En el 70º cumpleaños de Vladimir Putin, el comité del premio Nobel ha reconocido la labor de tres activistas que luchan contra el mandatario ruso y contra los regímenes pro-Putin.
El Nobel de la Paz ha recaído en el activista bielorruso encarcelado Ales Bialiatski, en la organización rusa de derechos humanos Memorial y en el Centro de Libertades Civiles de Ucrania. Los tres ganadores han sido reconocidos por el comité como ejemplos de “derechos humanos, democracia y coexistencia pacífica”.
Cabe destacar que el comité ha premiado a un activista encarcelado por el principal aliado de Putin, a un grupo de derechos humanos ruso que Putin ha intentado cerrar y a un grupo de derechos humanos ucraniano que está documentando los crímenes de guerra rusos.… Seguir leyendo »
Under Russia’s czars, military officers had the right to inflict summary punishment on unsatisfactory soldiers by punching them in their faces. When, in spring 1917, disorder spread, the lynchings of police and other representatives of order were sometimes accomplished by tying their legs to vehicles and dragging them through the streets. A pastor in Petrograd — soon, Leningrad — said “thirty or forty policemen were pushed through a hole in the ice [of the Neva River] without as much as a stunning tap on the head — drowned like rats”. Others were “lifted on bayonets”: impaled by perhaps half a dozen and lifted off the ground.… Seguir leyendo »
On Aug. 4, Amnesty International issued a report that accused the Ukrainian army of violating the laws of war by placing military bases close to civilian infrastructure. The report triggered a wave of public outrage worldwide and across Ukraine. For me, the report’s deepest flaw was how it contradicted its main objective: Far from protecting civilians, it further endangered them by giving Russia a justification to continue its indiscriminate attacks. That’s why I resigned as head of Amnesty International’s Ukrainian office. Many of my colleagues followed.
As a human rights defender, I am driven by a core set of values. Before this crisis, I had always felt proud of Amnesty’s work and guiding statute.… Seguir leyendo »
Lo entrevisté para mi película Por qué Ucrania (Pourquoi l’Ukraine), unas horas antes de que él y sus hombres recibieran la orden de rendición.
En la entrevista, Ilya me dijo que acabar en manos de los separatistas prorrusos del Donetsk era lo peor que les podía pasar a los combatientes del regimiento Azov, ya que serían torturados, o asesinados, o ambas cosas.
Así, Ilya había predicho, en cierto sentido, la tragedia que tuvo lugar el 29 de julio en el corazón del Donetsk, en la colonia penitenciaria de Olenivka, donde varias decenas de hermanos de armas suyos fueron quemados vivos tras una explosión cuyo origen la propaganda rusa oculta de manera sistemática.… Seguir leyendo »
The moral relativism of self-consciously neutral journalism — “Jack says the moon is made of green cheese, Jill disagrees” — is bad enough when it comes to political reporting. It’s far more noxious in the case of war crimes. Yet many publications are reporting the sickening massacre of 53 Ukrainian prisoners of war on Friday with headlines like this one from The Post: “Ukraine and Russia trade blame for attack killing Mariupol prisoners”.
This might make sense for the Iran-Iraq war, but there is no moral equivalency between Ukraine and Russia. The Ukrainians are innocent victims of unprovoked aggression. They are not known to deliberately target civilians, much less their own captured soldiers.… Seguir leyendo »
With every passing day, it is becoming clearer that Russia is committing the gravest crime imaginable in Ukraine: genocide. Russian forces have ravaged many parts of the country, massacring, raping, torturing, deporting, and terrorizing a vulnerable civilian population. A chilling logic lies behind these acts of violence, one that seeks to extinguish Ukrainian national identity, wiping out modern Ukraine as an independent country through the killing and the Russification of its residents.
Correctly understanding the stakes, the United States has already committed significant resources to the defense of Ukraine. What happens on Ukrainian frontlines will determine the future of Western security.… Seguir leyendo »
On February 24, 2022, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine stunned the whole world but particularly Europe and the West. This war has profoundly shaken political and geostrategic agendas. It also generated the biggest shock that international criminal justice has known for a long time.
This is firstly because never before has a conflict been so documented and analysed in real time, by a multitude of actors. While the current times allow this through telephones and technology – as we have seen in Syria and other recent conflicts -, the situation in Ukraine is singular in that it allows access to its territory and Ukraine has called on the help of international criminal justice.… Seguir leyendo »
By invading Ukraine in February, Russia committed a blatant war of aggression, evoking memories of the death and destruction of World War II. Not only was the very launching of the war illegal, but so, too, has been its prosecution. Over the last three months, Russian troops have killed thousands of civilians and laid waste to cities in Ukraine. As Ukrainian forces have begun retaking towns from Russian occupying forces, they have discovered mass graves and widespread evidence of other atrocities.
International institutions and an unprecedented coalition of states have taken early steps toward holding Russia accountable for these war crimes.… Seguir leyendo »
La ciudad ucraniana de Leópolis, hoy parcialmente destruida por los ataques rusos, ha sido en otros momentos históricos y bajo diversos nombres, polaca, rusa o austrohúngara. Guarda para los polacos recuerdos próximos e inolvidables hasta el punto de que la que fuera Lvov polaca, cedida a la URSS tras Yalta, al final de la II Guerra Mundial, sigue siendo para los ciudadanos del Vístula, y en demérito de Cracovia, la «más bella» de sus ciudades. Cabe preguntarse lo que quedará de Lvov, Lviv, Lemberg o Leópolis, bajo todos sus nombres urbe espectacular, tras el intento criminal de Putin y los militares rusos contra Ucrania.… Seguir leyendo »
Is what is happening in Ukraine genocide? That has been a burning question in this crisis, as it has been in other recent humanitarian crises in Darfur, Syria, Myanmar, China and with the crises in the 1990s, especially in Rwanda. President Vladimir Putin of Russia invoked the term to justify the invasion of Ukraine, claiming to “de-Nazify” the country. Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky, countered by accusing Russian forces of genocide, and Ukraine brought a genocide case to the International Court of Justice. That Russia has committed genocide has become integral to official Ukrainian rhetoric about the war. Many of Ukraine’s supporters and Russia’s enemies, including President Joe Biden of the USA, have adopted the same language.… Seguir leyendo »
President Biden’s accusation that Russia is committing genocide resonated with those appalled by the images of apparent slaughter in Bucha, Mariupol and other parts of Ukraine. “Your family budget, your ability to fill up your tank — none of it should hinge on whether a dictator declares war and commits genocide a half a world away”, Mr. Biden declared, although he later qualified his remarks, recognizing the need for more evidence. “We’ll let the lawyers decide internationally whether or not it qualifies, but it sure seems that way to me”.
It is understandable that Mr. Biden spoke as he did; his use of the term “genocide” was, at base, an expression of outrage and revulsion.… Seguir leyendo »
Russians who've committed war crimes in Ukraine may be counting on the conventional wisdom that accountability for such acts — if it comes at all — will be many years in the future. But that assumption is about to be upended.
Ukraine’s chief war-crimes prosecutor Yuriy Belousov has told us that his office is moving forward with charges in four model cases involving mass disappearances, torture and killing of civilians. And this is only the beginning: Ukraine is investigating some 7,600 potential war crimes cases.
What Belousov vows to deliver is something that eluded the United States after 9/11: the investigation and trial of suspects for horrific crimes, amid national outrage, in a manner that respects the rule of law.… Seguir leyendo »
It is an obscene irony of the war in Ukraine that Russian leaders use the charge that Ukrainians are “Nazis” to dehumanize them, just as the Nazis used dehumanizing accusations against their own enemies. While ostensibly attacking fascists, Russian propagandists use methods that pay tribute to German fascism. In the process, Russian officials have become the spitting image of what they pretend to condemn.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is among the most prolific practitioners of this strategy. The Ukrainian government, he has said, is “pro-Nazi” and controlled by “little Nazis”. The stated goal of his “special operation” is to “denazify” Ukraine.… Seguir leyendo »
“Get out! You don’t have permission to be here! Didn’t you see the sign on the gate?” shouted the official. But it was open briefly when I walked by on the evening of March 28, and sixty seconds were enough to sear the image on anyone’s mind for a lifetime: some one hundred dead bodies lined up and, in one section, piled up to three deep in the courtyard of Kharkiv’s central morgue. Frozen by the cold, some were in body bags; many were not. Some had shoes; some were in socks. Bare legs protruded from under sheets. Some were old.… Seguir leyendo »
El término de "oso ruso", como se conoce a Rusia, surge de un mito del siglo XVI que decía que estos animales abandonaban los bosques durante el invierno para dirigirse a las casas en búsqueda de comida, lo que generaba que las familias abandonaran sus hogares por el terror y fallecieran luego por el frío. De hecho, el partido político de Vladímir Putin, Rusia Unida, utiliza un oso como imagen. Bajo dicha imagen, el nuevo tirano ha ocupado el poder de la nación que antes fue gobernada por otro monstruo: Iósif Stalin.
La conflagración bélica desatada por Rusia con la invasión de Ucrania seguida de ataques indiscriminados a la población civil y el uso de bombas de racimo, las ejecuciones sumarias así como los desplazamientos forzosos de su población han puesto a prueba, una vez más, los mecanismos de aplicación del Derecho Penal Internacional como fórmula jurídica de lucha contra la barbarie. Tras el final de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, con la victoria aliada, se crearon los Tribunales Militares Internacionales de Núremberg y para el Extremo Oriente para juzgar a sus principales responsables. Previamente, nueve gobiernos europeos en el exilio hicieron pública una declaración, en enero de 1942, expresando su deseo común de utilizar el derecho penal para castigar a los culpables y responsables de las atrocidades perpetradas en aquella guerra.… Seguir leyendo »
I have found it almost impossible to look away from the images of the carnage unleashed by Russian troops on occupied Ukrainian towns. Overcome with numbness, I masochistically zoom in on the photos of victims, studying every face, or whatever is left of it. All I can think is: “They have done this before. They are doing it again”.
The indiscriminate shelling, the looting, the evidence of rape, torture and executions, and, above all, the sense of enthusiasm with which these war crimes are being carried out are painfully familiar. In recent days, my mind has kept wandering to another photo, taken 18 years ago in Rigakhoy village in Chechnya by my mum, human rights activist Natalya Estemirova.… Seguir leyendo »
War is synonymous with suffering, but for civilians, the severity of the consequences depends on how a war is waged.
One war crime stands out for its singular capacity to amplify the suffering of civilians, multiply the effect of mass atrocities, and drive forced displacement: Russia’s deliberate assault on health care. Because of its cruelty and devastating effect, this strategy deserves special attention and should be prioritized for prosecution.
On March 9, the Russian assault on a Mariupol maternity hospital in Ukraine sparked international condemnation. The Russian foreign minister confirmed that the attack was intentional but justified it by the specious claim, backed by fake images, that the hospital was a military base.… Seguir leyendo »
«El maravilloso y talentoso pueblo de Alemania, la nación de filósofos y poetas que dieron a la cultura mundial a Lutero y Goethe, a Nietzsche y a Wagner, a Kant y a Hegel, no deben ser acusados por los actos inhumanos cometidos por Hitler y su círculo más próximo y no se les debe hacer responsables por lo sucedido en Auschwitz, Majdanek, Buchenwald, Dachau, o por otras atrocidades que fueron parte del Holocausto, ni por haber borrado de la faz de la tierra a Varsovia y a decenas y cientos de otras ciudades y pueblos destruidos a lo largo y ancho de Europa.… Seguir leyendo »
When the last Russian troops in Bucha found themselves cornered by advancing Ukrainian forces in late March, they began shooting civilians, says Serhiy Konovalov.
“My brother was killed right here on these steps”, says the 46-year-old. “He was going to the basement in the evening and stopped to light a cigarette when one soldier just shot him for the sake of it”. He believes his brother Dima’s corpse deterred Russian soldiers from entering the basement and prevented the killing of three people sheltering underground without heat and electricity for a month.
Konovalov, who witnessed his brother’s shooting from the ground floor of the house, points to graves around his neighbourhood marked with makeshift wooden crosses.… Seguir leyendo »
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