Tag Archives: Atrocities

South Carolina Bill to Execute People Who Have Abortions Gets Support From 21 Republicans

“Executing women is not fringe GOP,” said one human rights lawyer. “It’s your horrifically mainstream ‘pro life’ GOP.”

By Julia Conley. Published 3–14–2023 by Common Dreams

Protestors in front of the Supreme Court on June 24, the day of Roe v. Wade’s overturn. Photo: Ted Eytan/CC BY-SA 2.0.

A new pro-forced pregnancy proposal in the South Carolina General Assembly that would make people who obtain abortion care eligible for the death penalty was portrayed as coming from the fringes of the Republican Party by one GOP lawmaker—but with 21 state Republicans backing the legislation, critics said the idea is representative of the party’s anti-choice agenda.

Proposed by state Rep. Rob Harris, the South Carolina Prenatal Equal Protection Act of 2023 would amend the state’s criminal code to give a zygote, or fertilized egg, “equal protection under the homicide laws of the state”—meaning obtaining an abortion could be punishable by the death penalty. Continue reading →

Fearing Future Probes of US Atrocities, Pentagon Blocks ICC From Russian War Crimes Evidence

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“The Ukrainian people deserve accountability. By blocking the sharing of evidence with the ICC, the administration, contrary to its stated position, is undermining it,” said one expert.

By Brett Wilkins. Published 3-9-2023 by Common Dreams

Bucha after Russian invasion of Ukraine. Photo: rbc.ua, CC BY 4.0 GFDL, via Wikimedia Commons

The Pentagon is helping to shield Russia from International Criminal Court accountability for its atrocities in Ukraine, fearing such a reckoning could set a precedent allowing the tribunal to prosecute U.S. war crimes, a report published Wednesday revealed.

According to The New York Times, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin III and other Pentagon brass are blocking the Biden administration from sharing evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine gathered by U.S. intelligence agencies with the International Criminal Court (ICC) over the objections of officials in those agencies, as well as in the State and Justice departments. Continue reading →

50 Years On, Legacy of Wounded Knee Uprising Lives in Indigenous Resistance

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“We’re not the subjugated and disenfranchised people that we were,” said one Ponca elder who took part in the 1973 revolt. “Wounded Knee was an important beginning of that.”

By Brett Wilkins. Published 2-27-2023 by Common Dreams

Photo: Comrade Stu/Twitter

As many Native Americans on Monday marked the 50th anniversary of the militant occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, participants in the 1973 uprising and other activists linked the deadly revolt to modern-day Indigenous resistance, from Standing Rock to the #LandBack movement.

On February 27, 1973 around 300 Oglala Lakota and members of the American Indian Movement (AIM), seething from centuries of injustices ranging from genocide to leniency for whites who committed crimes against Indians, occupied the hamlet of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation for more than two months. The uprising occurred during a period of increased Native American militancy and the rise of AIM, which first drew international attention in 1969 with the 19-month occupation of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. Continue reading →

Why aren’t child soldiers treated as human trafficking ‘survivors’?

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Child soldiers are often shunned when they return from war. This is no way to treat ‘survivors’

By Benedetta Wasonga. Published 2-22-2023 by openDemocracy

Child soldiers in South Sudan. Photo: UNMISS/flickr/CC

What happens to child soldiers once the fighting is over? How do they re-integrate into society, and who supports them to find a new place in civilian life? These questions are not as easy to answer as one might think. In post-conflict settings in Africa, former child soldiers return traumatised. Warring parties have used them not only as fighters, but also in many other jobs. Some, especially girls, have also been subjected to gender-based violence.

Yet, for the most part, they are not greeted warmly by those back home. International organisations do not trip over themselves to provide them with services. They are instead met, for the most part, with suspicion. And because they are not seen as ‘survivors’, there are few places they can turn to for help. Continue reading →

Israel ‘Legalizes’ 9 Apartheid Settler Colonies in Occupied Palestine

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“Make no mistake; this isn’t about retaliation for the recent terror attacks,” said one critic. “This is nothing else than colonialism, and the U.S. and E.U. won’t do anything about it; instead, they say that they are ‘deeply concerned.'”

By Brett Wilkins. Published 2-12-2023 by Common Dreams

Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, an occupied territory in which international law bans nations from settling civilians. (Credit: Montecruz Foto / Flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0 /

Israel’s far-right Security Cabinet on Sunday approved the immediate “legalization” of nine Jewish-only settler outposts in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem over what critics called the empty objection of benefactor the United States and in violation of international law—under which all Israeli settler colonies are illegal.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich both claimed responsibility for the action, in which they sought government recognition of 77 illegal settler outposts. The ministers and other Israeli officials said the move was in response to recent deadly attacks against Jews by Palestinian resistance fighters, including a vehicular assault that killed three people—two of them young children—near East Jerusalem’s Ramot neighborhood on Friday. Continue reading →

Critics Slam ‘Reprehensible’ Iowa Bill to Expand Child Labor

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“This is just crazy,” said the president of the Iowa Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO. “A kid can still lose an arm in a work-based learning program.”

By Brett Wilkins Published 2-7-2023 by Common Dreams

Teen Job Fair. Photo: Fleet & Family Support Centers/flickr/CC

Labor advocates on Tuesday decried a business-backed bill introduced by Republican state lawmakers in Iowa that would roll back child labor laws so that teens as young as 14 could work in previously prohibited jobs including mining, logging, and animal slaughtering—a proposal one union president called dangerous and “just crazy.”

Senate File 167, introduced by state Sen. Jason Schultz (R-6) would expand job options available to teens—including letting children as young as 14 work in freezers and meat coolers and loading and unloading light tools, under certain conditions. Continue reading →

Brazil’s Indigenous peoples survived Bolsonaro. Now Lula has won, what next?

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Bolsonaro’s genocidal policies devastated Indigenous communities. After four years of trauma, they can breathe again

By Sarah Shenker. Published 2-3-2023 by openDemocracy.

Indigenous women in Brazil have led protests during Bolsonaro’s rule.. Photo: Survival International

The news broke on 28 October 2018. Through the crackle and hiss of the radio, we made out one sentence: “Jair Bolsonaro has been elected president of Brazil.”

It was a long way from Brasília to Maçaranduba, an Indigenous community in the Amazon rainforest, but the significance of the news was clear. Some of our Awá and Tenetehar friends paced up and down, others held their heads in their hands. One let out a visceral scream, before reaching for a bottle of sugarcane spirit. Continue reading →

‘Death Sentence for Women and Families’: US Court Blocks Domestic Violence Gun Ban

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“There is no real doubt that the 5th Circuit’s decision is going to lead to more abusers murdering their wives and girlfriends,” said one gun control advocate. “It will also increase mass shootings.”

By Brett Wilkins Published 2-2-2023 by Common Dreams

People participate in a March 24, 2018 “March for Our Lives” protest for gun control laws in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. (Photo: Peter Cedric Rock Smith/flickr/cc)

The right-wing 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday struck down a federal law barring people with domestic violence restraining orders from owning firearms, a ruling that gun control advocates said will cost lives.

A three-judge panel of the New Orleans-based appellate court said in its decision that the overturned law is an unconstitutional impediment to the right to bear arms. The judges based their ruling on New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, a June 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down that state’s limits on carrying concealed guns in public. Continue reading →

Pain of police killings ripples outward to traumatize Black people and communities across US

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RowVaughn Wells, in gray jacket, mother of Tyre Nichols, who died after being beaten by Memphis police officers, is with friends and family members at the conclusion of a candlelight vigil for Tyre, in Memphis, Tenn., on Jan. 26, 2023.
*AP Photo/Gerald Herbert*

Denise A. Herd, University of California, Berkeley

As the video goes public of Black police officers in Memphis beating Tyre Nichols to death, it is a stark reminder of George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020. That set up the largest protests in U.S. history and a national reckoning with racism.

But beyond any protests, every police killing – indeed, every violent act by police toward civilians – can have painful and widespread consequences.

Each year, U.S. police kill about 1,000 people, which equals approximately 8% of all homicides for adult men. This risk is greater for Black men, who are about 2.5 times more likely to be killed by the police than white men. Continue reading →

‘2022 Was Deadly’: Killings of Journalists Jumped by Nearly 50%

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The deadliest year for media workers since 2018 was driven in large part by the war in Ukraine and a rise in killings in Latin America.

By Julia Conley. Published 1-25-2023 by Common Dreams

The funeral of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in Ramallah. Photo: YouTube/Wikimedia Commons/CC

Driven in large part by Russia’s war in Ukraine and a rise in violence in Latin America, 2022 was the deadliest year for journalists in four years and saw nearly a 50% increase in murders, killings in crossfire, and deaths as the result of dangerous assignments, according to a report released Tuesday.

In its annual report on the killings of members of the press, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) confirmed that at least 41 journalists and media workers were killed in direct connection to their work, including nearly two dozen who were murdered in retaliation for their work. The group is still investigating the motives for the killings to 26 other journalists, bringing the total number of media workers killed last year to 67. Continue reading →

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Tag Archives: Atrocities

South Carolina Bill to Execute People Who Have Abortions Gets Support From 21 Republicans

“Executing women is not fringe GOP,” said one human rights lawyer. “It’s your horrifically mainstream ‘pro life’ GOP.”