The trail of the 'Raytheon 9' enters its likely final week. These nine men occupied the Derry offices of an arms manufacturer for 8 hours back in August 2006 with the purpose of preventing war crimes. Claims Eamonn McCann, due to take the stand this week:
"Israel had dropped so many bombs over southern Lebanon, south […]
It’s a bumper year for 40th anniversaries, especially for the United States: assassinations, moonwalks, war, protest. Elsewhere there were coups, decolonisation, nuclear tests. 1968 was also the year of the Prague Spring and the invasion of Czechoslovakia, student riots in Paris, violence and starvation on a mass scale in Biafra (Nigeria).
Last week was the 40th […]
Australia has had a change of government since Donna Mulhearn (39), Jim Dowling (52), Bryan Law (52) and Adele Goldie (31) were convicted under the never-before used 1952 Defence (Special Undertaking) Act for breaking into the US military facility on Australian soil called Pine Gap in December 2005. And it would appear the courts have […]
Hans Blix was this week awarded the 2007 Sydney Peace Prize "for principled and courageous opposition to proponents of war in Iraq, for life-long advocacy of humanitarian law and nonviolence and for leadership of disarmament programs to rid the world of weapons of terror".
The 79-year old Swedish diplomat and international human rights lawyer became a […]
Adolf Hitler is said to have assumed impunity for his Final Solution with a rhetorical, ‘Who remembers Armenians?’ His dismissive reference to the 1915-18 genocide of some 1.5 million Armenians under the Ottoman empire overlooks the genocide of 750,000 Assyrians by the same regime.
The Christian population of the Middle East — from the Copts in […]
Last week retired academic Peter McGregor was arrested in the Australian parliament for attempting to arrest Prime Minister John Howard, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, Attorney-General Philip Ruddock and Defence Minister Brendan Nelson, accusing the four of war crimes.
This was not McGregor’s first attempt to arrest the Attorney-General. In a public statement McGregor accused "groups like […]
Ordinary people are doing extraordinary things to oppose the war in Iraq; courageous, costly things. And more than just expressing opposition, some are acting to prevent war crimes being committed.
This month, four ‘Christians Against All Terrorism’ were pursued through the courts by the Australian Government for breaking into the secret US military facility Pine Gap, […]
Advancing the global campaign against explosive remnants of war, Belgium has taken the unprecedented step of banning investment in companies that manufacture cluster bombs. Belgium banned the weapon itself a year ago.
Cluster munitions spread ‘bomblets’ — hundreds or thousands at a time — over wide areas from 1 to 20 square kilometres. Unlike landmines, a […]
When a permanent International Criminal Court (ICC) was finally established in The Hague in 1998, its founding document contained four classes of major crimes that could be heard by the Court. Three of them are genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, each with legal precedent and a clear definition in the Rome Statute establishing […]
It’s 40 years since Australia executed anyone. Forty years ago today a flock of pigeons took flight from the roof of Pentridge Gaol in Melbourne when the gallows trap crashed open under Ronald Ryan’s feet. He was, and may he remain, the last person executed in Australia.
On this bleak anniversary Lex Lasry QC reminds us […]