Last week Russian President Vladimir Putin warned the West he is not bluffing about using the weapons of mass destruction.

He ordered Russia's first mobilisation since World War Two and backed a plan to annex swathes of Ukraine.

Without naming Russia or Putin, Francis told the crowd in St Peter's Square last Wednesday that even thinking of using nuclear weapons is "madness".

Ukrainians are being subjected to savageness, monstrosities and torture, he added. They are a "noble" people being martyred.

He then told the crowd of a conversation he had on Tuesday with Cardinal Konrad Krajewski.

The Polish cardinal (pictured with his ambulance) leads Francis's aid work in Ukraine.

Krajewski had to run and take cover after coming under light gunfire last week, Francis said. At the time, the cardinal had been delivering aid with a Catholic bishop, a Protestant bishop and a Ukrainian soldier.

Cardinal Krajewski also visited mass graves outside Izium, in northeast Ukraine.

"He (Krajewski) told me of the pain of these people, the savage acts, the monstrosity, the tortured bodies they find. Let us unite with these people, so noble and martyred," Francis told the crowd.

Ukrainian officials say they have found hundreds of bodies. Some have their hands tied behind their backs. They are buried in territory recaptured from Russian forces.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy says their bodies provide proof of war crimes,

Of the 111 civilian bodies exhumed by Wednesday, four showed signs of torture according to the head of investigative police in the Kharkiv region where Izium is located.

Russia has consistently denied its troops have committed war crimes since it invaded Ukraine in February.

On Monday last week, two days before the exhumations, the Kremlin rejected allegations of such abuses in Kharkiv region. The allegations are a "lie", the Kremlin said.

A contrasting world view

After discussing the situation in Ukraine with the crowd, Francis then spoke of his trip to Kazakhstan which took place early last week.

The central Asian country gave up its nuclear weapons in 1991 after its independence from the Soviet Union.

"This was courageous," Francis told the crowd.

"At a time in this tragic [Ukraine] war where some are thinking of nuclear weapons - which is madness - this country said 'no' to nuclear weapons from the start."

Read by some as a surrender to the "woke brigade" and by others as a reasonable response to the accusation the lyrics glorify "slavery, rape, torture and paedophilia", the decision highlights the changing ethical considerations musicians must navigate in order to maintain a social license.

Brown Sugar was recorded in Alabama in late 1969 and released on the Rolling Stones' 1971 album Sticky Fingers.

The song is emblematic of the Stones' energetic rhythm and blues sound and has been a mainstay of their set list for decades.

The lyrics explore the sexual exploitation of a black woman by slave traders and slave owners in America's south, presenting a sexualised view of a marginalised group.

Brown Sugar, how come you taste so good?
Brown Sugar, just like a young girl should.

Contemporary and informed audiences would also recognise "brown sugar" as a reference to heroin.

Through the course of the song, the singer moves from observer to an agent of this sexualisation.

And all her boyfriends were sweet 16
I'm no school boy but I know what I like
You should have heard them just around midnight.

While some interpretations of the song would like to see it primarily as a celebration of a drug counterculture, any pretence the phrase "Brown Sugar" is other than a reference to a black woman falls away in the final lyric of the studio album.

Just like a black girl should.

This combination of sexual imagery and illicit drug references in the song's lyrics contributes to the culturally transgressive place the Rolling Stones occupy in popular music history.

A question of race

Some have little to say about matters of race in the Stone's music.

A recent essay in the Cambridge Companion to the Rolling Stones examines the contribution of non-band members to Brown Sugar, notably pianist Ian Stewart and saxophonist Bobby Keys, and interprets the lyrics as nothing more than "famously bawdy".

But for many race is central to any consideration of the Stones' output from this period.

Patrick Burke, in Rock, Race and Radicalism in the 1960s sees the Stones as wallowing in racist stereotypes.

He asserts Brown Sugar is a "lascivious celebration of sexual clichés associated with slavery."

The song undeniably deals in confronting subject matter.

Its removal from the set list causes us to question whether the song is racist and speaks to the changing parameters of ethical practice for musicians.

Keith Richards highlights this ambiguity in his comments on the removal of the song.

"I don't know. I'm trying to figure out with the sisters quite where the beef is. Didn't they understand this was a song about the horrors of slavery?"

Richards' mildly defensive tone fuels broadcaster Piers Morgan bellicose defence of Brown Sugar as a "song aimed at defending and supporting black women".

Morgan also draws attention to what he sees as a "double standard" for rap music where racist and misogynist tropes abound.

Pulling the song from the set list seems to Morgan an unacceptable confession of guilt.

Ethics in music

I would argue that whether Mick Jagger, in writing Brown Sugar, intended it to be racist misses the point.

My research examines how non-Aboriginal Australian composers have interacted with Australian Indigenous music.

The use of Indigenous music, instruments and language by Australian composers was once commonplace - and even viewed as a form of advocacy. More recently, Australian composers have come to realise the damage cultural appropriate can cause.

As we learn more about other cultures - including greater knowledge of what causes offence and what is painful - our behaviour needs to change.

Even if the style of Brown Sugar was once heard as an innocent rendering of an upbeat rhythm and blues sound (and as far back as the mid-1960s there have been critiques of the Rolling Stones co-option of Black culture), the ecstatic guitar riff, energetic piano and vigorous saxophone create an unacceptable dissonance in the ears of contemporary listeners.

To use such joyful music to accompany lyrics exploring the sexual exploitation which accompanied slavery clearly causes hurt to marginalised people. As music producer and author Ian Brennan notes, were someone in customer service was to utter the line "Brown Sugar how come you taste so good?", they would be immediately fired.

The freedom to not play Brown Sugar

So does the Stones decision to pull the song damage their reputation? Is this an act of censorship, injuring artistic freedom?

I would argue the ethical musician should defer to the sensibilities of the marginalised group.

The cost here is the Rolling Stones won't play Brown Sugar live.

This isn't censorship; the song is readily available. It isn't even iconoclasm - music history is not damaged and no idols have been smashed.

The Stones' decision to pull the song isn't a confession of racism. It is an ethical act and, in itself, an act of artistic freedom that preserves their social license and affirms their ongoing cultural significance.

• Timothy McKenry is Professor of Music, Australian Catholic University.
• First published in The Conversation; republished with permission.

Omar Nabi's father, Haji-Daoud Nabi, was fatally shot at the Deans Ave mosque on March 15 as he tried to shield another person. Read more

The Indefinite Despair report includes medical data MSF gathered during the past year while it was contracted by the Nauruan government to deliver mental health services.

These services were provided to Nauruans and to asylum seekers and refugees detained there under Australia's offshore detention policy.

The report says Nauruan and refugee patients show similar levels of mental illness that are far worse than other MSF projects around the world.

While stigma and a lack of understanding of mental illness were leading to poor healthcare for both Nauruan and detained people, the report says Nauruan patients were improving under MSF treatment while refugees and asylum seekers were not.

MSF also reports that rates of suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts among the refugees and asylum seekers were exacerbated by family separation and the violence they experienced on Nauru (some of which was allegedly inflicted by authority figures).

The refugees' and asylum seekers' prior detention on Christmas Island was also found to be an exacerbating factor in poor mental health outcomes.

Using a mental health scoring method known as Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF), MSF says it found the situation on Nauru to be more severe than in many global emergencies it deals with.

The report says waiting in limbo for five years meant the Nauru detainees had a lower GAF score than torture victims MSF had treated.

"We found this loss of control was associated with major psychiatric illnesses such as depression, anxiety disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder. We also found the loss of control was associated with higher rates of suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts," said Dr Beth O'Connor, one of the psychiatrists involved.

The report found among 208 refugee and asylum seeker patients, 60 percent had suicidal thoughts and 30 percent attempted suicide, one as young as nine years old.

A breakdown in the relationship between MSF and the Nauruan government saw the doctors expelled in October this year, just 11 months after the contract began.

Source

• Doctors Without Borders
• The Guardian
• Radio NZ
• Image:The New Daily
  

In a Tuesday message for the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, Francis said that torture didn't end in Auschwitz-Birkenau.

"Today people are being tortured. Many prisoners are tortured. Today in many places where there is war the same thing happens.

"Jesus carried this reality on his own shoulders. He asks us to pray," Francis says.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says "victims of torture have a right to an effective remedy, rehabilitation and redress."

Guterres said observing International Day in Support of Victims of Torture was instituted to acknowledge and honour the "many survivors of torture worldwide."

Victims include those who have been tortured for "their political or other views, those caught in the fight against terrorism or those who have been tortured simply because of their differences."

Although torture is condemned in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the United Nations Convention against Torture, Guterres says more action is needed to eradicate torture fully.

We should pay tribute "to all those who stand in solidarity with victims and their families and ... reaffirm our commitment to ending this abominable and useless practice," he says.

Source

• YouTube
• Vatican News
• Image: New Scientist

The bishops say their decision came in light of a "longing of Pope Francis", who was the former bishop of Buenos Aires in Argentina.

Francis has promised human rights groups the church would hand over documentation to help clarify the crimes committed by the military regime. Read more

In a new report titled "Libya's Dark Web of Collusion", Amnesty International says the EU finances the Libyan coastguard and officials running the country's detention camps to carry out torture and exploitation.

At present, the human rights group says about 20,000 people are detained in detention centers in Libya.

The aim is to stem the flow of people across the Mediterranean to Europe "... with little thought, or seeming care for the consequences for those trapped in Libya as a result."

Irregular entry, stay and exit are criminal offences in Libya.

"The lack of any judicial oversight of the detention process and the near total impunity with which officials operate has facilitated the institutionalisation of torture and other ill-treatment in detention [centers]," the Amnesty report says.

The organisation further reports the EU "routinely acts in collusion with militia groups and people traffickers to 'make money from human suffering'".

After ships, training and funding from the EU and Italy were provided to the Libyan coastguard, Amnesty says the number of arrivals in Italy fell by 67% between July and November compared with the same period in 2016.

Deaths at sea have correspondingly reduced.

Furthermore, Amnesty says the coastguard and those to whom they hand over refugees, migrants and asylum seekers, are often acting with criminal gangs and militia.

Amnesty claims the coastguard and smugglers sometimes mark boats to allow vessels to pass through Libyan waters without interception.

At the same time, the coastguard sometimes escorts boats out to international waters.

Refugees and migrants intercepted on their way to Europe are sent to camps run by the Libyan general directorate for combating illegal migration.

They are then routinely tortured for money, Amnesty reports.

Source

• The Guardian
• National Public Radio,Inc
• Aljazeera
• Image: Thomson Reuters Foundation News

This trauma fuelled her passion for human rights work.

Ortiz now serves as the editor of Education for Justice, a project of the Center of Concern.

She also founded the international Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition (TASSC International) and served as its director for 10 years.

Ortiz has received many honors for her human rights work, including three honorary doctorates, the Pax Christi USA Teacher of Peace Award, and the Rothko Chapel Oscar Romero Award.

Ortiz shared with Global Sisters Report the story of her journey from survivor to visionary advocate and educator and talked about the spirituality that supports her in her work.

Like many sisters, Ortiz works to raise awareness to end human trafficking. She helped produce the short video "I Am Miriam," which tells the story of a trafficking survivor.

GSR: What are the spiritual practices that nourish you in the 'long-haul' work of social justice ministry?

Ortiz: Years back, I was asked to give a presentation on the relationship between my own spirituality and justice.

This was one of the most agonizing reflections that I had ever been asked to give.

How could a person who was present at the eclipse of God and felt divorced from humanity claim to have a spiritual life?

My experience of torture left me feeling lifeless and with a lack of purpose.

I came to recognize that my spirituality at that given moment was surviving — stitching back together my shredded trust in God, my hope in humanity, and my dignity as a woman.

Our world is faced with so many problems [including] poverty, corruption, extreme forms of violence [and] ecological peril. Being an advocate for change is not easy and can take a toll on a person's life.

There were times I was passionate — some might say 'obsessed' — in my attempt to get people to recognize what was happening in our world with torture.

My life goal was to create a world free of torture, to raise awareness of its impacts of individuals, families, societies and perpetrators. Continue reading

Source and Image:

• Global Sisters' Report, from a question and answer article by Rhonda Miska, a former Jesuit Volunteer (Nicaragua, 2002-2004) and a graduate of the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry.

The footage, reportedly taken in a village of the Enga province, shows four women who have been stripped, tied up, burned and beaten. Several men prod the women threateningly with machetes while hurling questions at them.

According to a local Lutheran missionary, Anton Lutz, the video was first shared by local high school students on their mobile phones before it appeared on social media.

The Guardian reports that several similar acts in recent years have also been filmed or photographed and shared.

"It's not police photos or anything of the crime being shared," said a source who is involved in rescues of victims. "It's actual participants who are there and actually bragging about what they're doing. It's kind of like a Abu Ghraib video or something."

He said he was aware of many people sharing the video on their smartphones, including high school students, and said it wasn't out of horror but rather approval for the actions being taken against the four accused women.

The torturers later claimed the women returned the man's heart after they were tortured, apparently proving their guilt, according to the social media reports.

It is believed at least one woman died after the ordeal, but this has not been confirmed.

The Catholic Bishop of Mendi Bishop Donald Lippert is hosting a forum against such violence this week.

He says the key to stopping sorcery-related violence in Papua New Guinea is to hold people accountable.

High-ranking members of the Catholic church from around the region are expected to attend as well as Australian National University's Miranda Forsyth, sociologist Philip Gibbs and the US ambassador to PNG and the Solomons, Walter North.

Lippert says police and business community representatives will also attend.

He says the focus will be on introducing deterrents to sorcery-related violence.

"It's really difficult to stop someone from believing something so if people want to believe in sorcery for the rest of their lives, it's up to them, but they have to know if they act on those beliefs in a way that harms innocent people then they have to be held accountable."

Last December the Catholic Bishop of Wabag, Arnold Orowae, launched a campaign against the persecution of so-called witches, threatening any Catholics who get involved in sorcery-related attacks with excommunication.

In an interview, Orowae expressed his disgust with people who call themselves Christians and yet spread dissension linking innocent persons to sorcery.

He also said that the Catholic Church would fight against these witch hunters together with the police.

"The unethical and unlawful killing of women alleged to be witches must and will be stopped in 2015," the bishop said.

The Bishops' Conference of Papua New Guinea published an open letter in the two major Papuan dailies, condemning the persecution of pseudo-witches.

Source

• breitbart.com
• dailymail.co.uk
• theguardian.com
• radionz.co.nz
• Image: nsnbc.me

The offer came during a meeting on Tuesday, between Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, and US Secretary of State, John Kerry, held at the Vatican.

The Vatican stood ready to "help find adequate humanitarian solutions through our international contacts", Spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi SJ confirmed, at a press conference following the meeting.

"There's a desire by the Vatican to follow the situation closely, even if [the precise solution] is obviously not among the Vatican's competences, but the Holy See favours adequate humanitarian solutions that lead to the closing the Guantanamo prison," said the spokesman.

Lombardi confirmed other topics discussed included in the discussions were the situation in the Middle East, talks between Israel and Palestine officials, the crisis in Ukraine and the Ebola epidemic.

The Vatican spokesman did not expand further on the contents of any of the discussions, but acknowledged there was a problem of where the current detainees can go and where they will be made welcome.

In October, the Pope railed against "penal populism" that led countries to facilitate torture, using the death penalty and imprisoning people without trial.

The US bishops have repeatedly called for Guantanamo's closure, saying that such torture violates Church teaching.

However former Vice-President Dick Cheney gave an unflinching defence of the CIA's torture programme.

Speaking on US television's, "Meet the Press" on Sunday, Cheney dismissed criticisms of the program's forced rectal feedings, waterboarding and death.

"It worked. It absolutely did work.

"I'd do it again in a minute," said Cheney.

Cheney said he was more disturbed by the detainees released from Guantanamo and prisons in Iraq - many under his own administration - who have returned to the battlefield.

President Barack Obama has launched a new push to close Guantanamo, and recently a dozen prisoners transferred out, leaving about 130 from a high of 700 on the U.S. base in Cuba.

Sources

• ABC
• NCR
• Huffington Post
• Crux
• Globe and Mail
• Image: Conggaio

Because I had some time before we were supposed to start services, I wandered around the 300 or so folks who shivered in the cold and gathered in the space around the altar (Mass was obligatory—Casa Romero was run by a generous, but iron-fisted Spanish nun).

On the outer edges of the group, I came upon a young, thin girl surrounded by five or six older men. We spoke for a bit; she told me that she was heading out that night with these men, looking to cross through the Wild Horse Desert, a desolate place just north of Brownsville, in an effort to avoid the Border Patrol.

The men, hands stuffed into their pockets, scuffed the ground. They would not meet my eyes, and ignored my handshake.

I found the nun and told her that I was worried about the girl. The nun said to me, "You should be. Please take her to the rectory with you tonight. She is not safe here."

The girl agreed to come and spend Christmas Eve with our religious community that night. She was sixteen years old, and she was from El Salvador. Her arms were covered with scars, about which she would only say, "They burned me with cigarettes."

I gave her my room, for that night, and I took to the couch in the living room. The next morning, as I passed by my bedroom, I saw her kneeling on the floor, her scarred arms held straight out from her sides, her eyes closed, and her head upturned toward the heavens. She was back-lit by the sunlight streaming through the window.

It was Christmas Day, and I felt that God had sent me an angel disguised as skinny, scarred teenaged girl.

She stayed with our community for about two weeks, until some good immigration attorneys managed to get her a special travel permission, and then, into a center that worked with the victims of torture (The Center for Victims of Torture). Continue reading

• Source: Views From Alongside a Border (author's name not noted)
• See also: Gilberto Ramos hoped for a better life, but died alone in a desert
• Image: Fronteras

Among the committee's accusations were failures to report allegations of abuse to authorities, and refusing to disclose information for criminal proceedings.

The report cited Archbishop Paul Gallagher, Papal Nuncio to Australia, who, it said, last year invoked diplomatic immunity when he refused to disclose documents about priests, including a notorious paedophile.

The committee was also troubled by "numerous reports" in which clergy under investigation were transferred to other dioceses where they were able to avoid punishment.

It also wants an update on the status of Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, the former nuncio to the Dominican Republic.

The Vatican removed him from his position last year after accusations he paid for sex with boys.

In a report released on May 23, the committee on torture asked the Vatican to establish an independent abuse complaints system.

It also asked that meaningful sanctions be imposed on Church authorities that fail to follow Church law in responding to abuse allegations.

And it wants Church officials worldwide to be required to report abuse allegations to local police.

The Vatican has strongly recommended such reporting, but it is obligatory only when local civil law requires it.

The committee praised Pope Francis for establishing the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, but wants to know more details about how it will work.

It also praised the Pope for "acknowledging the damage done by the sexual abuse of children by some priests".

In response to the report, the Vatican said it would "give serious consideration" to the recommendations.

But it contested the committee's assumptions about the extent of its jurisdictional powers around the world.

The Vatican statement also acknowledged that sex abuse is as "a serious crime and a grave violation of human dignity".

But it said it cannot be equated to state-sponsored torture under the terms of the treaty the UN committee overseas.

The committee on torture's report came three months after the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child accused the Vatican of systematically adopting policies that allowed abuse.

Sources

• National Catholic Reporter
• The Tablet
• Image: National Post

On May 5 in Geneva, the Vatican's handling of the global clerical sex abuse scandal was compared with torture.

If it does fit the definition of torture, any failure to investigate clergy and their superiors could have broader legal implications.

The Catholic Church could be exposed to a new wave of lawsuits, since torture cases in much of the world don't carry statutes of limitations, legal experts say.

The Vatican's ambassador to the UN agencies in Geneva, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, did not dispute the claim that child sexual violence could be considered torture.

But he insisted that the Holy See's responsibilities under the torture convention only apply inside the Vatican City State, which has a population of only a few hundred people

He told the committee the Catholic Church had "crossed the threshold" in its approach to the issue of abuse.

He said the Church's internal culture had changed.

"Any serious look around the world at what the Holy See is doing and what local churches are doing shows clearly that there is no climate of impunity, but a total commitment to clean house," he said.

Archbishop Tomasi said in the 1960s and 1970s there was a tendency to offer "psychological" help to clergy accused of abuse.

"The culture of the time would allow this to happen. This was a mistake because this allowed for other abuse of minors. The culture has changed."

He told the committee that 848 clerics had been laicised between 2004 and 2013 and lesser sanctions were given to another 2572 in that period.

But David Clohessy, national director of the Chicago-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), called the number of dismissed priests "meaningless".

"Parents can't protect their kids from a number," he said.

"What parents need are the names and whereabouts of child-molesting clerics."

Pope Francis has established a commission to look at the issue of sex abuse.

Its first meeting was at the Vatican last week.

The UN committee also reportedly suggested Church teaching on abortion amounts to "psychological torture" of women and should be repealed.

Sources

• National Catholic Reporter
• Sun Herald
• ABC News
• Washington Examiner
• Image: Solar News

He'd been away from Sri Lanka since February of 2010, when he fled the country for security reasons, and was looking forward to seeing his family.

But the happy homecoming would be short lived.

On January 28, a little over three weeks after he'd returned, he was abducted by a group of armed men in a white van.

"They accused me of being an LTTE [Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam] member who had come to Sri Lanka to regroup the LTTE," he said over the phone from the United Kingdom, where he has claimed asylum.

When Rojananth repeatedly denied these accusations, the men began torturing him.

"They beat me on the soles of my feet with pipes and electrical wires, and they beat me with wires and plastic pipes filled with sand on my back," he said. "They submerged my head in water and held me under until I suffocated."

The next day he was hung upside down and the torture continued.

"I was severely beaten," he said. "My head was covered with a petrol-sprayed polythene bag. I was suffocating and eventually became unconscious."

"When they asked questions or interrogated me, they burned me with cigarettes on the chest, shoulders and back," he added. Continue reading.

Source: UCANews

Image: Scars criss-cross the back of an ethnic Tamil man, who was tortured by Sri Lankan security forces in Batticaloa in September of 2012, UCANews

The UN Human Rights Office regional representative, Nancy Robinson says only four nations in our region have ratified the convention so far - Australia, New Zealand, Nauru and Vanuatu.

Palau has signed on, but hasn't ratified it yet.

Ms Robinson says there have been recent examples of torture in PNG and Fiji, and the Pacific needs to take action prohibit that sort of thing.
Continue reading

Cardinal O'Brien resigned as Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh after the public release of accusations that he had made homosexual advances on young priests.

Baroness Helena Kennedy, a barrister, broadcaster and Labour member of the House of Lords, said: "I feel very sad for Cardinal O'Brien because here was a man who quite clearly had wanted to have a sexual life and felt that it was a failing for him to want to have a sexual life and that he was going against his commitment to celibacy.

"It is terrible to torture people by expecting that of them and I just feel huge compassion for him. I do not like the idea that there might be an issue of being predatory but I do not want to make a judgment on that.

"But he himself has said that he was involved in sexual activity and I feel very sad that that was something that he had to in some way bury, then give expression to — then feel shame and guilt and presumably is absolutely covered with guilt now."

Lady Kennedy, who was brought up in a Catholic family in Glasgow, said she was not speaking as someone who would consider herself to be a "devout" Catholic. She said she preferred to call herself a "bad" Catholic.

She was speaking in the House of Commons at the launch of a declaration by a group of 179 Catholic scholars on authority in the Church.

The group's declaration said the faithful had suffered from "misguided" Church rulings on sexual ethics, including contraception, homosexuality and remarriage, and called for a new pope to introduce more democracy in the Church.

Lady Kennedy was joined at the launch by Catholic peer Lord Hylton, Professor Ursula King of Bristol University, Labour MP Siobhain McDonagh, and former priest John Wijngaards.

Source:

The Independent

Image: The Guardian

The problem for the Bahrainis is that their government is indeed "oppressive" and therefore lends itself to such easy substitution. Over the past 18 months, Bahraini security forces, aided by troops from Saudi Arabia, have engaged in a brutal crackdown against the island nation's own Syria-style uprising. Bahrain is home to the Arab Spring's forgotten revolution. Since February 2011, there have been near-daily protests against the regime, a repressive Sunni monarchy ruling over a Shia-majority country. These have been met with tear gas, live ammunition, mass arrests and torture. While the fighting in Syria is debated in the corridors of the United Nations building and reported on the front pages of the world's newspapers, the unrest in Bahrain is quietly ignored by our leaders and relegated by journalists to the box marked "news in brief".

"[The violence] has got worse," Maryam al- Khawaja, acting president of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, tells me during a rare visit to London. "The Bahraini regime has made some superficial changes but the situation on the ground hasn't changed . . . Torture has moved from official torture centres to unofficial torture centres."

The death toll

Apologists for the Bahraini regime claim it is offensive to compare the moderate, pro-western king, Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, to the Assads or Gaddafis of this world. They point out that the death toll in Syria is far, far higher than in Bahrain. True, says Khawaja, "[but] one of the things you have to do is look at things per capita. Bahrain's population is 600,000 and you are looking at 100 people dead. If Bahrain had the same population as, say, Egypt, that's [equivalent to] more than 11,000 people dead in just a year and a half." Read more

Sources

• New Statesman
• Image: Muftah

Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi has declared that Egypt will "control all parts of Sinai", where clashes have been occurring between militants and Egyptian soldiers. The Al-Qaeda-inspired militants are seeking to set up an Islamic state in the area.

The Catholic bishops of the Holy Land — including Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Fouad Twal, Melkite Archbishop Elias Chacour and Holy Land Custos Father Pierbattista Pizzaballa — urged Egypt to act on the crisis facing Sinai asylum seekers.

"We, the heads of the Catholic Church in the Holy Land, continue to call out to the world in our deep concern for the fate of the African asylum seekers who have been kidnapped as they pass through Sinai," they said.

The bishops said hundred of victims, many kidnapped in Sinai while on their way from Eritrea and Sudan, "are being tortured — suspended by the limbs, burnt by white hot irons, electrocuted on their body parts and systematically raped."

"At this very moment, the relatives of the victims are paying extortion money to release their loved ones," they said. "May the cry of the oppressed be heard by those who now have the opportunity to release them from their bondage."

Up till now, Egyptian authorities have cited the 1978 Camp David agreement with Israel as a reason for being unable to act effectively in the demilitarised Sinai Peninsula.

But now that forces have been deployed against the Islamic militants, the bishops said, the Egyptian authorities should seize the chance to come to the aid of Sinai asylum seekers "and make sure the trafficking in human beings stops".

Source:

Catholic News Agency

Image: Mondoweiss

Speaking ahead of ceremonies to mark the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Cheney said "enhanced interrogation" produced "phenomenal" results, and he rejected the use of torture undermined the moral authority of the United States.

Cheney dismissed President Obama's investigations in the legality of US use of torture, labelling them as "objectionable" and a "terrible precedent."

"The notion that somehow the United States was wildly torturing anybody is not true," he said.

"One of the most controversial techniques is waterboarding ... Three people were waterboarded. Not dozens, not hundreds. Three. And the one who was subjected the most often to that was Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, and it produced phenomenal results for us."

Waterboarding Mohammed "helped produce the intelligence that allowed us to get Osama bin Laden", he said.

"It was out of the enhanced interrogation techniques that some of the leads came that ultimately produced the result when President Obama was able to send in Seal Team 6 to kill Bin Laden."

"They've been successful in part because of the capabilities we left them with, the intelligence we left them with, because of what we learned from men like Khaled Sheikh Mohammed back when he was subjected. I think it's a mistake not to have an enhanced interrogation programme available now. I don't know what they would do today if they captured the equivalent of Khaled Sheikh Mohammed."

Earlier this week, Eliza Manningham-Buller, the former head of Britain's domestic intelligence service, MI5, repudiated the use of waterboarding as torture and illegal even if, she said, it did produce valuable intelligence.

"It is a sadness and worse that the previous government of our great ally, the United States, chose to waterboard some detainees. The argument that life-saving intelligence was thereby obtained, and I accept that it was, still does not justify it," she said.

"Torture should be utterly rejected even when it may offer the prospect of saving lives".

Defending waterboardsing, Cheney said the US used it in training its operatives so it could not be that bad.

Cheney said very member of the national security council, including Cheney critic and former secretary of state, Colin Powell was informed of the decision and signed up to it.

Sources

• The Guardian
• Associated Press (Video)
• Image: Red Ice Creations

Colonel Mara is in New Zealand to meet with the Fiji community and officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFat) to discuss the level of human rights abuse, which he says is deteriorating every day in Fiji.

Colonel Mara says close to 50 soldiers directly under the country's military ruler, Commodore Frank Bainimarama, have been involved in torture, but neither he nor soldiers under his command ever took part.

The Auckland-based Coalition for Democracy in Fiji has filed a criminal complaint with police in New Zealand for his alleged role in torture at the Suva military barracks.

Colonel Mara says he is prepared to be questioned by police about torture allegations but that he's surprised by the coalition's move given the positive correspondence he's had with its president, Nik Naidu.

He says in internet correspondence before he came to New Zealand, Mr Naidu told him he would like to see all people and organisations with a positive interest in Fiji working together to find acceptable solutions for its future.

At a media briefing in Auckland on Wednesday morning, Colonel Mara said soldiers are as repressed as the civilian population and there is a definite split within the military, with just 50 people who still support the regime.

Colonel Mara, who has been highly critical of the Fiji government since he fled to Tonga earlier this year, says he would go back to Fiji if he could, but believes he would be detained and tortured.

The group behind his visit, the Fiji Freedom and Democracy Movement, acknowledges some people are opposed to him being here.

But its president Josaia Rasiga says those against the visit can put their concerns to Colonel Mara directly at a public gathering in Auckland on Saturday.

Mr Rasiga, a former Fiji police officer who is now a refugee in New Zealand, says it is important Colonel Mara visit.

Source: Radio New Zealand

Image: TV3