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Kissinger to Argentines on ‘dirty
war’:
‘the quicker you succeed the better’
Washington, DC, Dec. 3- Newly declassified US State Department
documents obtained by the National Security Archive under the Freedom
of Information Act (FOIA) show that in October 1976, Secretary of State
Henry Kissinger and high ranking US officials gave their full support
to the Argentine military junta and urged them to hurry up and finish
the “dirty war” before the US Congress cut military aid.
The new documents are two memoranda of conversations (memcons) with
the visiting Argentine foreign minister, Admiral Cesar Augusto Guzzetti,
one with Kissinger himself on October 7, 1976. At the time, the US Congress
was about to approve sanctions against the Argentine regime because
of widespread reports of human rights abuses by the junta. A post-junta
truth commission found that the Argentine military had “disappeared”
at least 10,000 Argentines in the so-called “dirty war” against
“subversion” and “terrorists” between 1976 and 1983;
human rights groups in Argentina put the number at closer to 30,000.
According to the verbatim memcon, Secretary of State Kissinger told
Guzzetti:
“Look, our basic attitude is that we would like you to succeed.
I have an old-fashioned view that friends ought to be supported. What
is not understood in the United States is that you have a civil war.
We read about human rights problems but not the context. The quicker
you succeed the better… The human rights problem is a growing one.
Your Ambassador can apprise you. We want a stable situation. We won’t
cause you unnecessary difficulties. If you can finish before Congress
gets back, the better. Whatever freedoms you could restore would help.”
One day earlier, on October 6, 1976, Acting Secretary of State Charles
W. Robinson had told Admiral Guzzetti that, “it is possible to
understand the requirement to be tough.” But Robinson also remarked
on the “question of timing of the relaxation of extreme countersubversion
measures” before Congress voted sanctions on Argentina. The memcon
with Robinson goes on to note that “[t]he Acting Secretary said…
The problem is that the United States is an idealistic and moral country
and its citizens have great difficulty in comprehending the kinds of
problems faced by Argentina today. There is a tendency to apply our
moral standards abroad and Argentina must understand the reaction of
Congress with regard to loans and military assistance. The American
people, right or wrong, have the perception that today there exists
in Argentina a pattern of gross violations of human rights.”
Beginning in September 1976, the US ambassador to Argentina, Robert
Hill, had been pressing the Argentine military on human rights issues,
amid a dramatic increase in the number of victims being disappeared,
killed and tortured, including half a dozen American citizens. The Argentine
generals dismissed Ambassador Hill’s demarches, according to previously
declassified cables written by Hill, and alluded to an understanding
with high ranking US officials that “the [United States Government]’s
overriding concern was not human rights but rather that [Government
of Argentina] get it over quickly.’”
After Admiral Guzzetti returned from Washington, Ambassador Hill wrote
“a sour note” from Buenos Aires complaining that he could
hardly present human rights demarches if the Argentine Foreign Minister
did not hear the same message from the Secretary of State. Guzzetti
had told Hill that “[t]he Secretary… had urged Argentina ‘to
be careful’ and had said that if the terrorist problem was over
by December or January, he (the Secretary) believed serious problems
could be avoided in the US.” Wrote Ambassador Hill, “Guzzetti
went to [the] US fully expecting to hear some strong, firm, direct warnings
on his government’s human rights practices, rather than that, he
has returned in a state of jubilation, convinced that there is no real
problem with the US G[overnment] over that issue.”
The two new memcons were not among the 4,700 documents released in August
2002 by the Argentina Declassification Project of the US Department
of State. Much to the credit of Secretary of State Colin Powell and
his predecessor, Madeleine Albright, who began the project, that release
made front page news in Argentina, contributed dramatically to civilian
control of the military, provided documentation on military decision
making now being used in court cases related to the “dirty war,”
and for some of the families of the “disappeared,” gave the
first available evidence of what had actually happened to their loved
ones.
The State Department project, however, did not include documents from
the often-vigorous internal US policy debates over Argentina; and neither
the CIA nor the Pentagon participated in the declassification effort.
Carlos Osorio and Kathleen Costar of the National Security Archive obtained
the new memcons in November 2003 in response to their FOIA request filed
with the Department of State in November 2002, seeking to fill in the
missing pieces from the larger release.
Source: National Security Archive
Proposed anti-people water bill
sparks protests in Sri Lanka
By Champika Liyanaarachchi
Colombo, Sri Lanka, Dec. 4— A powerful coalition of nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs) Wednesday urged the Sri Lankan President to prevent
the government from introducing a controversial Water Services Reform
Bill which they say will deprive the poor of the precious resource.
The Alliance for the Protection of Natural Resources and Human Rights
(APNRHR) which organized the protest, claims the Bill seeks to privatize
water supply, distribution and even ground water ownership.
In a memorandum to President Chandrika Kumaratunga, they blamed international
financial institutions for placing undue pressure on the government
to privatize water.
The slogan also figured prominently on the agenda of the country’s
biggest trade union, Ceylon Mercantile Union (CMU), during a general
strike held the same day.
Elaborates co-secretary of the APNRHR, Sarath Fonseka, “According
to the Bill, licenses awarding water ownership rights will be issued
to private parties. This was tried in several other countries including
the Philippines.”
Fonseka stresses that the experiment only, “created chaos and made
water a commodity unaffordable for the poor.”
Activists point out that the discriminatory move would also discourage
farmers as 85 percent of water is used for agricultural purposes.
Reportedly, in its 1996 recommendations on domestic agriculture, the
World Bank had suggested water privatization and marketing as a strategy
to discourage low value crops.
Alleges Fonseca, “This Bill has come into being due to its pressure
to discourage traditional farmers and promote large companies who can
afford the high price of privatized water.”
In 2000, the Sri Lankan government produced a national water resources
policy statement which the NGOs label a “conclusion of a process
commenced in 1996 with directions from international financial institutions.”
Following public protests, the controversial policy document which was
prepared without consulting the public or civil society, was later withdrawn.
Two years later, the government’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper
(PRSP) recommended the promotion of private sector participation in
water services.
In October 2002, the “Water Services Reform Bill” was presented
in Parliament. But it was challenged in the Supreme Court by social
justice activist Nihal Fernando, on the grounds that it would deny the
country’s impoverished millions access to water.
The Supreme Court blocked the Bill saying its provisions covered areas
included in the purview of the Provincial Council Act, as water was
a concurrent subject (shared both by the center and provincial councils).
It said therefore that the Bill had to be approved by all provincial
councils.
Interestingly, the main opposition party, People’s Alliance (PA),
led by President Kumaratunga, is in power in six of the seven provincial
councils currently functioning (with the North and East defunct). The
Central province is the only exception.
PA strongman and former Water Management Minister Dr Sarath Amunugama
says there is a strong possibility that all six of the provincial councils
will oppose the Bill.
Says Amunugama, “During my tenure, I came under a lot of pressure
to implement this plan. But others warned me that although water privatization
works for developed countries, it is disastrous for the Third World.”
According to him, private sector participation in water ownership wiped
out farmers in African countries like Senegal. He predicts the same
fate for Sri Lankans if the government introduces the Bill.
APNRHR plans to hold a seminar Friday (December 5) to create awareness
among parliamentarians and members of provincial councils.
It is collecting signatures for a petition protesting against the plans
to make water a commercial commodity. Over 200,000 people have already
signed it.
According to World Bank studies, only one out of every ten households
in Sri Lanka boasts a water connection in their house or yard. Every
fifth person of the 19 million population relies on unprotected water
sources including rivers and streams.
Predictably, service coverage is worse in small towns and villages,
with plantation workers having scarcely any access to water.
Only 40 percent of people in villages and small towns have private access
to safe water sources. In plantations, 70 percent of the population
depends on water from rivers, ponds and streams.
But Ministry of Housing and Public Utilities secretary, W.D. Illapperuma,
dismisses people’s fears as unfounded. As he puts it, “The
Bill is aimed at regulating water through recommendations from an independent
commission appointed by the Constitutional Council. Everything will
be subject to this commission’s approval, as the World Bank does
not play any role here.”
The ten-member Constitutional council comprises members from almost
all major political parties in Parliament.
For his part, World Bank country director Peter Harold dismisses the
allegations against his organization, declaring that, “The Water
Services Bill is neither imposed by the World Bank nor is it patently
designed to hand over the nations water supply to private hands.”
Harold adds that the World Bank has always emphasized the importance
of water as a key element of poverty reduction in Sri Lanka where the
water service level is low.
“We have supported the government of Sri Lanka’s efforts to
ensure access to safe drinking water supply and adequate sanitation
to its population by the year 2010,” he says.
In May this year the World Bank approved a US $40 million grant to strengthen
water supply to local councils in four of the country’s poorest
provinces.
Source: OneWorld.net
Journalists jailed for inciting Rwandan
genocide
Dec. 4— Two Rwandan journalists have been sentenced
to life in prison and a third to 35 years for their roles in fuelling
the 1994 genocide in which 800,000 Tutsis and Hutus were murdered.
The sentencing ends a landmark three-year trial that highlighted what
became known as the “hate media” during the tragic period in
the African country’s history.
The international criminal tribunal for Rwanda, which is being held in
Tanzania, heard how the media played a major role in inciting extremists
from the Hutu majority to carry out the 100-day slaughter of ethnic Tutsis
and politically moderate Hutus.
“This tribunal has set an important precedent that says if the media
in this day and age uses their power to attack an ethnic group or racial
group, they will have to face justice,” the chief prosecutor, Hassan
Bubacar Jallow, told Reuters.
He said the use of “hate media,” which acted as propaganda outlets,
helps explain how ordinary Rwandans - even children and grandparents -
were influenced to participate in the killings.
At the trial several emotional witnesses, including media employees, compared
the role of the media to that of fuel on a fire.
Phrases like “go to work” and “the graves are not yet full”
were read by radio DJs during the spring of 1994. A newspaper called on
citizens to exterminate the “cockroach Tutsis”.
Ferdinand Nahimana, who was sentenced to life in jail, was a founding
member of Radio Television Libres des Mille Collines, as was Hassan Ngeze,
42, the owner and editor of the Hutu extremist newspaper, Kangura, who
also got life.
“Let whatever is smoldering erupt,” Ngeze wrote in the newspaper
days before the genocide.
“It will be necessary then that the masses and their army protect
themselves. At such a time, blood will be poured. At such a time, a lot
of blood will be poured.”
RTLM, which was known as Radio Machete, broadcast the names and addresses
of members of the country’s Tutsi minority and of Hutus who sympathized
with them.
“Nahimana chose a path of genocide and betrayed the trust placed
in him as an intellectual and a leader. He caused the deaths of thousands
of civilians without a firearm,” said the presiding judge, Navanethem
Pillay.
Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, a top executive at RTLM, who boycotted the trial,
was given a 35-year sentence, which was reduced to 27 years for time already
served.
Their sentences follow the jailing of Belgian reporter Georges Ruggiu
three years ago.
He was jailed for 12 years in 2000 after pleading guilty to direct and
public incitement to commit genocide.
In testimony against the three sentenced yesterday, Ruggiu said: “The
editorial policy of RTLM was to diabolize the RPF [the Tutsi dominated
Rwandan Patriotic Front] and the pro-RPF personalities and to prove that
UN peacekeepers deployed in the country were biased in favour of the RPF.”
The BBC’s Ally Nugenzi, who worked as a journalist in Rwanda, said
that during the massacre the radio station pinpointed targets.
“RTLM acted as if it were giving instructions to the killers. It
was giving directions on air as to where people were hiding,” Nugenzi
told the BBC’s news website.
The outcome drew comparisons with the 1946 Nuremberg trial of Nazi publisher
Julius Streicher, who used films and cartoons to incite hatred of Jews
and was executed for his role in the deaths of 6 million people.
By soaking their journalism in ethnic hatred, the three men turned their
media into weapons of war, the court said.
Kangura, which means “wake it up”, published what it called
the “Hutu 10 Commandments” telling people to kill.
John Floyd, the Washington-based lawyer who defended Ngeze, called the
verdict unfair and said it curbed freedom of speech.
Floyd said it could be used as an excuse for politically charged governments
to shut down any media outlet with which they disagreed.
“The freedom of expression has stepped backward for 50 years,”
he told Reuters.
“This would have never lasted in the US court. These men would have
had their rights to democratic expression.”
The court said freedom came with responsibility.
Source: Guardian (UK)
Israeli pilots say why they could not obey
illegal orders and kill innocent Palestinians
By Chris McGreal
Tel Aviv, Israel, Dec. 3— For two months, a rebel group
of Israeli Black Hawk helicopter and F-16 fighter pilots has been denounced
as traitors for saying they will no longer bomb Palestinian cities.
Until now they have maintained a resolute silence on their motives,
preferring to limit their criticism of Ariel Sharon’s war to a
letter signed by 27 reserve and active duty pilots refusing to carry
out what they described as illegal orders, and denouncing the occupation
of Palestine as eating at the moral fabric of Israel.
Now, having been thrown out of the air force, they are talking publicly
about what brought members of the most revered branch of the Israeli
military to make an unprecedented challenge to the handling of the conflict
with the Palestinians.
“I served more than seven years as a pilot,” said Captain
Alon R., who, like all the younger pilots, hopes to return to combat
flying and so declines to use his full name in order to retain his security
clearance. “In the beginning, we were pilots who believed our country
would do all it could to achieve peace. We believed in the purity of
our arms and that we did all we could to prevent unnecessary loss of
life.
“Somewhere in the last few years it became harder and harder to
believe that is the case.”
The line was crossed for most of the pilots with the dropping of the
one-ton bomb last year on the home of a Hamas military leader, Salah
Shehade, killing him and 14 of his family, mostly children.
“The Shehade incident was a red light for us, a final warning,”
said Capt. Alon R. “With Shehade I began to re-evaluate my beliefs.
We killed 14 innocent people, nine of them children. After, my commander
gave an interview in which he said he sleeps well at night and his men
can do the same. Well, I can’t. We refused to see it as an innocent
mistake.”
Capt. Assaf L., who served as a pilot for 15 years until he was sacked
for signing the letter, had similar doubts.
“You don’t have to be a genius to know that the destruction
from a one-ton bomb is massive.”
Lieutenant-Colonel Avner Raanan is among the most respected pilots to
have signed the letter. He served for 27 years and was awarded one of
Israel’s highest military decorations in 1994. “If you look
at the past three years, you see that, if we had a suicide bombing,
the Israeli air force made a big operation in which civilians were killed,
and that looks to innocent eyes like revenge,” he said.
At its core, the letter questions the legality of the “targeted
assassinations” that have claimed the lives of more civilian bystanders
than their Hamas, Islamic Jihad and al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade targets.
In October, 14 civilians were killed when the air force fired missiles
at a car in Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp.
“Is it legitimate to take F-15’s and helicopters designed
to destroy enemy tanks, and use them against cars and houses in one
of the most heavily populated places in the world?” Capt. Alon
R. asked.
“Because of the terrorism, we have become blinded by the blood
on our own faces. We cannot see that on the other side, beside the terrorists,
is a whole nation of innocent people.”
The pilots’ stand shook Israeli society. There is no shortage of
critics of the prime minister’s militarist tactics, but those of
the peace camp are widely marginalized as pacifists.
“Our government’s policy is to maintain fear in the public,”
Capt. Assaf L. said. “We’re not weak. It’s not 1967 or
1973, with the Syrian army on the border waiting to attack us. This
is maintaining a war to maintain the occupation.”
Many who poured scorn on the pilots accused them of wading into politics
for going beyond questions about the legality of their orders and challenging
the occupation. “We cannot separate the two,” Capt. Jonathon
S. said. “We are not pacifists. We don’t think we should sit
back and let suicide bombers attack us. But all this is a direct result
of our being in the [occupied] territories.
“Our fight to keep the settlements and suppress the Palestinian
people is killing us. It is killing our right to live safely in the
country of Israel. A very small group of radical Israelis is leading
the sane majority to catastrophe.”
Col. Raanan scoffs at the accusation that the pilots have denigrated
their uniforms by wading into political issues.
“The air force commander spoke in favor of the [Jewish] settlements
while sitting in uniform next to Sharon at a Likud party convention,”
he said. “That is political. This country has a defense minister
who, as army chief of staff, was the most political ever. It is hypocritical
to say lower ranking officers cannot express an opinion. What they mean
is, we can be political so long as we agree with the government. Well
that’s not democracy.”
The pilots say they have received more than 500 letters of support,
including one from a Holocaust survivor, and numerous calls from fellow
pilots. Several left-wing former cabinet ministers praised the pilots’
stand, saying it proved the armed forces were moral.
Concern in the air force prompted its commander, Major-General Dan Halutz,
to meet groups of pilots to tell them that “targeted assassinations”
were not a war crime.
Source:Guardian (UK)
Glaxo chief: our drugs do not work on most
patients
By Steve Connor
Dec. 8— A senior executive with Britain’s biggest
drug company has admitted that most prescription medicines do not work
on most people who take them.
Allen Roses, worldwide vice-president of genetics at GlaxoSmithKline
(GSK), said fewer than half of the patients prescribed some of the most
expensive drugs actually derived any benefit from them.
It is an open secret within the drug industry that most of its products
are ineffective in most patients but this is the first time that such
a senior drug boss has gone public. His comments come days after it
emerged that the NHS drug bill has soared by nearly 50 percent in three
years, rising by £2.3bn a year to an annual cost to the taxpayer
of £7.2bn. GSK announced last week that it had 20 or more new
drugs under development that could each earn the company up to $1billion
a year.
Dr .Roses, an academic geneticist from Duke University in North Carolina,
spoke at a recent scientific meeting in London where he cited figures
on how well different classes of drugs work in real patients.
Drugs for Alzheimer’s disease work in fewer than one in three patients,
whereas those for cancer are only effective in a quarter of patients.
Drugs for migraines, for osteoporosis, and arthritis work in about half
the patients, Dr. Roses said. Most drugs work in fewer than one in two
patients mainly because the recipients carry genes that interfere in
some way with the medicine, he said.
“The vast majority of drugs — more than 90 percent —
only work in 30 or 50 percent of the people,” Dr. Roses said. “I
wouldn’t say that most drugs don’t work. I would say that
most drugs work in 30 to 50 percent of people. Drugs out there on the
market work, but they don’t work in everybody.”
Some industry analysts said Dr. Roses’s comments were reminiscent
of the 1991 gaffe by Gerald Ratner, the jewelry boss, who famously said
that his high street shops are successful because they sold “total
crap.” But others believe Dr. Roses deserves credit for being honest
about a little-publicized fact known to the drugs industry for many
years.
“Roses is a smart guy and what he is saying will surprise the public
but not his colleagues,” said one industry scientist. “He
is a pioneer of a new culture within the drugs business based on using
genes to test for who can benefit from a particular drug.”
Dr. Roses has a formidable reputation in the field of “pharmacogenomics”
— the application of human genetics to drug development —
and his comments can be seen as an attempt to make the industry realise
that its future rests on being able to target drugs to a smaller number
of patients with specific genes.
The idea is to identify “responders” — people who benefit
from the drug — with a simple and cheap genetic test that can be
used to eliminate those non-responders who might benefit from another
drug.
This goes against a marketing culture within the industry that has relied
on selling as many drugs as possible to the widest number of patients
— a culture that has made GSK one of the most profitable pharmaceuticals
companies, but which has also meant that most of its drugs are at best
useless, and even possibly dangerous, for many patients.
Dr. Roses said doctors treating patients routinely applied the trial-and-error
approach which says that if one drug does not work there is always another
one. “I think everybody has it in their experience that multiple
drugs have been used for their headache or multiple drugs have been
used for their backache or whatever.
“It’s in their experience, but they don’t quite understand
why. The reason why is because they have different susceptibilities
to the effect of that drug and that’s genetic,” he said.
“Neither those who pay for medical care nor patients want drugs
to be prescribed that do not benefit the recipient. Pharmacogenetics
has the promise of removing much of the uncertainty.”
Source: Independent (UK)
Glaxo drug response rates
Therapeutic area: drug efficacy rate (%)
Alzheimer’s: 30
Analgesics (Cox-2): 80
Asthma: 60
Cardiac Arrythmias: 60
Depression (SSRI): 62
Diabetes: 57
Hepatits C (HCV): 47
Incontinence: 40
Migraine (acute): 52
Migraine (prophylaxis)50
Oncology: 25
Rheumatoid arthritis50
Schizophrenia: 60
The other face of the narco-traffickers
By Constanza Vieira
Mocoa, Colombia, Dec. 2 (IPS)— Aleida Cuarán, 36,
was sentenced to eight years in a Colombian prison on Jan. 24, 2001.
She remembers the exact date, and with a frank gaze states matter-of-factly
that she is serving time “for drug trafficking.”
Cuarán is from Mocoa, the capital of the southern Colombian department
(province) of Putumayo, an oil-rich zone that is one of the poorest
parts of the country, and one of the hardest-hit by the armed conflict
and drug trafficking.
This civil war-torn country of 44 million is now the world’s top
producer of coca.
From prison, Cuarán is unable to take care of her four daughters,
ages 13, 15, 17 and 18, and a 20-year-old son who was born nearly blind.
Cuarán and the father of her children separated 12 years ago,
and since then the family has not heard from him.
When she was arrested, she left her family under the responsibility
of her sister, who is too poor, however, to take them all into her own
home. Only the near-blind son lives with her. The girls rotate between
the homes of friends, working for their keep.
All of the girls wash clothes and do other domestic chores in exchange
for room and board. But despite everything, only the youngest has dropped
out of school.
Cuarán used to do other people’s laundry for a living. Three
years ago, she was earning $1.15 dollars a day. “There were people
who paid me more, to help us out,” she says. “We had to pay
rent, and we were always in such great need.”
What worried her most was that her daughters would ask her why they
couldn’t all go to school. The problem was that school implied
expenses, for uniforms, supplies, and books.
One day someone offered Cuarán a small fortune, $160 dollars,
to carry seven kgs. (15.5 lbs.) of unrefined cocaine paste on a relatively
short trip to Pasto, the capital of the neighboring department of Nariño,
which stretches from the Pacific coast to the Andes mountains, where
Pasto is located.
At the time Cuarán accepted the tempting offer, which would feed
her family for months, the southwestern part of Putumayo, on the border
with Ecuador, had the highest density in the world of coca bushes, whose
leaves provide the raw material used to produce cocaine.
Up to 1998, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the main
rebel group, was the only armed organization that received financing
by providing protection for coca plantations.
The guerrilla group also collected “taxes” from drug traffickers
for the processing facilities where basic cocaine paste is produced,
clandestine airstrips, aircraft, the transport of chemicals, and production,
charged on a per kg. basis.
But in 1998, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), the right-wing
paramilitary umbrella group, began to penetrate the area dominated by
FARC, and is now fighting with the insurgent group for control over
the territory and for the “protection tax” and other fees
paid by the narco-traffickers.
After she set out carrying the cocaine paste, Cuarán was stopped
and searched at an anti-drug control post in El Mirador, two hours from
Mocoa along the highway that runs from Colombia’s Amazon jungle
region to Pasto. If she had been carrying less than five kgs. (11 lbs.),
she would have been sentenced to only four years in jail.
Cuarán is one of 450 women in jail in Putumayo on drug trafficking
charges. In Mocoa, 150 children of 80 female prisoners are, like her
daughters, going from home to home, trading work for a roof over their
heads, meals, and in some cases, the possibility of attending school.
“We cannot continue to fill the prisons up with women who were
just trying to feed their children.” Cuarán told IPS.
In Mocoa, one kg of basic cocaine paste fetches $1,000. By comparison,
a cluster of plantains, a staple of the Colombian diet, sells for 2.50
dollars, without counting the cost of transportation to market. One
kg. of cocaine paste is obtained from leaves that take four months to
grow, while the plantain harvest takes at least a year.
But the chemical precursors needed to produce cocaine paste are costly,
and the peasants who grow coca end up earning only $180 per hectare.
And by the time the coca-growers are paid, they already owe that money
in debt, said Gustavo Burgos, the ombudsman of Mocoa, who receives the
complaints filed by local residents.
“It is the person who sells the cocaine paste who earns the money,
the middleman between the campesino (peasant) who grows the coca and
the real narco-traffickers,” Burgos told IPS.
The intermediaries hire people like Cuarán, often driven by desperate
poverty, to act as “drug mules” or couriers.
After a long, complicated journey, the unrefined cocaine paste is converted
into cocaine and eventually makes it to the streets of New York or other
large US cities, where it sells for between 50 and $150 a gram, depending
on its purity.
The United States, keen on reducing the inflow of drugs, channels financial
and military aid to Bogota through the Plan Colombia anti-drug and counterinsurgency
strategy, whose main focus is Putumayo.
For the past four years, the US government has provided $1.4 million
a day to Colombia in military and police aid, according to Adam Isaacson,
coordinator of the Washington DC-based Center for International Policy’s
Colombia Program.
That has provided a much needed boost for defense spending in Colombia,
which has a fiscal deficit equivalent to 2.5 percent of Gross Domestic
Product, according to official figures.
One of the aims of Plan Colombia, which was designed with help from
the US government, is to eradicate coca crops by means of widespread
aerial spraying, using a heavily concentrated mixture of the herbicide
glyphosate.
Although the spraying is driving up the poverty level in Putumayo, already
one of the most impoverished regions in the country, the government’s
aim is to reduce the financing FARC receives from the taxation of coca
cultivation and processing.
But Cuarán complained that the persecution focuses on the weakest
parts of the chain — the coca farmers and small-time couriers —
while the intermediaries are still able to make their way around the
area freely.
Police attack Piqueteros in Argentina
Nov. 29— At least 36 people were injured, five of them
by bullets, when riot police used tear gas, water cannons, rubber bullets
and firearms against a group of some 400 unemployed demonstrators known
as piqueteros in the southwestern Argentine city of Neuquén,
capital of the province of Neuquén, on November 25. Some demonstrators
responded by throwing rocks at police. A photographer from the Argentine
news agency Télam suffered a head injury from a tear gas grenade
thrown by police. There were some isolated incidents of looting, and
at least 20 people were arrested. Most of the detainees were reportedly
released by the next day; humanitarian organizations charge some were
tortured while in custody.
The conflict began outside the Ruca Che stadium, where unemployed and
poor people were supposed to register for social assistance subsidies,
but it soon spread throughout the city. The piqueteros were protesting
the provincial government’s decision to begin issuing the subsidies
through a bank card system. The subsidies, which amount to about $50
a month, were previously distributed in cash. The protesters say the
new system will prevent them from using the subsidies for rent or transportation,
and will limit their purchases to larger stores and supermarkets which
are set up for the card system. On Nov. 26, some 3,000 people marched
in Neuquén to protest the previous day’s police attack on
the piqueteros and reiterate their rejection of the new card system.
Deputy Governor Jorge Sapag, left in charge while Governor Jorge Sobisch
was on an official visit to Brazil, responded to the protests by suspending
the subsidy registration process for two days. Meanwhile, a provincial
government spokesperson claimed that the cards can be used for any purchase,
or even to withdraw cash. Neuquén is the only province in Argentina
which is governed by a regional party, the center-right Neuquino Popular
Movement (MPN); Sobisch, an ally of right-wing ex-president Carlos Saúl
Menem and collaborator of ex-dictator Jorge Rafael Videla, was reelected
on Sept. 28.
More conflicts erupted in the town of General Mosconi in the northern
province of Salta, where unemployed oil workers began blockading the
entrance to the Durán oilfield’s processing facility on
Nov. 16 or 17. The workers are demanding government compensation after
being laid off because of the privatization of the oil companies. After
a judge ordered the protest dissolved on November 20, police came in
and arrested seven members of the Union of Unemployed Workers of General
Mosconi, including protest leader José Pipino Fernández.
Angered by the arrests, local residents blocked more roads and a group
of about 100 piqueteros set fire to the offices of the Refinor and Tecpetro
oil companies, causing a fuel tank to explode.
In Buenos Aires on Nov. 25, thousands of piqueteros blocked streets
with a peaceful protest march, demanding that the administration of
President Néstor Kirchner provide more assistance for the poor.
Kirchner, who represents the leftist wing of the Justicialist (Peronist)
Party (PJ), has been mostly tolerant of piquetero protests since he
took office on May 25 of this year.
In an interview published on Nov. 29 in the Buenos Aires daily La Nación,
ex-president Eduardo Duhalde, also of the PJ, criticized Kirchner for
being soft on the demonstrators. “At times the state has to repress,”
said Duhalde. On Nov. 28 congressional deputy-elect Hilda González,
who is Duhalde’s wife, urged the government to “put order
back” in the streets. Source: Weekly Update On the Americas
CAFTA could block cheap AIDS drugs
By Emad Mekay
Washington, DC, Dec. 8 (IPS)— Volunteer social worker Alain
Rias, who helps treat people living with HIV/AIDS in Honduras, says
his work has helped patients recover, go back to work and support their
families.
But the French activist, who works with Medicins sans Frontiers (MSF),
known in English as Doctors Without Borders, says this work is threatened
by a controversial trade deal the United States is trying to finalize
with five Central American countries.
US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick and ministers from Costa Rica,
El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua began meeting on Dec.
8 in Washington for talks to launch a US-Central American Free Trade
Agreement (CAFTA).
CAFTA would eliminate tariffs and other “barriers” to trade
in goods, agriculture, services, investment and the imposition of intellectual
property rights on medicine, among other things. The meetings are scheduled
to wrap up by Dec. 17.
But health activists are warning that the deal could establish new rules
for the protection and enforcement of drug company patents and other
forms of intellectual property rights that will reduce access to medicine
in one of the Latin American regions hardest hit by the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
Rias has been giving antiretroviral therapy in Honduras free of charge
to some 300 HIV/AIDS patients, mostly women, over the past 18 months.
“Really, having access to medicine changed their lives because
many of them are women and their main preoccupation is staying alive
to feed their children and to see them grow,” Rias said during
a teleconference organized by health activists and experts lobbying
against limitations on access to medicine under CAFTA.
“People recovered very quickly. They are able to work again and
earn a bit of money to support their families. Many of the women are
without male partners because they had to go abroad for work. So the
conditions are very hard economically,” he said.
According to Doctors Without Borders, the Honduran government purchased
brand name medicines for the disease at $850 per person per year, while
the group buys generic drugs for half that price. The difference goes
mostly to gigantic US-based pharmaceutical companies.
Activists say that the poor country is under pressure from the United
States to continue to buy brand names rather than the more affordable
generic drugs.
“In the conversation we realized that the government is under pressure
to continue to buy brand names and fears retaliation from the US government,”
Rias said.
Activists also worry that the trade deal now being negotiated in Washington
could place dramatic limitations on compulsory licensing, a procedure
that allows a government to authorize itself or a third party to use
a patented product, with payment of reasonable compensation to the patent
holder.
Other provisions of the deal would require companies that manufacture
generic drugs to redo costly tests to obtain marketing approval. This
would be beyond the capacity of almost all of the relatively small generic
companies.
The provisions could ask the generic drug company to delay using the
results of tests already completed by brand-name companies for a period
of five years, creating patent-like barriers to market entry of generics,
even where no patent exists.
“The new intellectual property rules that the Bush administration
is aggressively negotiating for in CAFTA will, we feel, obstruct access
to medicine by increasing medicine prices and delaying or blocking generic
competition,” said Asia Russell of Health GAP, a US-based group
that lobbies for global access to HIV/AIDS drugs, during the teleconference.
Civil society groups also view the United States, particularly under
the right-wing Republican administration of President George W. Bush,
as trying to influence international trade rules to favor corporations
while undercutting the ability of national and state lawmakers in developing
countries to protect environmental and public health.
The Bush administration saw its aggressive trade policy partly derailed
last month when ministers from 34 countries in the Western hemisphere
meeting in Miami failed to reach a comprehensive agreement, as initially
envisioned, to open their borders for trade.
The controversial Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) was originally
designed to open borders for free trade in the entire region, with the
exclusion of Cuba.
Feeling threatened by the advance of some more moderate politicians
and the evident increasing suspicion with which developing countries
now view these trade deals with, the administration is now rushing to
finalize bilateral and regional agreements.
In Miami, the United States announced talks for a flurry of bilateral
trade deals with countries like Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia.
The deals would make the United States less responsive to pressure from
emboldened groupings of developing countries, as happened during World
Trade Organization (WTO) meetings in Cancun, Mexico in September.
“Unfortunately, however, the US is trying to move out from the
WTO forum to other forums where it thinks it may be able to more successfully
limit [other] countries’ ability to access generics and to impose
enhanced patent protections,” said Robert Weissman, co-editor of
Essential Action, a corporate accountability watchdog group.
“They tried to do that with FTAA with unclear success, and they
are moving increasingly to bilateral and many regional agreements, of
which CAFTA is the most important right now,” he said.
Once the CAFTA agreement is finalized, Panama and the Dominican Republic
are expected to agree to similar or identical terms without extensive
negotiations of the details, a step that could deprive more HIV/AIDS
patients from affordable medicines.
But for Rias, people in Honduras — where MSF says that one person
dies of AIDS every two hours — no trade agreement that could keep
life-saving medicine off-limits is needed. A program that puts more
medicine into their hands.
Mexican activists hope UN report
will lead to changes
By Diego Cevallos
Mexico City, Mexico, Dec. 8 (IPS)— Human rights activists
are hopeful that a new United Nations report that describes the situation
of human rights in Mexico as alarming could actually lead to significant
changes.
But 15-year-old Guadalupe, who lives on the streets of Mexico City, says
the report presented to Mexican President Vicente Fox won’t change
anything. “I don’t know anything about that. I’ll still
be here like always,” she said.
According to the report drafted by the office of the United Nations High
Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) at the Fox administration’s
request, the Mexican state fails to respect the rights of Guadalupe and
millions of other Mexicans living in the most dire poverty, exposed to
abuses from police and other authorities.
Poverty, an ineffective justice system, forced disappearances, torture
at the hands of law enforcement officers, insufficient education, and
discrimination are routine in Mexico and must be dealt with at once, says
the report, “Diagnosis of the Situation of Human Rights in Mexico,”
presented to the government by the UNHCHR.
The situation of human rights in Mexico is serious and disturbing, and
the state must take urgent measures, says the report.
“We hope that this report will be heard, so that Mexico can begin
to make radical changes,’’ Silvia Aguilera, director of the
non-governmental Mexican Commission for Defense and Promotion of Human
Rights (CMDPDH), told IPS.
When Fox took office in December 2000 as the first president from a party
other than the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in 71 years, one
of the first things he did was to ask the United Nations to carry out
a broad evaluation of the human rights situation in Mexico, which would
serve as the basis for a national human rights program.
The 226-page document, which sets forth detailed recommendations in 32
different areas, reflects the concerns expressed in recent years by local
and foreign human rights organizations as well as several UN agencies,
which have produced a number of harsh reports on Mexico.
“It’s not that it contains so many new insights. The strength
of the new report is that it gathers information on specific issues in
an organized, systematic manner, and is part of a plan assumed by the
government to design an integral human rights policy,” said Aguilera.
The CMDPDH was one of the 148 civil society organizations, 48 government
agencies and 20 private and public educational institutions consulted
by the UN experts who wrote the report.
José Miguel Vivanco, executive director of the Americas Division
of Human Rights Watch, said in a communiqué that, “The UN
report opens a window of opportunity for progress on human rights in Mexico.
“It is the first comprehensive assessment of the full range of human
rights problems in the country, and it has the backing of both the Mexican
government and the United Nations.
“It is crucial that the government use the report’s recommendations
to craft a national agenda to tackle the country’s long-standing
human rights problems,’’ said Vivanco.
Fox promised that he would remain open to international scrutiny in the
area of human rights, unlike his predecessors, who were suspicious of
any reports critical of the country’s human rights record.
In response to rumors that several portions had been criticized by the
government, which reportedly asked that they be modified, the authors
and UN officials said they felt no censorship or pressure from the government.
The UN recommendations to Mexico range from the recognition of human rights
in the constitution to advice aimed at keeping economic policies from
punishing the poorest segments of the population.
The report calls for a “radical’’ change in the structures
of the administration of justice, recognition of the cultural rights of
indigenous people, new economic strategies to combat the poverty that
affects over half of the population of 100 million, and a greater voice
for citizens in designing the country’s economic policies.
“I’ll keep begging for coins until I get tired of it or until
I find another ‘chamba’ [job],” said Guadalupe, who added
that human rights are the business of “the ladies and gentlemen in
the government’’ who “don’t have any interest in helping
me.’’
An estimated 14,000 children like Guadalupe live and work on the streets
of the capital, the product of social ills like poverty, child abuse and
drug abuse.
Isidro Cisneros, one of the Mexican consultants who helped write the report,
said it outlines “the map of impunity in Mexico, and reflects a state
that is irresponsible when it comes to reverting discrimination and human
rights violations.’’
Aguilera, who took part in the process as a representative of local human
rights groups, said activists hope “the authorities come up with
a clear plan to implement the UN recommendations, including a clear timetable
and sources of funding, in January.’’
“This cannot be just left on paper again, and our work now is to
oversee and monitor the actions designed by the authorities,” she
said.
Sergio Aguayo, another local expert who took part in drafting the report,
said the document will remain “in the mural of horror” until
its recommendations are adopted. But he clarified that changing the situation
would be a long-term, “monumental’’ task.
The document points to torture and mistreatment of detainees at the hands
of the police and the military, the corruption of judges, chronic problems
in the prison system, the violence suffered by women and children, and
other violations of civil, political, cultural and economic rights.
The report does not hold the current administration responsible for the
situation, but states that the problems are structural and chronic.
But although Fox says he is actively working on behalf of human rights,
most local human rights groups say little has changed, and that the only
novelty in his first three years in office is a new discourse and repeated
empty promises.
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