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Volume 3 No.2 PP 17742/10/2013(033047)

CRIMINALISE

QUARTERLY ORGAN OF THE KUALA LUMPUR FOUNDATION TO CRIMINALISE WAR

INTERNATIONAL FORUM 2015 & ROYAL DINNER “Some Enchanted Evening”

inclusive of GST

RM 20.00

JUNE BUMPER ISSUE

ERS’ D N FOU DAYS H BIRT IAL SPEC ON I EDIT

Criminalise War, Energise Peace.

CRIMINALISE WAR, ENERGISE PEACE.

Kuala Lumpur Foundation To

CRIMINALISE WAR W A R I S A B O U T K I L L I N G, M A S S I V E K I L L I N G

The Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War (KLFCW), a non-governmental organisation was established under the laws of Malaysia on the 12th day of March 2007.

The main objectives of the Foundation, as stated in its Statutes are, inter alia, • To undertake all necessary measures and initiatives to criminalise war and energise peace; • To provide relief, assistance and support to individuals and communities who are suffering from the effects of war and armed conflict wherever occurring and without discrimination on the grounds of nationality, racial origin, religion, belief, age, gender or other forms of impermissible differentiations; • To promote the education of individuals and communities suffering from the effects of war or armed conflict; • To foster schemes for the relief of human suffering occasioned by war or armed conflict; • To provide for mechanisms or procedures in the attainment of the above purposes.

CRIMINALISE WAR JUNE 2015

“PEACE “ If indeed we want

HOPEFULLY,

in the future,

WITH JUSTICE,

we would have clubs

our value systems,

particularly in those

our mindset, our belief,

need to be CHANGED. And the change that

MUST

TAKE PLACE IS THAT THE

OVERSEAS, COUNTRIES THAT HAVE

GONE THROUGH

HARDSHIPS, CONFLICTS, SANCTIONS,

AND ALSO

at war, it is a

WAR.

TUN DR MAHATHIR MOHAMAD

TUN DR SITI HASMAH MOHD ALI

PERCEPTION OF WAR war is a crime, no matter which

direction you are looking

CRIME.

Founder / Chairman, Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War

Founder / Chairperson, Criminalise War Club - Malaysia Chapter

JUNE 2015 CRIMINALISE WAR

1

C

S

ONTENT JUNE 2015

04 06 08 10 FOREWORD

FROM THE DESK OF THE SECRETARY-GENERAL

EDITORIAL

13 14 18

BREAKING NEWS : MALAYSIA GIVES SANCTUARY TO BOAT PEOPLE

INTERNATIONAL FORUM 2015

CHANGING THE MINDSET

A DREAM TO CRIMINALISE WAR

22

SPREADING CWC’S WINGS ABROAD

24 28 32 36

“...WAR - IS NONE OTHER THAN MASS MURDER – COMMITTED BY WARRING NATIONS...”

THE MALAYSIAN PROGRAMME AT THE UN SECURITY COUNCIL - PLIGHT OF CHILDREN IN WAR-TORN COMMUNITIES

PROXY WAR

SANCTIONS

39 42 46 50

REGIME CHANGE & ACCOUNTABILITY

ABOLISHING WARS AND SEEKING PEACE WITH JUSTICE : THE ROAD MAP AHEAD

TORTURE - THE UNBROKEN CHAIN

FALSE FLAG

DRONES & COVERT WARS

“WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?”

55 62 66 70

CHILD SOLDIERS OF BURMA

“FROM A DISTANCE CHILD VICTIMS OF WARTORN VIETNAM”

71 76 80 84

MESSAGE FROM KIM PHUC

2

PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPACT OF WAR CHILD SURVIVORS OF THE 1945 ATOMIC BOMBING OF HIROSHIMA & CRIMINALISE WAR JUNE 2015 NAGASAKI

“HISTORIA MAGISTRA VITAE” LEARN FROM THE PAST. WORK FOR A FUTURE WITHOUT WARS.

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE “NEW WORLD ORDER”

89 90 98 100 COMMENT

ROYAL DINNER “SOME ENCHANTED EVENING”

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

SCOURGE OF WAR AS SEEN THROUGH THE EYES OF 3 CRIMINALISE WAR CLUB (CWC) MEMBERS

102 104 106 109 HOW WAR SHAPED US

3 BIRDS

EDITOR

PUBLISHER

G.S. KUMAR

KUALA LUMPUR FOUNDATION TO CRIMINALISE WAR PS-8-12, WISMA PJ5 SOHO, JALAN SS 5D/6, 47301 KELANA JAYA, SELANGOR DARUL EHSAN. Tel : 03 7887 0428 Fax : 03 7803 0427 Email : admin@criminalisewar.org Website : www.criminalisewar.org

MANAGEMENT TEAM AZIMAH NOR HAMZAN AAZRAA ALA MERICAN NUR QISTINA GANDING

A CARING FOUNDATION COMES TO THE ASSISTANCE OF CWC

A STUDENT’S TAKE ON WAR

Volume 3 No.2 PP 17742/10/2013(033047)

CRIMINALISE

QUARTERLY ORGAN OF THE KUALA LUMPUR FOUNDATION TO CRIMINALISE WAR

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TAN SRI RAZALI ISMAIL PROF EMERITUS DATUK DR SHAD SALEEM FARUQI PROF SALLEH BUANG PROF GURDIAL SINGH NIJAR PROF YUSHIHARU KIM PROF DR PIERMAURO CATARINELLA BEN ADAMS ADMIRAL (R) VISHNU BHAGWAT JOHN PHILPOT DENIS J HALLIDAY HANS-C VON SPONECK LARISSA JANE CADD DETMOLD INDER COMAR AIMAN SYAKIR ABDUL HARIS PUTERI FATEH ARINA MERICAN LOW CHUEN LEIK

Criminalise War, Energise Peace.

CRIMINALISE WAR, ENERGISE PEACE.

VOL.3

NO.2

JUNE 2015

DESIGN & LAYOUT FUTRI NAJLA SALLEH

SEVENTH HEAVEN MALAYSIA

JUNE 2015 CRIMINALISE WAR

3

Foreword PROF SALLEH BUANG

T

hree months ago, on 12th March 2015, KLFCW celebrated its 8th year of operation. Over the last 8 years since it was established, the armed conflict map of the world has changed – for the worse, not for the better. The flames of war and armed conflict had engulfed parts of Latin America, Africa, Eastern Europe, and Asia. The war in Afghanistan, which started in 1978, had taken the lives of more than 2 million people.

The Boko Haram insurgency in Africa had resulted in the death of more than 30,000 people; these are only estimates, as the death toll continues to rise over the years. Armed conflicts have not ceased in Kashmir, Southern Philippines, Columbia, Libya, Syria, Gaza, Somali, Darfur, Nigeria, North-West Pakistan, Yemen, and South Sudan. According to media reports, as of September 2014, the United States is involved in at least 134 wars, although Secretary of State, John Kerry, prefers to put it as US involvement “in major counter-terrorism operation”. Every time someone tells us that criminalising war is an impossible dream, our response is “Take a look at slavery”. The fight to abolish it lasted several centuries.

Slavery began in ancient times (550 BC in Persia). In the modern age, the slave trade began in the 10th century, until it was abolished in different times in different countries – Iceland in 1117, France in 1315, Sweden in 1335, Spain in 1542, Poland in 1588, Portugal in 1595, England in 1834, and so on. We anticipate that the same thing will happen to KLFCW’s campaign to criminalise war.

A Greek social reformer, Vassilis Epaminnondou, said – “If you kill one person, you are a murderer. If you kill ten people you are a monster. If you kill ten thousand, you are a national hero”. In this modern civilised age, such convoluted thinking should no longer be acceptable.

The present mindset that wars are a legitimate tool to

4

CRIMINALISE WAR JUNE 2015

settle conflicts must be discarded. The late US President John F. Kennedy remarked “Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind”. Regrettably, his successors in office considered war not only as an instrument of the US foreign policy, but also as a justification for regime change (and later labeled as its “war on terror”), justifying the massacre of thousands of innocent lives in a foreign country. American historian Howard Zinn once asked “How can you make war on terror, if war itself is terrorism?”. He added that “There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people”. Sun Tzu (544 BC – 496 BC) aptly summed up all this when he said “All warfare is based on deception”.

KLFCW’s campaign against war and the criminalisation of war must continue. This campaign needs your continued support and participation. We in KLFCW realise it is going to be a very long journey, but over the last 8 years we had taken many large steps in what we believe have been in the right direction. The international forum we hosted on April 18th and 19th in Kuala Lumpur was our most recent (but certainly not the last) effort in that same direction. Former UN Secretary-General, U Thant, ventured “In modern war, there is no such thing as victor and vanquished. There is only one loser, and the loser is mankind”.

PROF SALLEH BUANG

President Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal

“

TO ME, THE THEME FOR THIS INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE,

“ENGAGING THE YOUNG TO CRIMINALISE WAR AND TO ENERGISE

PEACE”

APPROPRIATE.

THAT THE

ASSUMES

IS MOST

IT IS A CLEAR AND PRECISE MESSAGE

YOUNG

THE SHAPING ROLE IN

A N D

PEACE

Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia, Minister of Education, Malaysia

AN IMPORTANT

OF OUR FUTURE OF HOW PEOPLE

CAN LIVE IN

TAN SRI DATO’ HJ MUHYIDDIN YASSIN

HARMONY.

Session : Keynote Address Event : International Forum Day 2 - Engaging the Young to Criminalise War and Energise Peace Date : 19 April 2015 Venue : Dewan Tun Dr Ismail Putra World Trade Centre (PWTC)

JUNE 2015 CRIMINALISE WAR

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FROM THE DESK OF THE

SECRETARY-GENERAL “Soon I hope to be 90 years old.”

So wrote our Founder and Chairman in the opening sentence of the Prologue of “Dr. Mahathir’s Selected Letters to World Leaders” (volume two), launched just weeks ago - which reminds us of a dream he often said would not be possible to be fulfilled during his lifetime, a dream, reminiscent of the lyrics of the song made famous by the protagonist in the 1965 Broadway musical “Man of La Mancha”: To dream the impossible dream, To fight the unbeatable foe, To bear with unbearable sorrow, To run where the brave dare not go.

To right the unrightable wrong, To love, pure and chaste, from afar, To try, when your arms are too weary, To reach the unreachable star.

This is my quest, to follow that star, No matter how hopeless, no matter how far,

To fight for the right without question or pause, To be willing to march into hell for a heavenly cause.

And I know if I’ll only be true to this glorious quest, That my heart will lie peaceful and calm When I’m laid to my rest.

And the world will be better for this, That one man scorned and covered with scars, Still strove with his last ounce of courage, To reach the unreachable star.

Tun Mahathir shared his dream with us at the end of his keynote address on the occasion of the Criminalise War Conference on 28 October 2009: “We believe that eventually the peoples of the world will come to accept that war is a crime... It will take time...We may not see this happen in our lifetime, at least for most of us.”

Our Founder and visionary Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad will be turning ninety on July 10th of this year.

As a man of ideals Dr. Mahathir, like Martin Luther King, would be proudly remembered as an icon who had proclaimed his dream and vision to a war-weary world. However elusive it may appear to many, Dr. Mahathir has, in his tireless pursuit of this dream, entered an arena where no one would venture to go, where no one would wish to take up a fight on the world stage against a formidable and unbeatable foe. In his brave endeavour, Dr. Mahathir is joined by his wife Tun Dr. Siti Hasmah Mohd Ali, who will turn ninety on 12th July next year. Age does not stop them from their bold quest to right the unrightable wrong suffered by innocent victims of war, including women and children. In Tennyson’s words : Old age hath yet his honour and his toil ; Death closes all: but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done.

6

CRIMINALISE WAR JUNE 2015

“

we believe that eventually the peoples of the world will come to accept that,

war is a crime.

It will take time...

We may not see this happen

in our lifetime, at least for the most of us.

Their common quest against the odds of nature finds expression in the closing lines of the same poem: One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

We are proud to note that Tun Dr Siti Hasmah’s quiet prayers are beginning to yield positive results: the younger generations from various parts of the developed world are gradually being led to imbibe the values of pacifism and non-violent solutions to diplomatic impasse at a global level. I am pleased to inform readers that on 18th April 2015, thirty two students came all the way from the Netherlands and Australia to attend a World Forum organised by the Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War. Again, most inspiringly, Hiroshima, which was once the scene of massive destruction during World War Two, will assume pre-eminence as the first overseas location to form clubs among schoolchildren to energise them in the quest to criminalise war. The city ‘s Mayor Kazumi Matsui’s intimation to this effect sounds the welcome bell and inspiring start to Tun Siti Hasmah’s world-embracing vision to establish 2020 Criminalise War Clubs throughout the world by Year 2020. The credit for this must be shared with the Japanese Ambassador to Malaysia, His Excellency Dr. Makio Miyagawa. Although the full extent of their collective vision may not be attained in their lifetime, the momentum has already been set in motion. The baying and ridicule can only be temporary, and the rewards for staying on the right side of history can and will earn them an assured niche in history. In other words, it is a glorious quest whose ultimate success is assured, despite the forces opposing its

advance. This reminds me of Victor Hugo’s famous lines: “On résiste à l’invasion des armées; on ne résiste pas à l’invasion des idées”. In other words, one may be able to resist armies, but no one can succeed in resisting an idea whose time has come.

Criminalising war is an idea whose time has indeed come. There is no looking back. The quest to criminalise war must not end. The younger generation must take over after their elders have gone.

Pursuant to a suggestion by our new Deputy Chairman, of which I am in complete agreement, this bumper issue of CRIMINALISE WAR is published to commemorate KLFCW’s recent tenth anniversary, containing excerpts of all the presentations of our international speakers attending our recent International Forum on 18th and 19th April 2015, focused on taking the work of KLFCW to the next level. But more significantly, it is to celebrate the birthdays of the Founders of both the KLFCW and the CWC that this special issue now makes its appearance.

And on this note, may I take the opportunity of wishing our two beloved icons, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad and Tun Dr. Siti Hasmah Mohd Ali, MANY HAPPY RETURNS OF THE DAY on the 10th and 12th of July 2015, respectively.

DR YAACOB HUSSAIN MERICAN Secretary-General Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War Inc

JUNE 2015 CRIMINALISE WAR

7

E

DITORIA JUNE 2015

by G. S. KUMAR

Y

ou have in your hands right now a “bumper” issue – a feat that may never again be repeated!!!! Phew…it may be hard to digest but it has become such as we have reproduced all speeches and presentations from the entire two-day International Forum that the Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War (KLFCW) hosted recently. Looking back at 2015, it is evident the year holds some very important anniversaries, like the one hundred years since the Armenian massacre, one hundred years since Gallipoli and the 70th anniversary since the end of World War II. They are certainly not joyous occasions, but stark reminders of mankind’s cruelty to fellow human beings. Despite there not being a global armed conflict, human beings have not enjoyed peace and quiet for the last seventy years. There are those who may dispute this, but the facts speak for themselves – human conflict and mass killings have all taken place in the 20th century. The only consolation that we have to concede is that there has not been a nuclear holocaust as often predicted.

A Nuclear Holocaust

Photo Credit : snoron.com

So are we in a better environment these days? No, not really. This issue reminds us that not everything is right in the world. The Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War (KLFCW) held its 2 day International Forum on 18th and 19th April in Kuala Lumpur with

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CRIMINALISE WAR JUNE 2015

L

the theme “ Peace with Justice – Constructing The Road Map” on the first day and “ Engaging the Young To Criminalise War and Energise Peace” on the second day, and the sum total of which served to remind everyone present that we are a long way away from a peaceful and just world.

G.S.Kumar, moderating the session of “Child Soldiers of Burma”, by Larissa Jane Cadd Detmold, during the 2nd day of the International Forum 2015, organised

by Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War.

We can constantly bring eminent speakers and experts to lament on the woes of the day. But little progress or forward steps will be taken unless there is a concerted effort to translate thoughts and ideas into full fledged action plans. Now regionally we face the major problem of migrants from Bangladesh and Myanmar. Tales of torture, rape and human trafficking abound and fill the pages of newspapers in several countries. For now, they remain mere “reporting or reading material for the general public”. Even evoking sympathy from the masses is a difficult task – most citizens have other issues to deal with, bread and butter issues. So can you blame them if they only express pity at the plight of these migrants? What we have witnessed over the last several decades serves as a nasty reminder of the cruel nature of those in power, those who blatantly dish out punishment to the weak and sick, women and children.

And behind all these misdeeds are those with vested interests. The United Nations once had a Secretary

United Nation’s Building

General who had masked his criminal past. He served two full terms and then went on to become the President of Austria. Here he was finally unmasked, even though there were many accusations about him while he was in the top UN post much earlier. Kurt Waldheim was a Nazi and had committed many crimes against humanity.

Yet this was cloaked from the rest of the world. And the deception went on for a very long time at the highest levels of power. This is a reminder that all of us need to walk the straight and narrow at all times. The term shelflife is most appropriate here in this context. For this magazine, it would have a shelf-life of approximately three months. Obviously humans have a longer “shelflife”, but as William Henry Hudson wrote in his novel, Far Way and Long Ago...

Photo Credit : beveridgefoundation.org

“we die like old Caesar and have the earth shoveled over us, from dust to dust…” Caesar was the family dog that had died of old age in the rich Pampas region where this young Englishman had spent his early childhood.

Obviously at that time, Argentina and the English were very friendly at the turn of the 20th century. Oh, by the way, the English brought football to that country. The

much has been done, we have not translated all that into concrete action, owing to several factors. But if even the Berlin Wall could come tumbling down like that of Jericho several centuries ago, these man-made barriers can be overcome with human endeavour and the will of those behind this movement. In attempting that, we must arm ourselves with a team dedicated to the cause, one captain and one custodian, several out fielders and others committed to the cause. Any short coming here in this drive will derail the entire effort. So the team must be made of those with “sterner” stuff.

At a time when travel around the world has become that much easier, one wonders why some refuse to acknowledge local customs and traditions. For some inexplicable reason, its those who come from the socalled “developed world” who are culpable of such acts of disrespect and desecration. It is highly unlikely that we from the East would show any untoward behaviour while in the corridors of the “civilised” world.

rest is history, ….the South Americans play much better football than the so-called masters or inventors of the game!!!

The point is simply this, all of us can only do that much, that overstaying is not an option, rather a liability.

There must never be any hidden agendas or hijacking of ventures for personal gain. To me, as the Editor, this is the principle that I will subscribe to. In my life time, the Founder’s aims may never be achieved, but I will console myself that I was a part of that noble movement that sought to make this world a better place. That war would be made a crime and young children the world over would be the torch bearers in this struggle. Is that too much or too farfetched? Not to my mind. The time is surely now for a concerted effort at achieving the aims of the Kuala Lumpur Initiative to Criminalise War of 2005, which led to the creation of the KLFCW and the War Crimes Tribunal. In the last decade while

At our recent two-day International Forum, a group of Dutch would-be lawyers were present. While the majority were taking it as a “learning experience”, there were some who felt that the speakers at the Forum were totally anti-American. How these people have missed the point!!! The KLFCW is not anti-American or anti West. Its the policies and the wars that their leaders conjure up that we find unacceptable. I hope these people realise that.

Finally, it has been reported that fewer Americans are being executed these days. This is because many states are now against the death penalty, and in fact some have passed laws against the ultimate punishment. However, there are still a large number on death row....the majority of them African Americans.

The EDITOR JUNE 2015 CRIMINALISE WAR

9

cw A DREAM TO CRIMINALISE WAR

by Prof Salleh Buang

10

CRIMINALISE WAR JUNE 2015

w

decade ago an elder Malaysian statesman had a dream. Just like centuries ago when someone had a dream that slavery would be abolished, this Malaysian statesman had dreamt that one day wars too would be abolished. So he gathered together several people to join him in realising that dream.

A

Many like-minded individuals from the four corners of the globe eagerly joined him in embarking on this extremely challenging quest. They met here in a Peace Conference in December 2005 to deliberate further, and as a result the Kuala Lumpur Initiative to Criminalise War (the Initiative) came into being.

That elder statesman is Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, a medical doctor from Kedah who had served as the fourth Prime Minister of Malaysia (1981-2003). That historical Peace Conference, held on 14-17 December 2005, was attended by more than 2,000 people from all the five continents.

Following that historical event, the groundwork was laid to put the Initiative into action. Two years later, in February 2007, another international conference was held at the Dewan Merdeka, Putra World Trade Centre (PWTC), Kuala Lumpur, themed “Expose War Crimes, Criminalise War”.

It was attended by over 3,000 people from all over the globe. It was at this conference that a decision was made for the establishment of a formal body, known as the Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War (KLFCW).

The Foundation quickly then drew up its Charter, under which three organs came into being – the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission (KLWCC) which acts as an investigative arm of the Foundation, the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal (KLWCT) which acts as a Tribunal of Conscience with its own rules of evidence and procedure consistent with the

highest standards comparable to the International Courts of Justice and other national courts of law, and finally the Legal Team, headed by the Chief Prosecutor.

Over the last eight years, the Commission held several sessions, hearing complaints from victims of armed conflicts in several war zones, and testimony from former detainees of Guantanamo Bay and medically-trained personnel who were involved in treating victims of the war in Iraq, Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon (the massacre in Sabra and Shatila).

Following these sessions by the Commission, the Chief Prosecutor had filed charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide against several individuals as well as the State of Israel.

The Tribunal, comprised of an international panel of 7 Judges, heard direct evidence and testimony from witnesses and legal submissions by both the prosecution team and the Amicus Curiae team (the latter representing the accused, as provided in the Charter and the rules of procedure) and in the end delivered its reserved judgment.

01

Proxy War: by Tan Sri Razali Ismail with Prof Salleh Buang as moderator.

02

Torture - The Unbroken Chain : by Prof Gurdial Singh Nijar, accompanied by his moderator, Denis J. Halliday

03 04

Hans von Sponeck gave his talk on Regime Change and Accountability, moderated by Larissa Jane Cadd Detmold

John Philpot, enlightened the audience with his speech entitled ‘False Flag’.

06

In all the three cases heard by the Tribunal (affecting the wars in Iraq, Gaza and the massacre in Sabra and Shatila), the accused were found guilty and declared as war criminals.

The full record of these criminal proceedings had been carefully and painstakingly compiled and the full text of the findings and judgements of the Tribunal were then submitted to the United Nations, the International Criminal Court (ICC) at the Hague and the heads of government of several states.

Recently, on April 18 and 19, 2015, KLFCW hosted its latest international forum at the Putra World Trade Centre Kuala Lumpur to take stock of what it had achieved so far and to formulate a road map as to what it should do in

05

Drones & Covert Wars: by Admiral (R) Vishnu Bhagwat, accompanied by his moderator, Dr Zulaiha Ismail.

Sanctions : by Denis J Halliday with Yoichi Shimatsu as moderator.

08

07 Inder Comar, gave his talk on ‘Where Do We Go From Here?’

07

Prof Emeritus Datuk Dr Shad Saleem Faruqi, concluding the 1st day of the International Forum with his speech ‘Abolishing Wars & Seeking Peace with Justice : The Road Map Ahead’.

JUNE 2015 CRIMINALISE WAR

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10 the next decade to take the quest to criminalise war to the next level.

On the first day of the forum, themed “Peace with Justice: Constructing the Road Map”, several distinguished speakers (local and foreign) spoke on various critical issues including, inter alia, proxy wars, torture, regime change, false flag operations, sanctions, the use of drones on civilian populations, and the road map ahead for KLFCW. On the second day of the forum, the Malaysian deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Dato’ Hj Muhyiddin Yassin delivered his Keynote Address under the theme “Engaging the Young to criminalise war and energise peace”.

Expressing his agreement that the theme of the forum is “most appropriate”, Muhyiddin said that it sent out a clear and precise message that young generation must assume an important role in the shaping of their future, free of war and armed conflict.

Muhyidin added that “In many wartorn countries.... we have seen how children suffered the most. Look at the Middle East, Palestine, Syria, Yemen and Iraq. How many of the young ones have had their lives snatched away because of war”.

Then, directing his remarks directly at the elder statesman and founder of KLFCW, the Deputy Prime Minister said “Telling the truth and standing up has been your trademark since you were a young doctor and an ordinary UMNO member... Let me assure, sir, that you are not alone”.

That singular and unexpected remark by the Deputy Prime Minister was met by a thunderous applause by the large body of audience who attended the second day of the conference.

09

11

John Philpot (with Kim Phuc), gave his talk on “From A Distance - Child Victims of War-Torn Vietnam”, accompanied by his moderator, Prof Datuk Dr Andrew Mohanraj

CRIMINALISE WAR JUNE 2015

14

12

13 Larissa Jane Cadd Detmold, enlightened the audience with her talk on “Child Soldiers of Burma”

It was a most positive endorsement and encouragement from the Malaysian government that the Board of Trustees and the working staff of KLFCW found most satisfying and gratifying.

A professor from Japan, Prof Yushiharu Kim, presented his speech on “Psychological Impact of War - Child Survivors of The 1945 Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima & Nagasaki”

“Historia Magistra Vitae” - Learn From The Past. Work For A Future Without Wars : by a UiTM professor, Prof Dr Piermauro Catarinella

15

The road ahead to criminalise war may take several decades or even centuries. But as the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu once said, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single first step”, KLFCW had been able to take several steps over the past decade. It is now time to fine-tune the road map ahead.*

*An edited version of this article, written by Prof Salleh Buang, appeared in his weekly column “Legally Speaking” in New Straits Times, 23rd April 2015.

12

Dato’ Sri Anifah Hj Aman, Foreign Minister of Malaysia, with his speech “The Malaysian Programme At The UN Security Council - Plight of Children in the War-Torn Communities”

Keynote Address by Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia, Tan Sri Dato’ Hj Muhyiddin Yassin.

Dato Freida Pilus, concluding the 2nd day of the International Forum with a short talk on criminalising war and energising peace

BREAKING

NEWS

by Ben Adams After initially turning away boats filled with Rohingya refugees and Bangladeshi economic migrants, Malaysia and Indonesia finally relented and offered them temporary sanctuary for 1 year. Foreign Affairs Minister Dato’ Sri Anifah Hj Aman said on Wednesday afternoon (May 20, 2015) that Malaysia and Indonesia have agreed to provide humanitarian aid and temporary shelter to the 7,000 migrants still adrift at sea, as well as the estimated 3,600 people who had already landed onshore in these two countries over the preceding two weeks. Anifah however added that this temporary sanctuary is dependent on the international community’s assurance that it will ultimately share the responsibility of providing them shelter on a more permanent basis. Denied citizenship in Myanmar and suffering persecutions and state-sanctioned discrimination, Rohingya Muslims had no choice but to flee the country and seek refuge in other countries. Over the past three years, at least 120,000 Muslim Rohingya have fled Myanmar. If they choose to stay in Myanmar, they will continue to be the targets of violent mobs of Buddhist extremists and be confined to camps. When the Rohingya refugees’ attempt to reach Malaysia and Indonesia overland (aided by human smuggling syndicates) was thwarted as a result of a crackdown by the Thai authorities, they continued their grim efforts by sea. Soon after Malaysia and Indonesia announced their willingness to give temporary shelter to the Rohingya boat people, a US State Department’s spokeswoman, Marie Harf, said that the United States is willing to take in Rohingya refugees “as part of international efforts to cope with Southeast Asia’s stranded boat people”. She added that the U.S. is prepared “to take a leading role” in any international effect “organized by the United Nations refugee agency”, to resettle the boat people.

Photo Credit : Rappler / EPA

Photo Credit : Getty Images

Malaysia and Indonesia are not parties to the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol.

“

LET US REMIND

OURSELVES

THE SAFETY AND WELL-BEING

OF U T M O S T

CHILDREN IS OF

PRIORITY THE

FUTURE

OF

SINCE CHILDREN ARE THE

NATION

AND THE

KEY

TO SURVIVAL, A COUNTRY’S

DEVELOPMENT,

DATO’ SRI ANIFAH HJ AMAN Foreign Minister of Malaysia

AND

PROSPERITY.

JUNE 2015 CRIMINALISE WAR

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INTERNATIONAL FORUM 2015

The Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War (KLFCW) hosted an international forum at the Putra World Trade Centre (PWTC) Kuala Lumpur on 18th and 19th April 2015 to evaluate its progress over the last decade and formulate a blueprint of action for the next decade – to take this important quest “Criminalise War and Energise Peace” to the next level.

On the first day of the forum, “Peace with Justice: Constructing the Road Map”, several distinguished speakers spoke on various critical issues including proxy wars, torture, regime change, false flag operations, sanctions, the use of drones on civilian populations, and the road map ahead for KLFCW. On the second day of the forum, “Engaging the Young to Criminalise War and Energise Peace”, Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said, in his Keynote Address, that the forum was “most appropriate” as it sent out a clear message that the young generation must assume an important role in the shaping of their future, free of war and armed conflict.

Appropriately, there were presentations on child victims and child soldiers, and the psychological impact on child survivors of the horrors of war in Vietnam, Burma and Japan. An interesting session on learning from the past exhorted the younger generation to ensure a future without wars. The audience was also mesmerized by poignant renditions on the scourge of war by the three enthusiastic school children.

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INTERNATIONAL FORUM 2015

PORTRAITS

01 Prof Salleh Buang, Alwizah Al-Yafii Kamal, Hans-C von Sponeck, Dato’ Dr Yaacob Hussain Merican, Prof Dr Mohd Akram Shair Mohamed, Denis J. Halliday, Musa Ismail.

Dr Zulaiha Ismail, Tun Dr Siti Hasmah Mohd Ali, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, Tunku Datuk Dr Hjh Sofiah Jewa.

02 Dato’ Freida Pilus, Tunku Datuk Dr Hjh Sofiah Jewa, Tun Dr Siti Hasmah Mohd Ali, Tan Sri Dato’ Hj Muhyiddin Yassin, Dato’ Sri Anifah Hj Aman, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, Dato’ Dr Yaacob Hussain Merican, Prof Salleh Buang.

01

02

03 Law Students from Holland (not in order) : Shakib Atmar, Mitchell Becker, Ilyas Benali, Merel Brons, Geoofrey Brugman, Robin de Meester, Tahmina Faez, Alexander Garrelfs, Rosanne Geurts, Lisa Golwaldt, Michelle Hermans, Yasmin Itkal, Robin Keyner, Lilith Khatchatrian, Maarten Kos, Egidius Kuijper, Cornelia Marchal, Eleha Muhseni, Vera Mulders, Sjors Emiel Peeters, Shams Quliyeva, Tim Schnezler, Marley Sijlbing, Olivier Smits, Nick Vathorst, Geoffrey van den Bergh, Eva van Kooten, Isabelle van Schip, Chantal van Sermond, Kimberly Wolf With KLFCW committee : Tun Dr Siti Hasmah Mohd Ali, Tunku Datuk Dr Hjh Sofiah Jewa, Dato’ Dr Yaacob Hussain Merican, Prof Datuk Dr Andrew Mohanraj, G.S. Kumar, Azizullaili Dato’ Seri Jalaluddin, Alwizah Al-Yafii Kamal, Wan Azlian Ahmad, Aazraa Ala Merican, Futri Najla Salleh

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15

DAY 1 : PEACE WITH JUSTICE - CONSTRUCTING THE ROAD MAP

CRIMINALISE WAR JUNE 2015

PROF EMERITUS DATUK DR

SHAD

SALEEM FARUQI ABOLISHING WARS & SEEKING PEACE WITH JUSTICE : THE ROAD MAP AHEAD

FALSE FLAG

DRONES & COVERT WARS

BHAGWAT

SINGH NIJAR TORTURE - THE UNBROKEN CHAIN

MOHAMAD CHANGING THE MINDSET

ISMAIL

KEYNOTE ADDRESS

“WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?”

16

VON SPONECK

PROF JOHN TUN DR ADMIRAL(R) VISHNU RAZALI MAHATHIR GURDIAL PHILPOT TAN SRI

PROXY WAR

J. HALLIDAY

SANCTIONS

COMAR

DENIS HANS-C

REGIME CHANGE AND ACCOUNTABILITY

INDER

DATO’ SRI HJ AMAN

PHILPOT

JOHN

(WITH KIM PHUC)

JUNE 2015 CRIMINALISE WAR

PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPACT OF WAR - CHILD SURVIVORS OF THE 1945 ATOMIC BOMBING OF HIROSHIMA & NAGASAKI

YASSIN

ANIFAH

FROM A DISTANCE CHILD VICTIMS OF WARTORN VIETNAM

MUHYIDDIN TAN SRI DATO’ HJ

THE MALAYSIAN PROGRAMME AT THE UN SECURITY COUNCIL - PLIGHT OF CHILDREN IN THE WAR-TORN COMMUNITIES

HASMAH MOHD ALI

KEYNOTE ADDRESS

TUN DR SITI

“...WAR – IS NONE OTHER THAN MASS MURDER – COMMITTED

BY WARRING NATIONS...”

JANE CADD DETMOLD

SPREADING CWC’S WINGS ABROAD

CATARINELLA

LARISSA

WELCOME ADDRESS

PIERMAURO PROF DR

CHILD SOLDIERS OF BURMA

“HISTORIA MAGISTRA VITAE” - LEARN FROM THE PAST. WORK FOR A FUTURE WITHOUT WARS

DAY 2 :

ENGAGING THE YOUNG TO CRIMINALISE WAR AND ENERGISE PEACE

YUSHIHARU

PROF DR KIM

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CHANGING

T E S D N I M

THE

“ And if there is peace without justice, it is not really a sign that we have our civilisation has made progress. We are still seeing the absence of justice even if there is no war.”

TUN DR MAHATHIR MOHAMAD

Founder / Chairman Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War

irstly I would like to say, “Thank you,” on behalf of the Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War for your attendance this morning. You have just seen some pictures, a very small number of pictures of war, what war is all about – war is about killing people.

F

Because killing people is a crime, it is illogical that if you kill one person you may be arrested and charged in court and may even be sentenced to death; but if you kill a few million people, that is glorious. It is this realisation of the contradiction in our perception of things that started this idea that war should be criminalised.

This morning we are going to talk about “Peace with Justice” and the roadmap towards peace with justice. Recently, in Kuala Lumpur, we had a small forum and we invited a number of good speakers, well-known speakers, among them was an American, a fairly well-

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known American, and he was given the floor as the first speaker. His first statement was shocking. He said that in the last 60 years we had enjoyed peace. That is not our impression.

But he very boldly stated that in the last 60 years we had enjoyed peace. And he gave his reason why he thinks that we are enjoying peace in the last 60 years, and his reason is that before, during the First and the Second World War, there were 70 million people were killed.

Since then, only 200,000 people have been killed. Obviously there is peace. We’re not killing as many people as we used to – that is his argument.

Now, maybe it is true for his own country, they are enjoying peace.

They don’t have people – well they do have policeman who shoot people in the back once in awhile – but beyond that, they are enjoying peace. And if they are enjoying

peace, then the whole world must be enjoying peace because their perception is that America is the world. They used to a slogan by General Motors, and the slogan says, “What is good for General Motors is good for America.”

And I suppose, by extension, what is good for America is good for the rest of the world. So, when they are enjoying peace, which is good for America, obviously the rest of the world must be enjoying peace – because they could not see beyond their borders. I’m not antiAmerica. I’m just stating facts.

Because in America they play the game of football, American football. American football is hardly ever played anywhere else in the world. Every year they have what they call “The World Series” where Americans play Americans in America American Football – that is the world. That is “The World Series”. Meaning to say that America is the world.

So, if America is enjoying peace, then the world must be enjoying peace. That is the kind of shortsightedness, misperception, that we find not among some little country somewhere but this is a country that rules the world. They have the power and authority and the means to force people to accept their rules and regulations.

This is the power that controls the world today. And if this power is so short-sighted that it considers itself as the world, then we cannot expect much from them. It is strange to have ignorant people ruling the world, is frightening, because they may make decisions that maybe good for them, but will not be good for the rest of the world. So for them, there is peace and there is justice. And by extension, because they are having peace and justice, therefore the world is having peace and justice. Yes, of course, a few misguided Arabs keep on killing each other – they would have liked to kill a few millions but their capacity kill is rather limited.

But the fact that they are fighting a war – to them it is a war – but to America it is not a war, it is a situation of “peace” because only 200,000 people have been killed.

So until we reach the millions of people who will be killed, then there really is “peace”. So this is the problem of misperception of what things are like in the world today. It is, I think, important that we understand this: That there is no peace and, obviously, there is no justice. There is no justice for the small nations. For the weak nations, justice is only for the strong.

As they say in international relations in the management of this world, “The strong will take what they will, and the weak will submit what they must.” So we must submit to the strong. And if we must submit to the strong, even when the strong is unjust, we have no choice but to submit to the strong. And so we have some kind of “peace”. But it is not peace with justice. And if there is peace without justice, it is

not really a sign that we have our civilisation has made progress.

We are still seeing the absence of justice even if there is no war. But, in actual fact, there is always a war going on and that war prevents justice ever being shown to anyone.

Malaysia is not at war with anyone.

We believe in being friends with everyone. But sanctions are being applied against Malaysia. And sanctions is a form of war. You may remember in history, the sieges of the cities of the past. One way to bring down a country is to lay siege to their capital city – starve them of food, force them to eat rats and vermin, and finally, because of so many deaths, so much hunger, so much thirst, the city goes under and surrenders. So sanctions, sieges, are the same thing: They are a part of war. To say that sanction is not connected with war is wrong because sanction is war by other means.

any reports about those killing.

When I went there, the country was quite peaceful.

I went to Damascus, the people there are Sunnis, Shias and Christians. And they live at peace with each other. But they have a dictator for a leader – a horrible man who’s killing everybody all the

So today, even Malaysia has to face sanction – of course it is not directed directly at us, but many countries have to accept the fact that we cannot trade with Iran. We have no war against Iran. They are our friends. We want to trade with them, but, “no, you may not trade with them.” So the sanction is not merely applied to Iran; it is applied to countries like Malaysia which maintains very friendly relation with the United States of America, “the world.” So the situation in the world today cannot be called “peace”. We are actually facing war, a global war, with one means or another.

It is not always about shooting and killing people that you saw on the screen just now; but starving people, depriving them of medical facilities, water, is war, is a part of the weaponry of war. And today you see what is happening – in Syria, for example.

Syria used to be quite a peaceful country. Of course it is ruled by a dictator and all the Syrians are being killed all the time – but I didn’t get JUNE 2015 CRIMINALISE WAR

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time. So the ruler must be displaced in order to achieve regime change; and so we see what’s happening in Syria today – a war among brothers, a war among co-religionist, and the horrors of war are perpetrated everywhere.

And among the horrors of war this time is the problem of refugees, people running away from war.

They are to be found in neighbouring countries – living, sometimes, in the open air, no cover at all, exposed to the sun and the cold of the winter. They are without water, without food, without any sanitary amenities. They are the victims of war.

Why? Well, “we need to change the regime.” Yes, I believe that the regime is dictatorial. But count the number of people killed by that regime as against the people who have been killed in the uprisings against that regime.

You look at Iraq. Iraq was one of the best developed Arab countries.

Of course it had a horrible dictator in the name of Saddam Hussein who has “weapons of mass destruction” – within 45 minutes Saddam could launch an attack against London. And so Tony Blair says, “we have to remove this man and his weapons of mass destruction.” Then it was found that he had no weapons of mass destruction and the purpose of the war was changed to removing this horrible dictator. And so the horrible dictator was found, captured, and hanged. But the war goes on. The Iraq which was peaceful before is no longer peaceful now. Every now and again we see people exploding bombs, exploding vehicles filled with bombs, killing people, and certainly, there cannot be peace after the regime change.

Indeed, there is less peace now than there was before the change of the

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regime. And today we see not only war in this country, but also an absence of justice. So, it is obvious that war does not solve anything.

Not even great wars.

Great wars were fought twice – the First World War and the Second World War. And what happened?

These were the wars to end all wars. But they have not ended any war. The First World War did not result in peace because it led to the Second World War; and the Second World War was also fought to put an end to warring as a means of

settling conflicts between nations.

They founded the United Nations – we shall sit around a table and talk our problems over. That was the idea. We will not fight and kill each other. But then we need to give 5 countries special position – they should be give vetoes.

And so the whole idea of solving the problems of the world in peaceful ways was negated by giving veto powers to 5 countries who we trusted, but we now find that they are not to be trusted. They will put

a spanner into the works anytime they can. One country has used the veto more than a hundred times, and we are actually ruled by these 5 countries, and there is no justice that they will uphold. If at all, they make decisions to use war to kill people in order to achieve their ends. So even the United Nations have failed to give us peace with justice.

So what do we do? What is the roadmap towards peace with justice? What we can do lies in our minds. We consider ourselves as civilised people, but actually we are not civilised. We are even more uncivilised, more primitive than the most primitive people of 4,000 or 5,000 years ago.

The people of the Stone Age did kill, did fight, but the damage done is very minimal. We have made progress, tremendous progress. Today, we can wipe out the population of this earth because we have developed weaponry that can do just that. Today when we fight wars it is not about soldiers fighting soldiers.

It is about destroying whole nations, exempting nothing. We kill the old, the young, the babies, the sick, the worn-out – all those people will be killed in our wars.

And the whole country will be devastated. Old monuments will be blown up. There were recently some pictures of these IS people destroying old monuments. But, after all, when you bomb countries, you destroy old monuments as well – only there’s not much publicity.

So, both sides are actually equally primitive; still resorting to killing people in order to achieve your objective.

Just imagine, if at this gathering of people, somebody doesn’t like somebody else – he gets up and takes a knife and plunges it into the

back of his enemy. And when he is asked, “why did you do that?” “Oh, I have a quarrel with him.” So, one solution is, of course, to kill him.

Imagine what kind of society we will be living in if people are free to kill their enemies and no action can be taken against them? But in the community of the nations of this world, such acts are permissible. If one nation does not like the other nation, all it has to do is to bomb that nation out of existence. And it is entirely possible to do that now because our civilisation has made such advances in the art of killing people that we can wipe out whole countries.

So that is the progress that we have made. If indeed we want peace with justice, our mindset, our belief, our value systems, need to be changed.

And the change that must take place is that the perception of war – war is a crime no matter which direction you are looking at, war, it is a crime.

It is about killing people. Massive killing of people.

No discrimination at all. In the old days, they used to have a fight between the leaders to decide who is going to win. That’s fine. But today, you, killing all the people if you can – and you can, because you have the weapons – you can destroy everything.

You can kill on a massive scale, 70 million people in the First and Second World War. That is still our mindset: That the killings in war is legitimate and acceptable.

It is even glorious. The killer will be given medals. The killer will have his statue erected in the park.

And future generations will pay homage to these killers because war is glorious. We don’t have too many monuments to peace but it is because our mindset still glorifies war as a means of settling conflicts between nations, or within nations.

If we reject war as a solution to our conflicts, then we will be making progress towards peace with justice.

It is our mindset, it is our culture – a culture that pervades the whole

world, that war is permissible, killing people is permissible if you call it war. If you don’t call it war, then you may be hanged for it. But if you call it, “in a war,” then you are doing nothing illegal when you kill masses of people. Until we can change that perception of war that it is legitimate and right and proper; until we change that mindset, there will be no peace, and certainly no peace with justice. We need to change our mindset, our thinking, about war in order to achieve, or to map out the way towards, peace with justice.

When we started this campaign way back in 2005, we decided that this is a campaign that should spread throughout the world. It is not easy to change the mindset of people – I’ve spent 22 years trying to change the mindset of the Malays, I did not make much progress I’m sorry to say. But I took on a bigger job: Trying to change the mindset of the whole world.

This little man in this small unknown country is talking big.

Who is he? Doesn’t matter. If people can understand that war is a crime, that it must be rejected, that it must be punished, it will be worthwhile, even for a small man.

I always like to talk about slavery and how slavery was abolished.

It was a very long fight to make slavery a crime. At one time everyone of us accepted slaves to work for us – nations and peoples everywhere had slaves. You find some captives from war, captured prisoners, will be treated as slaves, and that is quite okay. If you find that the colour of his skin is darker than yours, then you should make him a slave, because of skin colour.

You could transport him into your country and make a slave of him.

But some people began to see the wrongness of slavery. And so they campaigned – perhaps only one or two people campaigned. But eventually the word spread. This is something that is a measure of our understanding of the human race –

that they need to be free, that it is legitimate and right for them to be free. And so the fight went on for centuries and eventually we have no more slaves. Recently we find some slaves in Rhodesia. But that is not national. But today we reject slavery. We reject slave trade.

Wilberforce fought for 30 years to put an end to the British and American trade in slaves. So, there is a long journey before us.

We cannot change peoples’ minds overnight, or even over a period of one year or two years. It’s going to be a long struggle to make war a crime. Until in the minds of people war is being categorised as a crime and as a crime people who wage war should be punished, until then we will not have peace with justice.

So with that I would like to welcome you to this forum and I hope that the speakers will contribute towards a process of changing the mindsets of people. It will begin here, but I do hope that it will spread to other countries and other parts of the world.

And there is one thing we can do in democratic countries is that we can demand that candidates for elections must make a pledge that they reject war as a means of solving conflict or you will not vote for them. I would like to compliment Japan, which is the only country which has put into its Constitution the rejection of war as a means of solving conflicts.

Japan has only a defence force.

Unfortunately it is being undermined by certain powers; and I pray and hope the resistance of the Japanese will be strong enough to prevent them from accepting once again that the solution to human relations between countries can be resolved through war. Japan is a model. It should remain a model, and the rest of the world should be taught, or should be subjected to pressure, so that they too would abolish war from their Constitutions – to make war a crime for their countries so that we may eventually have peace with justice.

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SPREADING

CWC’S WINGS

ABROAD

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F

irst of all I would like to express my grateful thanks, my humble gratitude, to the Almighty Allah Subhanahu wa ta’ala for giving us this opportunity again to gather again in an environment of peace and harmony in this hall, and we hope that He will bless us with His guidance and wisdom to pursue our objectives that is to make the young generation realise that war is a crime, war kills, and that they will be the ones who will suffer if we do not try to stop war in this world.

And again I would like to express my grateful thanks to YAB Tan Sri Muhyiddin for his presence here today.

We know that he had had a very busy schedule for the past one month but he has given us his time to present this keynote address. Thank you Sir. And also to express my gratitude to all the distinguished speakers who came from abroad and also from here in Malaysia for giving us the time and the expertise which we know will help the younger generation to think about why we have this forum targeting them.

Clubs”. And we have to thank the Minister of Education who has kindly allowed and approved the establishment of these clubs throughout the country. So far we have 3 premier schools – pioneer – having this “Criminalise War Clubs” in their schools and they will be performing, they will express their hearts and minds today on this stage later on. But other schools have already picked up our mission – our concept of having younger people to understand why war should be criminalised, and we are spreading throughout the country. And hopefully, in the future, we would have clubs overseas, particularly in those countries that have gone through hardship, conflicts, sanctions, and also war.

Here, in Malaysia, we have relative peace. We are multiracial. We have diversity in culture, religion, and so forth. But we understand – we have a conscience – to be together and that we understand that if we fight with each other, we will not be gaining anything. We will lose; both the victorious and the victims will lose.

We want our loved ones, the young generation, to understand and to realise that they will be the ones who will suffer most because war does not discriminate.

So, in Malaysia, although we have peace, we want other people, our neighbours, other countries, to have peace just like us. We need political stability. We need understand among all tribes and races in the country so that they will achieve peace.

Ladies and gentlemen, this forum, the theme is “Engaging the Young Generation to Criminalise War and to Energise Peace”. As we have seen the whole of yesterday, our young generation has taken part and they are very confused and they want to know more about why we want war to be criminalised. And they are young. And we know that they will take up our mission because they are our flag-bearers of the future, and they will understand why – why we want them to follow our great efforts.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have invited distinguished speakers from overseas and they will be enlarging, explaining, and sharing with us their experiences in Hiroshma, Nagasaki, and other places which I still have memories of their disasters. We have, of course, many disasters happening in this world – natural disasters. But the man-made ones are the ones who really really worry us.

As you can see, ladies and gentlemen, and young people, since the beginning of this millennium, we have seen conflicts, sanctions, leading to war. And this time we have put in sanctions because, as we have heard yesterday, how cruel sanctions can be – it’s just like war, it causes slow death to mass population. The population, the victims, are starved.

They cannot get anything economically, and so this is a precursor to war. And we don’t want our children to be starved. We don’t want them to lose the roof above their heads. We don’t want them to lose the love and care of their parents. So, ladies and gentlemen, that’s one of the reasons why we have to start changing the minds of people about war.

War is a crime, war kills, and the impact of war on people, including children, is really really horrendous. So this is one of the reasons why we started to establish clubs for secondary schools which is called “Criminalise War

We want our children to have roofs over their heads, food on their tables, and clothes to wear, and parents to love and care for them. This is what – the motive of our Criminalise War Clubs. We want them to understand that we care for them, and we want them to care for their children, and their grandchildren and greatgrandchildren also.

So, with that, I would very much like to thank all the distinguished speakers – especially YAB the Minister of Education – for being here and to give their expertise so that our young generation who yesterday had a really full day asking questions which not only for their information but those questions which really confuse them.

That we are here to inform them properly, deeply, and we want them to realise that we adults care for them because we want them to have roofs above their heads, food on the table, and parents and loved ones to care for them for always.

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“...war – is none other than mass murder – committed by warring nations...”

F

irst, I would like to congratulate the Criminalise War Club for successfully organising a world forum, “Engaging the Young to Criminalise War and Energise Peace”. I’m glad that CWC has taken an important initiative to educate the young about the dangerous effects of war on mankind and, of course, to impart peace as an honourable value.

surely spend most of their lifetime behind bars. That is how civilised nations treat murders – as a serious crime. But unfortunately, war – is none other than mass murder – committed by warring nations, is not regarded as a crime. Likewise, leaders of these nations, sanctions against innocent civilians, women and children, women and elderly, are not regarded as criminals. We have seen the sufferings of innocent people in war-torn countries. Where do they go to demand justice?

We all know that murder is a heinous crime. All civilised nations make murder a crime punishable with the most severe of punishment. Even in countries where death penalty is outlawed, convicted murderers will

In their minds, there must be someone who is responsible for all the suffering inflicted upon them; but more often than not, this someone managed to escape, or escape scott-free. And far from

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being punished, the leaders of victorious nations take pride in the victory of the army, and the soldiers are decorated as heroes and saints.

Whereas the brutal truth is that they are just killers whose mission is to kill their enemies, and in doing so, causing pain and injury and death of the innocent people. And all these happen because the so-called civilised nations of today do not regard war as a crime.

Sadly, the death and injury of innocent people is assumed as collateral damage. By no means the victims of war can seek justice for the loss of their loved ones and for their own sufferings. Justice can never be done as long as war is not regarded as a punishable offence.

In this regard we would like to commend YAB Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, who is one of the main proponents of criminalise war movement. Ever since he founded the Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War (KLFCW), YAB Tun has been very vocal in voicing out the brutal truth about war and the misery it causes to mankind, and therefore call for war to be made a crime.

I must praise you, Sir, for your bravery and perseverance in stating brutal truths about war, and for your guts to stand against the powerful nations and the leaders to criminalise war. For in fact, telling the truth and standing up against the powers that be has been your trademark, ever since you were a young doctor; and, of course, as an ordinary UMNO member, and until today. And let me assure you, Sir, you are not alone in telling the truth.

Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, Malaysia pays special attention to education of children.

The largest slice of the national budget goes to education. As much as 21% of total annual budget is assigned for education, operating expenditure, building new schools, and upgrading existing ones among others.

It is not just the physical that we are concerned with but also the quality of education. And this has been the policy of the Malaysian government on and on. As the Minister of Education I have always paid particular attention to the needs of schoolchildren, teachers and the education fraternity. We have done our best to encourage a wholesome upbringing of our children by teaching a wide range of subjects and thereby embarking the young minds in various aspects of virtue, the culture of understanding, tolerance, and good behaviour.

Thus, when the request for the Ministry of Education to sanction the launch of the Criminalise War Clubs, or CWC, for schools came

“

‌ We would like to commend YAB Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, who is one of the main proponents of criminalise war movement. Ever since he founded the Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War (KLFCW), YAB Tun has been very vocal in voicing out the brutal truth about war and the misery it causes to mankind, and therefore call for war to be made a crime. I must praise you, Sir, for your bravery and perseverance in stating brutal truths about war, and for your guts to stand against the powerful nations and the leaders to criminalise war. For in fact, telling the truth and standing up against the powers that be has been your trademark, ever since you were a young doctor; and, of course, as an ordinary UMNO member, and until today. And let me assure you, Sir, you are not alone in telling the truth.

to my attention, I did not hesitate to give my fullest support and approval. Moreover, the founder of CWC is none other than our beloved and well-respected YAB Dr. Siti Hasmah Mohd Ali, and over the years, as a cabinet member, I was aware of the drive and passion that YAB Tun Dr. Siti Hasmah bring to any project, be it big or small. Hers is the touch that leaves a lasting impression on every Malaysian and produces the best results.

I am honoured that Tun Dr. Siti Hasmah personally invited me to this international conference and a quick glance at the programme tells me that great effort and

thought have gone to selecting the topics for discussion. The eminent speakers who would, no doubt, provide great insights and share with you the inherent dangers if we ignore the signs of impending war or do nothing about it. Extremism and terrorism, for example, has become one of the greatest threats that the whole world is facing right now. Signs of extremist tendency among our people must be quickly nipped in the bud before it imposes a serious threat to the peace and stability of our country.

And therefore strong measure must be put in place to keep such threat in check and address its root cause, and Malaysia has

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done so by introducing tough laws to deal with such threats, including the Prevention of Terrorism Act which has been passed by Parliament recently. To me, the theme for this international conference, “Engaging the Young to Criminalise War and to Energise Peace,” is most appropriate. It is a clear and precise message that the young assumes an important role in the shaping of our future – of how people can live in peace and harmony.

The organisers have also scheduled that the young members of the clubs of CWC to share their world view of what their movement is all about, their hopes and their aspirations. And, of course, I look forward to that presentation.

I understand that the leadership of YAB Tun Dr. Siti Hasmah has seen at least 13 such clubs in the country, and I am aware that YAB Tun Hasmah personally helped to launch the 3 pioneer clubs. And this gesture of the Founder is an excellent example of her involvement in projects she undertakes.

And, most important, the young must appreciate the time and the effort that YAB Tun has put in, and thus, members of the existing CWC have a duty towards the Founder: spread the word and the message that “War is a Crime” and that the world can be a better place for all of us if there is peace and goodwill.

Children, especially, have suffered the most in any place where violence has broken out.

Look at the Middle East – Palestine, Syria, Yemen and Iraq: How many of the young ones there have had their lives snatched away from them because a war is being fought in their home town? And the same is in the case of many other parts of the world such as in Africa where young girls have been kidnapped, raped, and not heard from. In other troubled spots like Libya and Latin America, I feel that there has been far too much killing and loss of lives. And this our young must understand and appreciate this.

We in this country have been blessed in many ways. We have not seen an armed conflict or massive loss of lives. We have just a massive flood that caused loss of lives and hardship for many people in several states at the end of last year. But, as is our tradition, everyone pitched in to help the victims of that disaster.

We have been a peaceful country and we have developed in a peaceful manner.

And this is recognised by many countries that have turned to Malaysia for leadership and guidance and training. The international

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“ I would like to congratulate the Criminalise War Club for successfully organising a world forum, “Engaging the Young to Criminalise War and Energise Peace”. I’m glad that CWC has taken an important initiative to educate the young about the dangerous effects of war on mankind and, of course, to impart peace as an honourable value.

community has also given us the honour of serving in the United Nations Security Council as a non-permanent member and, of course, this is the fourth time we have served in that capacity.

I remind you of this to highlight, to our young audience here, what peace and goodwill can bring to all of us not just in our own homes and backyards, but also at the international level. And because we have given our children the best in education, healthcare and welfare, most Malaysians enjoy a high standard of living. Many are able to seek jobs internationally all because of a solid background in primary and secondary education. And today many international institutions of higher learning are establishing their branches in this country.

This, in itself, allows our children to mingle and understand different cultures and traditions right here, and at a very early age. Now that the CWC is slowly taking root, I’m sure the spill-over effects will be far-reaching and very beneficial.

I would like to conclude my speech by saying “Thank You” again to YAB Tun Dr. Siti Hasmah Mohd Ali for the very kind invitation. I wish all participants and audience here today the very best.

I know that many good things will come out of this conference, and I once again thank you all.

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No violence against children is justifiable. Bearing in mind that poverty, income inequality, political instability and conflicts are among factors that could increase the risk of violence, there is an urgent need for the global community to address the root causes of these problems and to put in place various mechanisms in order to stop and prevent violence against children.

THE MALAYSIAN PROGRAMME AT THE UN SECURITY COUNCIL - PLIGHT OF CHILDREN IN WAR-TORN COMMUNITIES

I

t is indeed a great honour for me to be here and to address this august conference and to share with you some insights into “The Malaysian Programme at the United Nations Security Council on the Plight of Children in WarTorn Territories�.

As we all know, armed conflicts have a devastating impact on the civilian populations, particularly on children. UNICEF reported that 2014 was the worst year for children. Up to 15 million of them suffering from armed conflicts in countries such as the Central African Republic, Iraq, South Sudan, the occupied Palestinian territories, Syria, and Ukraine. It is most unfortunate that children have

become increasingly embroiled both as targets of violence and as combatants. We are increasingly alarmed at the disturbing trend of child abduction by non-State armed groups, and hundreds of children have been abducted in the past year by armed groups in Africa and in Middle East, and for many of them, their fate remains unknown.

In the case of the occupied Palestinian territories, the brutal and relentless attack by Israel on the Palestinian civilians in Gaza in 2014 had led to the death of over 500 Palestinian children, some deliberately targetted and killed, and many others ... killed while seeking refuge in UN centres.

These massive assaults have resulted in more than 3,000 children

injured or maimed for life, and 54,000 children made homeless.

At least 373,000 children in Gaza are currently in desperate need of psycho-social support. What is more even deplorable is that schools were targets of aggressions.

Malaysia deplores and condemns all acts of violence against children, be it murder, sexual violence, abductions, or vicious and indiscriminate attacks against children and essential infrastructure such as schools and hospitals.

Against this backdrop that we are pleased to reaffirm our steadfast commitment to the efforts of protecting and promoting the rights of children. Let us remind ourselves that the safety and well-being of JUNE 2015 CRIMINALISE WAR

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children is of utmost priority since children are the future of the nation and the key to a country’s survival, development, and prosperity.

They are, in fact, the foundation on which a strong, vibrant, and dynamic nation shall be built. We are encouraged that almost, if not all, members of the States of the United Nations have acceded to the Convention on the Right of the Child, or better known as CRC. We believe that the ratification of the CRC is a testament to the common will of the global community in promoting and protecting the rights of children.

As a State party to the CRC, Malaysia has undertaken efforts in ensuring that the rights of its children are protected, and in addressing pertinent issues such as violence against children. Apart from being a State party to the CRC, Malaysia has acceded to the optional protocol to the CRC on the involvement of children in armed conflict, the optional protocol to the CRC to the sale of children, child prostitution, and child pornography on 12 April 2012.

In addition, Malaysia’s a State party to the 4 Geneva Conventions of 1949 which were incorporated in Malaysian law on 16 April 1962 though the Geneva Convention Act 1962. It is well to remember that the 4 Geneva Conventions of 1949 are remarkable milestones in the history of humanity as not only were limits placed on the acts of belligerence but also civilians affected by armed conflicts, including children, were protected for the first time.

In this respect, Malaysia believes that the high contracting parties to the 4 Conventions, it is incumbent upon us not to only respect the Conventions, but to ensure respect for them in all circumstances. This will entail undertaking measures to ensure that the humanitarian principles involved in these Conventions are applied universally.

No violence against children is justifiable. Bearing in mind that poverty, income inequality, political

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instability and conflicts are among factors that could increase the risk of violence, there is an urgent need for the global community to address the root causes of these problems and to put in place various mechanisms in order to stop and prevent violence against children.

International humanitarian laws provide for the general protection of children as persons taking no part in hostilities. It provides for children as persons who are particularly vulnerable. The 4th Geneva Convention 1949 comprises many provisions in favour of children.

They exemplify, already in 1949, that children should be specially protected against warfare.

The legal protection of children encompasses various aspects to include, among others, the right to care and aid for the child and his family, the cultural environment of the child, the education of children, the personal rights of the child, the respect of preferential treatment for children who have been arrested, detained or interred, and children taking part in hostilities.

In order to advance the global protection of children in armed conflicts and put an end to impunity of the perpetrators, the United Nations Security Council has identified 6 categories of violations and so-called 6 grave violations, namely, killing and maiming of children, recruitment or use of children as soldiers, sexual violence against children, attacks against schools and hospitals, denial of humanitarian access for children, and abduction of children. In essence, the 6 grave violations against children enumerated by the Security Council in its resolutions form the basis of the architecture of protecting children during war.

Malaysia became a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council on the 1st of January 2015, and as a member of the Security Council, Malaysia shares the commitment of the international community to protect

children in situations of armed conflict. In this regard, Malaysia welcomes the report by the Special Representative of the SecretaryGeneral for Children in Armed Conflict and commends the noble campaign of “Children, Not Soldiers” launched by the Special Representative and UNICEF in March 2014. The campaign seeks to galvanise support to end and prevent, by 2016, the recruitment and use of children by national security forces in 7 countries.

Malaysia is pleased to highlight that this year marks the 10th anniversary of the Security Council Resolution 1612/2005 which endorsed the establishment of the monitoring and reporting mechanism, or MRM, to document grave violations against children in armed conflict, and also establish a Security Council working group on children in armed conflict.

The working group exemplifies the cooperation, innovations and creativity that the Security Council is capable of harnessing in order to address international issues of concern, in this case the plight of children affected by armed conflict around the world. The working group plays a pivotal role in focussing on the grave violations that are being committed against children by parties to armed conflict, and mobilising concerted international action through its conclusions.

As the current Chair of the Security Council Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict, Malaysia believes that it is important to build trust and engage in constructive dialogue with the Member States whose situations are being considered. Accordingly, Malaysia will seek to facilitate new efforts or approaches in order to achieve timely, relevant and balanced conclusions for all country situations.

In seeking to enhance the Working Group’s effectiveness in dealing with child protection issues,

Malaysia would endeavour to ensure that conclusions reached by the Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict are translated into action and that they enjoy the support of the Member States. We intend to further strengthen the transparency and visibility of the Working Group to the wider United Nations member States and the public, as well as to mainstream the issue of children and armed conflict.

Malaysia strongly believes that the issue of child protection in armed conflict should not be politicised nor should the issue be used to create divisions within the international community.

In this regard, Malaysia aims to strengthen engagement with all stakeholders on this issue, including Member States, UN bodies, civil society and the media, and with a view to depoliticising the issue and seeking solutions that would bring

a positive and tangible impact on the ground.Malaysia is of the view that in order to have any meaningful discussion on this subject, the issue of the plight of Palestinian children must also not be forgotten. It is indeed a pathetic state of affairs, when the international community ignores the suffering of these children merely because it cannot find a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

in wartime. Every State has the duty to promote the rules protecting children from any form of violence in war, and should crimes occur, to swiftly bring the perpetrators to justice. The general and specific protection to which children are entitled, must become a reality.

The enduring responsibility for improving the plight of children in times of war and conflict must be shared by each and everyone of us.

The Security Council also has a compelling legal, moral and political responsibility to ensure that Israel, as the Occupying Power, respects and complies with the fundamental principles of international law and international humanitarian law, in the interest of the security and welfare of the children in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

In conclusion, allow me to reiterate Malaysia’s unwavering commitment towards relentless efforts to address the plight of children in armed conflict. While the promotion of peace and the prevention of armed conflict should remain our priorities in ensuring the safety and well-being of children, it is the protection of children in existing situations of armed conflict, or in situations of impending armed conflict, which demands our urgent and undivided attention.

Today more than ever, States and parties to an armed conflict must do their utmost to uphold respect for the safety and dignity of children

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I am honoured to be asked to speak, and I am particularly impressed that we have so many students, young people, out there coming to listen with great interest with what we’re doing, today and tomorrow. I congratulate the organisers and I recognise their continuing commitment, their resilience, in taking this long and hilly road up to try and find a time when we can illegalise war – we come to the conclusion within our own response system that we do not want war. It will yet be a long time but nevertheless I am happy that there are compatriots in Malaysia and elsewhere that want to do this and nothing has taken them off the track of what they are trying to do.

I am not a believer in conspiracy theories as such. But in my time as a professional, in the business of being a representative of the government overseas, clearly I have seen instances when countries and groups connive to get things done; any by very subtle ways or very outrageous ways.

And we have seen many things in history in the last 2 decades where these things were done with actually impunity because there is that understanding that they can get away with it. Today we are talking about Proxy Wars. It is important that young minds, particularly, begin to realise that it is possible for people to fashion together ways to get what they want and proxy wars are efforts – subtle, sophisticated, sometimes brutal also – to try to get what they want. If we have to learn anything at all from the past, with all the victims and casualties, we must make sure that we don’t fall prey to that kind of situation where willy-nilly, in the fault of our not quite understanding the things, we become party to being part of proxy wars. But let us first talk about South East Asia. If you look at the history of South East Asia, you will see the very early positive context in relation between the countries in Europe and the countries in South East Asia.

Between major countries of Asia – India, China – and the little countries of South

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by TAN SRI RAZALI ISMAIL East Asia. There were such mutually profitable context. And I’m talking about the 17th century and early part of the 18th century where there was international commerce that traffic between, looking at the monsoon north east and the south west monsoon that commerce brought items in China to Venice and the rest of Europe and from Europe it went to China, India also. But the nexus of that was South East Asia, particularly Malaya. The Malacca Sultanate excelled in its sophistication to deal with it, taking into acceptance the movement of the monsoons and allowing for all kinds of diversity. People who lived in Malacca could trade in that area. There were Persians, Chinese, people from Africa, they came to stay as early as the 18th century.

And the curious thing was this; the native authority never had to lose power. There was no attempt to try to coerce the native authority, the Sultanate in Malaya and in some parts in Malaysia, to diminish their control with the area. It was only with the onslaught of imperialism and communism that destroyed totally that scenario. Countries like Malaya, Indonesia, Philippines became eventually colonial entities, governed by imperial power. In the case of Malaysia, the British re-fashioned Malaya, re-fashioned the very Sultanates to become, with to protocol to added – pomp and splendour and ceremonies – to become, in effect, more and more an appendage of the colonial power.

In the 50s, 60s and 70s, you have the phenomena of the imperial powers and the communism in Russia and China, trying to compete and have conflicts in South East Asia through using people to do their bidding. That was a time during the so-called democracy of the United States and the invisibility

of communism. Countries in South East Asia were made to choose sides and conduct the foreign policy in support of one or the other. In effect, by that time, they were already taking on the role of proxy states. We were taught to worry about Chinese communism, we were told that the South East Asia Treaty Organisation (SEATO) would be the protective wall, the defence against communism. Of course, one or two of us learned to play one major power against the other.

To some extent, it accrued some benefits. But mainly, many of us became very much a part of the process of dealing with proxy wars.

In the 50s, the move by Vietnam to gain independence was stalled for a very long time by the so-called “free world”. The Americans and the Allies propped up military regimes in South Vietnam to try to stop Vietnamese independence in the name of stopping Vietnamese communism. Legitimacy was added to it by referring to the effort of the so-called free world, this is to stand the invisibility of the domino theory. The Americans in Vietnam wished a dirty war. There was Agent Orange, defoliation, carpet bombings, killings and maiming of thousands, and forcing hundreds of thousands, of Vietnamese, to leave in boats later to find better homes elsewhere.

Afghanistan was the Russian version of the dirty war, where they tried to wage and subjugate the people of Afghanistan by the utilisation of lethal weapons and the most horrific of tortures that led to the total destruction of the customary and traditional structures of governance in Afghanistan, all in the name of the inevitability and invincibility of communism.

Both the US and the Soviet Union used the countries in that area as surrogate to prop up their proxy wars.

Malaya (subsequently Malaysia) was not immune to

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proxy wars. It is possible, perhaps now, to review the Malayan Emergency of the 40s, 50s and up to the 60s where many Malayans, and Malaysians, lost their lives.

This is part of a larger picture plan articulated in the 50s by the then President Eisenhower to prevent a domino effect of South East Asia falling under the sway of communism. Recently in Lahad Datu, Sabah, a faction of a Sulu group made a military incursion into Malaysia, probably coached by certain Philipino parties, possibly with some elements in the government, to promote and resurrect the Sabah claim using the trappings of some old legitimacy. This is another kind of an attempt to proxy wars – with programmes of people behind the scene to try to push whatever they want to in that speculations.

The interference and manipulation of external powers, and other powers, continue to exist to this day; and we would be fooling ourselves to think that we are entirely free of these kinds of manipulations. They come in various shapes, manifest themselves in varying degrees, and, of course, the most insidious of them all, in the application of the whole matrix of proxy war.

Proxy war is defined by many as a struggle between 2 powers through the use of substitutes in order to avoid direct confrontation. A term forged in the bitter foundaries of the Cold War, proxy wars referred to the proliferation of wars fought on behalf of these 2 major powers in that era – within those that champion so-called “liberal capitalism” of the United States, and those that defended the ideals of communism, Soviet Union.

Another way of looking at it is to think of it as what happens when a major power decides when an armed conflict works in its favour but it does not want to deal with the consequences, complications and fallout of being directly involved. Perhaps in the line of contemporary business today, this kind of expression might relate to the idea of outsourcing. Indeed, it may even follow the same logic: Why do the dirty work yourself when it is less costly to have someone else do it for you? You get what you want, your proxies get what they want, and everybody should be happy. But that is not always the case. Not everybody will be happy. And the casualties, the victims of these attempts of proxy wars, are enormous.

In 2003, the European council in Brussels acknowledged that out of the millions of people that have died in wars, 90% of them have been civilians. And the casualties for such wars did not necessarily come out as a direct result of war. Some died as a consequence of the war, but some, diseases and malnutrition, and the destruction of the economy left these people to be victims of that kind of conflict. Some died of exposure to the elements, displacement; in fact in 2013, the UNHCR have a record of 33.3 million people displaced worldwide as a result of violence and conflict. These are people who have been uprooted from their lands, forced to flee, and

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driven from their homes. These people have had to find their future in other areas. Then, of course, I point your attention to the gross violation of human dignity that often takes place during the war itself. We talk about the campaign in the past few years against the rape as a weapon of war to remind us of the suffering of women who have to go through these horrendous experience.

For example, out of 1,600 women interviewed in the aftermath of the Liberian Civil war, 92% admitted to having suffered from violence, including rape. The use of child soldiers are also a cause of great concern.

UNICEF reports over 300,000 boys and girls under 18 years of age being involved in conflicts worldwide – sometimes abducted, often forcibly recruited – these children either find themselves involved directly in violence, warping their minds forever, or have become preys and victims of the soldiers.

During the Cold War, it is estimated that 20 million people died in the Third World due to proxy wars – dying so that the United States and the Soviet Union can avoid directly coming to blows at the international stage. It is ironic perhaps make up irony that 20 million might well be seen by some of these people that connive proxy wars to be a necessary sacrifice because, at the end of the day, they were not forced to actually fight themselves, and they were not forced to use the ultimate weapon, the nuclear bomb. Proxy wars continue even today with intensity and greater sophistication, not necessarily committed only by the major powers, but by bodies and peoples and governments from other areas. Some have suggested, for example, that in the smorgasbord of armed violence happening within Syria-Iraq borders, no fewer than

“

It is important that young minds, particularly, begin to realise that it is possible for people to fashion together ways to get what they want and proxy wars are efforts – subtle, sophisticated, sometimes brutal also – to try to get what they want... we must make sure that we don’t fall prey to that kind of situation where willy-nilly, in the fault of our not quite understanding the things, we become party to being part of proxy wars...

8 different proxy wars are playing themselves out, including the war between the Wahhabi factions in the Middle East to the manifestation of animosity between the Sunni-Shia divide. Who are behind, really, these efforts? Libya has become a proxy for a much wider conflict. Its Islamic groups are reportedly backed by Qatar and Turkey, while the more secular forces get weapons and funding from Egypt, Saudi Arabia and UAE. There is much concern about the events that are currently taking place in Yemen. But one of the most searing questions is whether countries of that region can find legitimacy in carrying out acts that can be interpreted in terms of belligerency without having any sanctions from the United Nations.

Human history is one of division; and the breakdown of peace within tribal and religious factions can lead to serious acceleration with horrifying consequences to Yemen. The Middle East now has the poorest country.

This could be a start of a far wider war within Sunnis and Shias and supremacy to one or the other would be controlled and fashioned by influences and powers of powers behind the actual conflict. As new trends and patterns regarding armed conflict in general, and proxy wars in particular, start to emerge, we would do well to heed where our current trajectory is taking us: what needs to be done to mitigate the effect of armed conflict, especially among innocent civilians. For example, many proxy wars currently involve non-State actors, most of whom, which are part of the whole new set of dynamics, and they largely fall outside the scope of the laws of armed conflict, and some have very little qualms of not only involving civilian lives, but making civilians primary targets. It is time for a conscious effort

to emphasise the rule of law and the internalisation of mainstream moderate values, particularly by the UN, UN should take the initiative on this, not just to articulate the necessity of these values, but to emplace and build these values into the body politics and operational matrix of the UN so that we can have a clearly, a set of operating procedures that will be clear, that there are certain borders that you will not cross.

This is something that committed governments can begin to look at, and committed groups can also do, because we are supposed to be living in a civilised age.

In ASEAN South East Asia, on the cusp of establishing an ASEAN economic community and promises of a peoplecentred ASEAN and benefits for all, it is necessary to project ahead and seriously appraise what can be called, if you are not careful and attentive, a secondcoming of the politics of big countries into our area. The imperialists before, they are still back, in one guise or another, as governments or as corporate bodies. And also the emergence of possible regional powers in our area that can affect and influence how we govern our countries, and use us to push to the maximum their own national imperatives and ambitions. ASEAN has to be very clear-minded of what would constitute a clear regional ethos or regional interest, and having accepted that, as a group, ASEAN has to make sure that no attempt would be made to divide us in that fashion.

This is a very difficult process. But if we do not want to be part of what had happened to us before, enhancing, promoting proxy wars and proxy battles of the other people, it is time that ASEAN take very clear actions to ward off influences of this nature.

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S N O I T C N SA

AY D I LL 994-98

1 RAL HA NE J E IS RY-G

A RET EN SEC D T BYN ASSISTAN U

of Sanctions. Both are unacceptable and uncivilised methodologies for change.

t

here is no doubt that sanctions (as in “siege”) are a part, a form of warfare. Sanctions are not a non-violent nor peaceful alternative to traditional military aggression which is designed to kill, punish and destroy. Under the various forms of sanctions existent, imposed multilaterally or unilaterally, on the citizens of a sovereign state– innocent people suffer and are punished; economies, cultural and social wellbeing collapse; human rights are swept away; external control and interference, power, greed, hegemony succeed.

Sanctions undermine the rights and protections provided by national sovereignty, domestic and international law. Sanctions can dominate the lives of millions, can destroy their humanity, and can kill. Thus, just as war must be criminalised, so must the imposition

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The challenge for us of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission is – how do we convince the Aggressor States that dominate the United Nations Security Council, the world economy and the production and sales of the weapons of war – that war is a crime? I speak of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, proven war criminals such as President Bush and Prime Minister Blair and other leaders and Governments protected by manipulation, neglect and corruption of international law, including the UN Charter itself.

You may well enquire how the Charter and other instruments of international law can be corrupted.

Chapter VII Article 41 of the Charter enables, under the concept of “nonviolence”, Permanent Member states of the Security Council to impose sanctions on States that are not behaving compatibly with the provisions of Articles I and II.

Thus, when the impact of these binding sanctions imposed by the Security Council undermine the human rights of the civilians of the victim State in question, via the application of Article 41, we have conflict within the Charter.

In other words, the Charter, under international law is being corrupted. Such sanctions may also violate the Geneva Conventions, Rights of the Child and many other protective provisions of the family of international law.

In summary, the imposition of sanctions which are often both punitive and regime-change oriented (as in the case of Iraq in 1990 and during 1991-2003), by the five Permanent Member States of the Security Council, undermine in spirit and in word the Charter.

In Iraq, comprehensive, open ended, punitive and manipulated UN Sanctions (by Washington and London) caused the deaths of over one million innocent civilians, over half of whom were children.

Not only did the UN kill civilians, the US and UK employed in 2003 a war of aggression on the good people of Iraq in the expectation of overthrowing the Government

i.e. regime-change. This one tragic case of Iraq alone underlines that sanctions are a form of warfare and must henceforth be deemed criminal.

As a consequence of the human, economic, social and cultural catastrophe created by the UN Security Council in Iraq, “smart” or “focused” sanctions were developed, discussed and implemented. The case of Iran springs to mind. Here banking, shipping, trade, insurance, currency, imports and exports were sanctioned with damaging results to the economy.

In addition, the cost of basic foods, cooking fuel, transportation went up. Employment was diminished, income reduced and the poor and the less wealthy suffered, and still do. The Government was strengthened as in the case of Iraq under comprehensive sanctions.

Regime-change did not occur.

Basic human rights were damaged, diminished and denied to many innocents.

Despite these and other models of sanctions imposed, many like to believe that sanctions are a viable alternative to war. After I departed Iraq in late 1998, I briefed the leaders of the French Communist Party, and believe they changed their policy stance thereafter once briefed on the killing and catastrophic impact of UN Sanctions on Iraq. The same changes occurred in London after similar briefings in Westminster and with British Quakers. In New York, ten years ago speaking to a large crowd of Iranian-Americans near UN Headquarters when Sanctions

on Iran were been mooted, I was booed for my opposition. However, this month, I was invited to speak in Washington on behalf of the same Iranians to condemn the impact of the “smart” sanctions that were imposed. Last month, at the University of Galway (Ireland) a lawyer and Professor from Costa Rica who spoke on neutrality (important to Irish people) failed to understand that Sanctions could be deadly and must be criminalised.

However, increasingly informed people are learning that sanctions are a form of war and warfare, and must be stopped, found unacceptable and deemed criminal. Even in the case of the Zionist Entity i.e. Israel, and despite its genocide in respect of the Palestinians, I believe the imposition of Sanctions to be unacceptable. I support the individual application of boycott and large and small scale divestment contained in the BDS progamme.

However, surely we do not want sanctions imposed on Israel that inevitably would leave the fascist government and bad leadership untouched and would instead punish the poorest, already struggling Jewish and Arab civilians.

Sanctions are simply indiscriminate, blunt instruments that diminish and often destroy basic human rights to which we are all entitled, such as food, water, housing, health care, energy, education and employment.

They fail to target bad leadership which in reality is often enhanced with increased local support as in the case of Iraq, Syria, Russia and Iran. It is the innocent people of the victim States that pay the price for bad Government and become weakened, undermined and the forgotten victims of the Security Council.

Worse, as modern history shows, sanctions that do not cripple and destroy the target country quickly enough to satisfy the Aggressor States, lead to traditional military invasion, state terrorism such as “Shock and Awe”, and the war crimes, torture and atrocities of which the USA/UK has been found guilty by the KL War Crimes Tribunal. Apart from impatience and haste, the same Aggressor States are the world’s military arms and weapons producers and salesmen. The US and less so other economies are dependent for prosperity and growth on the massive and exceedingly profitable weapons industry.

The Five Permanent Member states of the UN Security Council, entrusted by the Charter with establishing and maintaining world peace, produce and sell globally more than 85% of military weapons!

It is not hard to see the madness of this situation. US Dollars in billions are thereby wasted and diverted into killing instead of sustaining human rights and life itself.

The question is what can we do about it?

Firstly, the UN Security Council must be reformed to be representative of one hundred per cent of the world’s peoples – North and South, East and West. One way to accomplish this would be to see the world in its customary regions – South America, North Africa, West Asia, Southern Africa, Europe, etc., etc. Each Region would be allocated one permanent seat. That Regional seat would be occupied by one member state elected for a three year term by the countries of the Region. When the elected member state speaks in the Security Council, it would speak for, and represent all the States of the Region. Today we have the EU/Europe of some 500,000 being represented by two veto power and permanent member JUNE 2015 CRIMINALISE WAR

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faiths andASEAN perceptions of the needs of the world community. No longer would the UN be dominated by the twelve per cent, but by the great majority of eightyeight per cent. The colonial era would finally end; there would be no veto. Instead, majority representative presence for the first time would be in a position to make the decisions so important to creating and sustaining world peace. This new Council could make war and warfare redundant, and enable all UN Member States to declare war to be a crime.

Secondly, and in order to underline the total unacceptability of warfare and profiteering thereby, all Member States producing and selling weapons of war would be excluded from the Security Council.

“ Sanctions undermine the rights and protections provided by national sovereignty, domestic and international law. Sanctions can dominate the lives of millions, can destroy their humanity, and can kill.

Thus, just as war must be criminalised, so must the imposition of Sanctions.

Both are unacceptable and uncivilised methodologies for change.

states (France and Britain) – a ridiculous imbalance in terms of global representation.

With Security Council reform, the ASEAN Region of some 600,000 million people, for example could elect Malaysia for a three year term and have Malaysia speak in the Security Council on major world issues of importance to peace and security. And Malaysia would do so after appropriate consultation with the other ASEAN member states. That ASEAN voice would represent the variety of ethnicities, cultures, societies,

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Thirdly, prosecution of the leaders of Aggressor and other Member States resorting to warfare would be the norm.

Acts of bombing, torture, atrocities, invasion and State terrorism would be so dealt. A reformed International Criminal Court, with authority, independence from the Security Council would be necessary for this task.

Member States guilty of military/sanctions aggression would be prosecuted by the International Court of Justice where binding reparations and other penalties would be considered.

Fourthly, remove the threat and option of warfare from the international dialogue. Commit to resolving inevitable differences between member states by nonviolent means. Establish that for global peace and justice, dialogue is the only approved route forward.

Fifthly, let’s employ global social and other media to sell and market the essential concept that war is indeed a crime. Warfare is dumb, unproductive, mass murder and is unacceptable to all thinking human beings. Let us employ the lobbyists of Washington and other capitals to influence parliamentarians to turn their backs on warfare as a tool of foreign policy. Let’s demonstrate that investment in human beings, in education provide a greater return than billions of dollars/euros poured down the drain of warfare.

Abolish military budgets and invest the dollars/euros saved in health care, employment, food and nutrition, the environment and overall human and physical sustainability. We need to invest in justice, equality, opportunities and justice. Put the “arms” money into opportunities for our young people so they can thrive and grow into mature human beings and productive civilians. Sanctions and traditional warfare would be OUT! Peaceful co-existence and human wellbeing would be IN! Our challenge here in KL is how to convince the world to join us, to see the light, to change? How to follow a road map that turns warfare into Peace with Justice for all?

REGIME AND ACCOUNTABILITY by

HANS-C VON

SPONECK UN Assistant Secretary-General (ret.)

t

here is no reference to “regime change” in the books of the United Nations, nor is there a norm of this kind in any international law.

Regime change is a term in the western dictionary of international relations. It is associated with a derogatory reference to national authorities not acceptable to certain western governments, especially to the United States. References to regime change carry with it the connotations of (i) conquest by a foreign power, (ii) External

assistance to carry out a revolution and (iii) Promoting coup d’ états. As history confirms, regime changes have never led to ending international conflicts. On the contrary, wherever regime changes have been attempted from outside, they intensified conflicts. The victims of such externally induced political changes have invariably been innocent civilians. While examples from various parts of the world could be cited (e.g., Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Syria, Yemen and Ukraine) this presentation has selected two instances of regime change policies introduced by the Unites States, as the main supporter of regime change in Iraq and Libya.

Example 1: Iraq The US Congress and the President of the United States, Bill Clinton in October 1998 approved the so-called ‘Iraq Liberation Act’.1 Section 7 of the Act states: “…it should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein.”

1

The Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, (H.R.4655) was approved by the US Congress and signed into law on 31 October 1998 by the President of the United States

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Five years later, on 19 March 2003, the United States and its allies invaded the Republic of Iraq in order to effect regime change by force. The result of this military intervention, not sanctioned by the UN Security Council and therefore illegal, was the complete breakdown of order in the country, a continuous violation of humanitarian and human rights law by the occupation forces and an evolving sectarianism which has culminated in the presence of ISIS/Daesh in today’s Iraq.

funds were made available to anti-Qadhafi forces. This did not prevent the NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen to declare on 31 October 2011: “We have fully completed the historic mandate of the UN to protect the people of Libya, to enforce the no-fly zone and the arms embargo!”

Example 2: Libya

Two months later, the UN Secretary-General Ban Kimoon told the world: “The NATO action in Libya was carried out in strict accordance with UNSC resolution 1973!”

At the 2005 UN Summit the concept of “responsibility to protect” or ‘R2P’ was accepted by the UN General Assembly as a new element in international relations.

It was agreed that under certain circumstances national sovereignty could be replaced by human rights as the issue that would define international reactions to conditions within individual UN member countries. The right to make such a decision would rest with the UN Security Council.

What in fact, the world witnessed was a complete breach of the agreement NATO countries had reached with the UN Security Council. In the process a potentially valuable new tool in conflict resolution, the R2P, was abused and this with serious implication for its use in other conflict areas. In 2015, conditions in Libya confirm that the 2011 NATO intervention has led to a break up of the country that is reminiscent of conditions in Iraq after the invasion of 2003.

Six years later, the UN Security Council decided2 to apply this new concept R2P and response to the deteriorating civil rights conditions in Libya. On 11 March 2011, the Security Council passed resolution 1973 in order to enlist international support not for regime change but for the protection of Libya’s diverse civilian population.

The NATO-led ‘Operation Unified Protector’ quickly revealed that the R2P intervention had more to do with regime change than with the protection of innocent people. The African Union (AU) and the Arab League, worried about this development, decided to become observers on the sidelines.

This is not the place to present details of the impact of externally induced regime change interventions. It is clear is that they have caused, and continue to cause, serious structural, physical and mental damages.

Following the assassination of Libya’s leader, Col. Muammar Qadhafi on 23 August 2011, the Arab League recognized two days later, the National Transitional Council as the new authority in Libya. Already in April 2011, the heads of government in France, the UK and the US, Sarkozy, Cameron and Obama, made it clear that the UNSC-authorised military intervention in Libya was interpreted by them as their right to remove the leadership in Tripolis. In a joint article3 the three leaders wrote: “(Qadhafi) has to go and go for good”.

It was thus first and foremost about ‘regime change’ and not about a ‘humanitarian intervention’ to protect innocent civilians. Contrary to the provisions of the UNSC resolution 1973, and therefore illegal, there were foreign boots on the ground, there was an inflow of military hardware in support of opposition forces, the declared no-fly zone was full with military aircraft from NATO and Arab coalition partners and while Libyan bank accounts of government were frozen,

2 3

What conclusions must be drawn? They are as follows – (a) the main victims of regime change are invariably innocent civilians; (b) the replacement of authority through regime change brings with it serious social and cultural destruction; (c) regime change damages have inter-generational implications and side effects that take a long time to overcome; (d) regime change affects the international security architecture at the regional and global levels; (e) the creation of interest groups and alliances are promoted by regime change and introduce barriers for the promotion of peace with justice; (f) international law is marginalised by regime change; (g) regime change promotes irresponsible journalism, misuse of media and fraudulent manipulation of facts.

“Peace with justice” rather than “conflict with injustice” can only prevail when regime change is replaced by negotiations, dialogue and mediation. Good examples are the current conflicts with Iran and within Yemen.

What road map to chose is not difficult. What is difficult has to do with the willingness of political leaders to opt for peace rather than narrow conflict-promoting selfinterests. The past 8 years have produced 18 major reports on reforms of the international governance structure and

See UNSC resolution 1973 of 17 March 2011, adopted by 10 votes and five abstentions (Brazil, China, Germany, India and Russia).

Published by the Times of London, the LeFigaro and the Washington Post; see the Guardian of April 2011

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“

No doubt, it will be a tough travel on the road towards ‘peace with justice’.

Whether this is a travel to ‘utopia’ or not depends largely on us, the people.

are awaiting consideration by UN member countries.

The United Nations is not a bureaucratic dinosaur that needs to be abolished. What needs to be abolished are (i) policies and political arm-twisting to maintain present power imbalances, (ii) the might-based military backed decision making and (iii) the right to impunity. There will be the reaction: this is all very well, we have heard this before but what we need to hear is the “how”! Part of the ‘how’ will be civil society’s significantly enhanced role in national and global politics. From the vinegar revolution in Brazil to occupation wall street in the US to blockupy in Germany and elsewhere in Europe to Gezi Park in Turkey, the Arab spring and the many other ’springs’, there are signs of people’s determination to challenge established politics for inclusiveness.

Most of the conflicts around the world have their origin in western capitals and have to do with hubris and the perception that the world cannot do without western, or more correctly, US leadership.4 With unilateralism and US exceptionalism waning, it is good to remember that

the western world comprises about 12% of the global population. The ‘other’ 88% have given notice that they are ready to play their leadership roles in global and regional politics and the creation of a new geo-political architecture.5 For these reasons, there are noticeable shifts of international decision making: The change from a G-7 to a G20, BRICS6, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization SCO), the new Infrastructure Investment Bank initiated by China, to name only a few major ones.

This contributes to another element in the ‘how’.

A third, and major, element of the ‘how’ has to do with the ending of impunity in political decision making. It is linked to civil society wanting to ensure that good governance is based on accountability.

No doubt, it will be a tough travel on the road towards ‘peace with justice’. Whether this is a travel to ‘utopia’ or not depends largely on us, the people.

4

Zbigniew Brezinski, formerly US President Carter’s national security advisor, writes in his book ‘Strategic Vision -- America and the Crisis of Global Power’: “a stable global power ultimately depends on America’s ability to renew itself…”.

5 See Kishore Mahbubani: The New Asian Hemisphere, The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East .

6 BRICS – the alliance of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

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ABOLISHING WARS AND SEEKING PEACE WITH JUSTICE :

THE ROAD

MAP AHEAD

by Prof Emeritus Datuk Dr Shad Saleem Faruqi

EVENTY years ago the Charter of the United Nations proclaimed that the people of the UN were determined to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war” and to “establish conditions under which justice … can be maintained”. Peaceful resolution of disputes was the over-arching ideal of the Charter. However, the Charter permitted two exceptions under which recourse to war was permissible:

S • •

Under Article 51 a nation can defend its sovereignty against an armed attack.

Armed actions can be undertaken under the authority of the UNSC Resolution.

In the seventy years since, we are unfortunately surrounded by theatres of conflict everywhere. In a nuclear age, the savagery of war has become even worse and the grounds on which war is waged have expanded.

Some powerful nations like the USA and Israel have doctored the Charter to read into it the right of preemptory attack. A new ground of “humanitarian war”

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without the authority of the UN has been established extra-legally by the US-EU Alliance. Wars for the purpose of regime changes were waged in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya and now in Syria and Yemen. Many rich states are creating and supporting armed mercenary forces for the purpose of subverting the sovereignty of another state (e.g. against Nicaragua, Libya, Syria and Yemen).

Civil wars are raging in many nations. What is most troubling is that some of the wars are proxy wars, fuelled and financed by the West. Tragic examples are: Yemen, Libya, Syria and Ukraine. Since the 90s, wars, incarceration in overseas prisons and torture have been privatised. State terrorism (both within one’s own territory and abroad) is widespread. The so-called “war against terrorism” has degenerated into a spiralling war between or among terrorists. Extrajudicial assassinations of the officials of other states or national liberation movements are being carried out by drone attacks, special forces units or covert operations.

Some nations like the USA and Israel are developing, deploying and testing their nuclear and space weapons systems in Afghanistan, Iraq and Gaza.

Threats of missile and nuclear attacks (as against Iran) have become standard language of foreign policy. In the name of human rights, sanctions are being enforced but in a very selective way by the Security Council and by individual nations against their opponents. This is despite overwhelming proof that sanctions hurt innocent civilians and cause untold misery and deprivation to the weakest members of society. The ICC has gone into operation. But nations like the USA and Israel refuse to join it. The UNSC and the ICC have brought to book a few war criminals. Sadly, the work of the ICC shows a terrible ethnic bias against Africa. Mass murderers from the USA, EU and Israel remain immune.

The Cold War has become reignited and with it new theatres of conflict as in Ukraine are causing massive loss of life. The arms trade continues unabated and ignites and fuels regional wars and retards the search for political solutions to international disputes. All arm traders are merchants of death but enjoy a prestige and wealth unknown to many other professions. Western exceptionalism and unilaterism is for everyone to see. The US has bombed, invaded or interfered in 64 countries since World War Two. In the last decade itself, there were full scale invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq on trumped up charges plus bombing of Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya and Syria. In Yemen, Libya and Syria, western proxies are in the forefront of the so called civil war.

US drones blow up “enemy combatants” in many parts of the world with sickening regularity. Despite its professed belief in democracy, Washington has a sorry record of collaborating with right-wing military officers to overthrow elected leaders who do not do Washington’s

bidding. A partial list would include Mossadegh in Iran (1953), Arbez in Guatemala (1954), Allende in Chile (1973), Aristide in Haiti twice, Chevez in Venezuala (2002), Zeleya in Honduras (2009), Morsi in Egypt (2013) and now Yanukovych in Ukraine (2014).

Besides the US, France is notable for its military interventions in Mali, Central African Republic and Algeria. The United States shot down an air bus of Iran killing nearly 300 people. No action was taken against the general who ordered the missile attack. US and European complicity in the 67 year old genocide against the Palestinians is an undeniable fact. Dutch complicity in the massacres in Srebrenica is well documented.The role of the West and the Western controlled Security Council in the Rwandan Holocaust of 1994 in well known. As I speak, Israel continues to butcher children, women and civilians in Gaza. Add to these military atrocities, the structural violence and oppressive economic systems of the West. There is a desire to consolidate an uncompromising version of corporatism that seeks total economic hegemony over Asia and Africa. An environmental catastrophe is awaiting the world unless we take adequate measures to control the threat. Needless to say that part of the ecocide is contributed by the use and misuse of weapons of mass destruction.

ROAD AHEAD What can be done to bring about a more peaceful and just world? There are obviously no simple solutions.

A comprehensive, holistic approach is what is needed.

In the area of economics: A decade or so ago in Monterrey, a bargain was struck between developed and developing countries to try to achieve “Freedom From Want”. In pursuance of this, all developing countries must seek to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and to mobilize all their strategies for this purpose.

Developed countries must give duty free and quota free market access to export from the least developed countries. As was recommended by former Secretary General Kofi Annan, developed countries must spend 0.7% of their gross domestic product on development assistance. This increase must be front-loaded through an international finance facility. Development must be sustainable. All efforts will be in vain if their results are reversed by continued degradation of the environment and depletion of its natural resources. Carbon emissions and green house gas emissions must be controlled. A multibillion dollar international fund must be established to bring rapid and effective relief to the victims of sudden disasters, whether natural or man made.

Human Rights and Democracy : Developing countries must improve their governance, uphold the rule of law, combat corruption, adopt an inclusive approach to development and make space for civil society and

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the private sector to play their full part. Developing nations must pay heed to freedom movements and to the aspirations of human rights. There is no necessary incompatibility between democracy and development.

Psychological dimension : Wars begin in the minds of men and it is human psychology that we need to alter.

The education system must emphasise peace studies.

The psychological ingredients which support war must be combated. Modern culture glorifies war. Employment in the armed forces is referred to as military service.

Films are made to glorify the heroism on battlefields.

What is in fact a brutal, murderous affair is given a halo.

Role of the media : The media and NGOs can expose the horrors of war. Peace groups, other civil society organisations, and the media must educate the masses that in wars there are no victories but varying degrees of defeat. Wars begin when you will but they do not end when you please. Benjamin Franklin’s reminder that there never was a good war or a bad peace must be borne in mind.

The dehumanisation of the enemy is what rationalises atrocities against him. For example in relation to the Palestinians, the indifference of the Western world is partly owed to the mind manipulation by the government and the pro-Israeli media. Our NGOs must fill the airwaves with the view that there will be no lasting ceasefire and no peace unless there is justice. The Palestinians cannot be caged.

Racist and religious bigots in Israel, the US and Europe must be told that enough is enough. The world cannot anymore tolerate this 65 year old effort to wipe out the Palestinians. We cannot condone the diabolical attempt to sear into the Palestinian conscience, the idea that the Palestinians are a defeated people and that if they wish to survive they must be prepared to lead a dog’s life under Israeli control. Israeli sycophants in the US congress must be told to put the interest of America first and not to allow Israel to push the US into committing atrocities against the opponents of Israel’s policies in the Middle East.

Genocide in Palestine: It is no exaggeration to say that the genocide in Palestine is fuelling a large number of wars and acts of terrorism around the world. Perhaps Americans will sleep better if the children of Palestine could also get a good night’s sleep without their house being demolished, their homes bombed and their orchards burnt.

Middle East. Instead it should turn to Russia and China. There is one shining precedent. In 1956 an Anglo-French-Israeli expedition invaded the Suez Canal. The USSR threatened to intervene on the side of Naser’s Egypt. Faced with this ultimatum, France, UK and Israel withdrew in humiliation.

The third world should have no expectations from the Security Council of the United Nations. It is a relic of the racist, colonial era. Instead we must rely on the 200 or so strong General Assembly.

International law : Despite all its flaws, there is much in international law to prosecute wrongs.

The Nuremberg law must be invoked to report unrepentant Western leaders like Bush, Blair, Cheney and Rumsfeld for crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity under Part VI of the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal.

Reports of genocide and crimes against humanity by successive Israeli leaders must be filed with the ICC and with all the 115 or so countries that have signed the Rome Statute. Some of these countries have laws that authorise prosecution for war crimes committed abroad.

Though the US unsigned the Rome Statute, leaders of Britain, France, Spain and Australia and other participating states in the many carnages in the Middle East are liable to the jurisdiction of the ICC once they leave office and their sovereign immunity expires. Citizens’ Tribunals like the Bertrand Russell Tribunal and the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal must continue their work to give voice to the voiceless and to expose the truth.

Reform of the UN : It may be harsh to say that the UN has failed. But certainly many members of the UNSC have been delinquent. The UNSC is a dysfunctional institution and should be consigned to the dustbin of history.

ICC : Despite its paralysis against western violators, there is much promise in the ICC and ways must be found to enhance its jurisdiction even against leaders of those countries that have not signed the Rome Statute or are shielded by the UNSC.

Humanitarian Intervention : It is an irony that in some

whatever is necessary to eliminate the nuclear threat to mankind’s survival.

cases, humanitarianism is eclipsing humanity. It is time to end this charade of humanitarian intervention and outlaw destruction of nations on the pretext of protecting human rights. We must remember what Mahatma Gandhi said in 1942: “What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarians or the holy name of liberty or democracy”?

Impartial mediators : The third world should stop

UN Peacekeeping Force : The General Assembly

relying on the US and Europe to bring justice to the

of the UN must pass resolutions to provide a UN

Nuclear Threats : Global policy makers must do

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“

Despite what some people believe, war is not natural and not inevitable.

Peace, security, love, laughter and the pursuit of happiness are what all human beings desire.

peacekeeping force in such areas of conflict as Gaza, Syria and Lebanon. International funds must be raised and deployed to maintain a strong United Nations peacekeeping force wherever war breaks out. This ideal has far reaching economic implications. A truly international Peacekeeping Force is, however, a necessity.

Reparations : Washington, London and Canberra should be required to announce a scheme of reparations for the devastations caused by the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

CONCLUSION Despite what some people believe, war is not natural and not inevitable. Peace, security, love, laughter and the pursuit of happiness are what all human beings desire. However, we cannot ignore flashpoints around the world that lead to wars and conflagrations. We need to identify their historical, religious, cultural, political and economic causes.

For example, the vested interest that the arms industry has in creating and promoting wars should be understood and neutralised. The approach to the prevention of war

must take note off all factors and forces that can provide the prerequisites for peace. The principles of the UN Charter (except in relation to the UNSC) if applied in all their ramifications, constitute an effective instrument for reshaping the actual policies of power and hegemony amongst sovereign states into those of mutual respect.

Conversely, the real international terrorism is founded in the imposition of the will of the powerful states upon the weak by means of economic, political and cultural military domination. The key to ending all forms of war and terrorisms is the development of new relations among nations and peoples based on unfailing respect for the right of self determination of peoples and on a greater measure of economic, political and social equality on a world scale.

The task appears impossible in the present world situation. One must remember that human history went through similar, perhaps worse, periods earlier. Change is possible. Each one of us who abhors war, and supports peace and justice has a role to play. In the desert, sand dunes often grow around single blades of grass. Lin Yutang once said “Hope is like a road in the country: there was never a road but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence.”

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T O R T U R E - THE UNBROKEN CHAIN

BY PROF GURDIAL SINGH NIJAR

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A. THE BACKGROUND The US Senate’s Select Intelligence Committee’s 2014 Torture Report speaks in its executive summary of 500 pages1 of the blatant acts of torture in Iraq committed by occupying US-British forces. Coming from the prime country of origin of these acts, which has long denied committing them, the torture report is news. But it is nothing new. History is replete with unspeakable horrors committed on local populations by these countries : the decimation of Native Americans; the napalming of Vietnamese children’s bodies to pulp; the mass slaughter of Kenyans in the 1950s. Torture, flogging, abuse of women and children, tiger cages, concentration camps, ‘special prisons’ and many unspeakable horrors were commonplace.

Indeed, “torture” is the common element that runs through these invasions. It draws together most colonial occupations, no matter where or when. That is the essence of imperialism. As Shakespeare said “History is prologue”. And it is laced with a strong dose of racism.

Complicity of the mainstream media For the mainstream media none of this was news worth reporting. It would not print the graphic pictures of the atrocities in Vietnam – that spoke a thousand words. Its facile rationalization: its readers would not accept them or it would be construed as ‘sensationalism’; or the ‘chosen’ journalists world forfeit the right to be embedded in the invading forces and denied a frontline view of the action. Or else the news was presented in language that presented the perpetrators as civilising agents of change blocked by an obdurate local uncivilised population. It was a naked display of racism.

W Wolfowitz, the Deputy Defence Secretary who is said to be the architect of the invasion of Iraq, has spoken of “snakes” and “draining the swamps” in the “uncivilized parts of the world”.

Language cover Yet another contrivance: couch the episodes in language invoking sympathy for the torturers. Newsweek referred to the brazen shooting of women and their babies in the village of My Lai as an unfortunate ‘American tragedy’.

But there is a difference today. The truth of the atrocious Anglo-American invasion of Iraq and its torture is news. And can hardly be suppressed. Indeed much of what is revealed was long out in the open through leaked Pentagon documents which revealed continuing widespread torture in Iraq – ‘systematic’ according to Amnesty International; and the outspoken stories of the soldiers involved. Then there has been the global outcry, the voices of people from all over the world – such as the 2012 Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal guilty verdict for the crime of torture against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and their coterie of legal advisers which received worldwide coverage in the social media.

Sterilizing the acts In a sense the Senate Report seeks to sterlise the acts of torture somewhat. Robert Fiske of the Independent notes how linguistic acrobatics conceals the whole filthy crude barbaric acts in a three-letter acronym “EIT” for ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’; and the CIA director, under pressure, admitted only to some ‘techniques’ being abhorrent, leaving intact the rest as justifiable EIT.

Open transparent system?

The independent iconic journalist John Pilger says it best: The “Mau Mau Teror” was reported and perceived one way: as “demonic” black against white. The racist message was clear, but “our racism” was never mentioned. When they arrived in Vietnam, the Americans regarded the Vietnamese as human lice. They called them “gooks” and dinks” and “slopes” and they killed them in industrial quantities, just as they had slaughtered the Native Americans; indeed, Vietnam was known as “Indian country”.

In Iraq, nothing has changed. In boasting openly about killing “rats in their nest,” US marine snipers, who in Falluja shot dead women, children and the elderly, just as German snipers shot dead Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, were reflecting the racism of their leaders. Paul

That the acts were hidden and denied for so long speaks not of an open transparent system in contrast to that in the Soviet Union – as the Washington Post columnist Fareed Zakaria would have us believe – but a hallmark of something gone terribly wrong where criminal acts in clear violation of domestic and international law can proceed with impunity. The report tries to restore rather belatedly a semblance of credibility in the name of ‘democratic accountability’.

Yet a report that Cheney the main architect of the torture ‘programmes’ calls “full of crap” surely deserves our attention. Never mind that it is a decade late in coming; and stops short of pointing to the ultimate decision makers. At least it was published. And the crimes placed in the public domain. Unlike the inrealised promise of the accomplice British Government made by its minister:

1 The full report comprises close to 7,000 pages. It is the most comprehensive account of the torture program to date. It took more than three years to complete, and is based on the review of millions of CIA and other records, although the CIA refused to let Senate investigators interview its employees. [https://www.aclu.org/cases/senate-torture-report-and-cia-reply-foai?redirect=national-security/senate-torture-report-and-cia-reply-foia].

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“The Government fully intends to hold an independent, judge-led inquiry, once all police investigations have concluded, to establish the full facts and draw a line under these issues.”

B. THE REPORT The report is a sordid tale of lies, deceit, chicanery, corruption, willful illegality and unbounded brutality and cruelty for which surely the highest echelons of authority can hardly feign ignorance. Indeed a clear case of the commission of war crimes. After all those victims have paid (and some are still paying) the price, there now emerges evidence of : 1 The CIA’s brazen lies. Its information was inaccurate, misleading or even fabricated. As regards its main point that it secured valuable information through torture which helped thwart terrorist action and kept US lives and facilities and the world safe : The Committee reviewed the CIA’s operational cables and records and concluded that the information extracted through torture “played no role…”. And that the 14 torture modes “did not produce additional intelligence material and were on all counts useless”. a. A key detainee – Khalid Shaykh Muhammad’s – torture information saved several hundred possibly thousands of lives. Report: “almost entirely inaccurate”. b. Helped thwart the UK Urban targets plot with intelligence information from the torture. Report: untrue – the information was “from foreign intelligence sources or was accidentally obtained”. c. Got “torture information” and thwarted the Heathrow Airport plot and the arrest of four persons. Report: not true – none of them were captured as a result of information obtained during or after the torture.

2 President Bush lied when he said in a 2006 speech that the “Karachi plots were ‘thwarted’, ‘disrupted’ or ‘uncovered’ as a result of the enhanced interrogation techniques”. CIA personnel in Karachi responded that “the information acquired from the CIA detainees and disseminated was already known to the CIA and US Consulate officials.”

3 The CIA bribed foreign governments to accept secret jails.

4 The CIA’s manipulation and deceit. Report : told foreign governments “not to let US ambassadors know” about the secret jails (‘black holes’) the CIA was maintaining in various countries in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere.

5 Complicity of doctors. They abandoned their professional and ethical codes when witnessing interrogation. Report: gives several examples including evidence that detainee Abu Zubaydah was interrogated without concern for preventing :Zubaydah’s wound from becoming infected”.

6 Complicity of Lawyers in the Office of the Legal Council. Report : accepted CIA assurances that they were acting in accordance with legal national and international agreements.2 7 Complicity of journalists : the media were given false information for release to deceive the public. Journalists were known to convey this false information sometimes fully aware of its falsity.

8 Blatant illegality. The CIA knew of their illegality as they destroyed incriminating interview video tapes in 2005.

9 Sheer arrogance. The CIA flatly refused to respond to the Senate Committee’ queries. Their conduct was described as “unprecedented and simply unacceptable, and appalling”.

10 Employed dubiously qualified psychologists to justify their water boarding torture 11 Acted with impunity. There were several deaths of detainees which did not result in any legal proceedings.

In short the acts which resulted in death went unpunished.

12 Acts of unprecedented cruelty. Detainees were shown pictures of family members in detention cells; and/or told that their family members would be arrested too. [In the KLWCT there was evidence adduced of detainees hearing the cry of females and told that these were the voices of their wife/daughter being tortured; or shots fired in nearby cells and the detainee informed that his family members were, or were going to be shot.]

The ICRC report acknowledged the commission of acts of torture, cruel treatment including inhumane and degrading treatment of detainees.

13 Poorly trained persons with known psychological problems were left to mete out these gruesome acts of torture.

14 Sheer hypocrisy. President Bush was more interested in maintaining appearances rather than stopping the torture. He did not want pictures of detainees shackled to walls to appear.

Surely the supreme act of hypocrisy was that the statement President Bush made at the UN International

2 In the KL War Crimes Tribunal case of Chief Prosecutor of the KL War Crimes Commission v George Walker Bush et al Case No 2-CP-2011 the Tribunal held that the lawyers and other advisers were guilty of promoting torture by giving advice justifying the EITs.

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violated. Neither was there any recommendation nor any follow up action as to the accountability or prosecution of the offenders. Nor, more importantly, any finding as to how high up the chain of command responsibility extends. The Nuremberg decision makes clear that the person or persons who are aware or ought to be aware of the criminal acts and fail to act are equally if not more responsible than the low level officials issuing the command or executing the acts.

President Obama described the executive summary as reinforcing “my long held view that these harsh methods were not only inconsistent with our values as a nation, they did not serve our broader counterterrorism efforts or our national security interests.”3 Yet executive branch agencies are fighting the release of the full torture report.

Nor has Obama’s administration even whispered plans of an investigation or prosecution of the offenders.

In that sense many see the Senate Report as little more than a grudging responses to appease the critics of the patently hideous acts committed willfully in clear violation of both US constitutional and military law as well as international law. And an attempt to whitewash the crimes so as to recapture the soiled moral high ground of this modern day empire because, as Obama admitted “these techniques did significant damage to America’s standing in the world and made it harder to pursue our interests with allies and partners.”

C. THE WAY FORWARD

Day in support of Victims of Torture on 26 June 2003: “The US is committed to the world-wide elimination of torture and we are leading this fight by example. I call on all governments to join with the US and the countries of law-abiding nations in promoting, investigating, and to prosecute all acts of torture in undertaking to prevent other cruel and unusual punishment.”

15 No assessment. Finally a significant disquieting omission of the Report: the Senate Committee acknowledged the ICRC’s indictment of the acts as torture, cruelty encompassing inhumane and degrading treatment. This is a clear violation of the Torture Convention and several other international humanitarian law agreements. In short clear evidence of war crimes.

As well as a flagrant violation of the US constitution and the domestics military codes.

The Report refers to the Torture Convention yet fails to assess which provisions of the Torture Convention of international law (or for that matter US law) were

The quest for the restoration of the rule of law in the international criminal justice system makes it imperative that there be a formal investigation leading up to the prosecution of all the offenders. Thus far powerrelations haul mainly African leaders to the international criminal court. The perpetrators of far worse war crimes – an illegal was, violent overthrow of lawfully elected regimes and the commission of grave crimes of torture – are rewarded with high paying lecture circuits and feted as celebrities.

Ironically, Tony Blair, reportedly, was paid a million or so dollars from a ‘lecture’ in KL by highly placed local personages’/institutions shortly after he was convicted of a war crime in this very city. This shows the level of moral depravity and compromise the quest for fame and fortune churns up from among the corporate dregs in our society.

This surely must be brought to an end – by an aware and courageous global citizenry – united in its demand that the perpetrators of these hideous acts be prosecuted for war crimes. Anything less will make us morally complicit and align us with the worst war criminals this modern century has ever produced.

3 https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/12/09/statement-president-report-senate-select-committee-intelligence.

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“ W

HERE DO E GO FROM HERE?”

by Inder Comar

Photo Credit : GoodFon.ru

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y topic is, “Where do we go from here?” So what I’d like to do is present a very small overview of the case, talk about where we are procedurally, then give some thoughts as to how the case that I’m leading could be model for actually using the theory of aggression, which came from Nuremberg, and implementing it not only in courts in the United States, but in courts all over the world.

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The theme of my speech is basically that so much has already been done for us as partisans in the cause of peace, and a lot of that work was done more than sixty years ago at the Tribunal in Nuremberg against the defeated Axis powers. With that as precedent, it’s quite amazing, actually, what might be possible, and a lot of where I’m coming from is as a student of Nuremberg, having learned about the Nuremberg case in law school, having studied it and read it now countless times, learning about the crime of aggression that was the chief crime prosecuted at Nuremberg. So much has already been done, and I think that the challenge for us here, today, now, is to take that hard work and to move forward into new frontiers and to apply it in courts of law as we would with any other type of law.

SALEH V BUSH AND PRECEDENT FOR THE CRIME OF AGGRESSION First, some brief background about the case. In 2013, my client [Sundus Shaker Saleh], who is an Iraqi refugee, filed a lawsuit in San Francisco, California, in the Northern District of California, which is a Federal Court, alleging the crime of aggression. The defendants in that case are the six highest ranking Bush administration officials: George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, and Paul Wolfowitz. So she is suing them in a civil case for her damages as a victim of the war, in much the same way that she would sue anybody for any cause of action.

To make it very simple, if George Bush had hit her in a car, for example, there would be no controversy that she could sue him if she were injured. It’s a similar type of claim that we’re making: his conduct and his actions caused her monetary damage and under the American system, she has a right to seek her tort damages, her tort relief. The basis of the lawsuit in the United States is a very old law dating from 1789, the first year of our republic, known as the Alien Tort Claims Act. The first Congress in the United States passed this law to permit non-U.S. citizens—non-Americans—the ability to go to the United States courthouse and file claims against anybody for violations of international law. So you have to allege violations of international law in order to use this law.

For about 200 years, people have used this law for piracy cases, for example. More recently, in the 1970s and 1980s, people started to use the Alien Tort Claims Act for claims of torture or for claims of crimes against

humanity. In this case, we’ve alleged the “supreme crime,” the crime of aggression, as Ms. Saleh’s international law claim. What this suggests is that just as you could pursue a pirate under this law, or just as you could pursue a torturer under this law, you must be able to pursue those who commit the “supreme crime”— the crime of aggression. In this case, she’s pursuing the six people who caused the Iraq War. As we know from Nuremberg, you don’t get to sue the soldiers who committed the aggression: they’re not responsible. The people who are responsible are the leaders who caused the aggression. And those are the people who are giving the orders, who are planning and executing these crimes.

We filed the lawsuit. The United States Department of Justice headed by President Obama moved to immunise these defendants soon thereafter. They requested that the Federal Court immunise them under domestic law, on the basis that these defendants were acting under the scope of their valid employment when they planned and waged the Iraq War. We fought that certification for more than a year and a half. But unfortunately, in December of last year, the District Court agreed that they were immune and immunised these defendants from further proceedings.

We’ve since appealed that order, and right now that case is on appeal in the Federal Court of Appeal for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco. At the end of next month, we’re due to submit a brief arguing a very specific point of law on appeal: whether or not a domestic immunity applies to allegations of aggression. Now for those of you who are familiar with Nuremberg, you may recall that this was the exact defense—or one of the defenses—raised by the German defendants. They argued that everything they had done was valid under German law and, as a result, they couldn’t be held guilty for something like aggression.

One of the things that we’ll be raising in our brief next month is that that issue was decided already at Nuremberg: domestic defendants do not get to raise that as a defense. Similarly, we’re going to be citing the Pinochet case, which came down in the late 1990s from the British House of Lords, one of the most conservative legal bodies in the world. But even that legal body decided in 1997 that Pinochet was potentially liable.

They said that Pinocet could not rely on his domestic immunity—which he claimed he had as a life-long senator of Chile—to avoid the charge of torture that was brought against him by the Spanish judge, Baltasar Garzón. We’re going to be citing that as persuasive authority on this point.

Pinochet is a very critical case because this issue is, I think, the final wall when we talk about accountability of leaders: the ability for a leader to claim some type of immunity. Right? This is what has to be, I think, destroyed in our minds and destroyed in the minds of judges once and for all. Why should immunity apply merely because someone was acting as a leader, if the act JUNE 2015 CRIMINALISE WAR

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in question was illegal? That’s a key question. In the last decade, many amazing lawyers brought similar lawsuits against Donald Rumsfeld for torture. He was immunised under very similar theories, which I think was a very upsetting moment in modern U.S. legal discourse. What we have to do is challenge that, battle by battle, step by step, proceeding by proceeding.

WHAT’S NEXT? CONCRETE RECOMMENDATIONS FOR ACTION So that’s the background of the case, and what I’d like to do is move now onto concrete recommendations that, as someone who is fighting in a courtroom to make this happen, I would like to see. When I brought this lawsuit, there was nothing institutional. If I was

hard work in describing aggression, in gathering together the experts, in moving the legal research forward because the last case about aggression was more than sixty years ago, right? Other than the Tokyo Trials and Nuremberg, there hasn’t been any precedent set on aggression other than this 2012 judgment. What I’d like to offer are some thoughts as to how we can take this battle now on the offensive and go into courthouses, go find venues where we can try and do our best. Ultimately, I think, we can convince judges that this is the law—and to not follow it would not only upset Nuremberg, it would validate the defenses made by the Nazi defendants, who argued that this type of law could never exist, that everything they did was completely legitimate, that they were simply following orders. If those things don’t give you a chill, they ought to, because these are the exact defenses that

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There doesn’t exist anything like that for aggression, other than this Foundation [the KLFCW]. This Foundation is the first entity that’s out there that has done a lot of the hard work in describing aggression, in gathering together the experts, in moving the legal research forward because the last case about aggression was more than sixty years ago, right? Other than the Tokyo Trials and Nuremberg, there hasn’t been any precedent set on aggression other than this 2012 judgment.

bringing a lawsuit about electronic privacy, for example, or an environmental issue, or freedom of speech, there are institutions and organisations both in the United States and worldwide with databanks of research, with authority, with reputations, who would be willing to support that endeavor, and to help bring a concerted movement and unity and solidarity to those issues.

There doesn’t exist anything like that for aggression, other than this Foundation [the KLFCW]. This Foundation is the first entity that’s out there that has done a lot of the

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the government is making in my case: that everything these defendants did was valid, that the court shouldn’t scrutinize war making, because war making is outside the scope of what the sovereign can be liable for. This is a rehash of Carl Schmitt’s theory about the exceptional sovereign. Carl Schmitt, who was the philosopher for the National Socialists (or one of them), presented a view in one of his books called The Concept of the Political in which he argued the sovereign can act outside the law and doesn’t have to be accountable to law, and that a valid sovereign has every right to act in an exceptional

manner, even if it’s counter to the constitution or the grounding law of that country. That’s the idea that we have to fight: that sovereigns or that individuals who become sovereigns can act outside the valid scope of what the laws permit. That was the philosophical basis of National Socialism, and that’s something that needs to be really exorcised from judicial houses and from politics altogether. In terms of where we go from here, I want to propose a concept that comes from Ancient Rome. In Ancient Rome, the senators, who were very ambitious, would battle for power amongst each other in order to gain influence in the Senate so that they could have more fame and glory. The term they came up for that was something called auctoritas in Latin.

The modern English word “authority” comes from that, but auctoritas in Latin meant something more: it meant the ability to charm people and governments and judges and anybody to listen to what you had to say.

For example, in the famous battle between Pompey and Caesar [at Pharsalus], both of whom were extremely accomplished generals who had conquered vast territories and subdued many enemies of Rome, there was a valid question between many of those Romans: who would they follow? Who had the greater auctoritas? That would enable them to command the Senate, to raise legions, and to ultimately fight for dominance in Rome.

We can take the principle and apply it to the idea space. What we need to think about is, how can we raise the auctoritas of this idea of aggression and the liability of people who commit aggression? One of the battles that I have in an American courthouse is to convince judges that this is what the law is.

Let me give you an example: If I were to file an intellectual property case, a trademark case, which I do a lot for clients, I don’t have to tell the judge what the law is, because the judge has seen this a thousand times. The judge knows the law—I just have to display what the facts are and why I’m right.

When I’m bringing this case about aggression there’s an additional battle, because I have to unearth 60 years of history to educate a judge who probably has never heard about the Nuremberg court. I have to tell them why Nuremberg is relevant, why Nuremberg is important, and that takes up half my brief. It’s already an uphill battle when half of my pleading has to be done on this educational effort. That’s what we need to create, as people who are committed to the idea of peace and committed to the idea that aggression is criminal: We have to create that backdrop already, so that when a judge receives a legal complaint that alleges aggression, there’s no homework that we have to do. The judge already understands the language that we’re talking about. The judge already understands Nuremberg—remembers Nuremberg, remembers the principles about Nuremberg: Wars of aggression are not

merely illegal, they are criminal. These are the holdings of Nuremberg, and under U.S. law, those are binding norms (that’s binding law that comes in as a common law element).

HOW CAN INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS HELP? I would argue for three different things that international organisations can do to help me and lawyers like me in this fight to criminalise aggression. The first is what I would the proactive litigation approach. I think it’s time that organisations committed to peace join the litigators and step foot into court. And it’s time to actually take the battle into the legal courthouses. Just like with any type of litigation there are going to be battles that we’re going to lose. There’s going to be motions that we’re going to lose; there are going to be courts who aren’t going to like us. But fundamentally, there are going to be things that we can do and that we can win. It’s time, for example, that we reach out to those professors out there who are writing about these subjects and ask them to give us legal research, to put together amicus briefs. One of the things that I’ve noted is that many international courts permit the filing of amicus briefs: The International Criminal Court, for example, permits the filing of amicus briefs. The European Court of Human Rights permits the filing of amicus briefs. The domestic courts in the United States permit the filing of amicus briefs. This is the way we educate the judges, by providing them with briefs and memoranda of law from distinguished panelists and legal researchers from all over the world, to identify what it is about aggression that exists and what aggression is, basically.

One of the things I think we can be doing is finding out what those venues are, where those courts are, what the rules are, and just begin submitting briefs wherever we can. Even if the clerk reads it and not the court, someone needs to be taught what these rules are. We have a giant education gap that we have to fill. That’s something we can immediately do: start putting all this amazing research into a legal pleading and submitting that to courts wherever we can find them. The second thing I would propose would be direct outreach efforts. What I mean by that is that we have to make aggression a topic of conversation around the world, not just in courthouses, but also with NGOs, and rights groups. What I think groups can start to do is follow and comment on other legislative efforts to criminalise aggression. Something that groups can do is to look at the protocol to the ICC which will criminalise aggression as early as 2017, and follow and comment on implementation of that, and on other international efforts that could help, again, to educate people about aggression.

The third thing that I think groups can do is to finally support independent research. That’s the great victory of the 2012 case, which was based in part on aggression— to start moving the ball forward. Again, the last court

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case about aggression was more than 60 years ago.

The international tribunals that have been founded since then—in Yugoslavia and Rwanda—specifically removed aggression; it was not part of their jurisdiction.

So we haven’t had judges or justices actually examine law in this area for more than 60 years.

We need to support independent research so that we can talk about what aggression is moving forward. We need to be able to talk about the legal bases of aggression that exist today and put it in the words of law, so that people like me can pull up those articles and cite that to the court to show that this is something that isn’t dead—this concept of aggression is alive and well. It’s never gone anywhere, and it’s still part of our conversation.

I also think it would be interesting to think about successful groups like UNICEF, which has been amazing in bringing the conversation about the rights of children internationally. They have a very interesting approach where they have a master organisation that is able then to create chapters all over the world, to raise awareness.

Some of the efforts with children’s clubs, for example, are amazing and might serve as a model for how we could directly increase the dialogue and conversation about aggression and criminalising war.

This type of multi-faceted approach—litigation efforts, direct outreach, and independent research—this type of multi-prong, multi-level approach is the way we have to proceed. And we have to be willing to lose a few battles, because that’s the only way these things happen. I’ve lost motions in this court; that doesn’t mean I’m going to lose the issue altogether. It is a bit daunting, to be honest, but it’s something I feel is important, and it’s something that I think a lot of lawyers would feel is important.

CONCLUSION: “ENEMIES OF CIVILISATION” AND THE FUTURE OF EFFORTS TO CRIMINALISE WAR Sometimes when I’m doing this case, I wonder if I’m crazy because there’s no other research and no other resources out there about aggression. What grounds me is thinking about the Nuremberg case. I’m just pulling a lot of this stuff from Nuremberg. And my thought is that if this is what’s holding Nuremberg together, then this has to apply in the U.S. court as well.

We have a concept, again from Rome, called the hostis humani generis: “enemies of civilisation.” What U.S. law recognises is that pirates, for example, are hostis humani generis - they are enemies of civilisation. Wherever pirates go, they destroy civilisation. Our effort has to be

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to equate the people who commit aggression to pirates, to enemies of human civilisation, because that’s in fact what they do: they destroy civilisations elsewhere, and then they destroy the civilisation at home. What we have to do is to equate that together, so that we can make those who commit aggression enemies of civilisation in the same way that pirates are. We need to start using the same language. These concepts are there, they are all sitting there—we just need to do a better job at packaging this stuff and then presenting it to courts. I’ll conclude my talk on those points, but I’m actually very optimistic about the future. I think there is so much work that we can start to do immediately, starting today, that could have really amazing ramifications.

I know that the world is sick and tired of war. I know I certainly am, as an American, and I know that I’m not alone in that endeavor. I think the problem is that it’s such a huge problem that it’s easy to feel isolated, and it’s easy to feel you can’t make a difference. But that isn’t true. Good, committed people together can make a really amazing and meaningful impact. The comments this morning about slavery are so true: it was just a small group of people—an incredibly small group of people—who decided that they didn’t want to have slaves anymore as part of that civilised moment.

That movement grew and took time, but today we acknowledge fundamentally that slavery is a horrible thing and shouldn’t be permitted.

We live in a very dangerous time where the high watermarks of civilisation are coming apart. We live in a time where torturers are allowed to walk free, without any sense of accountability. We live in a time where today, as we speak, there are civilisations—ancient civilisations—being destroyed by bombs and missiles without any sense of recourse, with blindness from the international community that’s supposed to protect them.

We have to have faith in the fundamental precept that the pen is mightier than the sword. That together, we can make our efforts known through law, through research, through the courthouses.

We can do it: Motion by motion, complaint by complaint, summons after summons, we can make this happen. But it’s going to take a joint, concerted effort.

It’s going to take the ability to work together, which is the fundamental basis of any great movement. But I think if we can do those points and agree on a high level strategy, I am very optimistic that the world will join this movement, because it’s time for it. It’s time to put war aside and live under an international community and an international regime where we can all live together in peace.

Child Soldiers of Burma

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Image: Source Unknown

Child Soldiers of Burma The importance in a name. I want to begin by clarifying a fundamental difficulty everyone eventually encounters when discussing Burma / Myanmar. I encounter frequently, when I discuss issues relating to Burma, whether the country should be referred to as Myanmar or Burma. This problem has been complicated by some nations adopting the use of Myanmar, and others retaining the use of Burma. Before deciding whether to adopt one term or another one should have regard to the history of the name. Until 1989 the country had always in some form been referred to as Burma because the dominant ethnic group was (and in fact remains) the Burmans. An earlier group had existed prior the mediaeval period, the Mon, but they were replaced at this time by the Burmans. Throughout British colonisation and empirical governance, the name was Burma. Whether as a province of India, or in its own right: Burma! When the country obtained independence in 1948, it became the Union of Burma until 1962 when it became the Socialist Republic of Burma.

Finally in 1989 it became the Union of Myanmar: this followed the 8888 uprising (8 August 1988), which ultimately resulted in the Burmese military replacing the 1974 Constitution with martial law. Therefore, when the name was changed to Myanmar by the military it wasn’t by popular consent. There are arguments supporting each name being used: Myanmar indicates a break with British colonialism and is alleged to be more inclusive of other ethnic populations; Burma indicates pro-democracy support and is alleged to be more disrespectful of non-Burma ethnic groups it imposes the indigenous name for Burma’s rather than an

Photo Credit : freewallsource.com

anglicised version seen to be more inclusive. Since 1989 the difference in meaning between Burma or Myanmar has become more than indigenous language versus colonial interpretation. The name used now identifies allegiance either to military rule or democratic reform.

Notwithstanding recent developments democracy remains a live issue for expat Burmese & supporters of full democratic expression in Burma. Finally, some argue that Myanma (with no ‘r’) is the indigenous word for Burma and therefore should be preferred to Burma.

But Myanmar is in truth only the literary (or written) version of the name. Myanmar as a spoken indigenous word is in fact pronounced ‘Bama’. This lends some support to the argument that it should be pronounced Burma in any event, and that it does marginalise ethnic Burmese. Interestingly, “Myanmar” has no counterpart noun for its nationality: it is the Burmese live in Burma or Myanmar, there is no such word Myanmar-‘ese’ or Myanmar-‘ish’. This paper will use Burma from this point onward out of respect to the democracy movement and the non-Burma ethnic minorities.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND TO CIVIL CONFLICT IN BURMA An unstable history of civil conflict and an unstable union

For the last 1000 years both re-unification and deunification has been a constant feature of Burma.

There have been many dynasties, kingdoms & empires.

Although Burma is predominantly Buddhist, Hinduism, Islam & Christianity are also practised in minorities.

Between 1886 and 1937, Burma was a province of JUNE 2015 CRIMINALISE WAR

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British India. Unrest continued throughout that time, mainly in the remote northern areas. In 1937 Burma was given a constitution under separate British rule from that of India. For all intents & purposes the British remained in control. The years 1948-1962 were a period of significant political upheaval : formal decolonisation & re-unification occurred. Regional armed rebel groups began to be established. These years were a period of significant unrest: formal de-colonisation & re-unification occurred. Military rule was imposed.

Regional rebel groups began to be established: e.g.

Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO), Shan State Army (SSA). And since 1962 Burmese history has been characterised by various forms of oppressive rule, stagnated economic development & failed democratic reform.

State), Karenni (Kayah State), Karen (Kayin State) & Mon (Mon State) peoples. Each of these ethnic groups are dominant in their respective states. Seven of these states have active ethnic (rebel) armed groups: Chin, Kachin, Kayah, Kayin, Mon, Rakhine, Shan. Many states have multiple armed groups active within them. Some of the main groups are listed below next to the state within which they are predominantly representative and active: there are many others that are not mentioned, and not recognised in ‘peace talks’ with the Burmese military. These are the civil conflicts within which child soldiers find themselves in Burma. They are recruited by many of the ethnic rebel groups, although focus has only really been on the existence of child soldiers in the Burmese military, known as the Tatmadaw Kyi (or Tatmadaw for short).

Today Burma is one of the most impoverished countries in the world; despite recent limited reform it remains one of the poorest nations in the world: ranking 149th among 186 nations rated in the 2013 Human Development Report of the United Nations Development Programme. This is despite having significant natural resources from which wealth could be generated for the benefit of its people. Since 1948 there have been 16 states that form part of Burma. Many of these states are vying for outright independence for their ethnic (non-Burman) populations. At the very least they are seeking a more formal and democratic representation in Burmese government. Because of this internal unrest within Burma has largely centred on the dominance of Burman culture & language over other ethnic minorities within the country. Approximately 60% of the Burmese population is Burman, while the remaining 40% consists of seeveral different ethnic groups within different states: Arakanese & Rohingya (Rakhine State), Chin (Chin State), Ka c h i n (Kachin

CHILD SOLDIERS ACROSS BURMA Basic Numbers

It has been long standing international law prohibition to enlist anyone under the age of 15 unless they consent.

There have been attempts for many years to make it unlawful to enlist anyone until aged 18 regardless of consent. Recruitment of children is a crime and the International Criminal Court can prosecute. The reality is it is very difficult to identify the individual perpetrators, and as long as Burma as a state continues to ‘talk the talk’ of preventing child soldiers it is unlikely that there will be any moves to prosecute the state. In 2002 it was estimated that Burma had the highest number of child soldiers in the world, some as young as 11 years old: of 350,000 soldiers in the Tatmadaw it was alleged that up to 70,000 may be children.1 In approximate terms that is up to 20% of the army being under the age of 18 years. However, there can be no exact numbers because of the various ways and reasons that such recruitment occurs: documentation is often forged or children are kidnapped and sold into the military, and extremely impoverished families indenture children for the income. As a result of international pressure, in 2012 the Burmese government signed an action plan with the UN to demobilise all child soldiers and cease recruitment.

The Tatmadaw has formally stated it wishes to stop the recruitment of soldiers aged under 18 years. Practically, that has been and 1

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“My Gun Was As Tall As Me”, Child Soldiers in Burma (Human Rights Watch, 2002), p 3.

remains a very hard task. The scale of child recruitment has been large; the resources to identify and discharge the children are extremely meagre; it is likely that the demobilisation of such children will leave the Tatmadaw basic ranks depleted making it practically difficult to implement on the ground. To maintain recruitment and enlistment numbers the Burmese authorities have attempted to implement an exemption for children enlisted between 16 and 18 years of age who have completed a minimum of 10 years education.2 This attempt to bargain away the seriousness of child recruitment should be a target of all international organisations as contrary to the rights of the child.

Between 2012 and the present, a total of 553 child soldiers have been released or discharged from the Tatmadaw.3 The last major release was in 2014 and was of 108 children. Yet the International Labour Organisation (the “ILO”) had identified 770 children between 2009 and 2012 alone.

The number and identity of children in the Tatmadaw remains an extremely real and serious issue. The inability of the Tatmadaw to live up to its promise to demobilise and cease child recruitment is evidenced in the fact that less than 1% of the children estimated to be in the army have been identified and released. That lack of dedication to resolving this issue is apparent from the attitude the Burmese authorities have taken to UN access and age verification procedures : “The Burmese armed forces have prohibited the UN access to Border Guard Forces, former ethnic insurgent groups under nominal military control, who are reputed to have child soldiers in their ranks. UN access has also been denied to more than a dozen non-state armed groups, including those listed by the secretarygeneral for child soldier use, such as the Karen National Union and the Karenni Army, despite these groups being engaged in a ceasefire process with the central government for more than a year.

“The Burmese army is not only dragging its feet in ending its use of child soldiers, but is also obstructing the UN from doing its job to verify its efforts,” Becker said. “On this basis alone the Security Council should hand the government a failing grade on its promised progress.””4 Once released there is always the risk of being taken again. To this end the ILO has been instrumental in providing documentation proving that the child is ineligible for recruitment. Such documentation is essential for protection in a country where birth records are informal at best, and birth certificates are not

routine (especially in rural areas). The ILO is certainly one of the major organisations trying to ascertain the numbers and identity of child soldiers remaining in the Tatmadaw. Between 2009 and 2012 the ILO identified 770 child soldiers recruited before the age of 18 years.5 The driving factors behind Tatmadaw child recruitment The reasons underlying why there is so much child recruitment are complex. They include economic issues (extreme poverty), self-interest, and avoidance of punishment in a brutal military system.

At the core of this is the unfortunate fact that children routinely fail to attend or finish school due to the cost of education. Kindergarten alone can cost 1,000-2,000 kyat each month; school 15,000-20,000 kyat. This is when incomes are very low: day labourers can earn 100-300 kyat per day; a private’s salary in the Tatmadaw is 4,500 kyat per month. In that context basic schooling for one child can cost up to a third of an adult’s annual income, without considering the other necessities of life. In such an environment, even basic education is not a right but a privilege of few.

Because of the lack of affordable schooling, children go out to work to earn money for the family when they are younger than 10 years old (and sometimes even younger). Some jobs see children working in places where they become obvious targets for recruitment: train stations, bus stations, markets, near public buildings, and other public areas. They can be tricked with promises of good jobs, kidnapped or trafficked into the military.

Selling children into the military is a form of income for child traffickers; and it can provide desperate money for some families. In 2002 a child soldier could be sold for between 1,000-10,000 kyat with a bag of rice between 15-50kg. In today’s money that is the equivalent of MR36.00, US$9.70, or AU$13.00. Such is the extreme poverty that fuels the sale of children into military life.

Although less common, because of extreme poverty or social deprivation, families will believe that the survival of the family as a whole requires selling one of their children to either the military directly or through traffickers. Sale of a child can also occur to obtain the ongoing income of a soldier to help the whole family survive.

Soldiers regularly recruit and kidnap other child soldiers. If they have been in the Tatmadaw for at least 5 years upon the recruitment of 5 soldiers they become eligible for discharge themselves.6 Enticements such as

Human Rights Watch, Burma: Failing to Demobilise Child Soldiers, 28 May 2013, (http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/05/28/burma-failing-demobilize-child-soldiers).

The Irrawaddy, 25 January 2015, http://www.irrawaddy.org/contributor/child-soldiers-ongoing-battle-burma.html).

Human Rights Watch, Burma: Failing to Demobilise Child Soldiers, 28 May 2013, (http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/05/28/burma-failing-demobilize-child-soldiers).

5 Human Rights Watch, Burma: Failing to Demobilise Child Soldiers, 28 May 2013, (http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/05/28/burma-failing-demobilize-child-soldiers).

6 My Gun Was As Tall As Me”, Child Soldiers in Burma (Human Rights Watch, 2002), p 4.

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this encourage rather than discourage the recruitment of children: it can be practically very difficult to recruit adults, children on the other hand are very easy prey.

Soldiers take children in public. The children are threatened in many cases with gaol and other abuses if they do not sign up. This is one of the reasons why it is difficult to identify the children in the ranks from a review of enlistment paperwork. A major reason for the demand for child soldiers is to fulfil recruitment quotas:

and carrying out executions. Human Rights Watch interviewed two boys, ages 13 and 15 at the time, who belonged to units that massacred a group of 15 women and children in Shan State in early 2001.”10 The unfortunate child soldiers involved in such acts are threatened with extreme violence, or even death, if they do not obey and engage in crimes against humanity.

Armed Rebel Groups

“In mid-2006 a senior general called for the recruitment of 7,000 new soldiers a month, four times the actual recruitment rate of a year earlier. Battalion commanders failing to meet their recruiting quotas are subject to a range of disciplinary action including the loss of their command posting.”7

At various times there have been, or are, up to 37 rebel armed ethnic groups11 : it is a constantly fluctuating number. The Military (Tatmadaw Kyi) has been fighting against those groups in a civil armed conflict that has lasted for over 70 years. In 2014 the UN referred to only 8 armed groups in Burma, including the Tatmadaw Kyi12:

Finally, there are the soldiers who to avoid extreme corporal punishment (e.g. beatings, confinement etc) for infractions to military discipline (e.g. absent without leave etc) provide the military with trafficked or kidnapped children as recruits. Again, the brutal system within the Tatmadaw encourages the recruitment of vulnerable children.8

• • • • • • •

Life Of A Child Soldier in the Tatmadaw9 Children recruited into the Tatmadaw must undergo basic training just as their older adult counterparts.

This can be a particularly brutal time for them because they are regularly beaten and made to undertake tasks that their small bodies are not yet grown enough to do. If a child is caught trying to escape the punishment can be extremely brutal. Children have been beaten to death. Children have been permanently disfigured and crippled. Children have been psychologically damaged.

Completion of basic training results in allocation to a battalion and essentially placed with conflict zones.

Some children will be given jobs as porters, servants to officers, and other non-combat roles.

These are tasks generally given to those children not yet physically developed enough for combat. Nevertheless, children do fight on the ‘front line’. There is anecdotal evidence that children have even been coerced to take part in war crimes and crimes against humanity: “Once deployed, boys as young as 12 engage in combat against opposition groups, and are forced to commit human rights abuses against civilians, including rounding up villagers for forced labor, burning villages,

Democratic Karen Benevolent Army (DKBA) Kachin Independence Army (KIA) Karen National Liberation Army (KNU/KNLA) Karen National Liberation Army Peace Council Karenni Army (KNPP/KA) Shan State Army South (SSA-S) Tatmadaw Kyi (including integrated border guard forces) • United Wa State Army (UWSA).

These 8 groups were listed on the basis that they had been listed in the UN annexes for at least 5 years.

Accordingly, new groups that came into existence or had not been listed for that length of time by the UN have not been included and hence the discrepancy with the number of known armed groups. Each of the above groups is known to use child soldiers. The recruitment of child soldiers by armed rebel groups is, by its nature, very hard to quantify. However, given the grass roots nature of the ethnic rebel armed groups it is not surprising that they also rely on large numbers of children to bolster their ranks.

MOVES TOWARD INTERNAL PEACE Recent Draft Ceasefire Agreement

If peace can be achieved within Burma, then the continued recruitment of child soldiers will not be imperative for rebel groups, and the Tatmadaw Kyi will be in a situation where it does not require such a large armed force. Therefore, any moves towards internal peace, and cessation of civil war is to the benefit of the children who are most at risk. The Guardian reported on 31 March 2015 the following headline: “Burmese government signsdraft ceasefire deal with rebel groups”.

The agreement was made between the Tatmadaw and

Burma: Sold to be Soldiers – The Recruitment and Use of Child Soldiers in Burma, (Human Rights Watch, 2013), p 7.

My Gun Was As Tall As Me”, Child Soldiers in Burma (Human Rights Watch, 2002), pp ii-iii.

9 See Appendix to this paper for two short stories of child soldier fears and experiences.

10 Human Rights Watch, Burma: World’s Highest Number of Child Soldiers, 17 October 2002, (http://www.hrw.org/news/2002/10/15/burma-worlds-highest-number-child-soldiers).

11 My Gun Was As Tall As Me”, Child Soldiers in Burma (Human Rights Watch, 2002), pp ii-iii.

12 Report of the Secretary-General to the Security Council (A/68/878–S/2014/339) issued on 15 May 2014; (https://childrenandarmedconflict.un.org/countries/myanmar/).

13 Human Rights Watch, Burma: Failing to Demobilise Child Soldiers, 28 May 2013, (http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/05/28/burma-failing-demobilize-child-soldiers).

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16 of the rebel groups including the KIA. The UN made the following statement regarding the ceasefire which took over 12 months to negotiate.

“The signing of an NCA is a first step towards a larger dialogue for settling the political and military issues that will pave the way for an inclusive and harmonious future for Myanmar,” the statement continued. …

Today’s agreement is a signal that new levels of trust, confidence and cooperation are possible between former enemies and that the seeds of change in Myanmar are beginning to sprout. …

Mr. Nambiar [Special Advisor for Myanmar] added that while many concerns and difficulties would nonetheless remain on the ground in the country, the reaching of an agreement on the NCA text remained cause for celebration as it laid the groundwork for achieving “a genuine and lasting peace in the country.”

It is significant that many of the larger rebel groups have signed up, especially the KIA which has historically been one of the largest and most active and troublesome groups. But there remain many large tensions to be resolved as this is very much a small step towards peace. Some groups have not been included as they are not recognised by the Tatmadaw or government. The Irrawaddy newspaper explained the reasons for this: “[Commander-in-Chief Snr-Gen] Aung Min told the press pack that Tuesday’s agreement would be remembered as a historical day for the country and a milestone in the government of President Thein Sein.

At the same time, he reiterated the government’s refusal to negotiate with ethnic armies outside of the NCCT members it has granted official recognition. …

There were 16 members of the NCCT when we began our peace talks with them. We only accept these 16 groups for participation in political dialogue,” he said. “Firstly, we will talk with these 16 groups. It will take a long time for us to accept new members. Our government does not have time for this.” …

On Tuesday, Aung Naing Oo, a government advisor at the Myanmar Peace Center, told the Los Angeles Times that the Kokang conflict had no bearing on the signing of a “nationwide” ceasefire agreement. …

“It’s possible to have a nationwide ceasefire and still be fighting the Kokang—they are considered a renegade group,” he said. ” Basically, the draft ceasefire is not (and cannot be) a complete solution for the region’s conflicts. Armed rebel groups not included in the draft plan will continue

to fight until either included in the peace process or their interests are recognised and met.

The draft ceasefire plan is a small but significant step towards permanent reconciliation between some of the marginalised minorities and the government. While it does pave the way towards peace, the experience of civil conflict in Northern Ireland shows that this will be a long and complicated process, with the potential for dissidents to remain belligerent.

As long as the risk for civil war acts exists, the risk of children being involved in ‘soldiering’ is greater.

THE FUTURE

International Assistance not Condemnation: Changing Systems & Behaviour The international community, and in particular international organisations must keep the pressure up on the Tatmadaw and Burmese authorities to continue to release children from the armed forces. I would not suggest economic sanctions against Burma or its citizens: the poor economic status of Burma is one of the fundamental driving forces of child recruitment. Any such suggestion would be misguided and compound the issue. However, allowing the international community to help the Tatmadaw and Burmese authorities identify those children within the ranks is essential: “Allow the UN [and other international organisations such as the ILO] full and unimpeded access to all military bases, barracks, training facilities, recruitment centres and other relevant military sites, including the Border Guard Forces … .

Accelerate the identification, registration, and release of all children from the Tatmadaw and the Border Guard Forces … .

Implement effective mechanisms to prevent recruitment of all children under the age of 18, without exception.”13 Positive steps which can be taken with help from the international community, nations, NGOs are more likely to produce tangible result. Some of the more obvious changes include positive reinforcement and positive systems to avoid the abuse of these children. Import changes needed include: • • • •

Helping Burma implement a reliable births, deaths and marriages registration system.

Modernising the Tatmadaw military systems of justice removing the emphasis on corporal punishment.

Punishing those who traffic, kidnap, or force children into the Tatmadaw using the civil criminal justice system.

Rewarding people who identify child soldiers.

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“

Recruitment of children is a crime and the International Criminal Court can prosecute. The reality is it is very difficult to identify the individual perpetrators, and as long as Burma as a state continues to ‘talk the talk’ of preventing child soldiers it is unlikely that there will be any moves to prosecute the state.

• • •

Rewarding military officers who identify and assist in the demobilisation of children in the ranks.

Seeking peace between the authorities and the armed groups.

Moving towards a reliable and honest justice system.

These are just the most obvious changes that the international community as a whole can help Burma achieve. The task as a whole is large. But it is not insurmountable with the will that the international community can bring to bear. Offering help is a much more likely way to achieve longstanding change, working together with the Burmese authorities, rather than adopting a paternalistic attitude characterised by dictation of terms.

Helping child soldiers upon discharge However, removing children from the Tatmadaw is only the first task. Once the children are free there remain risks and needs that must be addressed.

• • • •

Prevention of re-recruitment once released.

Contacting and establishing re-connection with family.

Providing educational opportunities lost by recruitment and service.

Providing emotional and psychological care to enable adjustment back into civilian life.

These children have lost their chance for a childhood, lost their chance to learn basics such as reading, writing, basic maths: lost their innocence.

They will return damaged by their experience, and it is up to the international community, the Burmese community and not least the Burmese authorities to give these children the opportunities they deserve.

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Grassroots A question I like to ask myself is, “What can I do to make a difference?”. Part of my answer to that question is that I am here today raising these issues.

And I ask this question because this is my problem too, not just Burma’s. It’s my problem because I am a citizen of this increasingly accessible global world. I am a part of it.

And You are a part of it.

The most important two questions of this entire paper are: “Are you a global citizen?”

“What are you going to do to help solve these problems?”.

Appendix The following is just two short stories of child soldiers (names changed) reported in Burma: Sold to be Soldiers – The Recruitment and Use of Child Soldiers in Burma, Human Rights Watch, Report, October 2007, at p 5.

I By the time he was 16, Maung Zaw Oo had been forcibly recruited into Burma’s national army not once, but twice.

First recruited at age 14 in 2004, he escaped, only to be recruited again the following year. He learned that the corporal who recruited him had received 20,000 kyat,a sack of rice, and a big tin of cooking oil in exchange for the new recruit. “The corporal sold me,” he said. The battalion that “bought” him then delivered him to a recruitment center for an even higher sum—50,000 kyat. When his aunt learned that Maung Zaw Oo had been recruited a second time, she and his grandmother made a long trip to his battalion camp to try to gain his release. The captain of the battalion company offered to let Maung Zaw Oo go, but only in exchange for five new recruits. Maung Zaw Oo said, “I told my aunt, ‘Don’t do this. I don’t want five others to face this, it’s very bad here. I’ll just stay and face it myself.’”

By age 16 Maung Zaw Oo seemed resigned to his fate.

When his unit went on patrol, he would volunteer for the most dangerous positions, walking either “point” at the front of the column, or last at the back. He said, “In the army, my life was worthless, so I chose it that way.”

II “Than Myint Oo, for example, was first recruited at 14, escaped the army, but was captured and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for desertion at age 15. He escaped from prison, was captured and re-recruited to the army, and eventually deserted again and reached Thailand. Now 19, he no longer dares return home.

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Because killing people is a crime, it is illogical that if you kill one person you may be arrested and charged in court and may even be sentenced to death; but if you kill a few million people, that is glorious. It is this realisation of the contradiction in our perception of things that started this idea that war should be criminalised.

War is a crime, war kills, and the impact of war on people, including children, is really really horrendous. So this is one of the reasons why we started to establish clubs for secondary schools which is called “Criminalise War Clubs”.

... unfortunately, war – is none other than mass murder – committed by warring nations, is not regarded as a crime. Likewise, leaders of these nations, sanctions against innocent civilians, women and children, women and elderly, are not regarded as criminals.

We have seen the sufferings of innocent people in war-torn countries. Where do they go to demand justice?

Tun Dr Siti Hasmah Mohd Ali

Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad

Tan Sri Dato Hj Muhyiddin Yassin

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05

06

While the promotion of peace and the prevention of armed conflict should remain our priorities in ensuring the safety and well-being of children, it is the protection of children in existing situations of armed conflict, or in situations of impending armed conflict, which demands our urgent and undivided attention.

... as the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu once said, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single first step”, KLFCW had been able to take several steps over the past decade. It is now time to fine-tune the road map ahead.

This is not the place to present details of the impact of externally induced regime change interventions. It is clear is that they have caused, and continue to cause, serious structural, physical and mental damages.

Prof Salleh Buang

Hans-C Von Sponeck

Dato Sri Anifah Hj Aman

07

The key to ending all forms of war and terrorisms is the development of new relations among nations and peoples based on unfailing respect for the right of self determination of peoples and on a greater measure of economic, political and social equality on a world scale.

Q uotes

Prof Emeritus Datuk Dr Shad Saleem Faruqi

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09

We come to the conclusion within our own response system that we do not want war. It will yet be a long time but nevertheless I am happy that there are compatriots in Malaysia and elsewhere that want to do this and nothing has taken them off the track of what they are trying to do.

... This surely must be brought to an end – by an aware and courageous global citizenry – united in its demand that the perpetrators of these hideous acts be prosecuted for war crimes. Anything less will make us morally complicit and align us with the worst war criminals this modern century has ever produced.

Tan Sri Razali Ismail

Prof Gurdial Singh Nijar JUNE 2015 CRIMINALISE WAR

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FLAG

FALSE

by

JOHN

PHILPOT

spent the last 15 years of my life primarily involved as a defence counsel at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and in the Hague at the ICC in the Kenya case. And we recently published a book called “Justice Belied: The Unbalanced Scales of International Criminal Justice”. I’ve been asked to speak about false flag. Often there is a form of provocation or an event which occurs setting off a conflict which creates a huge media encouragement for the war, and it is often done by an innocent party. And we’re living in a time of extreme war – it was pointed out in the opening speech that we’re not at peace. In fact, since at least 1990, we’ve been more at war than ever. The Cold War was also a very “hot” war, and since the end of the Cold War’s it’s got hotter.

I

We know that the Nazi rise to power – the Reichstage fire was a fake. We know that in Iran in 1952-53, the CIA hired Iranians to pose of communists in order to justify the overturning of the Iranian government that led to the Shah and to destabilisation. I understand that when the coup d’état was supposed to take place in Venezuela in February, that the Israeli-Us-Canadian conspiracy, and it was that, with some local Venezuelans, had a plane which they painted with the decorations for the Venezuelan Air Force and they were going bomb the President. So there’s another example that was stopped, but it was a false flag, it was supposed to be a coup d’état organised by the Venezuelan army, in fact it was fake. We’re living in a very dangerous period.

We cannot sum it up lightly.

I’m gonna look a bit at Central Africa since the early 90s. I’m going to refer briefly to 9-11 because people here have discussed and studied 9-11 much more than I have; the Ukrainian coup. And we all suspect that what led to the war in Iraq and 9-11 was in fact a third force, probably closer to the US government than to an enemy, and this false attack led to the wars which we have seen in Afghanistan and Iraq, Syria probably, Libya. We can have a brief look at February 2014 in the Ukraine and the attacks where snipers shot at government people, at crowds, and it seems there was a consensus that the sniper was a false flag. People aren’t sure who the culprit was but it seems to have been a faked attack which led to a complete change in European-RussianAmerican relations. It’s a terrifying situation where we have the resurgence of fascism, which my father fought against in Italy – many people fought – and we now see it’s not a national liberation struggle, it is an attempt to impose fascism engineered, probably, by the United States and is terrifying for all of you in Asia because Europe does not want to have a war with Russia.

I want to concentrate on Africa, partly because it is my expertise. And I note that the video that we saw at the beginning, the first reference was, “5.5 million deaths” in Kivu, the area of the Congo just west of Lake Kivu. I don’t like bandying around figures, but there’s been many many millions of deaths. Probably the greatest number of deaths in a conflict since the Second World War. Canada was involved, United States was involved, Britain was involved. It’s a bit like

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this Anglo-Saxon war-making conspiracy. And there is a very interesting book in French by Patrick Bakel which talks about the development of the Rwandan Patriotic Front which led to the taking over of all of Central Africa and the riches of the Eastern Congo – very important.

I will give you a synopsis. But of the functioning by proxy force, the governments of Uganda, Rwanda and, eventually, the Congo, behind American-CanadianBritish interest.

The topic of this presentation is false flag. Now where are the false flags in this event? There was a war which lasted from October 1st, 1990 until April 6, 1994, almost 4 years. It was the Rwandan Patriotic Front, a branch in the Ugandan army – it wasn’t an uprising, it was an invasion – fought and negotiated with the UN, stopped, and started the war again, and they had troops at the centre of Kigali – and, by the way, Rwanda was a very sophisticated country, very developed, highly educated. Everybody was watching a football game on April 6, 1994. Many friends were there. There was a big explosion, and the President’s plane, in which there were 2 Presidents, dignified men, members of their army, French military flying the plane; it fell in, ironically, his own garden, by his own flowers – he was a peaceful man. And all hell broke loose.

Now, I live in Canada. What did we hear? We heard that the radical Hutu shot down their President’s plane.

On the spot, people who were working with the UN mission, they all knew it was the RPF, Paul Kagame, who shot down this plane. And yet, the media said, “the radical Hutu had shot down the President’s plane in order to unleash a genocide of the Tutsi by the Hutu.” In fact, all hell did break loose. In the east of Rwanda – and it’s coming out, the documentation is coming out right now, Judy River, a Canadian journalist, is bringing these issues out. She’s being threatened by the Rwandan government, as are many other people including myself.

We’re being killed in our own country. Cause they do it – they killed people in South Africa last, they killed people in Tanzania, they killed people in Kenya, former people who left the government. So, they, in fact, did kill a lot of Hutu in the east, and as the war progressed, the conflict between Hutu and Tutsi blew up and there were a lot of deaths – unplanned.

And in the streets – this is a very complicated issue and there’s a lot of debate about how it all happened and what exactly happened. There’s considerable evidence that the gangs who were killing each other in the Hutu groups, there were, in fact, provocateurs from the RPF trying to excite the violence. So, a lot of people died, and no one is denying the horrors of these 3 months, but

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what we are denying is that it was a planned genocide.

And I’ve spent 12 years at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda where all the forces of some parts of the UN tried to prove that our clients had planned the genocide. It never succeeded. Millions of dollars spent.

There was no conspiracy. We defended the brotherin-law of President Habyarimana who, in fact, during the war was hiding. He was allegedly the person who organised the genocide. And he was acquitted after a long, hard trial.

We’re not talking about false flag. People are talking about where to go forward. The way of preventing war is to understand how wars start, and debunk the lies.

And when the lies come out, they will come at you so hard that you can almost be knocked over by them yourself. It’s chilling and frightening when we talk about media today. I am worried about this, and I’m also confident that we can understand the genesis of these wars and it will come out in different ways. I’m very frightened about the situation of Israel right now and the threats of new wars, possibly in northern Lebanon; intervention in Syria, the alliance between Saudi Arabia and Israel with the war on Yemen.

I think we have to set aside the sectarian analysis of these wars – and the people from Saudi Arabia, Iran or Syria can correct me – but I understand that the alliances are not sectarian. My reading, basically from Michel Chussodovsky’s website is that the war in Yemen is not SunniShia. I understand that Syria is multiconfessional, Iran is essentially Shia – they were allies. I think we have to understand that the issues are political.

Where do we go in the future?

Previous speakers have been unable to answer that, and I think they are right, because if we had a magic solution, then we are generally lying, or exaggerating, or being too confident. However, there are certain movements which I consider very important. The Boycott-DivestmentSanctions movement against Zionism is very strong. It’s very strong in Europe. It’s shamefully not strong enough in Canada. My country, unlike 20 or 30 years ago where it had some

independence, is more Zionist almost than the United States, unfortunately. The BDS movement is very important and I urge the world, in my humble way, to get involved in the BDS movement. Apartheid in South Africa, one of the key factors in its collapse was the boycott. Israel, right now, has placed BDS as one of their strategic areas which they have to fight against. I am very pleased to have participated in the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal, which I have studied myself before I actually had contact with them, because it criminalised the planning of aggressive war which is the first time since Nuremberg where that was actually spelled out so clearly.

The ICC is not going to do it – not going to criminalise the crime of aggression. It’s going to be gone like spelled out in our book, unfortunately, hopefully it can change.

I also refer, a little bit, to the story of the youth – and I see a lot of youth in the room, and it’s very heartening.

When I was called a little over a month ago to be present here, I was in El Salvador as an observer to the elections where the FMLN has the Presidency, and if you were

a member of the FMLN – the people who fought the United States for a long time, and had some success, and ended up negotiating, and it’s a good negotiation because they are still surviving and they are – and we were, in the election, called in by the FMLN to be observers; and what struck me is the youth.

There were so many young people in these electoral hall – huge crowds of people supervising the elections, fighting every point, ensuring that every vote counted.

And so I’d like to leave you now saying that I’m very optimistic for the future. I urge the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal to move on. I’ve read Michel Chussodovsky’s letter suggesting that the Tribunal take other charges against leaders which are presently active. I think it may be a step because there’s a lot of planning and wars are going on, frighteningly.

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DRONES & COVERT WARS

by ADMIRAL (R) VISHNU BHAGWAT Photo Credit : bemil.chosen.com

he perpetrators of the wars take up a million forms like an octopus with a thousand tentacles constantly regenerating morphing into molds visible and invisible and more often hidden covert or behind the seas. I have been inspired by the statesmanship and leadership of Tun Dr. Mahathir after seeing the modernisation of Malaysia. Having read his book, “Globalisation and its New Realities” I therefore take the liberty of quoting a little from that seminal book; “It has immense relevance to our times and what we may expect the future as challenges to all of humanity.” He says the fact that globalisation has come does not mean we should just sit by and watch.

T

Predators destroy us. Malaysia was the only country facing the crisis to reject the IMF advised open door to permit foreign acquisitions of local assets to prize open the beleaguered country. Markets so that foreign companies move to take over local businesses and enterprises, buy and sell currencies, impoverishing whole nations, excluding into riots, violence and wars; both covert and overt. The new liberal religion, as the books says has many prominent temples; IMF, World Bank, WTO and those

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who manipulate money and stocks in FED and Wall Street, backed by the US tragedies department of financial warfare. How many of us know that there is a department of financial warfare in the US tragedy? One of the great truths of our times is that second great age of colonisation is upon us. If we had seriously studied the instances of deception, intrigue, forgeries, frauds, fraudulent treaties, commercial political and military agreements are own gullibility and liability over the last 400 years.

I mean the Asian and African people.

We should know that covert wars activities are the order of the day.

They are growing more destructive by the day, not less destructive.

What do they affect? In the world of the bandits, they are known as the Structural Adjustment Programme of the IMF. In fact, they mean that children do not go to schools, medicines do not reach the people. All essential basic goods are priced beyond their means.

In fact, it is a war in slow motion.

This policy of the new economic are the global financial oligarchy, are in fact the genesis, the roots of covert war. We have seen a million children die in Iraq and more in Palestine, Libya, Syria, Iran, Russia and Ukraine. Somebody

said it is a small price to pay. It is softening up prior to occupation, destruction and re-conception to make a country, to make a new country for democracy. The right to interference in the internal affairs of independent nations very quickly extends to the right to interfere in the political and economic systems. Malaysia has experienced the globalization of capital and was nearly destroyed by it. Capital does reach borders, however the bill of 6 billion people of the world known pleasantly being negated must prevail. The weapons used against are not just military, but also economic forces that are more subtle and has the lowest damaging effect compared to military assaults.

Are you familiar with the 100th order of Bremmer, the first administrator after the invasion of Iraq? What he did, wholesale privatisation, wholesale deprivation, wholesale the destruction of the country in order to reconstruct the country with western corporations like Dick Chenney’s and so forth.

Governments may submit as Tun Mahathir said, but the people will show their resentment. Better to take over the national corporations, they will show their feelings in many ways. Regardless of the new

war revelation, even if they want to avoid violence, violence must come as a new capitalist disregard their signs. They will be no war of independence but there will be a kind of Guerilla war which will not be good for anyone. However, Latin America Unity is winning.

Asian Unity, at least Southeast Asia had the fair opportunity of winning peace and developed through the mutli-level dimensional dialogue, Forums that are now in progress.

The subversion of civil and military structures and infiltration counter intelligence; it is often the first of detective of foreign penetration. The rules of the game and modus operandi have changed little in the past centuries, LawrenceLifschultz, had so well put in his book, “Bangladesh the Unfinished Revolution”. Just over two centuries ago, its contingent over 800 irregular troops faced an army Navy nearly 80,000 troops of the Naval of Benggol. But in this instance artillery and technical supremacy were also against the European Force. Nevertheless, in the most miserable skirmish forever to be called the decisive battle. The Europeans walked off with victory would change the course of world history. That was the battle of Plassey 1757.All sorts of racial and national historical myths developed out of this event, but the story of the conquerors of Benggol was no mystery.

In the modern parlance of western intelligence community, what happened was a classic covert operation. With great clandestine success, there was never a military defeat of the Naval of Benggol. The method of securing victory was much simpler. The commander of the Naval arms forces had secretly being bought off by the British.

The battle around the mango groves of Plassey never took place.

Through an astute understanding of the political fractions within the leadership and ruling class, by carefully distinguish the patriotic from the corrupt and through an abyss capacity to buy and sell

comprador loyalty from those who deal the ambitions of power. This small British expeditionary force under Robert Clive secured its military triumph by a neat gamble on prior political arrangement from the incident Plassey onwards. The British way more or less continues war against the Indian people and consolidating their path in India conquering other regions, breaking up the old system.

The Plassey business model as I call it, was a great success for the next 100 years and more. Supplemented as it was with the great famines imposed on the Indian people.

The precursor of today’s sanctions, and sanctions I hold as an act of war, nothing less than the act of war. Accumulation of surplus on a world scale as documented

by SameedAmeen, the eastern company corporation that changed the world which expanded to the east to China in opium trade and opium wars. Over the next century, an entire world would be remade and made from this little staging post in Benggol. Gandhi said “an armed conflict between nations horrifies us but the economic war is no better than the armed conflict. This is like a surgical operation and economic war is like prolonged torture.” It is not the torture of individuals, it is the torture of the whole population, torture of the children, see the PSTD. They talk about the veterans in the US, but what about the PSTD of the children? You see what they all have said on television of little children in Palestine and Ukraine and elsewhere?

We think nothing of the other because we are used to its deadly effects, that is the war. The movement against war is sound.

I pray for its success and Gandhi, but I cannot help the annoying fear that the moment we fail if it does not touch the root of all evil.

Human plead, I call it depopulations and the financial oligarchy. Sergio Tomasello, Secretary-General of the Argentine Farmers League in his testimony to the Argentine

Tribunal on impunity said that he was the casualty of a long war between the poor peasants who wanted to form cooperatives and all powerful launchers who owned half the land. We chose to name the cooperation rather than the soldiers who used us.

The oligarchy is also controlled by the monopolies. Ford Motors, Monsanto and Phillip Morris; and he said, free markets who are leading to cooperate massacres in a covert war against the people.

This is why I say this is covert war.

That was the classic dead chapter of theWorld Bank, in this way crisis built into the Chicago school, IMF, World Bank Model with limitless money, free to travel across the globe speculated bet on everything from cocoa to currencies in the commodity markets in London. It was the dawn of the dictatorship of debt and brought to in its exchange misery and burden greater than wars. So what name do we give such wars? It was also called the Washington Consensus signed in 1999 by India. The doors were wide open for privatisation, deregulation and drastic cuts in public spending except on the military under Article 21 in which there is no restriction on spending on us in defence. Who were they drafted by?

Might it surprise you that the Schalkaprogramme was indeed seated by JP Morgan and Citibank.

The agreement on agriculture

by Monsanto and Kajal, seats by Kajal. I do not want to go further except that it is in South Africa in the southern atmosphere new liberalism is spoken of as a second colonial pillage. The first; it was shaped from the land and the second shaped by the state. Be the Balkans, Iraq or elsewhere, the US administrations saw no reasons why war should not be a part of America’s highly profitable service economy, an invasion with a smile.

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327 billion went to contracts to private companies. From private companies have spawned private intelligence, private military companies, private militias, private dead squads all who spread Mayhem, assassinations, regime change and so forth. They are not state elements. State elements are not applied to them. The military are not applied to them. Geneva Conventions do not apply to them. This is the manner in which they bypass law. Bypass their own constitution, bypass through the dragon enforcement agency, bypass national and domestic laws of the US because they are immune to it. They make it a peak condition for aid.

Where do Coups figure, Coup d’Etats?

The interference in the election processes, and you know it better than I do. Organised by the long time NGOs with the national endowment for democracies.

So freedom of Iraq communities, any case, the FSA Free Syria Army, the ISIS now called IS. Stephen Kinzer has recorded these activities in his book called “The Overthrow”.

Kinzer writes the three-stage process. A US based regime change is the three-stage process. The US base multinational sees some kind of threat to its bottom line by the action of a foreign government demanding that the company pay taxes or observe laws or environmental laws. Second, the US politicians hear of the MNC’s complain.

They transform the motivation from an economic or commercial.

The third stage, when the politicians have to sell the need for intervention to the public at which point the good versus evil issue, they are always good, we are always

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evil. The Kinzer analysis fits well with Iraq and President Saddam Hussain had signed contract with the Russian oil medias and was in negotiations withtotal of France.

Bush announced a US Middle-East free trade zone within 8 days of completion of combat operation.

Freeman claims that he did not see the carnage, Freeman of the Chicago school. Iraq was an empty space on a map, it was and remains an old civilisation with fierce antiimperialist pride. Strong Arab nationalism deeply held faith and a majority of the Arab population with military training and high standards of women in education,

important, real time manipulation of sensors and inputs turning on and off lights that enable anyone to see other people. That is the total deprivation of the sensors of the whole population. That is why I call it mass torture. To me, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo mean nothing.

There is a whole population, doctors, engineers, lawyers, civil servants, people engaged in agriculture and all activities.

A thousand year old illuminated Quran disappeared. The National Museum of Iraq, which is a priceless heritage of mankind. It is called the soul of Iraq, the soul of the Arab world was stolen post the occupation. I am just giving you examples because it is the torture of the whole people.

Bremmer’s 100th order as spoken about in Iraq, has not been just a genocide of a segment of the people. It is not the question of 4 million, 5 million, the other day I read in papers stating it was 4 million. It is not 4 million, God knows how many Photo Credit : gsmcneal.com millions in Pakistan, Libya, Iraq, Turkey, probably the highest in more than Syria and everywhere. Just half the world, Iraqi women. If because President Assad said nation creating was to happen in that it is Syria that will follow an Iraq, what is exactly was to happen independent line, an autonomous to the nation that was already mode of development. It will be a there? The question was never composite homogeneous secular asked, never considered because country like it has been the torch, it is too mundane, too pedestrian the flame, the inheritor of the for the intellectuals of the West whole civilisation of that part of or the intellectuals of the US and the world and certainly Islam.

UK empire. What violence did it Starvation disease; the story is too photo? 380 Tomahawk missiles heart changing but look at another were fired in 12 days, 30 bombs little story inside this little story. and 20,000 precision guided munitions. That is 87% of the total Not having means satisfied in US military arsenal, something like raising these countries to the Libya. A classic example of human ground, raising their people to intervention. In crude terms they the ground. The Atlantic council clear equivalence of the US CIA’s energy summit in November 13th interrogation manual. The goal 2013, one half and a year ago is to render the adversity totally decided that covert war operations

that means ISIS, Al-Nusra, God knows what they pick out from the lexicon of Arab history will be subjected to another renewed war and that is what we are seeing.

Look at the confusion caused by Wall Street journalists, New York Times and all the kind of medias that they have, that these are sectarian wars, these are wars which are being fought inside a country by inside people that are unhappy with President Assad. I just want to take a divergence and ask you, how many have you seen the interviews done by President Al-Bashar Assad to the world media including to the BBC 3 days ago? Not one of them was able to refute even one sentence what he had said under such strenuous circumstances of fighting all these forces with all the money with all the poisonous gases and all the arms, people released from jail who were criminals waiting for their death rows from Saudi Arabia, “so on and so forth”.

I do not like to name countries but I have to. So what is their essential background? There will be multiple conflicts mutating forms around the globe and violent conflicts will dominate the headlines. Vice President, Dick Chenney said in 2001 new wars may never end, at least not in our lifetime. The National Security Strategy Document in 2005 says America is a nation at war. There is no mistake about it. It is not the opinions of individual people, it is the document. In the meanwhile, militarisational space goes ahead with all kinds of weapons, kinetic energy, lasers and so forth. That is why it kept drones because drones

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are just the stepping stone.

Drones are the stepping stone to weaponisation of space from which they will exercise military complete hegemony on this earth because you cannot shoot at space.

So it is the militarised management of the planet in which the military is the subordinate partner to the corporate boardrooms.

The military becomes an instrument of not a democratically elected government but of the boardrooms and I think Mr. Chossudovsky made this point that the Nebraska in 2003 that the targeting plan was finalised at the US strategic command. So I say again, the military is virtually at the disposal of the corporate boards using it to protect oil and mineral interest of the Rothschild & Company. Finally in short, it has res public turned into res privata. I will end by saying that the private military companies, they are not private. They are ex chief of US army staff, the head of MPI Florida, the ex US Head of Defense Intelligence Agency or the next head of MPI in Florida private military companies.

The Iraqi farmers were told to burn their seeds and buy Monsanto terminator seeds. This is covert w a r.

Drones are the stepping stone to weaponisation of space from which they will exercise military complete hegemony on this earth because you cannot shoot at space. So it is the militarised management of the planet in which the military is the subordinate partner to the corporate boardrooms.

Covert war is not some kind of soldiers in some sort of fatigues trying to operate secretly. So I say a permanent war system nurtured by a permanent war economy fed by the big banks, multinationals and a national security state to advance the private agendas of a few globally.

Harold Pinter in a Nobel Prize acceptance speech said it means you infect the heart of the country that you establish a malignant growth and watch the gangrene bloom. When the people have been subdued or beaten to death, the military and the great corporations sit comfortably in power. Another peaking of the world is deep crisis the survival of the planet by eco and economic collapse must mean all anti-war, all progressive forces catalysed to build a world that is safe are genuinely equality and human community. The only sustainable bases for human development, fellowship on earth as Simon Bolivar said, “equality is the law’s flaws”.

“

Covert war is not some kind of soldiers in some sort of fatigues trying to operate secretly. So I say a permanent war system nurtured by a permanent war economy fed by the big banks, multinationals and a national security state to advance the private agendas of a few globally.

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FROM A DISTANCE - CHILD VICTIMS OF WAR-TORN VIETNAM

by JOHN PHILPOT Well we all are just grains of salt and we participate in this struggle for peace and I am proud to be a part of this. Since I am a little older than the fine young ones back there, but I was a student in the 60s; I am a Canadian and I am from Toronto, we remember the war in Vietnam and my own life we remember the civil rights struggle in United States in Selma Alabama and in the South. 50 years ago, the US Marines 3500 invaded Vietnam Sunday March, 1965 and it is when the civil rights protestors were beaten back in Selma Alabama. By 1968, the US had half a million troops the work contingence in 1975. I do not like statistics but people say that in Vietnam as many as 3.8 million died.

I cannot guarantee those figures but it is a very large number of men, women and children. Up to 800,000 Parisian Cambodians and a million in Laos they seem to say. The US lost about 58,000; which is a lot but not in proportion.

South Vietnamese forces escort suspected Viet Cong officer Nguyen Van Lem (also known as Bay Lop) on a Saigon street Feb. 1, 1968, early in the Tet Offensive

Photo Credit : AP Photo / Eddie Adams

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South Vietnamese General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, chief of the national police, fires his pistol into the head of suspected Viet Cong officer Nguyen Van Lem on a Saigon street, on Feb. 1, 1968

Photo Credit : AP Photo / Eddie Adams

Photo Credit : AP Photo / Boston.com

If you want to read about a good article look under “democracy now”, the website, which has an article by Seymour Hersh, an American journalist who was the man who uncovered the My Lai Massacre. A young American, just a little older than you youngsters back there, excuse me for calling you youngsters. They weren’t that old, they were in their 20s and they massacred unwantedly the women and children saying they were looking for Vietcong. The event happened in March 16 1968 and we read about it. It took him a year and a half to bring out. At that time, journalism was a bit feared than it is now because now when we go into war; I am against it, U.S does it, Canada; I am Canadian unfortunately, is bombing Syria now and it is wrong. Journalists do not have the same freedom of

movement as they had back in those days and it’s called embedded. I do not know what that word means, but it is some kind of lingua. The massacres which happened at My Lai, the negotiators in Paris said to, apparently said at that time, well My Lai is not an exception. Only exception was it came out and helped to bring about a change of opinion in the United States. We have draft orders in Canada; black men, white men who came to Canada to get away from that damned war because they were being constricted. The next small point I would like to make is, I was inspired at one point in my career by Ramsay Clarke, former Attorney-General United States involved in the Civil Rights movement and became an anti-war activist. We were involved in a mock Tribunal for the first Iraq war published in a book; “The Fire Next Time” by Ramsay Clarke. It is hard to get hold of it now because it is not being published anymore and what struck me. What struck me, I had read about the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal from afar and what struck me about it, and it is to your honour, to your honour sir, making the crime of aggression a war crime is the mark of this Tribunal and the great contribution of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal and the Commission. This is the key issue, the key characteristic of war which differs it from all the socalled “international” war crimes tribunal, which in fact forms of intervention in third world countries. I was attracted to this Tribunal and then a couple of years ago I was contacted and I had the honour of serving as the member of the jury where we found Israel guilty of genocide. I am very proud to be associated with this noble institution. We are now going to see a video of the murder of a Vietcong prisoner followed by Kim Phuc’s message.

I extend my heartfelt thanks to the good people in Malaysia who have taken the trouble to invite me to be a speaker at your Forum.

Unfortunately, owing to my own program, I am unable to be there in person, but I am there with you in spirit to ensure that this Forum is a success. A special word of thanks to the Founder of The Criminalise War Club, (CWC), Her Excellency Tun Dr Siti Hasmah, for extending this special invitation to me. To the Founder of the Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War, His Excellency. Tun Dr Mahathir and to other distinguished speakers, members of the public and to the members of this unique Criminalise War Club, my warmest greetings.

world and don’t help anybody. War causes nothing but suffering. For that reason I am in tune with the Kuala Lumpur Foundation and with the CWC as its aim is to criminalise war. That you have created a movement dedicated to making the young understand why wars should not be fought, is commendable. I am glad that there is another such Foundation, quite similar to my

know the value of peace. I have lived with my pain; I know the value of love when you want to heal. I have lived with hatred, and now I know the power of forgiveness. Today, I am alive, I live without hatred, without the spirit of revenge, and I can tell all those who caused my suffering: I forgive you. That is the only way to save peace, to speak of tolerance and non-violence.

IM PHUC K M O R F e g a s s e M

You are all aware that I am a victim of war. In 1972, when I was a 9-year old, I was burned because of war. I survived that horror, although many thousands of my countrymen and women did not.

I went through many hardships, loneliness, pain and even perhaps anger. However that did not consume me.

The Kim Phuc Foundation was created in 1997.

It helps children who are the victims of war and violence.

In East Timor, Romania and, most recently, Afghanistan, we give them medical, physical and psychological assistance, fit them out with prosthetic devices if they’ve lost a limb, help them to get over the trauma they have gone through. I know how hard it is for those children to speak.

My heart is with all the victims of the wars going on right now. For them, I have never stopped spreading a message of peace. I thus reach out across the ocean to the Foundation in Malaysia and the CWC to join me in this noble battle to rid the world of war, to save our children and to live in a peace world.

Kim Phuc, who was famously photographed by Nick Ut as a naked 9-yearold running from a napalm attack during the Vietnam War, holding her son, showing her horribly scarred back and arm. She was the girl on the Photograph that brought the world’s attention to the horrors of the war in Vietnam.

My own people wanted to use me as a symbol, not of hope, but to sow the seeds of anger at the enemy. But I was freed of that, when something came into my life. It changed my life and my attitude.

Today, I want to encourage people to love and help one another.

We need to learn how to become more tolerant, how to look at the individual, to listen, to come out of ourselves, to help others instead of letting ourselves get carried away by anger and hatred, which give rise to revenge and violence in the

own Foundation that is working with war victims in many parts of the world. Many times I have been asked how I could forgive what had happened to me. It took me time, a long time, but I knew it was the right thing to do.

That’s why I show the little girl in the picture. Because she tells my story and the consequences that war has had on my life. No parent wants what happened in that picture to happen again. I will never wish what happened to me, to happen to anyone else. I experienced war; I

It is also my hope that someday soon I shall be able to visit Malaysia and to see for myself the work undertaken by the Foundation and the CWC and how the Clubs are run in schools there. My very best wishes to all.

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Napalm was a horrible weapon. It was invented in the US in 1942 and it incinerated parts of Tokyo on March 9th 1945 and incinerated about 180,000 people in one night. Probably more died in Napalm attack than nuclear. It was last used in Iraq in 2003 and Barack Obama has agreed to not use it in war but there is an exception in the documents signed by Mr. Obama where they can disregard the treaty if it would save civilians. There was another arm that was used in the Vietnam War. “Agent Orange” which was used to defoliate, supposedly to prevent the Vietcong from advancing but in fact it deprived people of food and sustenance. I understand that can be corrected.

I read it was first used, it was invented by the British and it was first used in Malaysia in the 1950s. I can be corrected on that fact. I discussed it with somebody and they said it was not true. I think it is, but that is

certainly something to be verified. We have a video, I think. About the song of children, illegitimate children of war. With the American occupation of South Vietnam and the war, children were born and the video speaks for itself. The children somehow did not belong.

Of course every child has a right to exist and a right to be loved and respected by his peers, by his society, but this was not the case after the Vietnam War. I have several thoughts about history war in 1890 but came into force in 1948 with Anapka. The heart of the Middle East is the support. And to understand the nature of that conflict and it all floats from there. The war in Yemen, the war in Syria are all interrelated. I am not going to give you my opinion on that exactly.

We have now the song of the “Bui Doi” and so now I would like refer to this and make short comments at the end.

e d i s y r e v e n t ’ o n s a l c l a y w e h t l t i l h t a e s r d c i e are k s e r s i d e e ’ h h I T T t e h o g c o t a u l o n p h e t y dr r n t e a u v e n B i n n g I r n o e o t c l e a s ’ f t e r a i b h n’t b e t s h a t d w n n a o e l m d a i e r t c m n i o e r r s f p o e s h f d i W e l e f n r o e b r t f d s l l u i a For h amp for ch Doi The D we them o c i e a u W B w e d f y e i e l r I sa l h t t a s c e n e i m r ’ o n y Bui-Doi h r e o g h b n i v o f l irn T hell And o d t s n u A D s n e e i i h l d i T e m i v a o e f i y D c r e i i h e u T h t B e f d i d n e r l t l s A a n c i e e r n w hers ’ r y d o e o b h o T d g n e w e h A r kn all t hell 72

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e r n i o a d d y e e o v t h e T i d c e e l n f i i o a r C f t s y e e w n h i t We can’t forget... d t n o a r o g o h b T e d h t t e l g An l , r s a o Must not forget... r f f o t O v o i s n v r r e t u s d s u n l l M a That they are all... a remi e t e k e i g v r i L g o f o too... won’t t o ’ t n a n Our children c e r I d l e We i r m h e o c v h e r n u m ’ l O I l ’ l I l n a e t h h m g W o u are t S a c h s g d u m n ’ o e I h t t w i e o c n n e n k o h a I w f I r e w e o h v t n o e t t r ’ u a n B s y i e n r h m a e T a r ’ W d d y n e m i h a m T n t u d e o n i i y V h e e e v b v a a t e f n l le i e l r d e e e v v w e e n s i e c s n n e o o C e m f e i pictur ildren The l r f g o n i t v s i u h l c D e e h e t h h t e T k h of i e t o w e D r y a i h u w y e B s ’ h t d T a e l e h f l T l i i r ca o t h s d c o r n t i u O d n e r l l l o i b a a f e d r e n b a w A t ’ y d n e o o h o d t g t y e a e h h t h T T l l s e a t d r r i f s a p O e s y h t r I e r e v u d e o i h n n o i t ’ s n p l e l a e c a a w D h y e t r i h o t h F t s e d d r i a c e k e l s p e s r d e p i ’ h e I m T h t a T c h g e a c u o a w l h a p t s y r I e n v a n e e c n h in e t I r ’ t e y u c e a h B f T n r i r n e r o i t h b t s ’ o g t b n a on i d h e t n b d s A n a l a l w l e e h a m n i m i r o c r d d f e e n s v e o A i h c s n W e i o l n C i e D r fam hildr f life [CHOIR] They’re called Bui-Doi The Dust of life Concieved in hell And born in strife They are the living reminders Of all the good we failed to do We can’t forget Must not forget That they are all Our children too

[PETER POLYCARPOU] Like all survivors, I once thought When I’m home I won’t give a damn But now I know I’m caught I’ll never leave Vietnam War isn’t over when it ends Some pictures never leave your mind They are the faces of the children The ones we left behind [CHOIR] They’re called Bui-Doi The Dust of life Concieved in hell And born in strife They are the living reminders Of all the good we failed to do That’s why we know Deep in our hearts That they are all Our children too

[PETER POLYCARPOU] These kids hit walls on every side They don’t belong in any place Their secret they can’t hide

It’s printed on their face I never thought I’d plead For half-breeds from a land that’s torn But then I saw a camp for children Whose crime was being born [CHOIR] They’re called Bui-Doi The Dust of life Concieved in hell And born in strife We owe them fathers And their families And loving home they never knew Because we know Deep in our hearts That they are all Our children too [PETER POLYCARPOU] These are souls in need They need us to give Someone has to pay For their chance to live Help me try

[PETER POLYCARPOU] and [CHOIR] They’re called Bui-Doi The dust of life Conceived in hell And born in strife They are the living reminders Of all the good we failed to do That’s why we know Deep in our hearts That they are all Our children too

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I would like to close with a call on everybody present to try to understand the past and then to understand the present. The dangers of IS, of Al-Shabab, and believe I agree with Prof. Shad yesterday that these terrible phenomena, the support is coming from the natal US. I have been in Kenya recently, a fair amount, a highly sophisticated country.

Somewhat like your country but obviously different.

With tremendous potential and they have been destabilised and I am convinced that it is something like ISIS. There is a gentleman from Nigeria here who I said hello to yesterday. It is also tremendously rich,

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powerful country with a lot of potential. A lot of inequality but they will resolve, not us and they are being disrupted. We have to try and understand those phenomena and not be blinded by calls of western intervention. It will never work. Regime change will never work. Some people like, like President of Syria, some people do not. I understand he got 61% of the vote in his last election. In the context of war, maybe we like him, maybe we do? But regime change is not the solution.

Thank you very much and I hope we can meet again in the future.

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The way of preventing war is to understand how wars start, and debunk the lies. And when the lies come out, they will come at you so hard that you can almost be knocked over by them yourself.

It’s chilling and frightening when we talk about media today. I am worried about this, and I’m also confident that we can understand the genesis of these wars and it will come out in different ways.

The challenge for us of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission is – how do we convince the Aggressor States that dominate the United Nations Security Council, the world economy and the production and sales of the weapons of war – that war is a crime?

Recruitment of children is a crime and the International Criminal Court can prosecute. The reality is it is very difficult to identify the individual perpetrators, and as long as Burma as a state continues to ‘talk the talk’ of preventing child soldiers it is unlikely that there will be any moves to prosecute the state.

Denis J Halliday

Larissa Jane Cadd Detmold

John Philpot

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We live in a time where today, as we speak, there are civilisations, ancient civilisations, being destroyed by bombs and missiles without any sense of recourse, with blindness from the international community that’s supposed to protect them. We have to have faith in the fundamental precept that the pen is mightier than the sword. That together, we can make our efforts known through law, through research, through the courthouses.

When the people have been subdued or beaten to death, the military and the great corporations sit comfortably in power. Another peaking of the world is deep crisis the survival of the planet by eco and economic collapse must mean all anti-war, all progressive forces catalysed to build a world that is safe are genuinely equality and human community. The only sustainable bases for human development, fellowship on earth as Simon Bolivar said, “equality is the law’s flaws”.

All depends on us as part of the human society but the younger generation can do much more (and better). Young people must study the history, know exactly what happened in the past, how cruel and barbarian we are (we as human beings) and learn from the mistakes done in the past.

The younger generation is surely smarter than the previous ones and can succeed where others failed.

Inder Comar

Prof Dr Piermauro Catarinella

Admiral (R) Vishnu Bhagwat

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Q

... nuclear power plants and atomic bomb explosions are very harmful not only physically but also from a psychological point of view.

It could have had a long lasting inference more than 50 years, that is half a century.

Prof Dr Yushiharu Kim

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present my gratitude toTun M and Madam Siti for arranging such a great opportunity and for inviting me here. I am so honoured to be here and speak in front of you about our research work on the psychological fate of the people involved in Nagasaki atomic bomb extent. I am working for the National Centre of Neurology on Psychiatry Japan. It is a very big institute and we have 11 divisions of main researches and 14 divisions of neurology researches and big hospitals.

It is a connected to the Japanese Government and Minister of Health and Welfare. The persistent distress after psychological exposure to the Nagasaki atomic bomb explosion,is the topic of which I will be talking a bout. What is the psychological impact? Of course you may know that people were involved are dead or injured by the atomic bomb in Nagasaki City, but some people who were not injured, who were not contaminated or polluted with the radiation, still suffer from psychological fearsof being possible exposed to radiation.

by Prof Dr Yushiharu Kim

- CHILD SURVIVORS OF THE 1945 ATOMIC BOMBING OF HIROSHIMA & NAGASAKI

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This is the similar situation that happened in Fukushima where atomic power plants accidents happen. Many scientists say that the radioactivity were very low, hence, the effect would be negligible so the people did not have to worry. The people were never relieved. The people would question, “is it safe for my children, is it real safe for my grandfather, grandparents, there is evidence of security?”. Scientists always talk about evidence for harm, but people need evidence for security. In Nagasaki City, our work has been published in scientific journals together with the name of Dr. Atsuro Tsutsumi. The centre of Nagasaki is where the atomic bomb had fallen. The red zone was at first recognised as the “polluted area”

by Chinese government.

The people who were living in the red zone at the time were recognised as the atomic bomb survivors so they were offered medical services or pensions. Why were all the people in the red zone acknowledged?

Why were the people in the blue zone or green zone excluded from the public services? People in those areas protested a lot. Subsequently, the blue and green zones were not included in the area of the service. The people in the yellow area were also excluded from the services. Based upon researches, there is no pollution in these areas but the people were not satisfied because the people who were living on the edge of the red area, quite far from the red centre, were included in the services. However, some part of the yellow zone, were nearer to that centre, so why were they also excluded?

Parts of the answers were because there were mountains and the wind was blowing from North to South at the time but this was not the perfect solution for the people. The people in the yellow area continuously made claims to the Japanese government to include them in the Government’s target of services but there is no proof of the contamination radioactive activities in their area.The people claimedthey were suffering from psychological distress from the fear of being possibly pollutedby radioactive activities.

A report was madeand handed to the government.

Consequently, the government decided to make a research team to verify whether their psychological state was really impaired by the experience of the atomic bomb. This is the attitude of Japanese Government. It is important to understand the people in the yellow area witnessed the explosion of atomic bomb. It Is a very shocking experience actually but the radioactivity did not reach this yellow area, that is what scientists say but the people actually were exposed and psychologically involved in atomic bomb explosion.

When people watch such explosion in the near areas it is very natural for them to be shocked and worried about the possible harmful effects. People try to run away from the atomic bomb and made prayers for their future after the explosion. Limited people were included in the service and the people who were excluded were very angry about it. There so many young people here in the audience. I would like to ask you why cannot we just accept the complaints of the people suffering?

Why is the government unable to provide services to the affected people? It wassimply because there were so many complaints from people who were suffering.

This is sadly true. Therefore, we were needed to start the research to prove to the Government whether the psychological distress was really related to atomic bomb explosion experiences? How were we able to conduct a research on this? The basic point of a scientific research is to always compare. We compared people in the yellow area who witnessed the atomic bombing explosion to another type of group of people. This method is scientifically called “control people”. So what kind of people should we select? The group of people had to live in the same yellow area because they have had to experience other natural disasters such as typhoon and earthquakes in which they would share with the “subject”.

The “controls” on the other hand should not have any experiences of such involvement. We decided to select the people who came to the yellow area after the Nagasaki tragedy. This is the “control”. Thosewho migrated from outside within 10 years afterthe atomic bombingsandafterwardscontinued living in the yellow areas so that they were able to share every local events with the actual survivors.The only difference waswhether these people were or not witnesses of the atomic bomb explosion?

We majored psychological state and other health variables and so as the family environment, jobs and financial issues, and so on. Allthese variables statistically matched. People may suffer when they do not have enough money. People may suffer when they do not have education. Evidently, all these variables had to be statistically controlled to pick up pure effects of the experience of witnessing the atomic bomb explosion.

This statistical work was quite complicating. In 1945, there were 9,800 people in the yellow area who witnessed the bombingswhom were of young individual and some were even children.

The witnesses/ survivors were divided into 37

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Photo Credit : wall4all.me

according to the place they are living now, their age and sex. The“control”werechosen from the same districts of age and sex, making them now a similar distribution.

The results were divided according to age, sex, those who smoked, those who drink, years of education, job history, family members and so on. There were no significant differences in the said categories except for age and years of education but were statistically controlled afterwards. As for the physical health findings, there was no presence of physical diseases.

There were absolutely no difference between the “samples” and “controls”. However, there was a great mental health difference. All the mental health factors were actually worse than the group that witnessedthe atomic bombings compared to “controls”. So what does this mean?

In this type of study, researchers are always concerned about the tendency for exaggerating. These questionnaires are based upon what people say about their status. If some were to exaggerate their sufferings, it will affect and jeopardiseentirely the results of the survey. So what was the background of the mental health radiation? We surveyed the knowledge about atomic bomb or radiations with the following questions: 1. Are the lightning and sound of the atomic bombs related to radioactivity? No.

The first question is very, very important. Were people who witnessedthe lightning and heard great sounds of the bombing explosion equally exposed to radioactive activities? The answer is no. Only 25 percentfrom the survey answered correctly. This simplifies that the percentage of 75% of the peoplebelieved that witnessing lighting or hearing the sound of the explosion would cause them to be exposed to radioactivity. Unfortunately, this was a false belief for over 50 years and people were convinced that they were too, exposed to radiation. The people were uninformed and denial of the fact and did not accept the correct information.

There is a great lesson that we have to learn from this study. There is a traumatic event very sadly but there are traumatic events that there are information and interpretation of the events. So what actually traumatised the people? Could it be the direct impact of the event itself and the information on or interpretation people add into afterwards? There were no signs of escapism amongst the people. Most responders were diligent workers, they worked for their families and raised their children at their best. No onewas escaping from the real life. The interviewers sympathised for the victims which resulted to a bias report. In order to achieve a fair unbiased report, we employed raters outside in other far possible areas from Nagasaki city.

5. When X-rayed in a hospital, are you exposed to radioactivity?

The implication is firstly, anxiety of radiological pollution can develop independently over substantial pollutions. Even if they are not polluted directly by radioactive activities they have substantial fear. This is a psychological fact.Information provision should be done beyond the boundary of substantial pollution. I interviewed several individuals asking what were their understanding or knowledge of radioactive activities. It was to my shock that most of the survivors were educated through scarce knowledge of radioactive activities solely from the media, not from the government nor the authorities.

6. Are there acute and delayed types of exposure to radioactivity?

Appraisal or selective bias of information should be taken into account, even if knowledge the correct was

2. Radioactivity decreases according to the distance from the blast center. Yes or no?

3. Do radioactivity decrease according to the time of course?

4. There is no exposure to radioactivity in daily life.

Yes or no?

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provided, the people would still notaccept it. Not enough sympathy were given at the time and so when the facts of information finally came for the people’s circulation, they rejected it entirely.

Any information should haven been based upon humanitarian support and empathy to the people otherwise it would not be accepted.

Thank you

Scientific “safety” is different from psychological “security”. Our purpose is to reduce anxiety of the victims to encourage victims to regain their life again. Providing the people with just knowledge and information was not enough. Humanitarian interactions were to be done to ensure the people’s security psychologically.

This research was done 18 years after the atomic power plant accidents by another team of researchers. It was very difficult to conductthe research. The team were very smart in employing the clean up workers whocleaned the affected area after the bombing. These clean up workers were actually polluted to radioactivity to some extent but were not made aware of. Depression and anxiety disorder of PTSD were higher amongst them compared to “controls” who are living in the same city. The radiation affected the clean up workers’ working ability the most.

In conclusion, nuclear power plants and atomic

Photo Credit : Slides by Prof Dr Yushiharu Kim

bomb explosions are very harmful not only physically but also from a psychological point of view. It could have had a long lasting inference more than 50 years, that is half a century. Information provisions are very important but basic human interaction and human beliefs should have came first as only providing scientific knowledge to the people were not effective. The people in fukushima continued this Horse Festival for more than 1000 years ago beyond many civil wars and natural disasters with greater hope that they would recover their courage and continue their cultural activities in the future. I hope for the same too.

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ISTORIA MAGISTRA VITAE - LEARN FROM THE PAST. WORK FOR A FUTURE WITHOUT WARS.

by PROF DR PIERMAURO CATARINELLA

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he topic of this conference is really important and events like this one should be held very often in every community, small or big such as schools, universities, parliaments and the United Nations because the international community and us, as part of it, in my opinion, should never forget what wars have produced in the past and the aftermath on people’s lives. I think that everybody agrees that children are the most innocent members of our family, are our future and must have the right to grow up in a peaceful environment and should not experience any kind of violence, physical or mental or whatsoever. I chose three topics (unfortunately, very sad topics) that I would like to share with you today: the atrocities committed on children by the Nazi’s regime during the Second World War in Europe (1933-1945), by the Serbian troops in the region of East Europe that was known as Yugoslavia before it collapsed and was divided in many single individual states (1991 – 1995) and by the Zionist State of Israel from 1948 till today.

I know Europe is far from this region (South East Asia) but the wars, all the wars, no matter where they take place, are very similar. At this moment, when we are sharing something together in this comfortable and peaceful hall, in many parts of our world, wars are ongoing and children are tortured, killed, raped, used as soldiers, weapons or human shields.

Debates like the one we are having now in Kuala Lumpur can be an important tool for everyone, but especially for the younger generation, to understand that wars have never solved human problems. If we understand this, one day, hopefully, wars will disappear. I know this might be like a dream but I like to think (and I want to believe) that sometimes dreams can become true.

Atrocities towards children committed by the Nazi’s regime during the Second World War (1933- 1945).

I was not born yet when the Second World War took place in Europe but I was told many stories about this dark period of our history by witnesses who were able to survive in the so called “concentration camps”. The wounds that the World War II left are still alive even if that war ended 70 years ago and it is always good and positive to remind ourselves of the atrocities that were committed in that period.

We hope that it will not happen again and we take a lesson from the past. Historia magistra vitae. It has been proven that the Nazi regime tortured and killed more than 15 million people from different European countries (France, Greece, Italy, Austria, Poland, Denmark, Holland and Germany itself) and one third of these 15 million were innocent children. Children who did not belong to that particular race that the Nazis called “Aryan” and for this reason did not deserve to live. The World War II and the killings committed by the Nazis are often associated with the term “Holocaust”.

The Nazi nomenclature targeted million people from all over Europe. Some were Jews (who were considered a menace for the German economy and for this reason

had to be exterminated and kicked out from the society) but the majority of the victims were killed only because “undesirable” according to the fanatic “nazi doctrine”: for instance they were not pure “Aryan”, belonged to some ethnic groups that the Nazis judged “inferior” (such as Rom, Sinti, Jenisch) or simply because handicapped. Nazis’ victims were deported from the country where they were born and brought to the concentration camps that the Nazis built all over Europe. They were called concentration camps because they were used to physically concentrate all the ethnic groups that were not “Aryan”. There were about twenty thousand concentration camps where children from 4 to 15 years old were used as slaves and forced to work at least 14 hours per day, without medical assistance and poor nutrition.

Those who were able to arrive alive to the final destination (the concentration camp where they were assigned) were taken away from parents and those who were still in good health were selected by the Nazis who were running these concentration camps. Many of these children were used as human cavies for medical experiments. In the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau, both located in Poland, Dachau, 15 km from Monaco of Bavaria, Germany, there were German medical doctors, like Josef Mengele, Erwin DingSchuler, Karl Brandt, Helmut and Edward Wirths, Carl Clauberg, Horst Schumann, Sigmund Rascher, Carl Peter Vaernet, who conducted many types of unhuman experiments on children. Another infamous concentration camp was Buchenwald established in July 1937; it was one of the largest camps in Germany.

It takes its name from a village on the hill Ettersberg, about eight kilometres from Weimar, in Thuringia, in eastern Germany. It was built on a hill covered with a dense extension of beech trees (Buchenwald literally means beech forest).

Some of these experiments were aimed at studying if and for how long a child could survive without oxygen.

Of course most of the young victims died after 2 or 3 minutes and after the experiments, the dead bodies were sectioned and studied. Another cruel experiment conducted on children was to put them in cold water pools to see how long a child’s body could resist in the cold or frozen water. The temperature was between 2 and 5 degrees Celsius and these children were kept inside for about 50 to 95 minutes. Of course most of them died after a while and those who did not die even after 95 minutes in frozen water were reanimated with special drugs. Those who were reanimated did not die immediately even if they suffered heart disease or other different ones. New vaccines were tested on children in order to prove if they were effective or not because many Nazi soldiers were killed in Russia by the hepatitis epidemic and the doctors in the concentration camps wanted to test new vaccines. Another experiment was to test if it was possible to change the colour of children’s eyes because in the Nazi’s ideology, the so called “Aryan JUNE 2015 CRIMINALISE WAR

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race”, should only have blue eyes.

All these experiments failed and all the children became blind and were subsequently killed in gas chambers.

Children aged between 12 and 16 who looked a little bit effeminate were forced to consume massive doses of testosterone in order to find a “cure” against an alleged form of homosexuality. Infamous experiments were conducted on twins. The research started from meticulous measurements and absolutely precise comparison between the twins. After measuring and exploring every inch of the body of the twins and check for their differences, the subjects were put asleep with an injection of Evipan on the arm and then killed with an injection of chloroform. After the bodies were dissected and studied from the inside. 15% of the twins examined were killed in this way, or during any surgical operation.

I can never forget the stories that Rita Prigmore, an Italian woman who is now 72 years old and who escaped the Nazis trials in 1943, told me. The Nazis tried to change the colour of her eyes when she was 2 years old. She had a twin sister who was killed during a medical experiment. Rita Prigmore always visits schools and universities to tell the new generation about her experience and shows no rage towards anyone. She always ends her speeches with the following sentences: “No more, no more wars, no more violence towards children”.

Acts of war committed by child soldiers towards adults and other children during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (the ex Yugoslavia, 1992 - 1995). The enrolment of children: a large phenomenon that is extended in many parts of the world.

Another war took place in Europe after the Second World War (in the ex Yugoslavia) between 1992 and 1995 and it was also a massacre of children. In this war that ended only twenty years ago, many children were used as soldiers and were taught to kill, to shoot, to torture and to use any kind of weapons.

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The reasons for this war are to be found in a sort of ethnic cleansing that the Serbians perpetrated towards the other population of the ex Yugoslavia. The three leaders of this infamous war are Slobodan Milosevic, Radovan Karadzic and General Ratko Mladic who are now under trial now and charged in the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. This war involved thousands and thousands of children as professional soldiers, some as young as only 6 years old.

More than 15 thousand were killed and those who survived face serious and incurable psychological and physical problems - problems that perhaps can be alleviated but not solved. All the protests that had been organized during this war (inside and outside the ex Yugoslavia) have not prevented the holding and the continuation of the war in Bosnia. Unfortunately the use of children of very young age during war is becoming very common in our modern wars. The Convention on the Rights of the Child prohibits the recruitment of soldiers who are under the age of 15 years. This Convention was signed by virtually all governments of the world, except two: Somalia and the United States (which have signed, but not ratified).

The United States of America offer the international community poor examples: not only, together with Somalia, are the only ones not to have ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1989, but they apply, together with Australia, the UK and many other countries, the practice of accepting volunteers of sixteen years in the regular army.

The use of child soldiers is extended to a large part of the world. In Cambodia, a survey carried out in military hospitals on soldiers who were injured by land mines showed that 43% of respondents had been recruited between 10 and 16 years. In some cases, the boys did not enlist voluntarily, but were compelled by force to take this step, after being kidnapped.

For example, in Ethiopia, in the

90s, the police and the military went around the streets picking up young people and teenagers in the villages and in the poorest areas of the city. In Myanmar, whole groups of teenagers, aged between 15 and 17 years were taken while they were at school and made to enlist by force. The young soldiers recruited by force sometimes were released upon payment of a sort of ransom from the family.

In Liberia, about a quarter of the soldiers of the various warring factions were minors, approximately 20,000 individuals, including children and adolescents.

The FNPL (National Patriotic Front of Liberia) had one of its units of minors, aged between 6 and 20 years old, involved in acts of war. Even opposition movements kidnapped children to get them to enlist in their army: this happened, for example, in Angola, Mozambique, Sri Lanka and Sudan. The reasons, for which a minor under the age of 15 joins the active armed force, whether governmental or relating to an opposition group, are many. The strongest motivation is economic but it is not the only one.

ATROCITIES TOWARDS PALESTINIANS CHILDREN COMMITTED BY ISRAEL (1948 TILL TODAY).

My last topic of my speech wants to deal with the barbarian atrocities committed by the State of Israel towards the innocent and helpless children of Palestine for more than 50 years (they started in the year 1948 and they are still ongoing).

After the end of the Second World War the winning powers, at the expense of the State and people of Palestine, decided to create the Zionist State of Israel. Israel, after its creation, started invading and conquering neighboring lands that belonged to other people (the Palestinians). These people, starting from the year 1948, were deprived of their own land, their fundamental and basic human rights, killed and slaughtered by the Israel troops, supported and funded by the all

the Israel leaders who were in power from 1948 until today (from David Ben Gurion until Benjamin Netanyauh), in defiance of any rule of the international law. The list of massacres committed by Israel, in which white phosphorus illegal bombs were used, causing the painful death of thousands and thousands of Palestinians children, is too long; also it is really unbelievable and unbearable that not even one Israel leader has been brought before the International Criminal Court at the Hague for crimes against humanity - not until the Chief Prosecutor of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission initiated charges against retired Israel General Amos Yaron and the State of Israel before the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal in 2012.

for us, even if none of the victims can ever obtain justice in custodial terms or even war reparations. The moot point is simply this, the Kuala Lumpur Tribunal has established a principle of international justice that no state is above the law. The world and especially the young generation must know that too many innocent people were killed in atrocious ways by the Israeli soldiers in many Palestinian refugee camps and, once again, too many poor and helpless children were the victims.

Nobody can forget the horrible and inhuman Sabra and Shatila’s massacre (or slaughter) committed by the Israeli soldiers on September 1982 or the “Cast Lead” operation between 2008 and 2009. Until when do we have to stand these barbaric atrocities and these blatant violations of the international law?

It was a courageous panel of international and independent judges of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal who, on November the 25th 2013, returned a verdict of guilty of crimes against humanity and genocide against both the defendants. Granted that the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal is merely a tribunal of conscience with no real power of enforcement, we must salute the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal for its valour to do what no others have done before - take Israel to court and convict that state of the crime of genocide. This, in the words of Tun Dr. Mahathir, is a moral victory

CONCLUSION: All the wars, sooner or later, end and this is possible if there is the intervention of the international community through using the tools of diplomacy and politics but these tools should be expanded and modernised. Many world leaders recognise the procedures governing the Security Council are obsolete and not efficient and, therefore, should be reformed. The Second World War and the Nazi regime could be stopped much earlier if the international community acted faster. The same can be said about the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The atrocities in the Palestine also can be stopped. The United Nations and the Security Council, the only existing bodies until today that put together the international community, need to introduce, in my opinion, other more profitable instruments.

Currently the Security Council, as recognised by many parties, is too slow and needs a deep and radical reform from within. The wars not only can be nipped in the bud but can also be avoided if there is the political will to do so and the international diplomacy has rapid and modern tools to do so. My appeal to all world leaders of today and to the young generation who will be the future world’s leaders is to act fast in order to make, with no further procrastination, reforms in the Security Council’s activity.

We do not want wars anymore. We want respect, care and love for the children of all over the world.

All depends on us as part of the human society but the younger generation can do much more (and better). Young people must study the history, know exactly what happened in the past, how cruel and barbarian we are (we as human beings) and learn from the mistakes done in the past. The younger generation is surely smarter than the previous ones and can succeed where others failed. This is my warm auspice that I want to express today.

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International Conference on the “New World Order” 84

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What kind of world would one choose to live in? If you have the choice, you could decide on a host of ideal situations, environment, income and quality of life. That is provided there is free choice. But what happens if there is no such freedom where every aspect of life is controlled and predetermined by an all powerful albeit unknown group?

That is perhaps what could happen in the New World Order (NWO). As part of their Grand Design, these powerful political and economic leaders could determine even the number of people on Earth, who lives or who dies!

That is a thought that instills fear. This was the subject of an International Conference hosted by the Perdana Global Peace Foundation (PGPF) with the theme The New World Order – A Recipe For War or Peace, at the Putrajaya International Convention Centre (PICC) on 9th March 2015.

Both the President of PGPF, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad and the Chairman of PGPF Tan Sri Norian Mai took pains to provide explanations – that NWO could be an attempt by a rich and very powerful group of people bent on total domination of the world.

That a group with vested interest and with links to the rich and powerful and perhaps even a Royal Family, are seeking to exert total domination over all aspects of life on this Earth.

It was indeed an impressive panel of academics, thinkers and social activists who were assembled to provide a captive audience at the PICC with their understanding of what the NWO is or what it could be, and why certain events have taken place. In his Keynote address, Tun Dr Mahathir termed the NWO as nothing but an Old Order, as this attempt at world domination has been around for more than a century.

He reminded the audience that the all powerful group wanted to reduce the total population to just about 1.5billion, at a time when the world population stood at 3 billion. This reduction could be carried out by starvation or even by the mere killing of those who do

not conform to their strict code of conduct. Today the world population stands at 7 billion.

The former Prime Minister of Malaysia also termed the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) as a “New World Order” (NWO) ploy that would lead to the world’s most powerful countries dominating the global economy. Dr Mahathir claimed that the TPPA, like many other free trade agreements, is a way for the NWO to establish a “one world government” through globalisation, as no other approach appears to be viable any longer.

“It’s not a partnership. All the countries which participate will be subjected to more rules than they ever had before. The TPPA is not about free trade, it’s about trade subjected to all kinds of laws and regulations, exposing countries to be sued by the international courts.”

The founder of PGPF also claimed that the countries that remain “recalcitrant” or refuse to conform to the trade agreement will be threatened by economic sanctions under this NWO. Among others, Dr Mahathir listed down Iran and Russia as examples. The TPPA is a free trade agreement that has been negotiated by the US, Malaysia and nine other nations as part of the larger Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership since 2010.

In a very slick and attention grabbing presentation Dr Thomas PM Barnett claimed that the world today is a much safer place, there have been no epidemics like the Spanish Flu that took more than 60 million lives, that even AIDS and Ebola have not decimated populations. In the first 35 years after the nuclear bomb was developed there were 7 countries that acquired the weapon and became members of the Nuclear Club.

But in the next 35 years, only 2 new members qualified to join that club. While many other countries have nuclear capability, no nuclear war has been fought and no bomb has been dropped on any target since 1945.

While the Cuban Crisis heightened tensions between the two superpowers, namely the US and the then USSR, nothing untoward happened, except that the dangers were highlighted.

While Dr Barnett acknowledged the many failures in US policy in many parts of the world, he claimed that the US has put in place measures that seem to penalise itself more than other economies.

“Globalisation comes with rules. US pioneered the creation of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the general agreement on trade and tariffs that became the WTO,” Barnett said, referring to the World Trade Organisation. Well, the country most sued, since the WTO court was created, was the US. The country that has lost more suits than anybody else in the world in the WTO court, has been the US,” he added.

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Barnett, who is an author and public speaker, further claimed that the US has even allowed the emergence of rival trading blocs such as the BRICs -- comprising Brazil, Russia, India and China – and MINT – made up of Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Turkey, instead of stifling them.

However the presentation by the US security adviser came in for some heavy criticism from many others. Almost all speakers insisted that jihadist groups such as alQaeda and the Islamic State were funded by the US and its allies, which included the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Israel.

“They say Muslims are terrorists, but it just so happens that terrorists are Made in America. They’re not the product of Muslim society, and that should be abundantly clear to everyone on this floor,”

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said Dr Michel Chossudovsky, the University of Ottawa’s Emeritus Professor of Economics.

“The global war on terrorism is a fabrication, a big lie and a crime against humanity,” added the founder of the Centre for Research on Globalisation. He added the global war on terrorism was then used as justification for Islamophobia and to enact antiterrorism laws that he claimed inadvertently demonised Muslims in the Western world through methods such as racial profiling.

Prof Chossudovsky asserted that NATO and the Turkish High Command were also responsible for recruiting members of IS and al-Qaeda’s affiliate the Al Nusra Front, while Israel is funding “global jihad elements inside Syria”.

In a rather moderate tone and providing the perspective from

an Islamic viewpoint was Dr Din Syamsuddin, the chairman of Muhammadiyah in Indonesia, an organisation that has 29 million members. A staunch supporter of the Inter-Faith movement, he reminded the audience of what the Holy Koran reveals about faith, hope and belief.

He stressed there was a need for tolerance, for understanding and goodwill in the fight against terrorism. Local scholar and social activist, Dr Chandra Muzaffar provided the strongest arguments to debunk Dr Barnet’s theory that the world is in a much better shape now than ever before when he made reference to the many flaws in US policy that had far reaching consequences, such as the overthrow of the legitimate Salvador Allende government in Chile, the establishment of the rule of Shah Reza Pahlawi in Iran in 1953 and several others, all engineered by the US.

All these had disastrous consequences. Total US support for Israel and its actions allow that country to label anyone not agreeing with their occupation of Palestine as “terrorists”. Dr Chandra also pointed out Muslims are being manipulated by the US to create a state of fear and turmoil.

Liberation movements in many troubled spots have support in terms of armaments and funding.

He asked if anyone had truly looked at the situation in Ukraine and at the historical perspective with regard to Crimea. He stressed that it was the Palestinians who faced the greatest challenges.

Providing the Lebanese viewpoint was a former general and currently a professor of geopolitics at the American University of Beirut was Elias Hanna, who described the current situation in his country as most stable and peaceful.

Once the hotbed of insurgency, political unrest, and sectarian

conflict, the country is recovering from the earlier turmoil and playing an active role in Middle East affairs.

Whilst Southern Lebanon was once the soft belly of the nation and needed Syrian support, Lebanon now provides a buffer zone for Syria in the Golan Heights.

Long time investigative journalist and a former editor of Japan Times, Yoichi Shimatsu provided shocking evidence of Israeli involvement in many of the calamities of recent times. Initial information, even before the start of an official inquiry into MH17, raise serious questions of whether Israeli intelligence tampered with the flight controls and radar identification (transponder) system of the Malaysian-operated Boeing-777.

Security at Schipol Airport in Amsterdam is operated by ICTS, an Israeli-owned airport security company based in The Netherlands founded by former officers of the Shin Beit intelligence agency.

Its subsidiaries are also involved in key security functions there.

In concluding remarks, PGPF adviser and former minister Tan Sri Dr Rais Yatim also blamed the Western world for tarnishing Islam by calling the militant group Islamic State, claiming that the rest of the world had unquestioningly followed suit.

The so-called Islamic State or IS militant group should be referred to as a terrorist or extremist group, instead of what it is called now.

He said the ‘Islamic State’ was a crucial term and it gave a sinful connotation to an Islamic state itself. “One cannot accept IS as referring to Islamic State just like that. It (IS militant group) is evil.

An Islamic state is not evil. An Islamic state is dictated by syariah law.”

The term Islamic State was widely used because the United States used it. Because the United States uses that word, we use that word as

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well,” he added. At a news conference later, PGPF president Tun Dr Mahathir said the IS militant group was not an Islamic state but a bunch of terrorists. “We were introduced to the term, Islamic State, by the United States and we accept it. This is not an Islamic state but a terrorist group. They might have been trained and supplied with weapons and money by those who call them IS. Therefore, we need to think over why the IS comprises Muslims who kill fellow Muslims,” he said.

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C American military leaders have a fixation with the “body count” tag. Remember Vietnam where the daily count was cause for great joy with the Commanding General of US Forces ? They beguiled themselves with the notion that with so many “kills” they must be winning the war… and a gullible US press was only too pleased to report it, in the hope of appeasing a public who had become weary of the war in Vietnam especially since so many G.I’s had lost their young lives. If the body count continued, the conscripts would be home soon….!!!!

The sorry truth, was that this body count did not matter at all. A determined Vietnamese nation fought for its survival and rid itself of the menace that landed on their homeland.

This raises the question then: if the military in the US actually knows how to fight a war? Since World War II, the US has only once completed a winning mission of warfare – in Grenada. All the others were efforts undertaken in collaboration with coalition forces. Iraq and Afghanistan stand out like sore thumbs when one considers US “successes” in the theaters of war.

Right now the “body count” term is popping up again, this time in relation with IS, whose forces are on a trail of destruction in Iraq and Syria. There are claims that the number 2 of IS has been killed, his wife taken captive, so on and so forth. In the meantime, priceless artifacts have been destroyed as a helpless world watches. This begs the question: what are the IS forces really up to? Islam is a very tolerant religion which allows for other religions and practices to exist in harmony with it. So there is really no reason, especially not even in the Koran, for such wanton destruction to be undertaken in the name of Islam. If we lose ancient heritages, the world becomes that much poorer.

So the body count, drone attacks and blundering military planning will come to naught if no clear plans are put forth. And yet President Obama claims that his strategy in facing up to the IS threat is a “winning” one.

How much more naïve can they get?

At the same time it is heart wrenching to note the plight of today’s “boat people”, desperate Rohingyas and Bangladeshis who have fled their homelands because of persecution and their desire of finding a better place to live and work. Europe also faces its own migrant influx, with many saved and many more lost at sea.

We first got to hear of the “boat people” shortly after the end of the Vietnam war. Malaysia was a port of call, a stop-over really. Settlements were established while these remarkable people pursued their dreams. They did not want to settle here, rather they were seeking “greener” pastures in Australia (the pun is intended) and the US. Admittedly we had no real clue as to how to deal with them, so some mistakes may have been made way back in the 70s. So we should have been better prepared for this new influx that has landed on our shores.

Common sense now reigns as these people have been given temporary shelter.

Before this situation becomes a time bomb, nations of the region must ensure a long term solution. Myanmar must own up to its responsibilities.

omment

by G.S. Kumar

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ROYAL DINNER “Some Enchanted Evening”

A Royal Dinner “Some Enchanted Evening” organised by the Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War was held on the 18th April 2015 as a means of highlighting some of the events and activities of the foundation and the Criminalise War Club.

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ROYAL DINNER “SOME ENCHANTED EVENING” PORTRAITS

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01

02 03 07 01 Wan Zaleha Radzi, well-known Emcee, for the glorious Royal Dinner.

02 Flower girls for the night : Wan Alya Farihah bt Ariff and Putri Airish bt Abdullah

05

03 The Arrival of the Founder of the Kuala

Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

04 DBKL (Dewan Bandaraya Kuala Lumpur)

dancers escorting the VIPs on the red carpet to the Merdeka Hall.

05 CWC Executive, Prabhakaran S. Nair (third from left), with his guests.

04

06 Members of the Royal Dinner food tasting

06

Committee from left to right : Tunku Datuk Dr Hjh Sofiah Jewa, Fauziyah Abu Hassan, Dr Zulaiha Ismail, Alwizah Al-Yafii Kamal, Azizullaili bin Dato’ Seri Jalaluddin, Sophian Ab Rahman (Protocol Officer of Istana Negara), Dato’ Dr Yaacob Hussain Merican, Jamaludin Rejab (Senior Manager of PWTC), Aazraa Ala Merican, Futri Najla Salleh, Wan Azlian Wan Ahmad

07 A centerpiece, courtesy of the Putra World Trade Centre, for the Royal Table of the Royal Dinner “Some Enchanted Evening”.

08 Putri Airish Abdullah, hands a bouquet of

flowers to the Founder of Criminalise War Club (CWC), Tun Dr Siti Hasmah Mohd Ali.

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Dato’ Mohamad Ariff bin Md Yusof, Tan Sri Dato’ Sri Hj Abdul Halil Hj Abdul Mutalif, Prof Salleh Buang, Tan Sri Norian Mai, YABhg Tun Ahmad Sarji bin Abdul Hamid, YABhg Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, YABhg Tun Dr Siti Hasmah Mohd Ali, YABhg Toh Puan Sagiyah Salikin, YTM Tunku Datuk Dr Hjh Sofiah Jewa, Puan Sri Nabiha bt Mahmur, Raja Rafekha Ahmad Khan, Datin Hakimah Hassan

Ravikumar Krishnappa, Dr KKJohan, Azizullaili bin Dato’ Seri Jalaluddin, Prof Datuk Dr Andrew Mohanraj, Putri Airish bt Abdullah, Dato’ Dr Yaacob Hussain Merican, Wan Alya Farihah bt Ariff, Dr Zulaiha Ismail, Alwizah Al-Yafii Kamal, Futri Najla Salleh, Fauziyah Abu Hassan, Nur Qistina Ganding

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ACK OW

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K O D A K

M O M E N T S

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OYAL DINNER

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“So me Enc hanted Ev ening”

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Galeria de fotos 96

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Behind the scenes ...

INTERNATIONAL FORUM 2015 & ROYAL DINNER “SOME ENCHANTED EVENING”

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CRIMINALISE WAR CLUB

Salam Ms. Ala,

rlebih dahulu. nalkan diri saya te ke er mp me ya sa Izinkan l Rahim dan saya Rahimie Bin Abdu ah ial ya sa ma Na ur Foundation to cebook Kuala Lump ‘Fa ti iku ng me lah te n lamanya. Disini, LFCW)’ untuk sekia Criminalise War (K da saudari untuk tuk menulis kepa saya terpanggil un ami isteri) yang n berharga kami (su berkongsi pengalama bertuah. Baruar kami benar-ben n ka sa ra me mi ka mana i ‘International eri telah menghadir ist n da ya sa , ini baru e’ anjuran KLFCW War, Energise Peac e lis ina im Cr m: ru Fo Forum ini telah de Centre (PWTC). di Putra World Tra anya, YABhg Tun Dr h pemimpin, antar dihadiri ramai toko Pengerusi KLFCW selaku Pengasas & Pengasas Mahathir Mohamad ah Mohd Ali selaku sm Ha i Sit Dr n Tu g dan YABh C). Pengalaman lise War Club (CW ina im Cr i us er ng & Pe kali ini terlalu antarabangsa pada m ru fo i dir ha ng me t yang diperolehi mi berdua. Manfaa ‘istimewa’ untuk ka n jenayah perang mi menginsafi kesa sangat besar dan ka san dengan akibat a. Saya amat terke kanak-kanak pada keseluruhanny anya kesan terhadap tam ru te ng ra pe jenayah Malaysia, kita psikologi. Syukur, di n pu hu ma l ika fiz secara an. Didoakan maian dan keaman da ke ti ma nik me masih anjangan. ini berkekalan berp agar kesejahteraan diran akna dengan keha jarah ini lebih berm Kami . ini i at rm ho Pengalaman berse ng amat kami ya in mp mi pe h ko ngenali keduakedua-dua to dengan hanya me ar es mb me n da an media seperti dilahirkan ini menerusi salur in mp at mi pe h ko kedua to jujurnya, kami am abar tempatan. Se kh rat i. su lag ah cil sk ke na jak n TV da in ini se kedua-dua pemimp n ha at ko to mp ke se i mi um ka ag r, meng bereda disini, sebelum kami n Ingin saya tambah mi terus menyataka Ka . hir at ah M Dr n Tu g Bh YA an an ng de berjumpa deng n’. Tun membalas e are with you Tu n dan aa mp rju pe sokongan kami ‘W un rp ank You’. Bia ‘Th ta rka be il yang mb ta sa ka senyuman ad, tiada g Tun sangat terh Bh YA an kan ng ata de ny me lan dapat perbua tapa bertuah kami be n ka uar ar dil mb ta ga rju u be mamp n. Antara s kepada YABhg Tu ru te ah’. jar mi rse ka ‘Be an n ng da ko so rlalu Istimewa’ ‘Te . ah rtu be h gu kan jutaan sana, kami sung ini untuk mengucap ng lua pe bil am ng to’ Dr Yaacob Kami ingin me niah kepada YBhg Da tan g lun ka se n da diatas kejayaan terima kasih aha Agong KLFCW us tia Se n, ica er M a Menjenayahkan Hussain Forum Antarabangs n ka jur an ng me KLFCW kami abadikan dalam alaman berharga ini ng ar Pe .

TC PW di ng Pera an. Saya berdoa ag iran) sebagai kenang mp a (la ias nt ar se mb ah ga sm uk Ha nt i be Bhg Tun Dr Sit YA n da hir at ik. ah ba M YABhg Tun Dr n kesihatan yang erkati serta diberika a yang tercinta, dilindungi dan dib jahteraan negara kit se ke n ka oa nd me kasih kerana sudi Saya juga dan damai. Terima an am a ias nt se ia Malays ya. membaca coretan sa Wasalam, Rahimie Abdul Rahim ail.com> < azuinrahimie@gm 15 20 ril Ap Sabtu, 25

Sent via email

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Letters

TO THE EDITOR Dear Sir, Please convey to our dear frie nd Yaacob that everything was excellent and better.

There was only one hitch for me, that my seating got mixed up at the dinner program, but even that turned out to be fortuitous, putting me right next to Malaysia’s top chemist for the palm-oil ind ustry. As you know “green energy” is a ma jor topic for my environmental science work and journalism, so everything went better tha n planned.

When I get back to Chiang Mai after work time in Hong Kong and now in Bangkok, I will get on with the bio-story of the young author of “3 Birds”.

There is still so much to do to foster peace and end the war mania, and I will do my best to continue alongside and wit h the KLFCW. Yoichi Shimatsu <yoishimatsu@yahoo.com>

Sent via email

The Editor Criminalise War M

agazine

Sir, Re : Psychologica

l impact of war

on children- the

invisible trauma The Trauma & M ental Health repo rt released by Yo reveals that in th rk University, Ca e past decade, ei nada ghteen million ch in the chaos of ildren are being war. Over 2 mill raised ion children have have been disabl been killed, 6 m ed, 20 million ar illion e homeless, and become separa more than 1 mill ted from their io n pa ha re ve nts. Many child horror as their ho ren have watch mes and school ed s in ar death of their lo e destroyed and ved ones and man have witnessed the y have lied throug believed they wou h situations whe ld themselves be re they killed. The psycho it difficult to func logical damage m tion, to be succes akes sful in school, to friends and fam have relationshi ily. Children havi ps with ng had more ye conflict, struggle ars exposed to to recover from violent years of compoun pervasive feelin ding traumas an gs of depression, d reveal an xiety, hopelessne and anger. When ss, grief, resentm they become ad ent ults they show po they find difficu or ‘coping skills” lty in tackling da where ily situations. As propensity to ab young adults they use alcohol and show a illegal substances can be impaired . Their personal in the sense they ities too are unable to fo and show irritabi rm trusting relatio lity over trivial m nships atters. They cons low self-esteem tantly live in fear and bear hatred , have or entertain reveng towards violence e and show tend . With conflicts an ency d resulting displa be an increase in cements, there te instances of child nds to abuse and neglec imposed by bigg t of children. Sanc er nations over tions “recalcitrant ” co insecurity and la untries causes’ ck of medical su food pplies which sig Lack of nutrient nificantly affect s result in gene children. rations of stun children. One ne ted and malno ed not kill or mai urished m children to ac people. Slowly, st hieve the destru arving out childre ct io n of a n ca Even children w n quite easily ac ho are not born hieve the same en yet may suffer. d.

Radioactive mat erials in bombs may cause birth for years to co defects and abno me. Toxins and rmalities teratogens in w shown to result eaponry used ca in birth defects n have and premature attention, and in births. Despite ternational outc media ry an to be the silent d condemnation, victims of wars de children continue clared with impu refreshing to no nity. That is why te that a few w , it was eeks ago in Kual an Internationa a Lumpur, we w l forum entitled itnessed “Engaging the Yo and Energise Pe ung to Criminal ace” officiated ise War by the Deputy Muhyiddin Yassin Prime Minister, himself. The pass Tan Sri ion displayed by in opposing war students at the s was inspiring to forum th e adults present. “un sugar coated In straight forwar “language they expressed their d, and indeed stup anguish over th idity of wars. On e futility e student, Puteri Tunku Kurshiah Fateh Arina Mer College kept the ican from audience spellb when she recited ound and overw her poem. “3 Bi helmed rds”, an ode to th or perished in th ose who went m e three Malaysia issing related air trage reference to the dies. In one stan ill fated flight M za in H17 she laments :

by Prof Datuk Dr Andrew Mohanra j <andrewmohan raj@gmail.com>

Sent via email

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“ The second (bird ) died of murder, with wings rent asunder, by an unknown hunter; Was it downed by enemy fire, or was it just a fri endly blunder?”

Clearly there was hope in the child ren at the confer only a child can ence. They prov truly understand ed that the pain of war it seems invisib on another child le to the adults when of this world. By implicitly allow our silence, we wars to underm adults ine the very foun lives, maiming th dations of our ch eir bodies and st ildren’s ealing their spiri t.

CRIMINALISE WAR CLUB

SCOURGE OF WAR AS SEEN THROUGH THE EYES OF 3 CRIMINALISE WAR CLUB (CWC) MEMBERS

“HOW WAR SHAPED US”

“3 BIRDS”

“A STUDENT’S TAKE ON WAR”

AIMAN SYAKIR ABDUL HARIS Sekolah Sultan Alam Shah

PUTERI FATEH ARINA MERICAN

Tunku Kurshiah College

LOW CHUEN LEIK Cempaka International School

The 17-year-old Head of Productions in the Sekolah Sultan Alam Shah (SAS) Islamic Board and Chief Editor of the school magazine’s editorial board. His multimedia works, from graphics to video editing have been vital for SAS’ formal events. When he’s not glued to a laptop screen, he spends time reading history books and mastering photography. He even enjoys travelling and has recently made an excursion to The West Bank.

A 15-year-old secondary four student and a pioneer member of the CWC. At seven, she penned her first perspective on the horrors of war, a piece which appeared in several periodicals. She is on the editorial board of her school magazine, The Saujana. She loves novels, poems and music. Today, she is dressed as a member of her college orchestra to highlight their plight of having lost their entire collection of musical instruments worth a million ringgit when the roof of their school music room came crashing down during a freak storm last year.

A student of Cempaka International School, Malaysia in Junior 2, Academic Year 2015. He is 17 years of age and have been a student in Cempaka for the past 11 years.

He has a deep interest in the area of public speaking and enjoys participating in Debate Competitions as he believes that effective public speaking skills are a vital part of communication in this globalised world we live in today, as the power of speech is immeasurable. He is a member of the Chess Club and TED Ed Club.

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MODERATOR Wan Azlian Ahmad

ELOCUTION CONTEST TROPHIES

by The BrandLaureate

JUDGE John Philpot

JUDGE Chew Bee Peng

JUDGE Prof Datuk Dr Andrew Mohanraj

CONTESTANTS Aiman Syakir Abdul Haris, Puteri Fateh Arina Merican, Low Chuen Leik

Sekolah Sultan Alam Shah, Tunku Kurshiah College, Cempaka International School

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REPRESENTATIVES OF THE 3 SCHOOLS

CRIMINALISE WAR CLUB by AIMAN SYAKIR ABDUL HARIS from SEKOLAH SULTAN ALAM SHAH

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# 1

First of all, I’d like to give my utmost appreciation to Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, Tun Dr Siti Hasmah Mohd Ali, the guests of honour, and my beloved family at the back there. Before we begin, I’d like to share you all with some rather intelligent words from Ernest Hemingway :

{{

HOW WAR SHAPED US

c o n t e s t a n t

In war... you will die like a dog for no good reason.

-

ernest

hemingway

-

War is often associated with brutalities and terror. In fact it’s true, and it does affect who we are now. Let’s take a few moments to understand what sort of events are categorised as war crimes. Here are just some. Let’s say, war is always a crime. It’s never something good anyway anyhow. I’m going to pinpoint the three main reasons why the atrocities happen and how they shape us now. Firstly, because they could. Second, because they want to. And lastly, because everyone else was doing it. Or if you’d prefer fancier academic terms... Technology.

Ideology. And the escalating cycle of violence. Let’s see the first one. Technology. It wasn’t just machine guns and airplanes in the battlefield. Industrialisation producesmass munitions that’ll certainly lead to wasteful overkill. Oh, and urbanisation too. They gathered huge populations in a place for them only to end being blown up by our old friend Mr. Nuclear! Can we ever escape the clutches of technology?

So where do these modernity of weapons lead us to? The nuclear

bombings have been causing radiations, mutations. And a new level of weaponry, such as chemicals will certainly cause more damage and effects in the future.

So let’s move on to Ideology. Here are some of the few wars driven by ideology. You can see that religion is also a catalyst in ideological wars. Solzhenitsyn has stated – to kill by the millions, you’ll need an ideology.

Gruesome picture, isn’t it? Here are the death tolls “honourably” done by our past leaders. Note that every leader has his own ideology, leading to mass killings. The rapid rise of communism in the 50s did play a substantial role to the clash of ideologies, being a catalyst for war!

Religion, take the Muslim world for example, has divided into separate understandings, Sunni claiming to be the true Islam, then Shiite denies.

In a utopia, everyone is forever happy. In fact, many of us agree that it’s permissible to divert a runaway trolley that threatens to kill five people onto a side track where it would kill only one.If it

40,000,000

40,000,000

40,000,000

20,000,000 17,000,000

4,000,000

Adolf Hitler

Genghis Khan

Mao Zedong

were a billion lives one could save by diverting the trolley, how many people would be permissible to sacrifice to maintain that infinite good? A few millions can be a pretty good bargain. These people.

They’re practically same. But what divides them? Religion. Ideology.

This “g” word is somehow the worst accusation you can point to a country. It’s somehow very very bad. Yeah because it’s a brutal thing. So here’s how they define genocide. I’d like to pinpoint a few weaknesses of these definitions.

Firstly, it is too broad in theory, and too narrow in practice.

Almost every conflict in history can be described as “intent to destroy by causing serious harm”. And so far, only the Holocaust, mass killings in Bosnia & Rwanda have been recognised by international courts

Joseph Stalin

Timur

Napoleon

as genocide. These are some of the death tolls caused by genocides.

It is indeed that they don’t have the sense of humanity.No serious matter? Finally, we’re in the last point. The escalating cycle of violence.

Each killing creates orphans who would grow up one day to avenge their fathers’ death, leading people to fight and fight. No victory was ever final. It was only until the development of nuclear weapons that the cycle of violence ran into a brick wall and was forced to stop.

So we’ve come to an end. In a nutshell, we are said to be living in the most peaceful era of humanity’s existence. However, these atrocities have affected who we are until now.

So are we? I want you to think and judge.

“

...three main reasons why the atrocities happen. Firstly, because they could. Second, because they want to. And lastly, because everyone else was doing it.

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Then came radical organisations that are threats in this worldlike Boko Haram and recently ISIS. Everyone desires Utopia. A community possessing perfect qualities. This is an ideology that will cost us more.

Why? One of the reasons is that they set up a pernicious utilitarian calculus.

DEATH TOLLS BY WORLD LEADERS

CRIMINALISE WAR CLUB

3 Birds

An ode to the memory of those who perished or are still missing in the three 2014 Malaysia-related aircraft tragedies

by Puteri Fateh Arina Merican from Tunku Kurshiah College c o n t e s t a n t

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# 2

S

omeone once told me, the tale of three birds that flew away; Two went home One went astray.

They were birds of beauty red, white and blue; Ephemeral all lives may be ‘tis sad to end ere end is due.

The first vanished causing anguish; Is it in some ocean floor? or was it the isle of Diego that the bird was led to go?

The second died of murder with wings rent asunder by an unknown hunter; Was it downed by enemy fire or was it just a friendly blunder?

“THERE IS NO DENOUEMENT FOR THE MURDERS.” The third floated dead, like a mermaid, torn apart with feathers red;

So fly you pretty birds fly away from these borders; There is no denouement for the murders.

Her heart, heavy with dread, dreader still, to ferry the dead.

She, Gaia, buried the corpses, leaving them resting in the earth, knowing they would fly to Paradise and away from this confusing Universe.

She searched the seas for the first whose mysterious demise became an endless story of surmise as that is the woebegone of life.

The demon hides under cover of night even as we cry for the plight of the birds on flight;

A person I knew who flew with the birds, said, “if we won’t meet again as we breathe life, I will hold you close in the afterlife”.

And I hold on to his words, because the three birds, have flown to Paradise.

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Gaia it was who found the second and the third that were downed;

CRIMINALISE WAR CLUB

A STUDENT’S TAKE ON WAR b y

l o w

c h u e n

c o n t e s t a n t

I am not a troubled refugee from a war-stricken country, nor am I a professor from a renowned institution. But rather, I am a student from Cempaka Schools, living in a peaceful country with little to no strife or hardship in my life.

My name is Low Chuen Leik and I stand here today to give you my take on “War”. So today we stand here in this day and age, seeking to eradicate war. It is a crime, no doubt on that, so here’s a new take on it; how can we stop war before it even happens? For that, we have to attain a firm grasp on why there is war, and understand the very nature of conflict.

We could...say, perhaps, look at it from a biological perspective. It is a common assumption that people are innately aggressive, that the urge to fight and wage war against a fellow human being is in our genes and something we’ve been doing ever since the dawn of our species.

War is human nature, and as long as we exist, there will be war. This

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l e i k

# 3

ideology would lead to fatalistic conclusions that perhaps all war and conflict is in fact, inevitable. No, it can only mean that war manifests as a result of rational human choices, each with their own motivations and reasoning behind them.

The United Nations remains the greatest and most far-reaching independent global body and thus has the greatest capacity to bring about dramatic changes; subdue the arms industry, enforce disarmament, limiting military expenditure.

In fact, recorded conflict between organized groups has only been appearing in past few thousand years, approximately when civilisation first began. In John Horgan’s words; war is a cultural, not a biological phenomenon.War does not form as a result of resource depletion, financial profit, the opening of new markets, although they do play a part in lighting the flame.

Religious institutions and secular groups can also aid in encouraging nonviolence. Then there is the golden key to success; education, where the minds of the next generation are moulded before being thrown out into the big world.

Our problem is simply a militaristic culture, a culture that glorifies war or even just accepts it, a culture that fails to renounce war as something as barbaric as cannibalism.

War is a human construct, something we invented and created and brought to life. Just like any creation of ours, it can be eradicated. Sure, war taps into deep biological proclivities, which is one explanation for how it is easy to continually re-invent and also spread like an infection. In the end, though, war is an invention, a social technology. What we have to do is simple; advocate and protest against war in all aspects of society.

We have to demonise war, make the very idea of entertaining conflict unthinkable and warfare outrageously unacceptable.

Teach them that war is unethical, that it is not a solution to uncertainty or disagreements. Overused as this may be, they are the leaders of tomorrow, and what good will our actions be today if tomorrow’s president charges headlong into war?

Well, where does this all start? Us, right here, right now. Not me by myself, nor you over there in the crowd. The human race as a whole, coming together, saying no to war.

It won’t be easy, and the end of war is not right around the corner, but it is possible and can happen, will happen, because we humans are creatures of change, capable of overcoming great obstacles to reach where we are today.

With education, enlightenment, and a world-spanning paradigm shift for mankind so that we may truly rid ourselves of the shackles of war, put an end to war in the 21st century.

ELOCUTION CONTEST

CRIMINALISE WAR CLUB

Congratulations!

SCOURGE OF WAR : AS SEEN THROUGH THE EYES OF 3 CRIMINALISE WAR CLUB(CWC) MEMBERS

01

02

Prof Datuk Dr Andrew Mohanraj, begins to announce the winners.

03

Tan Sri Dato’ Hj Muhyiddin Yassin, accompanied by Tun Dr Siti Hasmah Mohd Ali, gives away the award to Low Chuen Leik, from Cempaka International School.

04

Tun Dr Siti Hasmah Mohd Ali, Tan Sri Dato’ Hj Muhyiddin Yassin, Low Chuen Leik, Aiman Syakir Abdul Haris, Puteri Fateh Arina Merican, Dr KKJohan, Wan Azlian Ahmad

Tan Sri Dato’ Hj Muhyiddin Yassin, gives away the award to Aiman Syakir Abdul Haris, from Sekolah Sultan Alam Shah.

05

Tan Sri Dato’ Hj Muhyiddin Yassin, gives away the award to Puteri Fateh Arina Merican, from Tunku Kurshiah College.

LOW CHUEN LEIK AIMAN SYAKIR ABDUL HARIS PUTERI FATEH ARINA MERICAN

TN I O J S NER N I W

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ALLAH SELAMATKAN TUN ALLAH SELAMATKAN TUN ALLAH SELAMATKAN TUN BERDUA ALLAH SELAMATKAN TUN

MAY ALLAH BLESS YOU TUN MAY ALLAH BLESS YOU TUN MAY ALLAH BLESS BOTH OF YOU TUN MAY ALLAH BLESS YOU TUN

MEGAT WIRA

SEVENTH HEAVEN MALAYSIA

#DemiAgamaBangsaTanahAir #PerjuanganBelumSelesai

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by PRABHAKARAN S. NAIR

A CARING FOUNDATION

COMES TO THE ASSISTANCE OF CWC

erjaya Founder’s Day celebration of 2015 might have been marked by the record-breaking cake that took centre stage during the festivities, but what is truly marked about Tan Sri Dato’ Seri Vincent Tan’s yearly birthday celebration is the commitment he shows in supporting various causes through his Better Malaysia Foundation and Berjaya Cares Foundation. The breadth of areas that has benefitted by the philanthropy of the two Berjaya foundations show just how much it is that Tan Sri Dato’ Seri Vincent Tan truly cares for the betterment of humanity. The broad categories of charitable causes, as documented in Berjaya Group’s new coffee table book ‘Growing the Legacy of Care’, include areas such as Education, Health, Community, Humanitarian Support, Environment, Animal Welfare, promotion of Arts & Culture, Sports and the improvement of the Workplace.

Aazraa Ala Merican, on behalf of the Criminalise War Club, receiving a mock cheque from the benevolent Tan Sri Dato’ Seri Vincent Tan during the Berjaya Founder’s Day celebration in March 2015.

It is indeed very seldom that there be a person who genuinely does not care for anything at all. We all care, but many of us may be guilty of caring too little. Simply put, we care to know – not to act. The ‘Legacy of Care’ that Tan Sri Dato’ Seri Vincent Tan wishes to leave behind him is certainly that of action, not just of attention. Corporate social responsibility – a term that was first used in the 1960s and became gradually popular ever since as CSR – refers to corporate initiatives in contributing to social causes beyond what is required for profit-maximization. In the case of Berjaya CSR is best expressed in Tan Sri’s own words: “Society made me wealthy through their support of my businesses, so it is only right that I give back to them”.

The generosity of Tan Sri Dato’ Seri Vincent Tan this year has extended to support the Criminalise War Foundation in its endeavours to promote its cause through the Criminalise War Club (CWC) in schools. Incidentally, ever since the Criminalise War Foundation was established, Vincent has been consistently supporting it. More than the money contribution though, the kindly gesture of Berjaya Group is valued for its subtle nudge for the Criminalise War Foundation to pursue its aims with renewed enthusiasm and a purposeful drive for a better world where wars would be a thing of the past.This year alone, Tan Sri donated a sum of RM20,000 million to 79 charity organisations through his Foundations. The theme of this year’s Day was “Let’s Go – Plant a Seed of Love”. It was a call to engage the community in worthy social causes in the true spirit of volunteerism.

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BE RJ Growing the L

Photo Credit / Photo Caption : Berjaya Corporation Berhad

CHAPTER 1 : EMPOWERING THE FUTURE THROUGH EDUCATION

CHAPTER 2 : MAKING QUALITY HEALTHCARE ACCESSIBLE

CHAPTER 3 : CARING FOR THE COMMUNITY

CHAPTER 4 : EXTENDING HUMANITARIAN SUPPORT

CHAPTER 5 : CULTIVATING ENVIRONMENTAL CONCIOUSNESS

C1

C2

C3

C4

C5

Tan Sri Dato’ Seri Vincent Tan and Dato’ Sri Robin Tan observing the children as they learn numbers by using Montessori teaching materials.

Looking on is Reverend Elisha Satvinder (right), Founder and Executive Director of Dignity for Children Foundation.

Berjaya Cares Foundation supported The Tun Hussein Onn National Eye Hospital by providing free eye screening and spectacles to more than 30,000 needy students worldwide.

Berjaya staff visiting the senior citizens at Rumah Jagaan dan Rawatan Al-Ikhlas, Puchong in December 2014.

Berjaya Youth volunteers building a house for an orang asli family in Gombak, Selangor in August 2014.

The houses in the Berjaya GK village are brightly panited to represent hope. These homes are purpose-built to withstand typhoon and floods.

In 2012, Berjaya provided funds to Montfort Girls Centre, Shah Alam, for setting up of The Sewing Room where sewing and tailoring skills are imparted to the female students. The centre was launched by Nerine Tan, Executive Director of Berjaya Group Berhad.

Better Malaysia Foundation contributed RM240,000 in 2012 for disadvantaged girls to undergo 1-year training at the Vocational Training Opportunity Centre in Kuala Lumpur, to help disadvantaged girls gain skills for employment and financial independence.

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Tan Sri Dato’ Seri Vincent Tan with his sons, Dato’ Sri Robin Tan and Tan U-Ming and senior management of Berjaya Group together with the volunteers and recipients of free artificial limbs during a visit to Limbs For Life Prostheses Centre in June 2014.

The mock cheque received from Berjaya Cares Foundation on 27th March 2015 at The Berjaya Times Square

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Dato’ Sri Robin Tan looking at a painting by a trainee from the vocational training programme at The Selangor and Federal Territory Association for the Mentally Handicapped in Brickfields, Kuala Lumpur in May 2013.

Tan Sri Dato’ Seri Vincent Tan leads the ground-breaking ceremony of 100 new homes in Berjaya GK-Village in Bugo in Cagayan De Oro, the Phillipines on 23 January 2015.

Divers carefully removing and putting the Crown-of-Thorns starfish in a net during the annual clean-up at Tioman Island in 2012. Crown-ofThorns starfish preys on coral reefs and an outbreak of such creatures causes much damage to healthy reefs.

JLegacyAY A of Care CHAPTER 6 : SHELTERING ANIMALS IN NEED

CHAPTER 7 : SUPPORTING LOCAL PERFORMING ARTS & CULTURE

CHAPTER 8 : CHAMPIONING A SPORTING CULTURE

CHAPTER 9 : ACHIEVING SUCCESS AT THE WORKPLACE

A SELECTION OF NEWSPAPER CLIPPINGS

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Berjaya Corporation Berhad together with Cosway (M) Sdn Bhd and 7-Eleven Malaysia Sdn Bhd contributed 15,000 footballs to schools across the country at a presentation ceremony held on 3 May 2013 at Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Jalan Junid, Muar, Johor to encourage sports activities in schools and instill the culture of sports and healthy living among school children.

Training and development programmes are conducted regularly at Starbucks Malaysia’s Learning Centre in Plaza Berjaya, Kuala Lumpur

Local villagers and volunteers excavating the turtle nests.

Berjaya has been a staunch supporter of the Sea Turtle Research Unit of Universiti Malaysia Terengganu since 1993. After more than two decades, approximately 8,000 nests have been saved and more than 600,000 healthy hatchlings have been successfully produced and returned back to sea.

Berjaya supported SuperMokh - The Musical in 2013 and SuperMokh The Restaging in 2014 which chronicled the life of one of Malaysia’s most celebrated sporting icons, the late footballer Mokhtar Dahari - known as SuperMokh to his thousands of fans.

Blood glucose testing was one of the health tests offered at the NKF Lifecheck health screening for staff.

Berjaya was the title sponsor for The Wizard of Oz - The Musical in 2012.

Berjaya Corporation Berhad supported the Langkawi International Mountain Bike Challenge 2012.

Berjaya Founder Tan Sri Dato Seri Vincent Tan and Chairman and CEO of Berjaya Coporation Berhad Dato Sri Robin Tan pose for photograph with beneficiaries (Community) after Cheque presentation during Berjaya Founder’s Day 2015. Photo Credit : JUNE 2015 CRIMINALISE 111 SUNPIX byWAR ASYRAF RASID

Photo Credit : www.walesonline.co.uk

This woman, an angel in her own right, remains the driving force behind Vincent’s philanthrophy and go-getting nature. She once recounted the following anecdote giving a glimpse into the kind of childhood that provided the springboard for Vincent to firmly decide that he should give back to society. “It was 1962. The ten year old Vincent trudged home from school pondering his dilemma.

The impending karate tournament would mean the achievement of a black belt – the goal he had envisioned for himself when he started his lessons. But he would need to get a new karategi (karate uniform) costing RM 32 to participate in the tournament. Even at his young age he knew money was tight as his family of ten depended solely on the daily erratic income of his father who drove taxis and lorries.

His mother always managed to make do however, so he decided to let her know. She was praying at the altar when he returned and he sat in observance while waiting for her to finish. “Yes Vincent, what is it?” she asked in Hokkien, sensing his unease. This son of hers, fourth in her brood of eight was seldom still and quiet. He was an active schoolboy – always busy with sports or his school’s extracurricular activities and never shirking his share of work. “Ma, I need to buy a new karate suit for my black belt tournament – its RM32. Can I please?” There was hardly any extra cash left after household expenses. But she knew Vincent would not have asked if it was not important to him. After a couple of moments of thinking while pretending to be busy sorting out the dishes, she turned to him and said, “I will let Pa know ... we can do more lorry runs today and tomorrow.” Vincent knew one lorry run provided a profit of RM3 – they would have to make it over ten runs to get the sum he needed. It was going to be hard work. But his mom’s smile and positive attitude warmed him. “I’ll help,” he promised.

Vincent Tan and his mother Madam Low Siew Beng More than 20,000 people turned up to enjoy the carnival-like atmosphere at the 5th Berjaya Founder’s Day at the Berjaya Times Square Boulevard on Saturday, 28 March 2015. The occasion was graced by the Sultan of Selangor, DYMM Sultan Sharafuddin Idris Shah and Pahang’s DYMM Sultanah Hajjah Kalsom. The Criminalise War Foundation was represented by YTM Tunku Datuk Dr Sofiah Jewa and Dato’ Dr Yaacob Merican. To Vincent, the most important person present at the function was his mother, Madam Low Siew Beng, whom Vincent always looks upon as his role model on compassion and giving. Being a devout Buddhist, no matter how little she had, she always gave what she could afford to the less fortunate. She has never shirked from hard work and remains active to this very day, organising prayer sessions for family and friends; travelling to Buddhist temples all around the world; and contributing whatever she can to the temples she visits. She even personally sews hand towels (on her Singer sewing machine) for visiting monks and poor families in villages in China.”

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Sitting in front of her altar with statues of Buddhas from various lands, the spry 87-year old recollects that Vincent, though boisterous and uninhibited at times, was also a hardworking and persistent child. Unable to afford continuing his education after completing his secondary education but determined to succeed in life, Vincent left Batu Pahat for Kuala Lumpur where he worked in a bank in the mornings, sold insurance at night and carried out ‘Tupperware’ business during his spare time. Vincent has clearly inherited his mother’s spiritual nature, and this may well explain how the Personality Award for 2015 which carries a reward of RM500,000 went to Cheng Yen, Dharma Master of the Tzu Chi Foundation in Taiwan. This foundation, like Vincent’s own, does not recognise national borders when granting assistance. Although Cheng Yen has never travelled outside Taiwan, her presence is felt in 5 continents through the help she has rendered to people in 90 countries throughout the world. Like Vincent’s mother, she too inspires people to be selfless and give as much as possible for charity. The philanthrophy of Vincent and his family, including his son Dato’ Sri Robin Tan, resonates well with the self reminder of an anonymous sage: “I shall pass through this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again”.

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* The Charter was drafted by Prof Salleh Buang, a member of the KLFCW Board of Trustees

Signatories and principal witnesses to Charter to Criminalise War Signatories and principal witnesses tothe theChildrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Charter to Criminalise War 22 November 2012, PWTC, Kuala Lumpur 22 November 2012, PWTC, Kuala Lumpur

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