A panel of experts led by a former war crimes prosecutor on Tuesday began discussing where and how to store millions of pages of evidence and thousands of hours of courtroom video in the archives of UN courts prosecuting atrocities in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
Both tribunals are under pressure from the UN Security Council to wrap up their work by 2010. They have begun looking at how best to preserve their archives and make them accessible to victims and survivors of the wars whose horrors led to the tribunals' establishment.
The panel's work "is crucial for the preservation of the legacy of the two tribunals and for the victims, as well as for the future for international criminal justice," said its leader, Richard Goldstone, a former prosecutor at both the Yugoslav and Rwandan courts.
"The tribunals' archives are a unique and invaluable resource for the peoples of Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, the United Nations and the international community," the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal said in a statement.
The archives not only can be a resource for future prosecutions, they establish a record "as well as contribute to peace and reconciliation in the regions," it said.
The Yugoslav tribunal has indicted 161 people and completed cases against 108 of them. In Rwanda, 27 cases have been completed out of more than 80, while 35 are either being tried or awaiting appeal decisions.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
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Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
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