ICC in Town

Not exactly, not the Court - I mean the International Criminal Court known as the ICC - but the lawyer who lodge a complain to the ICC on behalf of the Cambodian people he believe are victims of violations of Human Rights that can classified as Crime Against Humanity. He talked about a gross number of 720,000 or 6% of the population of Cambodia.
   His name is Richard Rogers and in the after noon of yesterday Sunday January 11, he walked in a packed room in Holly Park Community Center, in Seattle, WA, to a hero welcome. But he answered humbly that he was not a hero, but simply a Human Right Lawyer. He talked an answered questions for over 4 hours in all aspects of the case from the submission of the complain last October 7, 2014, the possible course of action and what the people, everywhere in the world, can help.
      Accompanying him is Vibol TOUCH, the President of the Cambodian National Rescue Foundation based in Virginia, a nonprofit organization with the mission to raise fund to support the work to help Cambodia.
    For more information please check the Foundation website..

Paris: Days after

The Charle Hebdo Massacre with 12 journalist killed and score of wounded have brought many world leaders to march on Sunday January 11, 2015, with one and a half million people in a show of force against terrorism and to defend the freedom of Expression.
   I am attracted to this articles in Washington Post this Monday, here the excerpts:

The free-speech hypocrisy of some world leaders marching in Paris
 .....
Despite the laudable show of unity, many observers couldn't help but bristle at the hypocritical presence of some world leaders. Although they were publicly lending their support to free speech at the rally in France, at home they often stifled that very same free speech. As Marc Lynch, a professor at George Washington University, put it:

Reporters without Borders (RWB), a nonprofit that supports free speech, said it was "outraged by the presence of officials from countries that restrict freedom of information."
In particular, RWB took issue with the presence of Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Algerian Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra, United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Sheik Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan and Gabonese President Ali Bongo.

Dozens of top dignitaries joined hundreds of thousands of people in the French capital Sunday to pay tribute to the victims of last week's attacks in Paris that killed 17 people. (Reuters)

These nations scored particularly low on RWB's annual press freedom index. Egypt is ranked 159th out of 180 countries in the index, Turkey 154th, Russia 148th, Algeria 121st, the United Arab Emirates 118th and Gabon 98th. Below are just a few of the criticisms leveled against the nations.

• Last year, an Egyptian court sentenced three Al Jazeera journalists to between seven and 10 years in jail on "terrorism" charges.
• Turkey, which was named the world's biggest jailor of journalists in 2012 and 2013, ended 2014 by detaining a number of journalists (including Ekrem Dumanli, editor in chief of Zaman, a leading newspaper with links to the moderate Islamic Gulen movement).
• In Russia, anti-corruption blogger and political activist Alexei Navalny has become a frequent target for the government, and the few remaining independent news outlets are struggling mightily to survive.
• While freedom of speech is enshrined in the Algerian constitution, between 1992 and 2011 the government declared a state of emergency that seriously curtailed the right. RWB noted that a number of journalists were arrested before last year's election.
• Groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have claimed that freedom of speech is severely restricted in the United Arab Emirates. Amnesty says that more than 100 peaceful activists and government critics have been detained there since 2011.
• Investigative journalist Jonas Moulenda has been forced to flee Gabon because of death threats.

There were even more guests deemed unsuitable. French newspaper Le Monde pointed to the presence of Hungary's Viktor Orban, the leader of a country that recently proposed taxing the Internet, and Naftali Bennett, Israel's economy minister, who was once quoted as saying, "I’ve killed many Arabs in my life, and there’s no problem with that." On Twitter, there was anger at reports that Saudi officials had attended the march, just days after Saudi Arabia flogged a blogger for blasphemy.
 .....

I read somewhere that the White House was absent at the march, even though the President dropped by the French Embassy to sign the condolences book.
In Washington Post today, I read this:

"In Paris on Sunday, the United States really led from behind — so far behind that President Obama and other important U.S. officials stayed stateside as 40 other world leaders joined about 1.5 million Frenchmen in a stirring riposte to terrorism and anti-Semitism. Even Vice President Biden stayed home. He remained in Delaware where, possibly, he stood at attention in front of the TV. It was, I’m sure, a moving moment.

The Obama administration has not yet explained why no high-ranking American official could hop on a Paris flight — although it did concede Monday that it had erred. Leaders came from Germany, Britain, Israel and even Palestine. The United States, however, was represented by its ambassador, the newly arrived Jane Hartley. With the possible exception of her staff, no one in France would recognize her. Shouts of “ Vive la Hartley ” were not heard."  ....

 

Jan. 7th

It was the day in 1979 that the Vietnamese army crossed the borders into Cambodia to kick out the Khmer Rouge and save the Khmer people from the killing fields. It is still a controversy: Some was saying that it was the day the Vietnamese were beginning a campaign of colonizing Cambodia.

Only History can tell.