the human province

Here's another genocide-related event in the international community, which gives me the impression that something's rotten in, well, the Hague:

Serbia, the heir to Yugoslavia, obtained the tribunal's permission to keep parts of the archives out of the public eye. Citing national security, its lawyers blacked out many sensitive -- those who have seen them say incriminating -- pages. Judges and lawyers at the war crimes tribunal could see the censored material, but it was barred from the tribunal’s public records.

Now, lawyers and others who were involved in Serbia's bid for secrecy say that, at the time, Belgrade made its true objective clear: to keep the full military archives from the International Court of Justice, where Bosnia was suing Serbia for genocide. And they say Belgrade’s goal was achieved in February, when the international court, which is also in The Hague, declared Serbia not guilty of genocide, and absolved it from paying potentially enormous damages.

Lawyers interviewed in The Hague and Belgrade said that the outcome might well have been different had the International Court of Justice pressed for access to the full archives, and legal scholars and human rights groups said it was deeply troubling that the judges did not subpoena the documents directly from Serbia. At one point, the court rebuffed a Bosnian request that it demand the full documents, saying that ample evidence was available in tribunal records.

"It's a question that nags loudly," Diane Orentlicher, a law professor at American University in Washington, said recently in The Hague. "Why didn’t the court request the full documents? The fact that they were blacked out clearly implies these passages would have made a difference."

The ruling -- which was binding and final -- was in many ways meticulous, and acknowledged that the 15 judges had not seen the censored archives. But it did not say why the court did not order Serbia to provide the full documents.

The first-hand experience I've had at the UN and what I know of the tribunals in the Hague and Arusha have convinced me that it would be naïve to think that there are no deals being made in the smoke-filled hotel rooms.

This probably has something to do with Serbia's wishes to join the EU and the fact that a guilty verdict would probably ruin the country financially. But still, this seems unacceptable to me.

This story in the Times shows what happens when an idiot judge in Germany mistakes cultural sensitivity with bigotry:

A German judge has stirred a storm of protest by citing the Koran in turning down a German Muslim woman's request for a speedy divorce on the ground that her husband beat her.

In a ruling that underlines the tension between Muslim customs and European laws, the judge, Christa Datz-Winter, noted that the couple came from a Moroccan cultural milieu, in which it is common for husbands to beat their wives. The Koran, she wrote in her decision, sanctions such physical abuse.

...The 26-year-old woman in this case was born in Germany to a Moroccan family and married in Morocco in 2001, according to her lawyer, Ms. Becker-Rojczyk. The couple settled in the Frankfurt area and had two children.

In May 2006, the police were summoned after a particularly violent incident. At that time, Judge Datz-Winter ordered the husband to move out and stay at least 55 yards away from the coupleis home. In the months that followed, her lawyer said, the man threatened to kill his wife.

Terrified, the woman filed for divorce in October and requested that it be granted without the usual year of separation because her husband's threats and beatings constituted an "unreasonable hardship."

"We worried that he might think he had the right to kill her because she is still his wife," Ms. Becker-Rojczyk said.

In January, the judge turned down the wife's request for a speedy divorce, saying her husband's behavior did not constitute unreasonable hardship because they are both Moroccan. "In this cultural background," she wrote, "it is not unusual that the husband uses physical punishment against the wife."

This is the kind of ruling that gives intercultural dialogue a bad name. All it takes is for some foolish judge to think that she's engaging Islam in a respectful way to make the whole enterprise look foolish.

It seems ridiculous to me that the Qu'ran would even come up in her ruling, but even more ridiculous that she would have the gall to say what is and isn't customary in Muslim culture or Islamic law or think that her opinion would have any weight at all. This, of course, is not because she's a foreigner, but because Islam is not her field, so just like she's unfit to make judgments on quantum physics, say, or Inuit literature, she should hold her tongue on issues that are not only not germane in a German civil court but of which she most likely knows next to nothing.

Here's another genocide-related event in the international community, which gives me the impression that something's rotten in, well, the Hague:

Serbia, the heir to Yugoslavia, obtained the tribunal's permission to keep parts of the archives out of the public eye. Citing national security, its lawyers blacked out many sensitive -- those who have seen them say incriminating -- pages. Judges and lawyers at the war crimes tribunal could see the censored material, but it was barred from the tribunal’s public records.

Now, lawyers and others who were involved in Serbia's bid for secrecy say that, at the time, Belgrade made its true objective clear: to keep the full military archives from the International Court of Justice, where Bosnia was suing Serbia for genocide. And they say Belgrade’s goal was achieved in February, when the international court, which is also in The Hague, declared Serbia not guilty of genocide, and absolved it from paying potentially enormous damages.

Lawyers interviewed in The Hague and Belgrade said that the outcome might well have been different had the International Court of Justice pressed for access to the full archives, and legal scholars and human rights groups said it was deeply troubling that the judges did not subpoena the documents directly from Serbia. At one point, the court rebuffed a Bosnian request that it demand the full documents, saying that ample evidence was available in tribunal records.

"It's a question that nags loudly," Diane Orentlicher, a law professor at American University in Washington, said recently in The Hague. "Why didn’t the court request the full documents? The fact that they were blacked out clearly implies these passages would have made a difference."

The ruling -- which was binding and final -- was in many ways meticulous, and acknowledged that the 15 judges had not seen the censored archives. But it did not say why the court did not order Serbia to provide the full documents.

The first-hand experience I've had at the UN and what I know of the tribunals in the Hague and Arusha have convinced me that it would be naïve to think that there are no deals being made in the smoke-filled hotel rooms.

This probably has something to do with Serbia's wishes to join the EU and the fact that a guilty verdict would probably ruin the country financially. But still, this seems unacceptable to me.

This story in the Times shows what happens when an idiot judge in Germany mistakes cultural sensitivity with bigotry:

A German judge has stirred a storm of protest by citing the Koran in turning down a German Muslim woman's request for a speedy divorce on the ground that her husband beat her.

In a ruling that underlines the tension between Muslim customs and European laws, the judge, Christa Datz-Winter, noted that the couple came from a Moroccan cultural milieu, in which it is common for husbands to beat their wives. The Koran, she wrote in her decision, sanctions such physical abuse.

...The 26-year-old woman in this case was born in Germany to a Moroccan family and married in Morocco in 2001, according to her lawyer, Ms. Becker-Rojczyk. The couple settled in the Frankfurt area and had two children.

In May 2006, the police were summoned after a particularly violent incident. At that time, Judge Datz-Winter ordered the husband to move out and stay at least 55 yards away from the coupleis home. In the months that followed, her lawyer said, the man threatened to kill his wife.

Terrified, the woman filed for divorce in October and requested that it be granted without the usual year of separation because her husband's threats and beatings constituted an "unreasonable hardship."

"We worried that he might think he had the right to kill her because she is still his wife," Ms. Becker-Rojczyk said.

In January, the judge turned down the wife's request for a speedy divorce, saying her husband's behavior did not constitute unreasonable hardship because they are both Moroccan. "In this cultural background," she wrote, "it is not unusual that the husband uses physical punishment against the wife."

This is the kind of ruling that gives intercultural dialogue a bad name. All it takes is for some foolish judge to think that she's engaging Islam in a respectful way to make the whole enterprise look foolish.

It seems ridiculous to me that the Qu'ran would even come up in her ruling, but even more ridiculous that she would have the gall to say what is and isn't customary in Muslim culture or Islamic law or think that her opinion would have any weight at all. This, of course, is not because she's a foreigner, but because Islam is not her field, so just like she's unfit to make judgments on quantum physics, say, or Inuit literature, she should hold her tongue on issues that are not only not germane in a German civil court but of which she most likely knows next to nothing.

Here's another genocide-related event in the international community, which gives me the impression that something's rotten in, well, the Hague:

Serbia, the heir to Yugoslavia, obtained the tribunal's permission to keep parts of the archives out of the public eye. Citing national security, its lawyers blacked out many sensitive -- those who have seen them say incriminating -- pages. Judges and lawyers at the war crimes tribunal could see the censored material, but it was barred from the tribunal’s public records.

Now, lawyers and others who were involved in Serbia's bid for secrecy say that, at the time, Belgrade made its true objective clear: to keep the full military archives from the International Court of Justice, where Bosnia was suing Serbia for genocide. And they say Belgrade’s goal was achieved in February, when the international court, which is also in The Hague, declared Serbia not guilty of genocide, and absolved it from paying potentially enormous damages.

Lawyers interviewed in The Hague and Belgrade said that the outcome might well have been different had the International Court of Justice pressed for access to the full archives, and legal scholars and human rights groups said it was deeply troubling that the judges did not subpoena the documents directly from Serbia. At one point, the court rebuffed a Bosnian request that it demand the full documents, saying that ample evidence was available in tribunal records.

"It's a question that nags loudly," Diane Orentlicher, a law professor at American University in Washington, said recently in The Hague. "Why didn’t the court request the full documents? The fact that they were blacked out clearly implies these passages would have made a difference."

The ruling -- which was binding and final -- was in many ways meticulous, and acknowledged that the 15 judges had not seen the censored archives. But it did not say why the court did not order Serbia to provide the full documents.

The first-hand experience I've had at the UN and what I know of the tribunals in the Hague and Arusha have convinced me that it would be naïve to think that there are no deals being made in the smoke-filled hotel rooms.

This probably has something to do with Serbia's wishes to join the EU and the fact that a guilty verdict would probably ruin the country financially. But still, this seems unacceptable to me.

This story in the Times shows what happens when an idiot judge in Germany mistakes cultural sensitivity with bigotry:

A German judge has stirred a storm of protest by citing the Koran in turning down a German Muslim woman's request for a speedy divorce on the ground that her husband beat her.

In a ruling that underlines the tension between Muslim customs and European laws, the judge, Christa Datz-Winter, noted that the couple came from a Moroccan cultural milieu, in which it is common for husbands to beat their wives. The Koran, she wrote in her decision, sanctions such physical abuse.

...The 26-year-old woman in this case was born in Germany to a Moroccan family and married in Morocco in 2001, according to her lawyer, Ms. Becker-Rojczyk. The couple settled in the Frankfurt area and had two children.

In May 2006, the police were summoned after a particularly violent incident. At that time, Judge Datz-Winter ordered the husband to move out and stay at least 55 yards away from the coupleis home. In the months that followed, her lawyer said, the man threatened to kill his wife.

Terrified, the woman filed for divorce in October and requested that it be granted without the usual year of separation because her husband's threats and beatings constituted an "unreasonable hardship."

"We worried that he might think he had the right to kill her because she is still his wife," Ms. Becker-Rojczyk said.

In January, the judge turned down the wife's request for a speedy divorce, saying her husband's behavior did not constitute unreasonable hardship because they are both Moroccan. "In this cultural background," she wrote, "it is not unusual that the husband uses physical punishment against the wife."

This is the kind of ruling that gives intercultural dialogue a bad name. All it takes is for some foolish judge to think that she's engaging Islam in a respectful way to make the whole enterprise look foolish.

It seems ridiculous to me that the Qu'ran would even come up in her ruling, but even more ridiculous that she would have the gall to say what is and isn't customary in Muslim culture or Islamic law or think that her opinion would have any weight at all. This, of course, is not because she's a foreigner, but because Islam is not her field, so just like she's unfit to make judgments on quantum physics, say, or Inuit literature, she should hold her tongue on issues that are not only not germane in a German civil court but of which she most likely knows next to nothing.

Here's another genocide-related event in the international community, which gives me the impression that something's rotten in, well, the Hague:

Serbia, the heir to Yugoslavia, obtained the tribunal's permission to keep parts of the archives out of the public eye. Citing national security, its lawyers blacked out many sensitive -- those who have seen them say incriminating -- pages. Judges and lawyers at the war crimes tribunal could see the censored material, but it was barred from the tribunal’s public records.

Now, lawyers and others who were involved in Serbia's bid for secrecy say that, at the time, Belgrade made its true objective clear: to keep the full military archives from the International Court of Justice, where Bosnia was suing Serbia for genocide. And they say Belgrade’s goal was achieved in February, when the international court, which is also in The Hague, declared Serbia not guilty of genocide, and absolved it from paying potentially enormous damages.

Lawyers interviewed in The Hague and Belgrade said that the outcome might well have been different had the International Court of Justice pressed for access to the full archives, and legal scholars and human rights groups said it was deeply troubling that the judges did not subpoena the documents directly from Serbia. At one point, the court rebuffed a Bosnian request that it demand the full documents, saying that ample evidence was available in tribunal records.

"It's a question that nags loudly," Diane Orentlicher, a law professor at American University in Washington, said recently in The Hague. "Why didn’t the court request the full documents? The fact that they were blacked out clearly implies these passages would have made a difference."

The ruling -- which was binding and final -- was in many ways meticulous, and acknowledged that the 15 judges had not seen the censored archives. But it did not say why the court did not order Serbia to provide the full documents.

The first-hand experience I've had at the UN and what I know of the tribunals in the Hague and Arusha have convinced me that it would be naïve to think that there are no deals being made in the smoke-filled hotel rooms.

This probably has something to do with Serbia's wishes to join the EU and the fact that a guilty verdict would probably ruin the country financially. But still, this seems unacceptable to me.

This story in the Times shows what happens when an idiot judge in Germany mistakes cultural sensitivity with bigotry:

A German judge has stirred a storm of protest by citing the Koran in turning down a German Muslim woman's request for a speedy divorce on the ground that her husband beat her.

In a ruling that underlines the tension between Muslim customs and European laws, the judge, Christa Datz-Winter, noted that the couple came from a Moroccan cultural milieu, in which it is common for husbands to beat their wives. The Koran, she wrote in her decision, sanctions such physical abuse.

...The 26-year-old woman in this case was born in Germany to a Moroccan family and married in Morocco in 2001, according to her lawyer, Ms. Becker-Rojczyk. The couple settled in the Frankfurt area and had two children.

In May 2006, the police were summoned after a particularly violent incident. At that time, Judge Datz-Winter ordered the husband to move out and stay at least 55 yards away from the coupleis home. In the months that followed, her lawyer said, the man threatened to kill his wife.

Terrified, the woman filed for divorce in October and requested that it be granted without the usual year of separation because her husband's threats and beatings constituted an "unreasonable hardship."

"We worried that he might think he had the right to kill her because she is still his wife," Ms. Becker-Rojczyk said.

In January, the judge turned down the wife's request for a speedy divorce, saying her husband's behavior did not constitute unreasonable hardship because they are both Moroccan. "In this cultural background," she wrote, "it is not unusual that the husband uses physical punishment against the wife."

This is the kind of ruling that gives intercultural dialogue a bad name. All it takes is for some foolish judge to think that she's engaging Islam in a respectful way to make the whole enterprise look foolish.

It seems ridiculous to me that the Qu'ran would even come up in her ruling, but even more ridiculous that she would have the gall to say what is and isn't customary in Muslim culture or Islamic law or think that her opinion would have any weight at all. This, of course, is not because she's a foreigner, but because Islam is not her field, so just like she's unfit to make judgments on quantum physics, say, or Inuit literature, she should hold her tongue on issues that are not only not germane in a German civil court but of which she most likely knows next to nothing.

Here's another genocide-related event in the international community, which gives me the impression that something's rotten in, well, the Hague:

Serbia, the heir to Yugoslavia, obtained the tribunal's permission to keep parts of the archives out of the public eye. Citing national security, its lawyers blacked out many sensitive -- those who have seen them say incriminating -- pages. Judges and lawyers at the war crimes tribunal could see the censored material, but it was barred from the tribunal’s public records.

Now, lawyers and others who were involved in Serbia's bid for secrecy say that, at the time, Belgrade made its true objective clear: to keep the full military archives from the International Court of Justice, where Bosnia was suing Serbia for genocide. And they say Belgrade’s goal was achieved in February, when the international court, which is also in The Hague, declared Serbia not guilty of genocide, and absolved it from paying potentially enormous damages.

Lawyers interviewed in The Hague and Belgrade said that the outcome might well have been different had the International Court of Justice pressed for access to the full archives, and legal scholars and human rights groups said it was deeply troubling that the judges did not subpoena the documents directly from Serbia. At one point, the court rebuffed a Bosnian request that it demand the full documents, saying that ample evidence was available in tribunal records.

"It's a question that nags loudly," Diane Orentlicher, a law professor at American University in Washington, said recently in The Hague. "Why didn’t the court request the full documents? The fact that they were blacked out clearly implies these passages would have made a difference."

The ruling -- which was binding and final -- was in many ways meticulous, and acknowledged that the 15 judges had not seen the censored archives. But it did not say why the court did not order Serbia to provide the full documents.

The first-hand experience I've had at the UN and what I know of the tribunals in the Hague and Arusha have convinced me that it would be naïve to think that there are no deals being made in the smoke-filled hotel rooms.

This probably has something to do with Serbia's wishes to join the EU and the fact that a guilty verdict would probably ruin the country financially. But still, this seems unacceptable to me.

This story in the Times shows what happens when an idiot judge in Germany mistakes cultural sensitivity with bigotry:

A German judge has stirred a storm of protest by citing the Koran in turning down a German Muslim woman's request for a speedy divorce on the ground that her husband beat her.

In a ruling that underlines the tension between Muslim customs and European laws, the judge, Christa Datz-Winter, noted that the couple came from a Moroccan cultural milieu, in which it is common for husbands to beat their wives. The Koran, she wrote in her decision, sanctions such physical abuse.

...The 26-year-old woman in this case was born in Germany to a Moroccan family and married in Morocco in 2001, according to her lawyer, Ms. Becker-Rojczyk. The couple settled in the Frankfurt area and had two children.

In May 2006, the police were summoned after a particularly violent incident. At that time, Judge Datz-Winter ordered the husband to move out and stay at least 55 yards away from the coupleis home. In the months that followed, her lawyer said, the man threatened to kill his wife.

Terrified, the woman filed for divorce in October and requested that it be granted without the usual year of separation because her husband's threats and beatings constituted an "unreasonable hardship."

"We worried that he might think he had the right to kill her because she is still his wife," Ms. Becker-Rojczyk said.

In January, the judge turned down the wife's request for a speedy divorce, saying her husband's behavior did not constitute unreasonable hardship because they are both Moroccan. "In this cultural background," she wrote, "it is not unusual that the husband uses physical punishment against the wife."

This is the kind of ruling that gives intercultural dialogue a bad name. All it takes is for some foolish judge to think that she's engaging Islam in a respectful way to make the whole enterprise look foolish.

It seems ridiculous to me that the Qu'ran would even come up in her ruling, but even more ridiculous that she would have the gall to say what is and isn't customary in Muslim culture or Islamic law or think that her opinion would have any weight at all. This, of course, is not because she's a foreigner, but because Islam is not her field, so just like she's unfit to make judgments on quantum physics, say, or Inuit literature, she should hold her tongue on issues that are not only not germane in a German civil court but of which she most likely knows next to nothing.

Here's another genocide-related event in the international community, which gives me the impression that something's rotten in, well, the Hague:

Serbia, the heir to Yugoslavia, obtained the tribunal's permission to keep parts of the archives out of the public eye. Citing national security, its lawyers blacked out many sensitive -- those who have seen them say incriminating -- pages. Judges and lawyers at the war crimes tribunal could see the censored material, but it was barred from the tribunal’s public records.

Now, lawyers and others who were involved in Serbia's bid for secrecy say that, at the time, Belgrade made its true objective clear: to keep the full military archives from the International Court of Justice, where Bosnia was suing Serbia for genocide. And they say Belgrade’s goal was achieved in February, when the international court, which is also in The Hague, declared Serbia not guilty of genocide, and absolved it from paying potentially enormous damages.

Lawyers interviewed in The Hague and Belgrade said that the outcome might well have been different had the International Court of Justice pressed for access to the full archives, and legal scholars and human rights groups said it was deeply troubling that the judges did not subpoena the documents directly from Serbia. At one point, the court rebuffed a Bosnian request that it demand the full documents, saying that ample evidence was available in tribunal records.

"It's a question that nags loudly," Diane Orentlicher, a law professor at American University in Washington, said recently in The Hague. "Why didn’t the court request the full documents? The fact that they were blacked out clearly implies these passages would have made a difference."

The ruling -- which was binding and final -- was in many ways meticulous, and acknowledged that the 15 judges had not seen the censored archives. But it did not say why the court did not order Serbia to provide the full documents.

The first-hand experience I've had at the UN and what I know of the tribunals in the Hague and Arusha have convinced me that it would be naïve to think that there are no deals being made in the smoke-filled hotel rooms.

This probably has something to do with Serbia's wishes to join the EU and the fact that a guilty verdict would probably ruin the country financially. But still, this seems unacceptable to me.

This story in the Times shows what happens when an idiot judge in Germany mistakes cultural sensitivity with bigotry:

A German judge has stirred a storm of protest by citing the Koran in turning down a German Muslim woman's request for a speedy divorce on the ground that her husband beat her.

In a ruling that underlines the tension between Muslim customs and European laws, the judge, Christa Datz-Winter, noted that the couple came from a Moroccan cultural milieu, in which it is common for husbands to beat their wives. The Koran, she wrote in her decision, sanctions such physical abuse.

...The 26-year-old woman in this case was born in Germany to a Moroccan family and married in Morocco in 2001, according to her lawyer, Ms. Becker-Rojczyk. The couple settled in the Frankfurt area and had two children.

In May 2006, the police were summoned after a particularly violent incident. At that time, Judge Datz-Winter ordered the husband to move out and stay at least 55 yards away from the coupleis home. In the months that followed, her lawyer said, the man threatened to kill his wife.

Terrified, the woman filed for divorce in October and requested that it be granted without the usual year of separation because her husband's threats and beatings constituted an "unreasonable hardship."

"We worried that he might think he had the right to kill her because she is still his wife," Ms. Becker-Rojczyk said.

In January, the judge turned down the wife's request for a speedy divorce, saying her husband's behavior did not constitute unreasonable hardship because they are both Moroccan. "In this cultural background," she wrote, "it is not unusual that the husband uses physical punishment against the wife."

This is the kind of ruling that gives intercultural dialogue a bad name. All it takes is for some foolish judge to think that she's engaging Islam in a respectful way to make the whole enterprise look foolish.

It seems ridiculous to me that the Qu'ran would even come up in her ruling, but even more ridiculous that she would have the gall to say what is and isn't customary in Muslim culture or Islamic law or think that her opinion would have any weight at all. This, of course, is not because she's a foreigner, but because Islam is not her field, so just like she's unfit to make judgments on quantum physics, say, or Inuit literature, she should hold her tongue on issues that are not only not germane in a German civil court but of which she most likely knows next to nothing.