(GenevaLunch) - Amnesty International’s 2011 annual report says bluntly that two of the most effective instruments of protesters in the Middle East in recent months have been mobile phones and FM radio. The report’s publication 12 May signalled its 50th birthday by surveying the state of human rights around the world. Reuters notes that “its beginnings in 1961 – ignited by one man’s vision to protect human rights for all — marked the start of the human rights movement worldwide. Key achievements include the formation of the International Criminal Court, treaties banning torture and the death penalty remaining in only a handful of countries.”
AllAfrica interviewed Amnesty leaders on YouTube: series of three videos.
Source: SECO, Switzerland (click on image to view larger)
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Swiss Piranha tanks were used by Saudi Arabia in putting down protests in neighbouring Bahrain in mid-March, the Swiss Office for the Economy (Seco) confirmed Sunday 27 March to news agency ATS.
The tanks, on wheels, were made by Mowag in Kreuzlingen, canton Thurgau. Some 30 were sold to the Saudi government in the 1990s, Seco figures show.
Switzerland sold arms to Saudi Arabia for a number of years but stopped approving them in 1991 during the Gulf War and again in 2009, when the Swiss also banned sales of arms to Egypt and Pakistan.
Deals made before the bans are allowed to go ahead.
Switzerland stopped sales to the three countries, it said, because of extensive human rights abuses, and the government is making a push for greater transparency.
Swiss arms sales total CHF200-400 million a year, relatively small. The US Congress In November 2010 approved $60 billion in arms sales to Saudi Arabia alone.
Amnesty International has harshly criticized Switzerland for its role in delivering arms used by Saudi Arabia in Bahrain. The group called on countries meeting 28 February in New York, to renegotiate the Arms Trade Treaty, to “to ensure no weapons or munitions are sold to human rights abusers”.
Links to other sites: ATS/24 Heures, GenevaLunch report on Swiss arms sales, Feb 2011 and Amnesty International video on arms control “free-for-all”
Friday in the Arab world has dawned with relative quiet, albeit a likely temporary pause, as the position of several governments in many places shifts.
Egypt: widespread rumours that appear to have started with the New York Times have the US and President Hosmi Mubarak discussing his departure with a three-head government to replace him.
Tunisia: the interim government is dismantling the old Ben Ali regime by replacing all 24 governors and several top security officers.
Algeria: President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has agreed to lift the 19-year-old state of emergency that limits internal travel and is behind other restrictions.
Yemen: The largest gatherings against the government in two weeks of protests, 3 February, brought out several thousand people in what turned out to be mostly peaceful calls for the president to step down, in a country where unemployment runs at 40 percent.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meeting with US officials Thursday 2 September in Washington, DC, have agreed to hold regular talks, starting in September in the Middle East. They will then meet every two weeks. George Mitchell, US President Barack Obama’s special envoy, announced that the purpose of the scheduled meetings “is to establish the fundamental compromises necessary to enable the parties to then flesh out and complete a comprehensive agreement that will end the conflict and establish a lasting peace.”
Links to other sites: Aljazeera, Jerusalem Post, New York Times, NPR, Telegraph, UK
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu left an unusually long meeting with US President Barack Obama smiling and talking about a “golden way” forward that had been discussed, but equally unusually there has been no official comment about the talks involved or agreements reached. Unofficially and off the record, says NPR in Washington, US officials are saying no agreement was reached and tensions remain high. The two met in what is widely being described as the worst crisis in relations between the two countries in decades, following Israel’s announcement that it would build new homes in East Jerusalem, with the news made public during a visit by US Vice-president Joe Biden to the region to restart Middle East peace talks.
Catherine Ashton, who heads the European Union’s foreign policy programme, is stopping in Gaza to see for herself how the EU’s aid to Palestinians is being used, before she continues on to Moscow for a meeting of the Middle East diplomatic Quartet: the EU, US, UN and Russia. The EU is the biggest contributor of aid to the Palestinians, according to the BBC. Ashton’s visit is unusual: officials at this level rarely visit Gaza itself because of diplomatic complications, and it follows Ashton’s condemnation of new Israeli settlements which have dampened hopes for a Middle East settlement.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Switzerland has added its voice to a growing number of nations asking Israel to end its plans to build 1,600 new homes in the Occupied West Bank. The Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA) in a statement Thursday morning 11 March called the decision a clear violation of international law.
“The FDFA is following with concern the events taking place in East Jerusalem, and deplores the go-ahead given by the Government of Israel to the building of 1,600 new dwellings in the settlement of Ramat Shlomo in East Jerusalem in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. It asks the Government of Israel not to proceed with the building project. East Jerusalem is an integral part of the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
“Switzerland considers the building of settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory to be a violation of international humanitarian law, which forbids an occupying power to transfer any part of its civilian population to an occupied territory. The Israeli settlements are a clear violation of international law.”
Settlement-building in the occupied West Bank will be halted for 10 months, but not in East Jerusalem, and the construction of schools, synagogues and community centres will continue as part of its “natural growth” doctrine, the government of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu announced 26 November. The news was welcomed by former US Senator George Mitchell, the US special envoy for the Middle East, who called it “significant.” President Barack Obama’s administration has urged Israel to respect its commitments under the 2003 roadmap to peace in the Middle East.
Palestine’s chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, dismissed the Israeli move as “mere propaganda” and said that it had more to do with appeasing the USA than making peace with the Palestinians.
Links to other sites: Aljazeera, Jerusalem Post, New York Times, US State Department briefing
US Mideast envoy, George Mitchell, arrived in Cairo, Egypt for talks with Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak 27 July, after stops in Syria and Israel. It was Mitchell’s second visit to Damascus, Syria in two months. Talks were “candid and positive.” In Israel, Mitchell met Defense Minister Ehud Barak. After talks in Cairo, Mitchell is to see Palestinian President Abbas, and Israeli leaders 28 July. This is part of a concerted effort by the Obama administration to move the Middle East peace process along. Other senior US administration officials are expected in the region later this week. Al-Jazeera, BBC, Jerusalem Post
US vice president Joe Biden told ABC television Sunday 5 July that the US could not restrain Israel from taking military action if it felt threatened by a nuclear build-up in Iran. Biden has just returned from a Middle East trip. Israeli prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu has warned that Israel will not allow Tehran to acquire nuclear weapons. Israel bombed a nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981. The Sunday Times of London reported 5 July that secret talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia raised the possibility that Israel would not be hindered if it flew through Saudi airspace on its way to Iran. BBC, Reuters
