€15 – Single copy: November/December 2009 (€5.5 postage included). Allow 2-3 weeks for the copy to arrive by post. For single copy orders, 2checkout.com Inc. is the authorised retailer of Independent World Report. Please click Order at 2CO.
Mark Farmaner of Burma Campaign UK writes about how – in the absence of a global arms embargo – China, Russia, Israel, Ukraine and others armed one of the most brutal dictatorships in the world: Burma.
Simone Troller of Human Rights Watch describes the plight of migrant and refugee children in Greece and how Greek authorities are doing the dirty work for other members of the European Union – giving them the opportunity to get rid of migrants, including potential refugees.
Maureen Lynch of Refugees International writes about the twelve million people worldwide who are forced to live their lives without a nationality. While recent developments in Bangladesh and Kenya are encouraging, large groups of stateless people in the Dominican Republic, Syria, and Kuwait continue to live in limbo.
Brian Campbell of International Labor Rights Forum writes about the reign of extrajudicial execution, torture and enforced disappearance in the Philippines. A counterinsurgency campaign by the Philippine military targets leftist activists, human rights defenders, labour leaders and clergymen.
Audrey Guichon of Anti-Slavery International writes about the suffering of millions of domestic workers in servitude, and the need for an international convention to protect them from abuse and exploitation.
DAUGHTER OF PEACE: IROM SHARMILA CHANU
Cover story by Deepti Priya Mehrotra, author of Burning Bright: Irom Sharmila and the struggle for peace in Manipur. Irom Sharmila has been on a fast unto death for ten years, demanding a repeal of the draconian Armed Forces Special Powers Act in Manipur, India. Ten innocent people were mowed down by security forces in Malom, in November 2000. The perpetrators were not punished, protected under the AFSPA, which empowers military and paramilitary personnel to arrest, shoot, even kill, anyone on the grounds of mere suspicion.
In response to this tragedy, Sharmila, a young Manipuri, began an indefinite hunger strike. The government arrested her and force-fed her through nasal tubes. She has been released and re-arrested innumerable times since then, but has stood by her demand, steadfastly refusing to eat until the act is repealed.
Online preview: This story is only available in the print edition.
FROM THE KILLING FIELDS TO THE COURTHOUSE
Amila Jašarević escaped the genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina by becoming a refugee in Denmark, at the age of twelve. In this report, she details how the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, failed the victims and survivors of one of the worst genocides in history: Sentencing a man to a few years of imprisonment for killing about a hundred unarmed boys and men… making deals with people who organised ethnic cleansing and shortening their indictments… granting war criminals early release because they were so kind as to cook and bake in prison… destroying evidence… trying to silence those who speak up about the goings on at the tribunal…
Online preview: This story is only available in the print edition.
AFGHANISTAN: IS THERE A HUMANITARIAN SOLUTION?
Joshua F Leach – writer, human rights advocate and student of political theory – presents the case for a humanitarian solution for Afghanistan, where warlordism and oppression can be tackled if the international community supports liberal, pro-democracy groups and individuals like Rawa and Malalai Joya. Rawa and similar organisations have been fighting for liberal democracy and secularism in Afghanistan for decades, though they have been forced into exile and still find it impossible to operate in Afghanistan. Given that a situation once prevailed in Afghanistan in which such groups could come into being, it does not seem impossible to undo the damage of the last decades.
Online preview: This essay is only available in the print edition.
FULL DISCLOSURE: A REPORTER’S JOURNEY TOWARD TRUTH
Brian Palmer – photographer, writer, teacher and filmmaker – gives a preview of his first documentary film on his experience as an embedded journalist during the war in Iraq: “There were times when I did not ask hard questions I should have, that I put my camera down when I should have shot. Later, I recognised it as a subconscious desire to protect the young men I was with. Proximity and dependence breed affinity. That is the genius of the Pentagon’s embedding system.”
Online preview: This story is only available in the print edition.
Photo feature by Elisabeth Ohlson Wallin.
Nine years after producing the controversial photo exhibition, Ecce Homo, internationally acclaimed Swedish photographer Elisabeth Ohlson Wallin started working on a new photography project, based on true stories of hate crimes against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
In hate we trust is a series of photographs that depicts hate crimes against the LGBT population worldwide through artistic reconstruction of real-life events. “The exhibition is still growing. It started with eight photos and now there are fifteen, their style inspired by Caravaggio,” says Wallin. “This is about hatred against LGBT people, specially from the religious quarters. I wanted to show that the church has blood in its hand.”
Online preview: This photo feature is only available in the print edition.
DEBT: THE FIRST FIVE THOUSAND YEARS
David Graeber, anarchist anthropologist. In studying economic history, we tend to systematically ignore the role of violence, the absolutely central role of war and slavery in creating and shaping the basic institutions of what we now call the economy. The violence may be invisible, but it remains inscribed in the very logic of our economic common sense, in the apparently self-evident nature of institutions that simply would never and could never exist outside of the monopoly of violence – but also, the systematic threat of violence – maintained by the contemporary state.
Online preview: This essay is only available in the print edition.
Arne Ruth, former Editor-in-chief, Dagens Nyheter. Ignoring the Holocaust in Sweden and Switzerland. At the end of the War, Sweden and Switzerland were accused of using their neutrality for enrichment and not, as they had maintained, as a way of participating in the epochal struggle for the future of the human race. Switzerland faced the particular charge of unconditionally accepting to keep looted gold from Germany in its banks… Swedish trade with Germany, at least from 1943 onwards, helped to prolong the war. From this perspective, the wartime Swedish coalition government can be accused of indirectly adding to the impact of the Holocaust.
Online preview: This essay is only available in the print edition.
