Bolivia: Evo Morales Moves to Centre Stage for Historic January 25th Referendum

  • Often delayed constitutional referendum now scheduled for Sunday, January 25th, with government projected to win comfortably.
  • President Evo Morales takes to a last-minute offensive with anti-opposition rhetoric and arrests, and with plans to establish new state-owned newspaper along with another TV network.
  • Despite optimistic government expectations surrounding referendum, 2009 likely to be characterised more by strife than compromise.

President Evo Morales is beginning 2009 hoping for a quick and decisive resolution to the political turmoil which has characterised his presidency to date. The much-delayed referendum to ratify Morales’ new constitution – originally intended to take last May – is now scheduled to be held on Sunday, January 25th. Polls indicate that Morales is comfortably on course to win the vote, although by a lesser margin than the 50-point landslide suggested in a survey conducted by the Observatorio de Gestión Pública (OGP or Centre for Public Management in Bolivia) and published by the government on January 4th.

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Petition for the Creation of a Special Tribunal to try Israeli War Criminals

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Creation of a Special Tribunal to try Israeli War Criminals

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PETITION

To President and Member States of United Nations General Assembly

The Creation of a Special Tribunal to try Israeli War Criminals

Recalling that Israel was created by virtue of a General Assembly Resolution in 1947 against the wishes of the indigenous population of Palestine;

Recalling that the creation of Israel was achieved through the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population, which resulted in the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem, and that more than half of the population of 1.5 millions of the Palestinian Occupied Territory called the Gaza Strip are Palestinian refugees who have become, with the other civilian population, victims of the recent Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip;

Noting that the UN Human Rights Council, in its ninth Special Session, has adopted on 12 January 2009, a resolution “on the grave violations of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory including the recent aggression of the occupied Gaza Strip” in which it “strongly condemned the ongoing Israeli military operation which had resulted in massive violations of human rights of the Palestinian people and systematic destruction of the Palestinian infrastructure”; and “decided to dispatch an urgent independent international fact-finding mission to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law by the occupying power against the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory”(United Nations Press Release of 12 January 2009, Human Rights Council, ROUNDUP);

Recalling that Israel has in the past refused to cooperate with similar fact-finding commissions or even give them visas to enter;

Recalling Article 22 of the Charter of the United Nations

Recalling further the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice of 9th July 2004 on the Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall by Israel, the occupying power, in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, in which the Court emphasized the special responsibility of the General Assembly for the Question of Palestine;

The undersigned NGOs and individuals

Call upon the General Assembly to create a special international tribunal to try Israel, its political and military leaders, for such crimes in violation of international law, human rights law and international humanitarian law in the Palestinian Occupied Territory of which they may be charged.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

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VIDEO: Gaza’s destruction revealed

20 January, 2009

The cessation of fighting in Gaza has allowed the true scale of destruction there to be revealed.

Sherine Tadros reports from the north of the strip on the despair of one father who says Israeli forces shot and killed two of his daughters at close range. A spokesperson for the Israeli army told Al Jazeera in response to the father’s allegations that Israeli soldiers “do not behave in this fashion” and the army “only returns fire to areas from which it was fired upon”.

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A ‘Police State’ Celebrates by Nora Barrows-Friedman

The Israeli government is stepping up efforts to suppress dissent and crush resistance in the streets. Police have been videotaping the demonstrations and subsequently arresting protesters in large numbers.

(IPS)

JERUSALEM – The Israeli government is stepping up efforts to suppress dissent and crush resistance in the streets. Police have been videotaping the demonstrations and subsequently arresting protesters in large numbers.

According to Israeli police reports, at least 763 Israeli citizens, the majority of them Palestinian and 244 under 18 years old, have been arrested, imprisoned or detained for participating in such demonstrations. Most have been held and then released, but at least 30 of those arrested over the past three weeks are still being held in prison.

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