Dutch troops and the Srebrenica massacre

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/28/dutch-soldiers-let-300-muslims-die-in-bosnian-war-court-rules

'Srebrenica massacre: Dutch soldiers let 300 Muslims die, court rules

Daniel Boffey in Brussels

Wed 28 Jun 2017 00.35 BST

UN peacekeepers should have known men were in danger, appeals court in The Hague rules over 1995 mass killing in Bosnia

Daniel Boffey in Brussels

Wed 28 Jun 2017 00.35 BSTLast modified on Mon 27 Nov 2017 21.06 GMT

 This article is over 1 year old

Shares

499

 Dutch UN peacekeepers sit on top of an armoured personnel carrier as Muslim refugees from Srebrenica gather in the nearby village of Potocari in July 1995. Photograph: AP

Dutch soldiers acting as UN peacekeepers were partly liable for the deaths of about 300 Muslim men massacred near Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Yugoslavian civil war, an appeals court in The Hague has ruled.

The ruling upholds a decision three years ago that the Dutch forces should have known that the men seeking refuge at their base would be murdered by Bosnian Serb troops if they were turned away.

Many of the victims had fled to Srebrenica’s UN-designated safe zone only to find themselves outnumbered and the lightly-armed Dutch troops unable to defend them. It was then that they headed to the nearby Dutch base, only to be subsequently handed over to their murderers.

Presiding judge Gepke Dulek-Schermers said that Dutch soldiers “knew or should have known that the men were not only being screened … but were in real danger of being subjected to torture or execution … by having the men leave the compound unreservedly, they were deprived of a chance of survival”.

The judge added that the soldiers had facilitated the separation of the men and the boys among the refugees.

The ruling came as a lawyer for 200 Dutch army veterans said his clients planned to sue the state for compensation for the trauma they suffered after being sent on “an impossible mission” in Srebrenica.

Michael Ruperti said the men are campaigning for a “symbolic” €22,000 (£19,500) each – or €1,000 for every year since the massacre took place, bringing the value of the total suit to €4.5m.

The 200 soldiers were serving in the Dutch battalion Dutchbat III protecting the Muslim enclave when it was over-run by Bosnian Serbs under the command of former general Ratko Mladić .

About 8,000 Muslim men and boys in total were killed by Bosnian Serb troops in Srebrenica in July 1995, in what is believed to be the worst mass killing on European soil since the second world war.

The ruling in the appeals court relates specifically to the 300 men who had sought safety on the Dutch-controlled base.

The amount of damages will be determined in a separate procedure unless the victims and the state can reach a settlement.

The Dutch government resigned in 2002 after acknowledging its failure to protect the refugees. The Netherlands maintains that the Bosnian Serbs, not Dutch troops, bear responsibility for the killings.

Mladić is on trial for genocide with a verdict expected later this year. The court rejected an appeal from relatives of other Srebrenica victims, who argued the Dutch government should be held responsible for the protection of thousands more Muslims who had gathered outside the base.

Munira Subasic, of the Mothers of Srebrenica group, said: “This is a great injustice. The Dutch state should take its responsibility for our victims because they could have kept them all safe on the Dutchbat [Dutch battalions’] compound.”'

Britain's refugee camps

https://blog.oup.com/2018/06/refugees-citizens-camps-british-history
'Refugees, citizens, and camps: a very British history

• BY JORDANNA BAILKIN
• JUNE 20TH 2018

Today, very few people think of Britain as a land of camps. Instead, camps seem to happen “elsewhere,” from Greece to Palestine to the global South. Yet during the 20th century, dozens of camps in Britain housed tens of thousands of Belgians, Jews, Basques, Poles, Hungarians, Anglo-Egyptians, Ugandan Asians, and Vietnamese. The camps jumbled together those who fled the crises of war and empire. Hungarians and Anglo-Egyptians competed for spaces when they disembarked in 1956, victims of, respectively, the Soviet invasion of Hungary and Nasser’s expulsion of British subjects from Egypt during the Suez Crisis; Ugandan Asians arrived in 1972 to find Poles still encamped from three decades earlier.

“Refugee camps” in Britain were never only for refugees. Indeed, it was impossible to segregate citizens and refugees. The Irish poor bunked with Belgians in flight, English women moved into camps to join their Polish husbands, while homeless Britons squatted in camps designed for foreigners. This was no rosy tale of multicultural harmony. But the contact between refugees and citizens—unsettling though it may have been—made it impossible for Britons to think of refugees only as different from themselves. This is one of the most crucial lessons that Britain’s camps, now largely forgotten, have to offer.

Many camps were peopled with British squatters, as refugees shared space—willingly or not—with Britons who had been ousted from their homes by bombs and poverty. Britons were often trying to get into the camps, while refugees were trying to get out of them. Although now we might think of camps as absolutely segregating refugees and citizens, 20th century camps often highlighted their closeness.

During the Second World War, millions of homes in Britain were damaged or destroyed; many others fell to slum clearance. Tens of thousands of Britons occupied army camps: a desperate response to this housing crisis. These squatters referred to themselves as “refugees” from overcrowding. But this was not just a metaphor. British squatters took over camps earmarked for or already occupied by Poles. In 1946, British ex-servicemen occupied a camp in Buckinghamshire that had been slated for Polish soldiers’ wives, and refused to vacate the premises. Some of these squatters were families that councils had refused to place in houses, because they were seen as unsatisfactory tenants. Refugee camps, then, could be places to stash British “problem families.”

Image credit: Photograph of Ugandan Asian family at Tonfanau by Jim Arnould, Nova (April 1973).

Along with demobilized British soldiers and bombed-out civilians, others made their way to Polish camps. In 1950, at the Kelvedon Camp for Poles in Essex, the National Assistance Board added a reception center for British vagrants. Poles and Britons slept separately, but shared clothing, a warden, and a doctor. Caring for Polish refugees and homeless Britons exhausted Kelvedon’s warden, who worried about “dissatisfying both populations.” He complained that the two groups were conspiring against him—Polish doctors happily handed out certificates to British vagrants stating that they were medically unfit to work.

Migrants, too, moved through spaces intended for refugees. Kaz Janowski, a Polish refugee who spent his childhood at Kelvedon, recalled “the steady flow of disheveled-looking [English] rustics,” as well as “gypsy” caravans moving through the camp and wayfarers sleeping in the camp ditches as they chose. Henry Pavlovich, who lived at the Polish camp at Foxley, recalled that as Polish families began to leave the camp, Irish and African Caribbean families took their place. Mixed communities sprang up. Pavlovich’s father, a trumpet player, forged casual friendships with the African Caribbean residents, intrigued by the Calypso music they brought with them to the Polish camp, and the drums they made from large oil cans or food tins. By contrast, the English and Irish residents of Foxley seemed to Pavlovich “totally unpredictable and uncomprehending about everything.”

As these stories suggest, refugee camps in Britain brought a startling variety of people into contact, creating unique intimacies and frictions. In 1972, hundreds of Ugandan Asians found themselves huddled over heaters in wartime wooden sheds at Tonfanau, a remote army camp in North Wales. This unlikely scene prompted even more unlikely encounters between people who surely would otherwise never have met. Margretta Young-Jones, who volunteered at Tonfanau, proudly recalled how she and a Ugandan Asian matriarch pricked their fingers and mixed their blood so she could be considered another “daughter.” Her young son, Edwin, was shocked by his first taste of a raw chili pepper at Tonfanau; Young-Jones described their shared meal as the start of a “beautiful friendship.”

The interactions between refugees and citizens can’t be easily characterized as hostility or benevolence, prejudice or tolerance. Instead, they reveal a morally complicated story about empathy, solidarity, and activism. As the global refugee crisis once again brings to Europe the challenges of mass encampment, we would do well to remember that refugee camps reflect how a society treats all people in need—foreign or domestic.

Featured image credit: Polish children at Foxley Camp. Photograph by Zbigniew Pawlowicz, by kind permission of his son, Henry Pavlovich.

Jordanna Bailkin is the Jere L. Bacharach Endowed Professor in International Studies in the Department of History at the University of Washington. She is the author of three books, including Unsettled: Refugee Camps and the Making of Multicultural Britain, published by Oxford University Press.'

Men in suits...

A commentary on attitudes in medicine, and medical error

https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2004/may/21/guardianletters2

I was saddened by the moral dereliction of Jed Mercurio ('We all kill a few patients as we learn', G2, May 18), by the smug disenfranchising of "laymen" from life-and-death issues and the elevation of cover-ups to the high ground of professional solidarity. There is a much smaller degree of separation than he thinks between the driver whose judgment is impaired by six pints of lager and the houseman whose judgment is impaired after being on call for 80 hours.

I'm sure I am not alone in thinking it scary that the only thing that comes between me and my maker in the small hours of the emergency room is the off chance that a passing consultant disseminates insights gained from previous fatal mistakes to the errant novice. About the only thing the article gets right is the proposition that 70,000 fatalities every year in UK hospitals are the result of systemic faults in management and training.

The sooner the medical profession acknowledges that the right to life is as indivisible, under the declaration of human rights, in suburban hospitals as it is anywhere else, the sooner the unacceptable "accidental" mortality rate in the NHS can be reduced through better training, accountability and collaborative working.
Dr Joe Cullen
Tavistock Institute, London

Knitting techniques

Cast on - rib

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bi1CAV0hda0/?tagged=%D0%B2%D1%8F%D0%B6%D0%B5%D0%BC%D1%81%D0%BF%D0%B8%D1%86%D0%B0%D0%BC%D0%B8

https://www.instagram.com/p/BjHOHktDhti/?taken-by=annakeat_knit

Cables - continental
https://www.instagram.com/p/Ber02FjAcKS/?taken-by=annakeat_knit

continental ribbing
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bd-ShmKHFnR/?tagged=%D0%B2%D1%8F%D0%B6%D0%B5%D0%BC%D1%81%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%82%D0%B5%D1%80

braided/ i-cord bind off

(2 videos) https://www.instagram.com/p/Bd5AQDZgRqv/?taken-by=annakeat_knit

creating double sided edging
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bf5UdR6gVUC/?taken-by=annakeat_knit

seaming
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bep1eWYHqDD/?tagged=%D0%B2%D1%8F%D0%B6%D0%B5%D0%BC%D1%81%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%82%D0%B5%D1%80

and a bit of inspiration

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bjy5WzmDUae/?tagged=%D0%B2%D1%8F%D0%B6%D0%B5%D0%BC%D1%81%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%82%D0%B5%D1%80

https://www.instagram.com/p/BmKh2SihcNX/?tagged=%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B3%D0%BB%D0%B0%D0%BD%D1%81%D0%B2%D0%B5%D1%80%D1%85%D1%83

UK Lyme disease underestimated

https://uk.yahoo.com/style/cases-debilitating-lyme-disease-could-going-undiagnosed-025400365.html

Cases of debilitating Lyme disease could be going undiagnosed

 Lorna Shaddick, news reporter,Sky News 29 minutes ago 

Cases of a bacterial infection that can lead to severe mental and physical problems could be much higher than previously thought, according to a new report.

The National Institute of Health and Care Excellence says the 3,000 cases of Lyme disease reported in the UK each year could be an underestimate, as many people go undiagnosed.

Spread through the bites of small parasites called ticks, its symptoms can be mild at first, but the long-term effects can be devastating.

Sophie Ward from Lancashire knows that all too well. Back in 2008, the then-champion GB youth swimmer enjoyed a family trip to Beijing to watch the Olympics.

But after a visit to a Chinese nature reserve, during which she cuddled a panda, Sophie began experiencing the migraines, muscle pains, infections and food intolerances that have plagued her ever since.

Only now, 10 years later have doctors finally diagnosed the 24-year-old with Lyme disease - probably given to her by a tick on the panda.

"One day you're way up and the next minute you can't get out of bed and you're bedridden," Sophie told Sky News.

"And it makes it very difficult to live. You can't make plans. Social events, activities have to be scaled down to a couple of hours coz they tire you out so quickly.

"And at 24, you know, you think I can travel the world, I should be going out partying, and you can't hack it."

Lyme disease can be hard to spot, since its symptoms are so varied. One of the most common is a pink or red circular "bull's eye" rash around the bite area - but fewer than half of those affected will get one.

Other characteristics such as a high temperature, feeling shivery and tiredness can be misdiagnosed as other conditions such as flu.

Dr Jack Lambert is Professor of infectious diseases at University College Dublin and says tick borne infections are "very common" in the UK and Ireland.

"We need better research, but we need better clinical management, we need better education in GP practices for early identification and prevention and early treatment," he says.

"That way the patients won't develop chronic conditions and there's lots of people out there with chronic conditions. I think we have to have better education of specialists and GPs that the tests are imperfect."

Lyme disease can also affect dogs as well as humans, giving them fever and swollen joints.

The largest UK survey of ticks and tick-borne diseases, the Big Tick Project, looked at more than 12,000 dogs and found that around a third of them were carrying a tick.

Despite that, a national survey showed 47% of dog owners did not know that ticks can spread disease to both dogs and humans.

"Check over your dog every day, especially if you've taken them into an area where you know there are ticks around," says vet James Greenwood.

"So checking over their fur, looking between their paws, around their ears, that's the first thing to do. And if you do find a tick, the key thing to do is to remove it safely and effectively.

Experts say you should take extra care to check for ticks after walking in long grass or wooded areas, even in urban parks and gardens.