Secretary general of Amnesty International Agnes Callamard holding a press conference, in London, 23 April 2023 (AFP)
Agnes Callamard says it’s time for ICC to charge Israeli leaders with the crime of committing genocide in Gaza
The secretary general of Amnesty International, Agnes Callamard, has urged British politicians to revise their denial that genocide is being committed in Gaza, following a major report by the group concluding that Israel is guilty of genocide.
The world’s leading human rights group on Thursday declared that Israel has committed and continues to commit genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, based on extensive legal and field research covering the period between 7 October 2023 and early July 2024.
“I hope that Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his foreign minister will read through the 300 pages of evidence that we have provided,” Agnes Callamard told Middle East Eye following the release of Amnesty’s report
“Genocide is not a matter of belief. Genocide is not a matter of desire. Genocide is a matter of law. Genocide is a matter of fact.”
Callamard also said the UK, US and German governments may be found complicit in genocide, as a result of their support for the Israeli army.
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“For the last 14 months, we’ve had a few governments that have supported Israel: the United States, Germany, and the UK.
“They have supported them and they have sold weapons. Therefore, they are facing the real risk of being complicit in the crime of genocide,” she told MEE.
UK Foreign Minister David Lammy confirms that UK government and military are active participants in Israel’s genocides and that the F-35 parts that they suspended from supplying to Israel are instead simply diverted via the United States. He says see https://youtu.be/QILgUHrdWREGenocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpA
Julian Assange gave a speech to the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights at the Council of Europe on October 1, 2024 in Strasbourg, France. (Photo: WikiLeaks)
“I am not free today because the system worked,” said Assange. “I am free today because after years of incarceration I pleaded guilty to journalism.”
In his first public statement since being released from prison in June, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Tuesday urged European lawmakers to take action to protect journalists from being prosecuted for their reporting work, warning that his yearslong case is directly tied to self-censorship and the chilling of press freedom.
Assange spoke to the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights (PACE) at the Council of Europe, which includes members from across the continent, in Strasbourg, France, and warned that current legal protections for journalists and whistleblowers “were not effective in any remotely reasonable time,” as evidenced by the 14 years he spent in prison or otherwise in confinement for his work.
“I want to be totally clear,” said Assange. “I am not free today because the system worked. I am free today because after years of incarceration I pleaded guilty to journalism. I pleaded guilty to seeking information from a source.”
Watch Assange’s testimony below:
Assange was released from Belmarsh Prison in London in June after being incarcerated there for five years. His release was secured when he agreed to plead guilty to one felony count of illegally obtaining and disclosing national security materials in a deal with the U.S. government.
He had spent years fighting U.S. efforts to extradite him, threatening him with a sentence of up to 170 years in a federal prison, as punishment for state secrets WikiLeaks published.
The media organization reported on a series of leaks provided by former U.S. Army soldier Chelsea Manning regarding the Army’s killing of unarmed civilians in Iraq, as well as publishing diplomatic cables.
“I was formally convicted by a foreign power for asking for receiving and publishing truthful information about that power, while I was in Europe,” said Assange, who is Australian, on Tuesday. “The fundamental issue is simple: Journalists should not be prosecuted for doing their jobs.”
Assange told PACE members that he had believed that Article 10 of European Convention of Human Rights, which protects the right to freedom of expression and freedom of the media, would protect him from prosecution.
“Similarly, looking at the U.S. First Amendment to its Constitution… No publisher had ever been prosecuted for publishing classified information from the United States,” said Assange. “I expected some kind of harassment legal process. I was pre-prepared to fight for that.”
He continued:
My naiveté was in believing in the law. When push comes to shove, laws are just pieces of paper and they can be reinterpreted for political expediency.
They are the rules made by the ruling class more broadly. And if those rules don’t suit what it wants to do, it reinterprets them or hopefully changes them… In the case of the United States, we angered one of the constituent powers of the United States. The intelligence sector… It was powerful enough to push for a reinterpretation of the U.S. Constitution.
He said he ultimately “chose freedom over unrealizable justice,” as the U.S. was intent on imprisoning him for the rest of his life unless he entered the guilty plea.
Assange added that his case set a “dangerous precedent,” and that since his arrest he has observed “more impunity, more secrecy, more retaliation for telling the truth, and more self-censorship.”
“It is hard not to draw a line from the U.S. government crossing the Rubicon by internationally criminalizing journalism to the chilled climate for freedom of expression now,” said Assange.
His comments echoed the findings of Reporters Without Borders (RSF), which published its annual press freedom index in May. The group found that “in the Americas, the inability of journalists to cover subjects related to organized crime, corruption, or the environment for fear of reprisals poses a major problem.”
The U.S. fell 10 places in the annual ranking, with citing “open antagonism from political officials” such as Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, “including calls to jail journalists.” RSF also cited the government’s pursuit of Assange’s extradition.
In Europe, said Assange on Tuesday, “the criminalization of news-gathering activities is a threat to investigative journalism everywhere.”
Minister for children and young people Natalie Don during a visit to TASK Childcare in Glasgow to mark International Women’s Day, March 8, 2024
THE UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) came into legal force in Scotland today.
Hailed as a “historic day,” it marks the end of a long journey for legislation first passed unanimously in Holyrood in March 2021 before being struck down in the Supreme Court on the grounds it breached devolution conventions by impinging on UK-wide law.
After a period of reconsideration and redrafting, the legislation was once backed by all MSPs in the Scottish Parliament last year, this time avoiding a constitutional stand-off and making it onto the statute book.
The NSPCC’s Joanna Barrett called it “a significant milestone in making sure that all children’s rights are recognised, respected and upheld.”
Protesters gather in Parliament Square, London, to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, 21 February 2024 | Alberto Pezzali/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Human rights group Liberty says spotlight on MPs’ safety has seen Tories ‘vilify’ Palestine marchers
Ahuman rights campaign group suing the government for forcing through anti-protest laws says people who go on Palestine marches are being “vilified” to “stoke division”.
Liberty is today challenging the home secretary, James Cleverly, in the High Court over a decision by his predecessor Suella Braverman to introduce new legislation targeting protesters that had already been rejected by Parliament.
The case comes in a week where protest rights are in the spotlight. Pro-Palestine marches are being labelled a threat to MPs and the Home Affairs Select Committee has called on the government to force organisers to give more notice.
Speaking to openDemocracy ahead of the hearing, Liberty director Akiko Hart said: “We’re seeing both our fundamental rights of protest being undermined, but also specific protests like the pro-Palestinian marches being vilified.”
Hart took aim at the “incredibly irresponsible rhetoric from senior politicians where protest is equated to intimidation and harassment”.
MPs’ safety fears were raised last week following chaos in the House of Commons over a symbolic vote on a ceasefire in Gaza. Though some MPs have reported an increase in abuse and threats, campaigners warn that peaceful protests are now being associated with terrorism in order to undermine them.
“There were legitimate concerns around MPs’ safety – obviously, two MPs have been murdered in the last ten years,” she said. “We need to take that very, very seriously. I would also say that it’s MPs who are racialised who are most at risk from harassment, and that’s what the evidence shows us.
“But to conflate harassment with protest, which is what’s happening this week, is really dangerous and irresponsible. There are laws in place to deal with harassment and abuse. That isn’t the same as legitimate protest.”
In its recommendations, the Home Affairs Select Committee said more notice was needed ahead of Palestine marches because the size and frequency of the protests is a burden on police resources. But according to the coalition organising the national Palestine marches, the measures would further limit the right to peaceful protest. Hart also said the current notice period of six days is enough for police to prepare for marches.
“Extending that will just restrict people’s ability to be able to make their voices heard. With this, as with any other issue, the point about protest is that it is not about whether or not you agree – it’s about our right to protest,” she explained.
Liberty was given the green light to sue Braverman in October after she used secondary legislation – which doesn’t get the same level of parliamentary scrutiny – to allow police to restrict or shut down any protest that could cause “more than minor disruption to the life of the community”.
“It shouldn’t be the case that you would have to take the home secretary to court with all the time and effort and energy and expertise that that involves,” said Hart. “The reason we are doing so is because of the then home secretary’s egregious act of circumventing Parliament.”
The government previously tried to insert the new powers into the Public Order Act 2023 in January last year, but was blocked by the Lords.
The point about protest is that it is not about whether or not you agree – it’s about our right to protest
Liberty believes a win “would be a powerful check against any future minister or government that intends to do the same thing”.
Hart told openDemocracy that there have already been clear examples of the impact of anti-protest laws that have come through the Police, Crime, Sentencing & Courts (‘Policing’) Act and the Public Order Act, which both give police more powers to restrict protests.
“There were anti-monarchy protesters who were arrested on the basis that the luggage straps that they were carrying were seen to be tools for locking-on, which was a new offence created under the Public Order Act, but they were carrying them to secure their placards.
“We’re also seeing it in sentencing. Last summer, the Court of Appeal upheld the sentences of the two protesters who scaled the Dartford crossing. And those sentences were two years and seven months, and three years – the harshest sentences ever handed down in modern times around protests around civil disobedience,” she said.
The trial against the home secretary is expected to run for two days at the Royal Courts of Justice in London. Hart told openDemocracy that while she and Liberty’s team of lawyers are feeling optimistic, “there’s a level of underlying exhaustion at how this government is conducting itself and responding to the protests that are happening”.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “The right to peaceful protest is fundamental; the right to disrupt the hard-working public is not.
“We have taken action to give police the powers they need to tackle criminal tactics used by protesters such as locking on and slow marching, as well as interfering with key national infrastructure.
“We work closely with the police to make sure they have the tools they need to tackle disorder and minimise disruption.”
With more proof of Shell’s climate deception, Rep. Ted Lieu is once again urging the Department of Justice to look into whether fossil fuel companies broke the law.
After new evidence emerged last week showing that oil major Shell internally acknowledged the dangers of their fossil fuel products decades ago, a member of Congress is renewing his previous call for the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate whether Shell and other Big Oil companies’ “alleged campaigns of climate deception” may have violated federal law.
The company documents, first unearthed by Dutch researcher Vatan Hüzeir and reported last week by DeSmog and Follow the Money, reveal Shell executives and employees predicting “major adverse changes” to the climate from fossil fuel emissions — and admitting Shell’s role in causing the problem. “Global warming could challenge the very fabric of the world’s ecological and economic systems,” warned Shell executive Ged Davis in one newly uncovered document from 1989.
“This new set of documents further demonstrates that Shell privately knew about the dangers its products would cause to the environment yet continued to deceive the public in pursuit of company profits. This is wrong and potentially illegal,” said U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA), who along with Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) led 20 members of Congress in a letter last year urging the Department of Justice to look deeper into evidence that Shell, ExxonMobil, and other fossil fuel majors “lied — and continue to lie — to the public about their central role in exacerbating the climate crisis.”
“These new documents provide additional evidence and make our calls for an investigation even more urgent,” Lieu told ExxonKnews in response to the latest Shell revelations.
The lawmakers’ July 25 letter cited an initial batch of internal Shell documents released by Hüzeir last March. The evidence, they wrote, should inspire the DOJ to “investigate Exxon, Shell, and other members of the fossil fuel industry to determine whether they violated RICO, consumer protection, truth in advertising, public health, or other laws.”
A separate letter from U.S. Sens. Bernie Sanders (D-VT), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Ed Markey (D-MA), and Ed Markey (D-OR) urged the DOJ to go even further and “bring suits against the fossil fuel industry for its longstanding and carefully coordinated campaign to mislead consumers and discredit climate science in pursuit of massive profits.”
The latest documents add to an abundance of proof that Shell was well aware of the harm its products would cause — and acknowledged its culpability for the damage.
“If a product is used, as indicated by Shell, and annoying consequences nevertheless arise, Shell feels partly responsible,” representatives from Shell told researchers from the Dutch University of Leiden in 1970.
Those “annoying consequences” — which turned out to be more catastrophic and deadly than just annoying — were plainly elucidated by the company in the years to follow. In a 1985 journal article, Shell employee T.G. Wilkinson observed that the burning of fossil fuels has “upset the balance” of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and “will cause major adverse changes to some areas.”
“The dilemma therefore remains as to whether to encourage the continued use of fossil fuels with the potential enormous effects on the world’s climate,” Wilkinson wrote.
Two years later, an internal Shell report titled “Air Pollution: an Oil Industry Perspective” noted that a rise in CO2 in the atmosphere “could lead to a higher average surface temperature on Earth, which could have far-reaching environmental, social and economic consequences.”
In 1989, Shell executive Davis warned that “Two groups who could bear particularly heavy costs will be: Future generations who would have to live with the costs of adaptation, and…Those in countries yet to industrialise who would face constraints on energy use.”
Davis is now executive chair of world energy scenarios at the World Energy Council.
Armed with the information it needed to steer the world toward cleaner sources of energy, Shell embarked on a campaign to undermine climate action instead.
The same year Davis made his prediction in the OECD report, Shell helped found the Global Climate Coalition (GCC), an oil industry lobbying group that worked to spread disinformation about climate science.
A year later, in an internal publication, Shell admitted the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and embrace alternative sources of energy — but stated that “by the time the enhanced greenhouse effect has been conclusively proven, it may be too late to do anything about it.”
Shell went on to promote the idea that climate science was uncertain and downplayed the role of fossil fuels in the years to come. “It is very difficult to aportion [sic] the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations to any particular cause,” read one paper published by the company in 1992.
When Shell left the GCC, citing its opposition to the Kyoto climate agreement, it explained in a 1998 report that “The Shell view is that prudent precautionary measures are called for.”
Hüzeir, the researcher who unearthed these reports, told DeSmog that documents like this could help litigators make the case against Shell in a growing wave of lawsuits seeking to hold the company accountable for knowingly fueling climate chaos. “Shell’s deepening embrace of the precautionary principle, as revealed in this document, shows that Shell was well aware of the crisis ahead,” he said. “What else did they know?”
The documents add to a heap of evidence that could spur the country’s most powerful public interest law firm to investigate Big Oil.
“If the allegations against ExxonMobil, Shell, and other major fossil fuel companies are true, their coordinated efforts to deceive Americans constitute the most consequential deception campaign in history, with potentially existential consequences for our planet,” Lieu and other members of Congress wrote in their July letter to the DOJ. “We respectfully request that the DOJ investigate whether these actions violated federal law.”
Since that letter was sent last year, more state and local governments have taken the companies to court for that deception. California — the most populous state in the nation and one of the world’s largest economies — sued Shell and other fossil fuel majors for climate damages and consumer fraud. Two Indigenous tribal governments in Washington State, forced to spend millions relocating their communities due to rising seas, filed their own lawsuit against oil giants. Honolulu’s climate accountability lawsuit cleared motions to dismiss the case by fossil fuel defendants, putting it on a path to be the first case of its kind to go to trial.
The stakes of these legal efforts are only getting higher, as climate disasterscontinue to batter many of the same communities awaiting their day in court. The DOJ threw its support behind the plaintiffs in a U.S. Supreme Court brief the agency filed last March, but it hasn’t yet taken independent action against the fossil fuel industry.
“It’s time to hold polluters accountable for their lies, which could have existential consequences for our planet,” Lieu said.
