Extrajudicial Killings Research Articles

The Potential of Domestic and International Courts to Protect Women’s Right to Family Life in the North Caucasus

Abstract The North Caucasus region of Russia is known for spawning the highest number of adverse judgments from the European Court of Human Rights compared to any other Russian region—over 500 as of mid-2020. Since 2005, the Court has found Russia responsible for enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings and torture carried out on a mass scale during the second Chechen war and in its aftermath. The Head of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, has become internationally infamous for the brutal repression of even his mildest critics, ensuring that most Chechens will be too afraid to claim their rights in any forum. Domestically, the Russian federal authorities have either ignored or tacitly condoned the increasing subversion of state law in the region in favour of de facto customary norms—adat—and elements of sharia law that have had a devastating effect mainly on women’s and girls’ rights. Harmful traditional practices such as ‘honour killings’, child marriage, bride-kidnapping, and—in certain remote mountain regions of Dagestan—female genital mutilation take place on a regular basis. Yet such violations, however grave, do not easily lend themselves to litigation. This practice note focuses on one of the few areas in the region in which systematic focused litigation is being carried out in domestic courts, often against enormous odds: the systematic denial of women’s right to family life after divorce or the death of their children’s biological father.

VIGILANTE GROUPS AND POLICING IN A DEMOCRATIZING NIGERIA: NAVIGATING THE CONTEXT AND ISSUES

Nos últimos anos, grupos de vigilantes e outras estruturas informais de policiamento assumiram um papel maior na arquitetura de segurança de muitos países, especialmente aqueles que saíram da ordem autoritária. Apesar deste desenvolvimento, no entanto, questões e preocupações são constantemente levantadas sobre se eles realmente poderiam ser agentes do policiamento democrático contra o pano de fundo de sua propensão para violações de direitos humanos e assassinatos extrajudiciais. É contra esse cenário que este artigo examina o balanço de grupos de vigilantes em uma Nigéria em democratização. Após uma extensa revisão da literatura existente sobre grupos policiais, de policiamento, de vigilantismo e grupos de vigilantes, bem como estudos relevantes sobre grupos vigilantes na Nigéria, observa-se que ao contrário da prática em democracias liberais, onde grupos de vigilantes, - em conduta e prática - , seguem os princípios do estado de direito e constitucionalismo, o oposto é o caso de uma Nigéria em democratização Argumenta-se e conclui-se que enquanto os grupos de vigilantes, como os estabelecimentos formais de policiamento, continuam sendo instrumentos de intimidação política de opositores políticos pelos políticos que os controlam; o terreno do vigilantismo continuaria a ser no reino da "anocracia".

Memoir and rememory: remembering Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda in Jack Mapanje’s And Crocodiles are Hungry at Night

ABSTRACT This paper attempts a rememory of the personhood and politics of Malawi’s foremost leader, nationalist and dictator, Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda, who ruled Malawi for three decades, from 1964 to 1994. The study is necessitated by the avalanche of critiques in Malawian literature which testify to the fact that for more than two decades after Banda’s reign, Malawi and its politics continue to be haunted by the ghosts of the Banda dictatorship. The study adopts the postcolonial memory methodologies, alongside Toni Morrison’s concept of re-memory, to palimpsestically retrieve the zeitgeist of the Banda days as detained in Mapanje’s And Crocodiles are Hungry at Night. The analysis of the memoir reconstructs the various dimensions of dictatorial tendencies and traits that characterised Malawian politics and social life. These traits include arbitrary arrest and detention of perceived political enemies, the proscription of the press and creative outputs through the Censorship Board and extra-judicial killings. These recollections are meant to serve as a precautionary measure to preclude the gradual rise of neo-dictatorship in post-Banda Malawi.

Perception of the Community towards Issues on Extrajudicial Killings in the Philippines

In the Philippines, Extrajudicial Killings is the tool mainly used against narcoproducents, narcotraficars and narcodealers. This study described the impacts of the viewed video clips in determining the attitudes and behavior of the respondents towards extrajudicial killings; and the response (positive/negative) and action of the respondents upon viewing the video clips. Descriptive method was used in this research and Likert-type questionnaire was utilized and distributed to 165 respondents. The researcher concluded that the respondents obtained knowledge and better understanding about extrajudicial killing documentaries. This was founded results wherein the respondent’s answers to the survey questionnaires bent towards “agree” and “neutral”. The results also imply that respondents have a positive attitude towards the documentaries about extrajudicial killings. Respondent’s increased knowledge leads to favorable attitude. The respondents became more concerned with the children who live in the next generation to have a peaceful, safety and drug-free country as they sympathize with the difficulties of extrajudicial killings featured in the documentaries. Over-all, it is concluded that most of the respondents thought of Extrajudicial killing as a positive tool against narcoproducents, narcotraficars and narcodealers.

UNITED STATES’ UNLAWFUL DRONE STRIKES AND DAMAGES CAUSED TO HUMANITY: A CASE STUDY OF PAKISTAN

This paper contributes significantly through suggestions to overcome the problem created by the disastrous US drone strikes in Pakistan. This paper evaluates incidences of the United States’ combat drone strikes in Pakistan and the damage caused to innocent people. It seeks to determine possible violations of international laws and the extent to which these strikes diminish the sovereignty of Pakistan. After the incident of 9/11, the use of combat drones in armed conflicts among states, non-state actors, disruptive groups and organisations has increased and expanded. Combat drones are controlled by operators who depend for their primary sources of information on cameras and sensors to determine their targets. Drone strikes lack identification processes causing many innocent people to be killed or injured. Drone strikes launched in non-conflict areas also increase the concerns about illegitimate interference in a state’s territorial sovereignty and violations of international laws. It covers the following questions. What are the basic principles about the use of force? What kinds of damages are caused by US drone strikes in Pakistan that violate basic human rights principles? What are the concerns of international organisations about drone strikes in Pakistan? Summarily, it covers the United States unlawful drone strikes in Pakistan and damages caused to humanity. The paper uses doctrinal qualitative analysis to situate the research within the ethical, legal and social parameters of the related statutes of international law. The research methodology adopted is evaluative, interpretive and analytical. The paper consists of 8 segments: (1) drones and the United States armed forces, (2) some basic international law principles about the use of force, (3) possible human rights violations, (4) US drone strikes diminish the sovereignty of Pakistan, (5) demands for transparency, (6) the damages caused to humanity by the drone strikes, (7) concerns of international organisations about illegitimate drone strikes causing extra judicial killings and (8) some recommendations to regulate the use of combat drones. It demonstrates that international law does not regulate the use of combat drones in armed conflict and no considerable effort has been made to bring the use of combat drones under the rule of law. Furthermore, US drone strikes in Pakistan’s territory have been done without consensus, resulting in the violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty and the killing of innocent people.

Framing Kian

Codex 23 Framing Kian Gary Devilles Fear history, for nothing can be hidden from her. —­ Gregoria de Jesus, wife of Filipino national hero Andres Bonifacio The late art critic John Berger (1991, 48–­50) said that photography always flirts with death because it stops the flow of life. And in Raffy Lerma’s photograph of Kian Lloyd Delos Santos lying in a coffin with a chick pecking at its glass pane, this flirtation becomes interminable, a constant play of sound and death. The chick’s pecking is unceasing, long, and acute. This Filipino custom is meant to shame the killers of the deceased, so the chick “pecks” at their conscience. On one hand, a feeling of indignation is evoked, but as the number of killings rises, and the photographs become all too familiar, our senses are dulled. Kian’sdeathmayhavesparkedanationwidecondemnationofDuterte’s war on drugs, as this happened during a bloody week of police operations Figure 5. Online version of the photograph of Kian Lloyd Delos Santos. Photograph courtesy of Raffy Lerma. 24 Codex and extrajudicial killings from August 14 to 18, 2017. At least eighty-­ one people were killed nationwide. However, at the same time, these reports and photographs were also being used by the state to justify its drive to clean up, to make the streets safe of drug users and pushers, telling us that the likes of Kian are the enemies, the real menace, the ones who have to be eradicated. At first, such news can be shocking, but soon, we accept and rationalize this state-­ sponsored violence. The statistics and the safe distance also afforded by TV screens at home somehow made us complicit with the state. We remained unperturbed as the police released recently that they had conducted 134,583 antidrug operations from June 2016 to July 2019. They visited 6,097,672 houses as part of Project Tokhang, which involves police officers going around communities across the country to persuade suspected drug users into drug rehabilitation programs. The word tokhang is derived from Cebuano, a language very distinct from Tagalog and the current president’s first language. Toktok-­hangyo, meaning “to knock and plead” (or to make a polite request to surrender or stop using drugs), led to arrests and killings. The police claimed that 1,020,244 people had surrendered from June to December 2016. They also said that only 4,049 of the dead were victims of extrajudicial killings (Bueza 2016). Despite these figures, Kian and the rest remain faceless, but the knocking amplifies to something strident and thunderous. Last November 29, 2018, police officers Arnel Oares, Jeremiah Pereda, and Jerevin Cruz were found guilty of killing Kian and were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole (Gavilan 2018). This could have been justice for Kian, yet he remains a restless ghost who continues to haunt us to this day. Among the little that we know about him is that he would have graduated from Our Lady of Lourdes College in Valenzuela City and might have applied to the Philippine National Police Academy. He would likely have continued to work in the sari-­sari store and to text his mom, Saldy, who works in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, about his future. But since such stories are the stuff that we watch too often on telenovelas or soap operas, we forget Kian and the many like him too easily. The recent Brilliante Mendoza’s Amo (pronounced “ah-­ moh,” meaning “boss” or “lord”) serialized in Netflix is about a high school student, Joseph, who gets involved in a drug-­ running operation of his family, with his uncle, who is a cop and profits from corruption, and with a brother-­ in-­ law, Bino, who helps cover his tracks. Filipino viewers easily recognized Kian in Joseph, and the director of the series is known as an unapologetic advocate of the brutal suppression of drug pushers and users. Mendoza even said that Duterte’s campaign is necessary for his own country and Codex 25 other countries afflicted with the drug problem. Human Rights Watch deputy Asia director Phelim Kine says that several sequences in Amo appear to be deliberate efforts to reinforce the government’s willfully deceptive...

Police brutality and human rights in Nigeria's democracy: Focus on restoration of man's dignity

After about twenty years of military rule in Nigeria, Nigerians seemed to have lost the ability to insist on their fundamental human rights. In this vein, any attempt to talk about human rights has been very controversial since the return of democracy in 1991 because the police seem to have taken over the lawlessness of the military as no day passes without a daily occurrence of extra judicial killings, accidental discharge, and other notorious acts against innocent citizens all over the country. Therefore, with police brutality observable in every nook and cranny of the Nigerian society, this study evaluates human rights abuses in Nigeria's democracy with a view to restoring man's dignity that is at lowest ebb today than ever. Since government seems confused on what steps to take to put a stop to the series of abuses of human rights, hypotheses were formulated and literatures related to the variables reviewed. Survey research design was adopted and a total sample of 150 respondents was selected through purposive sampling technique and simple random sampling technique. The hypotheses were tested at 0.05 significant levels and the results of the findings show that all the null hypotheses were rejected and the alternate hypotheses accepted at same significant levels. Among the findings, the study shows that the rule of law in Nigeria has fallen short of the expectations of the citizens. Secondly, the police force has become a stumbling block to the effective administration of Justice and efficient maintenance of law and order as cruelty against citizens are widespread. Furthermore, the sheer disrespect of rules of engagements with imunity by the police not only questions the ability of the government to protect its citizens but also undermines its credibility. Based on the findings, the study concludes that the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) have not only abdicated their constitutional functions, responsibilities and obligations to Nigerians, but are deeply engaged in human rights abuses, bribery, and extortions of money not only from motorists plying our roads but also in our habitudes at the least opportunity. In this light, the study recommends that as a security organization in a democracy, the Nigeria police should understand that democracy demands that the human personality in its course of development should be allowed to proceed without artificial forces or barricade so long as it actively does not violate the safety and reasonable right of others. In addition, there should be other far-reaching reforms and reorientations necessary to bring Nigeria's policing operations into conformity with constitutional and international human rights standards.

Wars over Wildlife: Green Militarisation and Just War Theory

Militarisation of conservation (sometimes known as 'green militarisation') is an issue of growing international interest. Rhino horn is immensely valuable (in 2013 its value exceeded that of gold or cocaine), and its illegal trade has attracted widespread attention. Conservationists have declared a 'war' on poaching, with extensive military resources deployed to combat it. This sometimes includes operations which are referred to, particularly in the media, as 'shoot-to-kill'. These can be tantamount to extra-judicial killings. We scrutinise this issue using 'Just War' principles, to explore whether the 'war' on poaching meets the criteria expected of armed conflict. Our perspective suggests that it fails both ethical and pragmatic examination. This piece encourages conservation scientists, and the public, to consider which actions are justified in protecting wildlife, and how we should rethink conservation policy to achieve ethical, successful outcomes for both people and wildlife.

Exposing EJKs and the State—A Collaborative Review of <em>Dark Lens/Lente ng Karimlan: The Filipino Camera in Duterte's Republic</em>

Convergence 2 Codex Nerissa S. Balce and Sarita Echavez See Exposing EJKs and the State— A Collaborative Review of Dark Lens/Lente ng Karimlan: The Filipino Camera in Duterte’s Republic In May 2016, the Philippines began a new era of state-­sanctioned death documented by a new visual technology: the digital camera. Under the leadership of the nation’s sixteenth president, Rodrigo Roa Duterte, a drug war was launched as part of Duterte’s plan to end illegal drug use and drug trade. The new Philippine president believed that criminals , such as drug users and drug pushers, were “animals” who should be killed without due process (Berehaluk 2016; Goodman and Liwanag 2017). The elimination of criminal elements has been rationalized as a purging necessary for creating the new strongman’s version of the modern republic. Since its unleashing, Duterte’s drug war has claimed more than thirty thousand deaths, with more than 40 percent of the killings committed in Manila, the Philippine capital. Scholars have described this humanitarian crisis as a genocide of the poor (Coronel et al. 2018; Simangan 2018). Most of the dead are from the urban slums—­ men, women, teenagers, and children who were shot or killed in the cross fire, their bodies found in sewers; on dimly lit side streets; at busy intersections; by sari-­sari (corner) stores; and in jeepneys, on motorcycles, and in cars. Some corpses bear the marks of torture; some have their heads wrapped in duct tape so that identifying them has been impossible. Corpses have been found with handwritten signs in Filipino that say “I am a drug pusher.” Since the drug killings, a new generation of Filipino photographers, in the tradition of journalists during the Marcos dictatorship, have emerged Codex 3 to record the horror of the Philippine state. The essays for this Codex discuss the work Manila-­ based photographers Eloisa Lopez, Br. Ciriaco Santiago III, Ezra Acayan, and Raffy Lerma. The new photographs of the drug war return us to the camera’s old intimacies with death and state violence. The photographs of extrajudicial killings—­what Filipinos refer to asEJKs—­appearnotonlyinprintbutalsoonsocialmedia,thusexpanding the reach of the photographs to millions of Filipinos and, by extension, a global audience (Gonzales 2019). These young men and women are the eyes of “The Night Shift” (Fenton 2017). Their grueling schedules begin at nightfall. They rush to the site of a murder or multiple murders, hurrying to photograph the corpses in the dark, before the police take the dead to morgues or funeral parlors that charge the victims’ families tens of thousands of pesos with a significant cut for the police who give them business. They work in near-­impossible conditions—­low lighting; the smell of blood, sewage, and fear; and the hostility of some Philippine police—­ but they continue to share their photographs of EJKs on various media. They have won international accolades for what we have dubbed their “dark lens.” With the assistance of Manila-­based video producer Rica Concepcion, we reached out to the photographers in March 2018, and they agreed to be part of an online exhibition that would bring attention to the drug war killings. As an academic and artistic response to the violence of the Philippine state, we launched Dark Lens/Lente ng Karimlan: The Filipino CamerainDuterte’sRepublic, on the website of SUNY Stony Brook’s Center for the Study of Inequalities, Social Justice, and Policy, in October 2018. The photographs were accompanied with original brief captions and poems by forty scholars, poets, and artists from the Philippines and North America. We co-­curated Dark Lens with literature and translation studies scholar Pia Arboleda (University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa) and Manila-­based writer Francine Marquez. The editors were Clare Counihan and Sarita See from the Center for Art and Thought. For this Codex, we invited four scholars from the Philippines and North America to expand the captions they had written for the DarkLens exhibition : literary critic John Labella (Manila) on Lopez; art historian Caroline Baicy (Honolulu) on Santiago; political scientist Ethel Tungohan (Toronto) on Acayan; and cultural studies scholar Gary Devilles (Manila) on Lerma. As we know from the history of photography, the camera is...

Duterte, Overseas Filipino Workers, and the Ethics of Representation

Codex 13 Figure 2. Online version of a photograph of Grace de Guzman. Photograph courtesy of Eloisa Lopez. Duterte, Overseas Filipino Workers, and the Ethics of Representation Ethel Tungohan Although the problem persists I really do believe the photographs put a face to the numbers. They allowed more people to witness the harrowing things we saw. More organizations were spurred to action from the reporting. None of this would have come to light if not for the very first wave of local reporters saying: this really is happening. —­ Hannah Reyes Morales, “Coming Home to Cover Duterte’s Deadly Drug War” Consisting primarily of former and current migrant workers who came to Canada under the low-­ skilled Temporary Foreign Workers Program (TFWP), members of the Filipino diaspora in Edmonton, Alberta, have oftentimes expressed to me their disillusionment with the way politics was conducted back home, the economic conditions that led them to 14 Codex seek jobs abroad in the first place, and the sacrifices they underwent in Canada. Living and working in Canada did not mean that they were uninvolved with events in the Philippines. On the contrary, being migrant workers abroad with obligations to send remittances to family and other loved ones in the Philippines meant that they maintained transnational ties. I actually first heard about Rodrigo Duterte first announcing his candidacy for president from them. Despite favorable media depictions of the progress former president Benigno Aquino Jr. has made, which included “rapid economic growth of 6.9% and improved performance in global competitiveness rankings (from 86th place to 47th)” (Curato 2017, 144), many of those with whom I spoke were disillusioned. The economic benefits that purportedly accrued under Aquino seemed to them only to be felt by a few, leaving behind marginalized communities that included Filipino migrant workers. Through Duterte, many Filipinos in the diaspora felt that at long last, somebody was setting the nation on the correct path. Stories of Duterte’s reign as mayor of Davao were shared with reverence. That Duterte also made gestures toward catering to progressive causes, including his decision to offer cabinet-­level positions to progressive politicians (Bello 2017) and his condemnation of “anti–­Overseas Filipino Worker” (OFW) policies such as Philippine customs agents’ tendency to vigilantly search the luggage of returning overseas workers to search for taxable goods (Ranada 2016), seemed to show that despite his blustering persona, his politics were commendable. In addition, Duterte’s unwillingness to kowtow to U.S. imperialist policies appealed to progressive members of the diaspora (Bello 2017). Consequently, pro-­Duterte groups mushroomed across Canada, as they did in countries where there were numerous OFWs. The explicit goal was to get not just OFWs but also their families back home to support Duterte. Interestingly, within months of his election, some of the same members of the Filipino diaspora who supported him started to doubt his sincerity. There were hushed reports of extrajudicial killings, of children being the collateral damage in his “war against drugs,” of police forces acting without restraint. Then there was the jailing of political opponents, the eventual ousting of progressive cabinet members like former Department of Social Welfare and Development secretary Judy Taguiwalo, and the unceasing attacks against journalists. More recently, Duterte’s statements that he was “powerless to protect OFWs” and his belief that rape and sexual violence were unfortunate yet unavoidable realities that female OFWs had to face (Aguilar 2019) caused widespread anger among the Filipino OFWs whom I knew in Canada, including former supporters. Codex 15 Still, there were those in the diaspora who doubted the veracity of the reports. The discourse of “fake news” became prominent transnationally through Duterte’s and U.S. president Donald Trump’s use of the term. Both disavowed news reports that challenged their respective actions. This meant that there was widespread confusion about what was true and what was not. Hence many Filipinos abroad were unsure of who and what to believe. The way Duterte supporters quickly mobilized against anyone who dared voice concerns about Duterte, with vitriolic and oftentimes gendered threats made frequently, lent a chilling atmosphere to political discourse online. And yet even members of the Filipino diaspora who did not know what...

Human Rights in Xinjiang 1978-2007: Internationalisation of the Uyghur Dilemma and China’s Reaction

Since 1978 when Deng Xiaoping took over the leadership of China after the demise of Mao Zedong in 1976, the country witnessed dramatic changes in the human rights situation. These included freedom in performing religious obligations such as pilgrimage, for the Muslim Uyghurs and freedom to practice their culture and language. Hence, there was an overall improvement in human rights situation in Xinjiang province. However, in the late 1990s the Chinese Communist Party reverted to harsh policies once again. They declared the policy of ‘Strike Hard’ which sanctioned the use of torture and arbitrary detention as well as extra-judicial killings of the Uyghurs. This article examines the factors that have influenced China’s policies on the human rights condition in Xinjiang from 1978 until 2007. It also analyses the role of Uyghur diasporas in their struggle to internationalise the human rights issues in Xinjiang and China’s reaction towards the international pressures.

Profiling of Human Tragedy in Kashmir and Kashmir Movement: Post Revocation of Article 370

This research paper is an attempt to make a comprehensive profile of human tragedies occurred in Kashmir, look into the sources of human tragedies and provide contemporary developments regarding the issue of human tragedy in Kashmir. This paper also highlights the severe crimes being committed in Kashmir which have affected lives of millions of people in living in Kashmir. There are numerous cases which reflect the violation of humanitarian laws in Kashmir by the Indian on ground troops in the valley. This research paper looks at the massive level of violation of human rights protected in UN charter. Pressing problems such as force full abduction, extrajudicial killings, and violation of political rights, liberty and even right to life will be discussed with comprehensive case studies. In later part Kashmir movement will be introduced and will elaborate its effectiveness in resistance against Indian brutalities.

The “Real” Chechen Man: Conceptions of Religion, Nature, and Gender and the Persecution of Sexual Minorities in Postwar Chechnya

ABSTRACT In March of 2017, the Russian LGBT Network received their first reports of police violence against individuals in Chechnya because of their perceived sexual orientation. In the following months, news spread of a campaign of forced disappearances and torture specifically targeting suspected homosexual men. Between December, 2018 and February, 2019, police carried out another wave of unlawful detentions of men on the basis of their sexual orientation. The reports of unlawful detentions and extrajudicial killings of queer men may seem surreal in a world that has slowly grown more progressive with regard to LGBT rights issues. And yet, this violence is the reality faced by gay and bisexual men in Chechnya under Ramzan Kadyrov, the hypermasculine Chechen leader. This paper explores the ways in which religious practice, imaginations of nature, and conceptions of gender have influenced Chechnya’s current anti-LGBT climate.

The dual causes of fragmentation: Democratic security and the communitarian state in Colombian politics

This chapter analyzes speeches delivered by former Colombian President, Álvaro Uribe Vélez, between August 2002 and August 2009, which can be found on the official website of the presidency: ( http://web.presidencia.gov.co/discursos/ ). We attempt to identify the webs of meaning surrounding the concepts of ‘Democratic Security’ and ‘Communitarian State’ with awareness of the relationship between discourse, ideology and power. The aim is to better understand the political power of the plans, programs and projects developed by Uribe’s administration, and how this was affected by widespread deployment of the media. These policies are conditioned by a set of colonialist principles that are embodied in symbolic-discursive strategies that result in representations, by means of which mechanisms of marginalization, discrimination and polarized hierarchy are legitimized from the different social spheres. During the 7-year period analyzed there were controversial debates over the commission of crimes against humanity by national security agents, as well as corruption scandals over topics like ‘para-politics’, ‘false positives’, selective arrests, extrajudicial killings and violations of the sovereignty of bordering countries. Within this political context, we attempt to identify the inherent tensions and social conflicts. It is argued that the analyzed discourses reproduce colonialist thoughts, in relation to neoliberal principles and the application of global policies. Using the principles of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), we explore the strategies and resources used in Uribe’s speeches and how major themes are positioned to reproduce systems of beliefs, values and attitudes.

#BlackLivesMatter: Innovative Black Resistance

Since 2013, extrajudicial police killings of black people have captured the attention of U.S. and international media, substantially because of the work of leaders in the Black Lives Matter (#BLM) movement. #BLM is simultaneously a group of localized organizations and a broad online social movement. In this article, we examine the #BLM movement in detail, with particular emphasis on the following aspects of the movement: (1) its innovative organizational practices and social media use; (2) its accent on black perspectives (counterframing) of systemic racial oppression, heteronormativity, and capitalism; and (3) its broad emphasis on oppressed Americans, including black women and LGBTQ people. We also situate the #BLM movement within the surrounding system of racial oppression, including the historical role of racialized policing in maintaining social control of blacks. We detail the long tradition of black social movements, especially black feminist organizing, against systemic racial oppression. In doing so, we intend to contribute social movement theorizing that more fully considers powerful counterframed perspectives of black activists in U.S. social movements. Although the #BLM movement reflects black feminism and past civil rights movement struggles, it is a uniquely twenty‐first‐century social movement that uses new technologies for innovative social protest.

Level of Awareness on Extra Judicial Killing of Bachelor of Science in Criminology Students

Extra Judicial Killing (EJK) is the unlawful killing of a person like leading politicians, religious figures, trade union leaders and sometimes socially popular figures by governmental authorities without the sanction of any judicial proceeding or any legal process. This descriptive study determined the level of awareness on EJK of the B.S. Criminology students. One hundred twenty (120) randomly selected students enrolled in the Bachelor of Science in Criminology (BS Crim.) in the Northern Iloilo Polytechnic State College (NIPSC), Ajuy, Campus, Ajuy, Iloilo during the second semester of the school year (S.Y.) 2017-2018 answered the researcher- made questionnaire. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), Percentages, means, frequency counts, and standard deviations for the total sample were calculated with the use SPSS version 19 and are presented in the data table. Results of the study showed that the level of awareness on EJK of the B.S. Crim. students was moderately aware. There was no significant difference in the students’ perception and students’ level of awareness. This study is pronouncing significantly the students’ disagreement on EJK. Moreover, those students in the pursuit of peace, justice, freedom, human rights tend to disagree with the extra-judicial killing related events. Students believed that EJK could not be the answer in the rise of crimes and vices in the country. Crimes and vice could only be solved and be eradicated through a lawfully and properly protocols.

ICC and ASEAN: Weakening or Strengthening National Criminal Justice System?

The objective of the establishment of the International Criminal Court by the Rome Statute 1998 is to achieve global justice. The spirit to end impunity established the ICC to respond to four previous criminal tribunals that have been criticized as victor’s justice and selective justice. The ICC has material jurisdiction on the four most serious crimes: crimes against humanity, genocide, war crimes, and crimes of aggression. These crimes can be committed in any part of the world, including Southeast Asia. The latest case was crimes against humanity that lead to genocide of the Rohingya people in Myanmar, not to mention extra judicial killings as a policy of drugs war and towards journalist in the Philippines. However, none of the case has been brought to justice. In view of that, this study examined challenges and opportunities toward the implementation of Rome Statute 1998 in Southeast Asia. Furthermore, it also observed possible impacts in implementing Rome Statute 1998 in Southeast Asia. The existing national legal instruments related to ICC can support the implementation of Rome Statute 1998 in Southeast Asia and achieve the objective of ICC to end impunity and to reach global justice. Nevertheless, challenges come from the governments of Southeast Asian states. They are reluctant to bring justice and fear that ICC can violate national sovereignty. Interestingly, the Philippines just withdrew itself as a state party to ICC since 2018. Based on the basic principle of complementarity, the ICC is proposed to strengthening national criminal justice of a state. Therefore, the ICC should not be considered as a threat to national sovereignty of a state.

The Metaphor of "War on Drugs" and "Mass Murder" in the Philippines: discourse analysis, power relations, and an interview with President Rodrigo Duterte

This article offers an analysis of statements pronounced by Rodrigo Duterte in an interview produced by Al Jazeera. It shows how Duterte tried to legitimize the extrajudicial killing of more than 3.500 citizens through these statements and rhetoric, a discourse dependent and effective through the metaphor of “war on drugs”, constructing drug dealers and users as threats , enemies to be “legitimately” killed. Drawing on Foucault's Discourse Analysis (1971), it argues that although war on drugs is a metaphor, and not war in the literal or modern sense, it is mobilized within a discursive strategy previous to, during, and after presidential elections; it is a juridical-political discourse on drugs and security that results in confrontations, hunting, punishment, and, in the limit, the exclusion or extermination of declared enemies. It also delineates the electoral context and the historical level of analysis, discussing the role of discourse analysis for critical security studies.

D.C. District Court Enters Over $300 Million Default Judgment Award Against Syria for the Death of Marie Colvin

On February 1, 2019, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia granted a motion for default judgment and entered a $302,511,836.00 award against the Syrian Arab Republic (“Syria”). The court found the Syrian government liable for the death of Marie Colvin, who died in an artillery shelling on February 22, 2012, at a media center in the city of Homs. Colvin was a heralded war correspondent who had previously “cover[ed] conflict zones in Iraq, Chechnya, the Balkans, East Timor, Sri Lanka, Sierra Leone, and Libya.” Colvin's heirs brought suit, claiming that because Syria had been designated a “state sponsor of terrorism,” it could be held liable for an extrajudicial killing of a U.S. national under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA). Judge Amy Berman Jackson concluded that the plaintiffs met the evidentiary burden required to support their claim after finding personal and subject matter jurisdiction.

Examining extrajudicial killings: discriminant analyses of human rights’ violations

ABSTRACTExtrajudicial killings are cases where a government kills citizens with no judicial oversight. We offer first-of-its-kind analyses of this phenomenon that by now is widely discussed in the context of international politics. The theoretical framework proposed here underscores the importance of two pillars: an independent judiciary and violent conflicts. Ordered logistic regression models and GEE time-series cross-sectional analyses with data for 146 countries from 1981–2004 lend support to our theory. Furthermore, the analyses compare extrajudicial killings as a political phenomenon with other phenomena they are often associated with or even lumped together with in empirical analyses. Those include political imprisonment and political disappearance. We find that in various ways extrajudicial killings are indeed unique.