Time - Blair on Trial

Time - Blair on Trial, originally uploaded by Teacher Dude's BBQ.

In the months following Tony Blair's dramatic arrest at Amsterdam's Schiphol international airport last September the possibility that a former UK prime minister maybe be tried and sentenced for war crimes has gripped the imagination of people from New York to New Delhi. Media representatives from every corner of the planet have turned the sleepy Dutch city of the Hague into a international news circus dwarfing the coverage given the O.J Simpson trial in the 90's. According to latests foreign ministry accounts 6,560 reporters have descended upon city to cover this week's preliminary hearings which are scheduled to conclude next week.

Blair's detention on route to the EU conference on Middle East Security and Safety in Zurich severely strained UK – Dutch relations with some Conservative members of parliament even calling for the air strikes on military targets within the country if the former leader was not released. In the days that followed hundreds of businesses and organisations with ties with the Netherlands were attacked throughout America with three Dutch citizens losing their lives in bomb attack on the country's London embassy

Not surprisingly, it has been the question of the sense and the legitimacy of the trials that is the center of attention for many eyewitnesses. Despite the lack of a legal precedent, most of them approve of the proceedings because, as U.S. writer Gore Vidal put it, "warmongers will no longer be able to live quietly in retirement." Some observers, however, have remained skeptical. Iraqi writer Salah Wali considered the indictment "bizarre" and British diplomats in Brussels have privately admitted that the British didn't "enter the war with clean hands. No nation could have done so."

The defendant, who await the world's judgment in varying postures of resentment, resignation, and revolt, is another focus for most members of the press. "While the counsel for the prosecution reads UK documents about the killing of Iraqis and Afghans," railed Polish reporter Pawel Osmanczyk, enraged by the prisoner's deliberate display of boredom, "Blair yawns, or just pretends to be asleep."

Fascination for and disappointment about the banality of the man who helped in the possible murder of thousands of people also appear in the accounts of the reporters witnessing the proceedings. "Involuntarily one desires to see a greater man," wrote Australian journalist John Pliger, "who have to stand trial for all the cruelties which are spread out before the court." Afghan opposition leader, Abdullah Abdullah remarked incredulously: "He is so insignificant that you ask yourself: Was it really this degenerate who laid my country to waste... ?"

Read more: www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,174037,00.html#ixz...

Greek government slammed over abuse of refugees

Photo: Chiara Tamburini, Brussels, all rights reserved

In a damning international report the Greek government was severely criticised for systematically denying refugees rights and turning a blind eye to abuse of those seeking asylum on its territory.

The German based PRO-ASYL (National Working Group for Refugees) report on the country claimed theat the situation was out of control and the the state had reneged on its international treaty obligations to treat asylum seeker humanely.

In the report published in October Karl Kopp, head of PRO - ASYL referred to a number of violations by the Greek government of refugee’s rights, including the summary deportation without hearing of thousands who had entered Greek territory from Turkey and the ill - treatment of other refugee by the police and border guards. One such example was given by A 34-year-old Iraqi Turkoman from Kirkuk who said that he made 10 attempts to cross into Greece before succeeding.

"One time I crossed the river into Greece and arrived in Komotini," he said. "They put us in jail for five days and then took us to the river and pushed us back. We were 60 persons. They put us in a small river boat with a motor in groups of 10. They did it in the middle of the night. It was raining hard, and the Greek police started beating us to make us move more quickly. I saw one man who tried to refuse to go on the boat, and they beat him and threw him in the river. They beat us with police clubs to get us to go on the boat."

Last year the Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) also noted in its report considerable number of allegations of abuse by police officials of foreign nationals in custody including the case of a detainee allegedly tortured with pliers while in custody in the northern Greek city of Alexandroupoli.
It should be noted that the land crossing from Greece and its traditional rival Turkey is littered with anti-personnel mines and that between 1997 and 2006 61 people lost their lives due to land mines.

In addition the PRO - ASYL report outlined the unwillingness of Greek authorities to accept asylum seeker’s applications. In the first six months of 2008 the authorities issued 8,387 decisions concerning asylum applications of which all 8,387 were rejected. During the same period just 71 of 2,886 appeal decision resulted in the granting of refugee status under the Geneva Refugee Convention. In 2007 just eight of the 25,111 claims proved successful.

Also simply getting access to offices dealing with asylum applications can be a risky business. On 25th and 26th October 2008 one immigrant died in custody and several were hospitalised after 3000 desperate asylum seekers applying for papers at the Petrou Ralli police station in Athens clashed with police. The police station had ceased to accept applications from the 3rd October for an unspecified period of time according to the Greek ombudman so leaving those without documents with the possibility of arrest and deportation.

In addition refugees deported to Greece from other European Union countries under the Dublin II accord have also had their rights violated and sometimes face violence at the hands of the police according to human rights organisations. A joint report published in 2007 by the Norwegian Organisation for Asylum Seekers, the Norwegian Helsinki Committee and Greek Helsinki Monitor wrote of the case of Noori, an Afghan asylum seeker transferred from Austria to Greece in December 2007.

“The policemen hit my face and the back of my head until I began hitting myself to make them stop. I thought that it is the same everywhere, the police is as bad. I thought of throwing myself out of the window in order to end my life. “

The situation has gotten so bad that that the United Nations Commissioner for Refugees has recommended that no asylum seeker be deported back to Greece from within the EU. Indeed Germany and Norway have already suspended such deportations in some cases citing concerns over human rights violations.

In a recent article on immigration in Greece for Time, Greek officials argued that the small Balkan state can not handle what is a pan European problem, however, such claims have to be seen in the light of the state’s ability to suddenly find 28 billion euros to prop up the country’s banking system in the wake of the global credit crisis.

Despite all this the conservative New Democracy government is unlikely to act to ease the plight of refugees at a time of rising domestic unemployment and embroiled as it is in the latest finance and influence peddling scandal to hit the prime minister, Kostas Karamanlis’s administration since being re-elected in September 2007.

PS. I just came across this comment on the Al Jazeera video posted above.

"Giati de tous petane pisw sth 8alassa?
Arketa me tis oumanistikes malakies , de ginete o ka8e apovlitos apo th koloxora tou na erxete edw.
Gia th metanasteush yparxoun diakratikes simfonies opws px me th Voulgaria pou erxontai oi an8rwpoi kai mpainoun se doulies kanonika kai me kanonikous mis8ous.
H paranomh metanasteush prepei na timwrite me 8anato epi topou . "

Translation

"Why don't we throw them back in the sea? enough of this humanistic b#llshit. It's just not on for every scumbag from his f#cking country to come here. As far as immigration is concerned there are discreet agreements, such as the one with Bulgaria by whuch people come and get work normally at regular wages.Illegal immigration should be punished by death.. on the spot."

NowPublic

Tags: Greece | Time | World | unhcr | human rights abuse | immigration karl kopp | pro - asyl | european immigration

Well, I never!

Happy!, originally uploaded by aNNa Munandar.

I was reading the latest edition of Time which was dedicated to the issue of food, a subject never far from my mind, dear reader. Anyway, some things I found out that I'd like to share;

1 Due to a dramatic drop in the more traditional seafood stocks such as cod, tuna and the like, we are now eating varieties that 40 years ago were considered "trash fish".

2 The Ukitas family in Japan spend $317.25 per week on food!!!!!! And there is only four of them!

3 The Aboubakars in Chad spend $1.23. And there are five of them.

4 800-or-so components go in Nescafe. This may explain why it tastes like the runoff from a toxic landfill.

5 Finns happen to be among the biggest consumers of ice cream per capita.

6 The poor still eat mainly carbohydrates and fats, the rich protein.

Looking back at 2006

At long last, my lonely struggle as Greece’s premier - (read only) edublogger has paid off. Yep, I’ve been awarded Time magazine’s person of the year award. I know, it came as a shock to me as well, I didn’t even know I was even in the running.

Just kidding, It seems “you”, faithful blog reader have also been given the same honour, so let’s congratulate you on this unexpected recognition of your valiant efforts.

Actually, this has been my year as far as the internet is concerned. Even though I’ve been using the web on and off for nearly a decade, it has only been over the last year or so that I’ve really felt that it is a tool I can use actively, an area in which I can express myself and contribute.

Blogging is the most obvious expression of this new found confidence, however, I have also been posting things on YouTube, Flickr and Wiki. All in all, I feel that the claims I have heard repeated so many times over the last decades about the potential of computers has finally come true. Finally, science fiction is becoming everyday reality.

For me the most amazing thing about all this for me, personally is the fact that that blogs, videos and photos and wikispaces I’ve posted have had 30,000 visits during 2006. Not a large number for those who regularly get those kinds of visits in a week or a day, but for me it is a mind blowing number as I never in my wildest dreams thought that so many people would be interested in what I had to say or show.

This year I think I’ve learnt more than at any other time in the last ten years, not since I finished my masters in teaching have I been exposed to so many new ideas. As far as teaching is concerned I’ve seen an acceleration in my application of new ideas and approaches in the classroom.

I feel that this just the beginning and that in the next couple of years I’ll throw off the shackles of my old style teaching practice in order to really make the web 2.0 tools available really work to their best advantage. That means seeing the internet tools such as blogging, vlogging, podcasts, wiki and the like not merely as away of enriching course books but a way of completely changing our teaching approaches.

I haven’t got there yet as I’m still learning - it’s a pretty steep learning curve- but also because I’m waiting for Greece’s internet infrastructure to catch up with my ambitions. Broadband still remains a novelty and prices for simple dial - up connections high. Hopefully, that will change in the next couple of years and so I’ll be able to rely on students having access to fast connections at home. Who knows, the school may even buy some PCs so enabling me to show students in more detail how to use the internet more effectively.

So here’s looking forward to a great 2007.