Skip to content

War crimes

Newsletter – A People United Will Never Be Defeated

October 18, 2015 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, www.PopularResistance.org , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
By Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese for Popular Resistance. This week, hundreds of thousands rallied in Washington, DC for the Million Man March, more information became available regarding US war crimes, we celebrated the second annual People's Climate March and World Food Day and we are preparing a mass mobilization to protest the TransPacific Partnership. Popular Resistance is collaborating with a growing number of organizations and people to protest the TransPacific Partnership and other international treaties that will prevent us from achieving success in our struggles for racial, economic and environmental justice. We are planning a mass mobilization in Washington, DC this November to show the large and diverse opposition to agreements that force us to sacrifice the health and safety of our communities for corporate profits. There will be two days of action preparation followed by three full days of creative events. You are invited to participate in any way that you can.

Analysts Knew Site Destroyed In Airstrike Was Hospital

October 17, 2015 Roisin Davis and Joshua Keating, www.truthdig.com www.slate.com ,
By Roisin Davis for Truth Dig and Joshua Keating for The Slatest - The Associated Press has reported that days before an Afghan hospital run by Doctors Without Borders was destroyed in a U.S. military attack, American special operations analysts were gathering intelligence on the facility because they believed it was being used by a Pakistani operative to coordinate Taliban activity. And Thursday, The Guardian reported that a U.S. tank “forced its way into the shell of the Afghanistan hospital destroyed in an airstrike 11 days ago, prompting warnings that the US military may have destroyed evidence in a potential war crimes investigation.”

Hancock Five Drone Protesters Arraigned, No Bail Required

October 15, 2015 The Hancock Five, www.upstatedroneaction.org , ,
By the Hancock Five - The “Hancock Five,” arrested mid-morning on September 21 whilst displaying three large banners across the main entrance of the Hancock Reaper Drone Base – home of the 174th ATTACK Wing of the NY National Guard – were arraigned before DeWitt (NY)Town Judge Robert Jokl this evening (Oct. 14). The Five, all Hancock recidivists, are Ed Kinane, Julienne Oldfield and Bonny Mahoney of Syracuse and James Ricks and Dan Burgevin of Trumansburg (near Ithaca). Their three one-word banners said: DRONES KILL CHILDREN. The Hancock Five were charged with the violations of trespass and disturbing the peace for this act of nonviolent civil resistance which sought to expose Hancock war crime in Afghanistan (and likely elsewhere). Judge Jokl declined to levy bail and, despite Hancock’s asking him to do so, refused to impose Orders of Protection on the defendants (a most dubious practice formerly typical of the DeWitt Court).

Investigators Ready To Investigate Kunduz Bombing, US Response?

October 15, 2015 Staff, www.msf.orgg ,
By Staff of Medecins Sans Frontieres - Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has been informed that the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission (IHFFC) has been activated. This is the first step needed to undertake an independent investigation into the attack on MSF’s hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan on 3 October. The IHFFC is now awaiting the agreement of the United States and Afghanistan governments to proceed. We have received apologies and condolences, but this is not enough. We are still in the dark about why a well-known hospital full of patients and medical staff was repeatedly bombarded for more than an hour,” said Dr Joanne Liu, MSF International President. “We need to understand what happened and why.”

Newsletter: War Culture, What’s It Good For?

October 11, 2015 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.PopularResistance.org , , , , , , , , ,
By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers for Popular Resistance. The confluence of Columbus Day Weekend and the Kunduz hospital bombing has us thinking about the deep levels of cultural violence in the United States and what can be done to change it. How does the US move from a country dominated by war culture to one dominated by a humanitarian culture? Popular Resistance has reported on the the legacy of Columbus. Howard Zinn describes the true history of Columbus and the Indigenous people of North America. There is a great need for the Columbus myth to be revised with realities. When the truth is understood, it is evident the US is celebrating a brutal war criminal and that it is time to abolish Columbus Day.

Release The Kunduz Bombing Tapes

October 11, 2015 David Swanson, www.davidswanson.org , ,
By David Swanson for Let's Try Democracy - There is video and audio. It exists. The Pentagon says it's critically important. Congress has asked for it and been refused. WikiLeaks is offering $50,000 to the next brave soul willing to be punished for a good deed in the manner of Chelsea Manning, Thomas Drake, Edward Snowden, and so many others. You can petition the White House to hand it over here. The entire world thinks the U.S. military intentionally attacked a hospital because it considered some of the patients enemies, didn't give a damn about the others, and has zero respect for the rule of law in the course of waging an illegal war. Even Congress members think this. All the Pentagon would have to do to exonerate itself would be to hand over the audio and video of the pilots talking with each other and with their co-conspirators on the ground during the commission of the crime -- that is, if there is something exculpatory on the tapes, such as, "Hey, John, you're sure they evacuated all the patients last week, right?"

Tell Obama: Even War Has Rules

October 10, 2015 Dr. Joanne Liu, www.msf.org , , , ,
By Dr. Joanne Liu for Doctors Without Borders (MSF). Geneva, Switzerland - On Saturday morning, MSF patients and staff killed in Kunduz joined the countless number of people who have been killed around the world in conflict zones and referred to as ‘collateral damage’ or as an ‘inevitable consequence of war’. International humanitarian law is not about ‘mistakes’. It is about intention, facts and why. The US attack on the MSF hospital in Kunduz was the biggest loss of life for our organisation in an airstrike. Tens of thousands of people in Kunduz can no longer receive medical care now when they need it most. Today we say: enough. Even war has rules. In Kunduz our patients burned in their beds. MSF doctors, nurses and other staff were killed as they worked. Our colleagues had to operate on each other.

Wikileaks Offering $50,000 For Kunduz Hospital Footage

October 10, 2015 Andrew V. Pestano, www.albawaba.com , , ,
By Andrew V. Pestano in Albawaba.com. WikiLeaks is crowd-sourcing funds to pay a $50,000 bounty for video and audio of the U.S. airstrike on the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. "We are raising a U.S. $50,000 bounty to obtain the footage, the cockpit audio, the inquiry report and other relevant materials such as the Rules of Engagement active at the time," WikiLeaks said in a statement. The United States carried out an airstrike on the hospital on Saturday, killing at least 22 people. Gen. John Campbell, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said the airstrike was a mistake and that the U.S. military "would never intentionally target a protected medical facility."

A Short History Of U.S. Bombing Of Civilian Facilities

October 9, 2015 Jon Schwarz, www.theintercept.com ,
By Jon Schwarz for The Intercept, On October 3, a U.S. AC-130 gunship attacked a hospital run by Médecins Sans Frontières in Kunduz, Afghanistan, partially destroying it. Twelve staff members and 10 patients, including three children, were killed, and 37 people were injured. According to MSF, the U.S. had previously been informed of the hospital’s precise location, and the attack continued for 30 minutes after staff members desperately called the U.S. military. The U.S. first claimed the hospital had been “collateral damage” in an airstrike aimed at “individuals” elsewhere who were “threatening the force.” Since then, various vague and contradictory explanations have been offered by the U.S. and Afghan governments, both of which promise to investigate the bombing.

Why Bombing A Hospital Is A War Crime

October 9, 2015 Robert C. Koehler, www.commonwonders.com
By Robert C. Koehler for Common Wonders, “We tried to take a look into one of the burning buildings. I cannot describe what was inside. There are no words for how terrible it was. In the Intensive Care Unit six patients were burning in their beds.” So said Lajos Zoltan Jecs, a nurse at the hospital the U.S. bombed in Kunduz, Afghanistan, killing 22 people: doctors, staff, patients (including three children). This image is now spiraling through the Internet and across the global consciousness. The hospital was not “collateral damage”; it was deliberately targeted, deliberately destroyed, in multiple bombing runs that lasted at least half an hour. Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), which operated the hospital, contacted its sources in the U.S. government immediately, pleading for the attack to stop — to no avail.

Margaret Flowers Arrested Protesting Afghan Hospital Bombing

October 6, 2015 Alli McCracken, www.CODEPINK.or ,
By Alli McCracken for CODE PINK - Before the start of a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing about Afghanistan, Dr. Margaret Flowers was arrested for speaking out against the recent US bombing of a Doctors Without Border hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. Dr. Flowers was holding a sign which read “BOMBING HOSPITALS= WAR CRIME”. In the attack on Kunduz, twelve staff members and at least seven patients, including three children, were killed; 37 people were injured, including 19 staff members including 19 staff members. Dr. Flowers, a pediatrician from the Washington DC-based activist group Popular Resistance, was with several members of the peace group CODEPINK at the hearing wearing “bloodied” doctors garb with “bloody” hands to draw attention to the culpability of the US military, and specifically the hearing witness General John Campbell who is responsible for US forces in Afghanistan, in the Kunduz massacre. Several members of Doctors Without Borders were present in the audience at the hearing. “There needs to be an independent investigation into the hospital bombing in Kunduz because targeting hospitals is against international law,” Dr. Flowers said from the Capitol Hill jail.

US Dropped Bubonic Plague On North Korea

September 6, 2015 David Swanson, www.davidswanson.org , , ,
By David Swanson in Lets Try Democracy. It is well documented that the United States dropped on China and North Korea insects and feathers carrying anthrax, cholera, encephalitis, and bubonic plague. This was supposed to be a secret at the time, and the Chinese response of mass vaccinations and insect eradication probably contributed to the project's general failure (hundreds were killed, but not millions). But members of the U.S. military taken prisoner by the Chinese confessed to what they had been a part of, and confessed publicly when they got back to the United States. Some of them had felt guilty to begin with. Some had been shocked at China's decent treatment of prisoners after U.S. depictions of the Chinese as savages.

Tribunal Demonstrates US War Crimes In Philippines

July 17, 2015 Bernadette Ellorin, www.PopularResistance.org , ,
By Bernadette Ellorin for International Peoples' Tribunal - In the first day of an International Peoples’ Tribunal in D.C. yesterday, victims and expert witnesses to torture, enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, forced evacuations, and violations of international humanitarian law gave testimonies drawing strong connection between the U.S. and Philippine governments’ collaboration and culpability in perpetrating these abuses. Cynthia Jaramillo shared details on the torture and murder of her husband, a member of the New Peoples’ Army, along with 6 other combatants and 2 unarmed civilians in September 2014: “They were not killed during a legitimate running battle with the AFP. The state of their bodies when recovered clearly indicated the torture, willful killing, and desecration of the remains. Almost all of them suffered from non-encounter wounds according to the post-mortem reports and the review of evidence by forensic experts.”

Serbian Prime Minister Attacked At Srebrenica Commemoration

July 12, 2015 Aida Cerkez, www.AP.org , ,
By Aida Cerkez for Associated Press - Anger boiled over Saturday at a massive commemoration of the slaughter of Bosnia Muslims at Srebrenica 20 years ago as people pelted Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic with stones, water bottles and other objects. An aide said he was hit in the face with a rock. Vucic's associate, Suzana Vasiljevic, told The Associated Press that his glasses were broken when he was struck in the face with a stone. Vasiljevic said she was behind Vucic when "masses broke the fences and turned against us." Tens of thousands came to mark the 20th anniversary of Europe's worst massacre since the Holocaust — the slaughter of 8,000 Muslims from the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica — with foreign dignitaries urging the international community not to allow such atrocities to happen again and to call the crime "genocide."

German Couple Pay Greece £630 ‘War Reparations’

March 22, 2015 Agency France-Presse, www.theguardian.com , , ,
A German couple visiting Greece walked into a town hall and handed over €875 (£630, approximately $1,000) in what they said were second world war reparations. Dimitris Kotsouros, the mayor of Nafplio, a seaport in the Peloponnese, said: “They came to my office yesterday morning, saying they wanted to make up for their government’s attitude. They made their calculations and said each German owed €875 for what Greece had to pay during world war two.” The mayor of the historic town where the tourists deposited their cheque said the money had since been donated to a local charity. The couple chose his town “because it was the first capital of Greece in the 19th century”, he added. Greek media reports named the pair as Ludwig Zacaro and Nina Lahge. They say Zacaro is retired and Lahge works a 30-hour week. They did not have enough money to pay for two, one paper said.
«12345678910»

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Donate Here

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! 

Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Donate Here
Sign Up To Our Daily Digest

Independent media outlets are being suppressed and dropped by corporations like Google, Facebook and Twitter. Sign up for our daily email digest before it’s too late so you don’t miss the latest movement news.