PALESTINA/IZRAEL:Public appeal to international writers: do not partake in celebrating apartheid Jerusalem!
Your participation would function as a whitewash of Israel s practices, making it appear as though business with Israel should go on as usual. Concretely, Israel routinely violates Palestinians' basic human rights in some of the following ways:
1. Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip live under a brutal and unlawful military occupation. Israel restricts Palestinians' freedom of movement and of speech; blocks access to lands, health care, and education; imprisons Palestinian leaders and human rights activists without charge or trial; and inflicts, on a daily basis, humiliation and violence at the more than 600 military checkpoints and roadblocks strangling the West Bank. All the while, Israel continues to build its illegal wall on occupied Palestinian land and to support the ever-expanding network of illegal, Jewish-only settlements that divide the West Bank into Bantustans. The International Court of Justice in its historic 2004 advisory opinion concluded that Israel's wall and colonies built on occupied Palestinian land are illegal. [8]
2. Palestinian citizens of Israel face a growing system of Apartheid within Israel's borders, with laws and policies that deny them the rights that their Jewish counterparts enjoy. These laws and policies affect education, land ownership, housing, employment, marriage, and all other aspects of people's daily lives. In many ways this system strikingly resembles Jim Crow and apartheid South Africa.
3. Since 1948, when Zionist militias and later Israel dispossessed more than 750,000 Palestinian people in order to form an exclusivist Jewish state, Israel has denied Palestinian refugees their internationally recognized right to return to their homes and their lands. Israel also continues to expel Palestinian communities from their lands in Jerusalem, the Jordan Valley and the Naqab (Negev). Today, there are more than 7 million Palestinian refugees still struggling for their right to return to their homes, like all refugees around the world.
4. In Gaza, Palestinians have been subjected to a criminal and immoral siege since 2006. As part of this siege, Israel has prevented not only various types of medicines, candles, musical instruments, crayons, clothing, shoes, blankets, pasta, tea, coffee and chocolate, but also books from reaching the 1.5 million Palestinians incarcerated in the world's largest open-air prison. [9]
With Israel's continued disregard for international law and the basic rights of the Palestinian people, the kind of solidarity we expect from people of conscience around the world is to heed the Palestinian civil society call for BDS against Israel and its complicit institutions, as international artists and cultural workers did in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa.
In heeding the Palestinian call for boycott, you will be joining the increasing number of international writers including John Berger, Arundhati Roy, Alice Walker, Judith Butler, Iain Banks, Naomi Klein, Ahdaf Soueif, Eduardo Galeano, among others, who have in recent years refused to engage apartheid Israel and who have chosen not to cross the Palestinian picket line.
Read more...
SVIJET:
Dražen Šimleša: Četvrti svjetski rat je pred nama
Danas je i više nego jasno tko su napadači na život, na koji način je život ugrožen u cijelom svijetu. Znači, riječ je o globalnom napadu. Kad kažem život, mislim na sve ono što on predstavlja, sve ono što čini osnovu života, a to su zrak, tlo, biljke i voda. Paralelno s tim događa se napad i na osnovu kvalitete života u našim društvima, pa se napada pravo na obrazovanje, zdravstvenu skrb, ljudska prava, demokraciju, javne prostore i slobodno vrijeme. Napad se događa na ljude, druga živa bića i svijet oko nas, na cijeli planet. Napadamo sadašnjost i time gazimo budućnost.
Pročitajte više...
Goran Jeras: Demokratičnost planiranja i upravljanja u postojećim poslovnim organizacijama
Trenutna svjetska gospodarska kriza možda je i najbolje pokazala prednosti kooperativnog ekonomskog modela u kojem je jasno naznačeno da stvaranje profita nije primarni cilj tih organizacija, već da je to kvaliteta života članova kooperativa te vrijednosti koje kooperativa donosi zajednici. Takav koncept pokazao se iznimno otporan na učinke krize; u trenutku najveće nezaposlenosti u Španjolskoj od 1994. godine, broj zaposlenih u radničkim kooperativama porastao je 7,2 % u zadnjem kvartalu 2011. godine. Iako u javnosti to uglavnom nije tako percipirano, produktivnost radnika u radničkim kooperativama se pokazala višom od produktivnosti radnika u klasičnim organizacijama te i unutar kapitalističkog sustava i tržišnog gospodarstva mnoge radničke kooperative uspješno posluju i kontinuirano rastu. Najtipičniji primjer je baskijski multinacionalni div Mondragon koji je ustrojen kao federacija radničkih kooperativa i koji danas zapošljava preko 80 000 ljudi u 17 država te posluje s godišnjim prihodom od preko 14 milijardi eura. Trend osnivanja radničkih kooperativa prisutan je u cijelom svijetu, a osobito u državama Latinske Amerike (s naglaskom na Venezuelu gdje je to dio službene vladine politike), Kanadi, Španjolskoj, Francuskoj, Italiji i Portugalu.
Pročitajte više...
SIRIJA:
Years of Fear: The Forcibly Disappeared in Syria
The story of those missing in Syrian prisons is the story of a country that has devoured its own sons. The enforced disappearances of oppositionists and the impunity of the perpetrators is the price paid for the “Kingdom of Silence” established by the authoritarian and abusive Syrian regime. Among the portfolio of human rights violations in Syria, the issue of persons forcibly disappeared in particular has become a national disaster. While the missing number in the thousands, deleterious effects extend to hundreds of thousands of Syrian citizens who were stripped of their political and civil rights. The phenomenon has led to the psychological, social, and economic destruction of many Syrian communities for more than 30 years.
Read more...
New report finds systemic and widespread torture and ill-treatment in detention
The scale of torture and other ill-treatment in Syria has risen to a level not witnessed for years and is reminiscent of the dark era of the 1970s and 1980s. ... Many victims said beating began on arrest, then they were beaten severely - including with sticks, rifle butts, whips and fists, braided cables - on arrival at detention centres, a practice sometimes called the ‘haflet al-istiqbal’ or ‘reception’. Newly-held detainees are usually stripped to their underpants and are sometimes left for up to 24 hours outside. ... Several survivors told of their experience of the dulab (tyre), where the victim is forced into a vehicle tyre - often hoisted up - and beaten, including sometimes with cables or sticks. Amnesty International said it had observed an increase in the reported use of shabeh -where the victim is suspended, from a raised hook, handle or door frame, or by manacled wrists, so that the feet just hang above the ground or so the tips of toes touch the floor. The individual is then often beaten. Eighteen-year-old “Karim”, a student from al-Taybeh in Dera'a governorate, told Amnesty International that his interrogators used pincers to remove flesh from his legs when he was being held at an Air Force Intelligence branch in Dera’a in December 2011. Electric shock torture appears to be widely used in interrogations. Former detainees described three methods: dousing the victim or cell floor with water, then electro-shocking the victim through the water; the “electric chair”, where electrodes are connected to parts of the body; and the use of electric prods. Gender-based torture and other crimes of sexual violence appear to have become more common in the last year. "Tareq" told Amnesty International that during his interrogation at the Military Intelligence Branch in Kafr Sousseh, Damascus in July 2011 he was forced to watch the rape of another prisoner called "Khalid": "They pulled down his trousers. He had an injury on his upper left leg. Then the official raped him up against the wall. Khalid just cried during it, beating his head on the wall." ... Amnesty International said that the testimonies of torture survivors presented yet more evidence of crimes against humanity in Syria. The organization has repeatedly called for the situation in Syria to be referred to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) but political factors have so far prevented this happening, with Russia and China twice blocking weakened UN Security Council draft resolutions that made no reference to the ICC. In light of the failure to secure an ICC referral, Amnesty International said it wanted to see the UN Human Rights Council extend the mandate of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria and reinforce its capacity to monitor, document and report, with a view to eventual prosecutions of those responsible for crimes under international law and other gross violations of human rights. The organization also said it wanted to see the international community accepting its shared responsibility to investigate and prosecute crimes against humanity in their national courts - in fair trials and without recourse to the death penalty - and called for the formation of joint international investigation and prosecution teams to improve the chances of arrest. "We continue to believe that the ICC represents the best option of securing real accountability for those responsible for the grave crimes that have been committed against people in Syria," said Ann Harrison. "But while politics makes that prospect difficult in the short term, Syrians responsible for torture – including those in command - should be left in no doubt that they will face justice for crimes committed under their watch. ..."
Read more...
Deadly Detention in Syria (video)
Eyes on Syria: One year on (video)
Syria: Campaign to silence protesters overseas revealed
In many cases, the organization found that protesters outside Syrian embassies were initially filmed or photographed by officials then subjected to harassment of various kinds, including phone calls, emails and Facebook messages warning them to stop. Some activists say they were directly threatened by embassy officials. Naima Darwish, who set up a Facebook page to call for protests outside the Syrian embassy in Santiago, Chile, was contacted directly by a senior official who asked to meet her in person. "He told me that I should not do such things,” she told Amnesty International. “He said I would lose the right to return to Syria if I continued." A number of Syrians found that their families back home were targeted by security forces, apparently to deter them from their activities overseas, with potentially devastating consequences. Imad Mouhalhel's brother Aladdin was detained in Syria for four days in July. After apparently being tortured, he was shown photos and videos of protests outside the Syrian embassy in Spain and told to identify Imad among the participants. On 29 August, Aladdin was re-arrested and apparently forced to phone Imad to ask him to stop going to the protests. Imad and his family have not heard from Aladdin since then and have grave fears for his safety in detention. After Malek Jandali, a 38-year-old pianist and composer, performed at a pro-reform demonstration in front of the White House in July, his mother and father, aged 66 and 73 respectively, were attacked at their home in Homs. Malek told Amnesty International his parents were beaten and locked in a bathroom while their flat was looted. The agents told his parents: “This is what happens when your son mocks the government.”
Read more...
Syria: Campaign To Silence Protesters Overseas (video)
Neil Sammonds Interview on Syrian Crackdown (video)
Amnesty International Germany - Syrien: Blutvergießen stoppen! (video)
Amnesty International Croatia - Syria Public Action (video)
Razan Zaitouneh from Syria Wins 2011 Anna Politkovskaya Award (video)
