Nigerian army intervenes in bloody ethnic clashes

At least 200 people, including four soldiers, were reportedly killed in renewed bursts of bloodletting in the oil city of Wari, Delta State, Nigeria last weekend. The BBC report says the death toll could be much higher. Several others were injured and property damaged. The soldiers had been called in to quell fighting between militant youths of Ijaws and rival Itsekiris.

Despite the reintroduction of a dusk-to-dawn curfew, earlier imposed some months ago in the wake of bloody inter-ethnic clashes in Wari, the fighting raged on. The overwhelmed army has called for help from other security forces such as police and the navy.

The governor of Delta State, James Ibori, recently relocated from the capital, Asaba, to Wari in a bid to directly preside over moves to halt further bloodletting among the ethnic groups in the city. (Daily Champion, Lagos)

Liberians welcome peace pact

Liberians rejoiced Aug. 19 over the signing of a sweeping new peace deal after nearly 14 years of war but urged the former belligerents and the international community to help make it stick. The agreement, signed in the Ghanaian capital, Accra, on Aug. 18, declared an immediate end to the war and called for a new caretaker government to take power in October and continue until January 2006. The signatories are to immediately start choosing the new government’s top leadership.

The deal also provides for disarmament and demobilization and opens up the country, four-fifths of which is currently under the control of the two rebel groups who fought warlord-turned-president Charles Taylor, who went into exile the previous week after being forced to resign under intense international pressure. In the streets of the battered seaside capital, Monrovia, people were cautiously upbeat following the agreement, inked exactly a week after Taylor’s exit. (Vanguard, Lagos)

Gay controversy spreads to other churches

The controversy surrounding the Anglican Church over homosexuality appears to be spreading to other churches. As the assembly of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) in Winnipeg, Canada, recently found itself in the same furor when Scandinavian delegates insisted that recognition of homosexuality and gay marriages as a form of family should be included in an LWF resolution to be adopted at the end of the meeting. Their suggestion was rejected by their African and Asian counterparts, who maintained the practice was unlawful and evil. Concerted consultations followed and a consensus was reached with delegates committing themselves to tread on the issue carefully.

LWF holds an assembly every six years that brings together the 136-member churches in 76 countries representing over 61.7 million Lutherans worldwide.

Ordination of homosexuals almost caused a split in the Anglican Church earlier this month when the Episcopal Church of the US approved the appointment of an openly gay clergyman as the new Bishop of New Hampshire. African Bishops have threatened to sever links with member churches supporting homosexuality. An emergency meeting, involving all the African churches, is to be held in Kenya next month to resolve the crisis. (IPS)

Nepal peace talks stumble

The peace process in Nepal appeared to be in trouble Aug. 17 after the country’s Maoist rebels rejected a government proposal to include them in a new administration. A deputy leader of the rebels, who declared a ceasefire in January after seven years of fighting, described the government’s offer as failing “to address many of the issues that concern the people and the nation.” The Maoists, who control much of rural Nepal and run their own mini-state in the west of the country, indicated they would continue the peace process.

The third round of talks between the rebels and the current care-taker government followed months of constitutional turmoil involving popular protests against the king’s appointment of prime minister and boycotts of parliament by the five main political parties who are calling for democracy to be restored.

The Maoists are demanding a special assembly to decide whether to keep the constitutional monarchy or transform Nepal into a communist state. The government has refused such requests but says the rebels can play a part in a new administration. (Guardian (UK))

Max Factor heir must pay $19 million for rape

Andrew Luster, the 39-year-old convicted serial rapist and heir to the Max Factor cosmetics empire, has been ordered to pay $19 million to a woman he drugged with a potent anesthetic and assaulted, compounding the horror by videotaping the attack. The judge in the case said the magnitude of the award was intended to deter future assaults using the drug GHB.

This was the first in three suits by victims of Luster, who is now serving a 129-year sentence for rape. Luster catalogued the videotapes with neat labels recording the names of his victims and the drugs used to subdue them.

He was returned to the California state prison system last June after being tracked down by a bounty hunter to the Mexican beach resort where he fled shortly before his conviction. (Guardian(UK))

Indigenous people under fire

The office of the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights (UNHCHR) in Colombia recently warned of the growing threat posed by armed conflict to the country’s 86 indigenous groups. The UNHCHR office reported that Colombia’s Indians are the targets of massacres, selective killings, threats, intimidation, collective displacement, forced recruitment by armed bands, blockades of food supplies, and attacks on cultural and sacred sites.

Between January and May 2003, a reported 106 Indians were murdered in the context of the armed conflict that has been raging in Colombia since the 1960’s. An added dimension to the impact of the violence on indigenous communities is their often small population numbers.

Around 80 percent of Colombia’s 1.5 million indigenous peoples exercise self-government over their traditional territory, legally demarcated by reservations. But activists warn that the remaining 20 percent are in an especially vulnerable position, as their relationship with the land, the basis of indigenous culture, is not protected. Natural resources, especially oil, and the ownership of land and property are among the factors leading to violence against Indians. (IPS)

Suicides in British prisons soar

On Aug. 17, Britain’s prisons chief warned Home Secretary David Blunkett against the “overuse” of jails when he blamed record suicide levels on Britain’s soaring number of inmates. Phil Wheatley, the director general of the Prison Service, said prison was “not the answer to crime,” insisting it is expensive and disrupted the lives of inmates’ innocent wives and children, saying, “It shouldn’t be lightly used.”

The prison population in England and Wales topped 74,000 last month for the first time in history and is estimated to reach 80,000 within three years. Figures released last week showed that 105 suicides were recorded in 2002-03, the highest total yet.

In an interview with BBC, Wheatley stressed the reasons for the suicides is “not so much the overcrowding” but the pressure of numbers which leads to prisoners being moved quickly and often, not allowing staff time to understand individual prisoner’s needs. He also said he felt many people were incarcerated for too long based on their crimes.

“But it is a very, very needy population coming in with mental health problems, severe drug problems, facing long sentences, often with, from their point of view, their life having fallen apart,” Wheatley said. “And most of the suicide problems do relate to that period immediately after coming into prison.” (Independent (UK))

Ex-guerillas arrested in Argentina

On Aug. 14, an Argentine judge put two former Montoneros guerilla leaders behind bars and issued an international order for the arrest of a third, accusing them of having turned over 15 of their comrades in 1980 to agents of the Argentine dictatorship, which murdered them.

The judge’s order came a day after Argentina’s lower house of parliament annulled the laws that granted amnesty to military and police agents accused of perpetrating human rights crimes under the military regime that ruled from 1976 to 1983. The bill approved by the lawmakers sends a political signal that will be difficult for the Supreme Court to ignore. The high court is currently studying several judicial rulings on the unconstitutionality of the amnesty laws. If the Supreme Court upholds the decisions of the lower courts, it could pave the way for reopening cases against agents of the dictatorship. (IPS)

Doubts arise over FBI arrest of arms dealer

Hemant Lakhani, the 68-year-old man arrested last week for allegedly smuggling an anti-aircraft missile into the US, was portrayed to the American public as a US-baiting, politically motivated international arms dealer. But the picture of him pieced together by The Independent reveals a bumbling rogue caught up in an elaborate sting that intelligence experts are starting to question.

Lakhani was charged by the FBI with “attempting to provide material support for terrorism” by trying to sell an Igla missile, something that is easily available via the internet, according to Bahukutumbi Raman, India’s leading expert on counter-terrorism.

Lakhani “is definitely not a terrorist,” said Raman. “He had been going through a lot of financial difficulties. It’s not a case of genuine terrorism — I think he was set up.”

Extreme financial desperation, not politically motivated opportunism, is seen by experts as the cause of Lakhani’s problems. (Independent (UK))