human rights

Today is a holiday in the United States. It commemorates Martin Luther King, Jr., a martyr of the American struggle for civil rights. But there were many more. During the "Freedom Summer" of 1964 three civil rights workers, James Chaney a 21 year old black man from Mississippi and Andrew goodman and Michael Schwerner, two white youths from New York, aged 20 and 24, were murdered in Mississippi: The murders of the three men occurred in Philadelphia, Mississippi, on June 21, 1964, just one day after the trio had arrived in Mississippi. The men had just finished a week-long training at the Miami…
2006, like other years, was a year of revenge killings. Iraq is the poster child for the cycle of violence and counter-violence that seems to have no end but exhaustion of the combatants. But it isn't the only one. The death sentences in the notorious case of the Tripoli 6 and the execution of Saddam Hussein are two more. We have dealt here depressingly often with the Tripoli 6 case, the health workers from Bulgaria and Palestine convicted in a Libyan court of intentionally infecting over 400 children with HIV. The exclusion of vital scientific evidence that the virus was almost certainly a…
A Boston man, the head of an elite Anti Terrorist Unit, has become the first person ever charged by the US Department of Justice with committing torture abroad. Charles "Chuckie" Taylor is being held in Miami. Surprised? Didn't think the US would move against one of its own citizens for flagrant human rights abuses and war crimes even though there has been a federal law (18 USC sections 2340A and 2441) that allows them to be charged in the US? After all, no one has ever been charged before. Of course, there are some special circumstances here. Chuckie Taylor is the son of Liberia's deposed…
Science and justice have been on trial in Libya and both have lost. Today a Libyan court again condemned five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor to death by firing squad after a retrial widely seen as unfair because it excluded exculpatory scientific evidence (see here and here and links therein). An international legal observer, Francois Cantier of Lawyers Without Borders, promptly criticized the retrial as lacking scientific rigor. Research published this month said samples from the infected children showed their viruses were contracted before the six defendants started working at…
The verdict in the Tripoli 6 case is scheduled to be handed down on December 19. There has been worldwide recognition the science now shows the six defendants arrived in the country after the viral strains were circulating in the hospital and its environs, making the 400+ cases of HIV infection in children in the Benghazi Hospital in Libya most likely the result of poor hospital hygiene. Not that you'd know it from the Libyan news media: Bulgarian nurses are guilty, evidence show 2006-12-14 It's a big crime. More than Libyan 400 children were deliberately infected with HIV at Benghazi…
I don't know whether it is a preoccupation with Iraq or a preoccupation with oil or whether there's a difference, but the US State Department doesn't seem to have a clue about the Tripoli 6 case. This, is from yesterday's State Department press briefing, courtesy Declan Butler's ongoing roster of links to the case (McCormack is the State Department spokesperson): [Reporter's] QUESTION: There's a scientific study published in -- by a British magazine today that would seem to set a scientific basis that those accused in the Libya HIV trial could not be guilty just because of findings that…
We are asking the scienceblogging community once again to rally on behalf of our colleagues on trial for their lives in Libya. They have been accused of infecting over 400 children with HIV (see previous posts, here, here, here, here, here and here). When last we made an appeal (here) the response was extraordinary and spread quickly to the blogosphere on both the left and right sides of the political spectrum. The campaign to save the six health workers began with a strongly worded editorial in Nature and spread via the science blogosphere to the wider science and human rights organizations…
I'm no fan of WalMart's. Too much disruption of the retail world at the expense of the global environment and workers around the world and too little attention to the needs of its own workers. My side of the political fence is not friendly WalMart territory, to be sure. It turns out that right wing religious whackos also hate WalMart. Oops. Sorry. They love WalMart, which is why they want to ruin its business. From the Christian Newswire: In a statement to the American Family Association yesterday, Wal-Mart agreed that they, "...will not make corporate contributions to support or oppose…
Yet another urgent cry for help concerning the dire medical care catastrophe in the Israeli occupied territories of Palestine. Israel has cut off tax revenues they have collected, essentially confiscating Palestinian wages for work done. At the same time international donors have cut-off aid in an unconscionable act allegedly protesting an unwanted outcome to a democratic election in January 2006. The targets may have been Palestinian leaders, but it is ordinary people that have been hit. As a consequence of these measures, the PA [Palestinian Authority] has been unable to pay regular…
The Tripoli 6 trial has ended without hearing the scientific evidence that could have exonerated the defendants, five Bulagarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor accused of intentionally infecting over 426 children with HIV in a hospital in Benghazi, Libya. The verdict on the case will be announced on December 19. These six unfortunate souls have now spent almost seven years in a Libyan prison, subjected to torture and now (again) an expected guilty verdict and sentence of death by firing squad. They are scapegoats for a failed Libyan health care system whose hygienic failings led to…
Contrary to expectation, the trial of the five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor for capital crimes in a Libyan court did not conclude yesterday but was continued until November 4 to allow the prosecutors to answer arguments by the defense that Libyan authorities have framed the Tripoli Six. Meanwhile in a significant development over one hundred Nobel Laureates have sent a letter to Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi of Libya protesting the exclusion of scientific evidence potentially exonerating the defendants. From Declan Butler's blog: In the letter, to be published online this week by…
As the October 31 date for the resumption of the trial of the Tripoli 6 looms, the world scientific community is weighing in. From the ScienceNow section of the journal Science: U.S. scientists are adding their voices to mounting international pressure on Libya to release six foreign medical workers who could face execution within weeks. A letter published online today by Science--written by virologist Robert Gallo, director of the Institute of Human Virology in Baltimore, Maryland, and co-discoverer of HIV, and signed by 43 other scientists--accuses the Libyan government of using the medics…
[NB: This is a companion to today's post on the Tripoli 6] Yesterday (October 24) was United Nations Day. Thanks to BoingBoing we were alerted that Librivox, an organization devoted to making available US Public Domain recordings, has an audiobook of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 21 languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Afrikaans, English and Esperanto. It is almost 60 years since the UN General Assembly ratified the Declaration in the wake of Nazi atrocities before and during WWII. It was meant to clarify the UN charter on matters of human rights and to emphasize their…
Lindsay at Majikthise notes that Dear Leader has signed the torture bill, with these words: "It is a rare occasion when a president can sign a bill that he knows will save American lives," Bush said. "I have that privilege this morning." Bush signed the bill in the White House East Room, at a table with a sign positioned on the front that said "Protecting America." He said he signed it in memory of the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks. "We will answer brutal murder with patient justice," Bush said. "Those who kill the innocent will be held to account." [AP] Some observations. Yes, it has been…
The Campaign to free the Tripoli Six is entering a new and dangerous phase. On October 31 their trial resumes, with a death sentence again looming. For those not familiar with the case, The New York Times today summarized the situation in a strongly worded editorial: Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor are facing the death penalty in Libya based on preposterous charges that they deliberately infected hundreds of children with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. This looming miscarriage of justice demands a strong warning to the Libyan leader, Muammar el-Qaddafi, that his efforts…
The Rockefeller Foundation's conference center in Bellagio, Italy on Lake Como is a lovely place (digression: so I'm told by people I know who have spent time there. I haven't -- yet. This is a big hint to the Foundation that I am available to take a week there and tell you what I think. Or you can find out for nothing here. But I'd rather tell you in person.). In June Ruth Faden, a bioethicist at Johns Hopkins convened a group of experts there to talk about ways to soften the impact of a flu pandemic on the world's most vulnerable: "Within countries rich and poor, the burden will be felt…
With over 150 blog posts from around the world now registered (Declan's Connotea tally here) and the full length documentary, Injection online for free (trailer here, complete streaming video here, time to catch our breath. Declan tells us the US Center for Nursing Advocacy received over 150 letters of support because of the blog campaign, even though they were not a contact target. They send their deep appreciation to all who are helping on this campaign for justice for five nurses and a doctor. If you are a nurse or want to support nurses you can get find a guide to their letter writing…
The campaign in the blogosphere to gain justice for the Tripoli 6 (see here, here and here) has gained another powerful resource for those wishing to know more and particularly, to see its human face. In 2003 film maker Mickey Grant of Dallas made a stunning documentary, Infection whose trailer we linked on an earlier post. He has now made the entire 1 hour 22 minute film available entirely free via streaming video (note: there is a 30 second test pattern at the beginning and some titles; this is a raw upload, but the link works. Give it a minute). Nature senior correspondent Declan Butler…
An amazing thing is happening. There are now more than 60 70 80 posts about the travesty of the five nurses and a doctor imprisoned in Libya and under threat of death by firing squad (see our posts here and here and Declan Butler's running Connotea list). Thanks to the many of you that have taken a little time to contact your reps and the government of Libya and whoever else you think needs to know. Full list of contacts and links here . The number of posts is impressive and let me say how proud I am of science bloggers and especially my colleagues here at scienceblogs.com who have…
The science blogosphere is responding magnificently to the dire circumstances of six medical colleagues, on trial for their lives in a courtroom in Tripoli, Libya. Declan Butler, Nature's senior correspondent who wrote the story in the world's premier science journal this week, is collecting the blogosphere links and stories over at the science social bookmarking site, Connotea. In less than 24 hours since we began to rally our colleagues in the blogosphere there have been more than 30, many right here in the Science Blogs stable, but also in some of the highest traffic blogs on the net:…