Argentina: protests gaining in strength and organization

Agentines gather in Centenario Park, Buenos Aires, Jan. 27, 2002.

By Viviana Alonso

Buenos Aires, Argentina, Jan. 23 (IPS)— The ongoing protests in crisis-stricken Argentina are becoming increasingly organized and their targets increasingly defined as the days go by and the lack of jobs becomes more acute, the peso continues to sink, and bank deposits remain frozen.

The spontaneous street mobilizations triggered by the collapse of the economy, which toppled two presidents in less than two weeks in late December, have begun to be led by groups with specific interests or neighborhood organizations.

The protests are becoming more organized as the caretaker government of Eduardo Duhalde attempts to rekindle economic activity, restructure the financial and banking system, and carry out the shift in monetary policy as painlessly as possible.

An international technical commission will work with the economic team of Duhalde, who was designated president by Congress on Jan. 1 to complete the four-year term -- until December 2003 -- of Fernando de la Rúa, who stepped down on Dec 20 after just two years in office.

The commission is made up of the president of Brazil’s Central Bank, Arminio Fraga; his counterpart from Chile, Carlos Massat; Miguel Mansera Aguaya, the head of Mexico’s Central Bank during that country’s late 1994 to 1995 peso crisis; and a representative of the United States Treasury Department.

The team of international advisers formed after a phone call between Argentine Economy Minister Jorge Remes Lenicov and Horst Koehler, managing-director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), who urged Argentina to come up with a “sustainable economic plan’’ to pull out of the crisis and recuperate international confidence.

Among the questions to be worked out by the government and its advisers are the design of a timetable for the release of the deposits of thousands of account-holders, aimed at preventing a run on banks, and the adjustment of the economy to a devalued peso after 10 years of a currency board scheme that pegged the local currency to the dollar.

The middle classes, affected by the “corralito”, or restrictions on cash withdrawals from banks adopted on Dec. 3 and tightened this month, have taken to the streets over the past month, joining the protests of traditional social and political groups.

The spontaneous “cacerolazos’’ or “pot-and-pan-banging protests’’ in middle-class neighborhoods have begun to converge with broader demonstrations staged by experienced associations of retirees and the unemployed, trade unions and other social groupings.

Workers from 76 public hospitals in the central province of Buenos Aires held a simultaneous strike Tuesday in defense of the public health system, demanding the materials and drugs needed to treat patients, and calling for the payment of back wages.

“We have no alcohol, gauze, or syringes,’’ said a nurse at the Posadas hospital. “What is going to happen to the really needy if they can’t even come to a public hospital for assistance?’’

The primary issues of the protests in greater Buenos Aires, which is home to one-third of the country’s 36.6 million people, are demands for jobs, subsidies for the unemployed, and the lifting of the “corralito’’, as well as complaints from people with mortgages in dollars who fear losing their homes due to the steep devaluation of the peso.

The demonstrators, who in early January gathered in the streets or outside banks, have begun to hold massive neighborhood assemblies, like the ones now organized every Sunday afternoon in the Centenario Park in central Buenos Aires.

The protesters gather around signs identifying their neighborhoods to discuss specific issues and demands, like “non- payment of the foreign debt’’, opposition to the “corralito’’ and the conversion of bank deposits in dollars to pesos, and protests against the cuts in public sector wages and pensions adopted in the last stretch of the de la Rúa administration.

The protesters are also demanding the resignation of all of the members of the Supreme Court, accused of letting former officials charged with corruption off easy. They point, for example, to a ruling that released former president Carlos Menem (1989-99), who was under house arrest in connection with the trafficking of arms to Croatia and Ecuador.

“They are stealing our future’’ is one of the phrases frequently repeated by demonstrators, highlighting the prevailing sense of uncertainty and desperation.

The savings of retirees, workers and small business owners, which were deposited in dollars when the convertibility law or currency peg was in effect, are trapped in the banks.

The often meager life savings of families have now been converted to pesos at the exchange rate of 1.4 to the dollar, used for official transactions. (The peso is trading at between 1.7 and 2.0 against the dollar in a parallel free market.)

The collapse of the economy has also driven the public health system into ruin.

Retirees who scrape by on tiny pensions are unable to withdraw their savings to buy medicine. Low-income hemophiliacs, diabetics, and other patients with chronic conditions, who depended on the care they received free of charge in the public health system, now have nowhere to turn.

Small and medium sized businesses have been forced to close by the breakdown of the chain of payments and the consequent lack of funds to purchase inputs and pay their employees.

Another group hit hard by the crisis --and especially the devaluation -- are mortgage-holders who purchased their homes by taking out loans of over $100,000. They have now put aside their pots and pans and are using their keys to protest instead.

This group of protesters, whose debts were not converted to pesos, is already 5,000- 7,000-strong in Buenos Aires alone, and is planning a nationwide mobilization on Jan. 30, known as “el llaverazo’’ or the “key banging protest.’’

The head of Argentina’s Association for the Defense of Consumers and Users, Sandra González, said a lawsuit had been filed “demanding the conversion to pesos of all mortgages, whether they are owed to banks or other financial institutions.

“We are demanding equality before the law,’’ said González, who pointed out that more than three million people have debts in dollars to construction firms and private finance companies, and “run the risk of losing their homes if the government does not take a hand in the matter.’’

Meanwhile, professionals from all sectors have called a public assembly in a Buenos Aires square to draft proposed solutions to the state’s administrative problems, which are to be presented to the government.

While the neighborhood demonstrations and protests by specific interest groups gain strength, the unemployed, represented by more experienced organizations like the Corriente Clasista y Combativa (Classist and Combative Current) continue to mobilize in eight provinces, while throwing up blockades along the highways leading into the capital.

“We do not bang on pots or pans, because we don’t have any. We have nothing to cook. We don’t bang our keys because we have no homes. We are not demanding the payment of back wages because we have no work,’’ said a young leader of the “piqueteros’’ - the name given the protesters in the “unemployed movement’’ due to their practice of staging roadblocks.

“Nor do we have money in the bank, although we feel solidarity with those who have been affected by the ‘corralito’, because if their savings are in the banks, [the banks] have to give it to them,’’ he added.

He agreed that the popular mobilizations were growing, and becoming a more organized, ongoing phenomenon. However, he complained that most of the groups only focused on their specific concerns.

“We show solidarity, but we believe we have to take to the streets together, because if every group mobilizes only around the things that affect them in particular, we aren’t going to find any solutions,’’ he said.

Bolivian coca farmers rise up in protest

By Raúl Pierri

Montevideo, Uruguay, Jan. 25 (IPS)— Bolivian farmers launched a massive protest Friday against parliament’s decision to expel deputy Evo Morales, a leader of the country’s coca growers. The lawmakers claim he incited violence during disturbances last week that led to the deaths of a soldier and a police officer.

Hundreds of farmers set up roadblocks in Bolivia’s central Chapare region, particularly along the road connecting the cities of Santa Cruz de la Sierra and Cochabamba, a route that handles more than half of the country’s foreign trade.

The government deployed a hefty military force in the Chapare, triggering sporadic armed clashes that left several wounded. The army detained Filemón Escobar, of the Six Federations of the Tropics of Cochabamba, an organization of more than 35,000 subsistence farming families presided by Morales.

The removal of Morales from parliament, decided Jan. 23 by the Chamber of Deputies, “is going to throw the country into chaos,” said Luis Cutipa, vice president of the Six Federations. “The entire tropic of Cochabamba has been militarized and there will be more roadblocks. We expect that all the peasant federations will join in the next few hours.”

The relatives of the soldier and the police officer killed Jan. 18 in the coca-growing zone of the Chapare accused Morales before the Chamber of Deputies Ethics Commission of being the mastermind behind the crimes. Three farmers and two other soldiers also died in the disturbances.

The coca growers, or “cocaleros,” of the Chapare are demanding the right to freely grow and market the leaf, which is the raw material for making cocaine, their principal means of subsistence — as well as certain legal products, such as tea and liquor.

The legislators censured Morales for violating Article 20 of the parliament’s rules on ethics, charging that he incited violent acts, threatened the government and promoted subversion.

After a seven-hour session, 104 deputies voted in favor of the expulsion, 14 voted against, and one abstained. The loss of his seat and special parliamentary protections exposes Morales to criminal legal action.

Labor unions and peasant farmer organizations accused the five main political parties, which set aside their difference to approve Morales’ ejection, of orchestrating a campaign against the cocaleros and the poor in general.

The Chapare district elected Morales to the deputy post in 1997. Following the legislative decision, he blamed the government for last week’s deaths and announced a hunger strike in protest.

“I wasn’t expelled for being corrupt, a criminal or a paramilitary. I feel proud that the political class has ejected me,” he stated.

Morales comes from a native Aymara farming family, from western Bolivia, near the city of Oruro. He moved to the Chapare in the late 1970s to take up coca farming after the closing of the tin mines in his home region left 30,000 families without a livelihood.

Morales continued his hunger strike Friday when he voluntarily appeared to present his statement before the public prosecutor of the Cochabamba police.

Meanwhile, the Confederation of Peasants held their “Land and Territory” congress in the central city of Sucre to decide on new measures to protest the decision of the Chamber of Deputies.

“This congress will draw up a political-revolutionary document in support of colleague Evo Morales,” said the president of the powerful Bolivian rural workers union, Felipe Quispe, widely known as “El Malku” (condor, in the Aymara language).

“We are profoundly angered by this latest act. We will not announce our measures due to security reasons. We are known for managing our strategies ‘under the poncho’,” he said.

The La Paz-based daily ‘La Prensa’ said Friday that Morales could become the fourth of the top union leaders to face criminal legal proceedings as a result of activity at the helm of social movements.

The other three are Oscar Olivera, accused of public instigation to commit a crime, Angel Durán, for allegedly masterminding a homicide, and Quispe, whose legal proceedings are under way for his activities with the insurgent Tupac Katari Guerrilla Army in the early 1990s.

The Bolivian government is moving ahead with a United States-supported plan to eradicate 17,000 hectares of the illicit coca fields.

Under the government’s aggressive eradication efforts, coca production fell 33 percent from 1999 to 2000, when the total area planted with the bush was 14,600 hectares, according to US figures.

The farmers’ threat of roadblocks and further protests was rejected by President Jorge Quiroga, who said he would not engage in dialogue with those who assassinated the uniformed men last week, and he stressed that the guilty parties would be brought to justice.

On Thursday, Quiroga received Peru’s President Alejandro Toledo, who is in the country on an official visit until Saturday.

Toledo offered the Quiroga government the use of the Peruvian ports of Ilo and Matarani for exports of Bolivian natural gas to the United States and Mexico, a six-billion-dollar deal that Chile also hopes to cash in on.

Discontent as former IMF chief named to UN conference

By Akhilesh Upadhyay

United Nations, Jan. 22 (IPS)— United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s appointment of former International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Michel Camdessus to oversee the “Financing for Development” initiative has drawn stinging criticism from grassroots groups, who say the move constitutes callous disregard for their experiences and a ringing endorsement of market-friendly orthodoxy.

Proponents of compassionate globalization accused Camdessus, who in 2000 stepped down as IMF managing director after 13 years in office, of bullying developing countries with a combination of bad economic advice, which devastated their economies, and harsh policy requirements imposed as conditions for bail-out funds.

“Camdessus is an unrepentant free marketeer,” says Arjun Karki, who represents Asian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) at the ongoing preparatory meeting for the International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD).

“All over the world, more and more people have actually turned poor due to policies dictated by the IMF and World Bank,” said Karki. “How could the Secretary-General appoint a person who as IMF chief has been responsible for the current mess, including the one now in Argentina?”

Alongside Camdessus, Annan has chosen South African Finance Minister Trevor Manuel to oversee the FfD process, which encompasses a number of issues including debt relief and aid levels. It is generally accepted that more of each is needed, but this stance has been a difficult proposition even at the best of times and now prospects appear bleak amid deepening recession.

Annan’s chief spokesman, Fred Eckhard, defended the appointment of Camdessus, saying his stature and expertise were unquestionable.

“While the number of countries failing is going up, institutions like the IMF continue their same old macro-economic policies,” said Gemma Adaba, UN representative of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions. “Unless there’s a paradigm shift, we will be in a bind. But I don’t see that happening any time soon.”

People like Camdessus like to talk about poverty alleviation and increased spending on education and health, said Adaba, yet they continue to demand strict adherence to conditions that clearly are at odds with these stated goals.

“He is not a fortunate choice for developing countries. His appointment doesn’t send a signal to developing countries (from the UN), that ‘we have come to a moment where we want to change’,” added Adaba.

Yet, the world must change, say Karki, Adaba, and other critics of corporate-led globaliazation. They see the protests that now routinely accompany international financial and trade conferences, and summits of corporate and government leaders from wealthy countries, as ample proof that millions of people around the world view the market — as currently designed and imposed — as a hostile and exclusionary force.

Camdessus was supported in his bid to head the IMF by some developing countries, because of his role in debt reschedulings. In the last year or so of his tenure at the IMF, he took to publicly reminding wealthy nations of their unfulfilled promises to increase aid to poor countries and urged them to open their markets to exports from those countries. Not doing so, he argued, was tantamount to “giving with one hand but taking away with the other.”

At the IMF, Camdessus was a lightning rod for criticism. Shortly before his retirement in February 2000, he was struck in the face by a pie hurled by US activist Robert Naiman during a meeting in Thailand organized by the UN Conference on Trade and Development. Naiman cited outrage with the IMF’s policies under Camdessus as the reason for targeting the outgoing IMF chief.

However, the IMF also has been accused of being in lockstep with the United States, which controls the single largest share of IMF board votes, nearly one-fifth. This is enough to effectively veto any significant policy shift.

Bush vows “Peace through victory”; civilians die

Compiled by Sean Marquis

Jan. 30— In his weekly radio address prior to his state of the union speech, US President George W. Bush said America would not rest until worldwide terrorism had been defeated.

In his speech the president said “We’ll protect our people in every way necessary and we will carry on the campaign against global terror until we achieve our goal: The peace that comes from victory.”

Bush and the US military continue to wage war for “the peace that comes from victory”, and continue to kill Afghani civilians in the process.

On Jan. 26, Afghans accused US forces of attacking a school and killing people sheltered there in a raid that the Pentagon claimed targeted Taliban fighters.

According to Pentagon accounts, special forces attacked two compounds Wednesday night at Hazar Qadam, about 60 miles north of Kandahar, and killed about 15 people in a firefight. One US soldier was wounded. Twenty-seven prisoners were taken.

US officials initially described the target as an al-Qaida “leadership facility,” but later said that the people there were Taliban fighters. They described the compounds, located a short distance from one another, as a munitions store holding hundreds of mortar rounds, rockets, rocket-propelled grenades and launchers, and more than 500,000 rounds of small-arms ammunition.

But villagers in Uruzgan province, where the raid took place, said that those killed were neither Taliban nor al-Qaida fighters, but local people sent to negotiate the surrender of weapons from Taliban in the area -- a program promoted by Hamid Karzai, the interim Prime Minister.

Demand for compensation

Victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist strikes in the United States handed over compensation claims to US officials on behalf of Afghan civilians who lost family or homes in Washington’s retaliatory bombing campaign in Afghanistan.

The handover was the culmination of an eight-day visit to Afghanistan by a group of four Americans who had family members killed in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Kelly Campbell, 29, whose brother-in-law Craig Amundson was killed in the Pentagon attack, said the group had met dozens of Afghan victims since they arrived in the country.

“We’ve met with people who have lost their loved ones to the US bombing, we’ve met children who’ve lost limbs to US cluster bombs, people whose homes were destroyed, who have no income, nowhere to go ... and do not know what to do next,” she told reporters.

“The United States government needs to take responsibility for the direct effect on these people’s lives,” she added.

Among those making a claim was Harafa Ahmad, who lost eight members of her family when her home was hit by a US bomb on Nov. 7.

She told reporters she had arrived on her own at the gates of the embassy but had been turned away by officials. “They treated me as a beggar,” she said.

The head of Global Exchange, the non-governmental organization which organized the visit, Medea Benjamin, handed over claims from 12 families to the commanding officer of the US Marines in Kabul, Captain Ferral Sullivan, at the US embassy on Jan. 22.

Afghanistan on shaky ground

Senior United Nations (UN) official Francesc Vendrell said there were “reasons for concern” over the security situation in Afghanistan.

“There are hundreds of thousands of people with weapons,” said Vendrell, deputy to the UN special envoy to Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi. “There are various armed groups who do not respond yet to central command.”

The International Security Assistance Force is limited to 4,500 troops and restricted to the Kabul area to protect the new interim government during its six-month lifespan.

In Kabul, where a night-time curfew is still in place, shots and explosions are often heard after dark. Residents reported three people murdered on Jan. 23 alone.

Last week “an incendiary device” exploded against one of the walls surrounding the tightly guarded United States embassy in Kabul, spokesman John Kincannon said.

A renegade army of 5,000 Taliban soldiers with 450 tanks, armored carriers and rocket propelled grenades, is locked in a tense stand-off with American special forces in Afghanistan.

The troops fled Kandahar with their commander and more than 100 senior Taliban figures in December after reneging on a surrender agreement. They have regrouped among villages in the mountainous region of Ghazni province, northwest of Kandahar.

“Extremely delicate and tense” negotiations are under way between representatives of Gul Agha Sherzai, Kandahar’s new Governor, US special forces and the Taliban commander in charge of the unit.

Afghan troops from Kandahar province are on high alert for possible military action against the allegedly Iranian-backed forces of Ismail Khan, the veteran warlord and Governor of the western city of Herat.

Sherzai’s commanders, and US Intelligence, have accused Iran of funneling cash and arms to Khan and his allies to stir up opposition to the new interim administration of Hamid Karzai in Kabul, and to the US presence in the region.

In the north reports continue of fighting between forces loyal to General Abdul Rashid Dostum -- a man who switched sides no less than six times during the Afghan civil war -- and Mohammed Daoud, two rival members of the Northern Alliance, over a remote district near the Tajikistan border.

The conflict has led two other warlords who claim a role in the city -- Commander Mohaqaq, a Hazari, and Commander Uftad Ata, a Tajik, to arm refugees loyal to them.

“The camps are now punctuated by small-arms fire as rival groups, armed by the warlords, battle each other for territory,” Haneef Ata, of the International Rescue Committee, said.

General Ghulam Nassery, Afghan minister in charge of peacekeeping, said: “Unless the camps are disarmed, Afghanistan could once again slide into civil war. I am ashamed to say, we need men who are not Afghans. We need more than 100,000 of them.”

The violence is further evidence that Afghanistan is rapidly devolving into the factionalism and warlordism that gripped the country a decade ago.

“Hamid Karzai has an impossible task,” said Rifaat Hussain, a professor of defense and strategic studies at the Qauid-i-Islam University in Pakistan. “The warlords are once more looking to create their own fiefdoms.”

US troops to Philippines

After much speculation the next phase of the US terror war has not gone to Somalia or Iraq, but to the Philippines.

Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s decision to allow the deployment of American troops in the restive south has created a political firestorm.

About 650 US troops -- some already having arrived in the country -- will go to the southern island of Basilan in Mindanao and join 1,200 Filipino soldiers in their mission to quell the extremist Muslim group Abu Sayyaf.

About 5,000 Philippine troops have been deployed in Basilan for months, but they have been unsuccessful.

The Abu Sayyaf, estimated to have less than 1,000 members, has been linked by the United States to the al-Qaida terrorist network of Osama bin Laden.

Critics, ranging from politicians to constitutional experts, say this presence of US soldiers is a violation of national sovereignty and is an ominous sign of foreign intervention.

Jovito Salonga, who was Senate president when the chamber ended a military bases agreement with the United States in 1991, decries the exercises as “a violation of the Constitution that bans foreign troops and foreign facilities in the Philippines."

To people like him, the sight of US soldiers on Philippine soil in relation to a local conflict brings back memories of the United States’ supported massacres and the country’s colonization by the US at the turn of the 20th century.

Many say the Abu Sayyaf are but bandits misusing Islam, and the bigger Muslim rebel groups have distanced themselves from it.

Sociologist and political analyst Randolf David stresses, ‘’This is a local war, and the Abu Sayyaf are local bandits. That Americans and other foreigners have been among their victims does not make them global terrorists. This is an internal problem that is being given an international dimension. Why?’’

Satur Ocampo, a leftist congressman and former spokesman of the Communist Party of the Philippines-National Democratic Front, the leftist umbrella group, said that ‘’this initial tie-up of military exercises, with actual military operations against the Abu Sayyaf, may expand to a wide scale [campaign].”

“We are on a defensive stance since we are holding negotiations with the government,” says Edi Kabalu, spokesman of the 12,500-strong Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which has been fighting for an Islamic state in the south for more than 20 years. “But in the event the US troops will be used against us, we are ready to adopt the necessary measures to defend ourselves,’’ he adds.

Arroyo has also had to allay fears after a statement made by US Senator Sam Brownback that “the Philippines is going to be the next Afghanistan."

The Philippine Daily Inquirer has reported that Vice President and Foreign Secretary Teofisto Guingona said he has been “agonizing’’ over his foreign policy differences with Arroyo and is considering “resigning from the Cabinet.”

“It’s a throwback to the Cold War era,’’ Ocampo says of the US presence. “It may even be worse, the Americans are getting the bases back cheaply — without an agreement and without having to pay.’’

US denies POW status

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) accused the United States yesterday of violating the Geneva Conventions by releasing photographs of Taliban and al-Qaida fighters held at Guantanamo Bay.

The organization said the conventions forbade exposing prisoners of war to “public curiosity." According to the Red Cross, the US violated the conventions by publicizing photographs which showed the prisoners shackled and wearing masks, goggles and ear muffs and kneeling before US soldiers.

Also the ICRC, Amnesty International, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, and the governments of Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland have all called on Washington to recognize the prisoners as POWs as set out by the Geneva Convention.

The convention says that if there is doubt about prisoners’ status, “such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal.”

Disregarding the stipulations of the convention -- to which the US is a signatory, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told reporter on Monday, “There is no ambiguity in this case…They are not POW’s…They will not be determined to be POW’s.”

The fury in Europe over the treatment of the Taliban prisoners in Cuba stems from what appears to be another example of the United States bending international law to suit its own purposes, European analysts and diplomats said Wednesday.

“A lot of the European reaction to Guantanamo is not because people care about the feelings of the prisoners there,” said Charles Grant, director of the Center for European Reform, a London-based research institute. “It’s touched a neuralgic point, which is the European concern that America doesn’t believe in international law, doesn’t believe in submitting itself to rules, organizations or norms that limit its freedom of action.”

On Wednesday, the Bishop of Birmingham, England, the Right Reverend Mark Santer, said “It is not edifying that the strongest country, America, has set itself up as prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner of its case.”

US terror war prisoners in Afghanistan are suffering under worse conditions than those in Cuba.

US-based Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) issued a report on Jan. 28, stating that between 3,000 and 3,500 Afghan and Pakistani prisoners being held at Shebarghan, near the northern provincial capital of Mazar-i-Sharif, are living in grossly overcrowded cells under conditions that do not even approach minimal standards under the Geneva Conventions.

PHR board member Jennifer Leaning, was among a delegation that visited the Shebarghan Prison on Jan. 20.

“We’re dealing with a quiet atrocity,’’ said Leaning. She quoted the prison warden, General Jarobak, as saying that “many, many, many prisoners have already died’’ at Shebarghan, mainly from dysentery and pneumonia.

The US military, the report added, has known about conditions in the prison, access to which it controlled until mid-month, but so far has done nothing to alleviate it.

The prisoners, who were taken captive after their surrender at Kunduz, “are ordinary Taliban soldiers,’’ according to Leaning. None of them was deemed important enough by US military and intelligence officers, who screened them after their capture, to be sent to the US holding facility at Kandahar and then on to Guantanamo.

“The facilities are entirely inadequate for the care of the number of people now held there…Dysentery and yellow jaundice, probably due to Hepatitis A, are epidemic,” according to the 11-page report.

Source: Agence France Presse, Associated Press, BBC, lndependent (UK), International Herald Tribune, IPS, NY Times

Church hinders ratification of convention on women in Chile

By Gustavo González

Santiago, Chile, Jan. 22 (IPS)— Pressure from the Catholic Church in Chile achieved a “moral victory” by blocking, at least until March, the Senate’s ratification of the optional protocol of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.

Heraldo Muñoz, Minister of the Government, stated Tuesday that President Ricardo Lagos had withdrawn the protocol from the Senate. The document had come under fire two weeks ago from the archbishop of Santiago, Francisco Javier Errázuriz.

The Lagos administration opted to pull the protocol given its imminent rejection by the Senate Foreign Relations Commission, though the official explanation provided by Muñoz was that the government would seek “a more extensive and profound discussion” of the matter in March, when it will come before the Senate again.

The Catholic hierarchy, led by Archbishop Errázuriz, maintains that the protocol of the Convention could lead to the legalization of abortion in Chile if the authorities choose to follow liberal interpretations of the document’s clauses.

The United Nations (UN) Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women became law in Chile in 1989, at the end of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990).

The subsequent “optional protocol”, which seeks to fill in the operational gaps of the Convention, was signed by Chile in 1999 by then-president Eduardo Frei, of the Christian Democratic Party.

Chile was the first member nation of the UN to sign the protocol, and marked the first step towards its ratification in the Chamber of Deputies in August 2000, after Lagos took office.

Strictly speaking, the protocol does not mention the concepts of “gender” and “reproductive rights”, terms that have come under constant criticism from the Vatican and from conservative organizations that define themselves as anti-abortion.

In spite of the absence of such terminology, Errázuriz and other Catholic clergy charge that the protocol paves the way for legalizing abortion because it stipulates the state’s obligation to protect women, which includes womens’ health, and could thus extend to include family planning.

The Catholic Church argues that, under this precept, if a woman believes that undergoing an abortion procedure is necessary for the preservation of her health, she could invoke the protocol — and it is likely the international committee would side with her decision.

The Pinochet dictatorship banned all types of medical abortions in 1988, which prompted a rise in clandestine procedures. According to women’s organizations, 150,000 to 200,000 abortions are performed each year in Chile, a country of 15 million people, the vast majority professing the Catholic faith.

The president, with the aim of completing the ratification process, included the respective bill in the agenda for the special legislative session, which the Senate is to wrap up by the end of January.

Now that the protocol has been withdrawn, it will have to be re-submitted to the Senate after Mar. 11, when the ordinary session begins with the installation of the new parliament.

Elections were held Dec. 16 for 120 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and for 18 of the 38 Senate’s at-large seats.

The government expects that, with the new senators, the upper house will lean towards more progressive policies, which bodes well for the ratification of the controversial protocol during the upcoming session.

Conservative senator Sergio Romero, chair of the Foreign Relations Commission, criticized Lagos’ decision to withdraw the protocol from the Senate before it came up for a vote.

Senator Gabriel Valdés, of the Christian Democrat Party, supported ratifying the protocol “with reservations”, a status that would protect the country’s sovereignty before the committee of 23 international experts that oversee each country’s compliance with the Convention.

The authority of the international committee was the most contentious aspect in cardinal Errázuriz’s presentation before a special session of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Commission.

Bishop Javier Prado, vice-president of the Chilean Bishops’ Conference, believes the international committee’s recommendations constitute a form of cultural colonialism that is based on a “single, limited, reductive view of the family and the dignity and rights of women.”

Jorge Carvajal, a leader of the Chilean Freemasons, stated that the Catholic Church is attempting to impose its own concepts on believers and non-believers alike, adding, “the worst colonialisms are religious and ideological, paternalistically assuming moral custody of all society and of the family in particular.”

Ximena Zabala, director of the Santiago-based Women’s Institute, condemned “the de facto powers continue to intervene in Chile’s democracy,” commenting that the Catholic Church “wields inordinate weight in this debate.”

Documentary says US commanders ordered killings of Korean refugees

A Korean girl and her brother pass a stalled M-26 tank in Haengiu, Korea, on June 9, 1951.
Photo courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.

By Hwang Jang-jin

Jan. 26— US military commanders repeatedly ordered the indiscriminate killing of Korean refugees in Nogeun-ri and other parts of the nation during the early days of the 1950-53 Korean War, a team of BBC documentary producers said yesterday.

Senior US Army commanders sanctioned killings of Korean refugees, including women and children, by using phrases such as “shoot all refugees,” “all refugees are fair game,” and “refugees will be dispersed by all available fire, including artillery,” according to a press release by the British broadcaster.

The BBC will broadcast the documentary film, “Kill ‘em All,” on Feb. 1.

“Such deliberate targeting of noncombatants violates the laws of war,” said Tom Roberts, director of the film.

The vast majority of these incriminating orders and communications, underpinned by newly unearthed military documents, are omitted from the Pentagon’s investigative report, he said.

In January last year, the US government admitted US soldiers killed or injured an unconfirmed number of refugees near Nogeun-ri, a hamlet about 200 kilometers south of Seoul, in July 1950. But it denied US commanders ordered troops to shoot civilians.

Korean survivors claim 121 civilians were killed and 21 were injured in the strafing from aircraft and the shootings in the railroad tunnels near the village.

The BBC documentary details previously unreported incidents of deliberate large-scale killings of Korean refugees by US troops and features new American witnesses and participants in the refugee massacre.

In the documentary, American ex-soldiers who were at Nogeun-ri said the shootings were ordered, and a new witness recalls officers shouting to the infantry, “Kill ‘em all,” according to the filmmakers.

The film also traces alleged killings by US soldiers beyond Nogeun-ri.

South Korean survivors, interviewed by the filmmakers, described the 25th US Infantry Division’s massacre of 82 villagers cowering in a small shrine. Among the victims, 25 were children under the age of 10. The division’s commander had ordered that civilians near the warfront be treated as enemies.

In the film, survivors also tell of another slaughter of as many as 400 civilians when US warships, without provocation, furiously shelled a concentration of refugees on an exposed southern beach.

“By picking up where American news reporting left off, we have been able to shed a broader light on a dark underside, a hidden chapter, of a major 20th century war,” Roberts said.

The Nogeun-ri incident was first unveiled by a Pulitzer Prize-winning report by the Associated Press.

After wrapping up a 14-month investigation in 2001, the US government issued a statement of regret but ruled out any compensation for the victims because commanders did not order the shootings.

Last week, South Korea’s ruling Millennium Democratic Party (MDP) and survivors urged the US government to reinvestigate the incident, following new evidence that US troops might have been ordered to kill.

George Early, a US veteran of the Korean War, wrote in a letter that his commanding officer threatened to execute him for refusing to shoot at the refugees near Nogeun-ri. The BBC documentary includes Early’s testimony.

The US government said it would erect a monument and establish a $750,000 scholarship fund dedicated to all Korean civilians killed during the war. The survivors’ group has rejected the offers, saying that they want a monument specifically for the Nogeun-ri victims.

Source: Korea Hearld

Human rights groups file petition against Israeli army

By Ferry Biedermann

Jerusalem, Jan. 25 (IPS)— Two human rights groups, one Israeli and one Palestinian, have petitioned the High Court in Jerusalem to disallow the so-called targeted assassinations of Palestinian militants by the army.

In a statement the groups said that “stretching the limits of self-defense beyond those of immediate threat is the most dangerous slippery slope a nation can tread upon and can quickly lead to the edge of the abyss of war crimes.”

The two groups, the Public Committee against Torture in Israel and the Palestinian organization, LAW, are not the only ones focusing on war crimes these days in Israel. The Israel Bar Association’s Human Rights Committee last year warned that soldiers who carry out so-called targeted assassinations of Palestinian militants, officers who order house demolitions, and fighter pilots who bomb Palestinian cities can all be prosecuted for war crimes.

Even in cases where lives are not immediately at stake, the term “war crimes” is brandished by lawyers and human rights groups. One example is the attempted eviction by the Israeli government of a group of Palestinians, so-called cave-dwellers, from their land south of Hebron on the West Bank.

“Is this a life?” Mohammed Abdel Mehsen Rashid wailed last week amid the bulldozed remains of his house and stables on a windswept and rain-soaked hilltop in the West Bank.

The 72 year-old pulled a loose stone out of a ramshackle wall. “We built this shack quickly before the winter, after the Israelis bulldozed our homes last summer, it is not very good.”

The Al-Rashids are among some 80 families who live in a collection of hovels and caves, surrounded by modern, red-roofed Jewish settlements in an area that is under full Israeli control.

For years the army has been trying to evict the approximately 3,000 Palestinians who live outside the established villages in the area.

In 1999 some of them were removed forcibly, only to be allowed back a year later, after the Israeli High Court granted them a temporary reprieve. Now the government is trying to get that decision overturned, but it is running into a new obstacle: an increasingly lively debate in Israel over the issue of war crimes.

The cave dwellers’ Israeli lawyer is threatening to file a war crimes suit in a Spanish court under a new provision in that country that allows prosecutions for acts committed outside its own territory and not involving its citizens. He claims the government last week delayed the planned evictions because of his threat.

The lawyer and the Human Rights Committee of the Bar Association base their approach on the widely held opinion among legal experts in Israel and abroad that the Palestinians are covered by the Fourth Geneva Convention that protects the rights of civilians in times of war and under occupation.

A small but active peace group called Gush Shalom, Hebrew for Peace Bloc, has picked up on the issue and is using it for leverage against Sharon’s policies. In January the group took out an advertisement in Israel’s influential Ha’aretz daily newspaper with just two lines: “War crimes are being committed in the Territories. The people responsible for them will not escape judgment.”

“We are trying to use it to de-legitimize Ariel Sharon’s war option,” explains Adam Keller, the group’s spokesperson.

The issue of war crimes and international law has gained more attention in Israel since Palestinian survivors of the Sabra and Shatilla massacres in Lebanon in 1982 filed a suit last year against Sharon, who was Israel’s Defense Minister during that invasion.

Israel’s Justice Minister, Meir Sheetrit, has condemned Gush Shalom’s campaign. On Israel radio he called the war crimes discussion a “very dangerous and pernicious idea, when the country is in such a difficult situation. If anybody should be prosecuted, it is these lunatic left-wing subversives, not the officers of our defense forces.”

Israel does not consider the West Bank and the Gaza strip to be occupied territories, but “contested” territories, explains an aide to the minister, so the Geneva Convention does not apply.

Keller is well aware of the outraged feelings his group’ s campaign provokes in an Israeli society that feels under attack

. “Bombings in Tel Aviv and shootings in Jerusalem that kill civilians are also war crimes,” he concedes. “But at the moment there is no balance. While the jails are full of Palestinians who allegedly have committed crimes against Israelis, our army’s behavior is going virtually unchecked.”

Israel’s left-wing political parties and its main peace group, Peace Now, are, for the moment, steering clear of the controversial issue.

“They are scared that the extreme Right, which is in power, will call them traitors,” said Shulamit Aloni, former minister and past leader of the left-wing Meretz party.

Aloni, who backs Gush Shalom on the issue, thinks the debate can affect the way the Israeli public perceives the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza strip.

“The public is disappointed and apathetic at the moment,” she explains, “but if they are made aware that in their name war crimes are being committed and that people may be held accountable, it could help change the mood.”

Aloni favors Gush Shalom’s idea of drawing up indictments for future war crimes cases but does not support prosecutions in foreign courts for now.

“We should bring the people the facts without yet clouding the issue with trials,” said Aloni.

Israel’s Justice Department is especially scathing about the idea of prosecutions in foreign courts.

“Where will it end?” said Jonathan Beker, adviser to the Minister of Justice. “It is inconceivable that just any country could allow prosecutions for acts committed outside its territories and not involving its citizens. If that were to be the case I could name many others who are candidates for prosecution.”

Beker cites the US war on terrorism as an example: “I am sure that American soldiers are working under very difficult circumstances in Afghanistan but nobody in the United States is calling for war crimes prosecutions against them in other countries. People here in Israel are not as responsible.”

GM, Chumbawumba team on anti-capitalist funding

London, England, Jan. 27— British anarchist band Chumbawumba are playing capitalist judo with General Motors (GM) by using the auto giant’s money to fund anti-capitalist campaigners, Britain’s Observer newspaper said on Sunday.

General Motors paid the band $98,840 for the use of their song “Pass it Along” in advertising for its cars, the paper said, but unbeknownst to GM the band planned to give half the money to grassroots group Corp Watch.

“We’re planning on using some of the money to document some of the social and environmental impacts of General Motors itself,” Joshua Karliner, executive director of CorpWatch, told the paper. “It’s known for resisting the kinds of change in production that would assist in reducing climate change, and for helping debunk the science of global warming,” he said.

The other half went to the alternative media group IndyMedia, which said it would use the money for “corporate jamming actions.”

“After much discussion and worry, we okayed it in the same manner we’d okayed quite a few other uses of our music in the past few years — by acknowledging that the amount of money we were being offered could fund anti-corporate activists for years,” the band said.

Source: Reuters

US and British jets bomb Southern Iraq

Baghdad, Iraq, Jan. 24— US and British planes struck targets in the south of the country today in the third such action in a week. An Iraqi military spokesman said US and British warplanes flying from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait attacked civilian and service installations in the southern provinces of Basra and Nassiriya. The spokesman also said US and British planes struck targets in Basra and Nassiriya on Monday and Wednesday. No casualties were reported. He said Iraqi air defense units fired on the jets and forced them to return to their bases.

US Central Command said coalition aircraft enforcing a no-fly zone struck an anti-aircraft artillery site in southern Iraq on Wednesday. The strikes “were executed as self-defense measures in response to Iraqi hostile threats and acts against Coalition air crews and their aircraft and are not related to the President’s campaign against terror,” a statement said.

Coalition forces have patrolled and enforced “no-fly” zones over northern and southern Iraq since the 1991 Gulf War. US and British officials insist the zones, which Baghdad does not recognize, were set up to protect the areas’ Kurdish and Muslim Shi’ite population from possible attack by Iraqi government forces.

Source: Reuters