Small farmers in Mexico await new blow from NAFTA

By Diego Cevallos

Mexico City, Mexico, Nov. 1 (IPS)— Mexico’s roughly 25 million peasant farmers, most of whom are poor, will be dealt a new blow by the next phase of trade liberalization in farm products under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), to begin in early 2003.

Starting in January, import duties will be completely phased out on 21 products, including potatoes, wheat, apples, onions, coffee, chicken and veal, in accordance with the timetable set by NAFTA.

The free trade deal outlines three stages of elimination of tariffs on farm products. The first occurred in 1994, when NAFTA entered into effect, the second begins in January, and the third starts in 2008.

But organizations of small farmers warn that the new phase of freeing up trade will hit them hard. They predict the loss of thousands of jobs, as they will be unable to compete with agribusiness interests in Canada and the United States.

Studies by the Group of Economists and Associates, an independent think tank on economic issues, indicate that the coming stage of trade liberalization will have a direct impact on 500,000 farmers in Mexico.

The supposed boost that NAFTA gave the economy of this Latin American nation of 100 million is greatly diminished when one considers the situation in rural areas, which are home to 75 percent of all Mexicans living in extreme poverty.

Since NAFTA went into effect eight years ago, the land planted in crops in Mexico has shrunk by more than 10 million hectares, and 15 million peasant farmers, mainly young people, have migrated to the cities or to the United States, according to a study by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

UNAM’s Center for Economic Research and Teaching reported that in the past 10 years, the share of jobs provided by the agricultural sector in Mexico shrunk nearly 10 percent. Further, rural wages are as much as 30 percent lower than in low-paying jobs — in the construction industry, for example — in urban areas.

But Mexico’s Secretary of Agriculture, Javier Usabiaga, said the current plight of the countryside had more to do with the lack of public policies over the past 10 years designed to make the country’s farm products more competitive.

A few months ago, Vicente Fox announced that his government would design measures to protect farmers from the new wave of tariff removal.

But with just two months to go before import duties are slashed on 21 products, the new safeguard measures have not yet been announced, although authorities said they would include cuts in electricity rates for small farmers, and special support in the form of soft loans.

Mariano Ruiz, an analyst with the Group of Economists and Associates, described the government’s announced measures to help the countryside as “too little, too late.” Moreover, he added, not much can be done given the influence and weight of Mexico’s partners, the United States and Canada, and the huge subsidies they shell out to their farmers.

A new law that went into effect in May in the United States, Mexico’s biggest trading partner by far, increased farm subsidies to $190 billion over the next 10 years.

The Mexican government protested the increase in subsidies, and announced legal action to fight the policy. But in practice, nothing has changed, and the process of eliminating import duties on farm products continues to move forward as planned.

Although NAFTA promotes an opening up of trade, it fails to address the question of subsidies.

The annual budget of the US Department of Agriculture amounts to more than $118 billion, 35 times the budget of Mexico’s Secretariat of Agriculture.

To prevent Mexico’s agricultural sector from collapsing would take a minimum budget of $7 billion a year, said Guadalupe Martínez, president of the Permanent Agrarian Council, an organization that says it represents 13 million farmers.

However, the Fox administration has earmarked just $3.8 billion to agriculture in 2003.

For his part, Ruiz pointed out that although the schedule according to which tariffs would be phased out was clear 10 years ago, when the negotiations for NAFTA were completed, it is only now, when the process is moving full steam ahead, that it has occurred to Mexico to prepare itself, defend its farmers, and protest US and Canadian farm subsidies.

“Perhaps it’s too late,” said the analyst, although he added that the harshest blow to Mexico’s farmers would come in 2008, which means that “we have time to prepare. I hope action is finally taken now.”

In 2008, the three NAFTA partners will complete the removal of import duties in agriculture by eliminating tariffs on key commodities like corn and beans, the mainstay products of 2.8 million Mexican farmers.

Secretary of the Economy Luis Derbez said Mexico will not request a revision of NAFTA’s clauses on agriculture, but will seek export and import quotas for the products on which tariffs are removed, lobby for the elimination of US farm subsidies, and adopt measures designed to protect local farmers.

US Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Market Access and Compliance, William H. Lash, said he expected Mexico to fully comply with the deadlines laid out by NAFTA.
There should be no surprises, because everyone was aware of the schedule and the requirements, he said.

Martínez, on the other hand, believes NAFTA should be revised. She argued that a trade agreement should not signify “death” for the Mexican countryside, with the myriad social problems that would bring, such as an even bigger rural exodus, increased emigration, and rising crime rates.

Although one-quarter of Mexico’s people live in rural areas, farm output today represents less than five percent of Gross Domestic Product — a reality that is not going to change in the two months before the new wave of trade liberalization gets under way.

What lies ahead is a new blow to the countryside, and no one can deny that, according to political scientist Alfonso Zárate.

IMF blamed for Malawi famine

Oct. 29— The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank forced policies onto the Government of Malawi that were responsible for turning a food shortage into a famine, concludes a report released today by the World Development Movement (WDM). Seventy percent of rural families faced starvation earlier this year, following floods in 2001. The current hunger crisis is the worst in the country since the dreadful 1949 famine.

The report details a catalogue of disastrous IMF enforced policies that have undermined Malawi’s ability to feed its people. It blames the ongoing privatization of the food production and distribution system (notably the Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation — ADMARC), removal of agricultural subsides to small farmers and deregulation of price controls on staple foods such as maize — policies that have enabled Malawi to avoid famine in the past. The price of maize increased 400 percent between October 2001 and March 2002 as a result of these policies.

Early in 2002 the Malawi Government sold almost all of its 167,000 metric ton grain reserve following advice from the IMF to reduce costs and stock levels to pay off a $300 million loan from a South African Bank. Subsequently, in April 2002, Malawi was suspended from the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative over allegations of corruption around the sale.

Entitled “Structural Damage: The Causes and Consequences of Malawi’s Food Crisis,” the report also reveals evidence that the IMF, World Bank and EU were heavily involved in the disastrous decision to sell-off Malawi’s grain reserves at the height of the famine, something they have repeatedly denied.

The authors also condemn international lenders for insisting that the heavily indebted Government of Malawi continues to make debt repayments to rich countries and the IMF and World Bank, despite the humanitarian crisis. Malawi — which owes $2.6 billion in debt — will spend $70 million, over 20 percent of its national budget, on debt repayments in 2002 — money desperately needed for health and education.

Director of the WDM, Barry Coates today condemned the IMF and World Bank for applying a one-size-fits-all, ultra free-market approach: “This is Jurassic economics, the policies of the Reagan and Thatcher era. They should be kept in a museum, rather than trampling all over desperately poor African countries.”

The WDM report calls for full cancellation of Malawi’s debt and an end to the economic conditionality of aid donors and the IMF and World Bank.

Source: World Development Movement

Carve-up of oil riches begins: US plans to force end of OPEC

By Peter Beaumont and Faisal Islam

Nov. 3— The leader of the London-based Iraqi National Congress (INC), Ahmed Chalabi, has met executives of three US oil multinationals to negotiate the carve-up of Iraq’s massive oil reserves post-Saddam Hussein.

Disclosure of the meetings in October in Washington — confirmed by an INC spokesman — comes as Lord Browne, the head of BP, has warned that British oil companies have been squeezed out of post-war Iraq even before the first shot has been fired in any US-led land invasion.

Confirming the meetings to US journalists, INC spokesman Zaab Sethna said: “The oil people are naturally nervous. We’ve had discussions with them, but they’re not in the habit of going around talking about them.”

Next month oil executives will gather at a country retreat near Sandringham to discuss Iraq and the future of the oil market. The conference, hosted by Sheikh Yamani, the former Oil Minister of Saudi Arabia, will feature a former Iraqi head of military intelligence, an ex-Minister, and City financiers. Topics for discussion include the country’s oil potential, whether it can become as big a supplier as Saudi Arabia, and whether a post-Saddam Iraq might destroy the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

Disclosure of talks between the oil executives and the INC — which enjoys the support of Bush administration officials — is bound to exacerbate friction on the UN Security Council between permanent members and veto-holders Russia, France and China, who fear they will be squeezed out of a post-Saddam oil industry in Iraq.

Although Russia, France, and China have existing deals with Iraq, Chalabi has made clear that he would reward the US for removing Saddam with lucrative oil contracts, telling the Washington Post recently: “American companies will have a big shot at Iraqi oil.”

Indeed, the issue of who gets their hands on the world’s second largest oil reserves has been a major factor driving splits in the Security Council over a new resolution on Iraq.

If true, it is hardly surprising, given the size of the potential deals. As of last month, Iraq had reportedly signed several multi-billion-dollar deals with foreign oil companies, mainly from China, France, and Russia.

Among these Russia, which is owed billions of dollars by Iraq for past arms deliveries, has the strongest interest in Iraqi oil development, including a $3.5 billion, 23-year deal to rehabilitate oilfields, particularly the 11-15 billion-barrel West Qurna field, located west of Basra near the Rumaila field.

Since the agreement was signed in March 1997, Russia’s Lukoil has prepared a plan to install equipment with capacity to produce 100,000 barrels per day from West Qurna’s Mishrif formation.

French interest is also intense. TotalFinaElf has been in negotiations with Iraq on development of the Nahr Umar field.

Planning for Iraq’s post-Saddam oil industry is being driven by a coalition of neo-conservatives in Washington think-tanks with close links to the Bush administration, and with INC officials who have long enjoyed their support. Those hawks have long argued that US control of Iraq’s oil would help deliver a second objective. That is the destruction of OPEC, the oil producers’ cartel, which they argue is “evil” — that is, incompatible with American interests.

Larry Lindsey, President Bush’s economic advisor, recently said that a successful war on Iraq would be good for business.

“When there is a regime change in Iraq, you could add three to five million barrels [per day] of production to world supply,” he said in September. “The successful prosecution of the war would be good for the economy.”

Analysts believe that after five years Iraq could be pumping 10 million barrels of oil per day. OPEC is already starting to implode, with member nations breaking quotas in an attempt to grab market share before oil prices fall.

Russian concern over a future INC-inspired carve-up of Iraq’s oil to the benefit of the US has become so intense that it recently sent a diplomat to hold talks with INC officials. At that meeting in Washington on Aug. 29 the diplomat expressed concern that Russia would be kept out of the oil markets by the US.

A model for the carve-up of Iraq’s oil industry was presented in September by Ariel Cohen of the right-wing Heritage Foundation, which has close links to the Bush administration.

In “The Future of a Post-Saddam Iraq: A Blueprint for American Involvement,” Cohen strikes a similar note to Chalabi, putting forward a road map for the privatization of Iraq’s nationalized oil industry, and warning that France, Russia, and China were likely to find that a new INC-led government would not honor their oil contracts.

Cohen’s proposal would see Iraq’s oil industry split up into three large companies, along the areas of ethnic separation, with one company in the largely Shia south, another for the Sunni region around Baghdad, and the last in the Kurdish north.

Source: The Observer (UK)

Uruguay: state to take responsibility for ‘disappeared’ By Raúl Pierri

Montevideo, Uruguay, Oct. 31 (IPS)— The Uruguayan state will assume responsibility for the deaths of 26 people at the hands of the military dictatorship that ruled the country from 1973 to 1984, announced the Peace Commission created by President Jorge Batlle to investigate the fate of those who were forcibly disappeared in that period.

The Peace Commission presented its preliminary report Oct. 30 after two years of investigations. Spokesperson Carlos Ramela pointed out in a press conference that military officials had collaborated in the effort.

“All of the individuals who spoke to us expressed respect for this issue. An attitude of regret was perceived for circumstances that obviously no one can consider favorable,” said Ramela, noting that “no one is proud of what happened in Uruguay” in the era of the dictatorship.

The Commission received 39 official claims about people presumed to have been “disappeared” in Uruguay by the military, but has only been able to determine the fate of 26. The majority died from torture at the dictatorship’s clandestine detention centers or were killed.

Among the exceptional cases is that of Elena Quinteros. A schoolteacher who was also an activist in a radical leftist group, she was assassinated in November 1976 after the military took her by force from the grounds of the Venezuelan embassy in Montevideo where she had sought refuge.

Juan Carlos Blanco, Uruguay’s foreign minister during the dictatorship, was indicted earlier this month and is being held in prison for the forced disappearance of Quinteros 26 years ago.

His arrest was the first ever in this South American country for the crimes against humanity committed during the de facto regime.

Within the coming month, the Peace Commission will present its final report, which is to include additional information on the whereabouts of the bodies of the dictatorship’s victims.

The text urges the government to maintain “an institutional structure that will continue receiving information on these cases,” Ramela said.

On another front, the Peace Commission was able to individualize the remains of 13 victims who were buried in an unmarked mass grave in Argentina’s Buenos Aires province.

As far as locating the bodies of 41 other victims, Ramela stated that the Commission’s conclusions would be made public after a meeting with representatives of the Uruguayan organization Mothers and Families of the Detained-Disappeared (MFDD).

“It is a very sensitive and delicate subject for the victims’ families. We have always said that we would talk with them first and explain how we reached certain conclusions. That phase is to be carried out in the coming weeks,” the spokesperson said.

Local media reported this week that the Peace Commission had reached the conclusion that the bodies of most of the disappeared were cremated and their ashes thrown into the Rio de la Plata. However, the association of victims’ families rejects that finding.

“It is one of many versions based on self-interest so that it will be accepted by the public. But there are no elements to support it. That conclusion is just a maneuver, a tactic by a powerful group,” said Javier Miranda, spokesperson for MFDD.

Miranda’s father, Fernando, is among those who disappeared during the Uruguayan dictatorship. According to the Peace Commission, he died in December 1975.

Miranda says that if the disappeared are declared dead, those responsible will not be brought to justice because they would be protected by the 1989 amnesty law, which covers homicide.

Forced disappearance, however, is considered an “ongoing crime” and legal experts say there are loopholes in the amnesty law that would leave members of the military who participated in the dictatorship’s human rights crimes open to legal charges.

The idea that forced disappearance is a permanent or ongoing crime is accepted by the American Convention on Human Rights, also known as the San José Pact, of which Uruguay is a signatory.

“They are seeking a declaration of death for the disappeared so that the crime is covered by the amnesty and the judicial proceedings would be brought to a halt,” said Miranda.

The amnesty law was approved in a 1989 plebiscite, granting legal protections for the military and police agents who took part in repressive acts under the dictatorship. The law passed by a small margin, which experts attribute, at least in part, to the fear that the military would once again take over the government.

Miranda said that the association of MFDD “recognizes that the work done by the Commission is very positive, but considers that many cases will be left pending,” particularly those involving Uruguayans in Argentina.

The Peace Commission supports the idea of passing legislation to officially declare the disappeared as dead, while their families prefer the description “missing due to forced disappearance.”

Batlle founded the Peace Commission, which wraps up its work in December, two years ago in response to the insistent demands for clarification about the fate of the Uruguayans who disappeared within the country and abroad during the South American dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s.

Human rights organizations say there are nearly 160 Uruguayans who were forcibly disappeared by the dictatorships here and in the other Southern Cone countries.

Canadian homeless fight to retain housing squats

By Paul Weinberg

Toronto, Canada, Oct. 31 (IPS)— Poor and homeless people, along with their political supporters in some cases, are taking over unoccupied or abandoned buildings in major cities across Canada — until police arrive to kick them out.

The Pope Squat, inhabited since July 2002, was evicted
on Nov. 1. Squatters and the Ontario Coalition
Against Poverty are making plans to bring the building
up to Fire Code in hopes of returning.

Squatting is the latest response by anti-poverty groups to the continued housing shortage in this country, caused by insufficient rental units and a trend among private builders to convert existing affordable housing into more expensive and potentially more lucrative accommodation.

Groups like the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) blame the Canadian government’s 1990s decision to withdraw from the business of building subsidized housing for moderate- and low-income people as the main reason for the current housing shortage.

In 11 out of 18 major Canadian urban areas, vacancy rates are below three percent, “the level considered necessary for a competitive rental market,” says the FCM. (In Toronto, the largest city in Canada, it has recently been below one percent.)

At the same time, the incomes of most Canadian families in the past decade have either stagnated or gone down.

About 4.9 million Canadians (of a population of 30 million people) live in poverty, a jump of more than one million since 1989, according to the National Council of Welfare in Ottawa.

With this ongoing crisis, it is not surprising that housing squats in Canada are growing, says John Clarke, an organizer with the activist Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP).

He said that Canadian trespass laws essentially “criminalize” housing squats by allowing property owners to call in police to evict people seeking shelter, even if the buildings have been unoccupied for years.

Clarke contrasts this with a legal tradition in parts of Europe where squatting is a civil matter between the occupier and the property owner, “and the owner goes to civil court to try and get a remedy.”

The Pope squat, a four-story brick house, one of various vacant addresses in Toronto’s low-income Parkdale district, had been occupied since OCAP took it over during the visit of Pope John Paul II to the city.

Housing about 25 people who were formerly homeless, the squat had managed to keep the Toronto Police at bay because of its murky ownership and unpaid taxes.

But squatters were evicted by police on Nov. 1. An attempt to seize a second vacant Toronto house one week before was cut short by a heavy police presence that forced the would-be squatters to leave.

Before this event, Clarke says, Toronto police had solicited trespass letters from owners of vacant buildings in advance of possible squatting. “That way they get around having to call up the owner every time they need to remove people.”

More successful for a period of time was Tent City, a community of about 100 squatters who, on Sept. 24, were evicted after living more than two years on a site in the Toronto port lands that was formerly used as an iron foundry and is still contaminated with heavy metals. The site is owned by the US-based Home Depot retail chain.

The action by Home Depot, which hired a private security firm to remove the squatters, was probably illegal, and could have been challenged, says Michael Shapcott, a Toronto housing specialist and a spokesperson for the Ontario division of the Cooperative Housing Federation of Canada.

Shapcott points out that Home Depot had allowed the squatters to stay on the land for a period of time and so had an obligation to pursue the eviction before a judge. “They can’t [just] turn around [and say] ‘we decided to change our mind’.”

The trespass law, adds Shapcott, was primarily designed to immediately remove people who occupy a property and ignore the owner’s immediate request to leave.

Canadian law tends to side with property owners and even Shapcott accepts the inevitability of the Tent City eviction. But a hearing would have at least given the squatters time to make alternative living arrangements, he says.

Meanwhile, the former Tent City squatters have since scattered — some benefiting from a Toronto rent supplement program to access housing.

Nobody has compiled a list of unoccupied buildings in Canada’s major cities. Shapcott and Clarke believe that it is unconscionable for property owners to let them stay empty for years during a housing shortage.

Montreal’s St. Henri neighborhood, for instance, has plenty of abandoned warehouses that could be turned into affordable housing, says Jaggi Singh, a writer and activist who has personally participated in squats in Ontario and Quebec.

At the same time, continues Singh, private corporations receive a variety of tax breaks to build more expensive condominiums that are in some cases purchased as an investment.

Evicting squatters does not always end the issue. Vancouver city police recently forced a group of homeless people to leave the site of a former department store, which they had occupied for about a week.

But the protesters returned to set up their own tent city in the vicinity of the historic Woodward’s building, which has been empty for nine years.

They want the current Liberal government in west coast British Columbia province to keep a promise made by the previous New Democratic administration to convert the property into low-cost housing. The protesters are now threatening to take over nearby empty publicly owned buildings.

One of a number of vacant premises in Vancouver’s impoverished downtown eastside, Woodward’s has become a symbol for local advocates of affordable housing, with squatters receiving donations of money, mattresses, food and tents.

A private developer that is currently seeking to purchase the Woodward’s property and turn it into a mixed retail and housing project is only proposing a small number of affordable rental units, says community legal worker Linda Mix. “I don’t know if the people at [Vancouver’s] Tent City could afford them.”

WORLD BRIEFS

A new direction
in Turkey

Turkey closed a chapter in its history with the Nov. 3 election, which swept the old ruling class out of power and installed a new party with Islamic roots, but also proclaiming itself as pro-European with no intention of upsetting the secular system. The Justice and Development Party led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the former mayor of Istanbul, placed 363 deputies in the 550-member Parliament, with 35 percent of the vote.

Despite leading his party to absolute majority in its first electoral test, Erdogan cannot become prime minister. He was barred from becoming even a member of Parliament after writing a poem four years ago that judges said incited religious hatred. Erdogan claims to have moderated his views since then and rejects any links between religion and politics.

Women increased their representation from 24 to 26. Fourteen of them are from the Justice and Development Party. A small question is whether they would wear headscarves when they are sworn in. A woman was booed off the floor for coming up to take the oath wearing a headscarf in the previous Parliament. (IPS)

Vancouver police break laws

In British Columbia, the conduct of Vancouver police in the drug ghetto of the Downtown Eastside meets the legal definition of abuse of authority and, in 12 cases, met the UN definition of torture, according to the Pivot Legal Society. Of 50 sworn statements collected by the society over nine months, six people said they suffered broken bones or teeth at the hands of police. Eight others said they were beaten after they had been put in handcuffs or surrendered. Thirty-six people said police used unreasonable force and seven said they were subjected to illegal strip searches.

Jill Weiss said she and a friend witnessed three uniformed officers beating a man as they were driving through the neighborhood in August. They stopped, as did several others and were shocked by what happened next.

“The smaller police officer…with no warning turned suddenly and pepper-sprayed us all,” Weiss said.

So far two families have launched lawsuits against the city and its police force.
(Canadian Press)

Anti-terrorism
bill opens way
to police state

In Canada, privacy commissioner George Radwanski issued a statement criticizing Ottawa’s new anti-terrorism bill Nov. 1, warning that the new legislation would allow the government “unrestricted access to…personal information.” Specifically, Radwanski said he has “grave concerns” about sections of the act allowing Royal Canadian Mounted Police to obtain airline passenger information when they are searching for people wanted under warrants.

James Moore, Canadian Alliance transport critic said the proposed legislation doesn’t give Canadian authorities access to anything that hasn’t already been made available to their US counterparts.

“We talk about the Americans having extraordinary powers. What this does is level the playing field,” he said.
Radwanski said the new bill represents an unacceptable attack on basic freedoms.
(Canadian Press)

Last revolutionary
to fight with
Zapata dies

The last living revolutionary in Mexico who fought with national hero Emiliano Zapata died at the age of 103. Galo Pacheco died Oct. 29 at his home in Cocoyoc, Morelos — the same city in which he was born Oct. 16 1899. He joined with the fighters of peasant leader Zapata at age 13, following the battle cry, “Land and liberty!” During the revolution he worked as a medic and afterward became a country doctor and healer. He was honored Oct. 30 with a moment of silence by the Morelos state Congress. (DPA)

Proposed bill in
Israel against
International War Crimes Tribunal

A bill placed before the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) Oct. 29 would criminalize any assistance rendered by an Israeli citizen to the International War Crimes Tribunal at the Hague. It was presented by MK Zeev Boim, a senior member of the ruling Likud party. Under the bill, any assistance by an Israeli citizen to the Hague Court would be punishable by up to ten years’ imprisonment.

“This bill betrays the memory of six million Holocaust victims,” declared former Knesset member and Gush Shalom activist Uri Avnery. “After the Holocaust, the Jewish people fought with all its strength for the creation of an International War Crimes Court, and now the Sharon government tries to destroy it. This is tantamount to an admission that they have something to hide.” (Gush Shalom)

Diego Garcia
islanders fight
to return

Exiled islanders from the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia are launching a legal action in a London court, seeking to return to their home and get compensation from Britain for being deported.

Nearly 2,000 people from the Chagos Islands were moved to Mauritius and the Seychelles 30 years ago to make way for a military base on Diego Garcia, which the United States leases from Britain.

Two years ago, a court in London ruled that the deportation was illegal; the islanders are now seeking compensation, and the right to return to all of the islands, including Diego Garcia.

But the government does not want the islanders back on Diego Garcia, which could be used as a base for a US attack on Iraq. The US is already planning to move B-2 heavy bombers to the island base. Islanders are adamant that they should be allowed to return to Diego Garcia and their lawyers are focusing on that claim and on compensation for what they call 30 years of poverty and exile.

The islanders launched their first court action in the 1970s. (BBC)