Iran’s hardliners step up arrests of activists

Iran’s hardline clergy has begun arresting and interrogating journalists, students and political activists in a new attempt to intimidate opposition before next year’s parliamentary elections.

In the most extensive wave of detentions in recent years, plainclothes security agents have detained hundreds of student activists as well as journalists and reformist commentators.

Ever since the election of reformist Mohammad Khatami as president six years ago, conservative militants acting through the judiciary and shadowy security services appear to have waged a campaign of repression to undermine the reformist movement.

A number of President Khatami’s allies have been imprisoned, a senior adviser was murdered three years ago and dozens of newspapers have been shut down.

Reformist activists say the pro-democracy demonstrations which erupted in June have provided a fresh opportunity for the conservative clergy to go after the most strident voices demanding reform of the country’s theocracy.

Upon release, many students and other activists are less ready to speak their minds and some journalists choose to stay away from “sensitive” topics. After being freed on bail, dozens of journalists and activists operate under the cloud of a pending trial.

But despite the imprisonment of more than 20 journalists in recent months, the news media and dissident voices are growing increasingly defiant as they test the limits of the system.

Many voters, disappointed with the pace of reform, are expected to boycott elections next February, allowing the conservatives to win back control of parliament. (The Guardian)

President blocks new law for
Sri Lanka’s landless poor

Protesting against a provision that erodes her Constitutional authority, Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga has stalled the government’s seven-month-old proposal for a new bill giving land ownership to 900,000 poor families.

In December 2002, Sri Lanka’s Lands Minister Dr. Rajitha Senaratne proposed a new Land Ownership Bill, giving families ownership of their land, and allotting another 1.2 million pieces of state land to the landless.

The state lands were distributed on a 99-year lease under two large government programs in the 80s and late 90s. But as they are just leaseholders, the allottees lack both security and the right to take loans against their property.

While the president welcomes the move to give ownership to leaseholders, she is strongly opposing one of the bill’s contentious provisions. This transfers her exclusive Constitutional powers to dispose state land to the Lands minister.

Senaratne holds that the new provision was introduced to simplify bureaucratic procedures, but the president alleges it is a sinister move by the United National Front (UNF) government to curtail her powers.

According to the Constitution, the president is the sole authority for the disposing of state land.

Declares an exasperated Senaratne, “The Land Ownership Bill is the stepping stone of a strong move to solve the problem of the landless. The president should realize this and avoid placing stumbling blocks.”

Senaratne says that the proposal has remained in cold storage since December due to the president’s opposition. She says, “Discussions are currently underway between our two secretaries and the attorney general, and I hope we can soon arrive at a consensus.” (OneWorld)

Canadian natives refuse to follow new firearms law

Thousands of aboriginal people across Canada are refusing to obtain gun licenses and to register their rifles and shotguns under new gun control laws, a survey by the Canadian government reveals.

Registration of all firearms became mandatory this year under a national program directed at gun violence. Previously, only handguns, automatic rifles and other restricted weapons were registered.

Failure to register guns is now an offense under the country’s criminal code, carrying a maximum five-thousand-dollar fine and six months in jail.

Canadian Justice Department surveys and briefing papers show that despite widespread concern in first nations communities about gun safety, most aboriginal gun owners and their leaders oppose participating in federal licensing and registration because they want their own gun regulations and laws as a treaty right.

Native groups oppose the new national law, saying it threatens their traditional ability to hunt and fish.

But at the same time, the surveys show that most native people are worried about gun violence and firearms accidents. In their reserves, which are usually in remote parts of the country, gun deaths — by accident, homicide and suicide — are so common that most residents polled knew someone who died in a firearm-related death. (IPS/GIN)

On the frontline of Liberia’s tragic war

Liberia’s civil war, one of the continent’s most brutal, is to start ending on Aug. 4 with the arrival of 300 Nigerian peacekeepers, the vanguard of a 5,000-strong west African force authorized last week by the UN security council.

Liberian President Charles Taylor, pressured by Washington and regional leaders as well as the two rebel groups who control most of the country, has agreed to resign on Aug. 11.

Weeks of shelling and gunfire have reduced districts to charred rubble and killed hundreds but Monrovia hopes that deliverance is at hand.

But Liberia’s history may repeat itself, with peacekeepers sucked into a conflict which started in 1989 when the then-warlord Taylor started a bush rebellion which flared again after he was elected president in 1997.

He has accepted an offer of asylum from Nigeria which should protect him from a war crimes indictment in Sierra Leone, but the orders given to his army suggested he could be planning to stay and fight. (The Guardian)

Amnesty rips Salvadoran gov’t over
‘disappeared children’

The government of El Salvador has failed to follow through on pledges to locate and help reunite more than 2,000 children, who “disappeared” during that country’s bloody 12-year civil war, with their families, according to a new report released during the week of July 31 by Amnesty International.

The report says that successive governments, led by the right-wing ARENA party since the first peace accord in 1990, have even turned their back on non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that have tried to carry out the work on their own, by claiming that such efforts would only re-open the wounds of the conflict in which some 75,000 people were killed between 1978 and the war’s end.

“The relatives have suffered for too long and deserve to know where their children are,” Amnesty said. “The failure of the authorities in El Salvador is only adding insult to injury.”

The report comes amid preparations for El Salvador’s presidential election next year. In legislative elections in March, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), which led the leftist insurgency during the war, made major gains against ARENA and appears poised to launch their most serious challenge to date to ARENA’s 15-year control of the presidency.

While the fate of the disappeared children is unlikely to play a central role during the campaign, a government led by the FMLN is considered far more likely to cooperate with the NGOs and families who are seeking to locate them. (OneWorld)

Iraq oil pipeline blown up by saboteurs

Saboteurs blew up part of a key oil pipeline in northern Iraq which was still ablaze following a big overnight blast, according to a senior official in the nearby refinery town of Baiji.

Police and witnesses at the scene said a large explosion rocked Baiji Thursday night, while a fire along a section of pipeline was still raging Friday, Aug. 1 near the refinery town.

Officials from the US-led coalition running Iraq said they were looking into the incident.

Baiji is about 125 miles north of Baghdad and is a vital hub in the network of oil pipelines which crisscross Iraq.

It also falls within the northern tip of the so-called Sunni Muslim triangle, a wedge of north-central Iraq known for its support of Saddam Hussein’s Sunni-dominated regime and the high number of attacks on US troops there.

Sabotage and looting have plagued Iraq’s oil sector, with pipelines suffering crippling damage, while just 150 of 700 oil wells are in working order, officials have said.

The incident heightens concerns over Iraq’s capability to maintain security on its pipeline network just as the main export line from Iraq’s northern oilfields to Turkey, which runs through Baiji and was wrecked in a previous sabotage attack, was supposed to reopen.

A coalition official said it was still unclear whether the new attack would delay the reopening which had been set for early this month. (AFP)

Global strife swells Exxon’s coffers

Exxon Mobil, the largest publicly quoted oil company, on July 31 reported a 58 percent increase in profits to $4.2 billion during the second quarter, on the back of soaring energy prices.

The sharp growth continued a trend seen in the past two quarters at Exxon Mobil and was recorded in the face of turbulent conditions, including a national strike in Venezuela and disruptions in North Sea and west African operations.

Revenues were 13 percent higher than a year ago at $57.2 billion.

The war in Iraq and subsequent difficulties in getting oil production back up to pre-war levels, as well as civil unrest in Nigeria and the Venezuelan situation have kept prices high. The company said earnings had improved across all parts of the business, even though production was flat.

Analysts have warned, though, that the ride might be coming to an end, with many of the conditions that created the spike in prices now resolved.

Lobby group StopEsso criticized the latest profits. “This month we have seen even more scientific evidence of climate change, weird weather and fires in France. Yet Exxon Mobil is still making huge profits from causing it,” a spokeswoman said.

Exxon had warned that a decline in air travel related to the SARS outbreak would hit downstream profits. But the recovery in air travel resulted in a threefold improvement in earnings at the division to $1.15 billon. (Guardian (UK))

Bové freed

French anti-globalization activist Jose Bové was released from jail in southwestern France on Aug. 1, amid cheers from about 200 supporters.

Bové, who heads the radical farmers union Confederation Paysanne (farmers’ confederation), had spent a month behind bars at the prison in the Montpellier region for destroying genetically modified (GM) crops.

While the crowd outside the prison called for Bové to be replaced in prison by President Jacques Chirac, the freed activist was carried on his fans’ shoulders to a public square where he was due to address the crowd and journalists.

Bové was originally sentenced to 10 months, but the traditional Bastille Day pardons meted out by Chirac on July 14 cut that to six months. Bové’s supporters said that Chirac should have exercised a complete pardon.

A judge ordered his release on Friday, allowing him to return home and work part-time for a local agricultural association for the remaining months of his sentence.

Bové has gained worldwide notoriety for his protests against junk food, GM crops and globalization, which included demolishing a half-built McDonald’s restaurant. (Agence France-Presse)