US actions in Middle East spur unexpected ‘reforms’
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Activists plan civil disobedience
to demand anti-HIV/AIDS drugs
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World rallies against US war on Iraq
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Ecuador: US insists on
‘regionalizing’ Colombian conflict
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Thai anti-drug war reveals culture of impunity
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Nigerian ethnic clashes shut
down oil companies in Warri
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WORLD BRIEFS
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US actions in Middle East spur unexpected ‘reforms’

By Emad Mekay

Washington, DC, Mar. 20 (IPS)— As the administration of President George W. Bush cheered the start of war on Iraq and confidently talked about spurring change in the Middle East, unprecedented events in the Arab and Muslim worlds show that the region is indeed transforming — only in the opposite direction to what Washington advocates.

Since the administration and its backers in neo-conservative circles started talking of invading Iraq as a first step to reform in the region, new radical groups have emerged, along with unprecedented popular protests, the changing of sides by once pro-American intellectuals, and unparalleled levels of public anger and pressure on dictatorial regimes.

Hours after Bush said he gave the go-ahead for an attack Tuesday night, some 15,000 Egyptians took to the streets and demonstrated in al-Tahrir Square, the closest thing to New York’s Times Square in the Arab world’s largest capital. Dozens of people were injured.

While this does not seem surprising in a time of war, it is the first time that Egyptians have taken to the streets spontaneously since 1977 riots over food shortages.

The demonstrators included at least 1,000 students from the American University in Cairo, one of the traditionally pro-American bastions in the region.

Another staunch US ally, Kuwait, though predominantly pro-American, has also reportedly witnessed the birth of a radical group that goes by the name “Kuwaiti Hamas” in emulation of the Islamic Resistance Movement in Palestine, which has been engaged in a painful war of attrition for years with Israel.

“We cannot let the criminals spill the blood of Muslims in Palestine, Afghanistan and today in Iraq,” the group said in its first statement.

The Arab-language al-Jazeera TV network showed footage last week of “dozens” of Arab volunteers flocking to Baghdad to fight against the US-led invasion — a development last seen when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in the late 1970s.

In other Arab and Muslim countries, like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Indonesia, Malaysia and Egypt — all US allies — usually docile, semi-official Islamic scholars have been racing to issue “fatwas,” religious rulings, condemning the US attack and saying it is “an individual duty on every Muslim to fight the invaders.”

Several newspapers in the region, many of them formerly pro-US, are changing sides and now label US troops “the new Mongols,” and use terms like “the American wars” and “the American occupation.”

Pro-American writers and intellectuals have found themselves at a loss to explain the US foreign policy that they have been promoting for years. Many have turned around and taken loud critical positions of Washington. These include the editor-in-chief of Egypt’s largest daily, al-Ahram, Galal Dewidar of al-Akhabr newspaper and liberal writer Hazem al-Biblawi, who founded the New Nedaa Society to promote an American-style way of life in the region.

“There is an inevitable result for this war,” Dewidar wrote on Wednesday. “It is the increase of hatred towards anything American because of the US rush into war without authorization from the Security Council. This will push the world into further chaos.”

These developments, though sporadic and sparse, suggest that the US administration claims that its military intervention in Iraq will unleash the forces of reform and create friendly pro-Western populations in the region and make it safer for US citizens at home are optimistic if not ill-informed.

Hussein Abdel Razeq, a columnist with al-Ahali newspaper in Cairo, said in a telephone interview that while some Iraqis may indeed welcome US troops as liberators from a tyrant and that Arabs would greet more freedoms, they clearly reject a change by force and perceive the US aggression as the start of an occupation.

“The tone of shock and anger at US policies all across the region is growing louder and louder by the day,” he said.

Hossam el-Sayed, news editor with the popular Islamonline.net, a bilingual news site that has been monitoring reaction in the Muslim world to US plans to invade Iraq, says that he has recorded events never before seen in that part of the world.

From activists paging each other on their mobile phones, to mass electronic messages urging a boycott of US products, to sit-ins outside British and US embassies throughout Muslim countries, people in the region are voting with their feet to resist US policies, he argued.

“I see the Arab regimes’ hold on power slowly weakening,” said el-Sayed. “There is a tremendous popular pressure now and people think of America as nothing short of an empire that is trying to invade them.”

Most sources interviewed agree it seems that Arab regimes are indeed yielding to this popular pressure, which, if it grows, will bring results inconsistent with US ambitions for the region.

Others say that a slow population-driven change could be in the making.

“People here were hindered and oppressed by their own leaders as well as angered by Israel’s practices against the Palestinians,” said Anas Fodah, a journalist with bab.com. “Now they have one more burden to fathom with the American invasion of Iraq.”

Although Fodah said that popular calls for a reaction to the US invasion could be rolled back as anger cools, it is equally likely that this anger could linger and produce unforeseen results. “The dominant trend is clearly for a change,” he added.

“It might be towards democracy or uprisings against the rulers, or towards radicalism, but it definitely will not be pro-American,” said Abdel Razeq.

Observers see US foreign policy backfiring on other counts. More people are turning to religious groups that Washington had been set to weaken, including the non-violent Muslim Brotherhood, which favors gradual moves toward Islamist states in the area.

“If there are 10 Muslim brothers in my class today, there will be 100 tomorrow,” Walid Kazziha, a professor of political science at the American University in Cairo, told the Washington Post on Thursday.

“The US government and its policies are providing the environment which would allow movements to flourish. They are both trying to stop the movements and at the same time causing them to expand.”

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Activists plan civil disobedience
to demand anti-HIV/AIDS drugs

By Anthony Stoppard

Johannesburg, South Africa, Mar. 20 (IPS)— The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), a lobby group fighting to get the South African government to make anti-HIV/AIDS drugs, like anti-retrovirals, freely available in the public health system, is getting ready to launch a civil disobedience campaign in support of its demands.

Controversially, the South African government has persistently cast doubts on the effectiveness of anti-retrovirals and has preferred to direct its anti-HIV/AIDS efforts towards education and nutritional programs.

Internationally, it is commonly accepted that while anti-retrovirals are dangerous, they are presently the best drugs available to ease the impact of the disease and reduce the spread of HIV.

“We are about to embark on the civil disobedience campaign where, if necessary, we are prepared to break laws and risk arrest. This is not a decision we have come to easily or taken lightly because we respect the government, our Constitution, and we are a constitutional law-abiding organization. But 600 people are dying every day from HIV/AIDS, and that’s a lot of life,” said TAC spokesperson Mark Heywood at a press briefing this week.

The campaign is expected to start on Friday — Human Rights Day in South Africa.

In South Africa, the day commemorates the massacre of more than 60 people who were killed when they clashed with the police while defying apartheid laws in 1961.

TAC is also insisting that the government agree to a national program to treat and prevent the spread of HIV and AIDS. The program was agreed to between representatives of government, trade unions and business organizations in South Africa.

AIDS activists are now accusing the government of dragging its feet and refusing to sign the deal. The program includes the provision of anti-retrovirals to people living with HIV/AIDS. Government has insisted that no agreement has been reached — much to the frustration of AIDS activists.

Earlier this week, TAC representatives indicated that they planned to have 600 volunteers arrested in the first week of the campaign, to symbolize the 600 people who die in South Africa every day of AIDS-related illnesses.

TAC has been tight-lipped about its plans, but has indicated that their actions could include the disruption of government offices, especially those belonging to the Department of Health. TAC has also started “civil disobedience preparation workshops” to train volunteers in civil disobedience.

At a conference on the treatment of the disease, in the coastal city of Cape Town late last week, international anti-HIV/AIDS activists said they would support the TAC campaign. This support would include demonstrations outside South African embassies across the world.

At the conference, it was announced that Namibia intended to become the next African country offering public sector anti-retroviral treatment. Botswana already provides anti-retrovirals in its public health system. Uganda has also committed itself to treating 150,000 people by 2005, while the Nigerian government intends to scale up its treatment.

According to TAC, at current prices, the cost of providing free anti-retrovirals for infected adults in South Africa would start at R224m for the first year, rising to R18 billion in 2015 (One US dollar is equal to 8.21 Rand).

The South African government has indicated that it is not convinced spending the money on anti-retrovirals is the best way of fighting the disease.

Most of South Africa’s five million people who are living with HIV and AIDS are now starting to get sick, according to reports from AIDS groups. A total of 400,000 people died of AIDS in 2002.

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World rallies against US war on Iraq

Compiled by Seán Marquis

Mar. 26 (AGR)-- On Wednesday, Mar. 19 US president George W. Bush announced to the world that his war of aggression against Iraq had begun. From that moment on, millions of citizens around the world have been answering him and sometimes their own leaders who are giving Bush aid in his war.

In Britain tens of thousands of anti-war protesters filled streets and squares, blocked roads, walked out of schools and universities and temporarily stopped work on Thursday.

At the biggest rallying point in London’s Parliament Square, police hauled away some of the 5,000 demonstrators, including many schoolchildren, who were sitting in roads and blocking access points, denouncing the use of British troops in the war.

In Manchester, several thousand young people chanting “Not in Our Name” met in Albert Square and blocked several streets before moving to Oxford Road, where there was a scuffle with police.

Leeds students chained themselves to motorway railings and at least 500 people walked out of Exeter University.

Demonstrations also broke out across Wales. Up to 300 students from Newtown high school, Powys, protested after an exodus from the school, and in Swansea hundreds of pupils at Olchfa comprehensive staged classroom sit-ins after being stopped from joining a protest in the city center.

In Scotland, Stirling University closed to allow staff and students to take part in a rally. Students and children also protested in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Inverness and in the Shetland capital of Lerwick. West Dumbartonshire council gave its staff paid leave to attend rallies. Medical staff at Aberdeen Royal infirmary demonstrated and gave out anti-war leaflets to patients.

In Gloucestershire, thousands of campaigners sang and chanted peace slogans as they marched on the US airbase at Fairford, a few hours after B-52s touched down there following a bombing mission to Iraq.

Protesters laid bouquets and wreaths at the main gate to mark “the death of democracy.”

“More flowers, less Bushes,” read one of the banners.

Between 250,000-400,000 protesters massed in London on Saturday on two days’ notice to denounce British involvement in the Iraq war.

Barely three hours after the first US missiles struck Baghdad, a crowd of 40,000 brought Australia’s second largest city, Melbourne, to a standstill.

The cities of Brisbane and Hobart were also brought to a halt.

The following day about 25,000 demonstrators continued blocking streets in Melbourne.

At a 30,000-strong anti-war rally in Perth on Saturday protester Vinnie Molina said he has stopped watching television broadcasts with Prime Minister John Howard in them. “I will not watch that prick!” he said.

“Millions of Australians are ashamed at the sight of their prime minister bending the knee to the most aggressive gunslinger of an American president we have known,” added Molina.

Joe MacDonald, deputy secretary of the Construction Forestry Mining Energy Union, said Perth construction workers started downing their tools when they heard the war announcement from the White House.

“By eleven in the morning some 2,000 construction workers were involved in strike action on their sites,” he told the Perth rally.

In New Zealand, thousands of chanting demonstrators marched through the streets of the three main cities, calling for an immediate end to the conflict.

In Wellington, protesters shouting “no blood for oil” marched to the US embassy and hurled fake blood into the compound and demanded that US diplomats be expelled.

Thousands more marched in Auckland and Christchurch.

Father Peter Murnane, a Roman Catholic priest, and Nicholas Drake, a Catholic activist, said they used a container of their own blood to make a cross on the carpet of the US Consul’s office in Auckland on Monday.

The US administration was “spilling great quantities of blood on the soil of Iraq,” they said in a statement afterward. “We now make the sign of the cross with our blood on the floor, in this outpost of the United States.”

In Egypt, thousands of riot police were deployed during anti-war protests at the Al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo.

On Thursday, the riot police used water cannon and attack dogs to force back protesters who tried to reach the US embassy.

“Bush is the new Hitler of this century. He won’t stop until he has control of all Arab lands,’’ one Omani student said.

Police arrested around 800 of the thousands of Egyptians who took part in anti-war and anti-American protests over the past three days, the Egyptian Bar Association said Sunday.

Among those arrested were five journalists and eight lawyers, the association said.

Nigeria, which has an election looming and a large Muslim population, says public demonstrations remained banned.

But Lilian Achor, a 25-year-old banker in Lagos, Nigeria said, “America, which has the most deadly weapons the world has ever seen, is accusing another country of having weapons of mass destruction and wants to disarm it. It’s sheer hypocrisy.’’

At least three people were reported killed in a chaotic confrontation outside the US Embassy in San’a, Yemen on Friday.

The clash in the Yemeni capital came when 30,000 demonstrators, some of them hurling rocks, tried to storm the US embassy and were blocked by hundreds of police officers and soldiers who first used tear gas and water cannon, but later fired rifles, news services reported.

In Germany 50,000-80,000 marched from Berlin’s central Alexanderplatz past the guarded US embassy and through the Brandenburg Gate on Thursday.

The crowd whistled and chanted and carried banners saying “Stop the Bush fire,” “George W. Hitler,” “No blood for oil.”

Pia Telschow, a 14-year-old from Berlin, said: “Bush is just carrying on his father’s war.”

On Thursday between 100,000-200,000 marched to the US Embassy in Athens, Greece, chanting “No to the war” and “Americans, killers of people.”

At least 150,000 people demonstrated in Athens and tens of thousands of others throughout Greece, as a four-hour nationwide strike brought the country to a standstill on Friday.

A petrol bomb was thrown at the entrance of a closed suburban McDonald’s restaurant in Athens. In a separate incident, a Citibank branch was damaged by a explosive device made from small cooking gas cylinders. Authorities said no one was hurt.

In Italy, students, labor union members and other protesters marched in several cities, including a demonstration that drew an estimated 45,000 people in Milan on Thursday, while tens of thousands of students, workers and other citizens blocked highways and train tracks elsewhere.

In Paris, France, Palestinian and Kurdish supporters joined anti-war activists, students and left wing parties in street protests numbering some 80,000 people on Saturday, and a McDonalds restaurant in the Montparnasse district of the city was trashed.

In Portugal, three former Portuguese prime ministers attended the start of an anti-war demonstration in Lisbon on Saturday that police estimated to number 35,000.

Some 30,000 hit the streets in militarily non-aligned Sweden.

In Oslo, Norwegian police said they used tear gas to fight off 200 anti-war demonstrators throwing rocks and eggs outside Norway’s US embassy.

In traditionally neutral Ireland, where debate has raged over the US military’s use of Shannon airport, some 20,000 joined a march through the capital Dublin, with at least 5,000 people laying down on main streets outside Trinity College to simulate casualties of war.

Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of Spain for the third day in a row on Saturday with about half a million people joining a march in Barcelona and at least 100,000 in Madrid.

Spanish police in riot gear fired rubber bullets at antiwar demonstrators, including well-known actors and celebrities, who gathered in central Madrid in protest at Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar’s support for the US-led attacks on Iraq. Thirty people were treated for injuries.

In Canada, a crowd of mostly university students turned out to shut down Toronto’s key Yonge and Bloor intersection.

The crowd exploded in chants when George Bush appeared on a giant TV screen on a building above the intersection.

“George Bush, we know you! Daddy was a killer too!”

Protester Issam Shukri, a former Iraqi now living in Toronto, said he agrees Saddam is a brutal dictator, but the US-led war will only hurt the Iraqi people, not the leadership.

“Thousands of lives will be sacrificed for overthrowing Saddam, then their future will be dark and will be controlled by the American puppets.”

More than 250,000 people gathered in Montreal on Saturday and marched on the American Consulate.

Montreal riot police used pepper spray, clubs and shields to keep demonstrators from crossing over the barricades to confront the American Consulate directly.

More than 15,000 protesters marched through Dhaka, Bangladesh, chanting anti-US slogans and burning American and British flags and a half-day strike closed many mosques and businesses.

Rebels in India destroyed Coca Cola bottles and blasted a Pepsi warehouse to the ground.

India’s oldest and most violent rebel outfit, the People’s War Group, targeted the soft drink giants in southern Andhra Pradesh state late on Sunday night.

In Calcutta about 1,000 protesters waving banners reading, “US warmongers go to hell,” tried to storm a US cultural center. At least 12 policemen and six demonstrators were injured when cane-wielding police drove the demonstrators back.

In the South Korean capital, Seoul, Buddhist monks struck giant drums at a rally of 2,000 people to console the spirits of victims of the war.

In South Africa the country’s largest trade union federation, the Congress of South Africa Trade Unions (COSATU), also joined the fray of protest. Calling Thursday a “sad day for world peace,” union spokesperson Moloto Mothapo said the day marked “naked aggression and certainly not war. War takes place between two countries with relatively the same strength -- this is no war, it is invasion and mass murder of the defenseless people of Iraq.”

In Afghanistan, about 1,000 people demonstrated in the eastern town of Mehtar Lam, an Afghan military official said.

Indonesians filled the streets of several cities on Monday, with some denouncing George Bush as a “terrorist” and a “vampire.”

In the city of Semarang, hundreds of people forced the closure of the local office of a US bank and two outlets of US food chains, Elshinta radio reported.



Sources: Agence France-Presse, Associated Press, BBC News, Canadian Press, Guardian (UK), International Herald Tribune, Inter Press Service, NY Times, Reuters, Sympatico NewsExpress, WBAI

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Ecuador: US insists on
‘regionalizing’ Colombian conflict

By Kintto Lucas

Quito, Ecuador, Mar. 21 (IPS)— An attempt by US Army Southern Command chief Gen. James Hill to get Ecuador to renegotiate an agreement to allow the US armed forces to interdict suspicious boats in Ecuadorian waters triggered controversy here this week, amidst protest demonstrations against the war on Iraq.

Hill said progress had been made in military negotiations with Ecuador to allow US warships to remain in Ecuador’s territorial waters and detain and board any vessel they deem suspicious.

“An interdiction agreement is vital to hemispheric security,” Hill said Wednesday.

But permission to carry out maritime interdiction requires the renegotiation of the treaty that leased the military base and part of the port in the western city of Manta to the US armed forces.

That bilateral agreement expressly prohibits the United States from engaging in drug interdiction activities in Ecuadorian territory.

Like any international agreement, a renegotiated version of the treaty would require approval by Congress.

According to the Manta Port Authority, 35 US navy vessels, several of which have been actively involved in maritime interdiction operations, arrived at the port between January 2000 and September 2002.

Such actions would be legalized and expanded under the renegotiated agreement sought by Hill.

Sociologist and writer Alejandro Moreano with the Ecuadorian Collective Against the United States War on Iraq said Hill’s proposal was linked to the US government’s current actions in the Gulf region.

“The US invasion of Iraq and the pressure on Ecuador to sign the interdiction agreement form part of a policy aimed at consolidating a unipolar world with one hegemonic superpower,” said Moreano, who is also an analyst with the fortnightly Quito publication Quincenario Tintají.

But Moreano said an agreement of that kind would not only infringe on Ecuador’s national sovereignty, but would endanger the country’s neutrality with respect to neighboring Colombia’s armed conflict.

“Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has been begging for the United States to intervene against the guerrillas in that country, after the war with Iraq is over,” said Moreano, an expert on the Middle East. “In such a scenario, what role would the US vessels in Ecuador’s territorial waters play?”

Hill visited military installations in Ecuador near the eastern border with Colombia this week, and expressed his country’s interest in assisting Ecuador’s armed forces with advisers and equipment.

“The idea is to work day by day, building friendships, getting to know the leaders [of the Ecuadorian army], and becoming friends,” said the general.

He added that the idea shared by Washington and Bogota is to expand the largely US-financed Plan Colombia, which has been touted as an anti-drug strategy but is described by critics as a counterinsurgency plan, to neighboring countries.

On an earlier visit, in October, Hill said Colombia’s “narcoterrorism problem” was not only Colombia’s but also shared by Ecuador, Brazil, Venezuela, Peru and the United States. “We can only solve this problem if we fight it together,” he added.

According to the general, that was the aim of the defense and foreign ministers of those countries when they met last week in Bogota.

But during that meeting, the ministers of Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador and Peru refused to declare the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the largest rebel group involved in Colombia’s civil war, “terrorists,” as they were pressed to do by Washington and Bogota.

Moreano praised the stance taken by Ecuador as one of neutrality towards Colombia’s four-decade-old armed conflict, and of respect for the free determination of nations.

“That dignified position taken by Ecuador should be strengthened by ruling out the possible agreement on maritime interdiction,” he argued.

Moreano was one of the organizers of a march held Thursday in Quito, where more than 5,000 people demonstrated against the United States and its war on Iraq. Protesters also took to the streets in other cities in this Andean nation of 12.4 million, including more than 2,000 in the southern Ecuadorian city of Cuenca.

Some local observers wonder whether Washington may decide to openly intervene in Colombia once the war against Iraq comes to an end.

“After Iraq, what then?” asked analyst Jorge Vivanco Mendieta, the assistant director of the Guayaquil daily Expreso. But he answered himself: “The most urgent, and closest to hand, problem for the United States is the Colombia conflict.”

Despite the “setback” that the meeting in Bogota signified for Washington, “because Colombia’s neighboring countries, with the exception of Panama, refused to declare the FARC a terrorist group,” the US government will continue trying to extend Plan Colombia, said Vivanco Mendieta.

“What to me seems inevitable is an escalation of the armed clashes between the regular forces in Colombia and the FARC,” which would lead to “much more intense pressure” on the Ecuadorian border, said the analyst.

The Manta base will also be used much more extensively, which could draw Ecuador into the conflict, the analyst warned, adding “That is what we are afraid of.”

The treaty yielding the Manta military base and port to the United States for use in its fight against drug trafficking in the region was signed in 1999 by former president Jamil Mahuad (1998-2000), then-foreign minister Benjamín Ortíz Brennan, and the former chairman of the congressional commission on international affairs Heinz Moeller.

But Congress as a whole was not informed of the agreement, even though the constitution stipulates that international accords must be approved by a plenary session of parliament.

The leasing of the Manta base was opposed by Ecuador’s well-organized indigenous movement, human rights groups, environmentalists, trade unions and other social movements, which saw it as a step towards involvement in Plan Colombia by Ecuador.

Ecuadorian President Lucio Gutiérrez, a left-leaning former army colonel who aligned himself with massive protests by the indigenous movement that helped overthrow Mahuad in 2000, and was elected president late last year, has expressed his opposition to any participation by Ecuador in the Colombian conflict.

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Thai anti-drug war reveals culture of impunity

By Marwaan Macan-Markar

Bangkok, Thailand, Mar. 11 (IPS)— As the death toll mounts in Thailand’s war on drugs, the country is being forced to face up to the culture of impunity that has long been enjoyed by those with power, be they the police, the military or other authorities.

It is a reality that even the critics of the government’s assault on the drug trade cannot ignore, since they find familiar patterns in the stories that have grabbed the headlines after the government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra launched its anti-drug campaign on Feb. 1.

What is different this time is the number of people being killed in the many mafia-style shootings. In the first five weeks of the crackdown, nearly 1,500 people have been killed across the country, with the provinces in the north and northeast among the worst hit.

By contrast, according to records, the average murder toll per month is about 400. In 2001, for instance, there were close to 300 murders recorded every month.

The government’s crackdown on drugs — from February to April — comes in the wake of reports that Thailand is the country with the highest addiction to methamphetamines in the world. Some 5.9 percent of Thais 15 years and older are hooked on the pills, which are produced in the millions in neighboring Burma.

“The culture of impunity is very strong in Thai society,” says Somchai Homlaor, secretary general of Forum Asia, a Bangkok-based regional human rights watchdog. “We know of the extrajudicial killings that take place in the north-east.”

According to Somchai, whose organization has been among those raising the alarm over the high death toll in the anti-drug crackdown, it is common to hear of “gangs going around in masks killing people” with links to drugs or those who steal cars.

“These groups of men are never caught,” he adds. “The public believe they have links with the authorities.”

The police are involved in these cases, he says, adding that it reflects a pattern of them having no faith in the judicial system. “In most cases, we believe that the police kill [drug trade] suspects if they have no evidence that can be proved in courts.”

The global human rights lobbying group Amnesty International has also pointed to the police for regularly resorting to torture to extract confessions from suspects.

“There is a widespread use of torture in the country,” says Srirak Plipat, director of Amnesty International’s Thailand office. “The public are aware that the police use torture.”

In its June 2002 report “Thailand — Widespread Abuses in the Administration of Justice,” Amnesty also identified military and prison guards, in addition to the police, in connection to “the practice of torture, and the existence of conditions amounting to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.” There are several “weaknesses in the Thai criminal justice system” that contributed to the persistence of torture, the report declared. “The police, prison guards and the army all appear to enjoy a degree of impunity in regard to their treatment of people in custody.”

Yet Thailand has many laws to protect human rights and to uphold the system of justice. Chapter three of the country’s 1997 constitution has a section that affirms the presumption of innocence of a suspect in a criminal case. Laws here also recognize the principle of due process.

Yet the stark contradiction between the law and the reality hardly surprises David Streckfuss, a Thailand-based US academic who has written on this Southeast Asian country’s human rights history.

“On paper, Thailand seems to have a judicial system that is in order. But there is always some other operating mechanism going on,” he says. “This permits impunity to happen.”

Even government officials concede that there has been a long prevailing climate of impunity. “Impunity has been around and the law has not been enforced,” says Suranand Vejjajiva, spokesman for Thaksin’s Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thai) party. “We are not happy about it.”

The government is heeding calls to investigate the links the police have with the drug trade, adds Suranand, also a Thai Rak Thai parliamentarian. “We have appointed committees to investigate the police procedure since [the drug crackdown] began.”

Rights activists, however, question the sincerity of this move. They say Bangkok’s latest policy on drugs has encouraged the police to take the level of impunity they enjoy to new heights.

“The government gave the green light by placing targets it wants to achieve by the end of the three-month campaign,” says Somchai. “The killings are a way to force suspects to give information. The killings are part of the campaign.”

Critics point to the “blacklists,” containing supposed suspects in the drug trade, that are held and used by the authorities.

According to Forum Asia, the government has ordered law enforcement officials to “remove 25 percent” of the suspects from provincial blacklists by the end of February.

In doing so, the Thai government has “in effect forced the police and local officials to sidestep judicial procedure and due process of law. Evidence suggests that the police have planted evidence in order to carry out arrests and killings of alleged suspects,” Forum Asia states in its assessment of the campaign.

The police see it differently, arguing that only about 30 deaths can be linked to police fire — and that too in situations of self-defense — while the rest of the killings were cases of drug suspects shooting each other.

This fails to convince Amnesty’s Srirak. “We do not see much commitment by the authorities to investigate the killings the police say were the work of the drug suspects,” he says. “There is evidence that drugs are planted at the crime scene and bullets removed.”

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Nigerian ethnic clashes shut
down oil companies in Warri

By Toye Olori

Lagos, Nigeria, Mar. 22 (IPS)— Nigeria’s petroleum industry may not benefit from the bombardment of Iraq by the United Stated-led coalition after ethnic clashes last week forced multi-national companies to shut down operations in Warri, one of the major oil-producing cities in the Niger Delta region.

Economists say the shut-down may mean that Nigeria will not benefit from the suspension of the quota allocated to member countries of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), to make up for any shortfall arising from the Iraq war.

The announcement by OPEC President Abdullah al-Attiyah means member countries would be free to produce as many barrels of crude per day as their capacity could carry. Nigeria, which is the sixth largest producer of crude in the organization and derives more than 90 percent of its foreign exchange earnings from oil, currently produces two million barrels per day of crude.

However, economists say with the current violent crisis in the Niger Delta region and the shut down of flow stations, Nigeria will not benefit financially from the suspension of the OPEC quota and the bombing of Iraqi oil wells by American soldiers which has pushed international oil prices up. Reports from Warri say military authorities rolled out armored tanks and deployed troops to several parts of the city to combat youths — suspected to be of Ijaw ethnic group — who were clashing with the Urhobos and Itsekiri tribes for the control of the water ways in the area.

Witnesses say a full-scale war broke out between the army and the Ijaw youth.

The first contingent of 1,000 men of the combined Army and Navy had reportedly embarked on “a shoot-on-sight” operation at Okerekoko, an Itshekiri community, but the troops ran into an ambush on their way. A fierce battle is reported to have ensued, resulting in 10 soldiers dead and several others injured. An additional 1,000 soldiers were then deployed to support the initial contingent.

Military sources told journalists in Warri that the army was disadvantaged by the fact that the Ijaw youth had superior knowledge of the area and were heavily armed and ready for battle.

The village of Kporo, which is located near an oil terminal, was destroyed, bringing to 12 the number of Itshekiri communities destroyed since hostilities began on Mar. 19. Police reports say at least 50 people have been killed and several injured in the renewed crisis.

One of the Ijaw youths, who refused to give his name, said they were fighting the government because of the total neglect of their area which produces oil. “We will make this place ungovernable for the federal government and their multi-national oil companies which degrade our environment without putting much back into the area. We will not relent until the government changes it’s stand and takes care of this region,” he said.

The action of the youths and the insecurity in the area have forced both Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) and the American-oil giant, Chevron Texaco, — two oil producing giants in Nigeria — to shut down crude oil flow stations in the area. According to estimates, Shell alone will lose 76,000 barrels of crude per day and Chevron Texaco a total of 140,000 barrels of oil a day.

Sola Omole, Chevron general manager of government and public affairs, in a statement said two contract workers from the Chevron Texaco Escravos Tank Farm were hit by stray bullets, one of them died while the other was treated and later discharged. He noted that the unrest was not directed at the company’s operations or its workers.

By Mar. 20, Chevron Nigeria Limited announced a shut-down of production from all of its onshore and swamp locations in the Western Niger Delta as a result of the unrest.

“The shut down of the onshore locations is a precautionary measure to ensure the safety of workers and guard against environmental damage in the case of an escalation of the situation,” said Omale.

Also on Mar. 20 the crisis spread to the neighboring Rivers State where ethnic Ogbogu youth groups seized a major flow station belonging to Elf Petroleum, alleging a breach of a memorandum of understanding signed with the firm.

The Ogbogu flow station owned by Elf, a French firm, is one of the company’s most extensive oil fields in Nigeria. The youth stormed the station, accusing the oil multinational of deliberately undermining the interest of its’ host communities despite signing a memorandum of understanding with them.