In Thailand, you can be sentenced to decades in prison for insulting the king. Read about the latest case of Pongsak Sriboonpeng and others. Some earlier cases are Somyot Pruksakasemsuk, Ampon Tangnoppakul and Joe Gordon. In Thailand it would probably not be possible to report freely about the Blue Diamond in the way done by Aftenposten (in Norwegian).
Thailand is not the only country with terrible sentences for insults. Remember Raif Badawi in Saudi Arabia.
At Accoun we want government criminals to face trial, but also they deserve a fair trial.
Show trials, such as the one where Saif Qadhafi was sentenced to death, are unacceptable. Read what UN officials say about the recent trial of former members of the Qadhafi regime.
His father, the dictator Muammar Qadhafi, was murdered in 2011, probably after being tortured (possibly even sodomized).
Can you imagine that anyone travelling illegally with assault rifles and pistols is just sent back and allowed to keep the weapons? Read about US soldiers travelling illegally with weapons (in German).
Read about military fraud, one of the latest cases of missing nuclear weapons (many nuclear weapons were also lost during the cold war) and the need for transparency
Too often the legal system is misused to simply frame someone, rather than creating real justice. In some cases, this can be traced to undue interference from government agencies or from the top level of government. As an example, read the criticism of 9/11 trial. The legal system must be better protected from such abuses and those obstructing justice must be brought to justice.
Does it sound far-fetched that western democracies and the UN could blame an aircraft disaster on the wrong country? Or that an innocent person could be found guilty in the largest case of mass murder in UK history? Not after reading about the Lockerbie bombing on Al Jazeera (in English) and Anders Carlgren’s blog (in Swedish). This raises many questions. For example, did the Swedish police for political reasons drop the investigation of the main suspect? Perhaps the west owes Libya not only huge war reparations for destroying their country in 2011 but also indemnity for the falsifications in the Lockerbie case?
An important precondition for accountability is of course that information is not withheld about possible wrongdoings. That is one reason why WikiLeaks is so hated by many governments. They don’t want accountability. They are so afraid that WikiLeaks will make ordinary people, the tax-payers, able to find out how governments are misusing taxes and are involved in crime. Luckily, they have not been able to stop WikiLeaks, despite many attempts. Therefore, we can for example read new revelations about economic spying (although some of this has been known or at least suspected before, it is important to get more proof). Also, don’t miss the recent interview with Julian Assange.
Will corporations and governments ever be held accountable for the harm agricultural chemicals are causing? Read about a lawsuit against Monsanto and about the toxicity of Glyphosate and Round Up.
Read about the Cuban embargo and regime change