Associated Press
Guardian 06.17.2010
Kyrgyzstan's interim government has accused the country's deposed president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, of igniting longstanding ethnic tensions by sending gunmen in ski masks to shoot members of both groups. The government, which overthrew Bakiyev in April, also accuses the leader of corruption and says he and his supporters were attempting to damage official control of the south and reassert their control of the Afghan heroin trade in the area. The official death toll on both sides is 189 but the true number appears to be far higher. Many Kyrgyz have been killed but the victims appear to have been predominantly Uzbeks, traditional farmers and traders who speak a distinct but separate Turkic language and have traditionally been more prosperous than the Kyrgyz, who come from a nomadic tradition...A few parts of the south have been all but purged of ethnic Uzbeks. In other areas hundreds who had not fled piled up old cars on the streets, barricading themselves into their neighbourhoods.
Luke Harding
Guardian 06.27.2010
Kyrgyzstan's interim government tonight claimed victory in a controversial referendum, held just two weeks after 2,000 people were killed and tens of thousands were left homeless in ethnic violence. Rosa Otunbayeva, the country's acting leader, said she had won overwhelming support for her plan to create a new parliamentary system... Today's ballot was designed to legitimise the current government and to replace the country's abuse-prone presidential system. The new European-style model is a first in central Asia, which is run by authoritarian "super-presidents". A new government would be formed on 10 July, Otunbayeva said, without a "temporary" tag. But international observers and human rights groups today criticised the timing of the poll, which took place against a backdrop of the worst ethnic violence in central Asia for two decades. They also warned that the vote could exacerbate divisions between the north and south of the country and hasten its break-up, or lead to civil war.
Laura Dickinson
Military Lawyers on the Battlefield (AJIL):
The U.S. military has a long tradition of at least formal respect for the rule of law and the limits that the law of war places on soldiers. As far back as the U.S. Civil War, the U.S. Army published the Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the Field of 1863, known as the Lieber Code. The code set forth rules of conduct for U.S. military personnel that included limits on the use of force against civilians and requirements that detainees be treated humanely... Indeed, the Lieber Code helped spawn the branch of international humanitarian law that governs the law of hostilities, commonly known as Hague law. Following the Civil War, the U.S. Armed Forces embraced a culture of respect for law. The United States also played an active role in furthering the evolution of international humanitarian law from the Civil War to the period after World War II, which culminated in the adoption of the four Geneva Conventions in 1949 and the enactment of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (U.C.M.J.).
NYT 5.3.2010
One year after the International Criminal Court accused Sudan's president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, of war crimes for the genocidal rampage in Darfur, he was re-elected in a blatantly manipulated election. Mr. Bashir has no legitimacy and he must stand trial for his crimes. But those facts must not divert the world's attention from another potential crisis: the very real danger of renewed civil war between Arab Muslim northern Sudan and the south, which is largely Christian and animist. The last conflict — from 1983 to 2005 — left about two million people dead. Under a United States-backed peace agreement, the semi-autonomous southern region will hold a referendum in January to decide its future. Voters are expected to choose independence. Leaders in both the north and the south pledged to respect the results. But there is so much oil involved that they can't be depended on to keep their word — without strong encouragement from the United States and other major players.
