Untitled Document

WORLD NEWS
No. 212, Feb. 6-11, 2003

US, allies could be prosecuted for Iraq war
go to story

Indigenous murders escalate in Chiapas
go to story

Hardliners win Israeli elections,
new mandate for violence
go to story

Bush revives alleged al-Qaida-Baghdad link
go to story

US accused of lies and distortions
after Powell report on Iraq
go to story

Immunity of Bangladeshi army,
law enforcers angers many
go to story

Sexual abuse in Zambia
fuels girls’ AIDS epidemic
go to story

World community gives Bush
AIDS pledge mixed reception
go to story

Five EU nations begin sea patrols
to stem immigration
go to story

Two-month anti-Chávez
strike begins to unravel
go to story

BRIEFS
go to briefs

US, allies could be prosecuted for Iraq war

By Thalif Deen

United Nations, Jan. 30 (IPS)-- The United States and allies who attack Iraq without United Nations sanction could face international legal action, even though Washington has opted out of the new International Criminal Court (ICC), experts and peace activists said Thursday.

“For the first time since the end of the cold war, an act of deliberate aggression is being advanced under the pretext of legality by a major power,” said James E. Jennings, president of Conscience International.

“The US refusal to join the International Criminal Court will not permit its leaders to escape trial before a world court and other international tribunals on war crimes charges,” he warned.

Jennings said that an attack on Iraq in the absence of an enabling Security Council resolution would constitute a violation of the UN charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Conventions, and other international obligations.

The United States has said that it is prepared to go to war with a “coalition of the willing” -- about 12 unnamed military allies, reportedly including Britain, Canada, Australia, Kuwait, and Qatar.

The London Guardian said last month that if Britain uses force, it would be the first time that British soldiers and their political superiors would be subject to ICC jurisdiction.

“But while the British citizens could be hauled up before the ICC, the real protagonists -- the United States and Iraqi nationals -- cannot be,” the newspaper said. Neither nation signed on to the statute that created the ICC last year.

A US attack without Security Council authorization would not only undermine the United Nations but also jeopardize countries joining the military coalition, said Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

“We, along with lawyers from the UK and Canada, have already sent letters to those countries and the United States warning them of the consequences of violating the Geneva conventions,” he said.

The United States and other nations violated the conventions in the 1991 Gulf War and the 1998 attacks on Kosovo, he added.

“With regard to the UK and Canada (and Australia), we said we would bring evidence of such violations to the ICC,” Ratner said.

US officials could be prosecuted in certain countries because such crimes are subject to universal jurisdiction, he added.

At a meeting of the Security Council on Monday, an overwhelming majority -- 11 out of 15 members -- wanted to give more time to UN arms inspectors to continue their search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, instead of going to war.

The United States, which is skeptical about continued arms inspections, has threatened to launch a military attack on Baghdad even without the blessing of the world body.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell has promised to provide the Security Council with more “evidence,” based on US intelligence, of Iraq's weapons programs next Wednesday.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan told reporters Thursday that UN arms inspectors have made it clear that they would appreciate receiving “actionable information” from all governments that have it. “They have received some and I hope they would also use whatever information that is given next week that will be helpful for their work,” he added.

Washington has indicated that it plans to go ahead with an attack on Iraq even if it does not win new converts on the Security Council.

“Given the US and British desire for the Security Council to take the unprecedented step of authorizing the use of force to actually overthrow the government of a member state, there is understandable reluctance to do so unless the evidence of Iraqi non-compliance is significant and undeniable,” said Stephen Zunes, a Middle East expert and associate professor of politics at the University of San Francisco.

More time is needed for inspectors get a clearer assessment of Iraqi compliance, including to determine if the Iraqi reluctance to be more forthcoming is because officials are deliberately hiding significant information or because of sloppy record keeping, political posturing, or other reasons, he said.

“There may also be a sense that, even if Iraq does have proscribed materials hidden somewhere, the ongoing presence of inspectors and the concomitant international attention would make it impossible for Iraq to develop or deploy significant offensive weapons of mass destruction capability,” Zunes said.

In other words, he argued, though the United Nations and its arms inspectors may not be able to force total disarmament of Iraq, they will have effectively forced functional disarmament, which is ultimately what matters.

Asked about the vulnerability of coalition members to ICC charges of war crimes, Zunes said, “My impression is that the ICC would only bring such charges if there was evidence of premeditated and deliberate atrocities.”

“Given that there are plenty of perpetrators of deliberate massacres still un-indicted, I believe that there would be a reluctance to extend the reach of the ICC to prosecute soldiers who accidentally kill civilians in the course of a war.”

At the same time, he said, there are serious moral and legal questions regarding accidental civilian casualties in war that will have to be addressed in the future and the ICC would seem to be a logical venue to do that.

Indigenous murders escalate in Chiapas

By Diego Cevallos

Mexico City, Mexico, Jan. 29 (IPS)-- Seven slayings were added to an already long list of murders and expulsions in a municipality of indigenous people, San Juan Chamula, in Mexico’s southernmost state of Chiapas, where virtually no one is brought to justice in ongoing political, economic, religious, and land ownership disputes.

State institutions exist only in name in that Chiapas town, said Guillermo Trejo, a researcher of social movements with the Center of Economic Research and Teaching (CIDE).

That reality was once again highlighted by Sunday’s killings of two indigenous people at the hands of other Indians, reportedly the result of a dispute over ownership of a well, and the murder Tuesday of four police officers who were attempting to arrest the killers.

In the resulting shoot-out Tuesday, the police also killed one of the suspects.

As on previous occasions, authorities promised to bring the guilty parties to justice and put an end to the culture of impunity that reigns in the town, where the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which governed Mexico from 1929 to 2000, created a lawless system of local political bosses that guaranteed it victories at the polls for decades.

The latest murders were added to the total of more than 100 committed over the past 30 years in the 82-sq-km municipality, which is home to around 60,000 Tzotzil-speaking Mayan Indians.

Some 30,000 local residents have been forced out of San Juan Chamula since the 1970s by the local community on the argument that they violated community laws and professed religions other than the Roman Catholic tradition.

All attempts at bringing peace among the various religious, political and business groups involved in disputes in the area have failed.

The violent clashes, in which the different bands use high- powered weapons, are a result of power struggles for control over the local government, rather than merely religious differences, as is generally thought, explained Chiapas prosecutor Mariano Herrán.

Historians trace the start of the worst conflicts in San Juan Chamula to 32 years ago, when Miguel Hernández, one of the first Protestant ministers to preach in the area and win over evangelical converts, was arrested by traditional Indian authorities, who are also the municipal authorities.

Hernández was forced to walk across live coals, and his tongue and eyes were cut out before he was murdered. None of his killers were ever brought to justice.

In San Juan Chamula, which was governed by the PRI since the early 20th century, religion is used as a pretext for oppressing anyone who challenges those in power, say activists with the Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Center.

The study “Expulsions and Human Rights in San Juan Chamula,” drawn up by the human rights group, which has been active in Chiapas since 1989, states that the indigenous municipality was converted by the PRI into “a structure of local bosses utilized to maintain political and social control over the population.”

The Center pointed out that in the municipality, which is divided into 112 local communities, the PRI began to penetrate the traditional indigenous organizations in the 1930s, merging them with politics in order to gain electoral support.

Post-election conflicts are routine in the life of the community, as is the threat of not participating in the elections whenever there is a possibility of triumph by a non-PRI candidate.

Nothing has changed in San Juan Chamula since 2000, despite the fact that the PRI lost control over the national government to President Vicente Fox, a member of the right-wing National Action Party.

Studies show that the PRI has sponsored the education and political training of a number of indigenous leaders in San Juan Chamula, who were then integrated into the community’s system of religious posts, where they assumed leadership roles.

In time, those leaders and their heirs became political chiefs in the municipality, and were equipped with resources and power by the government.

It is these political leaders who have been “judging” those who go against the standards and customs of the community, and who hand down punishment like prison sentences, expulsion and even torture, said the Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Center.

“The monstrous system of local bosses that emerged in Chiapas, and San Juan Chamula in particular, does not exist so much today to promote local interests as to feed itself, reproducing itself through innocent victims,” stated the group’s report.

“The municipality of San Juan Chamula has been under a permanent state of emergency, and the justice system there is part of the machinery of impunity and death,” it added.

Since the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) rose up in arms in January 1994 in the jungles of Chiapas demanding justice for indigenous people, the groups of those forcibly displaced from San Juan Chamula and evangelical Protestant converts began to present their complaints to the government and demand sanctions for the local political bosses.

But although their demands were heard, no measures were taken.

Hardliners win Israeli elections,
new mandate for violence

Compiled by Seán Marquis

Feb. 5 (AGR)-- Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's right-wing Likud Party made historic gains in national elections on Jan. 28 and as the predicted results of the Israeli polls were made official, fear of an Israeli invasion gripped Palestinians in the occupied territories.

The results were particularly ominous because the nearly two-dozen deaths in the Gaza Strip in four days prior to the polls failed to alter the outcome of the elections -- Likud doubled its seats to 37 -- from the Palestinian perspective.

With Labor declining to join a national unity government and the secular Shinui party, one of the biggest gainers in the elections, still non-committal on joining it, the threat of an ultra right-wing government loomed and put Israel's ties with even the United States and Europe on a collision course.

Palestinian chief negotiator and cabinet minister Saeb Erekat said the following day: “I believe that after a government is formed in Israel, it will be moving to reoccupy the Gaza Strip.”

Sharon will exploit the looming US-led war on Iraq to step up actions against Palestinians, he added.

The Israeli media admitted too that the results were hardly worth cheering. According to Maariv daily, “no one really expects the dawn of a new day, at most, the twilight of an old evening.”

In a speech to the parliament, Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri said the right-wing victory means “the idea of peace has been folded in Israel and the competition between candidates is [based] on who is more hostile to the Palestinian brothers and Arabs in general.”

According to Mohammed Khaled, a media company director in the United Arab Emirates, Sharon campaigned “with the belief that as much Palestinian blood he can shed, the more votes he can win.”

In a sign that he will stick to his tough policies against the Palestinians, Sharon rebuffed Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat's offer to meet and resume peace talks.

True to Sharon’s word on Jan. 30 Israeli troops and tanks swept through Hebron, closing Palestinian police and TV stations, searching homes and blocking major roads in a crackdown on suspected militants.

The military said it carried out the operation in response to a series of shooting ambushes in Hebron. Since Nov. 15, 18 Israelis have been killed in such attacks.

Israeli bulldozers demolished about 100 stands in the city's main open-air market. Palestinians threw stones at the armored force, drawing live fire and rubber-coated metal bullets.

Soldiers closed three police stations in Hebron, said the Palestinian police commander in the city, Khaled Madoun.

The army accused police of helping militants.

The Hebron police chief said Israeli soldiers released criminals held in lockups at the police stations. The army said the jails were empty when soldiers arrived.

Madoun accused Israel of trying to create more chaos in the Palestinian areas. “It's Sharon's policy to destroy the last remnant of the Palestinian Authority in Hebron, the police force,” Madoun said.

In the past 28 months of fighting, Israeli troops have persistently targeted Palestinian police installations in response to bombing and shooting attacks by Palestinian militants. Israel has accused officers of participating in attacks or doing nothing to prevent them.

Soldiers also closed two local TV stations and a radio studio, arresting a worker at one of the TV studios, broadcasters said. Khaled Masade, director of Nauras TV, said his station only broadcast music shows and films. “We don't know why they are closing us,” he said.

Still shaken from eight hours of pitched fighting and the detonations of helicopter rockets and tanks shells in the night, Fuad Simna looked at the ruins of his metal factory, which had been one of Gaza City’s largest before the Sunday Jan. 26 Israeli assault into the city which left 13 dead, over 60 wounded, and over 100 shops and homes destroyed.

“I can't believe my eyes. They destroyed my workshop, everything is destroyed,” he said.

The Israeli army claimed his lathes and other machinery turned out homemade Katyusha-style rockets, more than 10 of which had been fired by militants across the Gaza border into southern Israel in days prior to the assault.

“How are we going to build mortars and rockets when we are working on our heavy iron industry?” he asked, staring at the wreckage of a building where 50 of his workers used to build pre-fab houses, caravans and girders.

“This kind of destruction of factories prevents hundreds of Palestinians from working. The 50 here will be added to the list of unemployed, when there are already more than 70 percent of people jobless in the Gaza Strip because of the Israeli closure,” Simna said.

Along Saladin Street, the main thoroughfare leading into the city center, hardly a metal workshop was left intact after Sunday's fighting and the raids which pushed deep into the heart of the sprawling coastal metropolis.

Sources: Inter Press Service, Palestine Chronicle, Qatar News Agency

Bush revives alleged al-Qaida-Baghdad link

Analysis by Jim Lobe

Washington, DC, Jan. 30 (IPS)-- Of all the assertions about Iraqi wickedness catalogued in US President George W. Bush’s State of the Union Address last Tuesday night, the most intriguing was his unexpected revival of an alleged connection between Baghdad and al-Qaida.

It was a theme that administration hawks and their backers in Washington think tanks and the media could not stop talking about in the first six months of the “war on terrorism” following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and the Pentagon.

Indeed, by November, they were offering breathless accounts of an alleged April 2001 meeting between the leader of the “skyjackers,” Mohammed Atta, and a senior Iraqi intelligence operative in Prague. They also produced a defector who talked about a training camp where non-Iraqi “Arabs” simulated the takeover of a commercial aircraft in a full-sized mock-up.

Last spring, the Iraqi National Congress (INC), an opposition group strongly favored by Pentagon hawks and a major source of Iraqi defectors, persuaded ABC News to interview a self-described long-time mistress of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Citing Hussein’s son Uday as her source, she claimed that the Iraqi president and Osama bin Laden held face-to-face meetings in the mid-1990s.

The fact that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) rejected the woman’s story was cited by Defense Policy Board chairman and super-hawk Richard Perle as “the latest example of the CIA’s unfailing inability to spot intelligence when they see it.” Other Pentagon hard-liners were so excited about her account that they prevailed on their boss, Donald Rumsfeld, to create his own intelligence agency to find other gaps in the CIA’s analysis.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal ran innumerable editorials scoffing at skeptics of a link and repeatedly suggesting that the anthrax attacks of October 2001 bore the markings of an Iraqi plot. It even provided lavish space for investigative reports that argued that Hussein was behind the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York and possibly the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building.

As with the story about Atta, the mock airliner (which should easily have been confirmed by satellite photography), and Hussein’s mistress, most of these allegations disappeared from the administration’s public rhetoric last summer, suggesting to most analysts that the stories promoted by Perle, the Journal, and others were either misunderstandings or fabrications or both.

Indeed, the US intelligence community appeared unanimous that evidence linking Baghdad to the Sept. 11 attacks, or any other attacks against western targets since an alleged 1993 assassination plot against former President H.W. Bush in Kuwait, was simply non existent.

But the early allegations had already had their desired effect. One poll released last October found that two-thirds of the public had come to believe that “Saddam Hussein helped the terrorists in the Sept. 11 attacks,” despite the lack of evidence to support that view.

The administration began focussing attention on charges that Hussein was accumulating weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that could either be used against the United States and its allies or transferred to al-Qaida or other terrorists.

It was the latter theory that Bush returned to last Tuesday night as he laid out a nightmare scenario.

“Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications, and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al-Qaida,” he declared without elaborating.

“Before September the 11th, many in the world believed that Saddam Hussein could be contained,” he said. “But chemical agents, lethal viruses and shadowy terrorist networks are not easily contained. Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans, this time armed by Saddam Hussein. It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known.”

Ironically, as New York Times pointed out Wednesday, such a scenario was already considered and dismissed as unlikely by the CIA last October, subject to one caveat. If Hussein believed that Washington was determined to oust him, the agency said, only then would he be inclined to use terror.

“Saddam might decide that the extreme step of assisting Islamist terrorists in conducting a WMD attack against the United States would be his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him,” the CIA warned.

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US accused of lies and distortions
after Powell report on Iraq

Compiled by Eamon Martin

Feb. 5 (AGR)-- On Wednesday, Feb. 5, US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, warned Iraq that it had put itself in danger of “serious consequences” as he presented to the United Nations (UN) what the Bush administration feels is evidence of Iraqi mobile weapons labs, links to al-Qaida and systematic attempts to evade inspectors.

Despite speculation of an “Adlai Stevenson moment” comparable to the point in the 1962 Cuban missile crisis when Stevenson, the then US ambassador to the UN, revealed aerial photographs of Soviet missiles on the Caribbean island before a live television audience, Powell instead listed a series of allegations.

He played the UN Security Council an intercepted communication between an Iraqi army colonel and captain from January this year containing orders to remove any reference to “nerve gas” from previous orders, and said that evidence of evasion was proof that Iraq was spying on the inspectors to hide its weapons programs.

Powell also:

•Asserted that Iraq “bulldozed and graded to conceal chemical weapons evidence” at the al-Musayyib chemical complex in 2002 and had a series of cargo vehicles and a decontamination vehicle moving around at the site. He said this had been corroborated by a “human” source.

•Cited informants who claim Iraq is placing rockets armed with biological weapons in the west of the country.

•Presented declassified satellite pictures that he said were of 15 munitions bunkers. Powell said four of them had active chemical munitions inside.

•Said Iraqi informants claim that Iraq has 18 trucks it uses as mobile biological weapons labs.

•Accused Iraq of harboring a terrorist network headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an “al-Qaida lieutenant,” with links to the London ricin gang.

•Played an audio tape between Iraqi military officers purportedly discussing hiding “modified” vehicles from weapons inspectors.

Powell’s contentions regarding Abu Musab al-Zarqawi are controversial in that there are no current links between the Iraqi regime and the al-Qaida network, according to an official British intelligence report seen and reported by BBC News this past week.

The classified document, written by defense intelligence staff three weeks ago, says there has been contact between the two in the past. But it assessed that any fledgling relationship foundered due to mistrust and incompatible ideologies.

That conclusion flatly contradicts one of the main charges laid against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein by the United States and Britain - that he has cultivated contacts with the group blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

The defense intelligence staff document, seen by BBC defense correspondent Andrew Gilligan, is classified Top Secret and was sent to UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and other senior members of the government.

It says al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden views Iraq’s ruling Ba’ath party as running contrary to his religion, calling it an “apostate regime.”

“His aims are in ideological conflict with present day Iraq,” it says.

The evidence Powell offered showed that al-Zarqawi was treated in a hospital in Baghdad last spring but provides absolutely no evidence of any contacts with Iraqi officials.

It also shows that some members of a small Kurdish Islamic fundamentalist group, Ansar al-Islam, which controls a small area inside northern Iraq, were trained by al-Qaida. But this also shows no credible evidence of contacts with the Iraqi regime.

It is the attempt by both the White House and the Pentagon to make a clear and definite link between al-Zarqawi, Ansar al-Islam and Saddam Hussein that has infuriated many within the United States intelligence community.

According to British and American intelligence sources the “new” material General Powell presented to the UN Security Council comes from Iraqi opposition groups and is not regarded as credible.

“The intelligence is practically non-existent,” one exasperated American intelligence source said. Most of the intelligence being used to support the idea of a link between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein comes from Kurdish groups who are the bitter enemies of Ansar al-Islam, he said.

“It is impossible to support the bald conclusions being made by the White House and the Pentagon given the poor quantity and quality of the intelligence available,” said the source. “There is uproar within the intelligence community on all of these points, but the Bush White House has quashed dissent.”

In its first reaction to Powell’s presentation, Baghdad issued a blanket denial. Iraqi presidential adviser Amer al-Saadi said intercepts of alleged conversations between Iraqi officials cited by Powell were “manufactured.”

Robert Scheer, in a Los Angeles Times editorial, immediately fired off a response: “Powell and the president have employed an irresponsible pattern of exaggeration and innuendo in an attempt to link Iraq to al-Qaida. This shameful canard molds a few extremely fuzzy and circumstantial bits of proto-evidence into an absurdly convenient ‘proof’ that taking over Iraq will help prevent anti-American terrorism. Years from now, if the US is still spending billions trying to micromanage the Middle East and reaping its rewards in blood, Bush will be marked indelibly, like Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon before him, as a leader who went to war on a lie.”

Speaking for the United States, the UN Security Council’s most powerful member, Powell once again threatened the existence of the international body if the UN was not more responsive to US wishes.

“This body places itself in danger of irrelevance if it allows Iraq to continue to defy its will without responding effectively and immediately,” said Powell.

France, which has a veto in the Security Council, said that the work of the weapons inspectors had not yet run its course, and their numbers should be tripled if necessary. French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin responded to Powell’s presentation by insisting that weapons inspections should be strengthened, with a full-time monitor overseeing the process in Baghdad.

“Given the choice between military intervention and an inspections regime which is inadequate because of a failure to cooperate on Iraq’s part, we must choose the decisive reinforcement of the means of inspection. This is today what France is proposing,” de Villepin said.

China’s foreign minister, Tang Jiaxuan, urged the 15-member Security Council to give inspectors more time to carry out their task. He said that inspectors had been working “very hard,” and added: “It is their view that now they are not in a position to draw conclusions. We should respect the views of the two UN inspection agencies and support the continuation of their work.”

Those sentiments were echoed by the Russian foreign minister, Igor Ivanov, who called for the allegations made in Powell’s statement to be confirmed by inspectors inside Iraq.

The European Parliament said last Thursday that Iraq’s behavior toward UN arms inspectors did not justify military action and urged the United States to avoid any unilateral use of force. In a non-binding resolution reflecting unease in Europe at the prospect of war, EU lawmakers declared: “Breaches of UN Security Council Resolution 1441 currently identified by the inspectors with regard to weapons of mass destruction do not justify military action.”

The European Parliament resolution said any preemptive strike by the United States and its allies would violate international law and lead to a deeper crisis in the region.

According to reports quoting US and British officials, war plans call for the United States to blitz Iraq with 3,000 guided bombs and missiles in the first two days of air strikes, easily exceeding the total fired over six weeks in the 1991 Gulf war.

Sources: Agence France-Presse, BBC News, Daily Telegraph (UK), Guardian (UK) Independent (UK), Los Angeles Times, Reuters

Immunity of Bangladeshi army,
law enforcers angers many

Dhaka, Bangladesh, Jan. 30 (IPS)-- Bangladesh’s government may have earned the gratitude of a number of citizens by tackling lawlessness through an anti-crime drive, but its introduction of a bill to protect law enforcers who carry out the drive, which has led to the deaths of at least 44 people in detention, has angered many.

This week the Awami League, the main opposition party, boycotted the start of the winter session of Parliament -- which began on Jan. 26 -- to protest the ordinance, signed by President Iajuddin Ahmed on Jan. 9.

But it is not just the opposition that is concerned by the bill. Eminent jurist Dr. Kamal Hossain accused the government of promulgating a “very extraordinary law bypassing Parliament” and said the ordinance was “contrary to the Constitution and human rights.”

He warned that the ordinance, if passed into law, would snatch away the right of “the people to get protection from repressive arrest, torture and inhuman behavior.”

The Joint Drive Indemnity Ordinance 2003 gives immunity from prosecution to armed forces and government officials for their involvement in “any casualty, damage to life and property, violation of rights, physical or mental damage” between Oct. 16, 2002 and Jan. 9, 2003.

The anti-crime drive was launched on Oct. 16, 2002, by the ruling alliance led by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, as a response both to growing lawlessness in the country and criticism of her inaction at tackling it.

By the time the drive, called Operation Clean Heart, was called off on Jan. 9, more than 11,000 had been arrested all across the country, including 2,400 criminals with police history sheets.

But the toll at the end of the exercise was at least 44 people dead in custody, allegedly as a result of torture, and more than 5,000 injured following their arrest, reportedly from being beaten by members of the armed forces, the paramilitary Bangladesh Rifles, and police.

It is a toll that has proven damaging to the ruling alliance. During the initial stages of Operation Clean Heart, the publicity wing of the armed forces -- the Inter Services Public Relations -- dismissed the growing number of allegations of death due to torture as “baseless” and said instead they were “heart attacks.”

The claims made by relatives of those who died in detention persisted, and led the government to announce that these would be investigated, and that those found guilty of excesses would be punished to the extent of the law.

Then came the surprise about-face -- the decision by the government to introduce the ordinance amid reports of some families taking steps to sue armed forces and police personnel for causing the deaths of their kin.

The Awami League and other political parties reacted immediately.

Former prime minister, now leader of the opposition Sheikh Hasina, stated: “The present BNP government deployed the army after having failed to run the country [and] control and contain terrorism. The government, particularly the prime minister, would have to bear the responsibility of the killing of the people during the army-led joint operation.”

Other politicians were equally strident in condemnation. Manjurul Ahsan Khan, president of the Communist Party of Bangladesh, and Rashed Khan Memon, president of the left-leaning Workers Party, said the country’s Constitution and law did not authorize people to be killed without investigation and trial.

“A new chapter has been added to the politics of killing through this ordinance,” said Memon. And barrister Rukonuddin explained that “the necessity of promulgating the indemnity ordinance would not have arisen” if excesses had not been committed during the joint drive.

Lawyers’ associations across the country -- from the Supreme Court Bar Association to those in small towns -- have condemned the ordinance and called for its immediate withdrawal.

Yet some here reckon that about 60 percent of those allegedly killed in custody were activists of the ruling BNP, and 30 percent were members of the Awami League.

Privately, a number of academics, teachers, and members of the public believe that much of the good from Operation Clean Heart has been destroyed by the deeds of a few.

“The members of the law-enforcing agencies might have killed some people during detention -- this of course is unacceptable,” said a Dhaka housewife. “But the lives and property of millions have been saved.” But that does not mean they like the ordinance.

“Let the wrong-doers suffer punishment for their misdeeds through the process of law,” said Abdul Haque, a teacher in a Dhaka college. Following the drive, a section of the public -- according to surveys -- feels that the next step is to reform the police administration, which they believe is riddled with corruption.

The argument is that calling out the army every now and again to aid the civil administration will rob army personnel of their martial spirit, honesty, and integrity. They say that maintaining law-and-order is the responsibility of the police, and a reformed and vigilant police force is what Bangladesh needs.

What concerns Fazle Hasan Abed, chair of the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, a leading non-governmental organization, is that the country’s image will be battered if the ordinance becomes law.

That, he said, will endorse the use of “undesirable methods and actions to enforce law,” which is why he has urged Prime Minister Zia to withdraw the ordinance.

World community gives Bush
AIDS pledge mixed reception

By Jim Lobe

Washington, DC, Jan. 29 (IPS)-- While welcoming President George W. Bush’s pledge to sharply increase funding for HIV/AIDS programs overseas, Africa and AIDS activists complain that the plan’s funding for the UN-backed Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria remains far short of what is required and targets too few countries.

They also said Wednesday that the Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which is to provide $15 billion to fight the disease over the next five years, will be phased in far too slowly, given the magnitude of the crisis.

Of the $15 billion total, only $2 billion is to be appropriated for fiscal 2004, which begins next Oct. 1, according to the White House, and only $1 billion will go to the Global Fund.

“The real measure of the president’s sincerity will be in the budget numbers for 2003 and 2004,” said Salih Booker, director of Africa Action. “Large numbers for 2007 are meaningless to people who will die this year without access to essential medicines.”

Bush announced his new program, which must be submitted to Congress for approval, during his State of the Union address on Tues., Jan. 28, which was devoted chiefly to making the case for a major new round of tax cuts and for war against Iraq without United Nations Security Council approval, if necessary.

The middle of his hour-long speech was devoted to the HIV/AIDS crisis. Bush noted that nearly 30 million Africans are infected with the virus, including three million children under the age of 15. “Because the AIDS diagnosis is considered a death sentence,” Bush said, “many do not seek treatment. Almost all who do are turned away.”

Of the $15 billion to be spent, Bush said, $10 billion will be “new money” -- that is, funds that have not been previously committed.

According to a White House fact sheet, the initiative will focus on 14 countries. The African countries are Botswana, Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. Zimbabwe, which suffers adult infection rates of more than 25 percent, is not included, apparently due to Washington’s unhappiness with the country’s dictatorial president, Robert Mugabe. In the Caribbean, Guyana and Haiti will be targeted.

The fact sheet said that the seven million new infections that will be prevented represent 60 percent of the projected 12 million new infections in the target countries. The program will also provide care for 10 million HIV-infected individuals and AIDS orphans.

AIDS activists, who have strongly criticized the administration’s lack of leadership in dealing with the global AIDS crisis in the past, generally welcomed the sharp increase in promised US funding.

“It’s about time that this administration addresses the AIDS pandemic in Africa at the kind of major national forum that it deserves,” declared Rep. Barbara Lee, a California Democrat who heads the Task Force on HIV/AIDS of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC). “I welcome the president’s announcement to treat two million people living with HIV.”

But Lee said that she wanted to wait until she could see the specifics of the proposal, including why it does not include more money for the Global Fund and whether the administration intends to take money from other key programs to fund the new one.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, one third world diplomat at the United Nations told IPS the US pledge is “too little, too late.”

“At a time when the US is planning to increase its military budget by nearly $100 billion annually, the American contribution to fight AIDS is peanuts,” he said.

The activists are particularly concerned that money to fund the program will be taken out of the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA), a program announced by Bush last May but not yet funded, to provide a 50 percent increase in US development aid -- or $5 billion -- to the world’s poorest countries over the next three years. That program is supposed to increase US aid next year by some $1.6 billion, but no details have yet been released.

“We have waited for real presidential leadership on this issue and at least we are starting to see it,” said Paul Zeitz, director of the Global AIDS Alliance. But, like Booker, he expressed disappointment that the program provides so little immediate funding and so little to the Global Fund, which, one year after beginning operation, is already running out of money due to high demand and disappointing contributions.

The Global Fund, to which Washington has contributed only $500 million in the last two fiscal years, has estimated its needs at more than $10 billion a year by 2005 and $15 billion a year by 2007 if it is to fulfil its role as the main multilateral instrument for fighting the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Activist groups like the Global AIDS Alliance have been arguing that the United States, which accounts for about one-third of the global economy, should provide at least one-third of the Fund’s resources, or more than $3 billion a year. In that respect, Bush’s commitment of only $1 billion over the five-year period marks a serious blow.

“It’s outrageous that the president gives such short shrift to the Global Fund,” Zeitz said. “It is the best hope yet for the fight against AIDS; yet the president has let the Fund down.”

Bush has also not made clear yet whether the program will encourage African countries to use generic drugs for treatment, contrary to the administration’s position in recent trade negotiations, where they have defended the interests of major western pharmaceutical companies that oppose generics.

Activists say they were encouraged by Bush’s reference to the sharp declines in the cost of antiretroviral drugs that sustain the lives of people with AIDS. “Procurement of drugs at this rate is only possible from generic manufacturers,” Zeitz said.

Finally, activists expressed disappointment that Bush failed to mention any new debt-relief initiatives, which they say could greatly enhance their ability to deal with the pandemic and rebuild health systems battered by years of World Bank and International Monetary Fund-induced austerity.

“Africa’s illegitimate external debts are draining $15 billion a year from the war on AIDS,” said Booker. “The spirit and logic of the president’s own initiative demand the immediate cancellation of these debts.”

Sexual abuse in Zambia
fuels girls’ AIDS epidemic

New York, New York, Jan. 28— Sexual abuse of girls in Zambia fuels the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the strikingly higher HIV prevalence among girls than boys, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said today. Concerted national and international efforts to protect the rights of girls and young women are key to curbing the AIDS epidemic’s destructive course, the group said.

Human Rights Watch today released a new 121-page report, “Suffering in Silence: Human Rights Abuses and HIV Transmission to Girls in Zambia,” which details sexual abuse and other human rights abuses of Zambian girls, especially girls orphaned by AIDS. The report documents many incidents of abuse of orphan girls at the hands of their guardians. Some of the girls are as young as 11 years old.

“It is no accident that HIV prevalence is five times higher among girls than boys under age 18 in Zambia,” said Janet Fleischman, Washington director for Africa Division of HRW and author of the report. “Young girls are preyed upon by older men — including those who dare call themselves guardians or caretakers of these girls, and the government fails to protect them.”

The United Nations’ annual assessment of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, released in December, emphasized that in Africa “the face of AIDS is clearly a female face,” and noted the much higher rate of HIV transmission among girls than boys on the continent. The HRW report tells the human story behind this disparity, detailing many ways in which girls in Zambia are vulnerable to the disease through abuse and subordination.

“Girls orphaned by AIDS face stigma and poverty and too often are unable to stay in school,” Fleischman said. “They may have no recourse but to trade sex for survival — their own survival and sometimes that of their siblings — and they are rarely able to negotiate safer sex.”

Zambia is not the only country facing this challenge, Fleischman noted. But with more than one in five adults infected and very high HIV prevalence among girls and young women, it illustrates a situation that should be central to the United States’ and other donors’ development assistance agenda and HIV/AIDS programs, he says.

Human Rights Watch said laws against sexual violence and abuse are inadequately enforced in Zambia. The insensitive and ineffectual handling of sexual violence complaints by the law enforcement system often deters victims from reporting cases and impedes prosecution of perpetrators.

Zambia is slated to receive $93 million for AIDS programs from the Global Fund on HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis and $42 million from the World Bank in the next few years. Other donors, including the United States, have also given millions for anti-AIDS efforts. Little of this assistance, however, is targeted to protecting girls from sexual abuse.

HRW urged the government of Zambia to intensify training on addressing sexual abuse for police and court officials, to strengthen victim support units of the police, and to ensure rigorous prosecution of perpetrators of these crimes.

“The improvements needed to enforce existing laws against sexual abuse are not very costly compared to many other elements of AIDS programs,” said Fleischman. “The government and donors have a chance to make a dent in the hyper-epidemic of HIV transmission among girls by making their protection a priority.”

The report is available online at: http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/zambia/

Source: Human Rights Watch

Five EU nations begin sea patrols
to stem immigration

By Tito Drago

Madrid, Spain, Jan. 28 (IPS)-- Five European nations initiated sea patrols with armed vessels in the Mediterranean Tuesday to keep undocumented immigrants from entering the European Union (EU), amidst criticism from activists who protest that the operation is a violation of human rights.

A total of seven vessels from Spain’s Civil Guard — a militarized police force — and from France, Britain, Portugal, and Italy began to take part in Operation Ulysses, described as the first EU-wide initiative aimed at stemming the inflow of undocumented immigrants.

“This action violates human rights, because the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations establishes freedom of movement as one of those rights,” said Francisco José Alonso Rodríguez, president of the Spanish League of Human Rights.

Parliamentary Deputy Consuelo Rumi, in charge of immigration affairs in the opposition Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), commented that the sea patrols were the “embryo” of a pan-European border police force, the creation of which is supported by her party.

She added, however, that it is a mistake to believe that illegal immigration flows can be effectively checked by sea patrols.

What is needed, Rumi argued, is “to work in the immigrants’ countries of origin with a policy of real development aid and cooperation, in order to prevent hunger and desperation from driving people to leave their home countries.”

According to Zorha Elguenuri, the president of the Association of Moroccan Immigrant Women, the inflow of people must be regulated in such a way as to allow those wishing to come to Europe to do so.

In response to IPS’ question whether there is space in Europe for many more immigrants, she said that “each person finds their place, and the universal right to free circulation must be respected.”

The head of the Federation of Defense and Promotion of Human Rights, José Antonio Gimbernat, said the operation launched Tuesday amounts to an attempt to “fence off the countryside” without addressing the roots of the problem.

Gimbernat remarked to IPS that those responsible for the new patrols believe in “fortress Europe” — the possibility that this region can remain an island of high living standards surrounded by countries suffering “epidemics of hunger and underdevelopment,” which he said was simply not possible.

He added that in order to attack the underlying causes, what is needed is an effective freeing up of trade to allow imports of merchandise from those countries, as well as “real” development aid. But while the countries are developing, he added, the right to immigration must be respected.

The start of Operation Ulysses, a pilot project, was announced by Spain’s Interior Minister Angel Acebes in Palma de Mallorca, the capital of the Balearic Islands, located off the eastern coast of Spain in the Mediterranean.

An Interior Ministry spokesman said the sea patrols are aimed at “combating illegal immigration and the mafias that traffick human beings.” In addition, he said, the vessels will provide humanitarian aid in case of shipwrecks.

Spain is one of the gateways used by thousands of undocumented immigrants from North and sub-Saharan Africa, East Europe and Asia to enter the EU every year, and hundreds drown annually in the attempt to cross the Strait of Gibraltar, often in precarious watercraft.

The operation’s command post will be based in Algeciras, a southern Spanish port city on the Strait of Gibraltar.

Greece, Norway, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland and Austria are also participating as observers, and on Feb. 8, the patrols will extend to the Atlantic ocean, around Spain’s Canary Islands, located off the northwest coast of Africa.

Acebes said the participating watercraft will create a “rectangular filter” six nautical miles in width, with a length measured in multiples of 12 miles according to the number of ships.

He said any boat attempting to pass through that filter would be detected, since the radars of the ships taking part in the patrols have a 12-mile range.

Planning for the initiative in the first half of 2002, when Spain held the EU rotating presidency, and the bloc began to decisively promote cooperation in the areas of justice and the interior between the 15 member nations, and to move towards the creation of a common European Union border guard.

Spain designed and presented Operation Ulysses to the Strategic Committee on Borders, Immigration and Asylum. It was approved last September, and the rest of the EU countries joined the project, either as participants or observers.

Two-month anti-Chávez
strike begins to unravel

By Humberto Márquez

Caracas, Venezuela, Jan. 29 (IPS)-- The nearly two-month general strike against Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez began to wane Wednesday with banks returning to their usual schedules and other sectors beginning to normalize activity as well, while the opposition tries to avoid the appearance of defeat.

The association representing the country's 30 private banks, which handle 90 percent of all financial activity, “decided by a two-thirds majority to renew normal hours of operation as of Monday, Feb. 3,” announced the group's president, Ignacio Salvatierra.

Since the strike began Dec. 2, the banks have only been open to the public for half their normal hours -- in the mornings -- leading to long lines of clients and prompting difficulties in other sectors of the economy.

The political opposition declared the nationwide work stoppage to demand a non-binding referendum in which voters would indicate whether or not the populist Chávez should immediately resign.

But on Jan. 22, the Supreme Court indefinitely postponed its debate on the constitutionality of the referendum.

Another aim of the strike, according to the business, labor and oil industry leaders who are heading it, is to show the world the magnitude of the Venezuelan people's opposition to Chávez.

The strike was further designed to pressure the government and opposition negotiators, engaged in talks brokered by Organization of American States (OAS) Secretary-General César Gaviria, to quickly come up with an “electoral solution” to the crisis.

Education Minister Aristóbulo Istúriz said 90 percent of the country's public schools are functioning again, while private schools have been holding assemblies to discuss opening their doors next week.

“We have a timetable for dismantling the strike without it being interpreted as a defeat,” a Christian Democratic leader who has been one of the main organizers of the opposition protests told IPS on condition of anonymity.

“The logical thing is to start with the most sensitive areas, like the food industry and education,” he said.

Since December, activity has been paralyzed in shopping malls, department stores, and the main manufacturing industries, although for some sectors the beginning of the strike coincided with the traditional December-January vacation period.

A large part of the country's small and medium industries continued to operate normally, including neighborhood shops and bakeries. Mass transit was not involved in the strike, and many factories and other businesses had already begun to return to normal operating schedules.

Over the past week, central areas of Caracas and other large cities have experienced the habitual noise and traffic congestion seen after every annual vacation period, even though long lines of vehicles continued outside the service stations, as the Venezuelan oil industry is only beginning to restore production after it fell to a relative trickle.

On Sunday, the shopping centers will open their doors to opposition activists collecting signatures in support of various initiatives aimed at pushing Chávez out of power.

Petition drives will also be carried out in front of the hundreds of schools that generally serve as voting stations.

There are numerous initiatives for which signatures are being collected, including a constitutional amendment to cut short Chávez's 2000-2006 term, a referendum that would revoke his mandate, and a call for the creation of a constituent assembly to rewrite the constitution.

A few days later, according to the opposition source, the malls and the franchises in Venezuela of international corporations will open their doors on restricted schedules, “to maintain the climate of civic protest, the point towards which the current strike will ultimately evolve.”

The reduced hours will allow shopkeepers to readjust the prices of their products once foreign exchange controls go into effect on Feb. 5. The government announced the new controls after suspending foreign exchange trading by the Central Bank on Jan. 22.

Car-makers are negotiating agreements with their workers to put them on leave with partial payment of their wages while they sell off accumulated inventories.

General Motors, the leading automobile manufacturer in Venezuela -- the company sold 25,945 of the 74,560 vehicles assembled in the country in 2002 -- asked its 1,800 employees to remain on leave and to take a 25 percent pay cut until some 6,000 vehicles are sold on the local market or exported to Chile, Colombia, and Ecuador, said the company's director of legal affairs, Luis Kolster.

Similar accords are being negotiated by Ford and Chrysler, while they await the reopening of their showrooms and sales lots. Much depends on the government's decision on foreign exchange, because around half of the components that go into each car are imported.

The strike's flagship industries -- those in which the two-month stoppage had most support -- including bottlers (of beer and soft drinks), flour, and food processing plants, which are to gradually reinstate operations throughout February.

The privately owned communications media, which halted broadcasts of advertising and changed their normal programming to focus on covering and promoting the anti-Chávez conflict, “will be the last to return to normal operations... perhaps by Feb. 10,” said the opposition source.

The oil industry, normally Venezuela's economic engine, has been the core of the power struggle here. The managers and several thousands of employees of the giant state-run Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) stopped working, halting operations at oil wells and refineries and on tankers.

Petroleum represents a quarter of the gross domestic product (GDP), half of fiscal revenues and 80 percent of cash inflows.

The country's normal output of 2.8 million barrels of crude per day fell to just 150,000 with the onset of the strike in December.

Venezuela, an oil exporter for the last 90 years, had to import gasoline for the first time in three generations.

The government responded with an emergency plan backed by the armed forces, and has achieved a partial recuperation of production. Chávez says daily output now stands at 1.32 million barrels of oil. The opposition PDVSA managers' union, Gente del Petróleo, however, puts the figure at 1.05 million.

This was achieved “by overexploiting the fields of light crude, where are easier [sic], while the heavy crude will be hurt because they are more difficult to reactivate, meaning the output levels from prior to the strike will not be achieved in the short term,” said a protest leader.

On another front at PDVSA, the government began rapid reforms “to streamline its structure and eliminate extra personnel,” company president Alí Rodríguez said as he reported the layoff of 5,111 employees.

The anti-Chávez coalition is demanding amnesty for all oil employees who participated in the strike, “but the problem is that the government refuses to address the point in the negotiations,” said Américo Martín, one of the six negotiators representing the opposition.

Officials say that some of the oil industry's installations were sabotaged. Administrative proceedings have begun against the leaders of the strike in the petroleum sector.

“For the saboteurs, there will be neither pardon nor amnesty,” said Vice-President José Vicente Rangel, leader of the government's negotiating team.

BRIEFS

Blair: North Korea is next
On Jan. 29 UK Prime Minister Tony Blair pledged that after dealing with Iraq, the United Nations would confront North Korea about its nuclear weapons program.
The prime minister was giving an impassioned defense of the government's position on Iraq during his weekly question time when an anti-war MP shouted: “Who's next?”
Replying to the heckle, Blair said: “After we deal with Iraq we do, yes, through the UN, have to confront North Korea about its weapons program.”
“We have to confront those companies and individuals trading in weapons of mass destruction,” he added.
To another cry of “When do we stop?,” Blair answered: “We stop when the threat to our security is properly and fully dealt with.”
The British and US governments have been accused of double standards over their treatment of Iraq and North Korea -- threatening Saddam Hussein's regime with war, when there is no evidence that it has successfully developed nuclear weapons, while attempting diplomacy with Kim Jong Il's, which is known to possess them. (The Guardian (UK))

Peace eludes Côte d’Ivoire despite pact signed in France
The Côte d’Ivoire peace accord reached over the weekend of Jan. 22-23 near Paris has brought about the practical end of the elected government of president Laurent Gbagbo, to the benefit of the opposition and the rebel forces that launched the civil war on Sept. 19 last year.
The agreement, signed by government and rebels in a conference held in Marcoussis, in the outskirts of Paris, might also lead to the installation of a new French protectorate in the Côte d’Ivoire to avoid an internationalization of the conflict, analysts said.
During the weekend, the UN secretary general Kofi Annan, an African coalition of 12 states, including South Africa, Mali, Ghana, Gabon and Cameroon, and France, ratified the agreement in Paris, and announced that international aid should now flow into the Côte d’Ivoire to finance reconstruction.
The peace pact should launch an international campaign of economic aid for the Côte d’Ivoire, whose economy has been severely damaged by the civil war.
The president of the European Commission, Romano Prodi, who participated in the signing ceremony, announced a first package of aid, worth $400 million.
However, the agreement in Marcoussis was accompanied by violent demonstrations against France in the Côte d’Ivoire.
Describing the accord a humiliation for Laurent Gbagbo, thousands of protesters loyal to the government chanted slogans against France and in favor of the United States, and sacked French institutions and residences in the Atlantic port of Abidjan, the country’s economic capital, and in other cities. (IPS)

US Congressmen take anti-war case to UN chief
Two members of the US Congress working against a possible attack by Washington on Iraq brought their message to the United Nations on Jan. 30.
John Conyers Jr. (D-MI) and Jim McDermott (D-WA) told United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan that they are preparing two resolutions that urge President George W. Bush to stay away from the military adventure in Iraq.
“We react to the people. More and more people are becoming aware of this issue,” said McDermott, referring to growing nationwide protests against the war.
Last October, the House of Representatives granted Bush power to invade Iraq without the approval of the UN Security Council, a move that was also endorsed by the Senate. The new resolution seeks to curtail the president’s powers and supports the ongoing process of inspections.
“The difficulty of going alone [on war] undermines the UN, which the US might regret in the future,” Conyers said.
Added McDermott, “The Vietnam war was ended by the American people. It was not ended by the members of Congress. The power in our system comes from the people.” (IPS)

Central America begins negotiations for deal with US
The United States and five nations of Central America began the first round of talks towards the creation of a free trade zone by December, amidst controversy over the alleged costs and benefits, in the Costa Rican capital on Mon., Jan. 24.
Around 200 negotiators met in a San Jose hotel to begin discussing the liberalization of trade between the United States and the so-called Group of Five (G-5), made up of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua.
The round of talks, which ran Monday through Friday, was the first of nine to be held throughout the year in various locations, and which are to end in December with a free trade deal that analysts say will act as a sort of blueprint for the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).
But critics, including farmers and environmentalists, argue that it is a maneuver aimed at benefiting transnational corporations and big business.
Trade between the United States and the G-5 currently amounts to around $20 billion.
The official launch of the negotiations took place on Jan. 8 in Washington. The second round of formal talks is scheduled for Feb. 24-28 in El Salvador, and the third for Mar. 31 to Apr. 2 in the United States. (IPS)

Mexican farmers stage mass protest against US imports
On Friday, Jan. 28, tens of thousands of farmers thronged the streets of Mexico City’s major boulevard, riding atop horses and tractors, leading burros and waving large banners to demand greater protection against US imports under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
“The central objective is to show the nation that there is great discontent in the countryside that cannot be hidden,” said Victor Suarez, one of the protest leaders.
At least 25 farm groups in three large coalitions were organized the demonstrations Friday, which also were backed by several environmental groups, opposition political parties, and major labor unions.
Organizers said 30,000 demonstrators participated in the march.
“Today the entire farm movement is marching under a single banner: re-negotiation of the farm chapter (of NAFTA), a new farm policy and a new deal for the countryside,” said Suarez, of the coalition known as The Countryside Can’t Stand More.
Imports of US farm goods to Mexico have skyrocketed. Farm groups allege that massive subsidies, cheap credit, better transportation and technology give US farmers an unfair advantage.
They also complain that the main beneficiaries of the rising Mexican exports have been large, corporate farms rather than the small-plot farms on which millions of Mexicans still live. (AP)

Report: war would be ‘catastrophic’ for Iraqi children
War in Iraq would have devastating effects on the country's 13 million children, many of whom are already malnourished and living in “great fear” of another conflict, says the report of the International Study Team, a Canadian-led, fact-finding team, released on Jan. 28.
The document, based on a trip to Iraq Jan. 20-26 by 10 health experts, concludes that, “Iraqi children are at grave risk of starvation, disease, death and psychological trauma.”
They “are more vulnerable to the adverse effects of a new war than they were before the Gulf War of 1991” but “the international community has at present little capacity to respond to the harm that children will suffer by a new war in Iraq,” it adds.
The report's findings are based on data collected in three Iraqi cities -- Baghdad, Karbala and Basra -- interviews with more than 100 families in their homes and previous studies.
“While it is impossible to predict both the nature of any war and the number of expected deaths and injuries, casualties among children will be in the thousands, probably in the tens of thousands and possibly in the hundreds of thousands,” Canadian team leader and medical doctor Eric Hoskins said in a statement.
The report says that Iraq currently has only one month's supply of food and three months of medicine remaining. (IPS)

Chile: privatization generates inequity in education
The highest proportion of rejected university applicants this year in Chile was found among graduates of public high schools -- one of the clearest indications of the inequalities generated by the partial privatization of the country's educational system.
“In high school I got good grades, but my score on the PAA (academic aptitude test) showed me that in Chile there is one educational system for the poor and another for the rich,” said Sandra Zúñiga, 17, who went to high school in Lo Espejo, a low-income neighborhood on the south side of Santiago.
When the selection process for the 25 public universities was completed on Jan. 20, authorities reported that only 25.6 percent of the 54,068 successful applicants came from public schools, 30 percent came from private schools that receive public subsidies, and 42.4 percent were graduates of private schools that charge tuition, where the children of upper-income families study.
The Pinochet dictatorship, which fragmented the University of Chile and the rest of the public universities, stripping them of their national character, opened secondary and higher education up to private sector participation, under which the state became merely another player in the educational system, and by no means the main one. (IPS)

Indian opposition grows against unilateral war on Iraq
Opposition is slowly but steadily building up in India against possible unilateral military action by the United States against Iraq.
On Jan. 27, the leader of India’s powerful opposition Congress party, Sonia Gandhi called for a concerted effort among like-minded nations to push for a peaceful solution to the issue within the framework of the United Nations.
“If in the present situation, war breaks out in any part of the world, it will not necessarily be confined to a particular area but would impact the whole world,” she said at a party function marking the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948.
The Congress party’s stand on the Iraq issue is in consonance with Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s call earlier in the week for restraint. “It is time the superpower showed some restraint and sought United Nations mediation to resolve the dispute,” Vajpayee said at public function Tuesday. (IPS)