Train carrying nuclear waste faces massive protest in Germany

Anti-nuclear protesters staged blockades along the route of a shipment of radioactive waste to a dump in Gorleben, Germany, on Sun., Nov. 11, 2001.

By Castor Boi

Nov. 11— Anti-nuclear protesters have staged blockades along the route a shipment of radioactive waste will take today to a long-disputed dump in Gorleben (northern Germany). The nuclear waste carried in ‘CASTOR’ containers (cask for storage and transportation of radioactive waste) left the French nuclear plant at La Hague on Sunday evening.

More than 200 farmers set up a blockade with tractors near the German town of Dannenberg on a street the nuclear waste will have to pass. Dannenberg is the site of a rail terminal from which the waste containers will be transported by road to a dump at Gorleben, long a focus of Germany’s anti-nuclear movement. Thousands of people staged a series of blockades and non-violent protests elsewhere in the region.

An estimated 10,000 police officers are trying to prevent any anti-nuclear protests. Meanwhile, local residents from the Gorleben area and anti-nuclear protesters are determined to stop the deadly shipment which is already on its way from France. The nuclear train is expected to cross the French-German border tonight.

On Saturday, Nov. 10, about 10,000 people demonstrated in Lüneburg against the latest shipment of radioactive waste to the nuclear waste dump. Since then, protests have spread around Germany and especially in the ‘Wendland’ region, a two-hour drive southeast of Hamburg.

Protesters carrying placards with the names of nearby villages broke through police lines near Dannenberg and stormed across open fields, reaching a road where the shipment is expected to pass early this week.

“When the nuclear waste comes to our region we will use any methods of non-violent action to stop this deadly shipment and send it back,” said Wolfgang Ehmke of the local residents action group. It is just six months ago that the last shipment went to Gorleben with protesters chained to tracks and blocking roads delaying the arrival for 24 hours and police using heavy force to bring it to its final destination. Authorities are keen to prevent a repeat of protests that disrupted the few waste transports during the last few years. Now a court has banned gatherings within 50 meters of the shipment’s route.

German power companies and the government agreed this year to phase out nuclear power plants. But this will take about 35 years -- too slow for anti-nuclear activists and people living near the Gorleben dump site. Germany sends spent nuclear fuel to France for reprocessing under contracts that oblige it to take back the waste. Protesters maintain that the shipping and reprocessing of this waste is unsafe. The “reprocessing” is undertaken by COGEMA in La Hague, France, a nuclear facility under pressure to close due to its status as the second-highest emitter of nuclear contamination in the world. Reprocessing is an unnecessary and highly contaminating industrial process.

These transports will be repeated many times over the next several years as there are thousands of tons of German nuclear waste still stored at La Hague. At the same time, the German government keeps sending shipments to France for reprocessing.

Anti-nuclear protesters in Germany demand that the social democrat-green government stop any nuclear transports immediately.

Source: Independent Media Center: www.indymedia.org

Fox pardons environmental activists

By Diego Cevallos

Mexico City, Mexico, Nov. 8 (IPS)— Two Mexican environmentalists, declared prisoners of conscience by human rights watchdog Amnesty International, were pardoned Thursday by President Vicente Fox.

Announcing the release from prison of Rodolfo Montiel and Teodoro Cabrera, Fox said the decision was based on the pledges assumed by his government to improve respect for human rights and justice, when he took office in December.

Montiel and Cabrera, farmers who founded an environmental group fighting commercial logging in the mountains of the southern state of Guerrero, were arrested in May 1999 by army troops. According to their attorneys, they were tortured into signing confessions and convicted on trumped-up drug and weapons charges.

While in prison, the activists received several awards, including the prestigious Goldman prize for environmental activism.

Semiliterate and poor, Montiel and Cabrera were sentenced to six and 10 years in prison, respectively, on charges of planting marijuana and illegal weapons possession.

Activists said their release was linked to the international outcry caused by the Oct. 19 murder of prominent human rights lawyer Digna Ochoa in her Mexico City office.

Ochoa represented Montiel and Cabrera in the early stages of the case against them, and had received a number of death threats.

The Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez human rights center, where Ochoa worked, blames her murder on members of the military and business interests with ties to logging activities in the state of Guerrero.

None of the appeals presented by the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez center’s lawyers for a review of the case against Cabrera and Montiel were admitted by the judges.

“Taking into account the petitions from various social organizations...the opinion issued by the United Nations working group on arbitrary detention, as well as the state of health of the two convicted men, I have given instructions for their release,” Fox told a news briefing Thursday.

In the wake of Ochoa’s murder, the Fox administration received a number of messages condemning the killing, including declarations from the US State Department and the European Union.

The international outrage over her murder also drew new attention to the case of Montiel and Cabrera.

After Ochoa’s murder, the government called on representatives of the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez human rights center, which is run by the Jesuits, to help set up a joint human rights panel.

In their first conversations, the delegates to the panel agreed that a presidential pardon would be issued to release Montiel and Cabrera.

The government also provided special police protection to five leading human rights activists who have received death threats.

The first thing Montiel and Cabrera did after their release from prison in the state of Guerrero was travel to the capital to testify before the Mexico City Attorney-General’s Office in connection with the Ochoa case.

African NGOs vow to join anti-globalization forces

By Judith Achieng

Dakar, Senegal, Nov. 7 (IPS)— African activists have vowed to join the growing forces in the south seeking to promote social justice and fight globalization, which they blame for the continent’s economic misery.

The activists launched a new initiative in the Senegalese capital, Dakar, last week to exert pressure on governments to be more accountable to their citizens.

The initiative also aims to mobilize resistance against international economic conditions being pursued by donor countries and institutions.

The initiative, dubbed the African Social Forum (ASF), will hold its first conference in Bamako, Mali, early next year, shortly before the World Social Forum (WSF) which will take place in Porto Allegro, Brazil.

The forum, according to its organizers, will bring together civil society and other social movements to discus alternatives for a “better and just” world.

“With the international financial institutions and the World Trade Organization (WTO), which are their instruments, they usurp decision-making power and weaken democratic institutions and marginalize the citizen. They endanger life, the environment, and the sovereignty of the people,” said a joint ASF/WSF declaration at the end of a five-day meeting in Dakar.

One key issue to be discussed at the forum is the armed conflict in Africa, which is affecting the continent’s 700 million people.

“Today, one of the most salient features of the world is marginalization of ordinary citizens both in national political systems and at the international level,” noted Aminata Toure, a Mali resident and organizer of the ASF.

The forum is also expected to demand cancellation of Africa’s external debt (amounting to more than 300 billion dollars), reparations for all human and environmental prejudices against African people through centuries of slavery, and a stop to what they described as the “frenzy” of liberalization being pursued by western donors.

The ASF meeting took place concurrently with the preparatory meeting of the WSF, also to be held early next year in Porto Allegro. More than 60,000 participants are expected to attend the forum.

At the first WSF forum held earlier this year in Porto Allegro, up to 17,000 representatives of social movements from the south declared that “another world — without hunger, poverty or war — is possible”.

Organizers, however, insist that the next WSF must take into account the current context of deteriorating global political and human relations.

“The future of the human race is not based on fundamentalism or US military action. The world is waiting for a new solution,” said Carlos Tiburcio de Oliveira, a Brazilian delegate. “The world is waiting for new proposals based on social justice that can lead the world to peace.”

“We must underline the fact that ‘another world is possible’ to oppose war and violence. Victims in a war are always innocent people,” said Juan Moreno, a trade unionist from Spain.

Participants at the Dakar meeting also complained about control of media by the United States and its allies, which they say have reduced citizens’ power to communicate, especially after the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.

“The monopoly of communication does not give a chance for other alternative voices of peace to be heard,” said French activist Benard Pinaud.

Rights groups cite Israel torture

By Steve Weizman

Jerusalem, Nov. 11— Israeli authorities torture Palestinian detainees regularly despite a 1999 Supreme Court ban on the practice, three local and international human rights groups said in a report Sunday.

The report cites nine affidavits by Arab detainees saying they were interrogated with methods expressly forbidden under the 1999 ruling or by existing Israeli or international law. Israel said the ban on torture is still in effect and that alleged violations are being investigated. It also says that security forces sometimes need to extract information quickly from suspects who may have knowledge of an impending attack.

An Israeli government report on the issue and the response by the human rights groups will be submitted to an 11-day meeting of the UN Committee Against Torture in Geneva, due to begin Monday.

The joint document by the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, or PCATI, the Palestinian rights group LAW and the Swiss-based World Organization Against Torture contends that the September 1999 Supreme Court ruling has been regularly flouted, particularly since the outbreak of fighting between Israel and Palestine in September 2000. Overall, the groups say they have received about 20 reports of violations since the ruling was passed.

“Torture and other forms of ill-treatment are still widely used against Palestinian detainees, both in GSS (General Security Service) interrogation facilities and by members of the Israeli army and police,” it says. The GSS is also known by its Hebrew acronym, Shin Bet.

Among the violations listed in the report are sleep deprivation, shackling a prisoner to a chair in painful positions for prolonged periods, the use of bad-smelling hoods, playing deafening sounds and beating, slapping and kicking.

“They ordered me to go outside, despite the freezing cold,” Rami Zaul, a 16-year-old interrogated a year ago, said in an affidavit. “One of them grabbed my shirt and poured cold water on me. Afterward he forced me to undress and I remained in my short-sleeved shirt and they continued to pour freezing water on my head.”

Zaul said he was then forced, while handcuffed, to drag a wooden beam with one of his interrogators standing on it. “When I got tired and dropped it I was beaten hard,” he said.

Zaul said he was accused of preparing fire bombs and of throwing stones at Israelis. Rights workers documenting his case said they don’t not know whether he has been released.

A draft of the Israeli government report prepared for the UN panel said that “torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” of detainees are strictly forbidden by the Israeli courts and alleged violations are being investigated.

An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, claimed that in many instances such complaints were unjustified, exaggerated and unsupported by medical evidence.

Israel’s security service has issued a directive to all its personnel ordering strict compliance with the 1999 court ruling, the government report said.

“If any investigator will be found to have used physical pressure against a suspect during an investigation he will be disciplined and where necessary will be dismissed,” it said.

However, PCATI said the inquiries are carried out by Shin Bet agents and that no interrogator has been tried in a criminal court.

Source: Associated Press

Activists vow to shut down G-20

By Dennis Bueckert

Ottawa, Canada, Nov. 9— Activists are threatening to shut down the G-20 meeting which opens in Ottawa next Friday, and protest organizers are preparing for the possibility of arrests and injuries. While most protest groups say they are committed to peaceful tactics, some anarchists are striking a more militant tone.

“We propose that we attempt to shut down the IMF/WB/G-20 meetings as well as we can, by snake marching militantly through the downtown core of Ottawa,” says a Toronto group called The Black Touta.

The Ottawa conference -- the first major meeting of the top global finance organizations since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks -- is seen as a crucial test of the politics of dissent in the new political environment.

“In the aftermath of Sept. 11, the World Bank, the IMF and the G-20 have not stopped or slowed their agenda of injustice, racism and despair,” says the web site of Global Democracy Ottawa, the coordinating group. “Now more than ever we must vocally and actively work to tear down the systems of death and oppression that surround us and lift up a vision for a better world.”

Global Democracy Ottawa has set up an elaborate organization to provide protesters with tactical training, coordination and legal and medical services. “We’ll be tracking who’s been arrested, whether they have special medical needs, and providing jail support so their families, their affinity groups, know where they are,” said Sarah Dover, an activist on the legal committee. Volunteers are being trained in first aid in case there are injuries.

A major new element for the anti-globalization movement since Sept. 11 is the introduction of federal anti-terror legislation, which many protesters fear will be used against them.

“Once the anti-terrorism bill passes, the RCMP will have the power to wiretap anyone’s phone, or read anyone’s e-mail, just because they suspect them to be a terrorist,” the group Black Bloc says on its Web site. It also proposes to shut down the meeting. “In Ottawa, we have the potential to dictate a message to the masses,” it says. “When people see that we continue to mobilize even during ‘war-time,’ it does nothing but strengthen the power of our collective voice. Solidarity is our strongest weapon against the inevitable police repression.”

Source: Canadian Press

Massive anti-war demonstrations in Greece

Coordinated anti-war demonstrations took place in every major Greek city on Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2001 .

Athens, Greece, Nov. 9— On Tuesday, November 6, coordinated anti-war demonstrations took place in every major city in Greece. The protests, supported by a whole spectrum of left-wing parties, groups, and many anti-war coalitions that have been created since Sept. 11, were massive and vibrant, living up to the expectations of the organizers.

In Athens, more than 10,000 people marched to the US Embassy in a passionate rejection of the US-led bombing of Afghaninstan. With great energy, people chanted “Americans, killers of the people” and “Bush, fascist, murderer.” Outside of the embassy, hundreds of riot police were standing in full gear, ready for a repetition of a 1999 attack on the US Embassy by demonstrators opposing the war on Yugoslavia. This time, no such confrontations were reported.

In Thessaloniki, many thousands marched to the US consulate. Outside the consulate, smoke flares were set off and a group of women lay down on the street, in an act representing the killing of innocents in Afghanistan. Some participants burned American flags.

Thousands more demonstrated in Patras and every other major Greek city. A massive mobilization is scheduled to take place on Nov. 17, the anniversary of the 1973 Greek student uprising against the US-imposed dictatorship. There have been anti-imperialist demonstrations commemorating the date every year since, but this time organizers feel that they will be bigger and even more enraged.

Source: IMC Athens

Bush thwarted FBI probe of bin Ladens

London, Great Britain, Nov. 7— FBI agents in the United States probing relatives of Saudi-born terror suspect Osama bin Laden before Sept. 11 were told to back off soon after George W. Bush became president, the BBC has reported. The BBC’s Newsnight current affairs program on Tuesday, Nov. 6 said that Bush at one point had a number of connections with Saudi Arabia’s prominent bin Laden family.

It added there was a suspicion that the US strategic interest in Saudi Arabia, which has the world’s biggest oil reserve, blunted its inquiries into individuals with suspected terrorist connections — so long as the US was safe.

Newsnight reported it had seen secret documents from an FBI probe into the Sept. 11 terror attacks that showed that at least two other US-based members of the bin Laden family are suspected to have links with a possible terrorist organization.

The program said it had obtained evidence that the FBI was on the trail of bin Laden family members living in United States before, as well as after, the terrorist attacks.

Newsnight said Bush made his first million 20 years ago with an oil company partly funded by the chief US representative of Salem bin Laden, Osama’s brother.

Bush also received fees as director of a subsidiary of Carlyle Corporation, a little-known private company which in just a few years since its founding has become one of America’s biggest defense contractors, and his father, George Bush Sr., is also a paid advisor, the program said.

The connection became embarrassing when it was revealed that the bin Ladens held a stake in Carlyle, sold just after Sept. 11, it added.

Source: Agence France Presse

Pakistan police kill 4 in anti-US protest

By Stephen Farrell

Islamabad, Pakistan, Nov. 10— Four protesters were shot and killed by police in Pakistan yesterday during a national strike to protest against the military government’s support for the US bombing in Afghanistan.

Markets were shut and streets nearly deserted in many towns after midday prayers, with police and paramilitaries under orders to quell dissent while President Musharraf is out of the country, visiting London and Washington. Machine guns were mounted on rooftops in Quetta and tear gas was fired at demonstrators in Karachi and Peshawar, with suspected “troublemakers” arrested the evening before.

The worst violence occurred in the central town of Dera Ghazi Khan, where 4,000 anti-US protesters belonging to the radical religious party Jamiat-i-Ulema Islam blocked the main road. When police moved them on, they blocked the railway line, stopping the Lahore-Quetta express from leaving.

Witnesses said the police beat protesters and used tear gas before opening fire with live rounds when the crowd threw stones. Four people were injured, doctors said. Protest organizers said later that they had seized four policemen and would not release them until the authorities held an investigation into the shootings. Elsewhere, anti-US protesters marched through the bazaars of Peshawar chanting pro-Taliban slogans and shutting shops that had defied an order to close. In Rawalpindi, dozens of people were arrested for burning tires and disrupting public transport. The government had taken extensive precautions, banning the use of loudspeakers for political purposes at mosques and rounding up populist clerics in advance. It had also declared a national holiday to mark the birthday of Pakistan’s national poet, Allama Iqbal, thereby keeping government offices closed and traffic off the streets.

Source: The Times (UK): www.thetimes.co.uk