Survivors of Korean massacre demand US apology, compensation

By Jim Lobe

Washington, DC, Jan. 12 (IPS)— Survivors of a massacre committed by US troops at the start of the Korean War have rejected a statement of regret issued by President Bill Clinton and have called for a clear apology and for compensation.

They said they would seek compensation through the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

“We don’t accept the statement as an official apology,” Chung Koo-do, who represents survivors and victims’ families said.

He said the US government was “committing a treachery before history’’ by refusing to admit it had massacred “innocent civilians’’ at No Gun Ri, a village about 200 kilometers south of Seoul, the South Korean capital.

Hoping to heal a festering sore in US ties with South Korea, Clinton on Thursday said that he “deeply regret(s)’’ the deaths of civilian refugees at No Gun Ri during the opening days of the Korean War some 50 years ago.

He did not, however, offer a formal apology for the killings of as many as 300 fleeing refugees which, according to recent news reports based on some eyewitness accounts, were carried out by US soldiers and pilots over a period of three days.

Nor did he offer reparations to families of the refugees who were killed in the incident, as some survivors and victims had demanded. Instead, Clinton said the United States would erect at the site a memorial to those killed “and all other innocent Korean civilians killed during the war (to) bring a measure of solace and closure.”

In addition, he said, Washington would create a scholarship fund of $750,000 “as a living tribute to their memory’’ to enable South Korean students to study in the United States.

“On behalf of the United States of America, I deeply regret that Korean civilians lost their lives at No Gun Ri in late July, 1950,” he said in a written statement.

Clinton’s statement and the release of a joint US-South Korean report mark the culmination of a lengthy investigation by both the Pentagon and its South Korean counterpart of a 1999 report by the Associated Press (AP) about possible atrocities committed by US troops during the Korean War. The investigators looked at thousands of documents and interviewed scores of veterans, including those who admitted shooting at refugees at No Gun Ri, as well as South Korean witnesses.

Based on eyewitness accounts, including from both US soldiers and South Korean survivors, the AP account alleged that US soldiers, who were retreating in disarray from the North Korean advance into South Korea which began in late June, 1950, fired repeatedly into a crowd of refugees huddled under a railroad bridge at No Gun Ri for several days in late July. It reported that US warplanes also strafed the refugee column from the air.

The report -- which represents the conclusions on which both the US and South Korean investigators could agree -- said the two teams could find no specific orders and no US veterans who remembered specific orders authorizing the killing of civilian refugees by either the US Army or Air Force.

The two teams also agreed that US troops did fire on refugees at No Gun Ri, but concluded that “an unknown number of refugees were killed or injured.’’ They also concluded that it was possible the refugees were strafed from the air, but it could find no report of such an attack.

“The army, being an official US government entity, thought it necessary to warn every veteran it interviewed that he had a right to remain silent,” said Oberdorfer who noted that one key witness, who had told AP that large numbers of Koreans were killed there, declined to be interviewed by the US team.

On the question of order, “there are a number of suggestive records and suggestive testimony of veterans indicating that some units in the army probably had an authorization to shoot to kill refugees,’’ he said. “But the army investigators could find no back-up for any of that.’’

“My own feeling is that the whole thing about orders is very murky,’’ said Oberdorfer. “Some (veterans) clearly believed there were orders, but don’t recall specific documents. The Army is taking a very legalistic approach to this; they couldn’t find any smoking gun.’’

Popular Front threatens to topple Ecuadoran President

Quito, Ecuador, Jan. 11-- Provincial judge Antonio Guerrero Carrasco of Pichincha, the province where Quito is located, ordered the suspension of executive decrees that imposed fuel price hikes. The government insisted it will maintain the price increases, arguing that Guayaquil judge Jose Rendon had already ruled in favor of the same decrees imposing the price hikes. As with a similar contradiction the previous week between court rulings over the transport fare hikes, the matter will have to be resolved by the Constitutional Court (TC).

Leader Luis Villacis of the Popular Front (FP), which is promoting protests against the price hikes, warned that “if Noboa doesn’t overturn the measures, we’re going to send him home on Jan. 21.” Jan. 21 is the first anniversary of an uprising over economic measures that forced the ouster of Noboa’s predecessor, President Jamil Mahuad Witt.

“We’ll make him leave, like Mahuad left,” Villacis said of Noboa. Government spokesperson Marcelo Santos responded to Villacis’ comments by accusing grassroots leaders of engaging in “subversive” discourse and actions.

On Jan. 10, Noboa called on the powerful Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), one of the main opponents of his economic plan, to engage in dialogue.

“If we want a fight,” said Noboa, “let’s have it against poverty, since I am the best ally of the indigenous group in Ecuador.”

On Jan. 11 CONAIE president Antonio Vargas Huatatoca replied by telling reporters that Noboa is “the best ally of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)” and “the worst enemy of the indigenous people.” Vargas announced a new mobilization for Jan. 22, and warned that CONAIE won’t dialogue with Noboa until the price hikes are repealed.

Source: Weekly News Update on the Americas: wnu@igc.org

“Balkans Syndrome” renews debate over depleted uranium

Compiled by Greg White

Jan. 15— Ten countries have ordered investigations in recent weeks into possible links between the illness of soldiers and their exposure to depleted uranium.

Up to ten former soldiers from Belgium plan to file a complaint seeking a judicial investigation into links between their illnesses and their service in the Balkans, a lawyer for the group said on Thursday.

The complaint will also charge unknown parties with crimes ranging from involuntary manslaughter to absence of assistance to persons in distress.

The use of armor-penetrating depleted uranium (DU) used to tip missiles, shells and bullets has been relatively widespread by British and American forces in the last ten years.

NATO says it fired 31,000 shells containing DU during its 1999 three-month bombing of Yugoslavia. Most hit Kosovo, southern Serbia and Montenegro. In addition, American and British forces fired an estimated 700,000 DU shells during the Gulf War.

Uranium is one of the heaviest metals, which makes it effective in piercing targets like tanks or concrete. A byproduct of enriched uranium, the depleted form is only mildly radioactive, but when it pulverizes in an explosion or fire, its dust is considered by some analysts to be hazardous if ingested or inhaled.

Cases of cancer have been reported among Italian, Belgian, French, Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese soldiers who served in Bosnia and Kosovo. Italy began studying the illnesses of 30 Balkans veterans, seven of whom died of cancer, including five cases of leukemia.

Up to 300 out of 5,000 Serb refugees whose suburb of Sarajevo was heavily bombed by NATO jets in the late summer of 1995 have died of cancer. The Yugoslav army has been encircling heavily bombed areas in barbed wire, and construction teams plan to erect concrete slabs to seal off certain areas that have been declared contaminated.

A Yugoslav pathologist said on Saturday about 400 Bosnian Serbs from an area bombarded by NATO with depleted uranium shells in 1994 later died of various forms of cancer. Doctor Zoran Stankovic, head of the Department of Forensic Medicine of the Yugoslav Military-Medical Academy in Belgrade, linked the deaths – which totaled about 10 percent of the community – to radioactive weapons. Some of the victims had worn flak jackets for protection made from recycled depleted uranium shells.

Reports of the effects of depleted uranium have also been widespread in Iraq. Dr. Jawad Khadim al-Ali, a British-trained doctor and a member of the Royal College of Physicians, works in a hospital in Basra, the site of heavy American and British bombing in 1991. He has maps of cancer and leukemia clusters which coincide with the most intensive use of DU weapons in the Gulf war in 1991.

The medical staff has a book of photographs of the grotesque, misshapen, stillborn children born in the hospital. There are some children with no brain, some with one eye in the middle of the head, others with extra limbs.

According to Dr. Jawad there has been a four-fold increase in cancers in the area where the use of uranium-tipped weapons was most severe.

In addition to the increase in illnesses in certain parts of Iraq, veterans on the other side of the war have suffered as well. Dr. Asaf Durakovic, a professor of nuclear medicine at Georgetown University, told a conference of eminent nuclear scientists in Paris last September that “tens of thousands” of British and American soldiers are dying from radiation from depleted uranium shells fired during the Gulf War.

Durakovic, who left America because he was told his life was in danger if he continued his research, has concluded that the troops inhaled tiny uranium particles after being in close proximity to exploded shells with DU.

Great Britain and the United States insist there is no evidence of a link between the use of DU weapons and cases of leukemia or cancer in troops who have had exposure to depleted uranium weaponry.

Despite denials for years by the two governments and much of the mainstream US media, two documents leaked to the press indicate some serious inconsistencies concerning the DU issue.

A document called “hazard awareness” issued by the Joint Chiefs of Staff warned soldiers and civilians against touching spent ammunition or other contaminated materials. It said personnel handling the heads of anti-tank shells or entering wrecked vehicles should wear protective masks and cover exposed skin, and people involved in the more hazardous clearing tasks should undergo health assessments afterward.

The British Ministry of Defense last week admitted it had known about the potential risk associated with depleted uranium weapons for more than 20 years. However, it insisted that the threat to British service personnel had always been insignificant.

The 1997 report warned: “All personnel . . . should be aware that uranium dust inhalation carries a long-term risk . . . [it] has been shown to increase the risks of developing lung, lymph and brain cancers.”

The Ministry of Defense was so concerned about the documents that had been leaked that they raided the houses of two Gulf War veterans who they alleged had stolen them.

International pressure by governments and activists has increased as more cases of illnesses related to DU are documented. Puerto Rico’s government plans to ask the European Union to include a US Navy bombing range on Vieques island in its investigation into the effects of depleted uranium. Thousands marched through the streets of Greece last Thursday to protest the United States’ use of DU munitions in the Balkans, and to demand that Greek troops posted there return home immediately.

Sources: Agence France Presse, Associated Press, The Independent, Irish Times, Reuters, Sunday Herald (Scotland), Sunday Telegraph

Protests put G8 on the defensive

Rome, Italy, Jan. 10— Italian Prime Minister Giuliano Amato called on fellow world leaders on Wednesday to address the concerns of the “anti-globalization” protesters who now regularly disrupt their summit meetings.

He said the issue must be tackled when leaders of the Group of Eight — the Group of Seven (G7) major industrialized countries plus Russia — hold a summit in Genoa, northwestern Italy, on July 20 to 22.

“This is a crucial issue for the future and it would be dangerous not to deal with it,” Amato said.

Italy has just taken over the G7 presidency, and Amato said the summit would also consider ways of fighting world poverty, technological imbalances between industrialized and developing countries, financial structures and energy and the environment.

Anti-globalization protests have become a regular accompaniment to international meetings since they disrupted a World Trade Organization summit in Seattle in 1999.

“We will also talk about the democratization of governance,” Amato said, adding that Seattle and subsequent protests showed it was necessary to talk about “the legitimacy of those eight (heads of state) and of those who protest.”

Amato said two main factors were eroding the workings of democracy and therefore attacking its legitimacy.

“Firstly, there is a feeling that with globalization, there are things that governments don’t see. Secondly, those who have been elected use decision-making processes in which the voice of lobby groups is louder than the voice of the people,” he said.

Anti-globalization protesters last hit the streets during December’s European Union summit in Nice, wreaking havoc in the French Riviera resort. Dozens of people were arrested or hurt in clashes with riot police.

Amato said there would be talks with Non Governmental Organizations representing the protesters ahead of July’s meeting.

As for the rest of the agenda, Amato said he expected the fight against poverty and illness to be central to the meeting, with special focus on the debt of developing countries.

He added there would be fewer topics on this year’s G8 agenda in an attempt to have more time to hold real discussions instead of relying on pre-written statements.

“Of course, financial architecture will be an important topic, as every year,” Amato said, but he declined to say whether a G7 finance ministers meeting in Palermo in February would discuss a devaluation of Japan’s yen.

The G8 brings together the United States, Canada, Japan, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Russia.

Source: Reuters