SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
un human rights council
'Slaughtered in Cold Blood': Iranians Describe US Massacre of School Children to UN Human Rights Council
"Israel and the United States, who are the cause of this suffering, must be held accountable," said a mother whose two children were killed in the school strike. "Not for revenge, but for justice."
Mar 27, 2026
A grieving Iranian mother told the United Nations Human Rights Council on Friday that when she sent her children off to their elementary school in the city of Minab late last month, "there was no sign that this would be the last time."
Speaking via video link to the 47-member UN body, Mohaddeseh Fallahat described combing the hair of Mahdiyeh and Amin, two of the more than 100 children killed in a US missile strike on Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School on February 28, the first day of the war.
"No mother is prepared to hear the words, 'Your child is not coming back,'" Fallahat told the council. "I am not just a grieving mother. No. I am the voice of all the mothers who sent their children to school believing they would be safe. A school was meant to be a place of learning, laughing, and building the future—a safe place for the children who were supposed to build the future of this world, not a place where their future is extinguished in an instant."
"Israel and the United States, who are the cause of this suffering, must be held accountable," she continued. "Not for revenge, but for justice, so that the world knows that children's lives are not worthless."
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi spoke after Fallahat, telling the council that the strike on the Minab elementary school was a crime, not a "miscalculation." Those killed in the attack, he said, were "slaughtered in cold blood."
“At a time when the American and Israeli aggressors, in their own assertion, possess the most advanced technologies and the highest precision military and data systems," said Araghchi, "no one can believe that the attack on the school was anything other than deliberate and intentional."
Preliminary findings in a US military investigation of the strike reportedly indicate that American forces were behind the attack, but that it was "the result of a targeting mistake" as the Trump administration conducted "strikes on an adjacent Iranian base of which the school building was formerly a part," according to The New York Times.
Volker Türk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, called for the US to complete its investigation "as soon as possible" and release the findings to the public.
"There must be justice for the terrible harm done," Türk said during Friday's human rights council session.
More broadly, the human rights chief called on the US and Israel to "end their attacks against Iran" and "return to negotiations—the only path towards a durable solution to their differences."
"There is a high and rising risk of further contagion and increased civilian suffering in the countries directly involved," said Türk. "Beyond the region, there are fears of grave economic consequences, from deepening poverty and hunger to shortages of medicine and fuel. It is imperative that all parties halt the escalation."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Francesca Albanese Names and Shames Israel's Corporate Genocide Partners
As bank accounts swell, more Palestinian bodies are piled up in morgues, mass graves, or are scattered in the streets of Jabaliya and Khan Younis.
Jul 13, 2025
Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in occupied Palestine, stands as a testament to the notion of speaking truth to power. This "power" is not solely embodied by Israel or even the United States, but by an international community whose collective relevance has tragically failed to stem the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Her latest report, From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide, submitted to the U.N. Human Rights Council on July 3, marks a seismic intervention. It unflinchingly names and implicates companies that have not only allowed Israel to sustain its war and genocide against Palestinians, but also confronts those who have remained silent in the face of this unfolding horror.
Albanese's "Economy of Genocide" is far more than an academic exercise or a mere moral statement in a world whose collective conscience is being brutally tested in Gaza. The report is significant for multiple, interlocking reasons. Crucially, it offers practical pathways to accountability that transcend mere diplomatic and legal rhetoric. It also presents a novel approach to international law, positioning it not as a delicate political balancing act, but as a potent tool to confront complicity in war crimes and expose the profound failures of existing international mechanisms in Gaza.
Two vital contexts are important to understanding the significance of this report, considered a searing indictment of direct corporate involvement, not only in the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza, but Israel's overall settler-colonial project.
This madness needs to stop, and, since the U.N. is incapable of stopping it, then individual governments, civil society organizations, and ordinary people must do the job.
First, in February 2020, following years of delay, the U.N. Human Rights Council released a database that listed 112 companies involved in business activities within illegal Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine. The database exposes several corporate giants—including Airbnb, Booking.com, Motorola Solutions, JCB, and Expedia—for helping Israel maintain its military occupation and apartheid.
This event was particularly earth-shattering, considering the U.N.'s consistent failure at reining in Israel, or holding accountable those who sustain its war crimes in Palestine. The database was an important step that allowed civil societies to mobilize around a specific set of priorities, thus pressuring corporations and individual governments to take morally guided positions. The effectiveness of that strategy was clearly detected through the exaggerated and angry reactions of the U.S. and Israel. The U.S. said it was an attempt by "the discredited" council "to fuel economic retaliation," while Israel called it a "shameful capitulation" to pressure.
The Israeli genocide in Gaza, starting on October 7, 2023, however, served as a stark reminder of the utter failure of all existing U.N. mechanisms to achieve even the most modest expectations of feeding a starving population during a time of genocide. Tellingly, this was the same conclusion offered by U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, who, in September 2024, stated that the world had "failed the people of Gaza."
This failure continued for many more months and was highlighted in the U.N.'s inability to even manage the aid distribution in the strip, entrusting the job to the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a mercenary-run violent apparatus that has killed and wounded thousands of Palestinians. Albanese herself, of course, had already reached a similar conclusion when, in November 2023, she confronted the international community for "epically failing" to stop the war and to end the "senseless slaughtering of innocent civilians."
Albanese's new report goes a step further, this time appealing to the whole of humanity to take a moral stance and to confront those who made the genocide possible. "Commercial endeavors enabling and profiting from the obliteration of innocent people's lives must cease," the report declares, pointedly demanding that "corporate entities must refuse to be complicit in human rights violations and international crimes or be held to account."
According to the report, categories of complicity in the genocide are divided into arms manufacturers, tech firms, building and construction companies, extractive and service industries, banks, pension funds, insurers, universities, and charities.
These include Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Amazon, Palantir, IBM, and even Danish shipping giant Maersk, among nearly 1,000 other firms. It was their collective technological know-how, machinery, and data collection that allowed Israel to kill, to date, over 57,000 and wound over 134,000 in Gaza, let alone maintain the apartheid regime in the West Bank.
What Albanese's report tries to do is not merely name and shame Israel's genocide partners but to tell us, as civil society, that we now have a comprehensive frame of reference that would allow us to make responsible decisions, put pressure on, and hold accountable these corporate giants.
"The ongoing genocide has been a profitable venture," Albanese writes, citing Israel's massive surge in military spending, estimated at 65% from 2023 to 2024—reaching $46.5 billion.
Israel's seemingly infinite military budget is a strange loop of money, originally provided by the U.S. government, then recycled back through U.S. corporations, thus spreading the wealth between governments, politicians, corporations, and numerous contractors. As bank accounts swell, more Palestinian bodies are piled up in morgues, mass graves, or are scattered in the streets of Jabaliya and Khan Younis.
This madness needs to stop, and, since the U.N. is incapable of stopping it, then individual governments, civil society organizations, and ordinary people must do the job, because the lives of Palestinians should be of far greater value than corporate profits and greed.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'We'll Own It': Trump Floats US Takeover of Gaza—After Ethnically Cleansing Palestinians
Standing beside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump said that "the U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip," which would be emptied of Palestinians.
Feb 04, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump said Tuesday that the United States will "take over" Gaza after emptying the embattled enclave of nearly all its native Palestinians, sparking a firestorm of criticism that included allegations of intent to commit ethnic cleansing.
Speaking during a press conference with fugitive Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday, Trump told reporters, "The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too."
"We'll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site, level the site, and get rid of the destroyed buildings—level it out and create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area," Trump continued.
"We're going to develop it, create thousands and thousands of jobs, and it will be something that the entire Middle East could be very proud of," he said, evoking the proposals of varying seriousness to build Jewish-only beachfront communities over the ruins of Gaza.
Trump said that U.S. developers will "level it out" and build the "Riviera of the Middle East" after Palestinians—"all of them"—leave Palestine's coastal enclave.
Doubling down on his January call for the removal of most of Gaza's population to Egypt and Jordan—both of which vehemently rejected the proposal—Trump said that "it would be my hope that we could do something really nice, really good, where [Palestinians] wouldn't want to return."
"Why would they want to return?" asked Trump. "The place has been hell."
Asked how many Palestinians should leave Gaza, Trump replied, "all of them," citing a figure of 1.7-1.8 million Palestinians out of an estimated population of approximately 2.3 million people.
The forced transfer of a population by an occupying power is a war crime, according to Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention—under which Israel's settler colonies in the occupied West Bank are also illegal.
"I don't think people should be going back to Gaza," Trump continued. "Gaza is not a place for people to be living, and the only reason they want to go back, and I believe this strongly, is because they have no alternative. If they had an alternative, they'd much rather not go back to Gaza and live in a beautiful alternative that's safe."
Asked if he would deploy U.S. troops to Gaza, Trump said that "we'll do what's necessary. If it's necessary, we'll do that."
Palestinian Ambassador to the U.N. Riyad Mansour responded by affirming that "our country and our home is the Gaza Strip."
"It's part of Palestine," he stressed. "Our homeland is our homeland."
Responding to Trump's remarks, Netanyahu praised his ally's "willingness to puncture conventional thinking" and stand behind Israel.
"[Trump] sees a different future for that piece of land that has been the focus of so much terrorism, so many attacks against us, so many trials and so many tribulations," Netanyahu told reporters as he stood beside the U.S. leader. "He has a different idea, and I think it's worth paying attention to this. We're talking about it. He's exploring it with his people, with his staff."
"I think it's something that could change history," Netanyahu added, "and it's worthwhile really pursuing this avenue."
There is currently a fragile cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, where more than 15 months of Israeli bombardment, invasion, and siege have left more than 170,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing and more than 2 million others forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened, according to local and international officials and agencies.
Numerous Israeli leaders have advocated the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza and the Jewish recolonization of the coastal enclave, most of whose inhabitants are the descendants of Palestinians forcibly expelled from other parts of Palestine during the establishment of the modern state of Israel in the late 1940s. Palestinians ethnically cleansed during what they call the Nakba, or catastrophe, have since been denied their U.N.-guaranteed right of return to their homeland.
Last November, former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon acknowledged that the ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza was underway. Other Israeli political and military leaders have said that the so-called "Generals' Plan"—a strategy to starve and ethnically cleanse Palestinians from northern Gaza—was effectively in progress.
Palestinian-American journalist Ramzy Baroud responded to Trump's remarks in a video posted on social media Tuesday.
"Now, you would say, 'Wait a minute, Trump seems to be really, really determined, his heart is set on ethnically cleansing Palestinians, and this subject is back on the table,'" Baroud said. "The question is, whose table? It's not on the table of the Palestinian people."
Earlier Tuesday, Trump signed an executive order withdrawing the United States from the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and continuing the freeze on funding for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which Israel has baselessly
accused of being a terrorist organization.
In a fact sheet viewed by multiple media outlets, the White House asserted that UNHRC "has not fulfilled its purpose and continues to be used as a protective body for countries committing horrific human rights violations."
"The UNHRC has demonstrated consistent bias against Israel, focusing on it unfairly and disproportionately in council proceedings," the White House continued. "In 2018, the year President Trump withdrew from the UNHRC in his first administration, the organization passed more resolutions condemning Israel than Syria, Iran, and North Korea combined."
UNHRC spokesperson Pascal Sim noted Tuesday that the U.S. has been an observer state, not a UNHRC member, since January 1, and according to U.N. rules, it cannot "technically withdraw from an intergovernmental body that is no longer part of."
The UNRWA funding pause is based on Israeli claims—reportedly extracted from Palestinian prisoners in an interrogation regime rife with torture and abuse—that a dozen of the agency's more than 13,000 workers in Gaza were involved in the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack. These claims prompted numerous nations including the United States to cut off funding for UNRWA last year. The U.S. had been UNRWA's biggest benefactor, providing $300-400 million annually to the lifesaving organization.
UNRWA fired nine employees in response to Israel's claim, even as the agency admitted there was no evidence linking the staffers to October 7. Faced with this lack of evidence, the European Union and countries including Japan, Germany, Canada, and Australia reinstated funding for UNRWA. Last March, then-U.S. President Joe Biden signed a bill prohibiting American funding for the agency.
Israeli lawmakers have also
banned UNRWA from operating in Israel, severely hampering the agency's ability to carry out its mission throughout Palestine, including in Gaza and the illegally occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
According to the most recent UNRWA situation report, at least 272 of the agency's workers have been killed by Israeli forces, which since October 2023 have bombed numerous schools, shelters, and other facilities used by the agency.
William Deere, the director of UNRWA's Washington, D.C. office, told PBS earlier this week that "there is no alternative to UNRWA."
"UNRWA performs a unique function in the U.N. system," Deere explained. "We are a direct service provider. We run... a healthcare network, we run an education system, we provide relief and social services."
As U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said last month, "UNRWA has been carrying out activities in the occupied Palestinian territory for more than 70 years... and has thus accumulated unparalleled experience in providing assistance that is tailored to the specific needs of Palestine refugees."
Trump's executive order preceded his meeting with Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court after it issued arrest warrants for him and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, last November for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. The tribunal also issued a warrant for Hamas leader Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri.
The U.S. president's directives also followed his January freeze on foreign aid to countries except for Israel and Egypt, and his plan to shut down the United States Agency for International Development.
This article and its headline have been updated to include Trump's call for U.S. ownership of Gaza.
Keep ReadingShow Less
UN Expert Demands Full Legal Protection for Climate Refugees
"The human rights implications of climate change displacement, in particular across international borders, are significant and truly disturbing," said the special rapporteur.
Jun 27, 2023
The top expert on the climate crisis at the United Nations human rights office said Tuesday that the international community must recognize that climate-related disasters including drought and sea level rise have become one the biggest drivers of displacement and ensure that the rights of people forced to leave their homes for these reasons are protected.
With 30.7 million people displaced in 2020 due to events related to weather and the climate—primarily drought, which was blamed for a famine in Madagascar and forced more than 1 million people to leave their homes in Somalia in 2021 and 2022—the global community "must realize its responsibility to protect people displaced across borders by climate change impacts," said Ian Fry, special rapporteur on human rights in the context of climate change.
Fry presented his findings about climate refugees and human rights in a thematic report to the U.N. Human Rights Council.
People who are displaced due to climate-related events are at risk of violations related to their human rights to food, water, sanitation, housing, and education, and in some cases, "their basic right to life," said Fry.
Between 2014 and 2022, more than 50,000 people died while migrating, and more than half of those deaths occurred when they were traveling to or within Europe, including people who crossed the Mediterranean Sea.
Fry presented his report less than two weeks after hundreds of refugees drowned after attempting to travel to Italy via the Mediterranean in an overcrowded fishing boat. The vessel, in which about 300 of 750 passengers were from Pakistan, capsized in front of a Greek Coast Guard ship. Greek officials are now facing questions about their response to the ship when it was in crisis.
A study of migration trends by researchers in New Zealand in 2019 found that the effects of the climate crisis, including flooding and temperature extremes, are now causing migration at a higher rate than poverty or a lack of political freedom.
"The effects of climate change are becoming more severe, and the number of people displaced across international borders is rapidly increasing," said Fry in his report.
The special rapporteur called on the Human Rights Council to submit a resolution to the U.N. General Assembly to "address displacement and legal protection for people all over the world affected by the climate crisis" by developing an optional prorocol under the 1951 Refugee Convention.
"Until then," Fry said, "I urge all nations to develop national legislation to provide humanitarian visas for persons displaced across international borders due to climate change, as an interim measure."
"The human rights implications of climate change displacement, in particular across international borders, are significant and truly disturbing," he added.
Keep ReadingShow Less
UN Human Rights Chief: FBI Could Unlock 'Pandora's Box' in Apple Case
'It is neither fanciful nor an exaggeration to say that, without encryption tools, lives may be endangered.'
Mar 04, 2016
The United Nations human rights chief on Friday warned that the U.S. government risks opening a "Pandora's Box" if it successfully forces Apple to unlock an iPhone belonging to one of the suspected San Bernardino shooters.
"Encryption and anonymity are needed as enablers of both freedom of expression and opinion and the right to privacy," UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said in a statement. "It is neither fanciful nor an exaggeration to say that, without encryption tools, lives may be endangered. In the worst cases, a government's ability to break into its citizens' phones may lead to the persecution of individuals simply exercising their fundamental human rights."
"To address a security-related issue related to encryption in one case, the authorities risk unlocking a Pandora's Box that could have extremely damaging implications for the human rights of millions of people, including their physical and financial security," he said.
The statement comes amid an escalating privacy battle between the FBI and Apple. The tech company continues to resist the government's orders to unlock Syed Farook's encrypted iPhone. While intelligence agencies have insisted that the FBI's demands are specific to the San Bernardino case, Apple, other tech companies, and privacy advocates have repeatedly warned that building a backdoor to encrypted data could set a dangerous precedent for expanding government authority.
Reporting earlier this month suggests that the Department of Justice is already pursuing court orders to force Apple to unlock iPhones in about a dozen undisclosed cases.
Moreover, Hussein said on Friday that weakening encryption could pose additional dangers to national security, such as exposing users' personal information to exploitation by hackers or repressive governments worldwide.
"This is not just about one case and one IT company in one country," Hussein said. "It will have tremendous ramifications for the future of individuals' security in a digital world which is increasingly inextricably meshed with the actual world we live in."
Keep ReadingShow Less
500 Scholars, Activists, and Nobel Laureates Call on UK and Sweden to Free Assange
Open letter condemns governments for ignoring United Nations ruling on arbitrary detention of Wikileaks' founder
Mar 01, 2016
More than 500 high-profile activists, Nobel Peace Prize winners, academics, artists, and human rights organizations released an open letter on Tuesday accusing Sweden and the United Kingdom of undermining the United Nations by continuing their "arbitrary detention" of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
The letter was delivered to the Swedish and UK permanent representatives at Tuesday's convening of the 31st United Nations Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva. It was published in response to a ruling issued by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention last month that Assange had been arbitrarily detained for more than three years and should be freed and compensated.
UK foreign secretary Philip Hammond dismissed those findings as "ridiculous" and "flawed," while a number of senior British attorneys argued that the UN report was "not binding on the UK courts," the Guardian reports.
Despite the ruling, Assange remains at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
The letter, which was posted on the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25) website, condemned the reactions of the UK and Swedish governments, charging that they "are setting a dangerous precedent that undermines the United Nations Human Rights system as a whole."
The signatories, who hail from 60 countries, include more than 100 human and legal rights organizations, four Nobel Peace Prize winners, activists such as Naomi Klein and Arundhati Roy, the cities of Madrid and Barcelona, 25 freedom of expression organizations, including Reporters Without Borders, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and The Freedom of the Press Foundation, and former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, who last month launched DiEM25, a pan-European progressive movement.
"We urge Sweden and the United Kingdom to respect the binding nature of the human rights covenants on which the decision is based, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as well as the independence, integrity, and authority of the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights and the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention," the letter states. "We, therefore, call on the governments of Sweden and the United Kingdom to comply without further delay with the Working Group's findings and 'ensure the right of free movement of Mr. Assange and accord him an enforceable right to compensation, in accordance with article 9(5) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.'"
Keep ReadingShow Less
The Imaginary Cuban Troops in Syria
Oct 18, 2015
Fair-and-balanced Fox News reported on Wednesday that "Cuban military operatives reportedly have been spotted in Syria, where sources believe they are advising President Bashar al-Assad's soldiers and may be preparing to man Russian-made tanks to aid Damascus in fighting rebel forces backed by the U.S." Fox's claim of an imaginary enemy alliance relies on two sources: the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies and an anonymous U.S. official.
The source at the Miami Institute indicated that "An Arab military officer at the Damascus airport reportedly witnessed two Russian planes arrive there with Cuban military personnel on board. When the officer questioned the Cubans, they told him they were there to assist Assad because they are experts at operating Russian tanks."
It is unclear what nationality the "Arab" officer was. Perhaps, said Arab, determined the people aboard the Russian plane were Cubans because he saw them smoking cigars and drinking mojitos. The Cuban soldiers then volunteered - supposedly - they were "there to assist Assad" because of their expertise in manning Russian tanks. However improbable this may seem to an unbiased observer, the source from the Miami Institute said, "It doesn't surprise me."
The supposed U.S. official - who Fox grants anonymity to without giving a reason why - related "evidence" from "intelligence reports" that Cuban troops "may" have trained in Russia and "may have" come to Syria in Russian planes. Sounds legit.
Despite the thinness of the report's sourcing and the improbability of its content, other news organizations were quick to parrot its claims. Spanish newspaper ABC noted the next day that media from Germany to Argentina to the Middle East had echoed the Fox News report, while ABC did the same themselves.
By Friday, the story had gained enough traction to be raised at a White House briefing. In a response that should have put the story to rest, the White House Press Secretary said, "We've seen no evidence to indicate that those reports are true."
But a few hours later, the Daily Beast definitively declared in a headline: "Cuba Is Intervening in Syria to Help Russia. It's Not the First Time Havana's Assisted Moscow."
Progressive concern troll James Bloodworth turned Fox's rumors into fact and wrote, "Not for the first time Cuban forces are doing Russia's dirty work, this time in Syria... Obama has been holding his hand out in a gesture of goodwill to America's adversaries only for them to blow him a raspberry back in his face - while standing atop a pile of Syrian corpses."
In reality, Obama's "gesture of goodwill" is little more than behaving less overtly hostile after decades of American aggression against Cuba and Iran. If you are choking someone unprovoked and you loosen you're grip, it is far from a gesture of goodwill.
Bloodworth also tries to make a historical argument that Cuba's (imaginary) military actions in Syria are consistent with their "bloody" interventions elsewhere. He decries"Cuban terror in Ethiopia" that resulted in hundreds of thousands of people being killed. "The tragedy was largely a consequence of the policies pursued by the Communist dictatorship that ruled Ethiopia at the time - a regime propped up by Cuba and the Soviet Union."
In 1977, Somalia invaded Ethiopia in an attack that "had been encouraged by ambivalent signals from Washington," according to historian Piero Gleijeses in his book Visions of Freedom. Initially reluctant to become involved, Fidel Castro finally agreed to Ethiopian requests to send troops to repel the Somali invasion.
Gleijeses found in his extensive review of formerly classified military documents that Cuba's motives in aiding Ethiopia were sincere:
With hindsight, we know that Mengistu's policies resulted in disaster, but this was not clear in 1977: though the process was undeniably bloody, the Ethiopian junta had decreed a radical agrarian reform and taken unprecedented steps to foster the cultural rights of the non-Amhara population... The evidence indicates that the Cubans intervened because they believed, as Cuban intelligence stated in March 1977, that 'the social and economic measures adopted by Ethiopia's leadership are the most progressive we have seen in any underdeveloped country since the triumph of the Cuban revolution.' [2]
In addition to correcting the record on Ethiopia, Gleijeses' study also sets the record straight on Cuba's historical modus operandi in its military interventions abroad. Cuba did maintain a large military presence in Angola for nearly 15 years, starting in 1975.
Castro first sent troops in November 1975 after Angolan President Agostinho Neto warned of a South African invasion of the country already underway, which would inevitably topple the nascent government without outside support. Cuba agreed to send soldiers to Angola right away. Several months later, they would repel the apartheid army back to Pretoria. They remained in Angola at Neto's bequest to prevent further incursions from the racist South African army into the country's sovereign territory.
At the same time, an ongoing civil war existed between Neto's MPLA, the largest and most popular of the guerilla groups, and the South African and American-backed UNITA guerillas, led by former Portuguese collaborator Jonas Savimbi.
Castro was adamant that Cuban troops would be responsible for preventing a South African invasion, while Angolan troops should deal with their internal conflict. In meetings with Neto, Castro "kept hammering away on the need to fight the bandits ... He explained to us that the fight against the bandits was necessarily and without question the responsibility of the Angolans, that we could not wage this war, that it was their war." [3]
Cuba's position during the Angolan conflict is consistent with the diplomatic approach they have repeatedly espoused in Syria, that the Syrian conflict is a domestic problem for the Syrian people and government to resolve themselves. At the same time, the international community works to achieve a peaceful solution.
"Cuba reiterates that international cooperation, based on the principles of objectivity, impartiality, and non-selectivity, is the only way to effectively promote and protect all human rights," Cuban representative to the UN Human Rights Council Rodolfo Reyes said at a meeting in Switzerland. He added, "Cuba is confident of the capacity of the Syrian people and government to solve their domestic problems without foreign interference."
Unreliable Sources
That Fox News could cause such a stir is a testament to the refusal of mainstream news organizations to verify sources. No new sources are cited in all of the iterations of the "Cuban troops in Syria" fantasy. The original Fox News report cites one anonymous U.S. official who may or may not exist. The only source on record with their incredulous claims is someone from the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies (ICCAS) at the University of Miami.
ICCAS is notorious for its reactionary, anti-Communist politics revered among the fanatically right-wing Cuban and Cuban-American population in Miami. Their academic research includes a conspiracy theory that appears to implicate Fidel Castro in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Another ICCAS report claims "the often-repeated view in many countries that the United States is an evil power, guilty for much of the problems and sufferings of the developing world, is owed in great part to the propaganda efforts of Fidel Castro" - not, rather, to decades of direct U.S. military intervention; profligate support to fascist military dictatorships; and predatory, neo-colonial lending policies that demand neoliberal structural adjustment programs which funnel public assets and resources to creditor interests, at the expense of the employment, health and well-being of the vast majority of local populations.
ICCAS is also home to the Cuba Transition Project, whose mission is "to study and make recommendations for the reconstruction of Cuba once the post-Castro transition begins in earnest." On its website, CTP acknowledges that "the project was established in 2002 and supported by grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) until 2010." Its funding indicates that it is at least indirectly an arm of the U.S. government's destabilization and subversion efforts dedicated to regime change of the politically and economically independent Cuban government.
Cuban Prensa Latina reporter in Syria Miguel Fernandez noted that ICCAS has reported six or seven times since 2006 that Fidel Castro has died. He suggested reports such as those originating with ICCAS about Cuban troops in Syria were part of the campaigns of reactionary groups opposed to normalization to tarnish the new relations between Cuba and the United States.
The Cuban Embassy in Damascus reportedly "laughed" at the report of Cuban troops in Syria and told Sputnik News: "It's pure lunacy. It is as if they were claiming that Russia had sent its troops to Madagascar to protect lemurs."
Despite claims of Cuban troops in Syria contradicting Cuba's stated policy and historical modus operandi, and the fact that now four days have passed without a single piece of corroborating evidence to the laughable Fox News report, the imaginary Cuban troops in Syria are likely to morph into more outrageous fantasies of media who have shown themselves primarily interested in fabricating tales of intrigue about America's evil enemies rather than reporting actual verifiable facts.
References
[1] Gleijeses, Piero. Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976-1991. The University of North Carolina Press, 2013. Kindle edition.
[2] Ibid.
[3] as quoted in Gleijeses, 2013
Keep ReadingShow Less
80,000 in United Kingdom Demand Netanyahu Arrest
Aug 24, 2015
Almost 80,000 people have signed a petition at the UK Parliament's website calling for the arrest of the Israeli prime minister when he comes to London for a planned visit next month.
If the number of signatures reaches 100,000, then the matter will be debated in parliament, according to the petition procedure.
"Benjamin Netanyahu is to hold talks in London this September," the petition states. "Under international law he should be arrested for war crimes upon arrival in the UK for the massacre of over 2,000 civilians in 2014."
Government responds
But in an official response containing several false statements, the government of Prime Minister David Cameron asserts that Netanyahu enjoys immunity, and justifies Israel's destruction and killings of Palestinians in Gaza as "self-defense."
"Under UK and international law, visiting heads of foreign governments, such as Prime Minister Netanyahu, have immunity from legal process, and cannot be arrested or detained," the government response states.
"We recognize that the conflict in Gaza last year took a terrible toll. As the prime minister said, we were all deeply saddened by the violence and the UK has been at the forefront of international reconstruction efforts," the government notes. "However, the prime minister was clear on the UK's recognition of Israel's right to take proportionate action to defend itself, within the boundaries of international humanitarian law."
False statements
It adds: "We condemn the terrorist tactics of Hamas who fired rockets on Israel, built extensive tunnels to kidnap and murder and repeatedly refused to accept ceasefires. Israel, like any state, has the right to ensure its own security, as its citizens also have the right to live without fear of attack."
In fact, Hamas and other Palestinian factions have consistently held to ceasefires while Israel has habitually broken them.
Israel has violated the ceasefire agreed on 26 August last year hundreds of times, according to international agencies, with relentless shooting across the Gaza boundary, especially at Gaza farmers and fishermen that has caused deaths and injuries.
The independent inquiry into the 51-day Israel assault on Gaza last summer, commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council and published in June, found that Palestinian resistance groups only used tunnels dug from Gaza to attack "legitimate military targets" in present-day Israel.
The UK was among the 41 members of the Human Rights Council that voted to "welcome" and accept the report. (Only one government, the US administration of President Barack Obama, voted against it and five abstained.)
Israeli officials must still find official pretexts for visits to the UK in order to ensure they are covered by diplomatic immunity.
Several Israeli officials have narrowly escaped arrest in the UK in recent years, often with official complicity.
The UK changed its law in 2011 specifically so that Israeli war crimes suspects would have an easier time traveling there.
Going to the ICC
In its response to the petition, the UK government also asserts that it "welcome[s] the fact that Israel is conducting internal investigations into specific incidents during Operation Protective Edge," the name Israel gave its assault that killed more than 2,200 Palestinians, including 551 children in Gaza last summer.
A year later, there have still been no charges in any case. And, as the UK surely knows, Israel's record when it comes to investigating itself is to provide its personnel with blanket immunity and impunity for killing Palestinians.
"We have also encouraged the Israeli authorities, as we do all countries, to cooperate with the independent Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) regarding the preliminary examination into the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories since 13 June," the UK response adds.
"I honestly don't expect [Netanyahu] to get arrested," Damian Moran, who launched the petition, told Al Jazeera. But he added that the growing number of signatures is "a clear message to him that there's a massive amount of people who don't want him here."
Welcoming Netanyahu is only one aspect of the UK's complicity in Israel's crimes. The UK continues to allow arms sales to Israel despite the carnage in Gaza.
If the ICC prosecutor resists US and Israeli political pressure and brings charges against Israeli leaders, then under international rules even the diplomatic immunity Netanyahu will hide behind in London would no longer protect him.
Keep ReadingShow Less
See More Stories
Most Popular
To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good.
News & Opinion
Trending
Common Dreams, Inc. Founded 1997. Registered 501(c3) Non-Profit
Privacy Policy