Two Dartmouth students turned a trip to Ethiopia into an opportunity to help shine a light into the lives of young Africans thousands of miles away.
In 2007, Ben Beisswenger, a member of the class of ’09 and classmate Zoe Dmitrovsky, were both on summer service fellowships in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, a trip funded by the Tucker Foundation and supporting the Human Capital Foundation. During their weeks there, the two, along with students from other American colleges, continued to be amazed by the optimism and cheer of the young people in the Selamta Children’s Center.
The Selamta Children’s Center is a children’s home and a sustainable living facility for children orphaned due to the devastating affects of HIV/AIDS in their communities.
Committed to being more than just impressed by the spirit of the Ethiopian students, Beisswenger, Dmitrovsky and the remaining American students wrote a book to tell the story of Selamta and the young people who live there. “An Unlikely Family” by Anemone Publishing Co. is a collection of first-person stories about the lives of various kids in Selamta. Often heartbreaking, the young people featured remain hopeful of their futures.
“The kids in Ethiopia were greatly interested in the book project,” said Carolynne Krusi, a former dean at Dartmouth and advisor on the Selamta project.
Krusi did the page layout and art selection for the book while American students, called ambassadors, were sending stories and other snippets to Krusi over the summer. When the American students returned, they filled in the gaps and helped with the editing and proofreading. It took nearly 18 months from the time Beissenwenger, Dmitrovsky and the other American students collected the Ethiopians’ story to the time the book came out.
Dmitrovsky worked as a teacher to the young students that summer and through a series of writing assignments each week, the seed was planted for the book.
“The most remarkable thing about these kids is they have experienced unbelievable hardships, yet they’re so appreciative of everything they have at Selamta,” she said. “I asked them to talk to me about what they wanted to do when they grow up and all of them said wanted to do good things for Ethiopia. Their desire is to transform Ethiopia for the better and they’re so thankful that it’s given them the ability to start a new life for themselves.”
As a show of support, on Tuesday, Dec. 16, the Dartmouth Bookstore located in downtown Hanover is hosting a book launching reception from 4:30 – 6:30 p.m. The entire purchase price of each book bought at the launch will be contributed to the Selamta Family Project.
Dartmouth College Office of Public Affairs • Press Release
Posted 12/15/08 • Media Contact: Latarsha Gatlin • (603) 646-3661
By Mike Elgan | ComputerWorld
I’ve been predicting for years that Wi-Fi would get freer and freer until almost nobody could muster the gall to charge for it. Now, with the economy down and competition for scarce customers up, the trickle of free Wi-Fi hotspots is becoming a flood.
Fancy UK sandwich shop Pret A Manger announced that it will offer free Wi-Fi at about 170 of its stores across the UK starting today.
And while municipal Wi-Fi is dying an ugly, premature death in the United States, China is working on making the entire city of Beijing a giant free-Wi-Fi hotspot by 2011.
The airlines lately have been rolling out Wi-Fi that is the opposite of free: They charge way too much for it (there are few monopolies as perfect as the provision of wireless networking at 35,000 feet). However, Delta plans to start offering Wi-Fi on its puddle-jumper shuttle flights tomorrow. To promote the new service, they’ll offer the Wi-Fi free for the next two weeks.
Free Wi-Fi is breaking out at gas stations, on buses and even on French “bullet” trains.
Meanwhile, an open source Wi-Fi service called WeFi now claims 10 million hotspots worldwide.
As more free Wi-Fi hotspots emerge, customers increasingly expect Wi-Fi to be free.
Of course, there’s no such thing as a free hotspot. Somebody’s got to pay for it. Increasingly, however, companies are folding in the costs of supporting a Wi-Fi network into the operations budget, and spreading the costs across all customers. I think this is a good thing.
My belief is that the demand for free Wi-Fi is driven at least as much by the hassle factor as it is the cost factor. People just want to fire up their laptops or iPhone and be online. As Wi-Fi devices, including the iPhone, BlackBerry Bold and ubiquitous netbooks go mainstream, the provision of free Wi-Fi just makes sense for business of all stripes.
In November 2008, International Rescue Committee health teams undertook a week-long campaign to conduct vital eye surgeries for 89 people in Sherkole camp, a safe haven for southern Sudanese refugees in western Ethiopia. Doctors targeted people suffering from cataracts, a clouding of the lens, and trachoma, an inward rotation of the eyelashes which rubs the cornea (and is most commonly found in rural areas without good water supply). Both diseases can cause blindness if left untreated.
“This was an important intervention that helped to bring much-needed services to hundreds of people in a remote part of Ethiopia,” said Bayleyegn Birhanu, the IRC’s “Vision 20/20” program coordinator.
IRC teams collaborated with government staff and an external consultant to examine 318 patients during the clinic. The services were made available to members of the neighboring Ethiopian communities as well as camp refugees. Indeed, of the 318 patients examined, approximately 82 percent were Ethiopian.
Before surgery, patients underwent preliminary screenings. Those with minor cases of vision impairment were treated with antibiotics. The teams then carried out 73 major and 16 minor surgeries. All patients were booked into the camp’s general health clinic for follow-up appointments conducted by government nurses and IRC staff trained by an ophthalmologic consultant.
The IRC offered similar surgeries in other refugee camps earlier this year. In Shimelba, we treated 54-year-old Lemlem Baheta who had been virtually blind for 10 years due to cataracts. The day after her surgery, while the examiner was checking her eyes, Lemlem could not restrain a cry of joy: “Stop it, I can see everything!”
The IRC now runs a permanent vision center in Shimelba’s health clinic. Since its inception in June 2008, technicians have examined well over 300 patients. Another 150 have been treated with antibiotics and given vitamin A supplements, while 37 people have received minor surgery. Additionally, 144 patients have received free eyeglasses following thorough consultations with IRC staff.
The IRC has made special efforts to reach children, according to Mengistu Scundado, an IRC Vision 20/20 officer in Shimelba. Children under 10 years are particularly vulnerable to trachoma—they often don’t wash their faces properly and have difficulty keeping flies, transmitters of the disease, away from their eyes. The IRC has treated 1,678 refugee children and 387 local Ethiopian children with antibiotics while also providing them with vitamin A supplements in accordance with World Health Organization guidelines.
To help parents protect their children from trachoma, IRC experts have trained 24 social workers to talk to families about personal hygiene and provide options for treatment of eyesight problems. They also trained teachers to recognize vision problems in children and to refer them to the local health center.
– IRC
By Ken Moore and David Schultz | The Connection
The call to Fairfax police about a bank robbery in progress at a McLean bank came at 11:21 a.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 10.
Ten minutes later, just across the Arlington line, three Fairfax police officers fatally shot a 19-year-old bank robbery suspect, at 11:32 a.m.
The suspect, Hailu Brook, also known as Hailu Brook Hailu, was a senior at Yorktown High School in Arlington County. He lived on the 7400 block of Eldorado Street in McLean, according to Fairfax Police, but had been recently living with relatives in Arlington and enrolled at Yorktown in September, according to Arlington County Public School Spokesperson Frank Bellavia.
Hailu turned 19 years old on Nov. 4, according to search warrants filed by Fairfax officers.
Arlington County and Fairfax County detectives are coordinating an ongoing investigation, according to an Arlington County Police press release.
FAIRFAX OFFICERS were initially called to a reported bank robbery at 11:21 am, Dec. 10, at Branch Banking & Trust Bank at 6220 Old Dominion Drive in McLean.
“In that robbery, the suspect entered the bank, brandished a semi-automatic handgun and robbed the teller,” according to a search warrant filed in Fairfax County Circuit Court. The suspect was wearing “a black-hooded sweat shirt with the hood over his head” as well as a mask, blue jeans, and white and black running shoes.
Two witnesses helped police locate the suspect, including one citizen who was at a drive-thru window when he observed the suspect enter the bank with the handgun, and then flee in a champagne-colored Honda, according to the court documents.
“The witness followed the suspect in his vehicle until the suspect crashed into a light pole,” according to the search warrants. That crash occurred at Old Dominion Drive and Valley Wood Road, according to both Arlington and Fairfax police.
Another witness then observed the suspect exit the vehicle with a white bag, later found to contain money.
“The second witness called 911 and stayed on the phone with the dispatcher as he followed the suspect,” according to the warrants.
Officers confronted Hailu Brook in the 5300 block of North 36th Street, just over the Arlington County border.
“The suspect produced a handgun and failed to obey the officers’ commands. Three officers fired at the suspect, striking him in the upper body,” according to both departments.
“The officers challenged the suspect, who matched the description of the bank robbery suspect, and then ended the encounter by utilizing deadly force,” according to the warrants written by a Fairfax officer.
THE THREE OFFICERS, all assigned to the McLean District Station, were veterans on the force, who had worked for 21 years, nine and three years, according to Fairfax Police.
Fairfax County Public Information Officer Shelley Broderick could not comment on how many shots were fired, how many times Hailu was shot, or whether he spoke English.
“Anytime there’s a shooting, we’re going to have an internal investigation,” she said. “There is no estimate as to when the investigation will be completed.”
Arlington Police were alerted to the incident from a Fairfax Police helicopter, according to Arlington County information officer Crystal Nosal. “They were alerting us because they had sightings of the suspect near a school.”
Williamsburg Middle School, Yorktown High School and Nottingham Elementary School were all locked down during the incident, she said.
Nosal added that she was once involved in a police shooting in the past, and that the investigation takes a significant amount of time.
“[That shooting] took place in October, and we didn’t send the [information] to the Commonwealth Attorney until spring. They want to go through the whole investigation and they like to be very meticulous.”
Hailu Brook was the son of an Ethiopian diplomat, Brook Hailu Beshah of McLean, who formerly served as Ethiopia’s deputy ambassador to the United States and is currently a part-time professor at George Washington University.
OFFICER DON GOTTHARDT, another Fairfax County Police Department spokesperson, said Fairfax Police could not answer questions Friday because Arlington County is now in charge of the investigation.
When asked if police have guidelines when to pursue a suspect and when not to, Gotthardt answered, “there are general orders, when we will … and when we shall not.”
Gotthardt refused on Friday to answer questions about the specific guidelines.
By Alemayehu G. Mariam
Donkeys, Liars and War Criminals
What a difference two years make! In December 2006, Zenawi invaded Somalia to save it from the “terrorist axis of evil” — Al Qaeda, Al Shabaab and the Islamic Courts Union. In January 2007, he reassured the world, “We will be out of Somalia in a few weeks.” A year ago he likened opposition members of his Parliament who opposed his Somali invasion to that faithful beast of burden, the donkey. He said “both have big eyes, but suffer from myopia; and have big ears, but don’t hear.” This past September, he declared triumphantly that he had fully achieved his primary objective of destroying and neutralizing the Somali “jihadist” threat to Ethiopia. A few days ago he told his parliament African Union troops have asked for help as they prepare to cut and run out of Somalia: “The African Union, Uganda and Burundi have all asked us to stay behind and provide protection for the safe passage of their troops.” Uganda’s deputy foreign minister, Okello Oryem, said that is a complete fabrication: “This is absolutely not true and this is contrary to everything we have said. Our position has always been that if Ethiopia pulls out of Somalia, we will increase our presence there. Uganda is prepared to increase its battalion if there is a need.” In the 104-page report, So Much to Fear: War Crimes and the Devastation of Somalia, Human Rights Watch indicted the Zenawi regime and its military forces in Somalia, the Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG), and Somali insurgent forces for war crimes involving “widespread and serious violations of the laws of war. Frequent violations include indiscriminate attacks, killings, rape, use of civilians as human shields, and looting.”
The Evidence of War Crimes
HRW’s cumulative evidence on war crimes in Somalia is staggering:
Since January 2007 (the onset of Zenawi’s invasion) at least 870,000 civilians have fled the chaos in Mogadishu alone — two-thirds of the city’s population. Across south-central Somalia, 1.1 million Somalis are displaced from their homes.
[Following the invasion] Insurgent fighters quickly adopted hit-and-run tactics…Ethiopian and TFG forces developed patterns of responding to those attacks that have since become part of the day-to-day reality of life in Mogadishu — reacting to indiscriminate mortar attacks in kind, with devastating barrages of rocket, mortar, and artillery fire across populated neighborhoods.
ENDF [Ethiopian National Defense Forces] forces in Mogadishu have routinely and indiscriminately bombarded populated residential areas of Mogadishu since March 2007. They have made regular use of “Katyusha” rockets in Mogadishu, often fired from BM-21 “Grad” multiple-rocket launchers.
Ethiopian forces carried out similar indiscriminate bombardments in fighting in the strategically important town of Beletweyne. ENDF forces responded by indiscriminately bombarding large swathes of the western districts of the town for three days beginning in July 2008. Humanitarian organizations estimated that at the end of July, 74,000 people—more than 75 percent of the town’s population—had been displaced as a direct result of the bombardment and related fighting.
There have been increased reports in 2008 of Ethiopian forces responding to insurgent ambushes and other attacks by firing indiscriminately into populated areas… particularly in Mogadishu, Baidoa, and along the Mogadishu-Afgooye road.
In 2008 the human rights and humanitarian situation in Somalia deteriorated into unmitigated catastrophe… Two long years of escalating bloodshed and destruction have devastated the country’s people and laid waste to its capital Mogadishu.
During the past two years life in Mogadishu has settled into a horrifying daily rhythm with Ethiopian, TFG, and insurgent forces conducting urban firefights and pounding one another with artillery fire with no regard for the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped in the city. The bombardments are largely indiscriminate… Insurgents lob mortar shells from populated neighborhoods… and Ethiopian and TFG forces respond with sustained salvos of mortar, artillery, and rocket fire that destroy homes and their inhabitants… TFG forces, often commanded or accompanied by Ethiopian troops, commit assaults, rapes, killings, and pillage of civilians during house-to-house search operations…. The discipline of Ethiopian soldiers in Somalia has broken down to the point where they increasingly are responsible for violent criminality.
TFG and ENDF forces frequently respond to insurgent attacks by firing mortar shells, artillery, and “Katyusha” rockets—the last being weapons that are inherently indiscriminate when used in populated areas—towards the neighborhoods from which they took fire.
ENDF soldiers have been implicated in serious violations of human rights and humanitarian law against Somali civilians with increasing frequency since the end of 2007.
The Art of Hocus Pocus
On the same day the HRW report was released, the regime’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs swiftly responded with a befuddled and incoherent critique of the report’s “methodology” and “specific findings”.[1] The official statement, in the usual categorically dismissive manner, rejected the HRW report because it was based on “flawed methodology, unsubstantiated allegations, hearsay and second-hand information conversations with anonymous informants.” In typical self-serving and sanctimonious hand-wringing style, the statement also declared that it was Ethiopia’s manifest destiny to bring peace to the warring factions in Somalia, and is now leaving because peace had become elusive there: “Ethiopia has persistently tried to facilitate peaceful resolution of the problems among the people of Somalia, not least by sponsoring a whole series of peace conferences since 1992… It was natural for Ethiopia to lend whatever assistance it could when called upon by the Government of Somalia… [Unable] to create a credible ongoing peace process… Ethiopia felt it appropriate to withdraw its forces by the end of the year.”
Remarkably, the official statement glosses over the serious accusations of war crimes and denies responsibility for any unlawful killing of Somali civilians. It even makes the comical argument that most of the Somali casualties since 2006 were not real “civilians”. Rather, “many of the claimed casualties have in fact been of fighters not civilians.” The statement denies the occurrence of any specific collateral damage (unintended civilian casualties) from combat operations by “Ethiopian” forces. It categorically and emphatically rejects the occurrence of any barbaric practices of war such as throat-slitting and body mutilation, and attributes such monstrous practices exclusively to Al Shabaab fighters. “Ethiopian” forces would never commit such atrocities because the “the Ethiopian military would not deploy under-trained troops in a combat zone like Mogadishu and… training in human rights and humanitarian law is part of the core curricula of all the country’s military training institutions at all levels…”
The regime’s criticism of HRW’s methodology — that is the claim that the HRW report consist of “unsubstantiated allegations, hearsay and second-hand information conversations with anonymous informants” — shows willful ignorance of facts and constitutes a feeble attempt at diversion from the serious war crimes allegations. The fact of the matter is that by any objective measure, there is nothing unusual or improper about HRW’s “methodology”. In “So Much to Fear,” HRW employed the same standard investigative techniques and methods it has used in all other cases of suspected war crimes/crimes against humanity. It has not used any questionable techniques in its Somalia investigation. As a matter of fact, HRW’s basic investigative techniques are not much different than those used in ordinary criminal investigations which involve gathering evidence from victims, eyewitnesses, confidential informants, officials, experts and any others sources that are capable of producing material and relevant evidence. In its Somalia report, HRW “interviewed more than 80 victims and eyewitnesses to the patterns of abuse documented in this report.” They interviewed “dozens of analysts, Somali civil society activists, humanitarian workers, diplomats, medical staff, and journalists, some of whom were also eyewitnesses to the events described in this report.” HRW also “met with TFG officials including Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein, with ARS officials, including Sheikh Sharif Ahmed and Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden, and with UN officials, including UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG), Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah… European Commission officials in Nairobi.” Beyond these evidence gathering techniques, HRW is also experienced in the acquisition of aerial and ground imagery, and analysis of combat operations information regarding collateral damage, cluster munitions and time sensitive targeting as evidenced in another recent report, Collective Punishment War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity in the Ogaden Area of Ethiopia’s Somali Regional State (June, 2008).[2]
The fact of the matter is that HRW used well-established criminal investigative techniques and procedures. But implicit in the “methodological” criticism is the subtle attempt to cast aspersions on the credibility of HRW as an impartial international human rights organization and create doubt on its investigative methods. The self-serving criticism must be challenged with facts. First, it is an irrefutable fact that there are few organization in the world that have the breadth and depth of war crimes/crimes against humanity investigative experience than Human Rights Watch (and Amnesty International). In the past decade alone, HRW has extensively and repeatedly documented war crimes and gross human rights violations in every corner of the world including Rwanda, Liberia, Uganda, the Sudan, Iraq, the former Yugoslavia, East Timor, Zimbabwe, Chechnya, China, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Sri Lanka and many other countries. Second, HRW has a stellar reputation for impartiality, neutrality, and integrity. Its reports are used in policy making by the highest legislative, executive and judicial bodies in most democratic countries in the world. Third, the countries that lash out against HRW most vociferously are countries with significant and lengthy records of human rights abuses. For instance, China has criticized HRW for preparing its country report “out of thin” air. Sudan savagely criticized HRW after it called for punitive sanctions against the top leaders in the Sudan who supervised the killing fields in Darfur. Last March Robert Mugabe dismissed a report by HRW on Zimbabwe as “rubbish”. A few months ago, Hugo Chavez threw out HRW from Venezuela, claiming that “[HRW] dressed up as human rights defenders, are financed by the United States. They are aligned with a policy of attacking countries that are building new economic models.”
Despite these transparent investigative procedures, one of the central criticisms of HRW by the Zenawi regime revolves around HRW’s unwillingness to turn over the names and addresses of the victims who gave evidence: “HRW gives no names of its informants and no addresses, though it does claim to have interviewed some people over the telephone in Mogadishu.” One can only shudder thinking about what they could do with the names and addresses of victims and informants!
What is also equally puzzling in the official statement is the regime’s emphatic assertion that, “It should be made clear that Human Rights Watch’s first time effort to expose abuses committed by Al-Shabab and other extremist forces in Mogadishu does not make its unsubstantiated allegations against Ethiopia any more credible.” Simply stated, the fact that HRW is telling the truth about Al Shabaab and the other insurgents for the first time does not mean it is telling the truth about “Ethiopian forces” this time around. Curiously, the regime’s logic compels a much different conclusion: If HRW’s evidence and allegations concerning war crimes/crimes against humanity against “Ethiopian” forces are untrue, mutatis mutandis (allowing other things to change accordingly), HRW’s evidence and allegations on Al-Shabaab and the other insurgent groups must be equally untrue. In other words, HRW’s allegations that Al Shabaab used civilians as “human shields”, it indiscriminately used mortars and remote-detonated explosive devices in populated areas, engaged in targeted killings, coerced recruitment and engaged in the use of child soldiers, etc., must also be untrue. It does not make logical sense for HRW to tell the unvarnished truth about Al Shabaab atrocities and fabricate unmitigated lies about atrocities committed by “Ethiopian” forces. As the old saying goes, what is good for the goose is good for the gander!
War Crimes
“War crimes” include a broad class of crimes under international law. There are at least four distinct categories of such crimes: 1) grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, 2) violations of the “Laws and Customs of War”, 3) genocide and 4) crimes against humanity (large-scale atrocity directed at civilian population including murder, torture, rape, etc.) Prosecution of war crimes raise many technical, legal and procedural issues as evidenced in the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the Special Court for Sierra Leone. Some of these issues are jurisdictional, e.g. where to bring the legal action, whether to use an ad hoc tribunal or the International Criminal court. Others are logistical, e.g. how to identify, capture, arrest and transport suspects to the venue of the tribunal. Still other issues involve prosecutorial strategy, e.g. how widely to cast the prosecutorial dragnet, whether to prosecute anyone implicated in atrocities or only those most culpable and responsible, how to distinguish between leaders who gave the orders to commit war crimes from those who actually carried out the worst offenses and those whose offenses were minimal. For instance, many of these issues arose in the Rwandan case. Prosecution of more than 100,000 Rwandan war crimes suspects proved to be an impossibility. For that reason, the Rwandan prosecution focused on the planners and leaders of the genocide, those in positions of authority who authorized, aided and abetted the commission of the genocidal crimes, notorious killers and torturers and others.
The Prima Facie Case for War Crimes: Collateral Damage and Concealment Warfare
At the core of the prima facie (on its first appearance) case in the HRW allegations are two central issues: 1) criminal liability for collateral damage, and 2) lawful responses to “concealment warfare”. Collateral damage generally involves excessive injury or damage to civilians from unintentional or incidental military actions. Intentional targeting of civilians as a military objective is a war crime. Protocols I and II of the 1949 Geneva Conventions codify the principles of distinction, proportionality, necessity and humanity in assessing collateral damage for war crimes purposes. These Protocols require that military objects be distinguished from civilian ones prior to attack in a combat theater. For instance, the principle of proportionality requires that attacks on a specific military objective are impermissible if they “may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life or injury that would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.” A responsible military commander is expected to first determine if the target is a military objective, and then decide whether the collateral damage from destruction of the target is proportionate to the military advantage of destroying it. Combat planners are required to “take all feasible precautions in the choice of means and methods of attack with a view to avoiding, and in any event to minimizing, incidental loss of civilian life…” Similarly, the doctrine of military necessity under the Protocols requires that there be some military advantage gained from the destruction of a target. “Concealment warfare” is often used by insurgents who commingle among the civilian population and launch attacks. For instance, some insurgent groups operating in urban combat environments employ the tactic of placing the civilian population at the center of conflict in an effort to create a more favorable battle space, and maximize their survivability against forces they are unable to engage under conventional terms. Concealment warfare poses special problems for conventional forces by combining military and civilian targets in the combat theatre increasing substantially the likelihood of significant civilian casualties.
One of the key legal issues in a future Somalia war crimes prosecution is likely to be whether the commanders of the “Ethiopian” forces in launching an attack or counterattack on insurgents concealed in civilian areas knew or should have known their actions would cause excessive incidental death or injury to civilians in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated, but failed to take appropriate mitigating actions. Another issue of criminal liability is likely to involve command responsibility under the Additional Protocol I of 1977 to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 which provides: “The fact that a breach of the Conventions or of this Protocol was committed by a subordinate does not absolve his superiors from …responsibility … if they knew, or had information which should have enabled them to conclude in the circumstances at the time, that he was committing or about to commit such a breach and if they did not take all feasible measures within their power to prevent or repress the breach.” Under this provision, command responsibility liability may go well beyond the actions or omissions of “Ethiopian” military commanders on the battlefields. Indeed there are many other legal issues that could be raised in a future war crimes prosecution.
HRW’s Big Message: War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity Will Be Punished
Over the past two decades, war crimes have been committed on a mind-boggling scale throughout the world. Most of them have gone unpunished. A year before the Rwandan genocide, the New York Times put out an editorial that began: “Commit atrocities on a large enough scale and you can get away with it.” That prophetic statement proved to be true in Rwanda in 1994 and later in other African countries. The message in the HRW report is not that the Somali war crimes suspects will be identified and prosecuted anytime soon, but rather those criminals should be on notice that the evidence is piling up against them for that day when justice will catch up with them. War criminals generally do not believe they will ever be caught by the long arm of the law. Radovan Karadzic believed as much. He became a mythical figure among some Serbs for evading arrest for war crimes for so many years. In the end, he was caught and is now facing justice in The Hague. No doubt, those who committed war crimes in Somalia will also be caught and brought to justice. But HRW’s report is important both for calling international attention to the “daily horrors of life in Somalia” and for resetting a universal tone of moral outrage so eloquently expressed over one-half century ago by Robert H. Jackson, United States Supreme Court Associate Justice and Chief Prosecutor Nuremberg Tribunals: “The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive their being repeated.” War crimes must never be tolerated!
1 http://www.ena.gov.et/EnglishNews/2008/Dec/08Dec08/75097.htm
2 http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/ethiopia0608_1.pdf
