On March 17

On this day in ...
... 1969 (40 years ago today), a native of Kiev, then part of the Russian Empire, who had already served as Minister of Labour and Foreign Minister, Golda Meir, was elected Prime Minister of Israel. Meir (far right) held the position till 1974, and remains the only woman so to serve, although the outgoing Foreign Minister and Kadima Party leader at center right, Tzipi Livni, would like to become the 2d.
... 1959 (50 years ago today), amid an anti-Chinese uprising in Tibet, the Dalai Lama escaped the capital city Lhasa along with 20 others. Their whereabouts would remain unknown for the more than 2 weeks it took them to traverse the Himalayas (below left) and seek refuge in India. (photo credit) The New York Times reported that just last Tuesday the Dalai Lama, now 73 and still in exile a half-century after the failed uprising,

delivered one of his harshest attacks on the Chinese government in recent times ... saying that the Chinese Communist Party had transformed Tibet into a 'hell on earth' and that the Chinese authorities regarded Tibetans as 'criminals deserving to be put to death.'
'Today, the religion, culture, language and identity, which successive generations of Tibetans have considered more precious than their lives, are nearing extinction.'

(Prior March 17 posts are here and here.)

'Nuff said

(Taking context-optional note of thought-provoking quotes)

'She has missed unique opportunities,' said Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), one of the leading congressional voices on human rights. Secretary of State Condoleezza 'Rice started out strong and ended weak,' he said. 'But Secretary Clinton is starting out weak.'

-- a story by Rice biographer and diplomatic correspondent Glenn Kessler, in yesterday's Washington Post.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton begged to differ:

'A mutual and collective commitment to human rights is [as] important to bettering our world as our efforts on security, global economics, energy, climate change and other pressing issues,' Clinton told reporters after meeting
with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi at the State Department. She said she had raised with Yang the issue of Tibet and a resumption of a U.S.-China human rights dialogue.
'The Obama administration is absolutely committed to a robust, comprehensive human rights agenda," she said. "We're going to look for ways where we can be effective, where we can actually produce outcomes that will matter in the lives of people who are struggling for their rights to be full participants in their societies.'

(credit for State Department photo of February 21, 2009, press conference by Clinton and Yang, in Beijing)

On March 7

On this day in ...

... 1848, was concluded the māhele, or division of Hawai'ian lands in a single transaction that had begun on January 28, 1848. The division was made among King Kamehameha III, the chiefs, and the protectors of land known as the konohiki. The transaction is recorded in the book whose cover is at right.

... 1989 (20 years ago today), by orders numbered 1 through 5, the Beijing-controlled "People's Government of the Tibet Autonomous Region" declared martial law in Tibet's capital, Lhasa, and certain other areas. The move, which followed days of demonstrations, provoked statements of concern from, inter alia, the U.S. Congress and the European Parliament.

(Prior March 7 posts are here and here.)

On February 22

On this day in ...
... 1680, or perhaps 2 days earlier, Catherine Deshayes was burned at the stake on charges of witchcraft on the Place de Grève in Paris. A "sorceress" about 40 years old, the woman known as La Voisin (left) "practised medicine, especially midwifery, procured abortion, and provided love powders and poisons." She was among many persons prosecuted in L'Affaire des poisons, or Poison Affair, a fatally hysteric phase during the reign of Louis XIV.
... 1940, in Lhasa, Tibet, a 4-year-old boy named Tenzin Gyatso (below right) was enthroned as the 14th Dalai Lama. (photo credit) In 1950 he "was called upon to assume full political power as Head of State and Government when Tibet was threatened by the might of China." Four years later he was forced into exile in India, and has not been able to return to his country since. He received the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of

the fact that the Dalai Lama in his struggle for the liberation of Tibet consistently has opposed the use of violence. He has instead advocated peaceful solutions based upon tolerance and mutual respect in order to preserve the historical and cultural heritage of his people.

(Prior February 22 posts here and here.)

Why Rape in Zimbabwe Isn't Sexy

While I was pleased to learn of AIDS-Free World's investigation of political rape in Zimbabwe, it struck me that ZANU-PF government militia have been perpetrating these horrifying assaults for nearly ten years with little notice from the rest of the world. While the atrocities in Darfur and human rights violations in Tibet dominate headlines and inspire the creation of NGOs focused solely on ending those particular humanitarian crises, international coalitions of Olympian athletes (see prior post), You Tube-based political movements, hip t-shirts, and even political video games, a Google search on "rape in Zimbabwe" gives rise to no such international outpouring. Instead, one reads a few quiet, tragic stories from rape survivors and sex slaves, reported in papers year after year, and human rights reports decrying the South African government's silence in the face of countless rape stories from Zimbabwean asylum seekers. In the words of one survivor:

We are living through a plague of brutal violence directed at women and girls. When talking about rape in a conflict situation, it is not like a wound on your hand or face. Our bleeding is hidden under our panties.

Where are Mia Farrow and George Clooney? Or even Madonna, whose adopted child hails from Malawi, not all that far from Zimbabwe? Celebrity roasting aside, why is it that some human rights crises capture the popular imagination, while others remain all but invisible? Is it that, in Zimbabwe, "the most vulnerable, the poorest, uneducated, unemployed rural women" are raped? Surely the same can be said for those suffering human rights abuses in Darfur. Is it the decade-long duration of the conflict in Zimbabwe, as opposed to the relatively recent eruption of violence in Darfur? Hard to single out this factor when the conflict in Tibet has been simmering for over five decades. Is it that political rape still gets less attention than other types of physical assault? Even CNN covers rape in Darfur, so that can't be dispositive either. And while the sheer numbers of rape victims may be greater in Darfur than in Zimbabwe, the same surely can't be said of Tibet. Perhaps Zimbabweans need a charismatic leader like the Dalai Lama? The label of genocide? More to the point, as Mariam Bibi Jooma of the South African Institute for Security Studies notes, international celebrity may not, in the end, make much of an impact:

despite the “Save Darfur” campaign gaining mass support on a scale perhaps rivalled only by the former anti-apartheid movement, very little progress has actually been achieved on either the political or military fronts in Darfur.

Perhaps the ICC's indictment of Al-Bashir will change this (see prior posts here, here, here, and here.) But even if Jooma is right that celebrity causes aren't all they're cracked up to be, it would be refreshing to see increased attention focused on Zimbabwe's brutal rape camps.

Monks march for a free Tibet

After last year’s monk-led protests in Burma/Myanmar , monks from monasteries outside Lhasa were on the march in Tibet. Coinciding with the 49^th anniversary of the 1959 uprising that forced the Dalai Lama into exile, protests began last Monday, when roughly 400 monks set out to march the 5 miles from Drepung Loseling Monastery to Lhasa’s city center to protest rules restricting religious practices and requiring “patriotic education” in the monastery: i.e., monks must “study government propaganda and write denunciations of the Dalai Lama.” The marchers had made it about halfway when police arrested 50 or 60 of them and the rest promptly turned the march into a sit-in, in which 100 more monks from Drepung joined. As the Drepung monks were agreeing to return to their monastery on Tuesday morning, a dozen or so monks from the Sera Monastery waving a Tibetan flag (at right) began a pro-independence rally outside Tibet’s most sacred temple, the Jokhang, in the center of Lhasa. Arrests there sparked further protest that day, as a reported 500-600 monks stormed from the Sera Monastery demanding the release of their brethren—and independence for Tibet. On Wednesday, monks from the Ganden Monastery held their own protest, which was followed on Thursday by what are apparently the largest anti-Chinese protests to be held since the 1987 and 1988 protests by monks from the Drepung and Sera monastery. While those protests ended in bloodshed, Chinese forces seemed to be more restrained on Thursday, thanks to the upcoming Olympic games in Beijing. On Friday, however, violence erupted. Reports as to how it began or evolved conflict depending on whether the reporter is ethnic Tibetan or Chinese, but it would appear that monks from the Ramoche Temple set out to protest Chinese treatment of monks who had demonstrated earlier in the week. The Ramoche monks were joined by ethnic Tibetans, who began burning shops and cars, including military vehicles. The Dalai Lama asked both sides to avoid violence but otherwise supported the protesters, and thousands of Buddhist sympathizers in Nepal and India hit the streets to show their support. On Saturday, as Chinese authorities reported they had regained control in Lhasa, clashes broke out in the city of Xiahe, Gansu Province, where small protests had begun the day before and escalated to involve perhaps as many as 4000 Buddhist monks and Tibetans calling for the Dalai Lama’s return to Tibet. Chinese authorities say they haven’t fired on the crowds, but witnesses report the opposite, claiming at least 30 deaths, if not 100.

On November 13, ...

... 1950, the Government of Tibet complained to U.N. Secretary-General Trgve Lie that it was the victim of Chinese aggression. The complaint by Tibet (flag at left) stated that even as international troops resisted aggression in Korea, "[s]imilar happenings in remote Tibet are passing without notice."

... 2001, President George W. Bush issued a Military Order on Detention, Treatment, and Trial of Certain Non-Citizens in the War Against Terrorism. Announcing a plan to detain captives in the "war on terror" that Bush'd declared in the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11 of that year, the Order asserted the power "to ... detai[n], and, when tried, to ... tr[y] for violations of the laws of war and other applicable laws by military tribunals" any person whom "there is reason to believe":

(i) is or was a member of the organization known as al Qaida;
(ii) has engaged in, aided or abetted, or conspired to commit, acts of international terrorism, or acts in preparation therefor, that have caused, threaten to cause, or have as their aim to cause, injury to or adverse effects on the United States, its citizens, national security, foreign policy, or economy; or
(iii) has knowingly harbored one or more [such] individuals ....

Executive detention at home and abroad of persons who came to be called "enemy combatants" -- among them 2 U.S. citizens, José Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi, as well as many noncitizens -- soon followed. The Supreme Court invalidated aspects of that policy in its 2004 decisions in Rasul v. Bush and Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, and in its 2006 decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. It is due again to consider detention, in Boumediene v. Bush, on December 5, 2007.