Africans demand recognition of ‘holocaust’

Geneva, Switzerland, May 31— An upcoming UN anti-racism conference is meant to find new ways of promoting future racial harmony. So far, it has done little but reopen past divisions between the conquerors and the oppressed. A two-week meeting in Geneva intended to draw up an agenda and declaration for the World Conference Against Racism in August ended in deadlock on Friday over whether countries that prospered from slavery and colonization should formally apologize for the suffering they caused and pay compensation.

Africans want both, but Western nations led by the United States, Britain and Canada are resisting any such move. Diplomats from 21 countries were told to begin another two weeks of talks in late July, in hopes of achieving progress before the conference formally opens Aug. 31 in Durban, South Africa.

Although there are other disagreements, such as what the conference should say about the Middle East, the question of slavery has proved the most vexing.

A proposed declaration prepared by African governments described the slave trade as “a unique tragedy in the history of humanity, a crime against humanity which is unparalleled” and said slavery, colonialism and apartheid “have resulted in substantial and lasting economic, political and cultural damage to African peoples.”

It demanded an “explicit apology” and the establishment of an international compensation program.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson told the Geneva meeting that there should be recognition of what happened, adding that she saw “great merit in a willingness to have that recognition in the form of an apology.”

But countries which used slaves and former colonial powers are holding out.

Western negotiators have been keeping a low profile and are refusing to talk about their positions.

Sources close to the meeting said Washington is ready to accept a statement acknowledging that slavery is among the causes of racism today and to “express regret” for past use of slaves.

But it stops short of an apology and refuses to accept any suggestion in the text that countries might be financially liable today. Such a move, wealthier nations fear, could open them to almost endless lawsuits.

African groups argue that there should be some compensation for slavery because, in effect, labor was stolen from the African continent and helped the development of now-rich nations, and for the stripping of natural resources during colonial times and even today.

The huge debts of the developing world can be directly linked to slavery and colonialism, they say, demanding that as a result such debts should be forgiven.

“The US position is weak because it is legalistic. They say the question of reparations is difficult because the victims are no longer alive. We say the victims have heirs,” said Alioune Tine, of the African Coalition for the Defense of Human Rights.

Advocates of compensation point out that Germany is reimbursing victims of Nazi slave labor programs, Switzerland is paying heirs of Holocaust victims for money that lay dormant in bank accounts after World War II, and South Africa is trying to address the injustices of the apartheid era.

Speaking for a coalition of African non-governmental organizations, Alioune Tine of Senegal, said the impact of colonialism is one of the prime causes of Africa’s economic backwardness today.

He told a news conference: “We invite the world conference to declare without hesitation that slavery and colonialism are a double Holocaust and crimes against the humanity of African peoples.”

Source: Associated Press, Reuters

India: Globalization benefits only transnational corporations

By Amit Baruah

Jakarta, Indonesia, May 28— India said today that transnational corporations, rather than countries, have reaped the benefits of the globalization process.

Addressing the 22nd meeting of G-15 Foreign Ministers, the Minister of State for External Affairs, U. Krishnam Raju, said the income gap between the rich and poor nations has only widened.

“There are no win-win perspectives in globalization as some in the developed countries would have us believe. Sustained reductions in global poverty require stronger growth..,’’ Raju said.

The Minister said a ‘cat scan’ of globalization revealed a “multi-dimensional image driven not only by market forces, but also by attempts to oppose cultural diversity, by factors such as global warming, the spread of diseases including HIV/AIDS, and the rise of terrorism, cyber crime, and transnational crime.”

The explosion of international movement of private capital and the nature of some capital flows raise questions on whether these are consistent with the evolving consensus on development, and appropriate to the needs of developing countries, Mr. Raju said.

“At the same time, there has been a downward trend in ODA (Overseas Development Assistance).”

“The financial crisis that affected many countries among us four years go demonstrated that we have to understand the costs and benefits involved in the utilization of foreign capital.... our role in international economic governance must increase if our interests are to be adequately safeguarded. The G-15 must, more than ever before, help build consensus on issues that arise out of the globalization debate.”

Speaking at the Sixth Meeting of G-15 Trade and Commerce Ministers yesterday, Commerce Secretary Prabir Sengupta said the launch of a new round of global trade negotiations should be discussed only after there is a full convergence of views amongst the entire World Trade Organization (WTO) membership.

Such a convergence, Sengupta argued, could come about only if “implementation issues” (arising out of the implementation of the Uruguay round of trade talks) are resolved up-front and satisfactorily and contentious non-trade issues are kept off the table.

“(The WTO) Ministerial Conference is mandated to be held once in every two years and we fully support the convening of the next (fourth) WTO Ministerial Conference at Doha, which should basically review the progress of resolution of the implementation-related concerns, give policy direction for the ongoing mandate negotiations and mandated reviews and take up other stock-taking and reviews..,” Sengupta said.

“The resolution of the implementation-related concerns of the developing countries should be done by the WTO membership upfront without in any way linking it with the launch of any new or comprehensive round of negotiations as these concerns are a hangover of the past Uruguay round of negotiations for which the developing countries have already paid by taking several onerous obligations,” the Commerce Secretary said.

“However, the General Council process that was set in motion to address these concerns has not given any satisfaction even after a year... a number of countries who are represented (in the G- 15)... share these perceptions and we need to work on this front so that the inequities are removed.”

Source: The Hindu & indiaserver.com, Inc.

Left targeted at Colombian universities

By Scott Wilson

Barranquilla, Colombia, May 30-- Who is sitting next to me?

An abiding suspicion has infected the classrooms, corridors and faculty lounges of the University of the Atlantic.

Professors who have spent decades in the grey concrete classrooms of one of Colombia’s finest public universities look out over rows of students and choose their words carefully. Students considering a rally think twice. Who is my classmate?

“There are students here who never take a test, never write down a thing,” said a 21-year-old basic sciences student from Cartagena.

“They are only here to identify student leaders, who the teachers are who might be from the left. I can’t walk up to a student and say, ‘This policy is wrong, let’s do something about it.’ I don’t know who I am talking to.”

Across Colombia, the decades-old ideological battle between left and right in the classroom has changed from an intellectual debate to a violent campaign against students, professors and administrators.

The country’s 32 public universities have long been a recruiting pool for leftist guerrilla armies, whose rhetorical blend of class struggle and social justice has found receptive audiences in the middle- to lower-class student bodies.

Colombia’s public universities reflect the deep class and ideological differences that have helped perpetuate the country’s civil warfare for almost four decades.

Here and across Latin America the public university has traditionally been the wellhead of leftist thought and activism, a training ground for future leftist leaders who often emerge from the disenfranchised lower classes. Private universities, too expensive for most Colombians, train the children of the more conservative elite.

Now, as part of their effort to seize not only territorial but ideological control from the guerrillas, the rightist paramilitary forces have arrived on the campuses of at least eight of Colombia’s public universities.

They are located in key geographic areas most contested by the leftist guerrillas and the rightist forces who have taken up arms on behalf of land and business owners who feel the government is not doing enough to protect them.

Paid informers monitor lectures for leftist overtones and the activity of their classmates. Lists of those targeted for death surface and disappear in campus corridors.

In the past two years, at least 27 professors, students and administrators have been killed, usually gunned down near their homes, according to the National Union of University Workers and Employees.

The most recent student to die here was Miguel Puello Polo, a 24-year-old representative to the university’s governing board. He was shot five times in front of his home by two men on a motorcycle, who called out his name before killing him.

As professors censor their own lectures and students abandon organizations that could be perceived as leftist, the paramilitary campaign is choking off leftist activism.

Professors and students, who rarely give their names and stop all conversation when a stranger enters a room, say the paramilitary campaign has stifled debate, changed the way they teach and learn, and undermined the universities’ traditional role as a wide-open sanctuary of free expression.

“In class, we take so much care in trying not to be seen promoting a leftist idea. We don’t know who might be the enemy in our classroom,” said a professor in the language department for the past 12 years.

The United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, as the 8,000-member paramilitary army is called, has declared many university figures “military targets.”

More than 180 students have been threatened with death, according to the Colombian Association of University Centers.

In the past two years, students, professors, and university union leaders have been killed at four universities along the volatile north coast; in Bogota, the capital; and at the University of Antioquia in Medellin, where one student and six professors have been slain.

Earlier this month the AUC announced its arrival, through a campaign of bathroom graffiti in student and professor lounges, at the University of Cartagena.

“The risk of restricting opinion is one of the greatest to the university,” said Elvira Chois, vice rector for academics at the University of the Atlantic, where she was also a student. “While we don’t know the origins of the violence, it has led to perhaps too much prudence in expressing opinions, our fundamental right.”

No university has been harder hit than the University of the Atlantic in this industrial port city on Colombia’s north coast.

A utilitarian grey concrete block clogged with book kiosks and leftist murals, the school draws its 17,000 students from six northern provinces. Since January 2000, eight students and professors have been killed.

Most of the students are the provincial poor, the target audience of leftist guerrilla groups, and the region has been fiercely contested by guerrillas and the growing paramilitary forces for the past few years.

Some of the worst massacres by paramilitary forces have been in towns where the university expects to attract students.

Prof. Jose Barrios, who has taught law for 26 years, said the university is a “big mirror that reflects all of the country’s frustrations.”

Garish murals of fallen leftist leaders cover the school’s entrance hall and courtyard: Che Guevara, the Argentine-born revolutionary who fought with Fidel Castro in Cuba; Jacobo Arenas, a founder of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the country’s largest leftist guerrilla group; and alumnus Jose Antequera, a leftist student leader who was killed in Bogota a decade ago.

For decades, the National Liberation Army (ELN), Colombia’s other main guerrilla group, has had success recruiting from Atlantic and other public universities, where its Cuban-style communist ideology has had more resonance than the FARC’s rural orientation.

Whether the ELN is still recruiting here is a moot point, because its tradition of doing so has made almost everyone a target for the right-wing forces vying for the same young hearts and minds.

Source: Washington Post

US State Department encourages anti-communist coalition in Nicaragua

Washington, DC, May 31— A top State Department official flew to Nicaragua on Thursday carrying an admonition to moderate parties to rally around a single presidential candidate to keep Daniel Ortega, a former president and an ally of Cuba, from returning to office.

The Reagan administration helped finance anti-communist rebels who fought Ortega and his Sandinista National Liberation Front, contending that his government was attempting to promote revolution elsewhere in Central America.

Lino Gutierrez, the No. 2 official in the State Department’s western hemisphere bureau, was planning to warn anti-Sandinista parties that their fragmentation could deliver the Nov. 5 election to Ortega, allowing the country to slip backward, said a senior official, asking not to be identified.

Gutierrez is a former US ambassador to Nicaragua.

Peter Romero, who heads the State Department’s western hemisphere affairs bureau, said there is no indication from Sandinista rhetoric that “they would behave any differently from the 1980’s” if they were to regain power.

The two major anti-Sandinista parties formed an alliance three weeks ago in hopes of heading off a Sandinista victory. The administration hopes other parties will join the alliance, whose candidate is Enrique Bolano of the ruling Liberal Constitutionalist Party. A nationwide poll in late April showed the Sandinistas leading by 7 points in presidential and congressional elections.

Ortega ruled Nicaragua for 11 years. He won a presidential election in 1984 that was criticized as unfair by the Reagan administration, then was defeated in 1990 by a coalition of parties led by Violetta Chamorro. The current president, Arnoldo Aleman, was elected in 1996.

Gutierrez was expected to urge anti-Sandinista party leaders to close ranks behind a single candidate, much as they did in 1990.

His mission to Nicaragua comes days ahead of a visit to Costa Rica by Secretary of State Colin Powell, who will attend the annual foreign ministers meeting of the Organization of American States.

The Reagan administration contended that Ortega, with the help of Cuba and the Soviet Union, tried to export his revolution through support for leftist rebels in El Salvador. The administration took steps to form an anti-Sandinista guerrilla movement, known as the Contras, not long after taking office.

In Reagan’s second term, it was discovered that top aides were using profits from secret weapons sales to Iran to help fund the Contras after Congress decided to deny assistance to them.

Source: Associated Press

Chilean judge seeks Kissinger testimony

Santiago, Chile, June 4— Chilean judge Juan Guzman said Monday afternoon he will solicit written testimony from former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger concerning his knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the death of US citizen Charles Horman in September, 1973.

Horman’s widow Joyce brought legal action in Chile late last year seeking an investigation into the death of her husband, which occurred just days after a military coup installed Gen. Augusto Pinochet as dictator. In her petition she asked that Judge Guzman question both Kissinger and former military dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet about her husband’s fate.

Guzman ruled Monday against the request to interrogate Pinochet but said he is preparing questions to be sent to Kissinger in the United States.

Horman’s death in Chile’s national soccer stadium was memorialized by the Costa-Garvas film “Missing” starring Jack Lemmon. The film and other accounts suggest that Horman was killed because he knew of direct US involvement in the coup and that his death, at the hand of Chile’s military, occurred only after US intelligence officials had signed off on the decision.

Kissinger has been in great demand recently for his alleged involvement in human rights violations occurring in South America during the 1970’s when military governments ruled the continent and the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union was at its height.

Last week the former US foreign policy leader refused a summons from French Judge Roger le Loire to discuss his alleged involvement in “Operation Condor.” Operation Condor is the name given to intelligence collaboration among Southern Cone military regimes which resulted in the death of numerous dissidents, mostly leftists, who opposed the military governments. Operation Condor was supposedly headed by Chilean secret police leader Gen. Manuel Contreras, recently released from a Chilean jail after serving a seven year sentence as intellectual author of the 1976 car bomb assassination of Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier and aide Ronnie Moffit in Washington, DC.

Source: United Press International

United States increases its military presence in Ecuador

By Neil Wiese

May 30— The United States is to double the size of its military presence in Ecuador despite growing concerns in Congress about the direction of America’s drug war in the region.

The expanded US air base at Manta - on Ecuador’s Pacific coast - will be home to 400 US military personnel beginning in October, allowing them to conduct anti-drug and spy missions as far north as the Caribbean.

A recent poll shows 65% of Ecuadorans believe the US presence poses a threat to their nation.

Some Ecuadoran lawmakers say the base is being used to help fight guerrillas in neighboring Colombia -- a fear echoed by some of their US counterparts.

US spy flights in Colombia and Peru remain suspended pending the outcome of an investigation into last month’s fatal shootdown of an American civilian aircraft by the Peruvian military -- supported by a US spy flight.

Source: Weekly News Update on the Americas