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On Tuesday, the President of the UN General Assembly, former Serbian Minister of Foreign Affairs Vuk Jeremić, accused his critics of trying to intimidate and pressure him into cancelling a special meeting on international criminal justice boycotted by the USA and some of its allies. Jeremić set up the meeting last week, whilst serving as President of the Assembly, a largely-ceremonial, but high-profile, post. Critics of the event said Jeremić that organised it as an excuse to attack the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY)… an allegation Jeremić rejected. A spokesman for the American mission to the UN explained its decision to boycott the event by saying, “It’s an unbalanced, inflammatory, thematic debate … on the role of international criminal justice in reconciliation”.
Jordan and Canada also boycotted the event, whilst EU countries sent junior diplomats. A number of key officials from international organisations and tribunals, including the ICTY, International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), and the International Criminal Court (ICC), chose not to attend. Without accusing any individual countries, Jeremić suggested that the 11 officials from the international organisations and tribunals didn’t attend due to outside pressure, adding that he, too, was under pressure to cancel the debate entirely, saying, “Unfortunately, these ladies and gentlemen refused to come to this debate. So, we worked with those who accepted, given that I wouldn’t balk under pressure to cancel what I believe is a debate on a critically-important topic. Somebody obviously thought that I could be embarrassed and intimidated into giving it (the debate) up”.
Jeremić said that the fact that the tone of the debate was more critical than supportive of the ICC, ICTY, ICTR, and other war crimes tribunals was because those who would’ve supported those courts chose not to attend the UN session. Serbian President Tomislav Nikolić was amongst those who spoke. He hammered away at the ICTY in a 45-minute speech to the assembly, telling participants, “The prosecution was favoured over the defence” and that the court was guilty of the “most flagrant violation of human rights”. Serbia and its ally Russia sharply criticised the tribunal over recent decisions to free two Croatian generals and a former Kosovo Albanian guerrilla commander.
Jeremić said that amongst those who avoided last week’s debate were the presidents of the ICC, ICTY, and ICTR, head of the UN Office of Legal Affairs Patricia O’Brien, head of Human Rights Watch Kenneth Roth, and former ICTY/ICTR chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte. He said, “How did it come about that all of them at the end of the day couldn’t be with us, couldn’t be with the member states on 10 April? We’re talking about too big a number … just to put it down to chance, that they just couldn’t make it”.
17 April 2013 (MSK)
Voice of Russia World Service
Editor’s Note:
Let’s keep it simple. The USA chooses to cloak its warmongering under a façade of smarmy pseudo-legality. These courts deal in ex post facto “victor’s justice”… they aren’t real courts at all. The USA invaded the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq, and Libya… and it’s beating the war drums for an invasion of Syria and Iran. I know who belongs in the prisoner’s dock… it’s not Serb patriots whose only crime was opposing the American-fomented and –financed breakup of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (don’t forget, the present Croatian leadership is the direct descendant of the murderous Ustaše of World War II… the USA turned a blind eye to butchers of Orthodox Serbs and Croatian Jews escaping to South America and the USA). The USA refused to participate because its amoral and noxious foreign policy was under scrutiny… and they hate it when the truth is told about their unprincipled, unscrupulous, and brutal warmongering. God bless Vuk Jeremić… he told the truth.
Orthodox people have an obligation to support their Serb co-religionists in this. We shouldn’t follow disreputable quislings like Victor Potapov and James Paffhausen, who’ve sold out to the American powers-that-be (making them two of the worst “Sergianists” who ever existed… ironically, Potapov screams loudly about “Sergianism” in Russia whilst being more guilty of it than his targets are… fancy that). That’s the way it is…
BMD
RF Gosduma Ratifies Child Abuse Convention
Tags: Child abuse, Child pornography, Child Welfare, children, Children and Youth, children's rights, Convention on the Rights of the Child, Council of Europe, Internet Crimes Against Children, Optional Protocol on the Sale of Children Child Prostitution and Child Pornography, paedophilia, Pedophilia, political commentary, politics, Prostitution of children, Russia, Russian, Sexual exploitation and abuse in humanitarian response, UN, UN General Assembly, United Nations, United Nations General Assembly, United States, USA
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On Friday, The RF Gosduma approved Russia’s accession to the Council of Europe Convention on the Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse. The convention opened for signing in 2007, and it came into force on 1 July 2010. Russia signed the convention in 2012. To date, 46 states have signed and 26 states have ratified the convention, which sets out international standards for protecting children against sexual exploitation and abuse. The Gosduma also ratified the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution, and Child Pornography. The UN General Assembly adopted the protocol on 25 May 2000. Russia signed the protocol in 2012. According to the protocol, the signatory countries must stipulate criminal, civil, or administrative penalties for selling children for sexual exploitation, organ transfers for profit, or forced labour, as well as for improperly inducing consent, as an intermediary, to a child’s adoption in violation of the applicable international legal instruments on adoption. These offenses include offering, obtaining, procuring, or providing a child for child prostitution and producing, distributing, disseminating, importing, exporting, offering, selling, or possessing child pornography.
26 April 2013
RIA-Novosti
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20130426/180862132/Duma-Ratifies-Child-Abuse-Convention.html
Editor’s Note:
The USA added the following caveat to the Protocol upon its ratification of the instrument in 2002:
That is, the Bush Administration and the Republican Party stated baldly that the ratification of the Protocol added NO additional protection for American children. Sexual predators have “rights”, dontcha know! That’s what “freedom” means for the GOP… along with predatory buccaneer crapitalism, toothless labour laws, mind-boggling greed, and the lightest of tax burdens upon the rich. If you vote for such, that’s what you vote for, full stop. It puts a new face on the posturing moralisers (especially, the smarmy self-righteous Evangelicals), doesn’t it? None dare call it evil… especially, not the well-paid and bovine American news media…
BMD