Amnesty: Russia is committing war crimes in Ukraine

Photo: AP Photo / Rodrigo Abd

On Tuesday, Amnesty International accused Russia of committing the same war crimes in Ukraine as it did in Syria.

“What is happening now in Ukraine is a repetition of what we have seen in Syria,” Amnesty International Secretary-General Agnès Callamard said.

“It is no longer a question of arbitrary attacks; we are now witnessing targeted attacks on civilian infrastructure,” she warned.

The so-called humanitarian corridors that should give civilians the opportunity to flee, which have been negotiated between Russia and Ukraine, are, according to Callamard, “death traps.”

“We see the same thing here, just like Russia did in Syria,” she said.

Aleppo

The head of Amnesty’s operations in Eastern Europe, Marie Struthers, also draws a parallel with Russia’s war in Chechnya, referring to the attacks on civilian targets and the use of illegal weapons.

Struthers compares Russia’s siege of the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol to the siege of Aleppo in Syria.

“We see more and more war crimes,” she said.

Callamard sharply criticizes “a paralyzed international system” that allows Russia to continue the war, including the “shameful” paralysis of action in the UN Security Council and other institutions.

Source: © NTB Scanpix / #Norway Today / #NorwayTodayNews

Do you have a news tip for Norway Today? We want to hear it. Get in touch at [email protected]

1 Comment on "Amnesty: Russia is committing war crimes in Ukraine"

  1. Our (Western) 2003 Iraq war was fraudulently begun and by Nuremberg entirely a war crime itself, causing 300,000 to 600,000 innocent deaths, depending on the credibility of the British Lancet study. Then there were our wrongful Libya and Iraq wars, the total bodycount of our Western murders being 600,000 to 900,000.

    Amnesty condemned individual incidents like Abu Ghraib (prison), and in 2017 CBS News “BAGHDAD — A recent spike in civilian casualties in Mosul suggests the U.S.-led coalition is not taking adequate precautions to prevent civilian deaths as it battles Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants alongside Iraqi ground forces, Amnesty International said on Tuesday.
    The human rights group’s report followed acknowledgement from the coalition that the U.S. military was behind a March 17 strike in a western Mosul neighborhood that residents said killed more than a hundred civilians.” (and many more such incidents, including targeting *weddings*)

    … but it daintily didn’t accuse us of “war crimes” like it accusing the Russians now.

    Why the difference?

    Meanwhile, Washington Post: “Russia has killed civilians in Ukraine. Kyiv’s defense tactics add to the danger.”
    By Sudarsan Raghavan Today at 11:00 p.m. EDT
    My comment beneath:

    Good to see WaPo finally addressing this.
    The Russians have been accusing the Ukrainians of using civilians as human shields from the start of this.
    But unless residents are evacuated – and some of those evacuated from Mariupol claim that their evacuation buses were fired upon by (doomed Azov Battalion) Ukraine troops/positions – heavy civilian casualties are inevitable.

    To his credit, Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre had foresightedly intended to make Norway’s UN Security Council presidency an opportunity to get enacted international laws of war trying to reduce the inhumanity of urban combat.
    Maybe after this tragedy there will be a greater chance of that.

    And we should remember that we Americans tried to break a country that wouldn’t surrender and was causing severe losses to our daylight precision B-29 bombing raids, with mass, indiscriminate night fire-bombing and then our successfully war-ending atom bombs.

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published.


*