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Amanpour

United Nations Report Lists Atrocities in Syria; Murder Trials in South Africa

Aired June 04, 2013 - 15:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN HOST: Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the program. I'm Christiane Amanpour.

War crimes have become a daily reality in Syria. So says a new report from the United Nations. It deliveries a litany of atrocities: murder, torture, rape, hostage taking. "The harrowing accounts of victims have seared themselves on our conscience," the investigators write. They say that both sides are committing the abuses. But the Assad regime, they say, is by far the worst offender.

In one horrific incident, extensively documented by Human Rights Watch, more than 100 bodies were dumped into the river north of Aleppo, in government controlled territory. Residents in Aleppo pulling them out, found that some had been killed execution style. Their hands were bound and they had been shot in the head. Many were buried in a mass grave by local activists.

And this is not the first time Assad's men have dumped bodies this way. In the latest development, though, the French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, said that he is certain sarin gas has been used in Syria.

And tonight on French television, the foreign minister said that he was certain that it was the Syrian government that used the chemical weapons.

Fabius says that they have based this conclusion on tests that have been conducted by their own scientists on samples that were given to France. And he says they have decided to make this public now because, he said, it's unacceptable that the perpetrators are allowed to continue in this way with impunity.

Now unlike France, the Obama administration is not certain but says that it has some confidence that sarin gas has been used in Syria. With talk of bread lines and consequences, the issue of chemical weapons has become highly politically sensitive.

Meantime, the United States is working to organize an international peace conference on Syria. Secretary of State John Kerry says that ending the war is, quote, "a very difficult process which we have come to late." And so the atrocities continue to pile up.

Ole Solvang is researching war crimes and other abuses for Human Rights Watch, and he joins me tonight from Paris.

Ole, thanks for being with me. Welcome to the program.

I want to ask you first about one of the big issues that you have been investigating and that is the dumping of bodies in these rivers as we've seen several times now in Syria.

Tell me about what you've found and how you've been able to come up with your assessments.

OLE SOLVANG, HRW RESEARCHER: So during several visits to Aleppo city we have been investigating these killings, these bodies that have been found in the river.

On January 29, that was the first time with local activists and local residents found bodies in the river, dozens of bodies. And then from that on, you know, pretty much every single day they found several bodies up until March 14th.

The majority of these bodies, as you said, had clear signs of execution. They had their hands tied behind their backs. There was tape across their mouths. Many of them had gunshot wounds to their heads.

And their circumstances where they were found and also the testimonies that we were able to get from the families of the victims strongly indicate that these people were killed in government controlled areas in Aleppo city and that the bodies later then floated down the river to opposition controlled areas.

AMANPOUR: Let me ask you to comment on the U.N. report that was made public just today, saying that atrocities are being committed on all sides, particularly pointing to rapes, to executions, to areas under siege, to barring civilians from normal daily activity.

What do you make of this equivalence that the U.N. seems to be drawing, although it does say that the preponderance of these crimes have been committed by the Assad regime?

SOLVANG: Well, I think on one level, a human rights violation is a human rights violation. And it doesn't really matter which side is committing them, particularly, to the victim. And all human rights violations should be condemned, investigated and somebody should be held responsible for them.

At the same time, I think it is important to acknowledge as Human Rights Watch does and as the Commission of Inquiry also does in its report that the extent of violations perpetrated by government forces and by the government is much larger than what we've seen on the opposition side.

And this is reflected for example in the fact that both Human Rights Watch and the U.N. Commission of Inquiry has said that government forces have committed crimes against humanity, widespread and systemic violations, a conclusion that we have not found with regard to opposition abuses.

AMANPOUR: And of course the opposition came out today and said that they continue to work with the U.N., that they reject any kind of suggestion that they are equally guilty. You've now just explained the description of these crimes that you're investigating.

You are in Paris now. You just heard that the foreign minister has made a public declaration on the use of chemical weapons. I don't know whether you can further comment on that, but I want to ask you about the issue of impunity. He said that they're making it public so that this cannot continue with the perpetrators benefiting from impunity.

But the question really is how will we ever know exactly who did it? Is there a shelf life to these chemical weapons? How will we find out those who are actually responsible?

SOLVANG: Well, I think it is important to keep in mind the use of chemical weapons is a very serious violation of international law. But in all the speculation and discussion about chemical weapons, I think it is really important that we all remember that, at the same time, dozens if not hundreds of civilians are being killed every day by other means.

So I think it's important to focus not only on the means by which people are killed, but that the fact that they are killed.

I think the French foreign minister points to a very important point, the issue of impunity and this is something that we feel very strongly about. There should not be impunity for these kind of crimes and Human Rights Watch has been calling for the U.N. Security Council to refer the situation to Syria.

I think what both the chemical weapons issue shows and what the issue that we have reported on today with the executions in the Aleppo River.

And it really emphasizes the need for a proper investigation so the U.N. Security Council should both demand that the U.N. Commission of Inquiry gets unhindered access to Syria, to investigate these allegations and the Security Council should refer Syria to the International Criminal Court, where these kind of violations really should be investigated.

AMANPOUR: Ole Solvang, Human Rights Watch, thank you so much for joining me from Paris.

And one of the great humanitarian catastrophes is the plight of Syrians displaced within their own country. They are homeless; they're desperate for food and medical care. They're unable to find shelter in camps across the border. There are more than 4 million of these so-called internal refugees in Syria, which is about a fifth of the total population.

Roy Gutman has made it his mission to tell the story of these internally displaced, whom he calls the forgotten people. He's a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter and he joins me now from Istanbul, which is your base.

Now I know you're covering the week of demonstrations in Istanbul -- a little bit quieter behind you in Taksim Square tonight.

Tell me about what you have found across the border inside Syria. This mission that you want to get out, the thing that we cannot see with our own eyes.

ROY GUTMAN, REPORTER: Well, I undertook a trip just to find the displaced. I didn't know quite where I would find them, but my -- I had a fixer, who's a Syrian, a fixer, you know, with a translator, guide, interpreter, everything. And he took me to North Hama, which is at least 100 miles inside of Syria. And we went through the local village.

There was an offensive by the government at the time, and it had displaced well over 50,000 people, maybe 100,000 people. And this was an offensive that nobody was even aware of outside of Syria, as I know of.

And I went then to the local village and talked to the imam of the mosque.

AMANPOUR: Roy, I know there's a lot of noise behind you. Let me interrupt you for a second.

Where have you seen these internally displaced forced to go? We hear caves. We hear -- we hear all sorts of tragic stories about where these people are being shuttled and shunted to.

GUTMAN: OK.

OK.

Shall I continue?

AMANPOUR: OK. I guess we're having some technical problems. When we come back in a moment.

And we're going to just stand by while these technical problems are resolved. And we'll be back shortly after a break.

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AMANPOUR: Welcome back. And we were talking about internally displaced Syrians from this terrible civil war, some 4 million of them internal refugees in their own country. That's about a fifth of the population.

We were talking to the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Roy Gutman, who's in Istanbul. We had some technical difficulties. But you are back with us.

Roy, tell me what you're seeing with these internally displaced. I've heard they've been shunted around to naturally occurring caves. They're in basements. There are women giving birth in the most appalling situations, the kinds of stuff we're not seeing on a daily basis.

GUTMAN: Well, they're living in schools -- this was obviously in winter -- that are unheated. They're crowded into private homes, sometimes 30-50 people are taken in by local people. They are living caves when they run out of space in the houses, in the village that I was visiting.

They're living also in camps that were set up, many of them near the border with Turkey, where they're, in the one case, I saw there were 20,000 people living there. I understand that's now gone up to 30,000, another case 12,000 which might have gone up to about 25,000 by now.

In other words there are just hundreds of thousands of people that have been forced out of their homes, forced to abandon everything they have and are living on the fumes. They have almost nothing of their own.

AMANPOUR: So they have virtually no medicine. They have virtually no food. Is the U.N. able to actually help them inside the country?

GUTMAN: Well, the U.N. operates out of Damascus. They operate with permission of the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad. And he does not give permission regularly for them to go beyond areas of the government controls.

You know, in theory, it would be very easy to go right across the border from Turkey, because some of these internally displaced people's camps are right on the Turkish border. But the U.N. doesn't do that and nor does any of its associated organizations.

Private charities could do it, but, on the whole, most of them are also set up in Damascus and don't want to do anything that's going to annoy the Syrian government for fear that they'll be kicked out of Damascus.

So when I was there at least, almost nobody was helping the people in these internally displaced camps.

AMANPOUR: But the Syrians are helping each other, right, in these areas. Are people able to, I don't know, go to other people's homes?

How much of a strain is that on those who are not having to leave their homes?

GUTMAN: You know, in one home in a village -- and I was in an area -- there was a new front created because the Syrian army had decided to attack some villages. So as many as 50,000 people, maybe even 100,000 people were displaced by this. And they went into all the local -- all the neighboring villages, people opened up their homes to them.

And in some cases they slept 20 or 30 to a room. Quite how they fed them, I don't know. But I -- there was some humanitarian aid being distributed. I'm not quite sure where it came from. They were distributing some tents. But on the whole, people were really living so badly. It was appalling.

And the international community really should be able to help these people. But they have to decide essentially to break with the Syrian government. You have to decide to send aid right across the border. And you have to make a concerted effort at it.

You know, the big thing is, Christiane, that this is such a huge problem. It is the world's biggest refugee catastrophe, displaced persons catastrophe and humanitarian catastrophe. And the numbers are staggering of even the U.N. numbers. But I personally think those numbers are probably low.

They're using figures like 6.8 million who are in distress; 4.5 million who are internally displaced. I think those numbers -- it might upward at least a third more, maybe even a half more.

AMANPOUR: Roy, you have -- you know, we both covered the Balkans; we both have seen the massacres. You also have seen that happening inside Syria.

How does it correspond to, let's say, Srebrenica, which was the massacre that brought the West in to end the war in Bosnia?

GUTMAN: It's funny -- it's not funny. I asked a senior U.S. officials recently whether Qusayr, which is now under siege, and now there are at least 10,000 civilians, maybe more there right now, whether that could turn into a Srebrenica, where at least 7,000 people were killed in 1995.

And the answer from this official was, "Well, yes, it certainly could. But in fact, there have been five Srebrenicas before it."

So -- and this is the really shocking thing to me that with the original Srebrenica in Bosnia, the international community reacted -- it intervened; it stopped the war. It helped people out. It saved a lot of lives.

But this time around, where it is -- it is literally five times the size of Bosnia, there -- the main characteristic of the international community is inaction.

AMANPOUR: And just very quickly as we end this, you know, there's always trouble going on in Turkey right now, but even before this, the Turkish people were not very pro their government helping the Syrian people.

GUTMAN: Well, one of the problems in Turkey, Christiane, is that the media have been so suppressed under the Erdogan government that you really don't know what the genuine mood is of the people. I think Turks are very generous and they -- I think they take in people who are suffering, like the Syrians are, and they've done it in such a grand fashion, really, at the government level.

But they have not involved the public and they have not explained things to the public. They've not brought them in. They've not consulted them. And so the public is -- they can overreact or underreact. They're - - it's a big flaw of the government. But I think one should not for a moment diminish that the Turks are really doing a hell of a lot for the Syrian displaced refugees.

AMANPOUR: Roy Gutman, thanks for joining me from Istanbul.

And turning now to South Africa, and two murder cases that raise the question: do crimes against women get equal treatment from the country's justice system? Today a judge postponed the high-profile murder trial of the world famous running Oscar Pistorius for another two months after prosecutors asked for more time to build their case.

The so-called Blade Runner remains free on bail. He's charged with shooting and killing his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp on Valentine's Day this year.

And in a lesser known case near Cape Town, prosecutors recently released Jonathan Davids, one of the two men charged with the brutal rape and murder of 17-year-old Anene Booysen. Booysen had identified him as her attacker before she died.

The other man charged in the case, Johannes Kana, pleaded guilty yesterday to rape but says he didn't kill her.

Now Debora Patta is one of South Africa's leading investigative reporters, and she joins me now to talk about all of this from Johannesburg.

Debora, welcome back to the program.

DEBORA PATTA, SOUTH AFRICAN INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST: Hi, there, Christiane.

AMANPOUR: So tell me, what is the reaction in South Africa today with this delay of Oscar Pistorius' trial?

Well, Christiane I think it very much expected. Nobody really thought that the case was going to get underway. The state has long been saying it needs more time to investigate and bear in mind they had a very shaky start in February; allegations of police walking over the crime scene without foot gloves and the lead investigator being kicked off the case, he himself charged with murder.

So I guess they really don't want to leave anything to chance and do their best in terms of investigating this ahead of the next appearance in August.

AMANPOUR: A couple of developments, obviously, in the last week or so, Sky Television, others have broadcast pictures purporting to show the bloody scene inside that bathroom, where Steenkamp was shot. What has been the reaction to that? And do you think that's at all prejudicial in any way to the case?

PATTA: Well, it's good point that you raise there, Christiane. It was one raised by the magistrate in the court case today, in which he said that he was worried about a trial by media, that perhaps there was contempt of court.

He's in fact asked the police to investigate whether, in his words, the media has transgressed any law and they said there will be (inaudible). The prosecution says they don't think it will have any impact on their case. They're confident in their investigations. But these kinds of things constantly getting debated do raise concerns.

They also raise concerns about where, for example, those pictures came from. They were taken from the crime scene. They're not the official photographs from the police. It means that somebody, one of the officials at those crime scenes, took photographs and leaked those to the media.

And that, again, raises ideas that perhaps a rogue cop or a rogue official leaking that kind of information to the media had all these poking flaws in the case so far.

AMANPOUR: Let me ask you about Hilton Botha (ph), who was one of the lead detectives at the beginning in the aftermath of the shooting. He has just given an interview. He says he's absolutely certain that this was a case of murder. He's been removed from the case because of a whole load of controversy after the initial appearances.

But the prosecution seems very sure about their case and that he will play a part in the -- in the case. What do you make of that?

PATTA: Well, alarmingly, Hilton Botha, who as you correctly said, was booted off the case, he himself charged with murder, leaving the prosecution very red-faced at the very beginning. They have put another detective on since then, Mike Van Aardt. And then Hilton Botha gives this interview in which he says he's absolutely convinced Oscar did it.

But bear in mind he is still going to be subpoenaed. He is still a key witness for the state. He was one of the first at the crime scene. He obviously took key evidence. And for him to be speaking out at this stage I think, again, raises the question as the magistrate pointed out today, is this a trial by media?

Is everything being discussed outside the courtroom when it should actually be kept inside the courtroom itself? It seems to me, I think on some levels, that Hilton Botha probably has an ax to grind.

He was kicked off the case in a very unsatisfactory fashion as he himself regards. And right now he has given varying degrees of information about the case, contradicting himself on occasion. This is not good for the prosecution and could well play into the defense's hands.

AMANPOUR: So this is obviously a massively high-profile case; involves very, very famous people. But in Cape Town, a much less famous young girl, 17-year-old Anene Booysen was brutally raped; she died of her injuries.

And now the attacker, who Booysen says she identified as her attacker, has been released for lack of evidence. What does this say, not just about the case, but about this ongoing sort of failure of justice, according to many South African women, when it comes to their cases?

PATTA: Let's just pause on that point for a moment, Christiane. This young woman, shortly before her death, from her deathbed identified her attacker, not once but three times by a nickname. She was known to him prior to the attack. But the national prosecuting authorities said that they were dismissing the case because there was not enough evidence to prosecute.

This is the kind of message that has been sent out to women who are raped in this country, making it very difficult for them to come forward when they are raped. One out of every nine rapes is brought to the police's attention in this country, and less than 14 percent of rapists are actually convicted.

And this is what stops many women from coming forward because the message that they are receiving is that essentially it's not worth going through all the effort, through the trauma of reporting that rape again. And sadly, these cases then never get to court and justice is never seen to be done.

AMANPOUR: And yet the president, Jacob Zuma, was enraged after this happened, demanded accountability. South Africans thought maybe this would be a turning point in sort of unlocking the kind of paralysis that you describe.

Has that moment passed?

I don't think Debora Patta hears me.

We have several technical problems this half-hour. But we're going to obviously continue to follow both cases on this program. Pistorius' trial is scheduled, as I said, for about two months from now.

And we will be right back after a break.

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AMANPOUR: And a final thought tonight, about the many ironies of our times.

Imagine a world that's even more dangerous than Syria today. According to the Assad regime, it's just across the border in Turkey. And they're warning Syrians not to go there. Talk about irony. For the past two years, Turkey's prime minister Erdogan has been a vocal critic of Syria's President Assad. He supports the opposition.

He urges Assad to step down and he's even likened him to Hitler and Mussolini. Now some of the tables are turning as Assad finds his own whipping boy in Erdogan. The glee from Damascus is positively palpable as Syrian television broadcasts its coverage of the protests that have been taking place in Istanbul against the Erdogan government.

Meantime, the Assad regime ignores its own 80,000 dead and the nearly 400,000 refugees who've fled to Turkey alone and, as we've said, the 4 million or so who are internal refugees. Let us go out and close this program, showing you the pictures of what it's like to move in Turkey.

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