Summary executions and mass human rights abuses targeting innocent civilians in Mali are being perpetrated by soldiers loyal to the dubious Malian regime in a campaign supported by the United Nations, the new socialist French government, and the Obama administration. According to human rights groups and witnesses on the ground, the atrocities are increasing as the number of murdered victims continues to rise — eerily reminiscent of similar tragic interventions in Libya, Syria, and the Ivory Coast.
The regime ruling southern Mali out of the capital city of Bamako, which seized power in a military coup last year led by a U.S. government-trained officer, is currently attempting to recapture the northern regions of the country. The vast swath of territory in the north was declared independent last year by a group of historically oppressed nomadic Tuareg rebels armed with weapons obtained from the recent Western-backed war on Libya.
Islamic fighters with various loyalties joined the fight against the corrupt central government, too — providing a half-baked excuse for the UN, the French government, Obama, and various African despots to enter the fray on behalf of the illegitimate regime in the south. After the UN Security Council purported to “authorize” an international invasion on behalf of the coup-installed regime, forces from France openly began their military campaign earlier this month under the guise of fighting “Islamic extremism.”
Obama, the U.K. government, and a motley assortment of African tyrants — most of whom continue to be propped up with Western taxpayer money — quickly joined the battle as well. But within days of the military operation to crush rebels in the north, disturbing reports of gross human rights violations perpetrated by Western-backed forces began to emerge from across the region.
“This series of grave abuses confirms the concerns that we have been expressing for several weeks,” said President Souhayr Belhassen with the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), a Paris-based umbrella group representing more than 160 organizations around the world. “These acts of revenge together with the extreme tensions that exists between the communities constitute an explosive cocktail leading us to fear that the worst could happen, especially in the context of the reconquering the North.”
According to FIDH, which said it is “very alarmed by the increasing number of summary executions and other human rights violations committed by Malian soldiers,” an immediate investigation is needed. The umbrella organization said an independent commission should be established to assess the scope of the crimes and bring the perpetrators to justice. The group said it had already confirmed dozens of reports of extrajudicial murders in various towns, and that other reported atrocities were still being investigated.
Even in Bamako, where the corrupt regime styling itself the “government” of Mali is based, ethnic Tuaregs who have nothing to do with the secession movement in the north are being brutalized. According to reports, their homes are being invaded and plundered. Simply failing to produce valid identification documents is apparently justification enough to brutalize or even murder the victims.
“These abuses undermine the legitimacy of the operation to restore territorial integrity and must be prosecuted by the national justice, and if required, by the International Criminal Court which opened an investigation on the situation in Mali on 16 January,” FIDH Honorary President Sidiki Kaba said in a statement, urging French and Malian authorities to investigate the lawlessness and criminal terrorization of victims.
Human Rights Watch, another prominent organization, echoed the findings of other human rights groups, saying it had received credible reports of wanton slaughter of civilians being perpetrated by the UN- and Obama-backed regime in Bamako. Among the most ruthlessly persecuted, the organization explained, are Tuaregs and Arabs — the ethnic groups associated with the independence movement in the north.
“We urge the Malian authorities, as well as the French and West African soldiers and authorities to do their utmost to ensure the protection of all civilians,” the New York-based group said in a widely cited statement. Before Western powers openly intervened on behalf of the coup government, Human Rights Watch had already been sounding the alarm, saying that the regime in Bamako was torturing and “disappearing” its enemies. Journalists and family members of coup opponents were also targeted, the group said.
Even Amnesty International, which has developed a reputation as a mouthpiece for the establishment, has expressed alarm over the crimes perpetrated by the Western-backed Malian regime. While noting that rebels who seized power in the north have also been involved in human rights abuses, the group said forces loyal to the illegitimate regime in Bamako were engaged in widespread and brutal activities too.
“Malian security forces have also committed violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, including the extrajudicial executions of Tuareg civilians, indiscriminate shelling of a Tuareg nomadic camp and killing livestock which the nomadic population rely on for survival,” Amnesty International said in a statement. Even in the south, where the coup-installed regime is purportedly in charge, the abuses have been spreading as well.
“Crimes are not confined to the north of the country,” the group said. “Amnesty International has also documented cases of torture, extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances and attacks against political leaders, journalists and other people who expressed dissent peacefully in the south, where the capital Bamako lies.”
While the press has been largely barred from conflict areas by the French government, even establishment journalists have documented the slaughter by UN-backed forces. A Reuters reporter, for example, “saw at least six bodies in two areas of the Walirdi district of Sevare. Three of them were lying, partly covered in sand, near a bus station and showed signs of having been burned. Three more had been thrown into a nearby well.”
Witnesses who spoke to the Associated Press but asked to remain anonymous gave vivid accounts of the atrocities being perpetrated by the Malian regime, which, again, has the full force of the Obama administration, the UN, and the socialist government in France behind it. According to the sources, Malian soldiers were massacring anyone suspected of having ties to the rebels in the north.
“They gathered all the people who didn’t have national identity cards and the people they suspected of being close to the Islamists to execute them and put them in two different wells near the bus station,” one of the witnesses was quoted as saying by the AP. After being dumped in the wells, Malian troops poured gasoline on the bodies and set them ablaze, probably to conceal the evidence of their crimes.
The coup regime in Bamako has denied the accusations, saying it ordered its officers to “respect human rights.” However, French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, when asked about whether he knew of the abuses being perpetrated by the “government” his forces are supporting in Mali, said: “There’s a risk” that the atrocities are occurring, but that it was up to the Malian regime to stop it.
It is hardly the first time in recent memory that the UN, the French government, and the Obama administration have supported barbarian forces to achieve their geopolitical aims. In Libya, for example, NATO-backed forces — many with admitted leadership roles in al-Qaeda — engaged in ethnic cleansing, wiping entire towns of black people off the map while torturing and murdering survivors. Even NATO itself was investigated for war crimes by the self-styled “International Criminal Court” for slaughtering civilians and destroying critical infrastructure
In the Ivory Coast, the UN and the French government — again with full support from the Obama administration — backed brutal Islamist militias to overthrow the Christian president of the country. After the disputed election, the Supreme Court ruled that the existing Christian president had won, but the UN, France, and Obama disagreed, waging a brutal war to install a Muslim central banker as president in a campaign that left thousands of innocent Christians massacred throughout the country. The new regime is now busy shutting down newspapers critical of the new “president” while arresting dissidents en masse.
More recently in Syria, the Western establishment — the Council on Foreign Relations, the Obama administration, the socialist French government, and assorted Arab dictators — are backing al-Qaeda and other Islamic extremists in the war on secular despot Bashir al Assad. As usual, innocent civilians have been the primary victims — especially Christians, who are being slaughtered and raped by the Obama-backed “revolutionaries” with impunity.
As countless analysts have pointed out, the current fiasco in Mali is simply blowback from the recent destruction of Libya during Obama’s lawless UN-approved war there and other U.S. “foreign policy” schemes. Even the UN admitted that al-Qaeda was able to secure huge stockpiles of military weapons that will continue to wreak havoc worldwide for generations.
The blowback from the UN-backed invasion of Mali, aside from the scores of dead civilians already paying the price, will eventually come back to haunt the world as well — and it will almost certainly be deadly. Meanwhile, the Obama administration has pledged its full support to the war effort, ensuring once again that the United States will continue creating new enemies for itself for generations to come.
Alex Newman, a foreign correspondent for The New American, is currently based in Europe. He can be reached at [email protected].
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