Feature Archives

On June 9th, "masked Shiite gunmen stopped cars in western Baghdad and grabbed people off the streets, singling out the Sunni Arabs among them and killing at least 41". Later, at least 25 people died when two car bombs exploded near a Shia mosque in the capital.

Baghdad's central morgue received 1,595 bodies in June 2006 alone. According to the morgue assistant manager, most of the bodies had gunshot wounds to the head, a common feature of sectarian, execution-style killings. The recent upsurge in sectarian violence in Iraq has raised fears of a civil war, with many Sunni Arabs saying that government-backed Shia militias are behind at least some of the attacks.

US prosecutors have charged Steven Green, 21 , a former private with the US Army's storied 101st Airborne Division, with raping and murdering an Iraqi girl, after gunning down three members of her family, including a five-year-old sister. On July 5th 2006, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki called for an independent inquiry and pressed for a review of foreign troops' immunity from Iraqi law.

In the latest attack over free media in the Philippines, Radyo Cagayano, a community radio station run by farmers and supported by the left-wing Bayan Muna party, was burned down and its staff member injured and robbed at gun-point.
The radio station employees suspect the Philippine Army. Since Gloria Macapagal became President in Feburary 2001, 42 journalists have been murdered. AMARC, the World Association of Community Radio Stations, is organizing a campaign to demand justice for the people of Radyo Cagayano.

On Friday June 16th, a teachers’ march in Oaxaca brought out all sectors of civil society in a vast repudiation of the repressive policies of Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortíz. The march of as many as 400,000 protesters was a direct response to the brutal police attack on the encampment of striking teachers in the center of the city at dawn on June 14th. In San Francisco, thirty teachers from United Educators of San Francisco and the American Federation of Teachers at City College demonstrated in front of the Mexican Consulate. Photos & Video

June 5th marks the 25th year since AIDS was identified. The "official" date for the beginning of the AIDS epidemic is usually marked as June 5, 1981, when the US CDC reported that unusual clusters of a rare pneumonia had been discovered in gay men in Los Angeles. As of 2006, AIDS has killed more than 25 million people, making it one of the most destructive epidemics in recorded history. More than 39 million people around the world are living with HIV, mainly in Africa and India.

As many as 350 people have been killed this past week in Afghanistan in an explosion of violence, the most severe since the US invasion in October 2001. On Monday, U.S. A-10 fighter jets and Apache helicopter gunships bombed homes in the village of Azizi, west of Kandahar. The air strikes killed about 100 people including as many as 30 civilians. More than 3,000 civilians have fled their homes in southern Afghanistan over US assaults and Taliban attacks. Fighting has greatly increased in southern Afghanistan as the Taliban have moved out of the mountains and seized large areas of the region.
Read More On Indybay's Afghanistan Page

The killing of more than 20 Iraqi civilians in an incident last November has become an international scandal after evidence from two official investigations was shown to members of Congress. The killings took place in November in Haditha, a city north-west of Baghdad. When reports of the deaths first emerged the Pentagon said one marine and 15 civilians were killed by a roadside bomb. It now appears a marine was killed by the bomb and that his colleagues then moved through the area, shooting five men standing next to a taxi and then entering at least two homes containing women and children where the killings continued. Eyewitness accounts by local people and a video shot by an Iraqi journalism student had already called into question the Marines' version of events in Haditha just over six months ago. But photographs by American forces could prove the crucial piece of evidence in an investigation that is now expected to result in charges of murder, dereliction of duty and making false statements against up to a dozen Marines.
According to reports in the US, military prosecutors may seek the death penalty for those found guilty of murder. Three Marines officers have already been relieved of duty, and more may be disciplined in a separate investigation into whether there was a cover-up after the killings.

Since the March 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, the civilian death toll resulting from the conflict remains a topic rarely discussed by American politicians or corporate media. While the Pentagon has refused to provide an estimate of Iraqi casualties, other groups have used various methods to arrive at the numbers of Iraqis killed. Iraq Body Count website states that up to 42,000 have lost their lives, while The Lancet, a respected British medical journal, reported that a study in 2004 found that over 100,000 Iraqi civilians had died due to the U.S. invasion.

George Bush and the Haditha massacre | Massacres Common in Iraq | War Crimes Start at the Top | Was it an Isolated Event and Did the Military Try to Cover it Up? | Lawmaker says Marines killed Iraqis 'in cold blood' | US Killing of Civilians "Fact of Life" in Iraq: Iraqis | Iraq's My Lai | US probes new Iraq massacre claim