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Tag: crimes against humanity
Jose Efrain Rios Montt the 86 year old former de facto President of Guatemala, dictator, army general, and former president of the Congress, who came to public office through a coup d'etat in1982 is currently on trial for Genocide and crimes against humanity. Amy Ross in an Aljazeera article titled ‘Wading uncharted waters: The trial of Rios Montt’ discusses how the events in Guatemala are exceptional because they are happening at home, in the nation where the crimes occurred. Ross states “When a judge ruled … Montt will, finally, stand trial for the crime of genocide, the news resounded profoundly at home and abroad. These events in Guatemala mark the first time a national court, anywhere, prosecutes its own former head of state for the crime of genocide. Several international courts established in the last 20 years have prosecuted people involved in genocide. …the judge ordered the former army general confined to his home - represented an extraordinary break with impunity in the Central American country; the decision to proceed with the trial, despite attempts to have the charges dropped, is of even greater significance. No ranking officer has been held responsible for the violence in which some 200,000 people, almost all civilians, lost their lives. …Holding trials "away" has been deemed appropriate when conducting a trial at home carries considerable risks. The rationale behind establishing international tribunals for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, The Netherlands, and for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania, was that holding trials in the country where the violence occurred would put participants at risk and potentially disrupt other fragile socio-political conditions.  …We should pay close attention to these legal proceedings in Guatemala. In the US, evidence of torture, disappearances and other crimes against humanity committed by US service members is denied, ignored or disposed of with minimal punishment. We might well need lessons from the brave lawyers in Guatemala.”  Inspired by Amy Ross, Aljazeera ow.ly/hMHhZ Image source The Kooza ow.ly/hMHEM Wading uncharted waters: Trial of Rios Montt (March 1 2013)

 

Jose Efrain Rios Montt the 86 year old former de facto President of Guatemala, dictator, army general, and former president of the Congress, who came to public office through a coup d’etat in1982 is currently on trial for Genocide and crimes against humanity. Amy Ross in an Aljazeera article titled ‘Wading uncharted waters: The trial of Rios Montt’ discusses how the events in Guatemala are exceptional because they are happening at home, in the nation where the crimes occurred. Ross states “When a judge ruled … Montt will, finally, stand trial for the crime of genocide, the news resounded profoundly at home and abroad. These events in Guatemala mark the first time a national court, anywhere, prosecutes its own former head of state for the crime of genocide. Several international courts established in the last 20 years have prosecuted people involved in genocide. …the judge ordered the former army general confined to his home – represented an extraordinary break with impunity in the Central American country; the decision to proceed with the trial, despite attempts to have the charges dropped, is of even greater significance. No ranking officer has been held responsible for the violence in which some 200,000 people, almost all civilians, lost their lives. …Holding trials “away” has been deemed appropriate when conducting a trial at home carries considerable risks. The rationale behind establishing international tribunals for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, The Netherlands, and for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania, was that holding trials in the country where the violence occurred would put participants at risk and potentially disrupt other fragile socio-political conditions.  …We should pay close attention to these legal proceedings in Guatemala. In the US, evidence of torture, disappearances and other crimes against humanity committed by US service members is denied, ignored or disposed of with minimal punishment. We might well need lessons from the brave lawyers in Guatemala.”

 

Inspired by Amy Ross, Aljazeera ow.ly/hMHhZ Image source The Kooza ow.ly/hMHEM

Polly Higgins the 43 year old UK barrister voted by the Ecologist as one of the ‘Worlds Top 10 Visionary Thinkers’ continues to strive for the United Nations to acknowledge ‘Ecocide’ as an international crime. The UN currently recognizes four significant crimes against Peace: Genocide, Crimes Against Humanity, War Crimes, and Crimes of Aggression. Higgins proposal is to include ‘Ecocide’ as a fifth. “Corporations have no legal responsibility for the Earth, yet they have accrued silent rights – the right to pollute, to emit, to destroy – which have allowed enormous damage and destruction to take place without consequence.” Higgins claims the earth is treated unfairly and is “in need of a good lawyer”, however “the laws to protect the interests of the Earth do not exist” and it is “time now to change the rules of the game and eradicate the Ecocide”.

 

Inspired by aljazeera http://ow.ly/76G8c image source pollyhiggins.com http://ow.ly/76G0d

Jorge Rafael Videla the 85 year old former senior commander in the Argentine Army and de facto President of Argentina has been prosecuted being the main architect of what became known as Argentina’s “Dirty War”. Following the coup d’état that deposed Isabel Martínez de Perón, Videla oversaw large-scale human rights abuses and crimes against humanity that took place under his rule, including kidnappings or forced disappearance, widespread torture and extrajudicial murder of activists, political opponents as well as their families at secret concentration camps. Videla claimed in his defense that Argentine society demanded the crackdown in which up to 30,000 people were tortured or murdered under his military rule, to prevent a Marxist revolution and complained that “terrorists” now run the country. Videla was sentenced to life in a civilian prison.

Inspired by Michael Warren Associated Press http://ow.ly/3vWav

Political Arts | Ian Bunn Visual Artist

My digital art work is essentially politics and art. It’s about iconic people, places and events of our day.  Recorded visually through daily compilations of manipulated digital images, posted online and disseminated via online media and social networks. The works are diaristic in nature that metaphorically record a spectator’s experience of the contemporary digital age.  The resulting work intentionally has a painterly aesthetic acknowledging my historical painting practice.

Adapting Pop Art’s notion of mass media imagery into a context of the contemporary digital age, the work draws on a myriad points of reference. Utilizing fractured images to provide an allusion to the digital noise pounding away daily into our sub consciousness.  The work is essentially popular culture arts, diverging from the traditional Pop Art notion of a pronounced repetition of a consumer icon, instead this work focuses on the deluge of contemporary digital content. The compilation of the fragmented imagery is vividly distractive, not unlike cable surfing or a jaunt through Times Square.

This digital photo manipulation art work is premised on the basis that Pop art in its beginnings, freeze-framed what consumers of popular culture experienced into iconic visual abstractions. With the advent of the techno age, visual information circulates in such quantities, so rapidly and exponentially, that to comprehend a fraction of it all becomes a kind of production process in itself.  Hence this work considers fragmented elements of Popular Culture through an artistic and conceptual exploration of specific people and events of the day.

www.ianbunn.com

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