Law-book toting gunslingers of the new, new West
In the folklore of the American wild, wild West, cattle barons and mine owners would pay hired guns to come around and “take care of business.”
Oftentimes, they would pay hired guns (hit men) to rid outlaws the local marshals and sheriffs could not handle.
Occasionally, they would hire them as bounty hunters to track down outlaws and bring them back “dead or alive.”
In the cold realpolitik reality of the new new West of the Biden era, Post WW II, the old-time gun slingers are replaced by law-book-toting lawyers and arrogant and self-righteous gospel-of-human-rights-thumping paper tigers and dragons preaching fire, brimstone and damnation against “outlaw” African countries for a contract price.
The new, new West’s cattle barons and mine owners are called Joe Biden, Susan Rice (Princess of Darkness), Chris Coons, Gregory Meeks, Robert Menendez, Josep Borrell, Antonio Gutierrez and Co.
The new, new West’s gunslingers are not called Wyatt Earp, Stagecoach Mary or Belle Starr.
They are called Steven Ratner, Kaari Murungi, and Radhika Coomaraswamy.
Their job is to travel the world on behalf of the cattle barons and mine owners of the new, new West and bushwhack governments in developing countries using human rights as a machete.
Ratner’s professional description posted on the University of Michigan Law School website recounts his decades-long exploits as an international hit/lawman chasing after all types of Cambodian and Sri Lankan government outlaws: war criminals, criminals against humanity, perpetrators of genocide, etc.
Ratner
began his legal career as an attorney-adviser in the Office of the Legal Adviser at the U.S. State Department. In 1998–1999, he was appointed by the United Nations (UN) secretary-general to a three-person group of experts to consider options for bringing the Khmer Rouge to justice; and in 2010–2011, he was a member of the UN’s three-person Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka, which advised the UN Secretary-General on human rights violations related to the end of the Sri Lankan civil war… (Boldface added.)
Ratner has been a decades-long legal hitman for the State Department travelling to Cambodia, Sri Lanka and elsewhere in hot pursuit of alleged human rights outlaws.
As a member of the International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia (ICHREE), Ratner is reprising his role in Cambodia and Sri Lanka.
Indeed, it is not a big deal for him.
All he has to do is cut and paste the Cambodia and Sri Lanka “investigative” reports, substitute “Ethiopia” for the two countries and voila!
Another fine fictional human rights violations report on Ethiopia!
On March 2, 2022, Ratner’s Gang of 3 was appointed by the President of the Human Rights Council to investigate human rights violations in Ethiopia.
On March 11, 2022, Ratner represented the following incredible statement on the University of Michigan Law School website:
The whole world, and especially the US, knows the terrorist TPLF started the war!
On November 4, 2020, the day after the TPLF attacked Ethiopian federal forces in Tigray region, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a statement making clear the U.S. position:
The United States is deeply concerned by reports that the Tigray People’s Liberation Front carried out attacks on Ethiopian National Defense Force bases in Ethiopia’s Tigray region on November 3. (Boldface added.)
Not only that, a top leader of the TPLF terrorist group explained how and why they started the war.
For translation, click here.
How Ratner would conduct his “investigation” and frame Ethiopia for human rights violations was clear nine days after his appointment to the expert panel.
Ratner had already concluded Ethiopia had started the war and announced it to the world.
His job was simply to selectively collect evidence to support his conclusion: “Ethiopia launched an attack on Tigray. Rampaging Ethiopian troops committed war crimes, crimes against humanity, rape, torture, etc. in Tigray.”
That is precisely what the September 19, 2022 ICHREE report concluded. (More on that below.)
Ratner and the Cambodia hit job
In 1998–1999, Ratner was appointed by the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon to a three-person group of experts to “consider options for bringing members of the Khmer Rouge regime to justice in Cambodia.”
Indeed, Ratner was instrumental in getting the UN General Assembly to pass a resolution asking the Secretary-General to consider “the possibility of the appointment of a group of experts” to look into human rights violations, war crimes, etc., in Cambodia.
Once appointed, Ratner’s group was given a triple mandate: (1) evaluate the existing evidence and determine the nature of the crimes committed; (2) assess the feasibility of bringing leaders to justice and (3) explore options for trials before an international or domestic court.
Ratner’s group also insisted the main source of evidence will be witness testimony. Any trial lawyer worth his salt knows, “eyewitness testimony is fickle and, all too often, shockingly inaccurate.”
Ratner’s group undertook its “investigation” in Cambodia and reported commission of various offenses under international law including genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, forced labor and torture among others.
Ratner’s group recommended trials of suspects be confined to “those persons most responsible for the most serious violations of human rights in Cambodia including senior leaders with responsibility over the abuses as well as those at lower levels who are directly implicated in the most serious atrocities.”
Ratner’s group further concluded only an ad hoc UN tribunal would effectively mete out justice to the Khmer Rouge, rejecting proposals for trials in both a Cambodian criminal court and a UN-supervised Cambodian court.
Ratner’s group further considered and rejected other mechanisms of accountability, including investigatory or truth commissions, removal and exclusion from office of offenders, and financial sanctions.
So, the million-dollar question is this: What was the outcome of the Ratner expert group’s Cambodia investigation?
On September 22, 2022, after 16 years and ONLY 3 convictions, the international tribunal for Cambodia closed down for good.
National Public Radio reported:
The international court convened in Cambodia to judge the Khmer Rouge for its brutal 1970s rule ended its work Thursday after spending $337 million and 16 years to convict just three men of crimes after the regime cause the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people. (Boldface added.)
To add insult to injury, the court ended its work by rejecting the genocide conviction of the only surviving leader who is in prison and 91 years old.
It cost USD 112 million to convict each one of the three Cambodian defendants!
Where did all that money go?
Though as a criminal defense lawyer I believe the accused is entitled to the best defense, I am appalled that much of the $337 million went to cover lawyers’ fees, wild goose chase investigations and grease the palms of corrupt officials and UN bureaucrats to keep the investigative scam going.
Justice delayed is justice denied.
The UN Human Rights Council spent over a quarter of a billion dollars to feed lawyers and other bottom feeders and let hang to dry (turn over in their grave) 1.7 million Cambodians!
Ratner and the Sri Lankan hit job
In 2010-11, Ratner was called to service once again by the new, new West “cattle barons and mine owners.”
Ratner was appointed as a member of the UN’s three-person panel of experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka with the aim of advising UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on human rights violations related to the end of the Sri Lankan civil war.
Beginning in the 1970s, Sri Lanka had faced a bloody terrorist war at the hands of the “Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE/Tamil Tigers”.
Hundreds of thousands were killed, maimed and displaced in Tamil Tiger terrorist war.
In 2009, Sri Lankan defense forces defeated the Tamil terrorists.
In the anti-terrorist action, it was alleged Sri Lankan defense forces attacked civilians and hospitals, denied food and medicines to the population and committed war crimes and all sort of atrocities.
After the Sri Lankan government declared victory over the terrorists in 2009, it invited Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to visit.
Barely a week after Moon’s visit, the UN Human Rights Council convened a special session on Sri Lanka at the request of Western governments to look into human rights violations during the Sri Lankan civil war.
In March 2011, Ratner’s panel of experts issued a 214-page report that threw everything, except the kitchen sink, at the Sri Lankan government.
Ratner’s group accused the Sri Lankan government of
(1) killing of civilians through widespread shelling;
(2) shelling of hospitals and humanitarian objects;
(3) denial of humanitarian assistance;
(4) human rights violations suffered by victims and survivors of the conflict, including both internally displaced persons and suspected LTTE cadre;
(5) human rights violations outside the conflict zone, including against the media and other critics of the government;
(6) using civilians as human buffers;
(7) killing civilians attempting to flee LTTE control;
(8) using military equipment in the proximity of civilians;
(9) forced recruitment of children and
(10) forced labor.
Ratner’s group estimated more than 40 thousand people had been extrajudicially killed by the Sri Lankan government.
Ratner’s group barely documented the horrendous crimes of the Tamil terrorists.
So, the million-dollar question is what happened to Ratner’s Sri Lankan investigation and report?
To make a long story short, as of September 12, 2022, the Sri Lankan government has told the UN Human Rights Council to take their report and shove it where the sun don’t shine!
In March 2019, Sri Lanka co-sponsored a resolution made by the UN giving the country a 2-year deadline to establish a judicial mechanism to assess violation of humanitarian international law committed during the civil war.
Tiger Tamils are to Sri Lanka as TPLF hyenas are to Ethiopia
There is great similarity between the Tamil Tiger terrorists and the TPLF hyena terrorists in Ethiopia.
On October 8, 1997, the US State Department classified the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) a foreign terrorist organization.
From a date yet to be ascertained until June 2014, the TPLF was listed as a terrorist group by the US Department of Homeland Security. Homeland Security determined:
The TPLF qualifies as a Tier III terrorist organization under INA section 212(a)(3)(B)(vi)(III) on the basis of its violent activities before it became part of the ruling coalition and the government of Ethiopia in May 1991.
The Tamil Tigers are listed in the Global Terrorism Database as a dangerous terrorist group.
The TPLF Hyenas are listed in the Global Terrorism Database as a dangerous terrorist group.
On November 11-14, 1993, the Tamil Tigers attacked Sri Lankan military base in government-controlled area of Pooneryn, overrunning the garrison and capturing military hardware and killing 532 Sri soldiers and 135 sailors.
On November 3-4, 2020, TPLF Hyenas attacked a federal military base (Northern Command) in Tigray region, overrunning the garrison and capturing military hardware and killing and maiming thousands of Ethiopian soldiers.
In August 2009, a 1,000 strong force of the Tamil Tigers massacred some 285 men, women and children, around a third of the population of the Palliyagodella village.
On November 9, 2020, the TPLF Hyenas massacred 766 innocent people in Mai Cadra.
The Tamil Tigers forcibly recruited child soldiers.
The TPLF Hyenas forcibly recruited child soldiers. They conscripting and deploying child soldiers at this very moment!
On January 5, 2007, Tamil Tigers terrorists set off explosions that killed 6 people and injured at least 30 in the Sri Lankan capital of Columbo.
ON September 16, 2006, the TPLF Hyenas planted 3 bombs that went off in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa and publicly blamed Eritrea and other opposition groups.
Beginning in February 2009, the Tamil Tigers, “in spite of the futility of their military situation, not only refused to surrender, but also continued to prevent civilians from leaving combat areas ensuring their continued presence as a human buffer.”
Beginning in December 2021, the TPLF has been using child soldiers as human shields.
In August 2022, TPLF Hyenas issued orders to shoot their own retreating troops.
The Sri Lankan defense forces defeated the Tamil Tigers in 2009 and rid their country of a malignant cancer once and for all bringing peace to their people.
The Ethiopian defense forces shall soon defeat the TPLF Hyenas and rid their country of a malignant cancer and bring peace to their people.
Kaari Betty Murungi (Kenya)
Betty Murungi is the chairperson of the Ratner hit team.
Murungi replaced former International Criminal Court prosecutor Fatou Bensouda who resigned on June 22, 2021, four months after the Ratner hit team was established.
Murungi has long been a longtime apostle, cheerleader and defender of the terrorist TPLF.
On April 2, 2021, when Murungi tweeted, “If there was a time for application of R2P in Tigray, the time is now,” she was advocating for humanitarian military intervention.
“R2P” is an acronym for “responsibility to protect” by international community in cases of mass atrocity crimes of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.
(Interestingly, Murungi deleted her Twitter account to destroy all trace of her tweets advocating for the terrorist TPLF, but her efforts were not entirely successful.)
Murungi got her chance to put her wishes into effect on June 22, 2021, when she replaced Fantou Bensouda as chairperson of the ICHREE.
Murungi was handpicked for the job by the president of the Human Rights Council because she had a solid track record of supporting the terrorist TPLF.
What is so shocking to the reasonable mind is that the president of the HRC did not even bother to do the MINIMAL DUE DILIGENCE to screen Murungi for simple things like bias, conflict of interest, appearance of impartiality, neutrality, etc.
Indeed, it is highly likely Murungi was selected precisely because she can be trusted to deliver a body blow to Ethiopia on behalf of the terrorist TPLF come what may.
“R2P! Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!”
In the end, Murungi torpedoed the UN Human Rights Council with her blatant partisan support for terrorist TPLF.
Murungi had been on the Council for less than three months when the ICHREE report on Ethiopia was issued.
It is interesting that Murungi has a history of sabotaging human rights investigations.
Between 2009 and 2010, Murungi served as Vice Chairperson and Commissioner of the Kenya Truth Justice and Reconciliation Commission in her own country Kenya.
That Commission was established after Kenya’s 2007 Presidential election which sparked violent clashes over electoral fraud allegations.
In that violence, nearly 1,500 people were killed and almost 300,000 were forced to flee their homes.
Following the violence, a power-sharing coalition government was established which authorized the creation of a Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC).
The mandate of the TJRC was “to investigate and recommend appropriate action on “human rights abuses” committed between December 12, 1963 and February 28, 2008.” The TJRC was also tasked to establish as complete a picture as possible of the causes, nature and extent of the post-election violence.
As Vice Chairperson and Commissioner of the Kenya Truth Justice and Reconciliation Commission, Murungi proved to be divisive and ineffective.
Murungi resigned claiming she “was unable to continue given the public position I have expressed with regards to matters facing the Commission’s Chair.”
Murungi said she was resigning because the Commission’s Chair was “unfit to hold such an office due to his past record as a senior government official.”
However, the hypocrite Murungi did not refuse to accept nor offer to resign after her PAST RECORD showed she is a dyed-in-the-wool terrorist TPLF supporter!
So, what happened to the TJRC?
In its 2013, the TJRC reported, among many other things:
1) Between 1963 and 1978, the government of President Jomo Kenyatta was responsible for numerous gross violations of human rights including killings, torture, and collective punishment, denial of basic needs and arbitrary detention of political opponents and activists;
2) Between 1978 and 2002, the government of President Daniel Moi was responsible for numerous gross violations of human rights including unlawful detentions, widespread torture and ill-treatment of political opponents;
3) Between 2002 and 2008, the government of President Mwai Kibaki was responsible for numerous gross violations of human rights, including unlawful detentions.
4) Security operations in Northern Kenya were accompanied by systematic and widespread torture, rape and sexual violence against girls and women.
In spring 2009, the Kenyan Parliament turned down a Constitutional Amendment Bill for a Special Tribunal for post-election violence.
On March 31, 2010, the International Criminal Court (ICC) opened an investigation into the post-election violence.
Six individuals, including the deputy prime minister, an ex-minister, and an ex-police chief were ordered to appear before the Court in The Hague.
Ironically, while I engaged global public opinion to fully prosecute Kenyatta and Ruto before the ICC, Murungi did not utter a word!
Now, Murungi becomes a champion of human rights in Ethiopia while she callously turned a blind eye to the deaths of 1,500 Kenyans and displacement of 300 thousand of her own brothers and sisters!
Kenyan Nobel Laureate Wangari Maathai wrote:
“The real intention of the just-formed Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC) therefore, is to facilitate impunity, hoodwink and massage the victims and yet again, sweep the crimes under the carpet. None of the leaders has ever been made to account for crimes they commit against the state. Why now?
Radhika Coomaraswamy and the Myanmar hit job
Radhika Coomaraswamy, a Sri Lankan, is the third member of the Ratner Hit Team sent to Ethiopia.
Coomaraswamy is the former UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative on Children and Armed Conflict. She also served as Chairperson of the National Human Rights Commission in Sri Lanka from 2003-2006.
Coomaraswamy’s claim to fame is that she was the lead author of the 418-page Global Study on the Implementation of Resolution 1325 (full involvement of women in all efforts for maintaining and promoting peace and security) published in 2015.
In 2017, after alleged atrocities against the Rohingya people in Myanmar, Coomaraswamy was appointed a member of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on Myanmar.
In 2018, the Coomaraswamy expert panel accused Myanmar authorities of committing
1) crimes against humanity including murder, imprisonment, enforced disappearance, torture, rape, sexual slavery and other forms of sexual violence, persecution, and enslavement;
2) crimes against humanity which meets the legal requirements of war crimes (murder, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity, attacking civilians, displacing civilians, pillaging, attacking protected objects, taking hostages, sentencing or execution without due process);
3) rape and other forms of sexual violence on a massive scale; and
4) arbitrary and frequent denial of humanitarian assistance to people in need and blocking movement of relief personnel for long periods of time.
Coomaraswamy group “recommended prosecution of senior generals of the Myanmar military for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in an international criminal tribunal.”
Coomaraswamy was a UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women from 1994-2003.
In 1996, Coomaraswamy submitted an addendum to her report on violence against women to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, citing evidence that proved to be a hoax and a fabrication.
Coomaraswamy effectively committed academic fraud by using the fabricated evidence of Yoshida Seiji (who claimed to have worked during World War II as a labor mobilization manager and witnessed sexual exploitation (“comfort women) of Korean women by Japanese troops) to bolster her credentials as fighter for women’s rights.
What is extraordinary is the fact that in her investigation of human rights violations in Tigray region, Coomaraswamy reported no evidence of violations of the rights of children even though she was a celebrated UN Special Representative on Children and Armed Conflict.
Conscription of child soldiers by the TPLF has been documented extensively by the BBC and other sources.
I have documented with video evidence the top TPLF terrorist leader stating in an interview that “the war will be a people’s war, starting with children.”
Despite ample evidence of use of child soldiers by the terrorist TPLF, Coomaraswamy, Ratner and Murungi turned a blind eye, deaf ears and muted lips.
Ratner, Coomaraswamy, Murungi and the Ethiopia hit job
The mandate of the “International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia” is to
1) conduct a thorough and impartial investigation into allegations of violations and abuses since 3 November 2020 by all parties to the conflict;
2) establish the facts and circumstances surrounding the alleged violations and abuses, to collect and preserve evidence, to identify those responsible for future accountability efforts;
3) provide guidance on transitional justice, including accountability, reconciliation and
4) engage with all relevant stakeholders.
The main “conclusions” of the ICHREE Commission quoted directly from the “REPORT” are as follows:
1) The Commission finds reasonable grounds to believe that the ENDF shelled Mekelle on 28 November 2020, killing and injuring civilians and striking civilian objects days after Tigrayan forces had left the city with their assets.
2) The Commission finds reasonable grounds to believe that the ENDF conducted a drone strike against the Dedebit IDP camp on 7 January 2022, killing and injuring approximately 60 civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure.
3) The Commission finds reasonable grounds to believe that Tigrayan forces killed civilians and persons rendered hors de combat, raped, looted, and damaged or destroyed civilian infrastructure and property in Kobo and Chenna in late August and early September 2021.
4) The Commission finds reasonable grounds to believe that the ENDF, EDF, and Fano have committed widespread acts of rape and sexual violence against Tigrayan women and girls.
5) The Commission finds reasonable grounds allied regional State governments have implemented a widespread range of measures designed to systematically deprive the population of Tigray of material and services indispensable for its survival, including healthcare, shelter, water, sanitation, education and food.
The ICHREE report has been meticulously and rigorously refuted point-by-point by the Ethiopian Government.
The Ethiopian Government’s rebuttal is a tour-de-force of legal and methodological analysis.
I recommend the reader to review the rebuttal in its entirety.
Methodological flaws, failure to adhere to UN evidentiary standards and its own terms of reference render the ICHREE report useless
In light of the thorough rebuttal of the Ethiopian Government, I shall focus on some of the major methodological and technical legal issues concerning the ICHREE report.
1) The ICHREE asserts it conducted its investigation and prepared its report “with limited time, staffing and access to sites and documents” and had “to select a specific and manageable preliminary group of incidents and themes” in its investigation.
The ICHREE also claims to have applied the evidentiary standard of “reasonable grounds to believe” and conducted its investigation “in accordance with the practice of United Nations fact-finding and investigative bodies.”
As a technical evidentiary matter, the threshold “reasonable grounds to believe” standard is problematic but applies in considering 1) whether a crime has been committed, and 2) whether the defendant is criminally liable. The standard further applies to infer mutually exclusive reasonable conclusions that a crime has been committed, and equally another reasonable conclusion a crime has not been committed.
The ICHREE’s report provides little or no explanation on its application of the “reasonable grounds to believe” standard and the specific investigative methods it used to collect and analyze evidence. It offers no indication on how to test the credibility of the “evidence” it collected and expects its vague and unsubstantiated conclusions to be accepted ex cathedra as infallible.
The Ratner-Murungi-Coomswarmy hit team reports it applied the “reasonable grounds to believe” standard in a “select specific and manageable group of incidents and themes for which it could complete investigations in two months with limited resources.”
The fact of the matter is that ICHREE only gives lip service to application of “reasonable grounds to believe” standard as the Ethiopian Government Response has shown in its meticulous rebuttal.
The ICHREE report fails to meet the minimum threshold for “reasonable grounds to believe” as it provides little or no explanation on the circumstances of the crimes, the time and date or duration of alleged crimes corroboration or verification.
The glaring omissions and methodological flaws of the ICHREE can best be seen in comparison to the work of the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC)/Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) Joint Investigation.
That investigation involved field work of nearly four months in various locations throughout Ethiopia under challenging circumstances with nearly 270 confidential interviews with victims and 64 meetings with a variety of stakeholders.
The governments of Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States “commended OHCHR and EHRC for their impartial and transparent work.”
Indeed, the Ethiopian Government accepted that report and is implementing its recommendations.
The Ethiopian Government has rejected the Ratner hit team’s report in its entirety.
2) The ICHREE was mandated to “conduct a thorough and impartial investigation into allegations of violations and abuses committed since 3 November 2020 by all parties to the conflict, by building upon the report of the Office of the High Commissioner and the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission. The ICHREE failed to honor its mandate and ended up preparing a report that not only contradicts but also trashes the highly commendable 2021 joint OHCHR and EHRC report.
3) The ICHREE failed to honor its own terms of reference (the document which sets the objectives, scope of work, activities, task to be performed, respective responsibilities, etc.) which provides the ICHREE will “build upon the findings, conclusions, and recommendations of the report of the JIT (2021 OHCHR and EHRC findings) in a way that adds value and avoids unnecessary duplication of effort without limiting the temporal or geographic scope above.”
In its rush to judgment, the ICHREE completely ignored the 2021 report and findings, choosing to re-investigate events already investigated rigorously and given conclusion.
4) The ICHREE’s admission that it conducted “most of its interviews remotely” (virtually) and used “satellite imagery, print and audio-visual material, and open-source information” as evidence that meets the standard of reasonable grounds to believe” is outlandish, outrageous and shocking.
The ICHREE’s random and causal use of satellite imagery, print and audio-visual material, and open-source information in clear disregard and flagrant violation of the 2015 UN Commissions of Inquiry and Fact-finding Missions: Guidance and Practice (see pp. 40-48). The “open source” information used by ICHREE is largely Western fake news and yellow journalism. The UN Guideline requires corroboration and independent verification of information obtained in an investigation, which the ICHREE report disregards.
5) In flagrant departure from the UN Guidance and Practice, the ICHREE allegation ENDF “soldiers committed extensive extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detention, and looting” and “used civilian objects for military purposes and restricted access to medical treatment” was unsupported by a single witness testimony.
6) The ICHREE aims to create moral equivalency by dignifying the TPLF terrorist group, declared as such by the Ethiopian parliament, militarily occupying Tigray as “the Regional Government of Tigray”. The ICHREE aims to lift the image of the terrorist group in the eyes of global public opinion by sanitizing it from a terrorist group to a “government.”
7) To add insult to injury and beyond the scope of its mandate and authority, the ICHREE dictates: “That the Inter-Governmental Authority for Development (IGAD), the African Union Peace and Security Council, and UN Security Council place the situation in Ethiopia on their agendas and take action aimed at restoring peace, stability and security in the region, thereby preventing further violations and abuses of international human rights law and humanitarian law.” (Boldface added.)
AFTER ALL IS SAID AND DONE, THE SINGLE MOST OUTRAGEOUS ELEMENT OF THE ICHREE REPORT IS ITS RECOMMENDATION OF R2P (responsibility to protect.)
KAARI MURUNGI FINALLY GOT HER WISH!
Million-dollar question: What will happen to the ICHREE report?
What happened to the UNHCR report of Cambodia?
What happened to the UNHCR Myanmar report?
What happened to the UNHCR Sri Lankan report?
The ICHREE has requested a one-year extension of its term. It is said a decision could be made on October 6, 2022,
The fact of the matter is with the Government of Ethiopia’s complete rejection of the report along with many other countries including China, Russia, India, it will prove to be a flash in the pan.
The fact of the matter is also that the US, EU, UN and certain Western European countries established to pressure and embarrass the Ethiopian government and force it to negotiate with the terrorist TPLF. They also hoped they could use the report to advocate global sanctions against Ethiopia.
The fact of the matter is that the US, EU, UN and certain Western European countries wanted to use the report for R2P, that is humanitarian military action in Ethiopia to protect the terrorist TPLF.
None of the above seem likely.
Joe Biden, the great war monger, seems to accept the reality of AFRICAN SOLUTIONS FOR AFRICAN PROBLEMS.
The weaponization of the UNHCR as a neocolonial tool has not gone unnoticed by African leaders.
The weaponization of the UNHCR to criminalize African leaders as human rights outlaws with a long-term agenda to undermine African sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity is not lost on Africans.
Last month, South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor gave Blinken the dress down when he visited South Africa last month.
Because when we believe in freedom – as I’m saying, it’s freedom for everybody – you can’t say because Africa is doing this, you will then be punished by the United States…. One thing I definitely dislike is being told `either you choose this or else.’ When a minister speaks to me like that … I definitely will not be bullied in that way, nor would I expect any other African country worth its salt to agree to be [so] treated.
During the interactive dialogue in the General Assembly over the ICHREE, 32 countries delivered their statements.
There were 13 countries that rejected the ICHREE report and 19 that supported it.
Countries rejecting the ICHREE report argued:
The Council is using the opportunity to advance a particular political agenda.
The report manifestly lacks neutrality, impartiality and rationality.
The report is a significant trespass on Ethiopia’s sovereignty.
The Ethiopian Government’s peace initiatives are to be commended and solutions should be sought only through the African Union.
The international community should support the Ethiopian Government’s efforts find lasting solutions and not meddle in Ethiopia’s internal affairs.
The Ratner Mercenary Group and monetization of human suffering
The Ratner Mercenary Group is in it for the money! It is strictly business!
They have a one-size fits all boilerplate human rights report which they will customize for their clients based on a narrative that is given to them.
They will cut and paste and modify their standard templates to deliver whatever report their clients demand of them.
A comparison of the Cambodia, Sri Lanka and Ethiopia reports shows how the Ratner Hit Team recycles the same template over and over to line their pockets.
The Ratner Mercenary Group is available for hire by anyone who is willing to pay them top dollar for their services.
Their motto, “Have law books, will travel anywhere in the world for a hit job in the name of human rights.”
Black ants, red ants, lawbook-toting hit teams and
Ants are a source of wisdom in African folktales as strong, hardworking, cooperative and determined creatures.
“Two ants can carry one grasshopper.” “When ants unite, they can lift an elephant.”
There is a putatively African folktale about ants that is apt to Ethiopia’s current situation.
It is said if you collect 100 black ants and 100 red ants and put them in a glass jar, nothing will happen. They will go about their business.
But if you take the jar, shake it violently and leave it on the table, the ants will start attacking and killing each other.
Red ants believe the black ants are the enemy and vice versa.
But the real enemy is the one who shook the jar.
So it is in Ethiopia.
There are 120 million hardworking, prosperity seeking, cooperative and mutually supporting ants in Ethiopia.
Then come the jar shakers with their hit men and women toting the gospel of human rights and preaching fire and brimstone to Ethiopians.
I find James Russell Lowell’s poem “The resent Crisis” appropriate in understanding the lies, damned lies and disinformation used by the new, new West to demonize Ethiopia, dehumanize, brutalize and polarize its people and weaponize human rights to keep Ethiopia in perpetual poverty:
When a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad earth’s aching breast
Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east to west,
…
Careless seems the great Avenger; history’s pages but record
One death-grapple in the darkness ‘twixt old systems and the Word;
Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,—
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own ETHIOPIA!
WE WON’T BACK DOWN. WE WILL STAND OUR GROUND.
ETHIOPIA SHALL PROPSPER. ETHIOPIANS SHALL LIVE IN PEACE.
ETHIOPIA SHALL PERSEVERE! ETHIOPIA SHALL OVERCOME!
ETHIOPIA SHALL PREVAIL!
Because Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own ETHIOPIA!
THE DAYLIGHT LYNCHING OF ETHIOPIA BY THE DIRTY HIRED GUNS OF THE UN HRC, EXPOSED!
Posted in Al Mariam's Commentaries By almariam On September 25, 2022Law-book toting gunslingers of the new, new West
In the folklore of the American wild, wild West, cattle barons and mine owners would pay hired guns to come around and “take care of business.”
Oftentimes, they would pay hired guns (hit men) to rid outlaws the local marshals and sheriffs could not handle.
Occasionally, they would hire them as bounty hunters to track down outlaws and bring them back “dead or alive.”
In the cold realpolitik reality of the new new West of the Biden era, Post WW II, the old-time gun slingers are replaced by law-book-toting lawyers and arrogant and self-righteous gospel-of-human-rights-thumping paper tigers and dragons preaching fire, brimstone and damnation against “outlaw” African countries for a contract price.
The new, new West’s cattle barons and mine owners are called Joe Biden, Susan Rice (Princess of Darkness), Chris Coons, Gregory Meeks, Robert Menendez, Josep Borrell, Antonio Gutierrez and Co.
The new, new West’s gunslingers are not called Wyatt Earp, Stagecoach Mary or Belle Starr.
They are called Steven Ratner, Kaari Murungi, and Radhika Coomaraswamy.
Their job is to travel the world on behalf of the cattle barons and mine owners of the new, new West and bushwhack governments in developing countries using human rights as a machete.
Ratner’s professional description posted on the University of Michigan Law School website recounts his decades-long exploits as an international hit/lawman chasing after all types of Cambodian and Sri Lankan government outlaws: war criminals, criminals against humanity, perpetrators of genocide, etc.
Ratner
Ratner has been a decades-long legal hitman for the State Department travelling to Cambodia, Sri Lanka and elsewhere in hot pursuit of alleged human rights outlaws.
As a member of the International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia (ICHREE), Ratner is reprising his role in Cambodia and Sri Lanka.
Indeed, it is not a big deal for him.
All he has to do is cut and paste the Cambodia and Sri Lanka “investigative” reports, substitute “Ethiopia” for the two countries and voila!
Another fine fictional human rights violations report on Ethiopia!
On March 2, 2022, Ratner’s Gang of 3 was appointed by the President of the Human Rights Council to investigate human rights violations in Ethiopia.
On March 11, 2022, Ratner represented the following incredible statement on the University of Michigan Law School website:
The whole world, and especially the US, knows the terrorist TPLF started the war!
On November 4, 2020, the day after the TPLF attacked Ethiopian federal forces in Tigray region, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a statement making clear the U.S. position:
Not only that, a top leader of the TPLF terrorist group explained how and why they started the war.
For translation, click here.
How Ratner would conduct his “investigation” and frame Ethiopia for human rights violations was clear nine days after his appointment to the expert panel.
Ratner had already concluded Ethiopia had started the war and announced it to the world.
His job was simply to selectively collect evidence to support his conclusion: “Ethiopia launched an attack on Tigray. Rampaging Ethiopian troops committed war crimes, crimes against humanity, rape, torture, etc. in Tigray.”
That is precisely what the September 19, 2022 ICHREE report concluded. (More on that below.)
Ratner and the Cambodia hit job
In 1998–1999, Ratner was appointed by the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon to a three-person group of experts to “consider options for bringing members of the Khmer Rouge regime to justice in Cambodia.”
Indeed, Ratner was instrumental in getting the UN General Assembly to pass a resolution asking the Secretary-General to consider “the possibility of the appointment of a group of experts” to look into human rights violations, war crimes, etc., in Cambodia.
Once appointed, Ratner’s group was given a triple mandate: (1) evaluate the existing evidence and determine the nature of the crimes committed; (2) assess the feasibility of bringing leaders to justice and (3) explore options for trials before an international or domestic court.
Ratner’s group also insisted the main source of evidence will be witness testimony. Any trial lawyer worth his salt knows, “eyewitness testimony is fickle and, all too often, shockingly inaccurate.”
Ratner’s group undertook its “investigation” in Cambodia and reported commission of various offenses under international law including genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, forced labor and torture among others.
Ratner’s group recommended trials of suspects be confined to “those persons most responsible for the most serious violations of human rights in Cambodia including senior leaders with responsibility over the abuses as well as those at lower levels who are directly implicated in the most serious atrocities.”
Ratner’s group further concluded only an ad hoc UN tribunal would effectively mete out justice to the Khmer Rouge, rejecting proposals for trials in both a Cambodian criminal court and a UN-supervised Cambodian court.
Ratner’s group further considered and rejected other mechanisms of accountability, including investigatory or truth commissions, removal and exclusion from office of offenders, and financial sanctions.
So, the million-dollar question is this: What was the outcome of the Ratner expert group’s Cambodia investigation?
On September 22, 2022, after 16 years and ONLY 3 convictions, the international tribunal for Cambodia closed down for good.
National Public Radio reported:
To add insult to injury, the court ended its work by rejecting the genocide conviction of the only surviving leader who is in prison and 91 years old.
It cost USD 112 million to convict each one of the three Cambodian defendants!
Where did all that money go?
Though as a criminal defense lawyer I believe the accused is entitled to the best defense, I am appalled that much of the $337 million went to cover lawyers’ fees, wild goose chase investigations and grease the palms of corrupt officials and UN bureaucrats to keep the investigative scam going.
Justice delayed is justice denied.
The UN Human Rights Council spent over a quarter of a billion dollars to feed lawyers and other bottom feeders and let hang to dry (turn over in their grave) 1.7 million Cambodians!
Ratner and the Sri Lankan hit job
In 2010-11, Ratner was called to service once again by the new, new West “cattle barons and mine owners.”
Ratner was appointed as a member of the UN’s three-person panel of experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka with the aim of advising UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on human rights violations related to the end of the Sri Lankan civil war.
Beginning in the 1970s, Sri Lanka had faced a bloody terrorist war at the hands of the “Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE/Tamil Tigers”.
Hundreds of thousands were killed, maimed and displaced in Tamil Tiger terrorist war.
In 2009, Sri Lankan defense forces defeated the Tamil terrorists.
In the anti-terrorist action, it was alleged Sri Lankan defense forces attacked civilians and hospitals, denied food and medicines to the population and committed war crimes and all sort of atrocities.
After the Sri Lankan government declared victory over the terrorists in 2009, it invited Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to visit.
Barely a week after Moon’s visit, the UN Human Rights Council convened a special session on Sri Lanka at the request of Western governments to look into human rights violations during the Sri Lankan civil war.
In March 2011, Ratner’s panel of experts issued a 214-page report that threw everything, except the kitchen sink, at the Sri Lankan government.
Ratner’s group accused the Sri Lankan government of
Ratner’s group estimated more than 40 thousand people had been extrajudicially killed by the Sri Lankan government.
Ratner’s group barely documented the horrendous crimes of the Tamil terrorists.
So, the million-dollar question is what happened to Ratner’s Sri Lankan investigation and report?
To make a long story short, as of September 12, 2022, the Sri Lankan government has told the UN Human Rights Council to take their report and shove it where the sun don’t shine!
In March 2019, Sri Lanka co-sponsored a resolution made by the UN giving the country a 2-year deadline to establish a judicial mechanism to assess violation of humanitarian international law committed during the civil war.
Tiger Tamils are to Sri Lanka as TPLF hyenas are to Ethiopia
There is great similarity between the Tamil Tiger terrorists and the TPLF hyena terrorists in Ethiopia.
On October 8, 1997, the US State Department classified the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) a foreign terrorist organization.
From a date yet to be ascertained until June 2014, the TPLF was listed as a terrorist group by the US Department of Homeland Security. Homeland Security determined:
The Tamil Tigers are listed in the Global Terrorism Database as a dangerous terrorist group.
The TPLF Hyenas are listed in the Global Terrorism Database as a dangerous terrorist group.
On November 11-14, 1993, the Tamil Tigers attacked Sri Lankan military base in government-controlled area of Pooneryn, overrunning the garrison and capturing military hardware and killing 532 Sri soldiers and 135 sailors.
On November 3-4, 2020, TPLF Hyenas attacked a federal military base (Northern Command) in Tigray region, overrunning the garrison and capturing military hardware and killing and maiming thousands of Ethiopian soldiers.
In August 2009, a 1,000 strong force of the Tamil Tigers massacred some 285 men, women and children, around a third of the population of the Palliyagodella village.
On November 9, 2020, the TPLF Hyenas massacred 766 innocent people in Mai Cadra.
The Tamil Tigers forcibly recruited child soldiers.
The TPLF Hyenas forcibly recruited child soldiers. They conscripting and deploying child soldiers at this very moment!
On January 5, 2007, Tamil Tigers terrorists set off explosions that killed 6 people and injured at least 30 in the Sri Lankan capital of Columbo.
ON September 16, 2006, the TPLF Hyenas planted 3 bombs that went off in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa and publicly blamed Eritrea and other opposition groups.
Beginning in February 2009, the Tamil Tigers, “in spite of the futility of their military situation, not only refused to surrender, but also continued to prevent civilians from leaving combat areas ensuring their continued presence as a human buffer.”
Beginning in December 2021, the TPLF has been using child soldiers as human shields.
In August 2022, TPLF Hyenas issued orders to shoot their own retreating troops.
The Sri Lankan defense forces defeated the Tamil Tigers in 2009 and rid their country of a malignant cancer once and for all bringing peace to their people.
The Ethiopian defense forces shall soon defeat the TPLF Hyenas and rid their country of a malignant cancer and bring peace to their people.
Kaari Betty Murungi (Kenya)
Betty Murungi is the chairperson of the Ratner hit team.
Murungi replaced former International Criminal Court prosecutor Fatou Bensouda who resigned on June 22, 2021, four months after the Ratner hit team was established.
Murungi has long been a longtime apostle, cheerleader and defender of the terrorist TPLF.
On April 2, 2021, when Murungi tweeted, “If there was a time for application of R2P in Tigray, the time is now,” she was advocating for humanitarian military intervention.
“R2P” is an acronym for “responsibility to protect” by international community in cases of mass atrocity crimes of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.
(Interestingly, Murungi deleted her Twitter account to destroy all trace of her tweets advocating for the terrorist TPLF, but her efforts were not entirely successful.)
Murungi got her chance to put her wishes into effect on June 22, 2021, when she replaced Fantou Bensouda as chairperson of the ICHREE.
Murungi was handpicked for the job by the president of the Human Rights Council because she had a solid track record of supporting the terrorist TPLF.
What is so shocking to the reasonable mind is that the president of the HRC did not even bother to do the MINIMAL DUE DILIGENCE to screen Murungi for simple things like bias, conflict of interest, appearance of impartiality, neutrality, etc.
Indeed, it is highly likely Murungi was selected precisely because she can be trusted to deliver a body blow to Ethiopia on behalf of the terrorist TPLF come what may.
“R2P! Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!”
In the end, Murungi torpedoed the UN Human Rights Council with her blatant partisan support for terrorist TPLF.
Murungi had been on the Council for less than three months when the ICHREE report on Ethiopia was issued.
It is interesting that Murungi has a history of sabotaging human rights investigations.
Between 2009 and 2010, Murungi served as Vice Chairperson and Commissioner of the Kenya Truth Justice and Reconciliation Commission in her own country Kenya.
That Commission was established after Kenya’s 2007 Presidential election which sparked violent clashes over electoral fraud allegations.
In that violence, nearly 1,500 people were killed and almost 300,000 were forced to flee their homes.
Following the violence, a power-sharing coalition government was established which authorized the creation of a Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC).
The mandate of the TJRC was “to investigate and recommend appropriate action on “human rights abuses” committed between December 12, 1963 and February 28, 2008.” The TJRC was also tasked to establish as complete a picture as possible of the causes, nature and extent of the post-election violence.
As Vice Chairperson and Commissioner of the Kenya Truth Justice and Reconciliation Commission, Murungi proved to be divisive and ineffective.
Murungi resigned claiming she “was unable to continue given the public position I have expressed with regards to matters facing the Commission’s Chair.”
Murungi said she was resigning because the Commission’s Chair was “unfit to hold such an office due to his past record as a senior government official.”
However, the hypocrite Murungi did not refuse to accept nor offer to resign after her PAST RECORD showed she is a dyed-in-the-wool terrorist TPLF supporter!
So, what happened to the TJRC?
In its 2013, the TJRC reported, among many other things:
In spring 2009, the Kenyan Parliament turned down a Constitutional Amendment Bill for a Special Tribunal for post-election violence.
On March 31, 2010, the International Criminal Court (ICC) opened an investigation into the post-election violence.
Six individuals, including the deputy prime minister, an ex-minister, and an ex-police chief were ordered to appear before the Court in The Hague.
Ironically, while I engaged global public opinion to fully prosecute Kenyatta and Ruto before the ICC, Murungi did not utter a word!
Now, Murungi becomes a champion of human rights in Ethiopia while she callously turned a blind eye to the deaths of 1,500 Kenyans and displacement of 300 thousand of her own brothers and sisters!
Kenyan Nobel Laureate Wangari Maathai wrote:
Radhika Coomaraswamy and the Myanmar hit job
Radhika Coomaraswamy, a Sri Lankan, is the third member of the Ratner Hit Team sent to Ethiopia.
Coomaraswamy is the former UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative on Children and Armed Conflict. She also served as Chairperson of the National Human Rights Commission in Sri Lanka from 2003-2006.
Coomaraswamy’s claim to fame is that she was the lead author of the 418-page Global Study on the Implementation of Resolution 1325 (full involvement of women in all efforts for maintaining and promoting peace and security) published in 2015.
In 2017, after alleged atrocities against the Rohingya people in Myanmar, Coomaraswamy was appointed a member of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on Myanmar.
In 2018, the Coomaraswamy expert panel accused Myanmar authorities of committing
Coomaraswamy group “recommended prosecution of senior generals of the Myanmar military for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in an international criminal tribunal.”
Coomaraswamy was a UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women from 1994-2003.
In 1996, Coomaraswamy submitted an addendum to her report on violence against women to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, citing evidence that proved to be a hoax and a fabrication.
Coomaraswamy effectively committed academic fraud by using the fabricated evidence of Yoshida Seiji (who claimed to have worked during World War II as a labor mobilization manager and witnessed sexual exploitation (“comfort women) of Korean women by Japanese troops) to bolster her credentials as fighter for women’s rights.
What is extraordinary is the fact that in her investigation of human rights violations in Tigray region, Coomaraswamy reported no evidence of violations of the rights of children even though she was a celebrated UN Special Representative on Children and Armed Conflict.
Conscription of child soldiers by the TPLF has been documented extensively by the BBC and other sources.
I have documented with video evidence the top TPLF terrorist leader stating in an interview that “the war will be a people’s war, starting with children.”
Despite ample evidence of use of child soldiers by the terrorist TPLF, Coomaraswamy, Ratner and Murungi turned a blind eye, deaf ears and muted lips.
Ratner, Coomaraswamy, Murungi and the Ethiopia hit job
The mandate of the “International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia” is to
The main “conclusions” of the ICHREE Commission quoted directly from the “REPORT” are as follows:
The ICHREE report has been meticulously and rigorously refuted point-by-point by the Ethiopian Government.
The Ethiopian Government’s rebuttal is a tour-de-force of legal and methodological analysis.
I recommend the reader to review the rebuttal in its entirety.
Methodological flaws, failure to adhere to UN evidentiary standards and its own terms of reference render the ICHREE report useless
In light of the thorough rebuttal of the Ethiopian Government, I shall focus on some of the major methodological and technical legal issues concerning the ICHREE report.
1) The ICHREE asserts it conducted its investigation and prepared its report “with limited time, staffing and access to sites and documents” and had “to select a specific and manageable preliminary group of incidents and themes” in its investigation.
The ICHREE also claims to have applied the evidentiary standard of “reasonable grounds to believe” and conducted its investigation “in accordance with the practice of United Nations fact-finding and investigative bodies.”
As a technical evidentiary matter, the threshold “reasonable grounds to believe” standard is problematic but applies in considering 1) whether a crime has been committed, and 2) whether the defendant is criminally liable. The standard further applies to infer mutually exclusive reasonable conclusions that a crime has been committed, and equally another reasonable conclusion a crime has not been committed.
The ICHREE’s report provides little or no explanation on its application of the “reasonable grounds to believe” standard and the specific investigative methods it used to collect and analyze evidence. It offers no indication on how to test the credibility of the “evidence” it collected and expects its vague and unsubstantiated conclusions to be accepted ex cathedra as infallible.
The Ratner-Murungi-Coomswarmy hit team reports it applied the “reasonable grounds to believe” standard in a “select specific and manageable group of incidents and themes for which it could complete investigations in two months with limited resources.”
The fact of the matter is that ICHREE only gives lip service to application of “reasonable grounds to believe” standard as the Ethiopian Government Response has shown in its meticulous rebuttal.
The ICHREE report fails to meet the minimum threshold for “reasonable grounds to believe” as it provides little or no explanation on the circumstances of the crimes, the time and date or duration of alleged crimes corroboration or verification.
The glaring omissions and methodological flaws of the ICHREE can best be seen in comparison to the work of the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC)/Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) Joint Investigation.
That investigation involved field work of nearly four months in various locations throughout Ethiopia under challenging circumstances with nearly 270 confidential interviews with victims and 64 meetings with a variety of stakeholders.
The governments of Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States “commended OHCHR and EHRC for their impartial and transparent work.”
Indeed, the Ethiopian Government accepted that report and is implementing its recommendations.
The Ethiopian Government has rejected the Ratner hit team’s report in its entirety.
2) The ICHREE was mandated to “conduct a thorough and impartial investigation into allegations of violations and abuses committed since 3 November 2020 by all parties to the conflict, by building upon the report of the Office of the High Commissioner and the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission. The ICHREE failed to honor its mandate and ended up preparing a report that not only contradicts but also trashes the highly commendable 2021 joint OHCHR and EHRC report.
3) The ICHREE failed to honor its own terms of reference (the document which sets the objectives, scope of work, activities, task to be performed, respective responsibilities, etc.) which provides the ICHREE will “build upon the findings, conclusions, and recommendations of the report of the JIT (2021 OHCHR and EHRC findings) in a way that adds value and avoids unnecessary duplication of effort without limiting the temporal or geographic scope above.”
In its rush to judgment, the ICHREE completely ignored the 2021 report and findings, choosing to re-investigate events already investigated rigorously and given conclusion.
4) The ICHREE’s admission that it conducted “most of its interviews remotely” (virtually) and used “satellite imagery, print and audio-visual material, and open-source information” as evidence that meets the standard of reasonable grounds to believe” is outlandish, outrageous and shocking.
The ICHREE’s random and causal use of satellite imagery, print and audio-visual material, and open-source information in clear disregard and flagrant violation of the 2015 UN Commissions of Inquiry and Fact-finding Missions: Guidance and Practice (see pp. 40-48). The “open source” information used by ICHREE is largely Western fake news and yellow journalism. The UN Guideline requires corroboration and independent verification of information obtained in an investigation, which the ICHREE report disregards.
5) In flagrant departure from the UN Guidance and Practice, the ICHREE allegation ENDF “soldiers committed extensive extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detention, and looting” and “used civilian objects for military purposes and restricted access to medical treatment” was unsupported by a single witness testimony.
6) The ICHREE aims to create moral equivalency by dignifying the TPLF terrorist group, declared as such by the Ethiopian parliament, militarily occupying Tigray as “the Regional Government of Tigray”. The ICHREE aims to lift the image of the terrorist group in the eyes of global public opinion by sanitizing it from a terrorist group to a “government.”
7) To add insult to injury and beyond the scope of its mandate and authority, the ICHREE dictates: “That the Inter-Governmental Authority for Development (IGAD), the African Union Peace and Security Council, and UN Security Council place the situation in Ethiopia on their agendas and take action aimed at restoring peace, stability and security in the region, thereby preventing further violations and abuses of international human rights law and humanitarian law.” (Boldface added.)
AFTER ALL IS SAID AND DONE, THE SINGLE MOST OUTRAGEOUS ELEMENT OF THE ICHREE REPORT IS ITS RECOMMENDATION OF R2P (responsibility to protect.)
KAARI MURUNGI FINALLY GOT HER WISH!
Million-dollar question: What will happen to the ICHREE report?
What happened to the UNHCR report of Cambodia?
What happened to the UNHCR Myanmar report?
What happened to the UNHCR Sri Lankan report?
The ICHREE has requested a one-year extension of its term. It is said a decision could be made on October 6, 2022,
The fact of the matter is with the Government of Ethiopia’s complete rejection of the report along with many other countries including China, Russia, India, it will prove to be a flash in the pan.
The fact of the matter is also that the US, EU, UN and certain Western European countries established to pressure and embarrass the Ethiopian government and force it to negotiate with the terrorist TPLF. They also hoped they could use the report to advocate global sanctions against Ethiopia.
The fact of the matter is that the US, EU, UN and certain Western European countries wanted to use the report for R2P, that is humanitarian military action in Ethiopia to protect the terrorist TPLF.
None of the above seem likely.
Joe Biden, the great war monger, seems to accept the reality of AFRICAN SOLUTIONS FOR AFRICAN PROBLEMS.
The weaponization of the UNHCR as a neocolonial tool has not gone unnoticed by African leaders.
The weaponization of the UNHCR to criminalize African leaders as human rights outlaws with a long-term agenda to undermine African sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity is not lost on Africans.
Last month, South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor gave Blinken the dress down when he visited South Africa last month.
During the interactive dialogue in the General Assembly over the ICHREE, 32 countries delivered their statements.
There were 13 countries that rejected the ICHREE report and 19 that supported it.
Countries rejecting the ICHREE report argued:
The Ratner Mercenary Group and monetization of human suffering
The Ratner Mercenary Group is in it for the money! It is strictly business!
They have a one-size fits all boilerplate human rights report which they will customize for their clients based on a narrative that is given to them.
They will cut and paste and modify their standard templates to deliver whatever report their clients demand of them.
A comparison of the Cambodia, Sri Lanka and Ethiopia reports shows how the Ratner Hit Team recycles the same template over and over to line their pockets.
The Ratner Mercenary Group is available for hire by anyone who is willing to pay them top dollar for their services.
Their motto, “Have law books, will travel anywhere in the world for a hit job in the name of human rights.”
Black ants, red ants, lawbook-toting hit teams and
Ants are a source of wisdom in African folktales as strong, hardworking, cooperative and determined creatures.
“Two ants can carry one grasshopper.” “When ants unite, they can lift an elephant.”
There is a putatively African folktale about ants that is apt to Ethiopia’s current situation.
It is said if you collect 100 black ants and 100 red ants and put them in a glass jar, nothing will happen. They will go about their business.
But if you take the jar, shake it violently and leave it on the table, the ants will start attacking and killing each other.
Red ants believe the black ants are the enemy and vice versa.
But the real enemy is the one who shook the jar.
So it is in Ethiopia.
There are 120 million hardworking, prosperity seeking, cooperative and mutually supporting ants in Ethiopia.
Then come the jar shakers with their hit men and women toting the gospel of human rights and preaching fire and brimstone to Ethiopians.
I find James Russell Lowell’s poem “The resent Crisis” appropriate in understanding the lies, damned lies and disinformation used by the new, new West to demonize Ethiopia, dehumanize, brutalize and polarize its people and weaponize human rights to keep Ethiopia in perpetual poverty:
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own ETHIOPIA!
WE WON’T BACK DOWN. WE WILL STAND OUR GROUND.
ETHIOPIA SHALL PROPSPER. ETHIOPIANS SHALL LIVE IN PEACE.
ETHIOPIA SHALL PERSEVERE! ETHIOPIA SHALL OVERCOME!
ETHIOPIA SHALL PREVAIL!
Because Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own ETHIOPIA!
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