The Ogoni and Self-Determination: Increasing Violence in Nigeria

1995 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 635-650 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claude E. Welch

The execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa, noted advocate of rights for the Ogoni people of the Niger delta, who was hanged with eight of his colleagues in Port Harcourt on 10 November 1995, drew universal condemnation from governments, human rights organisations, and literary figures. Following the trial of these Ogoni activists, the Nigerian régime headed by General Sani Abacha decided that the verdict of the appointed tribunal should be endorsed and implemented without delay, despite an international campaign for clemency. In the view of many, Nigerians and non-Nigerians alike, an independent judicial court would not have found the accused guilty of the murder in May 1994 of the four prominent Ogoni who had been killed during a riotous rally. For the military administration, however, the claims for self-determination made by Saro-Wiwa had run counter to national policy, nOt least by having highlighted long-standing tensions between the country's ethnic mosaic and its political centralisation.

1975 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rupert Emerson

The new Asian and African states have laid much stress on human rights, but have often not lived up to them. The basic right of self-determination has been limited to colonies only. Democratic institutions have generally given way to authoritarian regimes, often run by the military, with popular participation denied rather than encouraged. The right to life, liberty, and security of person has been grossly violated in the cases of millions of refugees, temporary and permanent, in Africa and the Asian subcontinent. Many hundreds of thousands have been killed in domestic conflicts, as in Indonesia, Nigeria, and Burundi. One of the results is the emergence of a double standard: an all-out African and Asian attack upon the denial of human rights involved in colonialism and racial discrimination, but a refusal to face up to massive violations of human rights in the Third World itself.


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 50-66
Author(s):  
Adam OSTANEK

Of all the citizens of the Second Polish Republic, 30 % were representatives of various national minorities. The Polish authorities, realizing that such a large percentage of national minorities concentrated in specific regions, can threaten the security of the state, are trying to pursue an appropriate national domestic policy. Its goal was to reduce this danger. The Polish army was one of the instruments that were used to varying degrees by the authorities. The purpose of the article is to show the place, role and tasks that the Polish army had to fulfill in relation to the national policy pursued in the southeastern voivodships of the Second Polish Republic in 1921–1926. The sources for publication is the then civil-military legal acts, archival materials collected in archives on the territory of Poland and Ukraine, as well as scientific research. The author paid considerable attention to the measures of the military administration to neutralize the actions of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, the Communist Party of Western Ukraine, the foreign intelligence agents (primarily from the USSR) in the military and civilian population of the Lviv, Stanislaviv and Ternopil voivodships which were under the control of the military structures of the District Corps Command No. VI «Lviv» and No. X «Przemysl». Almost 5.5 million people lived in these voivodships, of which 45.1% were Poles, 47.9% were Ukrainians, 6.4% were Jews, 0.65 were Germans, 0.1% were other nationalities. The author claims that the military authorities were vigilant about the security and strengthening of the Polish state. Keywords Polish Army, the Second Polish Republic, national policy, Lwow Voivodeship, Stanisławow Voivodeship, Tarnopol Voivodeship.


ICL Journal ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-105
Author(s):  
Markku Suksi

Abstract New Caledonia is a colonial territory of France. Since the adoption of the Nouméa Accord in 1998, a period of transition towards the exercise of self-determination has been going on. New Caledonia is currently a strong autonomy, well entrenched in the legal order of France from 1999 on. The legislative powers have been distributed between the Congress of New Caledonia and the Parliament of France on the basis of a double enumeration of legislative powers, an arrangement that has given New Caledonia control over many material fields of self-determination. At the same time as this autonomy has been well embedded in the constitutional fabric of France. The Nouméa Accord was constitutionalized in the provisions of the Constitution of France and also in an Institutional Act. This normative framework created a multi-layered electorate that has presented several challenges to the autonomy arrangement and the procedure of self-determination, but the European Court of Human Rights and the UN Human Rights Committee have resolved the issues regarding the right to vote in manners that take into account the local circumstances and the fact that the aim of the legislation is to facilitate the self-determination of the colonized people, the indigenous Kanak people. The self-determination process consists potentially of a series of referendums, the first of which was held in 2018 and the second one in 2020. In both referendums, those entitled to vote returned a No-vote to the question of ‘Do you want New Caledonia to attain full sovereignty and become independent?’ A third referendum is to be expected before October 2022, and if that one also results in a no to independence, a further process of negotiations starts, with the potential of a fourth referendum that will decide the mode of self-determination New Caledonia will opt for, independence or autonomy.


Author(s):  
Vasilii Lebedev

Abstract The North Korean police were arguably one of the most important organisations in liberated North Korea. It was instrumental in stabilising the North Korean society and eventually became one of the backbones for both the new North Korean regime and its military force. Scholars of different political orientation have attempted to reconstruct its early history leading to a set of views ranging from the “traditionalist” sovietisation concept to the more contemporary “revisionist” reconstruction that portrayed it as the cooperation of North Korean elites with the Soviet authorities in their bid for the control over the politics and the military, in which the Soviets merely played the supporting role. Drawing from the Soviet archival documents, this paper presents a third perspective, arguing that initially, the Soviet military administration in North Korea did not pursue any clear-cut political goals. On the contrary, the Soviet administration initially viewed North Koreans with distrust, making Soviets constantly conduct direct interventions to prevent North Korean radicals from using the police in their political struggle.


2021 ◽  
pp. 0095327X2110068
Author(s):  
Sam R. Bell ◽  
K. Chad Clay ◽  
Ghashia Kiyani ◽  
Amanda Murdie

Do civil–military relations influence human rights practices? Building on principal–agent theory, we argue that civilian–military relations, instead of having an effect on mean levels of repression, will be associated with the dispersion in human rights practices. States where there is less control of the military or more conflict between civilian and military leadership will see a wider range of human rights practices. We test our hypotheses quantitatively on a global sample of countries, using updated data on civil–military relations and find evidence that civil–military conflict and lack of control increase the variance in human right practices.


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