Afghan women still suffer widespread abuses

By Phil Reeves

Oct. 6— Afghan women are still the victims of widespread abuses, including forced marriage, rape and abduction, two years after the American-led invasion that threw out the repressive Taliban regime, according to Amnesty International.

Violent crimes causing “untold suffering” are perpetrated against women with the “active support or passive complicity of state agents, armed groups, families, and communities,” says an Amnesty report, published today.

Prosecution for violence against women is virtually absent, as is any protection for women who are at risk, it says.

Although it acknowledges that legal reforms and rebuilding the police force and judicial system are moving forward, Amnesty warns that “no clear strategy” exists to end discrimination or build a means of protecting women’s rights.

The need to liberate Afghanistan’s women from abuse by the Taliban government, which severely restricted their basic freedoms, was one of the motivating issues before the US-led forces launched their assault.

Under the Taliban, women had to remain covered from head to toe and were not allowed to work outside the home. Girls were barred from attending school.

Before the assault, the international community — especially politicians from the US-led alliance — made assurances that toppling the Taliban would help Afghan women realize their rights. The US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, declared the restoration of women’s rights would “not be negotiable.”

However, the international community has failed to deliver on its promises so far, Amnesty’s 48-page report concludes. Along with Afghanistan’s US-backed transitional government, headed by Hamid Karzai, the international community has “proved unable to protect women.”

“In certain instances, international intervention is perpetuating and condoning gender discrimination,” says the report, entitled “Afghanistan: No one listens to us and no one treats us as human beings. Justice denied to women.” It said: “Protection and shelter for women at risk has not been created, and legal aid provision remains entirely inadequate.”

The report highlights several abuses that Afghan women suffer, including the giving of girls and women in marriage as a means of settling disputes. Domestic violence — unchecked by the state — has driven some women to suicide; Afghan armed groups continue to carry out rapes with impunity.

In certain cases, there is evidence that officials from the Afghan police or national army — both still in relatively early stages of being set up — may be involved or colluding with abuses, it says, and women are frequently reluctant to speak out about for fear of reprisals and because of the social stigma surrounding sexual assault.

Amnesty cites reports of one incident in which a woman was detained at an army checkpoint and handed over to the commander of an armed group. “Her fate remained unknown, but it was understood that she would be transferred as a ‘gift’ to different commanders.”

Amnesty’s researchers received numerous reports of girls and women being physically abused in the home by male family members, and sometimes even killed by their relatives. They unearthed a report of a father who shot his daughter because she refused his choice of husband. When the district governor tried to bring the man to justice, he was given sanctuary by a militia with which he was affiliated.

In Jalalabad, in eastern Afghanistan, families whose women had committed adultery or eloped were killed. In some regions, women are routinely detained for adultery or for attempting to assert their right — enshrined in Afghan law and international conventions — to marry a man of their choice.

Amnesty also cites a clear pattern of widespread underage marriage of girls, particularly in rural areas. The report says it is relatively rare for girls to remain unmarried until they reach 16 years, the legal age for marriage. Some Afghan women told Amnesty researchers that girls as young as eight were being forcibly married off.

The report demands urgent action from the international community and the Afghan transitional government to ensure the protection of women is made a priority during the country’s reconstruction.

It says the debate on the new constitution by a national assembly — the loya jirga, due in December — will provide an opportunity to enshrine women’s rights in the country’s laws.

As drafted, the constitution would ban forced marriages, bridal dowries and other discrimination and guarantee women’s political rights. However, the government has little power to enforce those rights outside Kabul.

Source: Independent (UK)

Every third person will be a slum dweller within 30 years, UN agency warns

By John Vidal



Oct. 4— One in every three people in the world will live in slums within 30 years unless governments control unprecedented urban growth, according to a UN report. The largest study ever made of global urban conditions has found that 940 million people — almost one-sixth of the world’s population — already live in squalid, unhealthy areas, mostly without water, sanitation, public services, or legal security.

The report, from the UN human settlements program, UN-habitat, based in Nairobi, found that urban slums were growing faster than expected, and that the balance of global poverty was shifting rapidly from the countryside to cities.

Africa now has 20 percent of the world’s slum dwellers and Latin America 14 percent, but the worst urban conditions are in Asia, where more than 550 million people live in what the UN calls unacceptable conditions.

The world’s 30 richest countries are home to just 2 percent of slum dwellers; in contrast, 80 percent of the urban population of the world’s 30 least developed countries live in slums. Although the report emphasized that not all slum dwellers are poor, the UN warned that unplanned, unsanitary settlements threaten political stability and are creating the climate for an explosion of social problems.

“There is a vacuum developing, because local authorities have no access to the many slums,” said Anna Tibaijuka, the director of UN-habitat.

“Extreme inequality and idleness lead people to anti-social behavior. Slums are the places where all the evils come together, where peace and security is elusive and where young people cannot be protected.”

Tibaijuka called on governments to urgently address a deteriorating situation which potentially threatened security and would increase pressures on immigration to rich countries. The report found that some slums were now as large as cities. The Kibera district in Nairobi, classed as the largest slum in the world, has as many as 600,000 people. The Dharavi area of Mumbai and the Orangi district of Karachi have only slightly fewer people, while the Ashaiman slum is now larger than the city of Tema in Ghana, around which it grew.

Other cities, such as Dhaka in Bangladesh, have several hundred small slums or squatter settlements, which have no access to services and are liable to be moved at short notice. “The world is entering a significant stage,” say the report’s authors. “Over the next 30 years, the urban population in the developing world will double to about 4 billion people, at the rate of about 70 million a year. Rural populations will barely increase and begin to decline after 2020.”

The authors also predicted that three-quarters of the world’s anticipated population growth would take place in relatively small cities with populations of between 1 million and 5 million. The report found that the world’s urban population had increased by 36 percent in the 1990s, and that city authorities had been unable or unwilling to keep up.

“Slums are the product of failed policies, bad governance, corruption, and a lack of political will,” the report says. “Very few countries have recognized this critical situation and very little effort is going into providing jobs or services.”

But the authors roundly blamed laissez-faire globalization and “neo-liberal” economic policies imposed on poor countries by global institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization for much of the damage caused to cities over the past 20 years.

The authors say people are encouraged to move to the cities by factors including the privatization of public services, job losses, and the removal of subsidies and tax breaks from key industries. Such effects, they say, increase inequality, and make sure that those who move to the cities remain in deep poverty.

“One of the few direct benefits that slum dwellers have gained from globalization is greater access to aid agencies,” the report says.

“But the very limited advantages are outweighed by a truly formidable array of disadvantages — so many, in fact, that some governments might be excused for not wishing to take part at all in globalization if they have the welfare of the urban poor at heart.”

“In a form of colonialization that is probably more stringent than the original, many developing countries have become... suppliers of raw commodities to the world, and fall further and further behind.”

The authors conclude that as “cities have become a dumping ground for people working in unskilled, unprotected, and low-wage industries and trades... the slums of the developing world swell.”

Source: The Guardian (UK)

Centers of decay and deprivation

Centers of decay and deprivation

Phnom Penh, Cambodia: Up to 230,000 people live in dilapidated buildings which are often flooded. Squatter settlements have grown beside railway tracks, canals, and reservoirs.

Nairobi, Kenya: Some 600,000 people live in Kibera, the world’s largest slum, where there is little running water, poor sanitary facilities, and frequent outbreaks of violence.

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Favelas started appearing in the 1950s, and there are now about 700, housing a total of about 1 million people. Many have been upgraded.

Colombo, Sri Lanka: Thousands live in deteriorating tenement blocks or derelict houses on high land in the old city center.

Cairo, Egypt: Slum areas have developed on desert land owned by the state. Some began as relocation sites for rubbish collectors and the army.

Mumbai, India: Tens of thousands live in decaying slums known as chawls. These were built by factory owners and sometimes collapse in the monsoons.

Iraqi police, US soldiers open fire on Iraqi crowds

Compiled by Seán Marquis

Oct. 8 (AGR)— Over the past week, US and British armed forces and Iraqi police have opened fire on crowds several times, injuring many and killing several people as unrest continues to rise in Iraq.

Iraqi police opened fire in Baghdad and Mosul to break up crowds of angry jobless Iraqis on Oct. 1, in Baghdad at least one demonstrator was injured in the shooting. When the gunfire stopped about 30 minutes later, fist fights broke out between some demonstrators and police. The protesters – who stormed the police station and threw stones at police — said they had been promised police jobs in July, but the positions had not been given out. They charged the police were demanding bribes in return for hiring them.

Police Lt. Mothana Ali said about 1,000 demonstrators had gone to the station demanding jobs. The police, he said, told the group they were not hiring any new officers then the group stormed the building. One protester, Ali Hamid, 21, said the protesters had applied for jobs as police but were refused even though they’d paid to get their names on the rolls of candidates. “All these policemen are corrupt. We gave them money to register our names as candidates and when we returned they said we have no business being here,” Hamid said. Ali Aboud, a 52-year-old out-of-work builder, said police had asked him to pay $100 for a job.

While in Mosul, members of a crowd of several thousand threw stones at an employment office and some chanted support for Saddam.

Police and security guards fired shots in the air and the crowd broke up.

British troops in Iraq opened fire on rioting protesters for the second time in 24 hours on Oct. 6 during violent clashes between Allied forces and former soldiers from Saddam Hussein’s army.

British soldiers fired baton rounds to disperse rioters who had set fire to tires and were bombarding vehicles with stones in the southern city of Basra.

The incident, close to the city’s university, came a day after British soldiers in the nearby port area shot dead an Iraqi man who was pointing a weapon during outbursts by former conscripts lining up to receive compensation for being made unemployed.

The American-led administration in Iraq has agreed a one-off payment of $40 to each of the 440,000 conscripts who served in Saddam’s army and lost their jobs when it was disbanded in May.

Iraqi police called to calm yesterday’s protest in Basra had to hide in a building after they ran out of bullets while firing into the air.

The protests in Basra were repeated in Baghdad and the town of Hilla.

British and American troops fired into crowds of rioting former Iraqi soldiers in Basra and Baghdad the previous day, killing one man in each city.

In the nearby Yarmuk hospital Hussein Hatem, an ex-soldier, was lying on a bed with an X-ray clutched to his chest showing that he had two bullets lodged in his thigh.

“It started when one man went to get a drink of water after we had been queuing for five hours,” said Hatem. “The US soldiers wouldn’t let him get back in the line and beat him and us with long batons and electric cattle prods. Then we started throwing stones at them and they fired back.”

A few hours earlier, an attack on American troops with rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns left one US soldier dead and another wounded.

Two Iraqi army veterans, awaiting a back salary payment, were shot dead and eight others wounded late Sunday, Oct. 5 by US forces who thought the men were about to riot.

“Ahmed Abdel al-Sattar, 21, and Raed Kamel Mahdi, 25, were waiting for a taxi to pick them up after waiting fruitlessly all day to receive their salary when US soldiers opened fire in the air and toward the people,” said police Major Etman Awad Mohammed.

“Eight others were wounded mostly in the legs and feet and they were taken to Kirkuk hospital.”

Uprising in Baiji

Iraqis shouting pro-Saddam Hussein slogans have staged an uprising in the important oil refining city of Baiji, burning down the mayor’s office, fighting with American troops and forcing local police to flee.

About a thousand people, some holding pictures of Saddam Hussein, held a stand-off with American troops Oct. 6, with US tanks surrounding the police station in the city, 160 miles north of Baghdad.

The crowds were chanting: “With our blood, with our spirit, we are ready to die for you Saddam.”

The uprising started early on Saturday morning in Baiji which contains the largest oil refinery in Iraq and is on a main oil pipeline.

According to Majid, a local man who was in the city center at the time five or six men arrived in a Brazilian-made car and began chanting pro-Saddam slogans reported the Independent, a UK daily.

He said: “A crowd gathered in the market place. Then the police attacked them and [other] people ... and were also shooting. Four people were hit and were lying on the ground.”

Enraged by the shooting, many citizens joined the crowd in attacking the police. A large crowd then advanced on the office of the mayor of Baiji, Hamid Rajabayef al-Qaissi.

He tried to stop them by saying that the police had overreacted but the crowd refused to accept this and burnt his office.

After the burning of the mayor’s office, most of the police fled, according to local people. Local people also attacked Turkish tanker trucks passing through the town, blowing up two vehicles and reportedly killing one driver.

Turkish truck drivers are a target for local hatred in Baiji because it is believed that they buy fuel cheaply, causing local shortages, and then smuggle it into Turkey to sell at higher prices.

A medic at the local hospital, Dr Assaf, said 11 people had been brought in with bullet wounds on Saturday, but he did not know how many casualties were treated altogether.

Five months ago, US troops got rid of an elected police chief who had a lot of support among tribal leaders in the area.

But on Oct. 6, they reinstated him in hopes of ending the three-day uprising.

Before he was reinstated, soldiers from the Fourth Infantry Division withstood a 75-minute barrage of mortar rounds, grenades and light arms fire that same day.

Foreign Ministry shelled

Large portions of Baghdad were in turmoil on Oct. 7 after attackers fired a mortar shell into the Foreign Ministry compound, former intelligence officers demanding back pay or jobs hurled paving stones at American forces, and US soldiers confronted a big demonstration of Shiite Muslims.

Witness Hussein Amin said the mortar shell or rocket-propelled grenade fired at the ministry compound landed near the office of Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari and broke windows. Workers in the compound came streaming out and Iraqi guards fired rifles in the air.

In southwest Baghdad, U.S. soldiers in about 20 Humvees with two helicopters overhead confronted some 600 demonstrators at a Shiite Muslim mosque, with protesters claiming the Americans had illegally detained their imam.

Sheikh Mohammed al-Sudani said mosque preacher Moayed al-Khazraji was arrested Monday as he lead a 12-man delegation to negotiate with the Americans in the municipal council building.

Protesters shouted “America equals Saddam” and “Today we are raising banners, tomorrow we will raise weapons.”

Last week, US soldiers fired warning shots over the heads of stone-throwing Shiites outside al-Karzraji’s mosque after the cleric was questioned by US and Iraqi authorities for allegedly inflammatory sermons.

Sources: Agence France Presse, Associated Press, Independent (UK) Reuters

Iraq: No uranium, no munitions, no missiles, no programs

Oct. 5— Last week’s progress report by American and British weapons inspectors in Iraq has failed to supply evidence for the vast majority of the claims made on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction by their governments before the war.

David Kay, head of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), told congressional committees in Washington that no official orders or plans could be found to back up the allegation that a nuclear program remained active after 1991. Aluminum tubes have not been used for the enrichment of uranium, in contrast to US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s lengthy exposition to the UN Security Council in February. No suspicious activities or residues have been found at the seven sites within Iraq described in the Prime Minister’s dossier from September 2002.

The ISG even casts serious doubt on President Bush’s much-trumpeted claim that US forces had found three mobile biological laboratories after the war: “technical limitations” would prevent the trailers from being ideally suited to biological weapons production, it records. In other words, they were for something else.

There have certainly been no signs of imported uranium, or even battlefield munitions ready to fire within 45 minutes. Most significantly, the claim to Parliament on the eve of conflict by Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, that “we know that this man [Saddam Hussein] has got ... chemical weapons, biological weapons, viruses, bacilli and ... 10,000 liters of anthrax” has yet to find a single piece of supportive evidence.

Those who staked their career on the existence in Iraq of at least chemical and biological weapons programs have latched on to three claims in the progress report.

First, there is the allegation that a biologist had a “collection of reference strains” at his home, including “a vial of live C botulinum Okra B from which a biological agent can be produced.” Straw claimed the morning after the report’s release that this agent was “15,000 times more toxic than the nerve agent VX.” That is wrong: botulinum type A is one of the most poisonous substances known, and was developed in weaponized form by Iraq before 1991. However, type B — the form found at the biologist’s home — is less lethal.

Even then, it would require an extensive process of fermentation, the growing of the bug, the extraction of the toxin and the weaponization of the toxin before it could cause harm. That process would take weeks, if not longer, but the ISG reported no sign of any of these activities.

Botulinum type B could also be used for making an antidote to common botulinum poisoning. That is one of the reasons why many military laboratories around the world keep reference strains of C botulinum Okra B. The UK keeps such substances, for example, and calls them “seed banks.”

Second, a large part of the ISG report is taken up with assertions that Iraq had been acquiring designs and undertaking research programs for missiles with a range that exceeded the UN limit of 150 km. The evidence here is more detailed than in the rest of the report. However, it does not demonstrate that Iraq was violating the terms of any Security Council resolution. The prohibition on Iraq acquiring technology relating to chemical, biological or nuclear weapons was absolute: no agents, no sub-systems and no research or support facilities.

By contrast, Iraq was simply prohibited from actually having longer-range missiles, together with “major parts, and repair and production facilities.” The ISG does not claim proof that Iraq had any such missiles or facilities, just the knowledge to produce them in future. Indeed, it would have been entirely lawful for Iraq to develop such systems if the restrictions implemented in 1991 were lifted, while it would never have been legitimate for it to re-develop WMD.

Third, one sentence within the report has been much quoted: Iraq had “a clandestine network of laboratories and safe houses within the Iraqi intelligence service that contained equipment subject to UN monitoring and suitable for continuing CBW research.” Note what that sentence does not say: these facilities were suitable for chemical and biological weapons research (as almost any modern lab would be), not that they had engaged in such research. The reference to UN monitoring is also spurious: under the terms of UN resolutions, all of Iraq’s chemical and biological facilities are subject to monitoring. So all this tells us is that Iraq had modern laboratories.

Source: Independent (UK)

Mexicans show fresh anger over 1968 Massacre

By Shawn Gaynor

Oct. 5 (AGR)— Some 40,000 Mexican protesters took to the streets in Mexico City last Thursday holding signs, carrying banners, and puppets to mark the anniversary of the 1968 massacre of student activists preceding the 1968 Summer Olympics. The protest, which was the most militant in decades, followed the release of documents showing some 360 government snipers participated in the massacre.

The protest turned violent early when a group of roughly 200 anarchists were attacked without provocation by a band of “porros” (government paid provocateurs), routing the surprised anarchist contingent. The anarchists, along with a broad representation of the crowd, recovered and running street battles with the porros ensued leaving one porro hospitalized and several people on both sides injured.

With the porros eventually routed the march continued. The first bank the crowd came upon was met with chants of, “attack, attack, attack capital.” The crowd then began attacking the building with rocks and pipes, breaking the institutions window.

This was the beginning of what was to be a 4 hour rampage. Every bank the march passed suffered the same fate. The Mexican Justice Department was attacked, as well as several other government buildings. Chain stores including the Gap, KFC, and Seven Eleven were vandalized. A car dealership was assaulted. One bank was set on fire along with a media van.

The march ended in front of a visibly unguarded Presidential Palace which was not attacked by marchers.

In all, 22 buildings were vandalized in what many estimate to be over one million dollars of damage.

Police reported 76 arrests, most of which took place after the march, with snatch squads arresting small groups of people. Police also claim to have identified 250 others whom they have targeted for arrest. It is believed that some of those arrested are facing up to ten years in prison.

At the time of the 1968 massacre, the Mexican government said that armed dissidents had provoked the killings, but growing evidence and newly released documents point to a massacre initiated by the Mexican government.

The new documents reportedly show that top officials, including then-Interior Secretary Luis Echeverria, knew much more than they originally claimed. Echeverria would become Mexico’s president in 1970.

Echeverria still claims no knowledge of the attack, but new evidence shows snipers moved through his sister-in-law’s apartment during the massacre.

Officials who had been involved in the government at the time have refused to testify despite orders from the Mexican Supreme Court.

Eyewitnesses and international human rights groups have claimed that hundred died in the massacre, while the Mexican government claims the number of pro-democracy protesters that were killed in the attack to be 38.

Daniel Wilkinson, an attorney for Human Rights Watch speaking to the Associated Press concerning Thursday’s protests commented: “As this thing drags out, I think the frustration has grown considerably. It will take showing concrete results for that to abate.”

Mexican President Vicente Fox promised this week that he has not forgotten about the investigation into the massacre.

AGR staff in Mexico contributed to this report

Heavy repression against anti-EU summit protesters in Rome

Compiled by Jodi Rhoden

Oct. 4 (AGR)— On Saturday, Oct. 4, over 70,000 protesters took to the streets of Rome to demonstrate against the one-day summit of 25 EU heads-of-state, called to discuss an EU constitution. Fighter jets roared overhead, accompanied by AWACS surveillance aircraft and helicopters, as Italian riot police fired tear gas and used batons and continuous charges to attempt to break up the protest. Witnesses reported that at least eight people were injured in the clashes and dozens were arrested as demonstrators smashed shop windows. Some 10,000 police officers in riot gear were on the streets of Rome enforcing a no-go zone around the venue, as the “Disobbedienti,” an Italian activist group, blocked one of the main roads in the city.

On Friday, a small group of demonstrators dumped manure in front of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s private residence in central Rome. At one point, a group of about 50 anti-corporate globalization protesters attacked the offices of a temporary work agency before being chased away by police, and an ambulance was seen moving in to take away an injured demonstrater. Smoke could be seen billowing from the agency, in an area between the city center and the summit venue. Activists threw toilet paper rolls at the officers in riot gear.

European trade unions and the anti-corporate globalization movement had called a joint demonstration Saturday demanding “another Europe,” protesting against not only the summit, but also the government’s labor and pension reforms.

Over the past year, the government has tried to overhaul both the labor and pensions systems, leading to protests by trade unions, which have called a general strike later this month to oppose the pension reforms.

“We will never build a stronger Europe on a weaker social pillar. It must attract popular enthusiasm and be firmly rooted in popular politics,” the secretary general of the European Trade Union Confederation, John Monks said. “We wanted to send a message to Europe’s political leaders that they will weaken the social dimension of Europe at their and Europe’s peril,” he added. Labor leaders are concerned that components of the draft constitution protecting social welfare rights will fall through the cracks when the final version is passed.

Inside the summit, the leaders of 25 current and future member nations agreed in a joint declaration that a new EU constitution was a vital step towards closer European ties. But they were unable to agree on what the constitution should contain. Italy’s foreign minister Franco Frattini praised what he called the “constructive spirit” at the talks but admitted that none of the leaders have shifted much from previously-stated positions. The current Italian EU presidency wants to complete negotiations by the end of the year to pave the way for the new treaty to be signed before European parliament elections next June.

The demonstraters say the proposed constitution is designed to promote the free market and capitalism and is not focused enough on the need to build peace and understanding. They want the EU to do more to address average citizens’ concerns as the bloc expands to include 10 new mainly ex-communist countries in May 2004.

“We took to the streets to counter the Europe of racism, war, and unemployment,” said one protest leader, Francesco Caruso, as several thousand marchers headed toward the summit site. “We wanted Europe not to be written in the palaces of power or in the constitution, but in a democratic way with the people,” he added.

Argentina: 40 years of secret police files revealed

By Marcela Valente

Buenos Aires, Argentina, Oct. 2 (IPS)— For 40 years, a secret police unit in Argentina gathered copious intelligence on student, labor, and social activists and a broad range of civil society organizations, remaining active under the democratic governments that alternated in power with military regimes.

Although the work of compiling and classifying the 300,000 files of meticulous records kept by the Intelligence Office of the Buenos Aires Provincial Police (DIPPBA) is not yet complete, some of the documents were made public in a special ceremony Thursday by the Provincial Commission for Memory.

The Commission was specifically created to guard and classify the archives in 1998, when the government dissolved the DIPPBA, which was founded in 1957.

The Commission is headed by local writer Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, who received the Nobel Peace Prize for denouncing the human rights violations committed by Argentina’s last military dictatorship (1976-1983), and Estela Carlotto, the president of Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a human rights group set up to seek the missing children of the regime’s victims of forced disappearance, many of whom were given to military families to raise.

The digitalization and classification of the 3.5 million pages of intelligence gathered by the now-defunct DIPPBA is to be completed by the Commission in 2004, when the files will be opened up to the public.

Priority of access will be given to people who were directly affected by the dictatorship, such as torture survivors or the families of the “disappeared,” who numbered as many as 30,000 according to rights groups.

“This is the most important archive found so far” on the last dictatorship, historian Patricia Funes, a member of the Commission, said in an interview with IPS. She warned, however, against generating false expectations, because it was the armed forces’ intelligence bodies that were most active during the de facto regime.

María del Carmen Verdú, lawyer for the Coordinator Against Police Repression (CORREPI), a rights group founded in 1991, told IPS that the finding provides new and more compelling evidence that “the repressive apparatus’s mechanisms date back to the 1930s, and remain active, with greater or lesser visibility, at the national level and in certain provinces.”

Verdú said “files containing intelligence information” on CORREPI, and on HIJOS, a group of now-grown children of the disappeared that was created in 1995, have been found in legal searches carried out in cases investigating links between the police and prostitution or gambling rackets.

DIPPBA’s surveillance of activists began in 1957, two years after the coup d’etat that put an end to the second government of former president Juan Domingo Perón. It continued to operate throughout the following democratic governments and military regimes.

The records that are being declassified include reports on “communism in Argentina,” reconnaissance gathered by police infiltrators in protests, political rallies and assemblies, surveillance of people involved in all kinds of social organizations, and even one curious report titled “Marxist infiltration in the provincial public administration,” datelined 1974.

In the more recent files, the investigations and reports were replaced by newspaper clippings, on incidents like the 1994 bomb attack on the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA), which left a death toll of 86. Several Buenos Aires province police officers have been prosecuted in connection with the blast.

The segment of the archives that dates back to the 1976-1983 dictatorship remains in the hands of a federal court in La Plata, the capital of the province of Buenos Aires, which is investigating the fate of people who were “disappeared” by the regime in that district.

One of the experts working on that segment of the files, Graciela Ojeda, said a reading of the records made it clear that “all sectors of the public were spied upon and persecuted by the state for nearly half a century.”

Funes said the closest precedent were the files kept in neighboring Brazil by the Offices of Political and Social Order (DOPS), which contained the results of surveillance carried out during that country’s 1964-1985 dictatorship.

The DOPS were specialized departments of the civil police forces, in charge of citizen security in Brazil’s states. Their origin dates back to the dictatorship of Getulio Vargas (1930-1945), and they kept close records on accusations, testimony, and intelligence on Brazilian citizens.

Secret police units continue to exist in Brazil, although often under different names. The most active DOPS offices were the ones in the states of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Some of them, like the one in Sao Paulo, have been converted into cultural centers.

Similarly, the headquarters of the secret DIPPBA department in Buenos Aires is now the office of the Provincial Commission for Memory, where two teams of a total of around 20 experts have been combing through the material and classifying it for over two years.

One of the teams is made up of computer experts from the National University of La Plata who are preserving and digitalizing the files, in order to make the documents accessible to the public through a system using key words.

The other group, made up of anthropologists, historians, and social communicators, is classifying and categorizing the documents.

Funes, a member of the second team, explained that “there are no records on common crimes” in the files. Instead, they contain information on what the police deemed “social, political, or subversive crimes,” which included the normal activities of students, artists, workers, trade unionists, and religious leaders, she said.

“The persecution of civil society is a constant theme” in the documents, said the historian, who cited the example of cultural censorship. “It is striking to see the lists of plays that were to be censored,” she added.

She also pointed out that during the Cold War, DIPPBA even kept track of the visits of schoolchildren to the embassies of East European socialist bloc countries, who were seeking informational pamphlets to write reports that their teachers had assigned.

Funes said the archives have “ethical, political, legal, and historical value.”

“From a historical point of view, we have found the biggest collection of political propaganda that has ever existed in this country, made up of documents seized” from activists and others monitored by the DIPPBA.

The archives include pamphlets, fliers, posters, and reports by trade unions, student organizations, and political parties — material that the activists themselves did not preserve.

Israel bombs Syria, US stands by the attack

Compiled by Seán Marquis

Oct. 8 (AGR)— Syria urged the United States on Oct. 6 not to block a United Nations (UN) Security Council resolution condemning Israel’s air strike near Damascus — its first attack on Syrian soil in more than 20 years, saying Washington should help prevent escalation of tensions in the Middle East.

Syria called an emergency Security Council meeting on Sunday over Israel’s attack to secure a measure that condemns the raid, saying it threatened regional and international peace.

Syria wanted an immediate vote but Washington said the measure had to go to the capitals of council members for study.

US Ambassador to the UN John Negroponte accused Syria of harboring “terrorists” and refused to criticize Israel for the air strike.

Negroponte also said that “Syria is on the wrong side of the war on terrorism.”

Israel claimed it did not intend to pick a fight with Syria but wanted the air strike to serve as a warning for it to stop Palestinian militant groups operating on Syrian territory.

Syria denies links to “terrorist groups” and says there is a difference between terrorism and legitimate resistance to illegal Israeli occupation. It says Palestinian militant groups only have media offices on its territory.

Ra’anan Gissin, a spokesman for the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, warned that Israel may attack Syria again if it continues to allow Palestinian militant groups to operate there. “The operation ... was intended to send that message off to Syria as well to the leaders of the Islamic Jihad and Hamas,” he said.

In a letter to the UN, Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa said: “Syria has practiced the highest level of self-restraint, realizing that Israel is trying to create pretexts ... to export its internal crisis to the region.”

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak condemned the attack as “aggression against a brother country”.

France and Germany both described the raid as unacceptable.

US president George W. Bush today declined to criticize Israel for its air strike inside Syria, saying that he had spoken to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. “I made it very clear to the prime minister that...Israel’s got a right to defend herself, that Israel must not feel constrained in terms of defense of the homeland,” Bush said.

By attacking a target in Syria, Israel might be in tune with Bush’s continuing militant mood.

Bush is reported by the Washington Post to have told King Abdullah of Jordan recently: “I’m still in a war mode and the war is terrorism.”

On Oct. 5 Israeli jets targeted a “Palestinian terrorist camp” fourteen miles from the Syrian capital in “retaliation” for a devastating suicide bomb in the northern port of Haifa on Saturday, which killed 19 people.

Israel said the target of the raid was the Ein Saheb camp, 14 miles outside Damascus, which it claimed was used by several militant groups, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

A third Palestinian militant faction, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), said the area had been one of its training camps, but was now disused and was largely empty when it was hit.

Syrian media have described Ein Saheb as a Palestinian refugee camp.

Many Syrians have voiced their anger over Israel’s air strike near Damascus, with some calling for reprisals and others enraged by US reaction.

One taxi driver, Mahir Awad, echoed others around him who hoped for a military response.

Awad said: “I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard. I wish I was there with a shotgun in my hand.”

A university student, Jamal, said he hoped the government would send its own air force “to show them what Syrians can do.”

One elderly man, Abu Qasim, said: “This man [Negroponte] was talking as if he owns the world telling us we are terrorists. Did he forget what [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon did in Sabra and Shatila?”

Sharon, then defense minister, is widely blamed for the 1982 massacre by Israeli-backed Lebanese Christian militiamen in Sabra and Shatila camps in Lebanon, in which hundreds of civilians were killed.

“There is no sense of right and wrong anymore,” Abu Qasim added. “Those Americans and Israelis think they are strong but they forget that Allah is stronger.”

Suicide bomb kills 19 in Israel

At least 19 people were killed and 56 injured Oct. 4 when a woman walked into the beachfront Maxim restaurant in Haifa on Israel’s north coast and detonated explosives strapped to her body.

The suicide bombing, the first in more than three weeks, appeared timed to have the maximum horrific impact as Israelis prepared for Yom Kippur, or Day of Atonement, the holiest event in the Jewish religious calendar, which began the following night.

“Suddenly we heard a tremendous explosion,” said a witness, Navon Hai, who was outside when the bomb went off. “We saw smoke pour out of the restaurant and the windows shattered. There wasn’t much we could do. Families were dead around the tables.”

Among the dead were five children and several Arabs. Haifa is one of the most mixed cities in Israel, with a large population of “Israeli Arabs” — Palestinians with Israeli citizenship. It is one of the few places in the country where Arabs and Jews mix socially, and many of the families in Maxim when the bomb exploded were Arab. The restaurant, owned by Arab and Jewish partners, was a symbol of Haifa’s more relaxed atmosphere, and some saw the bombing as an attack on the very idea that Arabs and Jews can live together in peace. The Christian Arab owner was said to be too shocked to speak.

Meanwhile, a member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades was killed that same day during an Israeli operation in the northern West Bank in which a nine-year-old boy was also shot dead.

The nine-year-old boy was shot in the chest when Israeli forces opened fire on a group of Brigades members in the Tulkarem camp, according to a report by Agence France Presse.

Sources: Agence France Presse, BBC, Independent (UK), Reuters