Israel cuts ties with UN human rights body

Al Jazeera

Co-operation with UN Human Rights Council suspended as punitive measure for probe of illegal West Bank settlements.

Navi Pillay, UN commissioner for human rights, said
West Bank settlement expansion is linked to violence

Israel has said it has severed contacts with the UN Human Rights Council after the group's launch last week of an international investigation into Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

The decision, announced by a foreign ministry spokesman on Monday, meant that the fact-finding team the council planned to send to the West Bank will not be allowed to enter the territory or Israel, said spokesman Yigal Palmor.

"We are not working with them anymore," Palmor said about the Geneva-based forum. "We had been participating in meetings, discussions, arranging visits to Israel. All that is over."

The international investigation was launched on Thursday, with the United States isolated in voting against the initiative brought by the Palestinian Authority.

Israeli leaders swiftly condemned the UN body, saying it was hypocritical and biased against Israel.
"They systematically and serially make all kinds of decisions and condemnations against Israel without even symbolically considering our positions," Palmor said.

He said Israel would continue to cooperate with other UN bodies.

Settlement status

The UN Human Rights Council condemned Israel's planned construction of new housing units for Jewish settlers in the

West Bank and East Jerusalem, saying they undermined the peace process and posed a threat to the two-state solution and the creation of a contiguous and independent Palestinian state.

About 500,000 Israelis and 2.5 million Palestinians live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, areas Israel captured in a 1967 war.

Palestinians want the territory for an independent state along with the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
Palestinians say settlements, considered illegal by the International Court of Justice, the highest UN legal body for disputes, would deny them a viable state.

Israel cites historical and Biblical links to the West Bank and says the status of settlements should be decided in peace negotiations.

U.N. rights chief: Guantonamo a Clear Breach of International Law

(AP) GENEVA - The U.N. human rights chief says the U.S. government must close the Guantanamo Bay prison as President Barack Obama promised a year ago.

Navi Pillay, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, says "the facility continues to exist and individuals remain arbitrarily detained — indefinitely — in clear breach of international law."

Obama pledged to shutter the U.S. Naval Base prison in Cuba in his annual address to Congress last year.

Pillay said Monday — ahead of Obama's next annual speech Tuesday — that she is deeply disappointed the U.S. government "has instead entrenched a system of arbitrary detention."

Pillay said she also is "disturbed at the failure to ensure accountability for serious human rights violations, including torture, that took place."

Iraqi authorities hang 34 people in a single day

NewKerala

BAGHDAD : More than 30 people were executed by Iraqi authorities on Thursday following their conviction for various crimes, the United Nations reported on Tuesday. It is the largest number of confirmed executions within a single day in years.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said she was shocked to learn that 34 people, including two women, were executed in Iraq on Thursday. "Even if the most scrupulous fair trial standards were observed, this would be a terrifying number of executions to take place in a single day," she said.

The United Nations believes at least 1,200 people have been sentenced to death in Iraq since 2004, but the government is reluctant to release official figures. The UN said at least 63 people are thought to have been executed since mid-November of last year.

"Given the lack of transparency in court proceedings, major concerns about due process and fairness of trials, and the very wide range of offences for which the death penalty can be imposed in Iraq, it is a truly shocking figure," Pillay said about Thursday's executions. Iraq lists 48 crimes for which the death penalty can be imposed, including non-fatal crimes such as damage to property.

"Most disturbingly," said Pillay, "we do not have a single report of anyone on death row being pardoned, despite the fact there are well documented cases of confessions being extracted under duress. I call on the Government of Iraq to implement an immediate moratorium on the institution of death penalty."

Tuesday's report comes just two days after Human Rights Watch warned that Iraq risks falling back towards authoritarian rule amid allegations that security forces have tortured detainees at a secret prison, cracked down on freedom of expression and attacked peaceful protesters as well as journalists. Executions were commonly used by the government of Saddam Hussein.

The opposition in Iraq has compared Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to a dictator as he has failed to appoint defense and interior ministers, giving him full control over those ministries. al-Maliki has also failed to appoint a minister of National Security Affairs. (BNO News)