League Releases Assessment of the Saville Report
October 27, 2010
The League today released it’s Assessment of the Saville Report, an assessment of the Saville Tribunal Report on the events of Bloody Sunday, January 30, 1972 in Northern Ireland. This assessment was prepared on behalf of the League by Robert F. Muse of Stein, Mitchell and Muse, Washington, D.C. and by John M. Bray, Jamie A. Lang and Marian Lee of King & Spalding, Washington, DC.
The League, and the attorneys who have served the League by following the work of the Saville Tribunal, have reviewed the Saville Tribunal’s June 15, 2010 Report. In the main, the League agrees with the findings of the Saville Tribunal. The Tribunal deserves great credit and much respect for its efforts. Its Report is comprehensive and honest. Because of that, it is courageous as well given the circumstances. It is not, however, without flaws.
The principal findings and conclusions, as to the soldiers, were that soldiers fired on unarmed civilians without justification, killing 13 and seriously wounding another 13. The Report clears the victims themselves and provides the long sought vindication of the claims of the victims’ families and the survivors of the march. But that is only part of the story. Of equal importance is determining the cause of the rampage, and that is largely obscured by the Saville Report.
The Report discusses at length the actions of the army’s more senior command, and it concludes that tactical missteps by the Lieutenant Colonel commanding 1 Para (1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment) were a cause of the casualties. The Report concludes that errors he made in giving the order to execute the army’s plan (the Operation Order) for making arrests that day, rather than the plan itself, were the key mistakes which, together with unjustified shootings by as many as 14 different Paras, resulted in the 26 casualties. Click here for more
League Mourns Death of Father Robert Drinan
January 29, 2007 (New York) The International League for Human Rights mourns the passing of Father Robert Drinan, who died Sunday at the age of 86. Drinan had been an active member of the League’s Governing Council since 1982.
Father Drinan was an active, impassioned and oftentimes outspoken advocate and his work promoting the rights of the oppressed continued with vigor until days before his death. His work was characterized by building support across party lines to promote the human rights agenda whether on a League mission to Chile , promoting inter-religious dialogue in the US or advocating for the right to emigrate from the Soviet Union .
The International League for Human Rights cherishes the memory of Father Robert Drinan for his generosity of spirit, kindness, and his work with the League defending defenders across ideological, theological and geographic boundaries. He honored us as a member of our Governing Council for the last twenty-five years of his life.
- Robert Arsenault
League Speaks Out On Turkmenistan
Courtesy White House Weekly, Llewellyn King, Publisher
January 10, 2007
NEW YORK -Three of the world's most notorious dictators—Chile's Augusto Pinochet, Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Turkmenistan's Saparmurat Niyazov - died last month.
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League's Reports:
Alternative Report on Compliance by the Republic of Turkmenistan with the
UN Convention
on the Rights of the Child
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Alternative Report on the Areas of Particular Concern in the Compliance of the Republic of
Uzbekistan with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child
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Alternative Report on the Compliance of the Republic of Uzbekistan with
The United Nations Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination
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Alternative Report on the Compliance of the Azerbaijan Republic with the Convention on
Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination
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Report on Uzbekistan’s Observance of the International Covenant
on Civil and Political Rights
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A Guide for Non-Governmental Organizations on Reporting to the Committee
on the Rights of
the Child (in Russian)
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Chilean, Guatemalan and US Champions Honored with Gruber Prize for Women’s Rights
The winners of the 2006 Gruber Prize for Women’s Rights are:
Luz Méndez for the Unión Nacional de Mujeres Guatemaltecas (UNAMG), a Guatemalan women’s rights organization;
Julie Su for Sweatshop Watch, a California-based coalition fighting against exploitation of migrants in sweat shops;Chilean jurist Cecilia Medina Quiroga, the only woman judge on the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
The two organizations and Judge Medina each receive a gold medal and a third of the $300,000 unrestricted cash award.
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The International League for Human Rights and the Center for Media, Education & Technology launch the web site for the Voice of Youth Media Project. After a ten-year war noted for its egregious atrocities committed against civilians (some by forcibly conscripted child soldiers), Sierra Leone’s youth has taken to the airwaves to voice their concerns about the human rights and governance crisis that led to the war, and that exists to date.
On the VoY web site, you can hear the radio shows that are currently being broadcast locally on issues of corruption, Charles Taylor, violence against women and girls, HIV/AIDS, the human rights of the disabled, workforce strikes, and more. The League and CMET have trained over 30 youth journalists, all of whom were victims of the war, to bring the voice of this majority yet marginalized population to policymakers and citizens alike.
www.voiceofchildrenonline.org
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