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Keywords: War Crimes

  • AUSTRALIA

    The shadow of responsibility: Australian war crimes allegations in Afghanistan

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 24 November 2020
    21 Comments

    The discussion in Australia as to how such atrocities are to be approached is telling. The call for responsibility has varied by degrees. Most tend to some variant of the rotten apple theory: a few particularly fruits that may be isolated and extruded from the barrel. Culpability can thereby be confined, preserving the integrity of other military personnel and, importantly, political decision makers.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Spit decisions: DIY tests endanger DNA data

    • Jacinta Bowler
    • 28 June 2019
    6 Comments

    When One Nation puts forward a policy to DNA test Aboriginal people, DNA databases are solving crimes abroad, and commercial ancestry kits are as popular as ever, it's important to ask what we're giving away when we get our DNA sequenced. You'll only ever have one set of genes and once that data is out there it's very hard to get it back.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The trouble with JK Rowling

    • Eleanor Harrison-Dengate
    • 26 November 2018
    5 Comments

    This is the first time so many characters with major screen time have been from diverse backgrounds in a Harry Potter film. But it’s not enough to just plonk them into an already bursting script.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    History can't absolve Serbia's great demon demagogue

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 30 August 2016
    8 Comments

    In the savage wars of the Balkans during the 1990s, the identification of good sides over bad meant evil had to be singularised, culprits found to galvanise resistance. One such figure was Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic. His death in a Hague cell in March 2006 had the effect of suspending arguments about responsibility from any legal scrutiny. Earlier this month, British journalist Neil Clark suggested he had in fact been exonerated for his role in war crimes and crimes against humanity. He's wrong.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    To work for police is to stare into the abyss

    • Paul Coghlan
    • 17 February 2016
    6 Comments

    Having worked at Victoria Police for 25 years, I have great empathy for Wade Noonan, who stepped down as Victoria's Minister for Police to undergo counselling due to his exposure to traumatic incidents in this work. I have long felt that job advertisements for police should carry a health warning: This position may be dangerous to your mental, physical and spiritual health. Whether it be trawling through crime statistics or investigating crimes directly, police work means filling your soul with dark things.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    We are shaped by how we choose to view violent crimes

    • Lyn Bender
    • 18 January 2016
    18 Comments

    In the early hours of a brand new year, two small boys had their lives extinguished by a purportedly depressed father. For me this event brought to mind two cases from a past life, when I was the manager of Melbourne Lifeline. One was a woman who disclosed that she had killed her two small children a decade earlier. In a second case, a belligerent suicidal man expressed rage towards his former partner, who was about to remarry. I asked pertinent questions. Would he harm his children? 'Yes.'

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Women are not responsible for violent crimes against them

    • Maureen O'Brien
    • 01 April 2015
    43 Comments

    Judgmental attitudes towards women who are victims of male violence are never far from the surface. A crass example occurred recently when a priest suggested to his congregation that if rape-murder victim Jill Meagher had been more ‘faith-filled’ she would have been home instead of out late on the night when she was raped and murdered. There is greater public moral outrage when acts of violence are committed against women considered 'virtuous' than others such as sex industry workers.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Africa and US worry the frayed edges of international criminal justice

    • Nik Tan
    • 06 November 2013
    2 Comments

    The African Union has asked the United Nations Security Council to suspend the trials of sittings Kenyan heads of state. Meanwhile Amnesty International has claimed that any killing of civilians by United States' drones violates the laws of war. Both cases call into question whether the International Criminal Court can end impunity for the most serious international crimes.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    To catch a despot

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 30 April 2012
    4 Comments

    Former Liberian president Charles Taylor's conviction by an international criminal court for crimes against humanity is the first conviction of a head of state since World War II. It does little to change the fact that it remains notoriously difficult to bring heads of state to trial for grave crimes.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Australia in Crisis Group firing line

    • Eve Lester
    • 01 June 2010
    12 Comments

    Some countries including Australia turned a blind eye to atrocities committed during the Sri Lanka conflict. The International Crisis Group has called upon these countries to ensure proper international investigation of war crimes. This includes granting asylum or other protected status to witnesses.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    ICC's dubious Darfur justice

    • Kimberley Layton
    • 11 March 2009
    2 Comments

    President Omar al-Bashir stands accused of two counts of war crimes and five of crimes against humanity. But prosecuting him will not deliver justice to the people of Darfur. What seems like the beginning of the end of the tragedy may be the end of the beginning.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Mahathir Mohamad embraces human rights?

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 08 March 2007
    1 Comment

    Malaysia's colourful former Prime Minister is setting up a war crimes tribunal, to "assuage the pain that has been suffered by so many people in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan and elsewhere". Mahathir, it seems, hopes to reinvent the wheel, and a rickety one at that.

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