Rise of the right worries immigrants to UK
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WORLD BRIEFS
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WAR BRIEFS
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Stalled terror trials fuel anti-US
rage in Yemen
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The real ‘Saving of Private Lynch’
Iraqi medical staff tell a different story than US military
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Gender inequality in South has global roots
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Latin American churches call for
alternative to ‘free market’
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US speaks of Iraqi democracy
while installing leaders
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How US paid for secret files
on foreign citizens

By Oliver Burkeman and Jo Tuckman

Washington, DC and Mexico City, Mexico, May 5— Governments across Latin America have launched investigations after revelations that a US company is obtaining extensive personal data about millions of citizens in the region and selling it to the Bush administration.

Documents seen by the Guardian show that the company, ChoicePoint, received at least $11 million last year in return for its data, which includes Mexico’s entire list of voters, including dates of birth and passport numbers, as well as Colombia’s citizen identification database.

Literature that ChoicePoint produced to advertise its services to the Department of Justice promised, in the case of Colombia, a “national registry file of all adult Colombians, including date and place of birth, gender, parentage, physical description, marital status, passport number, and registered profession.”

It is illegal under Colombian law for government agencies to disclose such information, except in response to a request for data on a named individual.

One lawyer following the investigations described Mexican officials as “incensed,” and experts said the revelations threatened to destroy fragile public trust in the country’s electoral institutions. In Nicaragua, police have raided two firms believed to have provided the data, and the Costa Rican government has also begun an inquiry. Other countries involved include Brazil, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Argentina and Venezuela.

The identities of the firms supplying ChoicePoint with the data are unknown, since the company says its contracts ensure confidentiality, although it insists all the information was obtained legally.

Exactly how the US government is using the data is also unknown. But since it focuses so heavily on Latin America, it would appear to have vast potential for those tracking down illegal immigrants. It could perhaps also be used by US drugs enforcement agents in the region.

ChoicePoint, though, which is based near Atlanta, is far from unfamiliar to observers of the Florida vote of 2000 that decided the US presidency in George Bush’s favor. Its subsidiary Database Technologies was hired by the state to overhaul its electoral registration lists — and ended up wrongly leading to the disenfranchising of thousands of voters, whose votes might have led to a different result.

Investigations in 2000 and 2001 by the Observer and the BBC’s Newsnight program concluded that thousands of voters had been removed from the lists on the grounds that DBT said they had committed felonies, preventing them from voting. In fact, the firm had identified as “felons” thousands of people who were guilty of misdemeanors, such as, in at least one case, sleeping on a park bench.

Then it produced a revised list of 57,700 “possible felons,” which turned out to be riddled with mistakes because it only looked for rough matches between names of criminals and names of voters. James Lee, a vice-president of ChoicePoint, told Newsnight that Florida, governed by Bush’s brother Jeb, had made it clear that it “wanted there to be more names [on the list] than were actually verified as being a convicted felon.” Bush’s eventual majority in Florida was 537.

Since the election, ChoicePoint has been the beneficiary of a huge increase in the freedom of government agencies to gain access to personal data. The USA PATRIOT act, passed after Sept. 11, allows government investigators to gain access to more information on US citizens without a search warrant, and to see data on private emails with such a warrant but without a wiretap order. The act also means banks must make their databases accessible to firms such as ChoicePoint.

In Mexico, the president of the Federal Electoral Institute, Jose Woldenberg, revealed that his investigators had talked to the Mexican company that said it paid a “third person” 400,000 pesos for a hard disk full of personal data drawn largely from the electoral roll. It sold this to ChoicePoint for just $250,000, indicating the huge profitability of ChoicePoint’s contracts — last year’s $11 million payment was part of a five-year contract worth $67 million.

“The companies had to know that it is forbidden to use the information in the electoral register for any other purpose than elections,” said Julio Tellez, a specialist in Mexico’s information laws at the Tec de Monterrey University. “It is a federal crime to misuse the information, and they did that by selling it and putting it in the hands of a foreign government.”

Tellez said he believed that this makes the companies and the US government liable to prosecution.

The sale of information from the electoral register is particularly devastating in Mexico, because the electoral institute enjoyed a close to unique reputation for honesty and transparency in a country plagued by corruption.

“We feel betrayed. The IFE [Federal Electoral Institute] was the only Mexican organization we could trust,” said Cesar Diaz, a Mexico City supermarket administrator whose feelings were echoed by many. “I mean, if we can’t trust them who can we believe in? I think it will have repercussions in the next elections.”

Britain’s much stronger data-protection framework probably means ChoicePoint could not make similar wholesale purchases of databases from the UK, and a similar situation exists across the rest of the EU. But the Latin American states “don’t have data protection on the level of Europe,” said Chris Hoofnagle, deputy counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington-based pressure group which obtained the purchasing and advertising documents.

ChoicePoint was taking advantage of those more relaxed laws to profit from the US’s “increasing reliance on private companies to obtain data on persons of interest to law enforcement,” he said.

But the US government has shown itself eager to enhance the amount of data it can gather on people across the world, including those in the UK. In February, Washington announced that it would be seeking access to credit card details and other information on all travelers entering the US. Britain, too, is proposing laws which would give state agencies wide-ranging access to information regarding telephone and email use, though ministers insist their plans will not now include the content of such communications.

In a statement provided to the Guardian, ChoicePoint strongly denied breaking any laws and said it was cooperating fully with Mexican authorities. “All information collected by ChoicePoint on foreign citizens is obtained legally from public agencies or private vendors,” the statement said.

The statement insisted that “ChoicePoint did not purchase election registry information and our vendor has verified that the information we purchased was not from the Padron Electoral [Mexico’s central registry of electors].” But that claim is called into question by the company’s advertising documents. Those documents, dated September 2001, explicitly boast that ChoicePoint can offer a “nationwide listing of all Mexican citizens registered to vote as of the 2000 general election — updated annually.”

Asked how the US government is using the data, Greg Palmore, a spokesman for the Bureau of Immigration and Customs, said it was helping to trace illegal immigrants but only if they were guilty of another crime. Asked to confirm whether the data was used by his bureau only to pursue criminals, he said: “Mainly.”

ChoicePoint insists that it requires all its subcontractors to sign pledges that they are not breaking the law. But legal experts say that would offer it scant protection if the Latin American police inquiries were to result in others being convicted.

“If you know that a practice is actually illegal, you can’t immunize yourself” with a pledge, said Hoofnagle. “There’s a strong principle in US law of being responsible for the actions of your agents.”

Source: Guardian (UK)

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Rise of the right worries immigrants to UK

By Sanjay Suri

London, May 5 (IPS)— The victories of the far-right British National Party (BNP) in local elections have shaken British Muslims and other immigrants. The BNP is now the second largest party in the councils, pushing the Liberal Democrats to third place. Labor holds the majority. Until a couple of years ago, there was not a single BNP councilor.

“Last time we kicked the door open,” BNP Spokesman Simon Bennett said at a press conference after the win. “This time we have kicked through it.”

The BNP is now preparing for further elections in councils next year in relatively impoverished areas, where it is expected to draw considerable support.

Given the clashes between Muslim and BNP supporters, and the strong anti-Muslim rhetoric of the BNP, Muslim communities in the north are particularly worried by the new developments.

But Muslims, who have been the primary targets of BNP hatred, are themselves partly to blame, said Ghiyasuddin Siddiqui from the Muslim Parliament, an independent pressure group. “Muslims need to build bridges across the political divide, and this has not happened…unless we go for a new alliance-building, the situation will remain the same, or get worse.”

Many Muslim and immigrant group leaders blame the government primarily for allowing this situation to develop.

“The manufacturing industry collapsed during the Thatcher era, and nothing has come up to replace it. The BNP now blames immigrants for the unemployment that resulted, but the government must set the record straight,” said Siddiqui.

A great deal of the segregation that is taking place in the north is the result of the policies of local councils, Siddiqui said. “This has to be recognized and tackled…and the government must explain that if people are poor, it is not due to the immigrants.”

What the Labor government is doing is in effect quite the opposite, says Tauhid Pasha, spokesman for the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI).

The Labor government has promised that it will halve the number of asylum-seekers by the end of the year. New measures introduced in January make it much harder for asylum-seekers to find refuge in Britain.

“This anti-immigration feeling towards asylum-seekers is feeding support for the BNP,” Pasha says. “The government must face up to its responsibilities towards asylum-seekers and immigrants, instead of making scapegoats of them for its own failures…The government has to accept responsibility for the kind of support the BNP is getting.”

These government fears are also feeding the media “which is adopting a very anti-asylum seekers agenda,” Pasha says. “The government bears moral responsibility for what is happening because it can influence how the public feel.”

The result in the small towns should send a wake-up call to all mainstream political parties. “Unless they sort it out it will happen again and again,” said the Chair of the Commission for Racial Equality, Trevor Phillips. “This can happen anywhere…each time it will become easier—even one BNP councilor is too many—and we must guard against complacency,” he said.

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Stalled terror trials fuel anti-US
rage in Yemen

By Geoffrey York

Sanaa, Yemen, Apr. 29— A backlash against the United States is gaining strength in a country that is considered vital to the American antiterrorism campaign.

In the impoverished Arab country of Yemen, where fugitive terrorists are believed to have found haven in lawless tribal regions, there is growing resentment of US pressure tactics that have left scores of Yemenis languishing in jail for years without a trial.

At a time of widespread anger at the US-led invasion of Iraq and an American missile attack that killed six people in Yemen last November, the hostile mood could hamper Washington’s efforts to track down the followers of Osama bin Laden, who remains popular in Yemen, the homeland of his ancestors.

At least 190 Yemenis are currently in custody on suspicion of terrorist activities, and most have been imprisoned in miserable disease-ridden conditions for months or years without charges or trials.

Yemeni newspapers have begun complaining of the “tragic life of torture and pain” suffered by the dozens of Yemenis who are still held in prison on suspicion of involvement in the bombing of the warship USS Cole, which killed 17 American sailors in 2000.

After 30 months in jail, the Cole suspects have not yet had a chance to defend themselves in court. Two of them, along with eight others accused of being terrorists, escaped from a high-security prison in the southern Yemen port of Aden this month, fuelling speculation that sympathetic guards may have allowed them to flee.

“A lot of people sympathize with these prisoners because they’ve been there for two years without a trial,” said an adviser to Yemen President Ali Abdullah Saleh. “It has caused a lot of suffering.”

The presidential adviser, who spoke on condition he not be named, blamed the United States for delaying the trials of the bombing suspects. Every time the government has attempted to hold a trial, US officials insisted on a postponement while they continue seeking the masterminds of the plot, he said. Some of the suspects were jailed on flimsy evidence, he added.

The main Islamic opposition party has been campaigning against the “arbitrary imprisonment” and “brutal torture” of innocent Yemenis, not just in the Cole case but in other cases as well.

It accuses the government of an “unprecedented rise” in arrests of suspects without trial.

Even senior government officials have acknowledged that the terrorism suspects have been jailed too long without a trial. Hamood Al-Hitar, a high-court judge and government adviser, said the prisoners cannot legally be jailed for more than six months without a trial.

Judge Al-Hitar, who has spoken to many of the prisoners, confirmed that their trials have been delayed because of US pressure.

Many Yemenis, including Judge Al-Hitar, have also criticized the US missile attack last November that killed six alleged terrorists in a remote region of Yemen.

The six men were killed by a missile fired by an unmanned Predator drone; it was the first US military action against alleged members of the al-Qaida terrorist organization outside Afghanistan.

The Yemeni suspects should have been given a trial, the judge insisted.

“It was 100 percent wrong,” he said. “I am against any illegal killing.”

Mohammed Al-Hazmi, a religious scholar and member of the Islamic opposition, accused the United States of interfering in Yemen’s internal affairs.

“If one of your people was killed in this way, you wouldn’t accept it either,” he said in an interview.

Source: Toronto Globe & Mail

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The real ‘Saving of Private Lynch’
Iraqi medical staff tell a different story than US military

By Mitch Potter

Nasiriya, Iraq, May 4— The fog of war comes sometimes with a certain odor, and cutting through its layers, like cutting through an onion, can bring tears to the eyes.

Such is the case with what is far and away the most oft-told story of the Persian Gulf War II — the saga of Saving Private Lynch.

Branded on to our consciousness by media frenzy, the flawless midnight rescue of 19-year-old Private First Class Jessica Lynch hardly bears repeating even a month after the fact.

Precision teams of US Army Rangers and Navy Seals, acting on intelligence information and supported by four helicopter gunships, ended Lynch’s nine-day Iraqi imprisonment in true Rambo style, raising America’s spirits when it needed it most.

All Hollywood could ever hope to have in a movie was there in this extraordinary feat of rescue — except, perhaps, the truth.

So say three Nasiriya doctors, two nurses, one hospital administrator, and local residents interviewed separately last week in a Toronto Star investigation.

The medical team that cared for Lynch at the hospital formerly known as Saddam Hospital is only now beginning to appreciate how grand a myth was built around the four hours the US raiding party spent with them early on April Fool’s Day.

And they are disappointed.

For Dr. Harith Houssona, 24, who came to consider Lynch a friend after nurturing her through the worst of her injuries, the ironies are almost beyond tabulation.

“The most important thing to know is that the Iraqi soldiers and commanders had left the hospital almost two days earlier,” Houssona said. “The night they left, a few of the senior medical staff tried to give Jessica back. We carefully moved her out of intensive care and into an ambulance and began to drive to the Americans, who were just one kilometer away. But when the ambulance got within 300 meters, they began to shoot. There wasn’t even a chance to tell them ‘We have Jessica. Take her’.”

One night later, the raid unfolded. Hassam Hamoud, 35, a waiter at Nasiriya’s al-Diwan Restaurant, describes the preamble, when he was approached outside his home near the hospital by US Special Forces troops accompanied by an Arabic translator from Qatar.

“They asked me if any troops were still in the hospital and I said ‘No, they’re all gone.’ Then they asked about Uday Hussein, and again, I said ‘No’,” Hamoud said. “The translator seemed satisfied with my answers, but the soldiers were very nervous.”

At midnight, the sound of helicopters circling the hospital’s upper floors sent staff scurrying for the x-ray department — the only part of the hospital with no outside windows. The power was cut, followed by small explosions as the raiding teams blasted through locked doors.

A few minutes later, they heard a man’s voice shout, “Go! Go! Go!” in English. Seconds later, the door burst open and a red laser light cut through the darkness, trained on the forehead of the chief resident.

“We were pretty frightened. There were about 40 medical staff together in the x-ray department,” said Dr. Anmar Uday, 24. “Everyone expected the Americans to come that day because the city had fallen. But we didn’t expect them to blast through the doors like a Hollywood movie.”

Dr. Mudhafer Raazk, 27, observed dryly that two cameramen and a still photographer, also in uniform, accompanied the US teams into the hospital. Maybe this was a movie after all.

Separately, the Iraqi doctors described how the tension fell away rapidly once the Americans realized no threat existed on the premises. A US medic was led to Lynch’s room as others secured the rest of the three-wing hospital. Several staff and patients were placed in plastic handcuffs, including, according to Houssona, one Iraqi civilian who was already immobilized with abdominal wounds from an earlier explosion.

One group of soldiers returned to the x-ray room to ask about the bodies of missing US soldiers and was led to a graveyard opposite the hospital’s south wall. All were dead on arrival, the doctors say.

“The whole thing lasted about four hours,” Raazk said. “When they left, they turned to us and said ‘Thank you.’ That was it.”

The Iraqi medical staff fanned out to assess the damage. In all, 12 doors were broken, a sterilized operating theatre contaminated, and the specialized traction bed in which Lynch had been placed was trashed.

“That was a special bed, the only one like it in the hospital, but we gave it to Jessica because she was developing a bed sore,” Houssona said.

What bothers Raazk most is not what was said about Lynch’s rescue, so much as what wasn’t said about her time in hospital.

“We all became friends with her, we liked her so much,” Houssona said. “Especially because we all speak a little English, we were able to assure her the whole time that there was no danger, that she would go home soon.”

Initial reports indicated Lynch had been shot and stabbed after emptying her weapon in a pitched battle when her unit, the US Army’s 507th Ordinance Maintenance Company, was ambushed after its convoy became lost near Nasiriya.

A few days after her release, Lynch’s father told reporters none of the wounds were battle-related. The Iraqi doctors are more specific. Houssona said the injuries were blunt in nature, possibly stemming from a fall from her vehicle.

“She was in pretty bad shape. There was blunt trauma, resulting in compound fractures of the left femur [upper leg] and the right humerus [upper arm]. And also a deep laceration on her head,” Houssona said. “She took two pints of blood and we stabilized her. The cut required stitches to close. But the leg and arm injuries were more serious.”

Nasiriya’s medical team was going all out at this point, due to the enormous influx of casualties from throughout the region. The hospital lists 400 dead and 2,000 wounded in the span of two weeks before and during Lynch’s eight-day stay.

“Almost all were civilians, but I don’t just blame the Americans,” Raazk said. “Many of those casualties were the fault of the fedayeen, who had been using people as shields and in some cases just shooting people who wouldn’t fight alongside them. It was horrible.”

But they all made a point of giving Lynch the best of everything, he added. Despite a scarcity of food, extra juice and cookies were scavenged for their American guest.

They also assigned to Lynch the hospital’s most nurturing nurse, Khalida Shinah. At 43, Shinah has three daughters close to Lynch’s age. She immediately embraced her foreign patient as one of her own.

“It was so scary for her,” Shinah said through a translator. “Not only was she badly hurt, but she was in a strange country. I felt more like a mother than a nurse. I told her again and again, Allah would watch over her. And many nights I sang her to sleep.”

In the first few days, Houssona said the doctors were somewhat nervous as to whether Iraqi intelligence agents would show any interest in Lynch. But when the road between Nasiriya and Baghdad fell to the US-led coalition, they knew the danger had passed.

“At first, Jessica was very frightened. Everybody was poking their head in the room to see her and she said ‘Do they want to hurt me?’ I told her, ‘Of course not. They’re just curious. They’ve never seen anyone like you before.’

“But after a few days, she began to relax. And she really bonded with Khalida. She told me, ‘I’m going to take her back to America with me.’”

Three days before the US raid, Lynch had regained enough strength that the team was ready to proceed with orthopedic surgery on her left leg. The procedure involved cutting through muscle to install a platinum plate to both ends of the compound fracture. “We only had three platinum plates left in our supply and at least 100 Iraqis were in need,” Raazk said. “But we gave one to Jessica.”

A second surgery, and a second platinum plate, was scheduled for Lynch’s fractured arm. But US forces removed her before it took place, Raazk said.

Three days after the raid, the doctors had a visit from one of their US military counterparts. He came, they say, to thank them for the superb surgery.

“He was an older doctor with gray hair and he wore a military uniform,” Raazk said.

“I told him he was very welcome, that it was our pleasure. And then I told him: ‘You do realize you could have just knocked on the door and we would have wheeled Jessica down to you, don’t you?’

“He was shocked when I told him the real story. That’s when I realized this rescue probably didn’t happen for propaganda reasons. I think this American army is just such a huge machine, the left hand never knows what the right hand is doing.”

What troubles the staff in Nasiriya most are reports that Lynch was abused while in their care. All vehemently deny it.

Told of the allegation through an interpreter, nurse Shinah wells up with tears. Gathering herself, she responds quietly: “This is a lie. But why ask me? Why don’t you ask Jessica what kind of treatment she received?”

But that is easier said than done. At the Pentagon last week, US Army spokesman Lt.-Col. Ryan Yantis said the door to Lynch remains closed as she continues her recovery at Washington’s Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

“Until such time as she wants to talk — and that’s going to be no time soon, and it may be never at all — the press is simply going to have to wait.”

Source: Toronto Star

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Gender inequality in South has global roots

By Thalif Deen

United Nations, Apr. 30 (IPS)— The world’s developing nations continue to lag far behind industrial countries in gender equality and gender empowerment, according to a new United Nations (UN) report released here.

Titled “Progress of the World’s Women 2002,” the study says only three of 133 developing nations — Argentina, Costa Rica, and South Africa — have made any significant progress in elevating the status of women.

Published by the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the report blames the lack of progress on several factors, including poverty, economic globalization, illiteracy, and the failure of the international community to honor its pledges to assist poor nations.

“Poverty is a critical obstacle to women’s access to education, economic empowerment, and political participation,” said UNIFEM executive director Noeleen Heyzer.

In a globalized world, the feminization of poverty is a continuing drag on the progress of poorer countries in every aspect of development, including gender equality, she added.

“As governments are forced to cut spending on services such as education, health care, transport — in the interests of structural adjustment and market liberalization — it is women who pick up the burden, as unpaid household workers.”

One of the Millennium Development Goals, adopted by world political leaders at a special session of the UN General Assembly in September 2000, calls for the “elimination of gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and at all levels by 2015.”

But in order to achieve these goals, Heyzer said, “we must hold all nations accountable, not only developing nations.”

“It is clear that in the poorest countries, women will need the support of a more just international system to achieve gender equality and empowerment,” the study said.

Heyzer pointed out that assessing progress towards gender equality requires an understanding of the current world context: economic globalization, national fragmentation, military conflicts, and diseases such as HIV/AIDS — “all with major consequences for women’s lives.”

According to the study, the same seven northern European countries that registered most gender achievements in 2000 — Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Iceland, Netherlands, and Germany — were the leaders again in 2002.

Their achievements are attributed primarily to the strong political will of successive governments to achieve gender parity and gender empowerment, as well as to high rates of literacy and economic advancement.

South Africa, which was the leading developing nation in 2000, was joined by Argentina and Costa Rica mainly because of large increases in women’s share of parliamentary seats in those two countries.

Currently, the women’s share of seats in the United States is 12 percent and in France 11.8 percent. But about 38 developing nations have a higher share, said the study, including 25.7 percent in Rwanda and 20.7 percent in Nicaragua.

But in Argentina, the recent financial and social crisis has thrown nearly everyone’s life into disarray, leaving women especially hard-hit, it added.

“Their wages have decreased, their rates of unemployment have increased and their poverty has deepened, “ said the report.

The study says that despite pledges made at several UN conferences since 1992, there has been little other progress toward gender equality and gender empowerment in poorer nations.

“The greatest improvements have occurred in women’s share of seats in parliament because this can be changed quickly in a short space of time,” the study said.

Since changes in literacy, education, and employment are rarely so dramatic in a similarly short space of time, they require widespread changes in economic and cultural structures, the report argued.

Among the key findings in the report is that an estimated 140 million young people in the world are illiterate, and more than half, about 86 million, are young women.

Additionally, many of the poorest women in the world are employed in agriculture or “informal” manufacturing and services, and their work is vastly ignored in employment statistics.

“Essential to the elimination of feminized poverty and progress on gender equality is for governments everywhere to recognize and value women’s work,” Heyzer said.

The good news is that a majority of countries have achieved gender equality in secondary school education or have more girls than boys enrolled at the secondary level.

Heyzer said that both the United Nations and the international community must move ahead on implementing the commitments to gender equality made at the world conferences of the 1990s.

“We have a new opportunity with the agreement of all 189 nations on the Millennium Development Goals, one of which is to promote women’s equality and empower women.”

“In order to realize this, which is critical not only as a goal in itself but as necessary to the achievement of all of the other goals, we must hold all nations accountable, not only developing nations.”

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Latin American churches call for
alternative to ‘free market’

By Marcela Valente

Buenos Aires, Argentina, May 2 (IPS)— Leaders of Protestant churches of Latin America, tired of alleviating social problems that they blame on neo-liberal free market policies, have decided to advance their own alternative proposals to governments and the multilateral lending institutions.

The continent-wide meeting “Globalizing the Fullness of Life,” organized by the Latin American Council of Churches (CLAI) under the auspices of the World Council of Churches, drew several hundred delegates to Buenos Aires between Apr. 28 and May 1.

The aim of the meeting was to share information and analysis of the socio-economic situation in the region, and explore alternatives to “globalization with a neo-liberal face” in order to promote economic justice.

The World Council of Churches is a fellowship of 342 churches in more than 100 countries, from virtually all Christian traditions, located on all continents.

Representatives of Protestant churches from around the region as well as delegates from the United States, Africa and Asia discussed a paper, “Protestant Churchs Say Enough is Enough!”, drafted by sociologists, economists, theologians, and pastors and presented as a focus of discussion at the meeting.

The meeting was part of an ecumenical process that got under way in 2001 with regional consultations in eastern Europe and the Pacific rim area. Similar conferences are planned next year in the United States and the Middle East. The results of the process will be collated and summarized in 2005.

The paper, which contains severe criticism of the neo-liberal economic model prevailing today in most countries of Latin America, is a draft document that will continue to be discussed and modified over the next few months.

In the paper, the CLAI member churches, which claim to represent between 15 and 20 percent of the population of Latin America, advocate the creation of global public institutions to oversee the direction taken by the globalization process and to regulate the banking system and capital flows.

They also propose bringing the mission of the United Nations up to date, and call for changes in multilateral lending institutions like the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and Inter-American Development Bank, whose prescriptions play a decisive role in the economic policies of poor and indebted countries.

The lending institutions have failed to live up to their original mandate, and have instead helped to put in place an unjust economic model, according to the document.

The churches say the state should not be paternalistic, bureaucratic, or neglectful, but should rather be a social state of law in which civil society plays a part.

In an interview with IPS, Puerto Rican pastor Angel Rivera, the coordinator of CLAI’s Faith, Economy and Society program, said churches work closely with the poor and are constantly mitigating the suffering caused by poverty, through their soup kitchens, homes for children in need and the elderly, and schools.

The churches draw professionals among the faithful, like engineers, sociologists, teachers, or psychologists, into community service in benefit of the poor, he added.

But “We cannot continue to be the cheap labor of the system, or continue to put band-aids on a system that foments injustice,” said Rivera, adding that “The idea is that we can change the system, that is, become elements of change through our work.”

In their efforts to help needy communities, churchworkers often fall into providing superficial welfare solutions, which do not resolve the underlying problems, he pointed out.

“We are now discussing a new theory about what we have been doing, how we have done it, and what errors we have committed,” Rivera added.

In recent years, Protestant churches in Latin America have backed the protests and demands of social movements in the region.

The document maintains that while criticism of “globalization with a neo-liberal face” has found a channel of expression in the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, anti-globalization groups must advance well-founded proposals that do not simply repeat initiatives and demands that arose in earlier periods of social activism.

The aim is for “Protestant Churches Say Enough is Enough!” to become a tool of “denunciation and dialogue” vis-a-vis governments in the region and multilateral financial institutions.

When the final draft of the document is ready, a group of church leaders will meet, in the second half of this year, to present it to Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, US lawmakers, and multilateral lending institution officials.

Delegates already met with representatives of the Inter-American Development Bank in April 2002.

The draft version of the document states that churchworkers at times feel they are “accomplices” of free market policies that generate poverty, inequality and violence, and that they recognize that their main task should be that of “helping human beings and transforming their existence.”

“It is as the well-known proverb states: Don’t give them a fish, teach them to fish,” said Argentine Nobel Peace laureate Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, after giving an address at the meeting that was highly critical of the effects that he and other critics believe the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) will have.

The continent-wide free trade area, which the United States is negotiating with 34 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean — all of them except Cuba — is to go into effect in 2005.

“We are not against regional integration initiatives in and of themselves, but against integration processes that favor transnational corporations instead of the large majorities,” and force countries to compete against each other in unequal conditions, says the paper.

The over 20-page document also states that structural adjustment policies, the ballooning of the foreign debt, privatizations, unfettered capital flows, and free market policies have generated “a profound human crisis.”

More than half of the population of Latin America is poor, unemployment is high, employment is precarious, and small companies are constantly going under, the paper adds.

The churches acknowledge the contributions of the liberal economic model, such as respect for individual liberties or opposition to a bureaucracy-ridden, inefficient state.

But they also state that being faithful to the gospel forces them to denounce the current world economic order.

The document says that during periods of economic growth, poverty slightly declines, but inequality does not. “The trickle-down theory has failed. We must call on our governments to commit economic disobedience against the recommendations of the multilateral credit institutions.”

With respect to the foreign debt, the Protestant churches took an unyielding stance. “Latin America paid $1.4 trillion in the past 20 years, which is five times the region’s original debt. We are calling for forgiveness of that debt, and for the governments of the region to draw together and refuse to pay it, with courage and political will,” the document concludes.

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US speaks of Iraqi democracy
while installing leaders

Compiled by Eamon Martin

May 7 (AGR)— On Monday, US officials gave the first details of their plan for an interim Iraqi government, saying it will be headed by a council of as many as nine leaders and suggesting that the majority would be drawn from Iraqi exile groups that haven’t won any popular support.

The US civil administrator for Iraq, retired Army Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, said five men had already begun meeting and would probably be part of the council. “By the middle of the month you’ll really see a beginning of a nucleus of an Iraqi government, with an Iraqi face on it, that is dealing with the coalition,” Garner said.

The five Garner named include the Pentagon’s choice, Ahmad Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress, and the leaders of two Kurdish factions who have controlled northern Iraq since 1991, Masoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani.

The others named are Ayad Allawi of the Iraqi National Accord and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, whose elder brother heads the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Shia group based in Iran.

The five have been meeting in a Baghdad hotel since last Wednesday under the wing of the US. All of them had been key players in a US-brokered conference held in London before the war.

Although internal groups have been invited to the discussions, the US and their nominees have control of the agenda. The Kurdish leaders are the only ones with significant support inside the country. There is next to no support in Iraq for Chalabi -- known to Iraqis as “America’s man” -- and only mixed support for Hakim’s brother, Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, who is due to return from Iran on Wednesday.

Though Garner did not spell out the selection process for the five men, they are leaders of exile opposition groups that have received extensive US material support and backing.

For the few Iraqis who know his name, Garner has become a primary target of complaint. Garner’s Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, responsible for running the country, has yet to make its presence felt. There is no US government office accessible to ordinary Iraqis. Last week, Bush administration officials announced plans to place former State Department official L. Paul Bremer III above Garner. They had concluded that Garner was not suited to overseeing the series of conferences scheduled in the next few weeks to choose an Iraqi authority. They said it did not make sense for that process to be handled by Garner because it would seem to many people that the resulting government was a puppet of the US military.

Bremer, a former ambassador in the Reagan Administration and head of the State Department’s counter-terrorism office, is a hawk with close ties to the Pentagon. He has long called for a very hard line against what he calls “extremist Islam” and for aggressive tactics, including assassination, in pursuing and preempting suspected terrorists. Bremer has also voiced great skepticism about exporting democracy, particularly to what he calls “ethnically aroused” parts of the world, such as the Middle East. Last year, Bush appointed him to the President’s Homeland Security Advisory Council.

Embracing unknowns, shunning majority
Washington’s main entry to Iraq was via the exile groups it had long sponsored in Britain and the United States. While those groups are organized and speak in the American idiom of democracy and governance, they are strangers to the Iraqi public.

“These parties are all new, and we don’t know anything about them. They may be set up by the Americans, so how can we trust them? How can we vote for them?” Gaylan Tayr, an Iraqi writer in Baghdad said.

While US officials have spoken repeatedly about the importance of indigenous Iraqi leaders, those who have broad recognition are primarily religious figures who, to varying degrees, support an Islamic government for Iraq.

So far, US officials appear to have had little contact with Shiite groups inside Iraq. Without involving Shiites, it is unlikely that the US will be able to win the hearts and minds of Iraqis, analysts say. Although Shiites are hardly monolithic in their views, they make up roughly 60 percent of the country.

American efforts to install new rulers in Iraq have already sparked demonstrations in some cities by imposing old officials from the regime of Saddam Hussein. In other cities, US forces have evicted new administrators who have local backing.

The US has excluded Iraq’s best-known forces from consultations on forming a central government. Garner held a conference of 300 Iraqis in Baghdad last week and excluded almost every group which has an organized following.

Washington’s failure to hold broad-based consultations at central and local levels is provoking resistance, sometimes armed.

On Wednesday, hundreds of Iraqi doctors in white lab coats took to the streets insisting they will not accept the US-appointed head of the Health Ministry because of his ties to Hussein.

Chanting in English, “New clean era! New clean figures,” some 400 doctors, most wearing their clip-on hospital IDs, marched through the streets of Baghdad.

On Saturday, the US named Ali Shnan al-Janabi, No. 3 at the Health Ministry under Hussein, to head the ministry. Before the war, al-Janabi “was a faithful servant of Saddam,” said Imad Saud, a resident in cardiothoracic surgery. “How can we trust him?”

Doctors accused al-Janabi of being part of a corrupt ministry that demanded kickbacks.

In Tikrit, US forces appointed a governor, Brig. Gen. Hosin Jasem Mohamed al-Jabouri, whose name was proposed by Yarab al-Hashimi, the Tikrit chief of the US-backed Free Iraqi Forces.

The Free Iraqi Forces are a mercenary army of Iraqi exiles armed and trained by the Pentagon. They operate as the military wing of Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress.

But Al-Jabouri said he didn’t worry about being perceived as a lackey.

A few weeks ago, US troops fired on a crowd of angry demonstrators while al-Jabouri attempted to give a pro-US speech in which he declared himself governor. The crowd overturned al-Jabouri’s car and set it aflame.

Najaf has the mayor nobody knows
Nobody in Najaf seems to remember the new mayor’s name. The Americans guided Abdul Munem into his improbable role — and he is something of an awkward fit. In a city sacred to Shiite Muslims, he is a rival Sunni. Munem works far from the city center, in a bright, sterile office in a remote medical college taken over by the Marines. These days, the college parking lot is cluttered with armed men. There are Marines, local policemen hired back from the old regime, and Free Iraqi Forces militiamen.

The new mayor of Najaf belongs to a network of local political stars that, with US money and guns, has gained minor control of some cities and provinces in Iraq. Many of the overnight leaders were plucked from the old governments, or from prominent civilian jobs.

None of the men were elected, and they are vulnerable to the tastes of the United States. Some of the mayors and councils have offices inside rings of razor wire and US soldiers — or even attached to a Marine base.

“[Munem]was supported by the elders,” said Lt. Col. Chris Conlin, a Marine commander who calls himself “the military mayor” of Najaf.

But that claim is in dispute amongst the locals.

“He is not elected,” scorned Mohammed Rodha Salami, a spokesman for the powerful Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. “It’s obvious to all of us here that he was put in by the Americans. He’s pretending to represent the popular will.”

“We were oppressed by Saddam for so many years,” said Ali Mahdi, 44, a Najaf butcher. “Now, the Americans are trying to oppress us once again by telling us how to choose our government. The Americans just want to put in their puppets so they can control our oil.”

North Carolina-based Research Triangle Institute (RTI) was hired Apr. 11 by the US Agency for International Development to help create 180 local and provincial governments in Iraq. Under a contract worth as much as $167 million, one of RTI’s immediate tasks is to help identify “appropriate, legitimate” Iraqis to assume key government posts in villages and towns.

The nonprofit group’s first representatives arrived in Baghdad on Wednesday.

Garner denies crisis
“There is no humanitarian crisis ... and there’s not much infrastructure problem here, other than getting the electrical grid structure back together,” Garner said last Wednesday.

But two days later, relief agencies warned that the Iraqi people will be forced to suffer more death, disease, and fear if the US does not step up security to help humanitarian aid get through. The situation was “critical” in some parts of Iraq, the leaders of eight agencies said in a joint statement.

The international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said that the United States has failed to meet its responsibility under international humanitarian law to ensure that the health and well being of the Iraqi people is being provided for. Urgent medical needs are not being addressed and disorganization in hospitals is posing a threat to the health of people in the country.

“Despite three weeks of the US occupation and many months of planning for this war, Baghdad, a city the size of Houston and Chicago combined, still does not have any fully functioning hospitals,” said Morten Rostrup, MD, MSF International Council president, who had just returned from six weeks in Baghdad.

Nearly a month after the fall of Baghdad, the Americans have failed to restore security and basic services. Crime is on the rise, looting continues and the capital is a no-go area at night. Electrical power and running water are still absent much of the time.

Iraqis seek revenge as Bush declares victory
On May 1st, Bush performed a dramatic gesture to mark victory in the Iraq war, co-piloting a navy jet onto an aircraft carrier to underline his role as America’s commander-in-chief, and to tell the American people to get ready for more combat in the years ahead.

In a speech with lengthy references to the Sept. 11attacks, he portrayed Iraq as one more battle in the global “war on terrorism” that is continuing “from Pakistan to the Philippines to the Horn of Africa.”

“The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11th, 2001, and still goes on,” Bush said.

In the nationally televised address, Bush celebrated America’s military prowess, while the US continued to take casualties from an uneasy occupation. Seven soldiers were wounded earlier in the day, when Iraqis taking revenge for the death of 17 civilians shot by US troops in Fallujah just days before threw two grenades into a former police compound. US troops patrolling in Baghdad also came under fire.

Outside the Fallujah mayor’s office, which is next to an American compound, staff hung an uncompromising banner: “Sooner or later, US killers, we will kick you out.”

Sources: Associated Press, Daily Telegraph (UK), Globe & Mail (Toronto), Guardian (UK), Inter Press Service, Los Angeles Times, Newsday, New York Times, Reuters, Times (UK), Washington Post

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