The Least of My Brothers

Delopmental Genocide

2007-11-18T16:10:00.000-08:00

The 2002 paper, "An Account of the Theory of Genocide" attempts to identify types of genocide, and to fill holes in the U.N.'s Genocide Convention of 1948. The most notable omission of the convention was "politicide"--the killing of human groups because of political affiliation. In order to come up with a more comprehensive description of genocide, the paper describes five major types of genocide: Progressive (towards the 'classless' society), Reactionary (towards the 'racially pure' state or 'common marketisation' of the world), Developmental (eliminating 'backward' peoples and their economies), Retributive (taking revenge), and hegemonic (seizing and holding power.)

Developmental genocide has become an increasing threat in recent decades as the growing demands of the industrial countries for raw materials has led to an ever increasing exploitation of resources in developing countries--often on indigenous lands. Resource Rebels, by Al Gedicks, documents the destruction of indigenous peoples, their habitats, and livelihoods by mining and oil companies.

From the Brazilian rain forests to the Australian outback, mining and drilling operations have brought with them military occupation, systematic human rights abuses, mass killings, arbitrary executions, and destruction of food supply. Between 1900 and 1957, Brazil alone lost more than 80 tribes. Total native population dropped from a million to less than 200,000. Anthropologist John Bodley lays the blame on resource exploitation;

The disappearance of tribal cultures over much of the world in the past 150 years can be seen as the direct result of government policies designed to facilitate the exploitation of tribal resources for the health of industrial civilization.

Gedicks describes the process of developmental genocide;

It involves a dehumanization of those who stand in the way of the economic exploitation of valuable resources. The basic element of this process involves a degradation of the victim, implying their inferiority or worthlessness. Native communities who occupy lands containing untapped resources are frequently described as "primitive," "savages" or "obstacles." From the perspective of the "members of the culture of consumption," it follows that if another culture's resources appear to be underexploited, this is all the justification needed to take those resources.

An illustrative case study published by MiningWatch Canada details the mining operations of the Canadian company, Goldcorp. Through a series of mergers and acquisitions, Goldorp has become the third largest gold producer in North America, with mines in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and the United States.

In its worldwide operations, Goldcorp has run up a record of union busting, disregard of native votes against the mines, toxic waste spills, depletion of local water sources, evasion of taxes, and violent repression of dissent. Goldcorp prides itself on being a "low cost" producer, but low production costs have come with a high human cost.

Goldcorp's Alumberra mine in Argentina, one of the world's largest and lowest cost gold, silver, and copper operations, has drained local rivers, forcing people to abandon their farmlands. Numerous environmental problems have been documented, including the spillage of 21,000 kg of ammonium nitrate, clouds of powder from mine blasts, containing heavy metal pollutants that afflict populated areas, and leaks containing high levels of arsenic, cadmium, copper, mercury, selenium and strontium. Mine operations have caused desertification, sickness, and the destruction of the local social and economic fabric.

At the Amapari mine in Brazil, Goldcorp received a ten year tax holiday from the government, while using its partner, Peak Gold Inc., as a "loss leader" company, allowing Goldcorp to declare an operating loss at the mine. More serious has been the crackdown on small scale, indigenous miners, garimpeiros, who mine to make their own living. In 2000, there were an estimated 700,000 garimpeiros in Brazil. Goldcorp has come into conflict with the garimpeiros in the Amapari mine. Goldcorp has not revealed what methods it has used to deal with the garimpeiros.

In Guatemala, Golldcorp's Marlin mine ran into serious opposition from the indigenous population in the region. Protests against the mine resulted in two deaths and numerous injuries. The residents of indigenous villages in Sipicapa organized a referendum using the International Labor Organization's Convention 169, which affirms the right of indigenous communities to be consulted before industrial activities take place on their land. The referendum resulted in an overwhelming rejection of the mine. Unwilling to accept the will of the people, the company filed an unconstitutionality suit as well as an appeal against the referendum. In May, 2007, the Guatemalan Constitutional Court ruled that the referendum was unconstitutional, although observers suggested that the ruling was influenced by political, economic and commercial interests.

Goldcorp's San Martin mine in Honduras has been criticized by natives as being so exploitative they have likened it to a new form of colonialism. Local environmental activists accuse the mine of drying up water resources needed for crops and villages. The mine's heap leeching techniques, in which diluted cyanide is sprayed over huge piles of quarried rock to separate the microscopic flecks of gold has resulted in the poisoning of streams and groundwater with toxic heavy metals. Since mining began nearby villages have experienced skin problems, hair loss, increasing numbers of miscarriages, and birth defects. Independent testing has confirmed the presence of dangerous levels of heavy metals in the local population, but the Honduran government has so far refused to officially release the results of the tests. The District Attorney for the Environment issued warrants against the company, claiming that the mine was a threat to the health of local inhabitants, only to have them ignored.

Although Goldcorp denies that pollution from the mine has caused these illnesses, environmental studies of Goldcorp's Marigold mine in the U.S. cast serious doubt over these claims. In November, 2006, Great Basin Mine Watch and Earthworks reported that Goldcorp's predecessor, Glamis Gold, had been caught seriously under-reporting mercury pollution from the mine. The company was forced to revise it's report of mercury releases eight thousand percent for 2003 and six thousand percent for 2002. In northern Canada, the costs of cleaning pollution from abandoned mines are expected to run over half a billion dollars, dwarfing the $150 million in royalties collected by the government.

Worse are the human rights problems that result from mining projects in developing nations. A 2005 Canadian Parliamentary Committee studied well documented cases of death threats, assassinations, toxic accidents and destruction of protected areas that mining companies have been implicated in. Although the committee recommended new laws that would hold companies accountable for these abuses, the government has yet to act.

Abuses such as these are a chronic problem around the world. Mining expert Roger Moody claims that the root cause of this intensified assault against native peoples has been a "radical shift" away from financing mining projects backed by shareholders and state enterprises toward those bankrolled by multilateral development agencies and regional banks. In 1997 alone, the World Bank Group lent $987 million for mining projects. Resistance to these projects results in increasing repression by the national governments involved. The result is a viscous circle; half of the debts in Third World states come from the purchase of weapons which are used in part to crush resistance to multinational development projects. The foreign corporations extract the wealth, leaving the local governments with little except debt and devastated environments.

Torture and Tourism in Oaxaca

2007-01-06T08:42:00.000-08:00

Here are some first hand accounts of torture by Mexican authorities in the repression in Oaxaca, as compiled by Graham Russell of Rights Action.

TORTURE & TOURISM IN OAXACA
by Grahame Russell, info@rightsaction.org, January 2007

***
THE STUDENT OF TORTURE GETS TORTURED
(Testimony, Tlaxiaco, Oaxaca, December 19, 2006)

In the city of Tlaxiaco, one victim of illegal detention and torture after another speaks to our emergency human rights delegation. Some stop in the middle of the hard parts to cry; some listening cry. Hard stories.

Cuitlahuac Santiago Mariscal, a teacher with the SNTE (Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores Educativos), stands before us. 'I am doing my thesis at the UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico) on the systemic use of torture by Mexican 'security' forces. Often, I have sat where you are [pointing at our delegation] listening to stories of abuse ., now I stand before you, a victim, to give my testimony.'

His story is similar to that of 8 other men illegally pulled off a bus one day in November by Mexican armed forces, while on their way to a legal protest. On the side of highway, they were herded at gun-point into corn fields and were beaten over their bodies and heads, with fists, feet and weapons. Forced to kneel, pistols were placed at their temples and they were told to say their last goodbyes, alone, in the corn field. The good news: no one in their group was killed that day.

'DESDE ABAJO'

Emiliano Zapata must be rolling angry in his grave, knowing that the Mexican Revolution, of the 1910 era, is long dead, constant rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding.

After the recent - and on-going - wave of brutal repression in the southern state of Oaxaca, Zapata would know that profound political and economic change is still needed throughout Mexico; Oaxaca is as urgent a starting point as anywhere.

Another global struggle 'desde abajo' (from below) is pushing its way into the consciousness of North and South America - this time in a place called Oaxaca. With a population of 3.5 million people (a majority being Indigenous and Indigenous-descendant), Oaxaca's story of racism, of inequality and greed, of protest, rebellion and State repression is also Mexico's story . and of the unjust global order.

Though the short-term focus of the protests is the ouster of the undemocratic and repressive Governor Ulises Ruiz, the movement 'desde abajo' that has come together under the umbrella of APPO (Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca) is broad-based. They are working to change the historic and endemic conditions of a majority of Oaxacans: inequality and racism; an unjust, exploitative and environmentally destructive economic-development model; repression by the State and wealthy elites; and, impunity and a lack of justice and democracy.

"It is democracy for one day, every four years. If you vote, they call you a citizen. If you exercise your human rights and protest and demand change, they call you 'guerilla' fighters and delinquents." (Pedro Matias testimony, Oaxaca, December 20)

Why the Oaxacan rebellion has risen this year, as opposed to next or last, is due to factors particular to Oaxaca and Mexico. Some recommended articles are: "Indigenous Rights Groups Meet the 'Law of the Club': Barbarous Oaxaca" (by Mitchell Verter, May 14, 2005); "From Teachers' Strike Towards Dual Power: The Revolutionary Surge in Oaxaca" (by George Salzman, August 30, 2006); "Calderon Installed by Media and Military: Repression on the Menu in Mexico" (by John Ross, December 2006).

Whatever the reasons for the timing of the APPO led movement, the Oaxacan struggle needs to be known about and supported, from the most local to global levels.

TORTURE & TOURISM

From December 16-22, I joined an emergency human rights delegation to Oaxaca organized by the Oaxaca Solidarity Network and sponsored by Rights Action. On short notice, 20 Northamericans came to Oaxaca, firstly, to be an international presence and listen to testimonies of people tortured and of family members of victims of repression; and, secondly, to return home and work to bring more international attention to the brutal campaign of State terrorism and repression that is strongly backed by the incoming Federal government of President Felipe Calderon.

We listened to testimonies of torture and other atrocities, even as the government of Ulises Ruiz ordered a massive armed force presence to 'protect' the huge tourist industry.

"Along with selling its natural resources to foreign investors, the PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional) cabal that runs the Oaxacan government gets much of its money from its lucrative tourist industry. Ulises has been converting the governmental palace located in the Zocalo . Ulises has been turned into a commercial center, appealing to local businesses and preventing the public from petitioning the government in view of tourists. Ulises'government severely punishes anything that gets in the way of commerce or detracts from its public image." ("Barbarous Oaxaca" article, by Mitchell Verter)

If tourists continue to flock to Oaxaca, pumping millions of dollars into the hands of the government and business elites that dominate the economy, then the chances of bringing about real democracy and rule of law in Oaxaca are greatly lessened.

CALCULATED BRUTALITY

Since the recent wave of repression began in Oaxaca in June 2006, at least 20 people have been killed; 350 have been illegally detained (most having been illegally jailed and tortured); and close to 400 wounded.

A particularly brutal night of repression and terror was November 25th. Federal PFP (Policia Federal Preventativa) and State forces spread through the central Zocalo district of Oaxaca attacking anyone they found on the streets, accusing them of being members of APPO (as if this were illegal). Hundreds were illegally detained; most were physically tortured and psychologically terrorized.

During the week of our visit, much of the activism was focused on securing the release of the illegally detained political prisoners and recording the testimonies of the victims. We did as much as we could.

AN ARQUITECT WHO "ATTACKED THE P.F.P"
(Testimony, December 24; LaJornada newspaper)

In the safety of a church that is a friend to and an advocate of the poor in Oaxaca, Porfirio Dominguez Munozcano (42 years) sat quietly as we set up camera and microphone. Then he talked for 40 minutes without stop. I thought he would cry; I thought we would, but on he went. Publicly telling the truth and fighting for justice are some of the best ways of healing (partially) from torture.

Because he was in the streets of the city where he lives on November 25th, Porfirio was almost killed. "I left my house to print some documents when I saw a bunch of PFP troops running towards me and a group of people I was near. I was left unconscious with the first blow they landed on my head. Two hours later, I came to: my head was wrapped in some sort of cloth and my body and face covered in blood; I had been beaten all over."

"I was in the central Zocalo, face down on the cement with many others. Soldiers kept coming by and kicking us or striking us with the butts of their guns."

Some time later the PFP herded everyone into trucks. Porfirio was put in the back of a pickup truck, face down on the floor; others were piled up on top of him. He thinks there were 5 or 6 other detainees in the same truck, but is not sure. They were not told where there were going. "They said they were going to take us in a helicopter and throw us into the ocean. We were frightened to death, even as they continued kicking us and grinding our heads and hands with their boots."

"We arrived at the women's CERESO (Centro de Rehabilitacion) Tlacolula jail. It was 2 or 3 in the morning. There, they continued hitting and threatening us. You have to try and imagine the terror that we were feeling."

A few days later, he learned that he - like most of the illegally detained - was being charged with assaulting police, sedition, destruction of public property, and more.

The legal and penal systems are being used in Oaxaxa as part of the apparatus of repression.

Due to swollen face and severely damaged left eye, Porfirio was finally taken to the Aurelio Valdivieso hospital where he remained for 7 days under surveillance by armed forces. After having his eye operated on - his vision is mostly restored, though much of the left side of his face remains paralyzed - , he was charged Pesos7000 (US$700) and sent back to jail for another week.

December 15th, Porfirio was released. No one had been told. He was left at the entrance of the jail, on a highway 30 minutes from Oaxaca, no money and no i.d. papers. Including Pesos7000 that he had in his pocket, when knocked unconscious, along with i.d. cards, credit cards, a driver's license, etcetera, nothing has as been returned to him. He hitchhiked to the city. A kind person gave him Pesos50 and he got a taxi ride home.

He continues to pay for his own medical treatment; he has nightmares; he has lost his work; his story has been published in the media and denounced by human rights groups; no charges have been filed against anyone.

Hundreds were illegally detained, jailed, tortured and psychologically tortured in the four weeks following November 25th.

SANTA CLAUS's GIFT LIST
(LaJornada, December 23)

"Dear Santa: This Christmas, I am not asking you for toys, I am only asking for the immediate liberty of my Papi." Derwin Coache Rivera - 8-year old son of political prisoner Marcelino Coache Verano (a member of APPO) - participates in all the marches being organized by COFADAPPO (Comite de Familiares de Presos, Detenidos y Desaparecidos de Oaxaca). Marcelino was illegally detained and jailed on December 4. Derwin wants to get Papi out "from that place where he is living that is so ugly." Derwin visited his Papi in a jail in Cosalapa, Oaxaca, near the border with Veracruz. "I hugged him and we cried. I said: 'Papi, I love you very much. I don't want to be separated from you'."

WOMEN WITH "A HIGHLY DANGEROUS PROFILE"
(LaJornada, December 21)

Mercedes Cumplido Pantoja (47 years) and Ruth Cabrera Vazquez (48) were illegally detained and tortured physically and psychologically by the PFP (Policia Federal Preventiva) on November 25th. Mercedes: "They told me they were going to kill me. They touched my legs, they hit me, they spoke to me in a most vile way, they said to me 'you are going to die, you are a bitch, an idiot, an asshole. Who paid you to be in the city center? How much did they pay you'?"

Ruth: While PFP agents were hitting her, "they were saying that I was too old to be involved in such bullshit, that we had no ethical values to destroy a beautiful city like Oaxaca." After she was illegally detained by the PFP on November 25, she was put in the back of a truck with 11 women. "They threw us on the floor and took photos of us while they continued insulting us. They threatened us, not letting us know where they were taking us. . They finally took us to the CERESO (Centro de
Rehabilitacion) jail in Miahuatlan."

"I told them I had nothing to declare because I had done nothing other than help people with coca-cola and vinagre who had been asphyxiated with the tear-gas (shot by the PFP). Is this a crime?"

"My hand was really swollen and painful [from the beatings]. I asked to go to the infirmary. An hour later, they told us that we were going. I was happy, thinking they were going to liberate us, so I was surprised when I learned they were taking us to who knows where, all hand-cuffed, forced to look at the ground, like some vile and bloody delinquents."

Members of our delegation have hours of filmed and taped testimony, some of which will be reproduced and distributed on Rights Action's list-serv, and elsewhere. Listening to the many testimonies, it is easy to confuse the stories - they are systematically brutal and head-achingly repetitive. Listening, it is sometimes too sad to continue to taking notes ... "They put blankets against our bodies, before kicking us, so as not to leave marks."

"Torture is the government's preferred method of collecting information, extracting confessions, and gaining political concessions." (Yessica Sanchez Maya, Liga Mexicana de Derechos Humanos)

WEDDING INTERRUPTED
(Testimony, December 21)

In front of the women's CERESO Tlacolula jail we spoke with 19-year old Mariela who has been waiting for days to see if her boyfriend would be released. Using the legal and penal systems as part of the apparatus of repression, the authorities don't tell anyone when they are releasing the people that they have illegally detained and most probably tortured physically and psychologically.

In early November, Mariela's boyfriend came from Baja California to ask for her hand in marriage. They had planned to marry in early January; repression got in the way. Illegally detained on November 25, he was disappeared for a week - part of the terrorization tactic.

Mariela went from hospital to morgue trying to find her boyfriend. She learned that hundreds of people were detained in jails so she started visiting the jails. Finally arriving at the women's CERESO Tlacolula jail, that the government had emptied so as to fill with the political prisoners, she met other family members of the detained and disappeared; since that time they have worked together to find their loved ones and to help free all the political prisoners. They formed COFADAPPO (Comite de Familiares de Presos, Detenidos y Desaparecidos de Oaxaca).

She hopes today is the day her boyfriend will be released ... and then he will start to tell his stories.

THE 'MODUS OPERANDI' OF REPRESSION AND TERROR

The "errors and mistakes" argument is showing up in the media these days, as testimonies of torture emerge - inside Mexico and internationally. Yet, the
illegal detentions, psychological and physical torture and dozens of killings in Oaxaca, are not "errors and mistakes" committed by "bad apples" in the various security forces.

"The objective of this counter-insurgency campaign is to totally finish off with social organizations and unions and, in general, with all opposition so as to implement the economic plans of the rich sectors. . These are projects that result in poor communities losing their lands, the forced displacement of 'colonos', misery and hunger." (APPO statement, Noticias, December 20, 18A)

STATE OF FEAR & "PROTECTION" OF WHAT?

Friday, December 22: Our delegation has ended. A few of us spend the next days doing follow-up interviews. At least 1000 heavily armed forces occupy every entrance to the Zocalo center of Oaxaca. All day, thousands of Mexicans and tourists come and go, walking by the rows of armed forces and barricades blocking every entrance to the Zocalo.

APPO is having yet another march, so government forces prevent them from entering the Zocalo where most tourists go and where the reknown "Noche de los Rabanos" (Night of the Radishes) celebrations take place on December 23. APPO takes its peaceful protest in another direction, and holds a meeting with thousands - courageously strengthening their movement.

THE RE-DETENTION, RE-BEATING, RE-RELEASE OF PEDRO GARCIA
(Testimony, December 18; LaJornada)

Midday on December 18, teacher Pedro Garcia gave testimony to our delegation. On October 1st, he had been shot at, pistol-whipped, taken 'incomunicado' to the Tlacolula CERESO jail, suffered beatings, forced to sign false declarations denouncing this and that person, and the like; standard operating procedures. He was released due to activism mainly from other members of APPO.

The story of his first detention and torture were hard enough. In the middle of our meetings that same night, we got a text message: Pedro had just been re-detained, along with Florentino Lopez (APPO spokesperson) and Otalo Padilla. Pedro was re-beaten and re-tortured and later re-released.

Florentino: "[the men who detained us] said: 'we are a death squad. You now know us and now you will know what it is like to go to hell.' They kept saying they were going to kill us." Pedro, Florentino and Otalo identified Alejandro Barrita Ortiz, director of the State Policia Auxiliar Bancaria, Industrial y Commercial (PABIC) as being one of the men.

Interviewed at the inauguration of the hastily convened and widely rejected "Reform of the State" process, Governor Ulises Ruiz was asked - referring specifically to these three men - whether it was the right time to initiate this 'Reform the State' process when government forces were arbitrarily detaining and torturing people.

Ulises Ruiz: "I understand that there was no detention, there was no legal process, they were not in the procuraderia ." (Noticias, December 20, p13A). The next day, the Noticias newspaper published photos of the three men - clearly beaten in their faces.

"On the one hand, they call for "reconciliation and dialogue", on the other they continue with arbitrary detentions, assassinations and disappearances." (APPO, Noticias newspaper, December 20)

After attending the well-attended-by-high-society inauguration of the "Reform of the State" process in the Palacio del Gobierno, governor Ruiz went to the Terranova restaurant in the Zocalo, owned by the family of the Secretary of Tourism, and had coffee with business leaders. They were surrounded by a detail of heavily armed "security" forces.

One of the businessmen who attended governor Ruiz's Reform the State show was Jose Escovar, president of the COPARMEX Oaxaca business coalition. We had formally asked him to meet with our delegation, but were told by his assistant he was away from Oaxaca until early January. (Neither would the State Attorney General's Office meet with us).

SHOOT THE MESSENGER

After Iraq, Mexico has the highest levels of repression against journalists, according to the Mexican Comision Especial para dar Seguimiento a las Agresions a Periodistas y medios de Comunicaion. Over the past 6 years in Mexico, 30 journalists have been assassinated; 3 remain disappeared. Recently in Oaxaca, killer's bullets have ended the lives of Mexican Raul Marcial Perez and American Bradley Ronald Hill.

DETAINING & TORTURING CANNOT KEEP THE GOOD PEOPLE DOWN

December 23, Noche de los Rabanos: Struggling for a decent and just society is also about singing, dancing and reciting poetry. After hundreds of heavily armed forces closed the Santo Domingo park area, where APPO was going to have its alternative Noche de los Rabanos celebration, the festival was held in a smaller outdoor space - armed forces at either end of the pedestrian-only street.

After 6 months of struggle, after weeks of illegal detentions, physical and psychological torture, a thousand or more came out to celebrate. One of the
main singers and speakers was none other than the twice detained and tortured Pedro Garcia.

NO CONCLUSION - SUPPORT & GET INVOLVED

Rodrigo, Indigenous campesino from western Oaxaca - also illegally detained and beaten - told us: "We know that they can kill us at any time but we know that our struggle is just."

"If you have come to help me, please go away. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, let us work together." (Lila Watson, Indigenous activist)

"There are no magic answers, no miraculous methods to overcome the problems we face, just the familiar ones: search for understanding, education, organization, action ... and the kind of commitment that will persist despite the temptations of disillusionment, despite many failures and only limited successes, inspired by the hope of a brighter future." (Noam Chomsky)

The struggle in Oaxaca is happening right now; the reactionary repression and State terrorism is happening right now; the mainstream media cover-up (not addressing the underlying issues; obfuscating the repression) is happening right now; the wealthy sectors of Oaxaca are maintaining their long-term relations with the wealthy and powerful of Mexico, Canada and the USA right now.

Hundreds of Thousands raped in Congo Wars

2006-11-17T19:16:00.000-08:00

The growing incidence of rape in the Congo violence has led some human rights groups to describe it as a "weapon of war" to punihs communities for their political loyalties or as a form of ethnic clensing.

In one province alone, South Kivu, about 42,000 women were treated in health clinics for serious sexual assaults last year, according to statistics collected by the human rights group, Global Rights.

Immaculee Birhaheka, head of a women's rights group in Goma, Paif, said those women who make it to hospital are just a fraction of those attacked. "It's impossible to know how many women have been raped in the war but it is hundreds of thousands," she said.

Some human rights groups are calling for the leaders of groups responsible for the tide of rape to be brought before the International Criminal Court in the Hague. One militia leader, Thomas Lubanga, founder of the Union of Congolese Patriots, went on trial before the the ICC last week for the forced recruitment of child soldiers, although his troops were also involved in the systematic rape of civilians.

UN passes resolution on Darfur

2006-08-31T12:28:00.000-07:00

A resolution adopted today by the United Nations Security Council would deploy U.N. troops to Darfur as a first step toward protecting civilians, but ongoing Sudanese government military operations in the region highlight the urgent need to secure Khartoum’s immediate consent for an U.N. force.

Today’s resolution, co-sponsored by the United States and Britain, permits a U.N. force to use all necessary means to protect civilians in Darfur and calls for a gradual transition from the under-funded and under-equipped African Union (AU) mission in Darfur, which has been unable to prevent widespread abuses against civilians, to a robust U.N. protection force. But the plan to deploy as many as 17,500 U.N. troops and as many as 3,300 civilian police is contingent on consent by the government of Sudan, which has categorically rejected calls for U.N. forces in Darfur.

Russia, a major supplier of weapons to Sudan, and China, a major consumer of Sudanese oil, both abstained in today’s vote on the resolution, which sends an extremely unhelpful signal about their lack of willingness to press Khartoum to accept U.N. troops.

After weeks of military buildups in Darfur’s three provincial capitals, Khartoum launched offensive military operations on August 28, with Sudanese troops attacking rebel-controlled villages in North Darfur and government aircraft bombarding Kulkul, north of the provincial capital El Fashir. International observers in North Darfur reported that civilians attempting to flee the attacks in Kulkul were turned back by Sudanese government troops.

The government offensive comes less than a month after Sudan circulated a proposal to send more than 10,500 troops into Darfur, in direct violation of the Darfur Peace Agreement signed in May with a Darfur rebel movement. Although the planned troop movements violated the peace agreement, the Security Council failed to condemn the Sudanese proposal, and took no action.

The U.N. reports that violence in Darfur is worse than ever despite the Darfur Peace Agreement, leading to the forcible displacement of 21,000 people since July in the state of North Darfur alone. Humanitarian access in Darfur is at its lowest level since 2004, with almost 500,000 needy civilians beyond the reach of humanitarian aid.

Guinea security force attrocities

2006-08-29T12:26:00.000-07:00

Guinean police and security forces routinely rob, assault, torture, and even murder Guinean citizens according to a report by Human Rights Watch.

Guinea is undergoing economic turmoil and impending political transition, and there is no control over the security forces.

Police brutally torture men and boys held in police custody. The victims are individuals suspected of common crimes as well as those perceived to be government opponents. Once transferred from police custody to prison, many are left to languish for years awaiting trial in cramped, dimly lit cells where they face hunger, disease and sometimes death.

Human Rights Watch called on the Guinean government to immediately investigate and bring to justice those responsible for crimes committed by state security forces during the June 2006 nationwide strike, as well as those responsible for torture and ill-treatment of individuals in police custody.

Human Rights Watch also recommended that international donors such as France, the United States and the European Union call publicly and privately on the Guinean government to investigate and, where applicable, punish those responsible for the abuses. International donors should also support efforts by local nongovernmental organizations to increase their ability to monitor and document violations by security forces.

Ramsey Case Spotlights Child Sex Trade

2006-08-17T15:16:00.000-07:00

The big story of the week has been the arrest of John Mark Karr, a 42-year-old American, in connection with the killing of 6-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey.

Karr was arrested in Bangkok on unrelated sex charges.

In countries such as Thailand, child sexual exploitation builds on a long-standing and vast prostitution industry, and thrives where law enforcement is weak or corrupt. That sex with young teens is not a strong taboo in some Asian cultures makes fighting the problem even more difficult.

In Cambodia, There are about 33,000 child sex workers, according to UNICEF, the U.N. children's agency. The U.S. State Department has listed Cambodia as among the world's worst nations at adequately addressing human trafficking problems, including the trade of child sex workers.

Just two months ago a Los Angeles man was deported from Thailand May after completing one-year prison sentence for molesting 15-year-old and 16-year-old boys. According to a U.S. criminal complaint, he told authorities he often paid Thai children the equivalent of $5 for two hours of sexual contact.

It appears that the killer in the Ramsey case was finally apprehended after being lured into the Asian sex trade.

Darfur Scorecard

2006-08-17T14:54:00.000-07:00

See how your senators and congressmen score in their support of legislation to end the suffering in Darfur.

Israel/Lebanon: Indiscriminant strikes on civilians

2006-08-05T19:20:00.000-07:00

A report by Human Rights Watch documents a systematic failure by Israelis to distinguish between combatants and civilians in their military campaign against Hezbollah. The pattern of attacks in more than 20 cases investigated by Human Rights Watch researchers in Lebanon indicates that the failures cannot be dismissed as mere accidents and cannot be blamed on wrongful Hezbollah practices. In some cases, these attacks constitute war crimes.

The pattern of attacks shows the Israeli military’s disturbing disregard for the lives of Lebanese civilians. Our research shows that Israel’s claim that Hezbollah fighters are hiding among civilians does not explain, let alone justify, Israel’s indiscriminate warfare.

"Fatal Strikes: Israel’s Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians in Lebanon,” analyzes almost two dozen cases of Israeli air and artillery attacks on civilian homes and vehicles. Of the 153 dead civilians named in the report, 63 are children. More than 500 people have been killed in Lebanon by Israeli fire since fighting began on July 12, most of them civilians.

“The pattern of attacks shows the Israeli military’s disturbing disregard for the lives of Lebanese civilians,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “Our research shows that Israel’s claim that Hezbollah fighters are hiding among civilians does not explain, let alone justify, Israel’s indiscriminate warfare.”

In previous reporting, Human Rights Watch has addressed the conduct of Hezbollah forces, condemning its attacks on civilian areas as serious violations of international humanitarian law amounting to war crimes. Human Rights Watch has called on the governments of Syria and Iran to use their influence on Hezbollah to promote respect for the laws of war. In this report, it urges Hezbollah to take all feasible steps to avoid locating military objectives within or near densely populated areas and to remove civilian persons and objects under its control from the vicinity of military objectives.

Code Pink hunger strike gains notice

2006-08-04T14:55:00.000-07:00

After 28 days of fasting, anti-war hunger strikers received a breakthrough victory for their sacrifice: Leading members of the Iraqi Parliament invited fasters to join them to discuss their plans for peace in Iraq. On Wednesday, August 2, hunger strikers will travel to Amman, Jordan to meet with these Iraqi MPs and break their fast.

The delegation includes: Peace mom Cindy Sheehan, Retired Colonel Ann Wright, Iraq war veteran Geoffrey Millard, Politician/Writer Tom Hayden, and CODEPINK co-founders Medea Benjamin, Jodie Evans, Gael Murphy and Diane Wilson. Click here for the full list of delegates and their bios.

The invitation from the Iraqi MPs comes after fasters were rebuffed in numerous attempts to meet with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki during his visit to Washington last week, including setting up "Camp Al-Maliki" across from the Iraqi Embassy and publishing an open letter to him in one of the largest Iraqi newspapers. Faster and CODEPINK cofounder Medea Benjamin was arrested for disrupting al-Maliki’s address to Congress last Wednesday, saying loudly and repeatedly, “Iraqis want the troops to leave, bring them home now!” The parliamentarians, who expressed concern for fasters’ health and dismay at the Prime Minister’s dismissal of their repeated requests for a meeting, will travel to meet with the US delegation in Jordan on August 3. The Iraqi elected officials will brief the Americans on the Reconciliation Plan they have been working on at the Reconciliation Conference held in Cairo last week. With the increased violence between Israel and Lebanon, a part of the U.S. delegation will go on to Syria and Lebanon to bear witness to the suffering of innocent victims of war in the region.

Sindhi Protest in DC

2006-08-02T14:49:00.000-07:00

The World Sindhi Institute
August 2, 2006
Press Release

WSI Protest Rally Scheduled
Rally to occur August 14 outside the Pakistani Embassy

Washington, DC—On August 14, the World Sindhi Institute, a non-profit organization that promotes human rights in the Sindh province of Pakistan through non-violent means, is sponsoring a protest rally at 11 a.m. outside the Pakistani embassy in Washington, DC.

The Pakistani government continues to abuse its power within Pakistan. At least three members of the press have been killed since January 2006: Munir Sangi, Mukesh Rotena, and Sunjay Kumar, and death threats have been made against journalists Sarmad Kanrani and Mubarak Bhatti. Since January 2006, at least three members of Jeay Sindh Qaumi Mahaz (JSQM) have been abducted, including Dr. Safdar Sarki, Asif Baladi, and Aakash Malah. Women and girls continue to be subjected to the practice of Karo-Kari, harassment, marriage while minors, and arrest. Couples continue to be arrested under the “draconian Islamic Hudood Laws.” In May 2006, the human rights commission of Pakistan observed that Pakistani “intelligence” agencies have been involved in the kidnapping of nationalist leaders and students from the Sindh and Baloch provinces, with more than 57 people reported missing due to these abductions. In Time, “Pakistan’s Other War” details the use of military equipment provided by
the United States government in the suppression of the Baloch. The extent of A.Q. Khan’s nuclear program and the possible sale of nuclear technology to countries, like Iran, Libya, and North Korea, remains to be disclosed.

The World Sindhi Institute has organized this event to protest the ban on freedom of _expression, the persecution of journalists, continued tortures, denial of women’s rights, the Hudood Ordinances, the lack of democracy, the disappearances of Sindhis and Baloch, and the issue of nuclear proliferation.”

“Only when these issues are resolved,” says Munawar Laghari, Executive Director of the World Sindhi Institute, “may Pakistan be considered a fully functioning democracy.”

For more information, please contact Caprill Hacker or Yelena Rubanovich at 202-223-1777 or via e-mail at wsihq@worldsindhi.org. You may also visit www.worldsindhi.org for more information.

Through nonviolent means, The World Sindhi Institute works relentlessly for universal human rights and humanitarian law for the Sindhis of Sindh, in southeastern Pakistan.

Spanish Judge Orders Guatemalan Arested for Genocide

2006-07-10T12:44:00.000-07:00

Continuing the Spanish prosecution of former US backed dictators in Latin America, a Spanish High Court Judge Santiago Pedraz has ordered the arrest of former Guatemalan leaders Efran Rios Montt and Oscar Humberto Mejia Victores along with six others.

General Montt headed the country in the early 80s and turned an already genocidal war against the mostly Mayan populations of the Guatemalan highlands into a scorched earth campaign that burned villages and indiscrminantly killed their inhabitants. At least 200,000 were killed or missing by the end of the war--the worst of the right wing terror campaigns during the 1980s.

Judge Pedraz's order requires local Guatemalan officials to issue arrest warrents for the men. Rios Montt remains an important political figure in Guatemala, having run in the last presidential election; and has a daughter married to a U.S. congresman. Prosecution may be difficult. A 1999 arrest warrent is still out for a military leader who cannot be found, even though he still receives his military pension.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu warned that it could be "a very tortuous road and a test of the Guatemalan justice system."

No mention was made of the tacit support the Montt administration received from the Reagan administration during his reign of terror.

Your Savings and Tax Dollars Are Funding Genocide in the Sudan

2006-06-30T17:58:00.000-07:00

Your tax dollars go to support city, state and university pensions, which invest them money in foreign companies — many of which operate in Sudan. The worst of these companies provide no benefit to Sudanese civilians, merely extracting resources and paying off the genocidal government in Khartoum. This is the primary source of funding for the genocide in Darfur.

While no US companies are directly doing business in Sudan, many multinational companies are--some with minority investment from US companies. While many of these companies are helping Sudan’s citizens, a small subset are providing substantial revenue and cover to the government of Sudan’s campaign of genocide.

The most effective way to fight this support is the Sudan divestment movement. Already a half dozen states have approved divestment from Sudan. Twenty other states have divestment legislation pending. There is an active divesment campaign targeting TIAA-CREF, the nation's largest pension fund manager.

Multinational Corporations are drawn to Sudan because of the oil there. Only a concerted public effort will force them out.

The Israeli Government Institutes Collective Punishment

2006-06-30T17:54:00.000-07:00

From Haaretz: : "The government is losing its reason"

Bombing bridges that can be circumvented both by car and on foot; seizing an airport that has been in ruins for years; destroying a power station, plunging large parts of the Gaza Strip into darkness; distributing flyers suggesting that people be concerned about their fate; a menacing flight over Bashar Assad's palace; and arresting elected Hamas officials: The government wishes to convince us that all these actions are intended only to release the soldier Gilad Shalit.

But the greater the government's creativity in inventing tactics, the more it seems to reflect a loss of direction rather than an overall conception based on reason and common sense. On the face of it, Israel wishes to exert increasing pressure both on Hamas' political leadership and on the Palestinian public, in order to induce it to pressure its leadership to release the soldier. At the same time, the government claims that Syria - or at least Khaled Meshal, who is living in Syria - holds the key. If so, what is the point of pressuring the local Palestinian leadership, which did not know of the planned attack and which, when it found out, demanded that the kidnappers take good care of their victim and return him?

The tactic of pressuring civilians has been tried before, and more than once. The Lebanese, for example, are very familiar with the Israeli tactic of destroying power stations and infrastructure. Entire villages in south Lebanon have been terrorized, with the inhabitants fleeing in their thousands for Beirut. But what also happens under such extreme stress is that local divisions evaporate and a strong, united leadership is forged.
In the end, Israel was forced both to negotiate with Hezbollah and to withdraw from Lebanon. Now, the government appears to be airing out its Lebanon catalogue of tactics and implementing it, as though nothing has been learned since then. One may assume that the results will be similar this time around as well.

Israel also kidnapped people from Lebanon to serve as bargaining chips in dealings with the kidnappers of Israeli soldiers. Now, it is trying out this tactic on Hamas politicians. As the prime minister said in a closed meeting: "They want prisoners released? We'll release these detainees in exchange for Shalit." By "these detainees," he was referring to elected Hamas officials.
The prime minister is a graduate of a movement whose leaders were once exiled, only to return with their heads held high and in a stronger position than when they were deported. But he believes that with the Palestinians, things work differently.

As one who knows that all the Hamas activists deported by Yitzhak Rabin returned to leadership and command positions in the organization, Olmert should know that arresting leaders only strengthens them and their supporters. But this is not merely faulty reasoning; arresting people to use as bargaining chips is the act of a gang, not of a state.
The government was caught up too quickly in a whirlwind of prestige mixed with fatigue. It must return to its senses at once, be satisfied with the threats it has made, free the detained Hamas politicians and open negotiations. The issue is a soldier who must be brought home, not changing the face of the Middle East.

The Israeli Government continually hopes for a 1948 rerun, when Arab inhabitants flee before invading Israeli armies, leaving the land open for Jewish settlers.

But the West Bank Palestinians did not flee in 1967, in spite of pamphlets warning them to run from the Israeli army. The Lebonese did not flee from Arial Sharon's invasion in the 1980s. Lacking Arab evacuation, the Isrealis have been left with unpalitable alternatives; ethnic clensing or prolonged guerilla war. They have not yet been willing to go to ethnic clensing, but their isolation of the Gaza Strip and attacks on vital infrastructure raise the possibility that this time that option may be on the table.

Congress approves emergency funds for darfur

2006-06-17T18:15:00.000-07:00

The U.S. Congress passed $173 million in emergency funding for the poorly funded and armed Darfur peacekeepers.

A UN assessment team visited Darfur and Chad last week and issued a report upon their return. The violence is spreading into Chad. Sudanese Janjaweed and rebel groups have driven up to 50,000 Chadians from their homes and are living next to Darfurians in refugee camps. The ethnic nature of the violence is also bleeding into Chad. The Janjaweed have begun recruiting Arab Chadians to join in their attacks. Chadian President Idriss Deby continues to accuse Sudan of inciting and funding this violence.

The UN delegation is seeking a resolution to the Darfur conflict that will address violence in Darfur and Chad.

The BBC reports this week that refugees still feel that there is not enough security in Darfur for them to return home. A Sudanese Red Crescent clinic — one of only two serving more than 40,000 refugees — will likely be forced to close in the coming weeks due to lack of international aid.

Amnesty International reported that China has been exporting military equipment that is being used to commit atrocities in highly volatile conflict regions including Darfur.

Women helping to rebuild El Salvador

2006-05-26T07:49:00.000-07:00

El Salvador is still haunted by the violent 12-year civil war that left 75,000 people dead, 8,000 missing, one million homeless and a further one million exiled. Women participated in the civil war at a high level; women served as armed combatants and provided domestic aid to soldiers. However, when the civil war concluded in the 1990s, women experienced a backlash: they were criticized for leaving their traditional family roles to fight and found it difficult to re-integrate into Salvadoran society.

It was out this that the organization IMU was born. IMU (in Spanish: Instituto de Investigación, Capacitación y Desarrollo de la Mujer) was founded in 1986 to address that intersection of gender and civil strife in post-conflict El Salvador. One of IMU’s pioneering projects is its women’s studies circles. The study circles, composed mostly of single women raising children, gather together regularly to discuss how human rights pertain to their lives. The participants are trained in community advocacy, parliamentary procedure and gender issues. From these study circles, two community-based organizations have bloomed – one focusing on domestic violence, the other on economic opportunities.

IMU is now moving in two important and complementary directions: pursuing and ensuring democracy and human rights for El Salvador through its women’s movement, and addressing how El Salvador can handle future natural disasters through advocacy and disaster preparedness. At the same time, IMU continues its vital and comprehensive network of women’s training circles, including a new project about the Dominican Republic–Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA), educating women on trade and globalization.

Human Rights Violations in Sindh, Pakistan

2006-04-18T09:54:00.000-07:00

The World Sindh Institute has released its 2005 report on Human Rights violations in Sindh, the southeastern province of Pakistan. The reports catalogs reports of honor killings, vioolence against women, arbitrary arrests and disappearances.

Sindh political movements and human rights activistis have been accused of terrorism by the pakistani government and its activists jailed and tortured. Sindh leader, Shafi Burfat, remains in hiding. Sindh Hindus have been forced to convert to Islam. In one case three daughters were kidnapped from their school. A few days later, their parents received a letter from a Madressah that they had converted to Islam and would not be allowed to return to their parents.

The oppression of Sindh Hindus has led to the emigration of some 17,000 Sindh to India in the last decade.

Slave Trade in Isreal

2006-04-18T04:40:00.000-07:00

An article in Haaretz details a growing problem in Israel; the importation of laborers who end up in upaid, forced labor. This is part of a larger, worldwide problem involving between 600,000 and 800,000 people annually throughout the world who are trafficed for purposes of work, prostitution and harvesting of body organs. A tactic that is often used in Isreal is debt bondage.

This is a pattern of behavior in which the slave is made to compensate his employer for the expenses he incurred in bringing him [to Israel] and paying for his upkeep. To this end, he must forgo his salary or receive a pittance, with the length of the compensatory period and the value of the services rendered arbitrarily determined by the employer. The victims of this trade in people are particularly vulnerable because of their unfamiliarity with the target country. Even if they arrive legally, they do not know the local language and culture, and this deters them from realizing their rights.

According to U.S. rankings of countries, Isreal was initially listed at the lowest level--a country that is doing nothing at all to eradicate human trafficking. Since 2002, it has been upgraded to Tier 2--countries that are taking action, but not enough.

In 2005, Israel was added to a "watch list" of countries that are about to be downgraded. The 2005 report stated, in condemnation of Israel, that some of the foreign workers in the country suffer from nonpayment of wages, threats, coercion, physical and sexual abuse, debt bondage and restrictions on freedom of movement, including confiscation of passports. The report also noted that Israel does not have legislation against trafficking in persons for purposes of servitude.

Cases against employers of foreign workers are often closed when no Israeli citizen is involved, says Rom Levkowitz, spokesman for the Hotline for Migrant Workers. "The same mantra of 'no public interest' keeps repeating itself. The moment it is not Israeli citizens who are involved, the approach is that the case has no implications for the Israeli society. That is the message that is being conveyed. They prefer simply to deport the complainants," he says.

Gaza on verge of disaster

2006-04-04T12:04:00.000-07:00

Isreal has closed off all access to the Gaza strip, preventing food from being shipped in. A humanitarian crisis is close at hand. Will this one make the media?

A report by the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) warns of a lack of basic food supplies due to the frequent closures of the Karni crossing that are preventing goods from reaching Gaza from Egypt. The report also said there has been a significant increase in the number of hungry people since financial aid has been halted.

Now that they have withdrawn from Gaza, the Israeli authorities seem intent on starving out the Palestinian population that is left there.

22 years and no justice.

2006-03-03T12:30:00.000-08:00

22 years after one of the worste industrial disasters in history, 150 survivors of the leak of toxic gas by Union Carbide at Bhopal are beginning a 800 km walk to bring attention to their plight. While Union Carbide's new owner, Dow Chemical, continues to make profits in India, the survivors of Bhopal have to beg for medical services. The marchers make the following demands:

1. National Commission on Bhopal: Set up National Commission on Bhopal with the necessary authority and funds to provide facilities for health care, medical research, social support and economic rehabilitation of survivors and their children for at least next 30 years. This commission must have active participation of non-government doctors, scientists and representatives of survivor's organizations.
2. Provide Safe Drinking Water: Commit funds for and agree to time-bound plan for delivery of piped Kolar water to communities affected by Union Carbide's contamination.
3. Prosecute Union Carbide and Anderson: Set up a Special Prosecution Cell in the Central Bureau of Investigation with representatives from the Ministry of External Affairs for speedy prosecution of Union Carbide Corporation, Warren Anderson and other accused in the criminal case of the December '84 disaster.
4. Make Dow Clean Up and Pay: Ensure scientific assessment of depth and spread of contamination in and around the Union Carbide factory and make Union Carbide's current owner The Dow Chemical Company pay for clean up of contamination and compensation for related health and environmental damages.
5. Blacklist Dow and Union Carbide: Stop government purchase of Dursban and other Dow products and halt any expansion of Dow's business in India till it accepts the pending liabilities of Bhopal.
6. Remember Bhopal: Include representatives of survivors organizations in the creation of a memorial to the disaster; declare December 3 rd as a National Day of Mourning for Victims of Industrial Disasters and Pollution and ensure that the Bhopal disaster and its aftermath are included school and college curricula.

Please sign a petition to support their demands.

Child soldiers sing

2006-02-14T18:10:00.000-08:00

Around the world, 30,000 children fight in various conflicts. But they are still children; they still sing.

Impunity Killings in Rio de Janeiro

2006-01-15T16:53:00.000-08:00

As locals crowded into the Bar do Raimundo in Morro do Estado, a crowded slum near Rio De Janeiro, one Sunday night in December they had no awareness of the imminent violence just outside.

Within minutes five residents – among them three boys under the age of 15 – lay dead. The weathered cement walls outside the bar were pockmarked with gunshots and the pavement covered in a thick coat of blood.

"It was an execution," one man who was in the bar at the time but was too scared to be identified.

The killings, which came one day after the launch of Amnesty International's report "They come in Shooting: Policing socially excluded communities", have for once caught the public attention in Brazil. Several politicians have denounced what they suspect were "summary executions", while the police have opened an inquiry into what happened that night outside the Bar do Raimundo.

This violence has been escalating in recent years. Between 1999 and 2003 the number of people killed during police operations in Rio more than tripled from 289 to 1,195, according to Justiça Global. The majority were poor, black males from the favelas, aged between 15 and 24.

Key Moment for Dafur

2006-01-14T16:09:00.000-08:00

December 2005 was marked by fresh attacks on villages by the Sudanese government and their proxy militias, killing untold numbers and displacing thousands of people. In early January the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General, Kofi Annan confirmed that the situation in Darfur was deteriorating, as he reported new large-scale attacks against civilians and urged further international action to end the crisis. In February, the U.S. will have a unique opportunity to take the action necessary to stop the violence and protect the people of Darfur. Today we write to invite you to escalate your activism to push the U.S. Administration to seize this moment. Send an e-mail to President Bush, mark your calendars for several important dates, and engage with us as we turn up the heat to stop genocide in Darfur.

Humanitarian organizations across Western Sudan are on the brink of withdrawal. There are currently 3.5 million people in need of food in Darfur. Jan Egeland of the UN estimates that if humanitarian organizations leave Darfur, as many as 100,000 people could die each month. We are out of time. In response to the increasing violence and the threat to civilians and humanitarian aid agencies in Darfur, we must escalate our pressure on the U.S. government to take the action necessary to stop the genocide in Darfur.

In February the U.S. will become President of the UN Security Council for one month, creating the perfect opportunity for the introduction of a resolution at the UN for an international intervention to stop genocide in Darfur. Between now and February we need to escalate our pressure on the State Department. U.S. Ambassador John Bolton at the UN is the man who must introduce that resolution, but the decision to introduce this resolution will be made by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and President George Bush. Join us in this critical moment.

A statement by Africa Action outlines proposals for ending the genocide.

CAFTA Threatens AIDS Victims in Guatemala

2006-01-05T10:45:00.000-08:00

Guatemala has more AIDS orphans than any other Central American nation, a problem that the government has been slow to acknowledge.

Experts say that the country has reached a critical juncture in the HIV epidemic. Recently Guatemala was granted $8.4 million from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tiberculosis and Malaria, most of which will be used to provide medicines to those infected.

But provisions of the CAFTA agreement will significantly limit the effect of this money by giving American pharmaceutical companies a five year period of exclusivity for new drugs. Guatemala will no longer be able to import affordable, geneeric AIDS drugs to meet the growing need.

Rachel Cohen, from Doctors Without Borders, calls the efforts to bring in affordable medicine "absolutely critical" because patients often develop resistance to the more commonly used brands;

If those numbers in Guatemala were to rise from 13,000 to 20,000, 30,000, 50,000, it's going to be impossible for Guatemala to contemplate the sort of national response that would be necessary.

The AIDS problem brings into sharp focus the heartless, bottom line mentality of "free trade" agreements and the suffering they bring upon the poor and the powerless.

British Envoy Goes Public About Use of Torture

2005-12-31T06:53:00.000-08:00

Britain's former ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, has published on the internet documents providing evidence that the British Government knowingly received information extracted by torture in the "war on terror".

Mr Murray, who publicly raised the issue of the usefulness of information obtained under torture before he was forced to leave his job last year, submitted his forthcoming book, Murder in Samarkand, to the Foreign Office for clearance. But when the Foreign Office demanded that he remove references to two sensitive government documents showing that Britain had been aware it was receiving information obtained by the Uzbek authorities through torture, Murray decided to publish the material on the internet.

The first document published by Mr Murray contains the text of several telegrams that he sent to London from 2002 to 2004, warning that the information being passed on by the Uzbek security services was torture-tainted, and challenging MI6 claims that the information was nonetheless "useful". The second document is the text of a Foreign Office legal opinion which argues that the use by intelligence services of information extracted through torture is not a violation of the UN Convention Against Torture.

The World has "Just Weeks" to prevent Dafur from Sliding Back into Chaos

2005-12-23T08:33:00.000-08:00

Sudan has been swept from view in the mainstream media and in the U.S. government, partly due to the peace settlement earlier this year, and partly due to the disire to exploit the oil rich region in the southern part of the country.

Fortunately, bloggers are attempting to keep the issue in view. Allthings2all has published a Christmass roundup of blog reports on Sudan and Darfur.

Congress has adjourned without taking action on Darfur:

The Darfur Peace and Accountability Act passed the Senate on Nov. 18, and the House was poised to pass the DPAA before the White House delayed it. Apparently, the Bush Administration objects to the continuation of sanctions on the government of Sudan. Congress must not allow this pressure to prevent the passage of the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act,

The Atlantic Review condemns European governments for being too eager to do business with Sudan.

The German media is very critical of any wrong doing by the US government, a few US soldiers and many US companies. Hedge funds were not just characterized as bloodsuckers, but as American bloodsuckers. German companies receive less criticism. Sometimes they even receive government support for doing business with rogue states.

The Sudanese government is complicit in the genocide in the western province of Darfur, but the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Labor sponsored a "German Pavilion" at a trade fair in the Sudanese capital in February 2005 and will do so again in February 2006 due to "the positive feedback from the German participants," according to one chamber of commerce.

Africa action lists the top 10 ways to take action to stop genocide in Darfur, while Sudan Divest is urging a divestiture campaign against Sudan similar to that taken against South Africa.

This is an issue that should not be allowed to be swept under the rug.

Amnesty International urges WTO to respect human rights

2005-12-09T10:07:00.000-08:00

As 148 governments prepare to meet in Hong King for the Sixth Ministerial Conference of the WTO, Amnesty International is urging the governments to give greater attention to human rights.

One example of particular concern comes from the WTO's Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Rights (TRIPS) which can hinder access to essential medicines for all. Concerns about this issue have lead to the WTO granting a 7 year extension to implement TRIPS.

Amnesty International urges all 148 governments to ensure that human rights concerns are central to the considerations of the upcoming meeting. Specificaly they urge the governments to;

* Ensure LDCs make full use of the seven years extension for the compliance of the TRIPS obligations. Developed countries should cooperate with at least one LDC by helping them to develop their technological base and to conduct, in conjunction with other relevant agencies, a human rights impact assessment to ensure their compliance with the TRIPS obligations will not negatively affect the human rights of their populations.

* Commit to carrying out participatory human rights impact assessment before concluding any new trade agreements, or making revisions to existing ones.

* Ensure that decisions made are informed and complemented by exchanges with governmental bodies responsible for ensuring compliance with human rights obligations. The governments may, for example, consider including at least one human rights expert in their delegations.

* Offer political support to ensure that relevant UN agencies and organizations build on existing expertise and best practice worldwide in order to identify an effective model of human rights impact assessment, which will include the development of appropriate methodology and human rights indicators and benchmarks.

Slave Labor Flourishing in Argentinian Sweatshops

2005-12-06T07:09:00.000-08:00

An estimated 150,000 people are working in sweatshops in Argentina under forced labor conditions. These are largely Bolivian immigrants who are luring into the country with promises of a good income and a place to live. But when they arrive they are locked into a small room, recieving very little pay.

A test case was brought before Argentinan courts by Jose Orellan, a Bolivian immigrant who escape a textile sweatshop in Buenos Aires with his family. The family of five ended up living in a single room. The Boss refused to give him most of his pay, saying he would hold it until the end of the year so that Orellan "wouldn't spend it all." Food was included in the contract but for employees only. In order for the children to eat, Orellan and his wife had to go hungry.

Many undocumented workers end up in hospitals with lung ailments caused by the dust they inhale in the workshops. They were rarely allowed to go out; Orellan was not even allowed to take his children to the hospital when they fell sick.

Eventually, Orellan and his family was able to escape with the aid of a community organization and the city's ombudsperson's office. He brought charged against his former boss in October but the case was dismissed by a judge who ruled that there was no merit to the case.

Migrants And Asylum Seekers Are Regularly Abused in the Ukraine

2005-12-01T04:28:00.000-08:00

Ukraine has been charged with subjecting migrants and asylum seekers to abuse, including extended detention in appalling conditions, violence, extortion, robbery and forced returns to face torture or persecution, according to a Human Rights Watch report released on the eve of an EU-Ukraine summit.

European Union policies worsten these problems, presuting Ukraine to prevent migrants from entering the European Union. Migration will be a major issue in the Eu-Ukraine conference in Kiev.

The Human Rights Watch report documents the routine detention of migrants and asylum seekers in conditions of severe overcrowding, frequently inadequate bedding and clothing, and little or no access to fresh air, exercise and medical treatment.

The detainees face physical abuse, verbal harassment, robbery and extortion, often have no access to a lawyer and are unable to apply for release. The asylum system is barely functioning, leading to the forced return of people to countries where they face persecution or torture.

Moreover, Human Rights Watch also documented the use of return agreements between Ukraine and its EU neighbors to summarily return migrants and asylum seekers to Ukraine without first determining whether they need protection as refugees or on human rights grounds.

Asylum seekers from Chechnya are particularly vulnerable, both to abuse at the hands of the Ukrainian police and forced return to Russia, despite the risk of persecution they face in that country. Although Russian citizens do not require visas to enter Ukraine, Chechens are routinely denied access at the border unless they pay bribes. Chechens detained in Ukraine trying to enter the European Union are denied access to asylum. In fact, no Chechen has been recognized as a refugee in Ukraine. A Chechen woman told Human Rights Watch, “They don't consider us human beings.”

The rise of Iraqi death squads

2005-11-30T18:20:00.000-08:00

The New York Times has confirmed that Iraqi security forces have executed hundreds of Sunni men. They have been taken from their homes by men in Iraqi uniforms and either "found dead in ditches or fields, with bullet holes to their temples, acid burns to their skin, and holes in their bodies apparently made by electrical drills. Many have simply vanished".

In January Pentagon officials told Seymour Hersh that the Pentagon was going to trigger "The Salvador Option"; a strategy involving the training of "death squads" to execute a bloody secret war against "alleged" insurgents. One official told Hersh;

Do you remember the right-wing execution squads in El Salvador? We founded them and we financed them. The objective now is to recruit locals in any area we want. We’re going to be riding with the bad boys.

Ghali Hassan writes that the U.S. continues to indiscriminately attack Sunni cities blanketing the towns, from the ground and from the air, with artillery shells, cluster bombs and napalm bombs with the full knowledge that civilians, particularly women and children, would be killed. After the shelling, the Marines entered the city to fight those who were still alive. Humanitarian aides and medical supplies were prevented from entering the town, in gross violations of international law and the Geneva Conventions.

Qaim last 29 August, a thriving town of 150,000 people in western Iraq, they cordoned it off, cut electricity, water and food supplies. Then they indiscriminately and disproportionately blanketed the town, from the ground and from the air, with artillery shells, cluster bombs and napalm bombs with the full knowledge that civilians, particularly women and children, would be killed.

The cities of Qaim and Tel Afar have been decimated and hundreds of innocent people killed. Iraqi news reports revealed, "'scores of casualties' due to indiscriminate bombing" by U.S. forces. Paralleling the atrocities committed in other towns and cities, all of which savagely attacked and destroyed the entire population of Tel Afar are now 'ethnically cleansed' refugees.

Virtually everything we see and hear about the war is mere rhetoric and spin. The White House strategy can come to no good end. Congressman Murtha has stood up and told the truth, but he is mighty lonely in that position.

Newly Released Documents Show U.S. Acquiesence in East Timor Genocide

2005-11-29T17:22:00.000-08:00

On Monday East Timorese President Xanana Gusmão sent to Parliament the final report of East Timor's Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation on human rights violations committed in East Timor between 1974 and 1999. At the same timee, the Security Archive make available some of the more than 1,000 formerly classified U.S. documents that it provided for use in the report.

Brad Simpson, assistant professor of history at University of Maryland, Baltimore County and Director of the National Security Archive's Indonesia and East Timor Documentation Project remarked that;

We expect the final report of the CAVR to demonstrate, as these documents do, that Indonesia's invasion and occupation of East Timor and the resulting crimes against humanity occurred in an international context in which the support of powerful nations, especially the United States, was indispensable. These documents also point to the need for genuine international accountability for East Timor's suffering, especially as Indonesia embarks on its own truth commission process."

President Bush has anchored his war in Iraq on human rights grounds. The administration's rhetoric can only highlight the failings of past administrations, and heighten criticisms of international power politics.

Starvation Results from IMF Policy

2005-11-19T16:42:00.000-08:00

An estimated 5 million of Malawi's 12 million people are hungry this year, according to the United Nations. Hospitals also report higher rates of malnutrition and, with the harvest still five months away, unusually large numbers of hungry children are beginning to sicken and die in rural areas.

Malawian agriculture once appeared to have a brighter future. A state-run farm agency, although widely criticized as overbearing, sold reliable supplies of seeds and fertilizer, guaranteed prices for whatever was grown, and even reached distant areas that were not well intigrated into Malawi's market. For a time, the government actively sought ways to build irrigation networks drawing on the mighty Shire River that flows through the dry, destitute valley south of Blantyre, Malawi's commercial center.

But in the past 20 years, under pressure from the World Bank, IMF and donor nations, Malawi has liberalized its agricultural economy and dismantled the state-run agricultural system. The government's clumsy implementation of this change has led to complaints from farmers that the market was unable to deliver a more efficient and bountiful harvest. The government, under IMF pressure, also sold off state food reserves at times, leaving nothing for emergencies.

Meanwhile, various water schemes have remained on the drawing board. Today less than 1 percent of this southern African nation, roughly the size of Pennsylvania, is irrigated, and that land mainly belongs to commercial farms that grow tea, sugar and tobacco for export.

The IMF and World Bank's blind reliance on markets, their insistance on eliminating government run programs, and their ignorance of local conditions, is taking a terrible toll in human lives, leaving Malawi nothing but rising debt to show for it.

China and North Korea Complicit in Sexual Slave trade

2005-11-10T16:04:00.000-08:00

The governments of China and North Korea are failing to protect North Korean women trafficked to China. Instead of helping them, the women are detained, forcibly repatriated and used as forced labour, a new report from Anti-Slavery International reveals.

Rather than being rescued by the Chinese authorities, trafficked North Korea women are put in detention facilities and held in horrific conditions before being forcibly repatriated to North Korea, where they are sent to forced labor camps.

Leaving North Korea without permission can be punishable by death. Yet the Chinese Government returns refugees from North Korea, even though it is party to the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, which prohibits the forced return of refugees.

"These policies make the tens of thousands of North Koreans living irregularly in China particularly vulnerable to trafficking and other exploitation. The Chinese Government needs to recognise them as victims of a crime and as refugees, and accord them the protection and assistance that is their right," the report's author, Norma Muico of Anti-Slavery International, said.

Brazil Steps Up Anti-Slavery Raids

2005-11-04T14:06:00.000-08:00

Marcelo Campos, chief of Brazil's anti-slavery task force, is stepping up armed raids on ranches, farms and work camps he says force people to work against their will.

About 25,000 people in Brazil work under conditions similar to the slavery the government abolished in 1888, according to the Catholic Church. They often have jobs in backland ranches, covert brick factories and rainforest camps that make charcoal used to produce pig iron. In the last 15 years, 17,000 captive workers have been freed by police, the Labor Ministry said.

``This has been a crime since abolition, but in spite of that people are still being exploited,'' said Campos, 43, who has run the Labor Ministry's Division of Investigation for the Eradication of Slave Labor for five years. ``We continue to find people forced to work like slaves.''

Slaves are used to clear the Amazon rainforest for cattle ranches and soybean fields from the northeastern state of Para to Mato Grosso near the border with Bolivia, Campos said.

They also cut wood for charcoal that mills in the eastern Amazon states of Para and Maranhao buy to produce some of the world's cheapest and purest pig iron.

Vermont Adopts New Rules to Cut Car CO2 Emissions

2005-11-04T14:03:00.000-08:00

Vermont on Wednesday approved stricter standards for vehicle emissions to reduce greenhouse gases, leading five other Northeastern states working on the same rules.

The changes by the Legislature's Administrative Rules Committee means that all 2009 and later model cars sold in Vermont will be required to meet higher fuel efficiency standards to reduce emissions such as carbon dioxide.

New York, Massachusetts, Maine, Connecticut and Rhode Island also have been moving to adopt the new carbon-reduction rules to keep pace with California.

California is the only state that can create emissions standards stricter than the federal government's, but other states can follow California's example.

When California beefed up its rules to take aim at carbon dioxide, the Northeastern states that had followed its previous rules had to either make the same changes or fall back to the federal standard.

Car makers have sued in California to overturn the new rules. The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers has argued that changes will add about $3,000 to the cost of a car.

Environmentalists counter that the increased costs are more like $1,000 per car, an amount easily offset by lower fuel costs. They also note that a number of car models on the road today meet the new standards.

"It's smart environmental policy that's good for consumers. This is a perfect example of where we should be," James Moore, clean energy advocate with the independent Vermont Public Interest Research Group.

Gov. James Douglas said the state's efforts to improve air quality -- along with its natural beauty and quality of life -- will help recruit new businesses.

Bush Administration Upgrades Sudan

2005-10-28T16:59:00.000-07:00

President Bush and the State Department elevated Sudan’s status on the Trafficking in Persons Report from Tier III (the lowest possible ranking), to Tier II. Despite continued government support and orchestration of slave raids, Sudan now shares the ranking with countries such as Switzerland, Chile, Hungary, and Greece.

But, observers on the scene are describing a situation quite different. Eric Reeves writes;

A series of extraordinarily dire warnings have recently been issued by various UN officials, a last desperate attempt to force the international community to take urgent cognizance of Darfur’s deepening crisis. Full-scale catastrophe and a massive increase in genocidal destruction are imminent, and there is as yet no evidence that the world is listening seriously. The US in particular seems intent on taking an expediently blinkered view of the crisis (see forthcoming analysis by this writer at The New Republic [on-line], www.tnr.com). But European countries and other international actors with the power to speak the truth are little better; the absence of an effective voice emerging from the Blair government is especially dismaying in light of British willingness to intervene in Iraq.

Even so, there is no possible escape from the most basic truth in Darfur: Khartoum’s National Islamic Front, ever more dominant in the new “Government of National Unity,” is deliberately escalating the level of violence and insecurity as a form of “counter-insurgency” warfare, with the clear goal of accelerating human destruction among the African tribal populations of the region.

In failing to respond to this conspicuous and now fully articulated truth, the world is yet again knowingly acquiescing in genocide. But as the shadows of Auschwitz and Treblinka, Bosnia, Cambodia, and Rwanda fall more heavily over Darfur, we cannot evade this most shameful truth: we know---as events steadily, remorselessly unfold---more about the realities of ethnically-targeted human destruction in Darfur than on any other previous such occasion in history. So much the greater is our moral disgrace.

Guatemalan landslides unearth bones

2005-10-19T13:10:00.000-07:00

The recent mudslides in Guatemala may have unearth mass graves from the genocidal civil war carried out against the indigenous populations two decades ago.

In the highland village of Las Nubes, mudslides that swept the earth away from one corner of a house revealed human bones.

Rudy Castillo, with the office of the country's Human Rights Prosecutor, is involved in the investigation. He confirms a human leg bone and shoulder bone blade were found under the house. He says there are more bones under the house.

With many people still unaccounted for, Castillo hopes an investigation will give people some answers. Castillo hopes the investigation will begin within two weeks in case future landslides destroy the evidence.

Responsibility to Protect (R2P) agreement

2005-10-18T13:04:00.000-07:00

The United Nations Summit in September 2005 agreed on the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), which commits the UN to taking action to protect people from such crimes as ethnic cleansing and genocide. This agreement would justify such actions as were taken militarily in Bosnia-Herzegovina and latterly Kosovo. It could have given more impetus to intervene in Ruanda, and may well be primarily aimed at future events in central Africa.

The Summit resolved that "Each individual State has the responsibility to protect its populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. This responsibility entails the prevention of such crimes... we are prepared to take collective action, should peaceful means be inadequate..."

This establishes the principle that governments have a duty to protect their citizens' lives and rights, and if they fail to do so, or indeed if it is a government that is actually committing those crimes, it loses its legitimacy and that the community of nations will take on that protection role even if it means infringing the sovereignty of the state.

This is an important and historic step, a change to the doctrine of sovereignty that can be traced back to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. No-one who cares about humanity can mourn the demise of the idea that regimes can do exactly as they please with those who lie in their power, but on the other hand, both the political environment and the way in which R2P will be worked out needs close inspection and development.

Ethnic Cleansing in the Kalahari

2005-10-11T11:46:00.000-07:00

Most of the Bushmen living in Botswana's Central Kalahari Game Reserve have been forced out of their homes by the government in an effort to end human habitation of the reserve.

Activist groups claim that Bushmen villages have been cut off from their main soruces of food and water and outsiders prohibited from entering to provide relief for the past six weeks. Last weekend most of the remaining residents were trucked out at gunpoint.

The government denies that anyone was forced to leave, claiming that the area had been quarantined because of a disease affecting goats kept by the Bushmen. But spokesmen for the Bushman hotly deny this claim. Outside observers have prohibited from enter to observe conditions.

Once populating most of Southern Africa, Bushmen were hunted to near extinction by both by Black and White immigrants to the region; in the end driving them back to the nearly inhabitable Kalahari Desert.

Some 2,000 Bushmen lived in the Kalahari Game Reserve before the government began forced removal campaigns in 1997. Now an estimated two dozen remain.

No end to gross human rights violations in Russia's North Caucasus.

2005-10-03T06:56:00.000-07:00

Amnesty International has released a report claiming that gross human rights violations are continuing in Chechnya and Ingushetia with the Russian authorities implicated in the torture, abduction and secret detention of civilians. Amnesty International says Russia's "war on terror" is being used as an excuse for systematic human rights abuses.

In a briefing paper, Amnesty International said it had detected a new trend in the human rights abuses in the North Caucasus. People are reportedly being arbitrarily detained and held in incommunicado detention, where they are subjected to torture and ill-treatment, in order to force them to confess to crimes that they have not committed. Once they have signed a “confession” they are reportedly transferred to another detention facility where they have access to a lawyer of their choice and relatives; but the confession seems to be enough “evidence” to secure their conviction.

Amnesty International urged the European Union to pressure Russia to end these violations. UK Prime Minister Tony Blair representing the EU Presidency at next week's EU-Russia summit in London has an opportunity to make it clear to Russian President Vladimir Putin that the torture and “disappearance” of men and women is inexcusable and must stop.

Concerns Grow Over Executions in China

2005-09-29T12:57:00.000-07:00

Use of the death penalty in China has become, in the words of one news service, "rapid and highly efficient."

China executes more people than all the other countries in the world combined, some 10,000 a year as estimated by Amnesty International. China executes people for 68 offenses, including smuggling, tax evasion, corruption, "endangering national security" and separatism.

In one recent case a 20 year old boy was convicted after a 2 hour trial and killed a few months later. Some trials last less than an hour. One accused murderer was convicted, had his appeal denied and was executed within 24 days.

Appeals are rarely successful because they are heard in the same court that issued the original sentence. Legal aid is rare; even those defendants able to afford lawyers aren't allowed to meet with them until after police interrogation. Lawyers say that defending their client too effectively can get them arrested, harrassed or disbarred.

International criticism is bringing some reform. Recently government media reported that the Supreme People's Court would regain the authority it lost in 1983 to oversee capital cases. The nation's highest court is adding three criminal trial courts to handle death penalty review cases.

State-controlled media have also started publicizing more embarrassing cases. In June, newspapers reported that a farmer in the central province of Hubei who, after 10 days of nonstop interrogation, confessed to killing his wife, had to be released when she showed up alive.

However, Beijing has made it clear that death penalty limits would only go so far. Corruption, bribery and national security violations would remain capital offenses. Very likely, many innocent people will continue to be killed.

Depleted Uranium Toll Rises

2005-09-22T11:53:00.000-07:00

Unusually large numbers of birth defects began to be reported in southern Iraq after the first Gulf War, with Basra particularly hard hit.

Now, as feared, a rising incidence of birth defects has spread north from Najaf to Baghdad.

According to Dr Nawar Ali, at the University of Baghdad, who works in the newborn babies research department:

There have been 650 cases in total since August 2003 reported in government hospitals - that is a 20 percent increase from the previous regime. Private hospitals were not included in the study, so the number could be higher.

Dr Ali blamed the rise on polluted groundwater, contaminated with radiation from depleted uranium used by coalition forces in the two Gulf Wars. Babies are being born with multiple fingers, unusually large heads, unilateral lips or no arms or legs.

The news comes amid reports that the number of deaths of Gulf War I Veterans from exposure to DU has topped 11,000.

Of the 580,400 soldiers who served in Gulf War I, more than 300,000 are on permanent medical disability. Terry Johnson, public affairs specialist at the VA, recently reported that veterans of both Persian Gulf wars now on disability total 518,739.

Depleted uranium is a crime against humanity.

Work related deaths climb

2005-09-20T13:06:00.000-07:00

The International Labor Organization reported on Monday that some 2.2 million workers die from job-related accidents and illness every year, and that the number is rising where employers and regulators skimp on safety measures in the mistaken belief that lower occupational health costs will boost companies' competitiveness. The ILO estimates that 22,000 children die at work each year.

The reported numbers almost certainly understate the problem. India reported 222 fatal work-related accidents while the Czech Republic, with a working population about one percent the size of India's, reported 231. The ILO pegged the real number of fatal accidents in India at 40,000.

China, where construction and low-cost production have powered economic growth, reported 12,554 fatal accidents in 2001. However, the ILO said the actual number of worker deaths in the world's most populous country likely was closer to 90,000.

The ILO blamed "rapid development and strong competitive pressures of globalization" for the upsurge in worker deaths, particularly in Asia. Since this globalization has largely been driven by recent free trade agreements such as NAFTA and GATT, these deaths must be seen as a call to reform international trade agreements to incorprate workers rights and environmental standards.

Asian-American Network Against Abuse of Women

2005-09-18T17:43:00.000-07:00

The Asian American Network against Abuse of Women helding the first ever rally against abuse in Pakistan in New York City On September 17.

The rally was held to call attention to the human rights abuses that continue unabated in Pakistan: at least three “honor killings” occur each day and a woman is raped once every two and a half hours.

Under the feudal system and jirga system of justice carried out under the banner of religion, Pakistani women and men are denied their basic human rights and dignity. Women are the most victimized members of Pakistani society who pay with their lives and bodies for alleged crimes violating their family or tribe's so-called honor.

In a recent case, Mukhtar Mai was raped while on duty as a physician in Sui Balochistan, Shazia. Shazia was been maligned and effectively banished from her homeland and forced to take refuge in Great Britain. The alleged perpetrator, an army officer, continues to go unpunished and is a free man.

She has spoken out against the crime and has become a symbol of hope for thousands of women in Pakistan who live daily with the fear of violence and torture on their person.

Guatemala: Amnesty Internatinal calls for suspension of evictions and genuine agrarian reform

2005-09-14T13:15:00.000-07:00

After touring Guatemala for two weeks, Amnesty International issued a condemnation of serious irregularities, human rights violations and discriminatory treatment of Guatemalan peasants and rural workers, during judicial procedures that result in the implementation of eviction orders.

Among the problems cited were:

Shortcomings in of the Labour Inspectorate operations to ensure that wages, compensation and benefits are regularly paid, in accordance with the law, on all Guatemala’s farms.

Shortcomings and delays in dealing with requests for the payment of benefits, circumstances which provoke lead to land occupations in support of these demands.

The inadequate response of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, which often brings charges of “"usurpation”" and aggravated “"usurpation”" in a mechanical, rapid and systematic way, resulting in warrants for the arrest and eviction of hundreds of families from lands they have often occupied for generations. It is worrying that these actions follow neither the letter nor the spirit of Convention 169 of the International Labour OfficeOrganisation.

Evidence to suggest that the validity of incomplete and doubtful land title claims are not studied with due diligence. In certain cases, verification of the disputed land by the competent authorities is impeded by farm owners, yet eviction orders are still issued and executed.

Complaints by peasants rural workers about the lack of attention to, and investigation of, their denunciations of death threats and other acts of intimidation by farm owners and their employees and private security agents.

The almost systematic destruction of belongings and domestic goods and the burning of homes, during evictions.

A decade after the peace agreement was signed in Guatemala, indigenous and rural workers are still not receiving justice.

Zimbabwe: Mass Evictions Lead to Massive Abuses

2005-09-13T17:26:00.000-07:00

The Zimbabwean government policy of forced evictions has violated the human rights of hundreds of thousands of its citizens, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

" The Zimbabwean government has caused untold suffering to poor and vulnerable people. To make matters worse, Mugabe’s government is now delaying the provision of much-needed humanitarian assistance to hundreds of thousands of people affected by the evictions. "

Over the past two weeks, the Zimbabwean authorities have compounded the suffering by refusing to fully cooperate with United Nations agencies and humanitarian groups working to assist the evicted population. On August 26, President Robert Mugabe’s government rejected the terms of a draft U.N. emergency appeal that would have helped hundreds of thousands of those hardest hit by the evictions.

The 40-page report, “Clear the Filth: Mass Evictions and Demolitions in Zimbabwe,” documents how the government has violated the human rights of its citizens by arbitrarily forcing them to destroy their property without due notice, process or compensation, and by displacing thousands into the rural areas where they lack basic services such as health care, education, clean water or means of economic support.

“The Zimbabwean government has caused untold suffering to poor and vulnerable people,” said Tiseke Kasambala, Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch. “To make matters worse, Mugabe’s government is now delaying the provision of much-needed humanitarian assistance to hundreds of thousands of people affected by the evictions.”

The humanitarian consequences of “Operation Murambatsvina” (“Operation Clear the Filth”) have been catastrophic. Thousands of men, women and children are now internally displaced and are living without access to humanitarian assistance, particularly in the rural areas where acute food shortages are looming and humanitarian agencies have had difficulties tracing those in need of assistance.

The United Nations estimates that as many as 700,000 people have been evicted and their houses and properties demolished since the government launched the operation on May 19.

Amnesty International: U.S. Consortium's African Oil Pipeline Threatens Human Rights

2005-09-09T16:41:00.000-07:00

Amnesty International accused U.S. oil giant ExxonMobil of putting profits over human rights with its involvement in a multibillion dollar oil pipeline that runs from Chad to a seaport in the West African nation of Cameroon.

Amnesty said in a statement there was "a prevailing climate of fear and intimidation around the pipeline, some of whose critics have already been arrested and intimidated."

"The US$4.2 (euro3.37) billion Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline risks freezing human rights protection for decades to come for the thousands of people who live in its path," Amnesty said.

Opponents say the pipeline threatens to pollute farmlands and has disrupted local communities. Some impoverished farmers in the region claim they've been denied access to water supplies and their land, which ExxonMobil refused either to compensate them for or to return to them," Amnesty said.

Human rights activists have long argued that oil, far from being a boon to citizens of developing countries, can exacerbate official corruption, weaken democracy and widen the gulf between rich and poor.

In Papua New Guinea, An Epidemic of Police Brutality Against Children

2005-09-05T16:44:00.000-07:00

Torture, gang rapes, and other abuses have become common in law enforcement in Papua New Guinea according to a Rights Action Report.

The 124-page report, “Making Their Own Rules’: Police Beatings, Rape, and Torture of Children in Papua New Guinea,” documents boys and girls being shot, knifed, kicked and beaten by gun butts, iron bars, wooden batons, fists, rubber hoses and chairs. Some are forced to chew and swallow condoms. Eyewitnesses describe gang rapes in police stations, vehicles, barracks and other locations. Children are also routinely detained with adults in sordid police lockups and denied medical care.

“Extreme physical violence is business as usual for the Papua New Guinea police,” said Zama Coursen-Neff, senior researcher for Human Rights Watch’s Children’s Rights Division. “Instead of protecting the public and children from violence, it is the police who are committing some of the most heinous acts of violence imaginable.”

Australia is the largest source of aid to Papua New Guinea, much of which goes to support the police, yet Australia does not make promotion of human rights an explicit purpose or condition of its aid. Australian officials admit that aid to the police has failed to reduce violence and other human rights violations by officers.

In addition to being abusive, Human Rights Watch said that police violence is ineffective in the face of the country's serious crime problem. Violent police tactics make people fearful of approaching police even to report crime and reluctant to cooperate with investigations. Even government studies have found police increasingly unable to fight crime.

One positive development has been the recent establishment by the Papua New Guinea government of juvenile courts and guidelines for police, magistrates and others designed to divert children from detention.

A Human Risghts Watch spokesman called the new guidelines "a step in the right direction."

China allows UN torture probe.

2005-08-29T13:04:00.000-07:00

After refusing for ten years, China has finally agreed to allow the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture to visit the country. The current rapporteur, Manfred Novak, is due to visit China from November 21 to December 2.

Apart from talks in Beijing, he is expected to travel to the Tibetan capital Lhasa to collect information about the condition of prisoners in Tibet, where many oppose the rule of China over the predominantly Buddhist Himalayan region.

Nowak also plans to visit the autonomous Xinjiang in Northwest China where the Uighur -- an Islamic Turk ethnic minority -- have reported persecution by the central Chinese government.

How much of the truth he will be able to uncover in so short a time is unclear.

The Falun Gong, a spiritual movement with millions of followers, claims its members are systematically tortured and many of them killed in re-education camps. The group is outlawed and persecuted across the country in an effort to stem the rise of the Buddhist and Taoist inspired movement.

Human rights activists also report frequent abuses of prisoners, including the use of torture to force confessions, and excessive use of the death pentalty.

The Chinese change of position on Nowak's visit may have been spurred by President Hu Jinatao's visit to the U.S. in September, with a view toward improving the climate of that meeting.

Rolling Stone discovers slavery

2005-08-28T18:05:00.000-07:00

Rolling Stone has discovered that slavery still exists.

Although Brazil outlawed slavery in 1888, landowners like Manica continue to hold thousands of men captive in the vast scrublands of Brasil Profundo -- Deep Brazil -- a desolate, sun-scorched region that sprawls across a million square miles in the country's vast interior. It's a brutal, lawless land, where drugs and small arms flow north through the "cocaine corridor" and mahogany and other rare woods stripped from the rain forest make their way to American furniture showrooms. Here, on huge cattle ranches and farms known as fazendas, enslaved men are forced to work without pay from sunrise to sunset under inhumane conditions. Those who refuse to follow orders are beaten and tortured; those who demand payment or attempt to flee are killed, their bodies mutilated and dumped in unmarked graves. Human-rights advocates in Brazil have documented the murders of more than 1,200 forced laborers, and many more killings are passed off as farming mishaps. One recent "accident" victim, a twenty-year-old named Carlos Dias, was killed by a bullet fired into his eye. "It's like your Wild West," Moreira says. "In the hinterland, the landowner is king." ...

The government puts the number of slaves at 25,000, but others say there are as many as 100,000. "No one really knows how many slaves there are in Brazil," says Patricia Audi, head of the anti-slavery program for the International Labor Organization in Brasilia. Around the world, an estimated 27 million people are held in bondage -- more slaves than at any other time in human history. In Pakistan, hundreds of thousands of slaves toil in brickmaking kilns. In India, desperate parents sell their children to weave carpets. The Burmese government forces villagers to build roads and bridges, and the "Lord's Resistance Army" in Uganda kidnaps children to serve as soldiers and sex slaves. Gangs in Eastern Europe enslave women into prostitution, and more than 10,000 people in the United States are forced to work in brothels, farms and sweatshops.

Compared to some countries, Brazil has relatively few slaves -- but its effort to end forced labor is widely regarded as a model. Since 2003, the government's antislavery squads have freed nearly 7,000 workers. "They're among the leaders of the world," says Kevin Bales, president of Free the Slaves and author of Disposable People, the most comprehensive book on modern slavery. "While other countries pretend slavery doesn't exist, Brazil uses mobile squads with just one purpose: to find and eliminate slavery. That's what other countries should be doing."

If Brazil is the front line in the global war on slavery, the general is President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva -- known throughout the country by his nickname, Lula. A month after his inauguration in 2003, da Silva unveiled the seventy-five-point "National Plan for the Eradication of Slavery," which increased funding for the mobile squads and stiffened penalties for slaveholders. Critics said the plan was too ambitious, but the issue is clearly a personal one for Lula: He is the first chief executive in his nation's 500-year history to rise from the favelas, the slums that fester on the outskirts of major cities. When Lula waved to the crowds of working-class supporters who jammed the streets of Sao Paulo the day after his election, they saw the evidence that he was one of them: a gap on his left hand where the little finger should have been, amputated by a machine press when he was a young factory worker.

This is a powerful, important article about a subject the almost never makes it into the major media outlets. Rolling Stone is to be congratulated for the effort.

Bangladesh: Impunity encouraging killings of human rights defenders

2005-08-25T12:38:00.000-07:00

Amnesty International charges that successive governments in Bangladesh have failed to stop the assassination of people promoting human rights in the country which has encouraged such killings to increase in a climate of total impunity.

Titled a href="http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGASA130042005">Bangladesh: Human rights defenders under attack, the report highlights arbitrary arrest, torture and filing of unfounded criminal charges by government agents against those who dare to speak out on human rights abuses in the country. Such people are routinely subjected to death threats, physical attacks and sometimes assassination. Perpetrators are individuals or groups usually linked to armed criminal gangs, political parties or mercenary gangs thought to be linked to local politicians.

The government's inaction has led to a climate of impunity in which physical harassment, torture and assassination go unnoticed and unquestioned.

claimed Madhu Malhotra, Deputy Programme Director for Amnesty International.

At least eight people who spoke out against human rights abuses in Bangladesh have been assassinated since 2000 by assailants believed to be linked to armed criminal gangs or armed factions of political parties. Scores of others have been seriously injured, some permanently, and require continued medical attention. Several journalists have had their fingers or hands deliberately damaged to prevent them from holding a pen.

Amnesty International is calling on the Bangladesh authorities to implement safeguards against arbitrary arrest and torture of human rights defenders and ensure rigorous investigation of reports of death threats and attacks against people who expose human rights abuses in the country.

Moroccan POWs Freed

2005-08-22T11:03:00.000-07:00

After an international campaign to free 404 Moroccan POWS who were the longest held POWs in the world, still imprisoned long after the fighting had ended. A wave of publicity organized by FreeThemNow.org secured the prisoners release on August 18.

Uzbek refugees recount harrowing tales three months after Andijan violence

2005-08-17T13:03:00.000-07:00

Interviews with Uzbek refugees who fled to Romania after the violence three months ago are tellign tales of violence, trauma and loss in eastern Uzbek.

Some of the refugee stories:

I heard in the prison that the President would be coming, so I went to the square. When I heard a helicopter, I got excited: a chance to voice our grievances. We heard speakers, and then suddenly shooting started around me in the streets. I saw one neighbour in front of me. His face was all bloody. Speakers urged us to leave but I was cornered.

My young son was killed in Babur Square. The bullet went through his ear, they said. I did not see it happen. I was also on the square with my other son and saw a young boy being shot in front of me. Now when I think about my dead son, I think about the young one I saw.

Others who fled were not so lucky. Some who fled to Kyrgyzstan were returned to Uzbeckistzan where they have been held incommunicado. Others are still being held by the Kyrgyz authorities.

Human trafficking: Authorities to travel to Guatemala

2005-08-15T13:00:00.001-07:00

Representatives from the U.S. Attorney and sheriff's office may travel to the central American country to meet with officals there considering new legislation.

Ana María Monteagudo, consul general at the Guatemalan consulate in Miami, said plans are moving ahead for the trip, which could happen in mid-to-late September. Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney Doug Molloy and Sheriff's Office representatives both have been invited to talk with the minister of foreign affairs.

Anna Rodriguez, a Collier County-based victim advocate and expert in the area of human trafficking who has worked extensively with the Sheriff's Office on the issue, said she also expects to take the trip. Of the suspected trafficking cases the Lee County Sheriff's Office has uncovered in recent months, most have originated in Guatemala, said Rodriguez, who also is the founder of the Immigrant Rights Advocacy Center.

Most prominently, three Guatemalan nationals were arrested in May, accused of forcing a now 14-year-old girl from that country into household labor and sexual slavery after purchasing her from her family.

U.S., Others Take Heat for Opposing U.N. Genocide Agreement.

2005-08-15T13:00:00.000-07:00

International charity Oxfam is condemning governments that it claims are blocking efforts to prevent genocide and protect civilians from atrocities such as those seen during the 1994 bloodbath in Rwanda.

The organization is accusing prominent United Nations member states the United States, Brazil, India, and Russia of blocking, or at least giving the cold shoulder to, an emerging international agreement establishing an international duty to head off genocide and protect civilians from ethnic cleansing as seen in the Balkans.

Other governments opposed to the proposed measures, to be discussed at a U.N. summit in New York next month, include Syria, Iran, Cuba, Pakistan, Egypt, and Algeria, according to Oxfam.

Nicola Reindorp, head of Oxfam's New York office stated that

'It is hard to overstate how important this is. In one month's time, the biggest meeting of world leaders in history could endorse a new standard which could help stop a future Rwanda from happening.

We've taken the step of exposing the governments blocking the agreement so people around the world can call on them to change their minds.

Human Rights Abuses on the Burma Road

2005-07-28T18:21:00.000-07:00

In 2001 the Asian Development Bank laid out plans for a road linking Mawlamyine (Moulmein), the capital of Mon State in Burma, to Myawaddy, opposite Mae Sot on the Thai border. The Bank claimed,

By 2004, you will be able to travel an all-weather road from Mawlamyine in Myanmar, through Lao PDR and Thailand, to Da Nang in Viet Nam, made possible because of the GMS East-West Economic Corridor.

The Bank claimed the road would increase mobility and reduce rural poverty by creating a range of economic opportunities, especially for women, along the new highway. The ADB has also proposed a toll system to recover construction costs and to cover road maintenance. Other infrastructure, such as a deep-sea port, industrial estates, and special economic zones are planned in connection with the highway for the near future as well.

The main problem for the road is the Burmese military’s ongoing counter-insurgency campaigns against civilian populations in Mon and Karen States. According to recent figures compiled by the Burma Border Consortium, there are over 31,000 and 135,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in these two states respectively due to ongoing state-sponsored violence in the region. The proposed highway bisects this region, which means that it will facilitate not only trade but also the rapid movement of troops and supplies to army bases along the heavily militarized border.

The NGO Earth Rights Institute has gathered hundreds of testimonies from victims of human rights abuses, especially forced labor and portering, in contested areas of eastern Burma. Given the continuing levels of violence, including the pervasive use of forced labor, ERI remains deeply skeptical that the ADB’s projects will encourage sustainable and equitable forms of development in the region without the use of forced labor. This is especially worrying since the recent International Labor Organization annual meeting indicated that the Burmese government is fundamentally unable to control the use of forced labor by its military much less eradicate the practice. After several years of discussion, the SPDC has again repeatedly failed to take meaningful steps towards decreasing the use of forced labor in Burma.

Similar to the World Bank, the ADB is a multilateral development finance institution established in 1966 and dedicated to reducing poverty in Asia and the Pacific. Like the World Bank, it's projects have often gone awry dealing with corrupt and brutal governments. This never seems to slow down bank lending, however. The Burma Road is just the lastest in a series of mega projects gone wrong.

Growing Evidence of a Massacre by UN Occupation Forces in Haiti

2005-07-25T13:11:00.000-07:00

A delegation of US trade unionists and human rights workers to Haiti at the beginning of July received an eyewitness report from local Haitian human rights workers that UN military forces had carried out a massacre in one of Port-au-Prince's poorest neighborhoods.

Since the coup on February 29th, 2004 that toppled the Aristide government, the people of Cite Soleil and other popular neighborhoods in the capital have been the target of systematic repression -- including extrajudicial executions -- by the Haitian National Police. Armed networks established by young adults in Cite Soleil -- labeled "gangs" by the authorities -- have attempted to provide security for a community facing almost daily incursions and shootings at the hands of the National Police. The community networks also provide vital social services such as education and food for the population.

The UN Mission in Haiti – MINUSTAH -- has insisted that these networks turn in their arms, but has not shown the capability or willingness to rein in the police units that have been terrorizing the population of Cite Soleil. The grass-roots networks have refused to disarm under the prevailing conditions, and have clashed with both police and UN military forces on multiple occasions.

The delegation interviewed a Haitian who was present in Cite Soleil during the operation and who got some film footage of the operation as it unfolded. The footage backs up eyewitness accounts of the events.

UN forces launched the offensive, shooting into houses, shacks, a church, and a school with machine guns, APC cannons, and tear gas. The eyewitness reported that when people fled to escape the tear gas, UN troops gunned them down from the back. UN forces shot out electric transformers in the neighborhood. People were killed in their homes and also just outside of their homes, on the way to work. One man named Leon Cherry, age 46, was shot and killed on his way to work for a flower company. Another man, Mones Belizaire, was shot as he got ready to go to work in a local sweatshop and subsequently died from a stomach infection. A woman who was a street vendor was shot in the head and killed instantly. One man was shot in his ribs while he was trying to brush his teeth. Another man was shot in the jaw as he left his house to try and get some money for his wife's medical costs; he endured a slow death. Yet another man named Mira was shot and killed while urinating in his home. A mother, Sonia Romelus, and her two young children were killed in their home, reportedly by UN fire after UN forces lobbed a 83-CC gas grenade into their home.

The eyewitness accounts combined with the videotape demonstrate that UN military forces in Haiti today are not engaged in the work of "peacekeeping" as much as they are in the business of repression.

Supporters of Aristide's party are being targeted for intimidation and terror before the next election is held--an effort to ensure victory for the present governemnt.

Bike Ride Across Russia to Free Slaves

2005-07-21T13:10:00.000-07:00

Amateur cyclist Andrej Mucic plans to bike 7,000 miles across harsh Russian terrain to raise $10,000 for the American Anti-Slavery Group.

He is biking to raise money for campaigns supporting Cambodian survivors of sex slavery, promoting the US/Sri Lanka anti-slavery awareness campaign, led by former Sri Lankan slave Beatrice Fernando, and promoting US divestment from Sudan.

Make a contribution here.

To read his trip diary go here.

Guatemala apologizes for slayings

2005-07-19T16:02:00.000-07:00

Under orders from an international court, Guatemala apologized Monday for the government-directed massacre of 226 people in a highland village during the nation's bloody civil war.

Vice President Eduardo Stein traveled via helicopter to Plan de Sánchez, 95
miles north of the capital, Guatemala City, to formally accept government responsibility for the killings by soldiers on July 18, 1982.

The government was ordered to apologize by the Inter-American Human Rights Court, which also decreed that the state pay survivors and relatives $7.9 million in damages in a ruling last fall.

Stein said the army had ``unleashed bloodshed and fire to wipe out an entire community.''

Between 1978 and 1983, the government of Guatemala carried out a scorched earth policy against Mayan villages in the highlands where the guerrillas operated. The Plan de Sánchez killings took place during the 18-month dictatorship of Efrain Ríos Montt whose short lived administration conducted the worst of the genocide. Over 600 Mayan villages were burned to the ground, crops destroyed, and animals either killed or carried off in the spoils of war. Villagers who survived fled into the mountains where they were pursued by the Army and bombed by the Air Force.

Soldiers aided by members of civilian patrols stormed into Plan de Sánchez in 1982. They used machetes and machine guns to kill inhabitants, and forced groups of men and women into homes which they set ablaze or pelted with grenades. Additionally, a helicopter bombed the area, considered a stronghold of rebel activity. The war killed 200,000 people before a U.N.-brokered peace treaty was signed by both sides in December 1996.

Stein said he insisted the ceremony take place in Plan de Sánchez and called the court ruling historic.

``The people want moments that commemorate their victims,'' he said. ``But, more than anything, they don't want what happened to keep being denied officially.''

But the apology hardly ends the story. Only one massacre has been successfully prosecuted and in that case only three low level civil patrolers were convicted. A warrent is out for the arrest of the officer in charge, but he can't be found--even though he continues to collect his pension.

Earlier this week, a collection of secret police files were discovered detailing more cases of dissapearance. Forensic teams plan to start digging up secret graves in Guatemala City itself in the near future. At the same time, human rights activists continue to be persecuted, recieving threats against their lives.

Nearly ten years after the peace agreement, Guatemala continues to suffer from the after affects of the years of genocide.

Srebrenica: 10 years later, no arrests for the genocide

2005-07-04T17:56:00.000-07:00

Ten years agoaround 8,000 Bosnians ere massacred after the UN “safe area” of Srebrenica fell to the Bosnian Serb Army. Crimes committed in Srebrenica have been recognized as amounting to genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (Tribunal).

Although some perpetrators have been prosecuted at the Tribunal, indicted suspects former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžiæ, former Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladiæ and former Bosnian Serb Assistant Commander Zdravko Tolimir are still free. They are believed to be either in Serbia or in Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Ten years after their husbands and sons were massacred, the women of Srebrenica are still waiting for the men who killed their husbands and sons to be brought to justice. They are still waiting for the Bosnian Serb authorities in the Republika Srpska to tell them exactly what happened to their family members. The majority are still waiting for the bodies of their relatives to be returned to them for burial.

They are still waiting to move on with their lives.

Israel's Failure to Probe Civilian Casualties Fuels Impunity

2005-06-25T18:00:00.000-07:00

Human Rights Watch has issued a report charging that the Israeli military has fostered a climate of impunity in its ranks by failing to thoroughly investigate whether soldiers have killed and injured Palestinian civilians unlawfully or failed to protect them from harm.

The report examines in detail more than a dozen cases of civilian deaths and serious injury caused to Palestinians and foreigners by Israel Defense Forces in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, most of which clearly occurred in law enforcement rather than armed conflict situations.

“Most of Israel’s investigations of civilian casualties have been a sham,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The government’s failure to investigate the deaths of innocent civilians has created an atmosphere that encourages soldiers to think they can literally get away with murder.”

As of May 22, the Israeli military had initiated 108 investigations resulting in 19 indictments and six convictions, according to Israeli human rights organizations. Two soldiers were convicted for manslaughter, two for causing grave harm, and 2 for illegal use of a weapon. The longest prison sentence in these cases, handed down on May 18 for causing grave harm, was for 20 months. However, most of the convictions have drawn penalties less severe than those handed down for petty theft or to conscientious objectors.

Human Rights Watch said that the heart of the problem was a military justice system that relies on the debriefing of soldiers—often misleadingly called “operational investigations”—to determine whether a Military Police investigation is warranted. These “investigations” do not seek or consider testimony from victims or non-military witnesses, and do not attempt to reconcile discrepancies between soldiers’ accounts and video, medical or eyewitness evidence.

Low level, continual violence against Palestinians goes unnoticed by the world press, only the spectacular suicide attacks by Palestinians.

More balance is required if a solution is ever to be reached in Palestine.

The World's Longest-Held POWs

2005-06-24T18:30:00.000-07:00

Injustices that fit neatly into U.S. political ideologies will receive much press attention. Many others fall through the cracks, such as the world's longest-held POWs.

408 Moroccans are still being held by the Polisario Front as a result of a territorial dispute in the Sahara. The remaining POWs have been held in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions since the declaration of a cease- fire in 1991, and are today the longest-held prisoners of war anywhere in the world.

In May, John McCain, along with six other former Morrocan POWS called for the immediate release of the remaining POWs.

"I know all too well that appeals to decency and justice can make a difference in the lives of prisoners," said McCain. "I have sent a letter to the leadership of the Polisario Front, calling for the immediate release of all prisoners of war, and I hope that my colleagues in the Senate and others will join this call as well."

The six former prisoners spoke about seeing their fellow prisoners murdered, tortured, forced to perform slave labor and forced to give their own blood to their enemies. The group explained that they had come to America to plea for the active support of the United States in helping to free the 408 Moroccan soldiers who are still facing torture, isolated confinement and regular humiliation.

But the story did not have the political sex appeal of an Abu Graib or Guantanamo Bay and quickly sank below the waves.

Do what you can for these people--take a moment to sign the petition for their immediate release.

Arrest Warrents Sought in Uganda

2005-06-17T18:55:00.000-07:00

The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court,Luis Moreno Ocampo, s seeking his first arrest warrants, for the head of Uganda's rebel Lord's Resistance Army and one of his deputies.

The LRA has been fighting President Yoweri Museveni's secular government since 1988, ostensibly to replace it with one based on the biblical Ten Commandments.

The rebellion has killed tens of thousands of people, mainly civilians, and displaced more than 1.6 million others.

The LRA is notorious for its brutality towards the civilian population in the region, many of whom have been killed, maimed or abducted. Kidnapped children are pressed into service as soldiers or sex slaves.

Third Attempt on Life of Key Torture Witness

2005-06-14T18:17:00.000-07:00

Several shots were fired at Luis Alberto Ramírez Hinostroza, a key witness in an upcoming torture trial against military officers, from a moving car on Wednesday evening, June 1, as he was crossing the Mariscal Castillo park in Lima accompanied by a police bodyguard. The park is close to the office of a Peruvian human rights group, the Legal Defense Institute (Instituto de Defensa Legal, IDL), where Ramírez had just held a meeting with his lawyer. The police guard covered Ramírez with his body to protect him and both luckily escaped injury.

This was the third attempt on Ramírez' life and human rights workers claim that it highlights the government's failure to take adequate action to protect those preparing to testify against the military officers.

“The Peruvian government must fully investigate the attack on Luis Alberto Ramírez and bring to justice whoever is responsible,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “This attack might have been prevented had earlier ones been properly investigated.”

Ramírez is due to testify in the trial of retired General Luis Pérez Documet, who was military chief of Junín province in the early 1990s, during Peru’s armed conflict. At least nine university students were forcibly disappeared during this period after being held at the “December 9” military base in Huancayo, under the command of Pérez Documet. In March 2004 the Fourth Criminal Court of Huancayo charged the former general with kidnapping.

Ramírez testified before Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission about the brutal torture he suffered at the base. He also witnessed the torture of others who subsequently “disappeared.” He is expected to provide crucial evidence of their detention in the trial, which is expected to begin in six weeks’ time in Huancayo.

Uzbekistan - Under the Radar

2005-06-11T17:01:00.000-07:00

How did Uzbekistan get away with shooting hundreds of civilians? Uzbekistan’s status as a U.S. ally in the “war on terror” appeared to be in jeopardy when reports that Uzbek sodliers massacred hundreds of unarmed protesters emerged just over three weeks ago. But since then, major news outlets from the Guardian to the Washington Post have repeated government claims that an Islamist uprising provoked the government’s use of extreme violence. Not everyone is buying that theory.

According to Acacia Shields of Human Rights Watch, Uzbek security forces regularly use torture to elicit false confessions tying dissidents to a supposed Islamic revolutionary movement to take over Uzbekistan. She thinks it “unlikely” that the protestors killed in Andijan were mobilizing for a religious cause at all. Shields told GNN that “economics was one of the main motivators” for the tragic march.

Ignoring evidence compiled by Human Rights Watch, officials in Washington, Moscow and Beijing have been eager to dish out shaky theories about Taliban, Chechen or Uighur involvement in the so-called ‘uprising’ at Andijan, to support the empty justifications that dictator Islam Karimov offers for the slaughter of Uzbek civilians.

Between 2,000 and 10,000 people rallied in the city of Andijan on May 13 to protest a scandalous trial of 23 prominent businessmen, who stood spuriously accused of opposition to Uzbekistan’s totalitarian government. Elite police and troops, including units trained in the U.S., responded to the crisis – opening fire on the crowd. Officially, 173 civilians were gunned down that day. Independent sources (confirmed by at least one army source) claim 500 or more died in the indiscriminate shooting. “Once the crowd had dispersed, eyewitnesses say the security forces went around finishing off the injured as they lay on the ground.” The city was then sealed off by tanks, and security forces are “making night raids on the houses of anyone who might have been among the crowd, or other witnesses,” the BBC reports.

Uzbekistan’s is playing both sides in a modern version of the Great Game. Just after the Andijan killings, the Uzbek leader Karimov visited China, where he was welcomed with unconditional support for his crackdown on dissidents. Security ties were reaffirmed with talk about the cultural affinities between China’s separatist Uighur rebels in the Xinjiang province bordering Uzbekistan and the Muslim Uzbeks that are supposed to be trying to forge a Central Asian Islamic Republic. A large package of trade agreements was signed during the visit, including a $600 million oil deal.

At the June 30 summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (S.C.O.) in Tashkent, Moscow firmed up a strategic partnership agreement with the Karimov regime that includes joint military exercises, and Beijing granted Tashkent a $1.5 billion aid package—the largest that it has ever disbursed to a country. The S.C.O., which also includes Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, is an effort by Moscow and Beijing to counter Washington’s influence in Central Asia, and to build an alliance that creates a “transcontinental bridge” between the European Union and Southeast Asia, excluding U.S. influence.

Guatemalan rights abuses rise sharply

2005-06-10T06:20:00.000-07:00

A report from Amnesty International charges that the number of women murdered and sexually abused in Guatemala has risen sharply.

Between 2001 and September 2004, nearly 1,200 women and girls were brutally killed in Guatemala, with 527 recorded killings in 2004 alone.

Guatemalan authorities blame youth gangs called maras, that have been spreading throughout Central America and Mexico, but the Amnesty report suggests other reasons: acute levels of sexual violence in the home, the activities of clandestine groups linked to organised crime and the legacy of Guatemala's long civil conflict.

Above all, Amnesty International blames a general climate of impunity. Lack of investigations and convictions for such killings sends the message that violence against women in Guatemala is acceptable.

GUATEMALA APPROVES UN HUMAN RIGHTS OFFICE

2005-06-03T17:54:00.000-07:00

With boosting country-level human rights work a major part of the United Nations strategic vision, Secretary-General Kofi Annan and UN human rights chief Louise Arbour today welcomed the Guatemala's endorsement of an agreement to open a new UN rights field office in the Central American country.

Guatemala's Congress yesterday unanimously approved the accord, signed in January by the Government and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to establish the office to monitor and report on the national human rights situation.

Ms. Arbour said, "We are encouraged to see the endorsement the accord received in Congress and look forward to making a positive contribution to the full mplementation of human rights in Guatemala."

Mr. Annan joined the High Commissioner in welcoming the Guatemalan
legislature's action.

"The office, which is expected to start operation in July, will advise
the Guatemalan Government, state institutions and civil society on all
matters related to the promotion and protection of human rights," Mr. Annan
said in a statement.

UNHCR's presence would continue the work begun by the United Nations
Verification Mission in Guatemala which completed its mandate at the end of 2004, he said.

For about a decade, the UN Verification Mission in Guatemala (MINUGUA) verified and expanded human rights observance, and helped the country implement far-reaching 1996 peace accords. The peace pacts ended 36 years of conflict that killed an estimated 200,000 people, most of whom died in massacres of the majority Mayan indigenous villagers.

The new field office would advise the executive branch on defining, streamlining and implementing human rights policies, particularly the Presidential Commission Coordinating the Executive's Policy on Human Rights Matters (COPREDEH), UNHCR said.

It would also advise representatives of civil society and individuals on promoting and protecting human rights, including the use of national and international mechanisms, and would assist current and future national institutions, particularly the Guatemalan Human Rights Procurator, Attorney General and State Procurator.

English Priest Stops Amazon Logging Giants in Their Tracks

2005-05-31T18:36:00.000-07:00

Economic plunder has always been at the heart of the exploitation of South America, but a minority of Catholic priests have always fought against this exploitation.

Now Father Paul McAuley has helped some 70 of his parishioners in the little settlement of Mazan, on one of the Amazon's main tributaries, to seek an injunction to protect large swathes of rainforest, containing valuable tropical timber. Last week a court in Iquitos, the capital of Peruvian Amazonia, ordered a halt to the government's sale of 40-year leases of forest land for only 22p an acre.

The judgment could affect logging operations all over the region,
but the English priest, who has received celebrity endorsement for his
campaign from television cook Delia Smith, says he is concerned that
the authorities have as yet taken no steps to enforce the decision. "The
government first sold off the oil to foreign companies, then the
forests, and now they say they'll be selling off the rivers," he told The
Independent on Sunday. "The authorities are supposed to make economic,
social and environmental surveys before timber concessions are granted,
but none has been carried out."

Since April last year the government in Lima and the local authorities of the department of Loreto in Iquitos have decreed the sale of concessions over 12 million acres. Timber merchants bought 7.3 million acres. In the next round, 23 million acres were due to be put under the hammer.

Tropical timber was piled high on the quayside at Iquitos last week, ready to be shipped down the Amazon for export. "This is a very sad sight," said Fr McAuley, adding that in the first three months of this year, loggers felled more than five times as many trees as in the first three months of 2004.

Although Peru signed up to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), which includes flora and fauna, in 1975, a year before Britain did, timber is sold with no reference to the treaty, which was put in place to reduce deforestation. To evade regulations, some Peruvian woods are sent to the US through Mexico. "There's timber laundering as well as money laundering," said the priest, who served at a slum parish in Lima before moving to Iquitos.

Fr McAuley said the privatization of the rainforest was part of a scheme demanded by the World Bank and other financial institutions of the Peruvian President, Alejandro Toledo, a former World Bank employee, as a condition for loans. Though he succeeded the enormously corrupt Western-backed autocrat, Alberto Fujimori, in 2001 on a wave of popular enthusiasm, Mr Toledo has himself been tainted by reports of widespread
government corruption.

Campaigners say the logging companies' activities ruin the livelihoods of local peoples by destroying vegetation, frightening off the wild creatures they hunt and poisoning the rivers where they catch fish. Recently Peru fined Pluspetrol, an Argentine oil company, more than $1m for its pollution of the Corrientes, an Amazon tributary, and ordered it to shut 14 of its wells. The river is estimated to have received vast quantities of pollutants every day for the past 34 years from Pluspetrol and its predecessors.

Violence worstens in Uzbekistan

2005-05-21T18:44:00.000-07:00

The killing of hundreds of protesters in Uzbekistan by government troops has focused the world's attention on the strategic Central Asian nation.

The violence began on Friday after a pro-democracy protest and a jailbreak involving men accused of "Islamic extremism" in the eastern city of Andijan.

Since then, President Islam Karimov's government and its human rights record have come under the spotlight, and the possibility that he will be the second Central Asian leader to be toppled this year has been raised.

The US, which has a military base in the country, and Russia argue that Karimov is a stabilising force, a bastion against the spread of Islamic extremism, and a valuable ally in the war on terror.

But Craig Murray, who was sacked in October 2004 as UK ambassador to Uzbekistan after he spoke out against rights abuses, says the Uzbek government is beyond the pale and the West should wash its hands of it.

I Was Tortured

2005-05-11T18:59:00.000-07:00

Sister Ortiz relates her experience in Guatemalan torture rooms where she was repeatedly raped and tortured by troops commanded by General Hector Gramajo, a CIA asset and graduate of the U.S. Army School of the Americas. U.S. personnel were present while she was being tortured. “Many of our fellow Americans wear a blindfold hiding from the truth of what our government is doing. But each of you has eyes to see, ears to hear, and a voice to oppose this crime against humanity,” claims Sister Ortiz.

Watch the video.

BRAZIL:Two-Week March by Landless Protesters

2005-05-03T18:18:00.000-07:00

The massive march that set out on May Day has been organised by the Landless Workers Movement (MST) to protest the government's economic policies, which are an obstacle to agrarian reform, the activists say.

Goiania, the capital of the state of Gois and located 210 km from Brasilia, will be the starting point for the 12,722 marchers. All of them will be wearing badges to identify them as participants in the protest, to "prevent infiltration," noted Joao Pedro Stdile, an MST national coordinator.

The goal of the march is "to promote debate and create awareness of the need for agrarian reform," Stdile told a press conference on Thursday.

The MST leader added that land reform is currently moving forward at a "snail's pace," despite the "people's government" of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a former trade union leader.

Lula, leader of the leftist Workers Party (PT) and a long-time ally of the campesino (peasant worker) movement, promised to provide land to 430,000 families during the four years of his administration, which began on Jan. 1, 2003.

The Brazilian government announced that it had settled 81,000 families on land of their own last year, but in fact the total was just 35,000, since the others were cases where families were given plots of land to replace other, substandard ones previously offered, which they had refused to accept.

Stdile said this "enigma" of a government that is sympathetic to the plight of landless campesinos, yet does not manage to provide them with land to work, is the result of three obstacles: a state structure organised to respond solely to the wealthy; the influence of agribusiness, "a modern-day version of colonial plantations"; and economic policies that concentrate wealth.

Unless there is a change to the current economic policy of high interest rates, fiscal adjustment and priority put on the export sector, "there will be no agrarian reform," which is why the target of the protest march is the economic policy adopted by previous administrations and maintained by Lula, said Stdile, who has a degree in Economics.

Radical Islam, Sharia, and Human Rights

2005-04-30T18:29:00.000-07:00

The Center for Religious Freedom at Freedom House has published a study of the spread of radical Islam; Radical Islam's Rules: The Worldwide Spread of Extreme Shari'a Law. The book describes the impact on human rights and democracy when states adopt a starkly repressive version of Islamic law or extreme Shari'a. Propagated largely by the regimes of Saudi Arabia and Iran, extreme Shari'a rule has spread over the last quarter century to a number of regionally influential countries in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.

Radical Islam's Rules documents effects of extreme Shari'a on human rights that are far more serious than the punishments of amputation and stoning that receive most international critical analysis. In practice, the status of women, the criminal code, religious freedom, the judicial system, educational systems, and the economy are all expected to conform to a purported seventh century model. However, the greatest danger of these laws is to democratic principles and systems themselves. Since their advocates assert they are divine, the laws cannot be debated or subordinated by man-made constitutions, legislative limits, or popular referenda.

In the countries surveyed, state imposition of extreme Shari'a is characterized by a lack of due process, stemming from vague and haphazard laws, untrained judges, and extrajudicial enforcement; cruel and unusual punishments, such as amputation, the removal of eyes, stoning, and crucifixion; the denial of equal rights under law to women, who are reduced to second-class status in marriage, divorce, and inheritance, and are denied full civil and political rights, equal education and employment opportunities, and equal treatment under the law. Rape and other forms of sexual exploitation often go unpunished due to rules of evidence that give women's legal testimony less weight than men's; the denial of equal rights under law to non-Muslims, making them second class citizens and worse, nonpersons without legal protection, sometimes even from extra judicial killing. Non-Muslims are denied full civil and political rights, particularly regarding religious freedom, and are discriminated against in state education and employment and under rules of evidence; the state enforcement of blasphemy or apostasy laws that can carry the death penalty against Muslims who are not part of the dominant group, who dissent from the state-imposed version of Islam, or who criticize the government's policies; weak or non-existent democratically elected legislatures, whose power is negated by un-elected religious authorities officially responsible for voiding laws that they deem to be inconsistent with Shari'a; and denial of religious freedom to individuals, particularly those who are Muslim, through blasphemy and apostasy laws that punish dissent and debate.

Sindhi rights

2005-04-27T19:20:00.000-07:00

A little known ethnic group that is suffering from discrimination, and government sponsored violence is theSindhi of south eastern Pakistan.

Decades old villages of Sindhi people have been declared illegal by Karachi administrative authorities and a processing of leveling such villages has already started.

These decades old villages are being treated as illegal settlements and Sindhis are seen as illegal settlers in Karachi’s villages.

Villagers have resisted government authorities moves and fearing peoples outburst the process of leveling the villages has been delayed for time being, but the fear to attack these villages remains there.

Currently there are 17 villages in rural areas of Karachi, which are
identified by city district government authorities as illegal and to be
erased.

The villages look like slum areas, poverty and joblessness is highest in these villages, basic amenities of life have been a dream for residents of these villages.

Sindhi parties led by Awami Tahreek has launched a movement to save these villages. AT chief Rasool Bux Palejo and AT Karachi chapter President Noor Nabi Rahojo, along with other activists have visited these affected villages and expressed their solidarity and support to struggling villages. Even some NGOs have come to defend these settlements.

But the Sindhi plight, like that of many other ethnic minorities around the world, remains well below the media's radar screen. Saving their rights will be a difficult fight.

BBC NEWS | Africa | Kenya looks underground for power

2005-04-26T18:00:00.000-07:00

Kenya looks underground for power

In frica's Rift Valley, a giant fissure in the Earth's crust running 9,500km from Lebanon to Mozambique. The plumes of escaping steam, and bubbling lakes, hint of volcanic turmoil beneath the surface. Experts from the United Nations say if this geothermal energy were harnessed, it could provide power to some of the world's poorest nations. Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Uganda, and even Zambia have the potential to tap in. But so far, Kenya is the only nation which has made headway.

Kenya's Ol Karia station is the continent's biggest geothermal power-generating plant. It takes its name from a nearby volcano, which erupted 150 years ago and is still active. Here there are 22 wells across the site, piercing the Earth's crust, and tapping into rock as hot as 345C deep below the surface. Water pumped into the well produces steam, which powers the turbines.

But even Kenya has been slow to exploit this resource. Potential sites could be identified and millions of dollars spent drilling wells, but the result could be zero. The consistency of heat or the rock type may not be suitable for geothermal electricity. This unpredictability makes African governments nervous. Unep, through its Global Environment Facility, is trying to help with the costs and to encourage private investors.

Geothermal energy should be a potential source of power in other parts of the word. The Pacific Rim, circled with volcanoes, seems like one obvious spot for exploitation. Even the U.S. should have the potential to exploit this resource.

Human Trafficking Getting More Attention

2005-04-26T17:42:00.000-07:00

As many as 2 millionmen, women and children are tricked, lured or coerced into involuntary servitude every year. While, historically, international law has defined trafficking as the movement of women and girls across borders for the purpose of prostitution, human rights organizations are coming to realize that trafficking in persons is far broader in scope. In addition to forcing young women and girls into prostitution, traffickers also use violence, deception, coercion, or exploitation to keep both men and women in slavery-like conditions. People can be trafficked into abysmal working conditions on farms, in factories, or in domestic households. Children are especially vulnerable to such forms of exploitation, including being forced to work in sweatshops, or as child soldiers.

Asia is a particularly burgeoning market where sex trafficking is concerned. Women are especially victimized in poor countries like Nepal where they have low status and limited employment opportunities. UN agencies estimate that some 200,000 Nepalese women and girls are in sex brothels in India, for example. While there are heated debates over what constitutes voluntary vs. involuntary prostitution, it remains that thousands of women and girls are forced into this business. Countries like Thailand, Cambodia, and Bangladesh are also at the center of the sex trafficking trade.

It is thought that about $7-9.5 billion is made every year from human trafficking. After arms sales and drug dealing, trafficking in persons is the fastest growing criminal industry. Additionally, because there is little risk of prosecution for traffickers themselves, the business continues to thrive. Some governments are starting to impose stricter penalties on those caught for trafficking, but, from the trafficker's perspective, the gains to be made still far outweigh the risks.

U.S. and other countries deporting people for torture

2005-04-18T18:33:00.000-07:00

Human Rights Watch has charged numerous western governments, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Sweden, Austria, and Germany, of increasingly sending suspects to abusive states on the basis of flimsy “diplomatic assurances” that expose the detainees to serious risk of torture and ill-treatment.

“Governments that engage in torture always try to hide what they’re doing, so their ‘assurances’ on torture can never be trusted,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “This is a very negative trend in international diplomacy, and it’s doing real damage to the global taboo against torture.”

States that offer such assurances include some of the most abusive regimes in the world—Syria, Egypt and Uzbekistan. Transfers have also been effected or proposed to Yemen, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Russia, and Turkey, where certain people—for example, suspected Islamists, Chechens, or Kurds—are singled out for particularly brutal abuse.

Officials in the United States recently acknowledged that they had sent an undisclosed number of suspects to countries where torture is a serious human rights problem. In an increasing number of those cases—so-called “extraordinary renditions”—the suspects have credibly alleged that they were tortured.

“Governments that are using diplomatic assurances know full well that they don’t protect against torture,” said Roth. “But in the age of terror, they’re convenient. Only pressure from the public in Europe and North America can stop this negative trend.”

Governments rely on a variety of devices to transfer suspects to other countries, including renditions, removals, deportations, extraditions and expulsions. But none of them is legally permissible if the person to be transferred is at risk of torture on return.

“If these suspects are criminals they should be prosecuted, and if they’re not, they should be released,” said Roth. “But shipping them off to countries where they’ll be tortured is not an acceptable solution.”

Massacre in Rio Getting Little Attention

2005-04-08T11:57:00.000-07:00

Violence is a way of life for many of the poor. In the slums of Rio de Janeiro shootings are common and death squads of former and off-duty police officers, funded by local businessmen, are known to knock off undesirables. In Mexico City, policemen shoot street children as if they were just another pest.

But even by the these brutal standards, last week's massacre of 30 people apparently by a band of rogue policemen in Nova Iguacu, Brazil was shocking.

So-called police death squads have been operating with impunity in Baixada for 25 years, locals and human rights groups say.

"Everybody knows death squads operate here, most people even know the names of the people associated with them," Lindbergh Farias, mayor of Nova Iguacu, said in a radio interview following the killings.

So far, 12 current or former police officers have been arrested and eight of them have been charged with murder. Four allegedly did the shooting; the others provided backup.

According to State Security Secretary Marcelo Itagiba, they were upset over the arrest of eight fellow officers caught on video dumping the bodies of two men, both suspected criminals, outside a police station and throwing the head of one decapitated victim over the gate.

And yet, the March 31 shootings failed to create much of a stir in Rio, partly because it was eclipsed by the pope's death partly because people are accustomed to bad news coming out of trash-strewn slums like Nova Iguacu, which is in the poor, gritty Baixada Fluminense section of the city. It is old news

Two police massacres in 1993 — the Candelaria massacre, in which police killed eight people when they opened fire on at least 40 street children sleeping in front of a cathedral, and the Vigario Geral massacre that left 21 people dead — generated far more attention because they occurred in downtown Rio.

Rio Mayor Cesar Maia said he didn't believe the brutality would harm the city's image or have any impact on its hosting of the 2007 Pan American Games because they were unprecedented and "because there is no reasonable expectation they will be repeated."

"The barbarous crimes cause indignation and revulsion but they don't create a sense of everyday risk," Maia told the Associated Press.

Unless, of course, you're poor.

Egyptian students held in pre-dawn raid

2005-04-06T18:41:00.000-07:00

Egyptian State Security Investigations officials took university students Abul Futuh Tahsin Abul Futuh, 21, and Tahsin Tahsin Abul Futuh, 23, into custody after raiding their home in the Cairo suburb of Nasr City at around 4 a.m. this morning. According to family members, four SSI officers searched the house and confiscated papers and a computer before taking the two brothers, saying it was a “standard security procedure” and that the two would be back “in two hours.” The authorities have not returned them or provided information as to their whereabouts.

“These kinds of arrests have become typical for the SSI, which routinely subjects persons to torture and ill-treatment during questioning,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East division. “Time after time, families are told that their father or son will be back in a few hours, and then hear nothing for weeks and sometimes months.”

Family members told Human Rights Watch that the two brothers have attended a Nasr City mosque whose imam was arrested several days ago, but that neither was involved in any political activities. They said that some nine other persons associated with the mosque have also been detained in the Nasr City area in recent days.

Pope John Paul II

2005-04-03T11:28:00.000-07:00

"The human race is facing forms of slavery which are new and more subtle than those of the past. For far too many people, freedom remains a word without meaning."
--John Paul II, 1999

Global mining exploitation, community development and Indigenous rights

2005-04-02T06:53:00.000-08:00

From Rights Action

There is increasing international interest in local resistance to metallic mining activities, particularly in the opposition of indigenous communities in the department of San Marcos, Guatemala, to Glamis Gold Ltd’s Marlin project. This interest and concern was stimulated by news of the murder of indigenous demonstrator Raul Castro Bocel by State security forces, when the Guatemalan government sent in the army and police to repress protests in Los Encuentros and ensure the safe passage of a convoy of mining equipment belonging to Glamis Gold.

This report focuses on the current situation in Guatemala and Honduras, as regards metallic mining activities, transnational companies and community-based responses. The current situation, however, cannot be discussed only in terms of mining in Guatemala and Honduras; the current situation is a product of recent legislation and regulatory framework changes, which, in turn, are the product of a ‘development’ model devised, promoted and carried out by the same global actors proﬁting from the unjust and exploitative neocolonialist global system.

Diverse global actors are involved in the mining industry around the world. The World Bank Group, via its private sector entities the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), is directly involved in ﬁnancing and insuring transnational mining corporations, as well as its involvement as a direct shareholder in several mining projects. The World Bank and its sister institution, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), have also been involved in mining legislation and policy reforms—beneﬁting companies at the expenses of local peoples and communities—in dozens of countries worldwide.

Canadian government entities, such as the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) and the Export Development Corporation (EDC), have played similar roles in promoting and implementing legislation and policy, ﬁ nancing and insuring mining projects and promoting the industry—using public funds—to support Canadian mining companies. The United States Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) and the Export-Import Bank are engaged in the same activities as their Canadian counterparts. United Nations agencies and private security/military companies promote and protect an industry that disproportionately affects indigenous peoples, as do the regional and bilateral ‘Free’ Trade Agreements that protect investors and further establish the neoliberal agenda.

Both with long histories of natural resource exploitation dominated by foreign control, persecution and genocide, Guatemala and Honduras have both been the sites of an onslaught of transnational mining company activity. Over one-third of Honduras and one-tenth of Guatemala are covered by mining concessions and licenses, many of which, in the case of Guatemala, are located in indigenous territory. This upsurge in metallic mining activity is the product of mining legislation reforms in the late 1990s, when global actors saw a ‘window of opportunity’ to pursue their ‘development’ agenda with the signing of the Peace Accords in Guatemala and Hurricane Mitch in Honduras. Dozens of Canadian and US companies are operating in the region.

A ‘leader’ in Central America, Canadian/US company Glamis Gold Ltd is currently involved in an arbitration case against the US under the North American Free Trade Agreement for protective measures taken by previous Californian governmental institutions to protect First Nations sacred sites from the damages of open pit mining. The same company operates the San Martin gold mine in the Siria Valley, Honduras, where devastating impacts include illnesses, water shortage, contamination, failed crops, and many others. Charges were laid against a representative of Glamis subsidiary Entre Mares for a number of environmental and other crimes; however, these cases lie ‘dormant’ in the Honduran ‘justice’ system, symptomatic of the global impunity in which transnational mining companies and other global actors operate. Glamis Gold is also the owner of the Marlin project in Guatemala, where indigenous communities’ rights and demands have been completely ignored and violated, as the January 11th murder of an indigenous demonstrator has shown.

From San Marcos to the Siria Valley to numerous communities and organizations around the world, community-based resistance is not the product of foreign anti-development agitators or ignorance, as mining companies and international institutions claim. In the face of the imposed ‘development’ model and regulatory framework that is at complete odds with their interests and local community development initiatives, communities are struggling to defend their lands, territory, water, resources, food sovereignty, environment, health and needs from the invasion of destructive mining activities operating amidst impunity and strong support from global actors. Despite this incredible power imbalance, several communities in Central and Latin America have successfully detained mining activities—at least temporarily.

While it is important to support the struggles, priorities, demands and needs of local communities, it is crucial that international solidarity initiatives address the global ‘development’ model of which mining is but one example. A global justice movement dealing with mining issues in Honduras and Guatemala must confront the unjust and oppressive global system and the global actors proﬁting from the continued exploitation.

Zimbabwe Catholic archbishop calls for an uprising

2005-03-29T17:18:00.000-08:00

The Roman Catholic archbishop in Zimbabwe's second largest city of Bulawayo, Pius Ncube, has called for a non-violent mass uprising like the one last year in Ukraine ahead of the 31 March national election. Ncube charged that President Robert Mugabe and his ruling Zanu-PF party was deliberately preventing food from supporters of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

The opposition and international observer groups declared Zimbabwe's 2000 election, as flawed. In that poll the ruling party narrowly won the popular vote. The MDC said the election was rigged.

Zimbabwe has since clamped down on the media, shutting down independent newspapers and forcing representatives of foreign news organisations to flee the country.

World Sindi Institute presses for human rights in Pakistan

2005-03-26T12:09:00.000-08:00

The World Sindhi Institute (WSI) has sent a letter to Condoleeza
Rice, the U.S. Secretary of State, urging the State Department to
reconsider its recent support of Musharraf's decision to continue as
Army Chief. Citing the lack of democratic freedoms and the
prevalence of gross human rights violations, WSI urged the State
Department to press the Musharraf regime for true reforms.
Secretary Rice visited Pakistan in a recent tour of Asia.

A copy of the letter is provided below.

March 25, 2005

The Honorable Condoleeza Rice
Secretary of State
U.S. Department of State
2201 C Street, NW
Washington, DC 20520

Dear Secretary Rice,

On behalf of the world Sindhi community (historically from the
region of Sindh, a province of Pakistan), and the World Sindhi
Institute, I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate you
on your recent appointment as Secretary of State. We wish you the
best of luck in your new position, and look forward to positive
changes in troubled areas of the world. With peace and security
increasingly important in global affairs, we ask for your attention
on the most pressing issues in Pakistan.

You recently commented that the U.S. government would not pressure
Musharraf to step down as army chief and effectively end his rule as
military dictator. This statement sends a negative message to the
Pakistani people – that the United States does not support
democracy in Pakistan. We ask you to support the rights of the
Pakistani people by demonstrating your continued support for and
commitment to a democratic Pakistan and promoting honorable human
rights practices. We urge you to reconsider this decision.

Secondly, we urge you to increase your level of support for human
rights in Pakistan. Extra-judicial killings, domestic abuse,
military brutality, police torture, rape, killings, and
disappearances are common, particularly in Sindh. All of these
instances of human rights violations are well documented by the
State Department, and we ask for your continued support and advocacy
to bring justice to the people of Pakistan. In particular, the
United States must press the Musharraf regime to denounce acts of
Violence Against Women (VAW). It must also ensure that such cases
are brought forth to the Pakistani judicial system, and that women
are not victimized by the legal process. The recent case of Dr.
Shazia Khalid has gained national press attention in recent months,
and justice has hardly been realized. She fled the country last
week in response to inaction and threats of violence. Her case is
but one example of the inability and unwillingness of the Pakistani
government to properly investigate cases of VAW and to bring them to
trial. Incidences of rape committed by the military, and within
Pakistani society as a whole, will continue until the U.S. no longer
tolerates corrupt leadership within the government, and holds it
accountable for fully prosecuting cases of VAW in Pakistan.

As regards the nuclear issue, the United States must continue to
monitor nuclear activity in Pakistan, and ensure that adequate
funding is allocated to perform such a task. The volatility and
instability of many South Asian governments creates an environment
ripe for nuclear proliferation, as the case of Dr. A.Q. Khan
demonstrates. The United States must remain focused on Pakistan and
ensure that nuclear devices, technology and expertise stay out of
the hands of those who may use them for destructive purposes.

We also ask that U.S. funds be denied to water projects along the
Indus River in Pakistan, in particular, the Kalabagh Dam and Thal
Canal. Dams and canals along the Indus have already had a
detrimental effect on Sindh, environmentally, socially and
economically. Additional projects will only worsen conditions. The
State Department must ensure that the Pakistani government does not
use U.S. funds to destroy the natural environment and the indigenous
people that occupy it.

We respectfully request the following of you, Dr Rice: Carefully
review U.S. policy towards Pakistan and its military ruler, and
offer support to the truly democratic movements that do exist,
however suppressed, in Pakistan. Authentic democratic movements,
particularly of the peace-loving and oppressed Sindhi, Baloch,
Serraiki and Pakhtun people, exist throughout the country – but
are stifled by authoritarian and unrepresentative regulations and
limited resources. Ongoing support of President Musharraf and his
military dictatorship, which shelters many of the terrorists that
the U.S. currently seeks, poses a serious threat to the United
States, Pakistan, and, indeed, the entire world. Your continued
support of democracy as well as human rights is of great importance,
and we urge you to answer its call in Pakistan.

I appreciate your time and consideration. My colleagues and I would
be available to meet with you and/or your assistants to further this
discussion. I may be contacted directly at 202-637-324/3245.

Sincerely yours,

Munawar Laghari
Executive Director
World Sindhi Institute
733 15th Street, NW, Suite 700
Washington, DC 20005
Phone: 202-637-3244/3245
Fax: 202-637-3246
WSIHQ@worldsindhi.org

__________________________________________

Protests in Kyrgyzstan

2005-03-22T18:04:00.000-08:00

The deteriorating human rights conditions in Kyrgyzstan, culminating in the failure to deliver free and fair parliamentary elections this year, has brought out thousands of protestors, blocking roads, occupying administration buildings, and burning police stations in towns all over the country. In March 2002, officers shot and killed five unarmed demonstrators in the town of Aksy in Kyrgyzstan’s southern Jalal Abad province.

In recent years, the Akaev government has grown increasingly hostile to the development of an open political process and a vibrant civil society. This hostility intensified following the “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine in December 2004 and as elections approached in Kyrgyzstan. Human Rights Watch wrote to President Akaev in advance of the elections cautioning that this period would be a test of whether the Kyrgyz government is willing to meet public demands for responsive government and fair elections. The alternative is violating fundamental rights in order to avoid a repeat of Ukrainian-style “people power.”

Photographs of the street demonstrations show many protestors wearing pink scarves as a sign of unified opposition to the Akaev government. Despite the relatively small size of the crowds that have turned out thus far, this and other parallels have encouraged comparisons to Ukraine’s “Orange Revolution.”

Presidential elections scheduled for October 2005 will be a crucial moment. President has already served the two terms allowed for by law and has promised that he will not seek a constitutional amendment to allow him to run again. Protestors are demanding that he step down at the end of his term. If he steps down, he will set a positive precedent for all of the leaders of Central Asian states and the entire former Soviet Union.

Saint Patrick, anti-slavery activist

2005-03-18T10:33:00.000-08:00

On St. Patrick's Day, it is interesting to note that St. Patrick was a survivor of slavery and a pioneering anti-slavery activist. Abducted in Britain in the 5th century, Patrick was taken to Ireland as a slave. He eventually escaped to Gaul, became a priest, and returned to Ireland to minister to those who once enslaved him. Patrick became one of the first people to speak out unequivocally against human bondage.

Meanwhile, a news release from Bangladesh indicates that child slavery is becoming rampant in that country.

Sarwar Hossain, 11, always wanted to see the Sundarbans and he readily agreed when an "unknown neighbour" offered to take him to the world's largest mangrove forest, reports BSS.

The boy was so delighted that he didn't bother to talk to his parents before embarking on the trip to the Sundarbans sometime in August 2004. It was too late when he realised that he was taken to a different destination.

Together with the stranger, Sarwar travelled to Dublar Char of Sarankhola Upazila in Bagerhat from his home district of Bhola. There he met the fate of many other children who were tactfully abducted from different places and forced to work for 'mahajans' in the charland.

Sarwar's father, Mosharraf Hossain of Pakhia village in Borhanuddin Thana of Bhola, was unaware of his whereabouts until the Coast Guard and forest officials rescued him along with 75 other minor boys in a joint raid on the char island on November
6, 2004.

Sarwar said he was forced to help catch, cut, select and dry fishes and do other fish processing works. He had to work most of the time and was only given two hours of rest in a day. He was beaten up when he refused to work.

There was no suitable sleeping place. He had to sleep either on boat, trawler or in open space. Nobody can adjust himself to the unhygienic environment of Dublar Char where there was no pure drinking water.

Terror in East Turkestan

2005-03-11T11:00:00.000-08:00

One of the lesser known ethnic conflicts that is still ongoing is that of the Uighur people of East Turkestan. The Chinese occupation of East Turkistan began in 1949.

On August 27, 1949, a plane carrying the leadership of the Republic of East Turkestan was on its way to Beijing for talks with Mao Zedong. In circumstances that can be euphemistically called suspicious, the plane crashed, killing everyone on board. Upon hearing the news, Mao sent in the Communist military, and the occupation of East Turkestan began.

In the years since Uighurs have been brutally persecuted. Mosques have been razed to the ground. Political prisoners have been shot after show trials in which they are branded as terrorists. The Communists have sent wave upon wave of Han Chinese to East Turkestan to reduce the Uighur majority there. For nearly four decades, Communist China has conducted nuclear testing in East Turkestan. Most of these tests were conducted above ground, in open air, with no concern for those who would suffer from the nuclear fallout. Over 200,000 have died, and tens of thousands more have fallen ill with cancer.

The Chinese have followed the same tactics that they have used in Tibet, only Tibet has had a powerful spokesman in the person of the Dalai Lama. "Free Tibet" bumper stickers can be seen in the U.S. but never a "Free East Turkestan" bumper sticker.

In a cruelly ironic twist, the Chinese government has used the 9/11 attacks in the U.S. as an excuse for their terror in East Turkestan because the Uighurs are Moslems (just as the Russians have used the war on terror to win sympathy for their genocide against the Chechyans who are also Muslim.)

For over five decades, Communist China desperately tried to keep secret any evidence of resistance to the occupation in East Turkestan. On September 11, 2001, that all changed. While America licked its wounds, and the Uighur people loudly expressed their sympathy and support for the United States, Communist China saw an opportunity, an opportunity to smear an entire people for the regime’s benefit. Suddenly, resistance to Communism in East Turkestan was supposedly everywhere, and according to Beijing, all of it was tied to and supported by Osama bin Laden. Never mind that bin Laden himself never uttered one word about East Turkestan. Never mind that bin Laden himself was allowed to use Communist Chinese front companies on stock exchanges around the world to launder drug money for his terrorist operations. Never mind that Uighurs in this country and throughout the world have shown themselves to be the most pro-American Muslims on Earth.

Great powers are innately cynical and will use even the most horrendous of human tragedies to further their geopolitical goals.

Thanks to The China Letter for posting this article.

Niger begins enforcement of ban on slavery

2005-03-07T18:27:00.000-08:00

Who says all the news is bad?

Niger has made its first effort to publicize and enforce an anti-slavery law that was passed in May of 2004. Last Saterday 7,000 people were freed for the first time in their lives.

The chief of the In Antes region will free slaves in the area under his control. 95% of the people of In Antes are owned and controlled by the other 5%.

In Niger, children are born into an established slave class. Out of a population of some 11 million, at least 43,000 people live as slaves.

Unfortunately, freedom won't be a panacea for Niger's slaves. With vast stretches of the Sahara desert within its borders, Niger is one of the world's poorest countries. Life expectancy is only 42 years. Over 60% of the population lives in poverty.

Still, Romana Cacchioli of Anti-Slavery International says that the overwhelming response of the freed slaves was hopeful.

Nepal: Security Forces 'Disappear' Hundreds of Civilians

2005-03-05T16:33:00.000-08:00

Human Rights Watch has issued a report accusing the Royal Nepalese Army, which assisted King Gyanendra’s February 1 seizure of power, of responsiblity for a widespread pattern of enforced disappearances. In the last five years, more than 1,200 cases have been documented. According to the United Nations Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances, in 2003 and 2004 Nepal recorded the highest number of new cases of “disappearances” in the world.

Among the testimonies recorded by Human Rights Watch are these:

The soldiers came to our village in the evening and burst into our house. As they were dragging my son to the street, I came out of the house, asked them where they were taking him, and begged them not to take my son away. But they pointed a gun at me and said they would shoot me if I did not go back into the house. They took him to the edge of the village, along with three other men, and an hour later we heard two long rounds of gunshots from there. But when we came, we found nothing there. An officer at the Rambhapur army post near our village first said we should bring a petition for their release, then suggested that they had been abducted by the Maoists, and finally said they had been taken to the Chisapani army barracks. But the officers there said they had no information.
--An elderly relative of 48-year old Jangu Tharu

After Som Bahadur was detained, for the first three months I visited him in the Fulbari army barracks. But one day I came to see him, and the army at the barracks told me he had been transferred to jail, but did not say which one. I searched every jail in the area, but could not find him. Then I inquired at the district police office in Pokhara, and the police said they had received his case, and were expecting him to be brought there. They told me he would come home soon, but he never did. Two months ago INSEC [local human rights group] inquired at the barracks again, and they said he was still alive, but they would not tell them where he was.
-- A relative of 29-year old Som Bahadur Bishwokarma

There were many soldiers in the village that night. One group took my older son, Khagga, away. Shortly after they left, we heard two gunshots from across the field, and wanted to go, but other soldiers were still in the house and they did not let us. They had their flashlights and guns pointed at us. The soldiers [that left with Khagga] then came back and took a wooden bed from our house…Another group then took my other son, Kala Ram away—I heard he was ordered, along with other men, to carry Khagga’s body on that bed to their van. Next morning we went to the field and found Khagga’s small sleeping veil that he took with him, all covered in blood, but we have not seen his body, and Kala Ram also never came back.
--Elderly parents of 34-year old Khagga Tharu and 23-year old Kala Ram Tharu

The mainstream media has been surprisingly quiet about Nepal. It doesn't fit into the oil story, it doesn't fit into the African tragedy story, it doesn't fit into the Muslim radical story, so it has no hook of interest for American audiences. But the suffering is just as real.

Sex slaves hidden victims in trade

2005-03-04T16:12:00.000-08:00

Along with thousands of people who try to cross the U.S. Mexican border every day are many woman destined to be trapped in world's most lucrative slave markets. Once in the U.S. the women are kept quiet by threats of violence against them or their families in Mexico.

"If you get caught with guns and drugs you'll get a long prison term," says Rick Castro, a deputy sheriff with the San Diego County Sheriff's Department and a veteran of the war against modern slavers.

"But if you're a trafficker you've already told your victims that if they talk to the cops they'll be killed or raped. Or their family members back home will be killed. So there's less chance of being caught."

Little wonder that many victims keep quiet. Only 100 or so human trafficking cases have made it into US courts.

Slave trafficking ranks only behind drugs and weapons smuggling among the world's most profitable crimes. It's extent is not known with any certainty. The State Department estimates that between 14,500 and 17,500 people are trafficked into the US each year, but other organizations estimate that the number is much higher.

"Maybe half that annual number, or more, become sex slaves," says Kevin Bales, president of Free the Slaves, a Washington-based non-governmental organisation. "It's a very hidden crime. And it's one in which the crime is not an event, like a mugging reported to the police, but a process."

Trafficing in slavery is a world wide phenomenon. In France 90 per cent of female prostitutes are believed to be trafficking victims. Bales estimates that up to 250,000 slaves exist in the US. "The basic rule of trafficking is that people move from poorer to richer countries," he says. Many victims come from Russia, Eastern Europe, Asia, and Latin America. But the trade is pervasive. Women are traded from, say, Mali to Ghana, and from Ghana to Nigeria, then from Nigeria to Italy.

Rescue groups across the US work to rehabilitate physically and psychologically traumatised women, while toll-free, international hotlines in the US, the EU, Russia and other regions to receive calls from victims and their families. For example, San Diego's Bilateral Safety Corridor Coalition has helped to rehabilitate 16 victims - from Korea, the Philippines, Mexico and Guatemala - in the past three months.

But law enforcement remains largely uninvolved in the problem and many victims are too frightened to testify resulting in few cases ever being prosecuted. "A lot are forgotten," says deputy sheriff Castro. "After years of abuse they almost forget who they are. They become numb and zombie-like. These girls are raped 20 to 30 times a day. Every day for years."

Slavery is a human rights area badly in need of publicity. Without public awareness, little will be done about it.

Divesting from Sudan

2005-03-01T18:42:00.000-08:00

Taking a page from the anti-apartheit movement, students at Harvard, Tufts and Boston universities have joined with an anti-slavery group to demand divestment from companies operating in Sudan.

A statehouse vigil in Boston will also urge university endowments and state pension fund in Massachusetts to divest from Sudan, said a statement issued Saturday.

The Massachusetts State Pension Fund has an estimated $1.4 billion invested in companies doing business in Sudan. Despite a campus divestment campaign, Harvard University recently increased its stake in the controversial PetroChina stock.

A candlelight vigil organized by the American Anti-Slavery Group and featuring student activists from the three educational institutions will begin Thursday afternoon.

"This is a crucial opportunity to show that we are leaders for a more just world, and will not tolerate our money and name being complicit in genocide," noted Brandon Terry of Harvard's Darfur Action Group and President Emeritus of the Black Men's Forum.

Terry is leading a campaign at Harvard for seniors to withhold their class gift until the university divests from PetroChina, a subsidiary of the China National Petroleum Company, which recently partnered with the Sudanese regime in a $1 billion petroleum project.

Jordan, the War on Terror, and Human Rights

2005-02-25T14:30:00.000-08:00

According to the State Department's 2003 human rights report on Syria,

The Constitution prohibits arbitrary arrest and detention; however, these remained significant problems. The Ministry of Interior controlled the police force, which many observers considered corrupt. The 1963 Emergency Law authorizes the Government to conduct preventive arrests and overrides Constitutional and Penal Code provisions against arbitrary arrest and detention, including the need to obtain warrants. In cases involving political or national security offenses, arrests often were carried out in secret. Suspects could be detained incommunicado for prolonged periods without charge or trial and denied the right to a judicial determination regarding pretrial detention. Additionally, those suspected of political or national security offenses could be arrested and prosecuted under ambiguous and broad articles of the Penal Code and subsequently tried in either the criminal or security courts.

Even though Syria has come under criticism by the Bush administration, it was still willing to make use of Syria's human rights record if the testimony of Maher Arar is to be believed. Mr. Arar, a Canadian citizen, was attempting to change planes at Kennedy Airport on his way home to Canada from a family vacation in Tunisia, when he was seized by American authorities, interrogated and thrown into jail. He was not charged with anything, and he never would be charged with anything. Instead he was flown out of the United States to Jordan and then driven to Syria, where he was kept in an unlit, underground, rat-infested cell that was the size of a grave. From time to time he was tortured.

Mr. Arar's words speak eloquently for themselves.

He wept. He begged not to be beaten anymore. He signed whatever confessions he was told to sign. He prayed.

Among the worst moments, he said, were the times he could hear babies crying in a nearby cell where women were imprisoned. He recalled hearing one woman pleading with a guard for several days for milk for her child.

He could hear other prisoners screaming as they were tortured.

"I used to ask God to help them," he said. ...

Mr. Arar, who is married and also has an 8-year-old daughter, said the pain from some of the beatings he endured lasted for six months.

"It was so scary," he said. "After a while I became like an animal."

The Justice Department has alleged, without disclosing any evidence whatsoever, that Mr. Arar is a member of, or somehow linked to, Al Qaeda, even though they now allow him to roam free. The Syrians, who tortured him, have concluded that Mr. Arar is not linked in any way to terrorism. A lawsuit on Mr. Arar's behalf has been filed against the United States by the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York. Barbara Olshansky, a lawyer with the center, noted yesterday that the government is arguing that none of Mr. Arar's claims can even be adjudicated because they "would involve the revelation of state secrets."

Which is something of an admission in itself.

880 Slaves Freed in Sudan

2005-02-22T18:02:00.000-08:00

After public pressure and a class action lawsuit, the Government of Sudan has released 880 slaves who were returned to their southern Sudanese homland where they are receiving aid from anti-slavery groups. Thousands more are still believed to be held in slavery.

A human rights group reported that the slaves had undergone a wide range of abuse.

Among the most widespread forms of abuse are beatings, death threats, work without pay, forced Islamization and Arabization, and racial and religious slurs. The majority of women and older girls said they were raped or gang-raped while in bondage. A minority of the females claim they were subjected to female genital mutilation (FGM) -- a ritual that is the cultural norm for Baggara Arab women.

While some of the slaves worked in Arab cattle camps others were captured to work in the Sudan{s burgeoning oil industry. Several foreign oil companies, most notably Canada's Talisman Energy, lead the Sudanese government's oil operations, fueling slave raids and funding its war chest. After a divestment campaign against Talisman, modeled after the South African anti-apartheid divestment, many of the world's largest pension and investment funds divested from Talisman.

A class action lawsuit was files on November 8, 2001 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against Talisman Energy, Inc. of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, on behalf of Rev. John Sudan Gaduel and The Presbyterian Church of Sudan and three individual plaintiffs.

"The complaint charges Talisman with violations of international law for participating in the Sudanese Government's ethnic cleansing of Christian and other non-Muslim minorities in areas of southern Sudan where Talisman is exploring for oil", according to Carey R. D'Avino, a director of the American Anti-Slavery Group, and Stephen A. Whinston, attorneys for the plaintiffs.

The issue of Sudan has seemed to slip from the mainstream media's radar screen lately. As before the issue became visible, the ongoing antislavery work falls to the private human rights organizations which continue their work.

Brazilian President Reacts

2005-02-19T14:00:00.000-08:00

Brazilian Prsedent Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, reacting to outside pressure, ordered the creation of two massive new rain forest reserves Thursday in an attempt to reign in lawlessness from violent loggers and ranchers after the killing last weekend of an American nun who fought to protect the jungle.

The decrees were announced after more than 60 groups signed a letter to the president demanding strong moves to curb "violence and impunity associated with the illegal occupation of lands and deforestation" in the Amazon -- and especially in Para, nearly twice the size of Texas. Though environmentalists were pleased with the decrees, they said they have lobbied Silva's administration for similar moves for two years and were dismayed they came only after Stang's death. "It is sad to see that things had been in the pipeline for months and years needed a tragic development in order receive priority," said Roberto Smeraldi, director of the environmental group Friends of the Earth Brazil.

The president also ordered a six-month moratorium on logging licenses on 20 million acres of land in Para near a jungle road scheduled to be paved in an area that environmentalists say is already rife with deforestation and land conflicts. During the moratorium, environmental authorities will define which areas should be protected. The government will pave a road, currently impassable to heavy trucks for much of the year because of constant rain, giving farmers in the top soy producing state of Mato Grosso access to an Amazon River port in Para for cheaper shipment abroad.

Lawlessness has long been common in Para, where ranchers, backed by hired gunmen, ensnare poor workers in an endless cycle of debt akin to slavery. Tensions rose further when the government recently ordered ranchers to evacuate land they occupied but couldn't prove they owned. Ranchers and loggers blocked roads and rivers, and the government relented, allowing ranchers with dubious claims to the land to continue logging.

There is good news and bad news in this story. Governments can be susecptible to foreign pressure when human rights abuses become widely known. Unfortunately, it took the death of an American citizen to bring that spotlight to Brazil. The death of hundreds of Brazilians is still worthless coin in the international arena.

Human Rights Worker Shot in Brazil

2005-02-18T11:30:00.000-08:00

Brazil has sent 2000 troops into the Amazon rain forest to counter death squads blamed for killing an American nun and rural workers settled on land coveted by loggers and ranchers. US missionary Dorothy Stang, slain on Saturday by hired gunmen near the town of Anapu. Two rural workers have been killed near the town of Anapu, 400km from Belem, in the last four days. A union leader was shot dead by gunmen on a jungle road near Parauapebas in south-eastern Para on Tuesday.

The troops will work with local police for ten days in an effort to beef up protection. However, local activists say that the effort is too little, that President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva only sent in the troops following world outrage at Stang's death and US pressure to find the killers.

"The day they leave, it'll go back to normal," said Tomas Balduino, president of the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT), a Catholic human rights group Stang worked with.

The violence has been going on for decades as loggers and ranchers have tried to drive off settlers on the land. The problem has been aggravated by a program that promises to settle 400,000 landless families by 2006. Those pledges encouraged peasants to occupy areas and lobby for land to be demarcated as reserves. Stang helped them.

The province of Para, an area twice the size of France, has Brazil's worst rural violence, slave labor and illegal logging. Hundreds have people have been killed in the last two decades while few people are ever punished for crimes.

Emerging Disaster in Nepal

2005-02-17T14:28:00.000-08:00

Two weeks ago King Gyanendra dismissed the government of Nepal, declared a state of emergency and suspended civil liberties, and jailed political leaders, students, human rights activists, journalists and trade unionists. The king claimed that the measures were aimed at the Maoist communist insurgency, which has claimed more than 10,500 lives since 1996.

However Amnesty International's secretary-general claims that a political catastrophe is brewing in the country and is urging donor nations to suspend military aid to Nepal. Amnesty said the state of emergency had "strengthened the hands of the security forces ... and increased the likelihood of an escalation of the conflict that could lead to even greater human suffering and abuse."

After a visit to Nepal, Amnesty's secretary general claimed, "While some leaders have been released, more are being arrested, particularly at the district level. There is strict media censorship enforced by the army and there is total clampdown on political dissent. Wherever we went, we encountered a deep sense of fear, uncertainty and insecurity among the people."

The new government has come under increasing pressure to restore democracy in recent days. India, the United States, Britain, and other European countries have already recalled their ambassadors.

Recent reports by Amnesty International show a dramatic increase in human rights abuses since a cease-fire with the Maoists broke down in August 2003, including torture, detention, disappearances, abductions and unlawful killings.

Haiti, one year later

2005-02-15T14:52:00.000-08:00

Nearly a year since U.S. Marines escorted former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from Haiti, human rights observers say state-sponsored abuses have escalated. Most of the abuses have taken place in poor parts of Port-au-Prince, where support for Aristide still runs strong and armed groups demanding his return defy the government and clash with police.

"The human rights situation in Haiti is critical right now," said Judy Dacruz, an independent human rights lawyer based in Port-au-Prince. "There has been a complicity of silence about these killings. The authorities don't even acknowledge violations are taking place, and the majority of the press are simply ignoring what is going on."

Dacruz has documented 14 cases, including the murder of Jean, since October, in which witnesses said police officers summarily executed unarmed people. In three other cases, people who were taken into police custody either showed up dead or were never seen again.

Accusations of abuse against Aristide led to the Organization of American States to freeze millions of dollars in aid to his government. But abuses of the government of Prime Minister Gerard Latortue have been all but ignored--in spite of peacekeeping troops still occupying the island.

"It's worse than I would have expected," David Beer, commissioner of the 1,400 UN civilian police in Haiti, said. "If the human rights situation isn't changing, and obviously changing, and the public has the confidence that it is changing, we can't have a secure and stable environment. People won't move around the country in day-to-day activities. They won't go shopping. They won't participate in elections in the same way.

The first round of presidential elections is set for Nov. 13.

Lavalas leaders have accused the government of a campaign of repression meant to stamp out support for Aristide and to dissuade the poor from voting. The government says it is battling illegal gangs that aim to destabilize the government"

Meanwhile, the killing in the slums goes on.

Slavery today

2005-02-11T05:22:00.000-08:00

27 million people are enslaved today worldwide -- more than at any time in history.

The classic form of chattel slavery- in which slaveholders maintain ownership no longer through legalities but through the use of violence - persists to this day in a few countries. In Sudan, a radical ruling regime has revived a racially-based slave trade, arming militia forces to raid civilian villages for slaves. In Mauritania, slave raids 800 years ago began a system of chattel slavery that continues to this day, with Arab-Berber masters holding as many as one million black Africans as inheritable property.

The most common form of slavery is debt bondage, in which a human being becomes collateral against a loan. With a massive population boom in regions of staggering poverty, some families have nothing to pledge for a loan but their own labor. With inflated interest rates, debts are often inherited, ensnaring generations. 15 to 20 million slaves are in debt bondage in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan.

Another common form of slavery is forced labor, where individuals are lured by the promise of a good job and instead find themselves enslaved. Migrant workers are particularly vulnerable, and small organized-crime rings fuel a booming international trade in human beings. Trafficking often flows from developing nations to the West. For instance, CIA estimates that 50,000 women and children are trafficked into the US each year as slaves.

A form of slavery most common in South Asia is sex slavery, where girls forced into prostitution by their own husbands, fathers, and brothers earn money for the men in the family to pay back local-money lenders. Others are lured by offers of good jobs and then beaten and forced to work in brothels.

Slave labor produces goods we use every day. Examples include: sugar from the Dominican Republic, chocolate from the Ivory Coast, paper clips from China, carpets from Nepal, and cigarettes from India.

Slavery occurs in every continent in the world except Antarctica.

In the U.S. the CIA estimates that 50,000 people are trafficked as sex slaves, domestics, garment, and agricultural slaves.

If this concerns you, go to iAbolish-the anti-slavery portal.