The Evolution

The Bureau had given the UK and US governments seven days to respond to an invitation for a Public Dialogue vide its letter dated and hand delivered on August 2 last week. This invitation reflects the Malaysian UMNO Youth’s staunch position that the atrocities and violation of human rights in Lebanon and Palestine perpetrated by Israel must cease and control be returned to the Government of Lebanon. The Public Dialogue calls for the UK and US Governments to defend their support of the Israeli invasion which thus far has dragged on for more than a month, mostly killing civilians, including women and children.

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The Public Dialogue

The Bureau had given the UK and US governments seven days to respond to an invitation for a Public Dialogue vide its letter dated and hand delivered on August 2 last week. This invitation reflects the Malaysian UMNO Youth’s staunch position that the atrocities and violation of human rights in Lebanon and Palestine perpetrated by Israel must cease and control be returned to the Government of Lebanon. The Public Dialogue calls for the UK and US Governments to defend their support of the Israeli invasion which thus far has dragged on for more than a month, mostly killing civilians, including women and children.

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The Malaysia Peace Gallery 2009

KUALA LUMPUR, 25 JAN 2008: Peace Malaysia will send much needed aid to the people of Gaza who have been without basic necessities since Israel ordered the shutdown of all Gaza crossings in June 2007. The situation has deteriorated in the past week, as the Israeli army has further tightened the siege. Residents of Gaza have now been forced to break through the barrier at the Rafah border crossing to Egypt in search of aid.

The Malaysian For Peace Gallery 2009

KUALA LUMPUR, 25 JAN 2008: Peace Malaysia will send much needed aid to the people of Gaza who have been without basic necessities since Israel ordered the shutdown of all Gaza crossings in June 2007. The situation has deteriorated in the past week, as the Israeli army has further tightened the siege. Residents of Gaza have now been forced to break through the barrier at the Rafah border crossing to Egypt in search of aid.

Galley Twenty Two

KUALA LUMPUR, 25 JAN 2008: Peace Malaysia will send much needed aid to the people of Gaza who have been without basic necessities since Israel ordered the shutdown of all Gaza crossings in June 2007. The situation has deteriorated in the past week, as the Israeli army has further tightened the siege. Residents of Gaza have now been forced to break through the barrier at the Rafah border crossing to Egypt in search of aid.

The Malaysian Peace Events Photo Gallery

KUALA LUMPUR, 25 JAN 2008: Peace Malaysia will send much needed aid to the people of Gaza who have been without basic necessities since Israel ordered the shutdown of all Gaza crossings in June 2007. The situation has deteriorated in the past week, as the Israeli army has further tightened the siege. Residents of Gaza have now been forced to break through the barrier at the Rafah border crossing to Egypt in search of aid.

Peace Malaysia to send medical team to Syria-Lebanon border

Peace Malaysia will send a medical team and set up a logistical base near the Syria-Lebanon border tomorrow.

Peace Malaysia coordinator Datuk Mukhriz Mahathir said today the seven-member team will work with humanitarian relief teams of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in the northern cities of Allappo, Homs and Tartus where there are thousands of refugees. Read more

Toward Sustainable International Peace – Wherein lies

By Caroline Indrani Samuel, University of New South
Wales, Sydney

Peace is a revolutionary idea; peace by peaceful means
defines that revolution as non-violent. That
revolution is taking place all the time; our job is to
expand it in scope and domain. The tasks are endless;
the question is whether we are up to them
– Johan Galtung, 2002 –

In recent times, the term ‘peace’ has evolved in definition as well as in ideology. To certain sects, peace means ultimately acquiring geographic or political territory believed to be rightfully theirs; even at the expense of a bloodbath and/or severe economic loss. To others, living in the security that
each day will bring new-fangled opportunities to further their economic, social and cultural status in their community equates a peaceful existence. Yet others construe peace from a purely religious or spiritual standpoint, where inner peace breeds greater mental, physical emotional and spiritual health.

These perceptions of peace point to an inevitable conclusion; peace is an entirely subjective concept interpreted differently according to specific frameworks of any given society. Indeed Mohd Shafie Apdal, Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Minister of Malaysia, put it best when he said, “one person’s
terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter”. The social construction of terrorism and liberation movements provides a good example: who is a terrorist and who is a freedom fighter? How are these conclusions reached? Why are some religions intolerable of others, or even intolerant of sects
within that religion? How are civilisational identities, such as ‘Asia’ and the ‘West’ constructed? Leading expert on Southeast Asian studies, Amitav Acharya, reasons that states redefine their interests and develop a ‘collective’ identity’ so as to perpetuate their own ideas of what certain concepts
should stand to mean. Similarly the concept of peace has been generated by nation-states, though lately it has taken on an individualistic shape owing to efforts by certain groups within the state.

Working from the assumption that peace is a subjective construct, how does one then reconcile ‘universal’ notions of peace with domestic national polities and even sectarian concepts of the same? The concept and pursuit of peace is extremely complex, encompassing such issues as the Just War Theory (which stipulates, amongst others, that in wartime, the force employed must not cause more destruction than necessary, and the concept of immunity from harm for non-combatants must be upheld) religious orthodoxy, morality, military necessity, terrorism, and the legality of humanitarian interventions.

Focusing on the matter of humanitarian intervention, there are those who believe that such intervention should be conducted with utmost respect to the Just War Tradition if peace is to be restored and is to be sustainable. To this end, the following conditions to intervention become vital: just cause; public declaration by a lawful authority of political
objectives in advance; the intervention is undertaken as a last resort; consideration of the proportionality of costs to the expected objectives.

Prospectively, the only viable path toward successful peace negotiations worldwide will lie in the careful and earnest engagement in dialogue between conflicting parties. The signing and ratification of toothless peace agreements will not do much to restore peace in conflict areas, not least because these agreements lack political will and do not always address the many cries of all parties involved. Take for instance the
1973-1979 Camp David accords and the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty that was ostensibly expected to further a more comprehensive peace settlement in the Middle East. As there was no reference to what many Muslims consider the third holiest city of Islam after Mecca and Medina, such nations as Saudi Arabia and Jordan could not endorse the agreement without instigating domestic outcry. Additionally, then President Saddam Hussein, as a proclaimed to be a champion of Arab nationalism, could not approve such an agreement that omitted any reference to the recovery of all of
Palestine. Conversely, Syria was unwilling to sanction such an agreement that did not explicitly indicate Israel’s reparedness to withdraw from the Golan Heights.

As Johan Galtung notes in his book Searching for Peace: The Road to Transcend (2002), “to work for peace is to work against violence; by analyzing its forms and causes, predicting in order to prevent, and then acting preventively and curatively since peace relates to violence as much as health relates to illness”. Indeed, sustainable peace is viable if only preventive measures are taken against violent resolutions, and the course toward this prevention is though active dialogue between conflicting parties. Where this is not feasible, then shuttle diplomacy is welcomed. To this end the role of the United Nations and other like international organizations will prove vital in enabling dialogue participation from all sides. Insofar as credibility in such institutions is restored and/or preserved, this will in turn deliver the goal of global peace and justice. Finally the importance of pursuing peace by peaceful means cannot
be emphasized as an alternative to the means in which peace has been pursued in the world in recent times.

638 ways to kill Castro

The CIA’s outlandish plots to bump off the Cuban dictator would put 007 to shame … poison pills, toxic cigars and exploding molluscs. Once he even offered to shoot himself, reports Duncan Campbell

Thursday August 3, 2006
The Guardian

For nearly half a century, the CIA and Cuban exiles have been trying to devise ways to assassinate Fidel Castro, who is currently laid low in Cuba following an operation for intestinal bleeding. None of the plots, of course, succeeded, but, then, many of them would probably be rejected as too fanciful for a James Bond novel.
Fabian Escalante, who, for a time, had the job of keeping El Commandante alive, has calculated that there have been a total of 638 attempts on Castro’s life. That may sound like a staggeringly high figure, but then the CIA were pretty keen on killing him. As Wayne Smith, former head of the US interests section in Havana, pointed out recently, Cuba had the effect on the US that a full moon has on a werewolf. It seems highly likely that if the CIA had had access to a werewolf, it would have tried smuggling it into the Sierra Maestra at some point over the past 40-odd years.

The most spectacular of the plots against Castro will be examined in a Channel 4 documentary entitled 638 Ways to Kill Castro, as well as in a companion book of the same name written by the now-retired Escalante - a man who, while in his post as head of the Cuban secret service, played a personal part in heading off a number of the plots. While the exploding cigar that was intended to blow up in Castro’s face is perhaps the best-known of the attempts on his life, others have been equally bizarre.
Knowing his fascination for scuba-diving off the coast of Cuba, the CIA at one time invested in a large volume of Caribbean molluscs. The idea was to find a shell big enough to contain a lethal quantity of explosives, which would then be painted in colours lurid and bright enough to attract Castro’s attention when he was underwater. Documents released under the Clinton administration confirm that this plan was considered but, like many others, did not make it far from the drawing-board. Another aborted plot related to Castro’s underwater activities was for a diving-suit to be prepared for him that would be infected with a fungus that would cause a chronic and debilitating skin disease.

One of the reasons there have been so many attempts on his life is that he has been in power for so long. Attempts to kill Castro began almost immediately after the 1959 revolution, which brought him to power. In 1961, when Cuban exiles with the backing of the US government tried to overthrow him in the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the aim was to assassinate Fidel and Raul Castro and Che Guevara. Two years later, on the day that President Kennedy was assassinated, an agent who had been given a pen-syringe in Paris was sent to kill Castro, but failed.

On one occasion, a former lover was recruited to kill him, according to Peter Moore, producer of the new film. The woman was given poison pills by the CIA, and she hid them in her cold cream jar. But the pills melted and she decided that, all things considered, putting cold cream in Castro’s mouth while he slept was a bad idea. According to this woman, Castro had already guessed that she was aiming to kill him and he duly offered her his own pistol. “I can’t do it, Fidel,” she told him.

No one apparently could. This former lover is far from the only person to have failed to poison Castro: at one point the CIA prepared bacterial poisons to be placed in Castro’s hand-kerchief or in his tea and coffee, but nothing came of it. A CIA poison pill had to be abandoned when it failed to disintegrate in water during tests.

The most recent serious assassination attempt that we know of came in 2000 when Castro was due to visit Panama. A plot was hatched to put 200lb (90kg) of high explosives under the podium where he was due to speak. That time, Castro’s personal security team carried out their own checks on the scene, and helped to abort the plot. Four men, including Luis Posada, a veteran Cuban exile and former CIA operative, were jailed as a result, but they were later given a pardon and released from jail.

As it happens, Posada is the most dedicated of those who have tried and failed to get rid of the Cuban president. He is currently in jail in El Paso, Texas, in connection with extradition attempts by Venezuela and Cuba to get him to stand trial for allegedly blowing up a Cuban airliner in 1976. His case is due to come back before the courts later this month but few imagine that he will be sent to stand trial, and he appears confident that he will be allowed to resume his retirement in Florida, a place where many of the unsuccessful would-be assassins have made their homes.

Not all the attempts on Castro’s life have been fancifully complicated: many have been far simpler and owe more to the methods of the mafia who used to hang out in the casinos and hotels of Havana in the 40s and 50s, than they do to James Bond. At one time the CIA even approached underworld figures to try to carry out the killing. One of Castro’s old classmates planned to shoot him dead in the street in broad daylight much in the manner of a mafia hit. One would-be sniper at the University of Havana was caught by security men. But the shooters were no more successful than the poisoners and bombers.

Officially, the US has abandoned its attempt to kill its arch-enemy, but Cuban security are not taking any chances. Any gifts sent to the ailing leader as he lies ill this week will be carefully scrutinised, just as they were when those famous exploding cigars were being constructed by the CIA’s technical services department in the early 60s. (They never got to him, by the way, those cigars contaminated with botulinum toxin, but they are understood to have been made using his favourite brand. Castro gave up smoking in 1985.)

All these plots inevitably changed the way Castro lived his life. While in his early years in office, he often walked alone in the street, but that practice had to change. Since then doubles have been used, and over the decades Castro has moved between around 20 different addresses in Cuba to make it harder for any potential hitmen to reach him.

Meanwhile, jokes about Castro’s apparent indestructibility have become commonplace in Cuba. One, recounted in the New Yorker this week, tells of him being given a present of a Galapagos turtle. Castro declines it after he learns that it is likely to live only 100 years. “That’s the problem with pets,” he says. “You get attached to them and then they die on you”.

Iraq: ending the willful killing of innocents

It seems quite clear by now that willful, unprovoked killings of Iraqi innocents by US soldiers are not, as claimed by US officials, isolated incidents by a few bad apples. The murders and massacres by US soldiers appear to be commonplace and mostly go unreported or uninvestigated, except for a small number of cases. This is a tragic repeat of how the US military behaved against Vietnamese civilians during the Vietnam War.

Only a small number of possible war crimes by US soldiers have been investigated by the US government.

The US military has recently completed its initial investigation into the killing of 24 innocent, unarmed Iraqi civilians in Haditha in November 2005. It said that the evidence they have so far support the allegation that US soldiers deliberately killed the twenty four people.

Unofficial, independent investigators have pieced together a likely version of what happened in Haditha that fateful November. It appears that US soldiers ran amok after the killing of just one colleague from a roadside bomb. In revenge they deliberately killed 24 nearby civilians who were totally unrelated to the bombing. Among those shot were girls aged 14, 10, 5, 3 and 1, an infant and an old man in a wheelchair. Many of them were in their nightclothes.

It also appears to the independent investigators that US military officials had lied and tried to cover up the incident.

The Haditha horror has frequently been compared to the US militarys massacre of unarmed Vietnamese villagers in My Lai in 1968 during the Vietnam War. After US soldiers found no insurgents at the location, they proceeded to wipe out the entire village in cold blood. In total about 500 were willfully killed, including women, children, babies and the elderly. Some were tortured or raped before they were murdered. There too the US military attempted a cover-up.

In Mahmudiya in March 2006, a 14-year old girl was raped and murdered, and her 6-year old sister and parents shot. The accused perpetrators, four US soldiers, are now being investigated by the US military.

US soldiers were investigated for possibly willfully killing 11 Iraqi civilians in March this year in Ishaqi. Most of the killed were found handcuffed. Among them were four women and five children. The youngest killed was six months old, the oldest, 75 years old. The US military concluded that their soldiers were not guilty of any crime. However the Iraqi government was highly dissatisfied with the verdict and is now conducting its own investigation.

In April this year in Hamdania, an Iraqi civilian was allegedly shot in cold blood by US soldiers.

Reports strongly indicate that US soldiers also committed many murders in Fallujah in 2004 but there has been no investigation so far.

There is a widespread belief among Iraqis that US troops kill civilians with impunity and regularity, and Iraqis are unable to do anything about it. It appears to them that there have been many murders or massacres that do not get reported or investigated. Some US soldiers who have witnessed the misdeeds of their colleagues reported them, but frequently nothing happens. Some Iraqi witnesses refuse to reveal information to investigators for fear of being killed by US soldiers in retaliation.

Can anyone expect objectivity if the US itself investigates possible misdeeds of its own people when they are fighting a difficult, vicious war with very high stakes? The answer is obvious. The Iraqi government wants to do its own investigations on all the reported murders of its civilians but the Americans have not allowed them.

How many murders, rapes, massacres and other atrocities against Iraqi civilians have the US military actually perpetrated? Most likely we will never know. However we have a guide from history - the Vietnam War. Recently declassified US military documents now show that US military atrocities and massacres of Vietnamese civilians were far more than the public was previously informed of. The documents now show that there were 320 substantiated incidents and 500 unconfirmed allegations. The actual story is most likely bigger. The war crimes were perpetrated not by a few bad apples but by every division of the US military operating in Vietnam. The crimes have mostly gone unpunished.

The Iraq carnage so far is staggering. Since the Iraq invasion began in 2003, two hundred thousand Iraqi civilians have died due to the war. This does not include the Iraqi military. Twenty thousand US soldiers have been killed, maimed or injured for the same reason.

Iraqis have now become inured to the atrocities around them after so many civilian killings every day.

What would end the willful killing of the innocents? The first step would be to get all US and foreign troops out of Iraq immediately and unconditionally. Let Iraqis themselves solve their internal problems. If they need help from outsiders, they will invite them of their own free will. This is the necessary condition for a truly free and democratic Iraq— if that is the real intention of the powers-that-be in Washington and London.

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