|
Activists alarmed at new Colombian anti
terrorism law
By Yadira Ferrer
Bogota, Colombia, Dec. 23 (IPS)— Colombia’s new anti-terrorism
law will undermine what little progress has been made towards preventing
forced disappearances of people by the armed forces, and will weaken
the independence of the courts and due process, according to human rights
activists.
Rocío Bautista, president of the Association of Relatives of
the Detained and Disappeared (ASFADDES), told IPS that the anti-terrorism
legislation passed this month by Congress constitutes “a grave
setback in terms of legislation on forced disappearance.’’
In 2000, after 12 years of efforts by human rights groups and the families
of the disappeared, Congress finally passed Law 589, which classifies
forced disappearance as a criminal offense and creates mechanisms for
its prevention and eradication — achievements that will be weakened
by the new law, said Bautista.
Under the anti-terrorism law approved by the Senate on Dec. 10, the
armed forces will be able to arrest people for up to 36 hours, search
homes, and spy on private communications without a legal warrant or
judicial oversight.
The new legislation also foresees the creation of a new registry containing
private information on all Colombians, to which military authorities
will have access. In addition, the armed forces will be given police
powers, including the authority to interrogate suspects.
Bautista said the new law was passed against the recommendations of
international human rights bodies, which expressed their opposition
to the granting of police powers to the military.
On Nov. 18, the United Nations Committee Against Torture called on the
Colombian government of right-wing President Alvaro Uribe to reconsider
the possibility of adopting measures that would grant judicial police
functions to the military and allow lengthy interrogations and arrests
of suspects without a legal order or judicial oversight.
The Committee Against Torture, tasked with preventing the practices
prohibited by the Convention Against Torture, of which Colombia is a
signatory, set a one-year deadline for the state to report on compliance
with its recommendation.
According to ASFADDES, the new law could fuel an increase in forced
disappearances, and will limit, “in a grave manner, the mechanisms
and guarantees in place for victims and their families.’’
The problem, says the human rights group, is that, “the very same
state agents that could be involved in alleged human rights abuses will
be in charge of carrying out the investigations, and collecting and
handling evidence.’’
ASFADDES reports that 6,340 cases of forced disappearance were committed,
mainly by members of the armed forces, between 1979 and May 2003.
Gustavo Gallón, president of the Colombian Commission of Jurists
(CCJ), said the enactment of the new law is disturbing at a time when,
“the polarization has reached the extent that the Colombian government
is stigmatizing not only ordinary people opposed to its policies,’’
but leading international authorities on human rights as well.
Gallón was specifically referring to an incident that occurred
earlier this year, when then-defense minister Marta Ramírez said
UN Special Representative to Colombia James LeMoyne had “defended
the terrorists.’’
That remark came after Lemoyne told reporters that “the backbone
of the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia — the main
guerrilla group) consists of between 1,000 and 1,500 ideologically committed
men and women who have been fighting for 15 to 20 years.’’
The CCJ has documented a number of arbitrary detentions of human rights
defenders, trade unionists and other social activists.
According to the CCJ, the common denominator in such cases is that despite
the joint efforts of the security forces and the office of the public
prosecutor, no evidence is found against the detainees to press charges,
nor is there any sign of a serious judicial investigation of their cases.
Furthermore, many of the arrests are carried out with the participation
of hooded individuals who point to the people to be detained, and on
many opportunities the detainees are released shortly after being hauled
in, due to a lack of evidence of any wrongdoing or crime.
The cases documented include a number of raids conducted on Aug. 21
in the town of Saravena in the northeastern province of Arauca by members
of the security forces and people from the office of the public prosecutor,
who were accompanied by two hooded individuals.
“The operation included raids of the offices of social organizations,
trade unions, and human rights groups, and of the homes of several people.
A total of 42 people were arrested that day,’’ states a CCJ
report.
Those arrested included 14 trade unionists, five community activists,
two teachers, three health workers, a human rights defender, a public
employee, and one minor.
A report by the London-based rights watchdog Amnesty International said
that six days after the arrests, 14 of the 42 detainees had been released,
while the remaining 28 were still in prison.
Activist Juan Carlos Celis, with the Corporation Movement for Life,
a group that forms part of the Network of Initiatives for Peace and
Against War, an umbrella organization that links around 30 peace groups,
was arbitrarily detained by the police in Bogota on Dec. 11, 2002 and
tortured.
Celis was described by the police as “the brains behind the wave
of terrorism’’ expanding in the city. He was arrested as part
of a series of operations carried out on the basis of information furnished
by the government’s network of civilian informants, who provide
“intelligence’’ in exchange for money.
According to Amnesty International, the police ‘’raided his
home without a search warrant and without the presence of the appropriate
judicial authorities. Juan Celis was beaten and subjected to electric
shocks to force him to confess responsibility for crimes of terrorism.’’
The CCJ said members of a committee made up of representatives of civil
society set up to discuss official human rights policy with the government
has asked the office of the vice-president for information on Celis’s
case, but has not yet received any response. The activist remains in
prison.
The representative in Colombia of the United Nations High Commissioner
for Human Rights (UNHCHR), Michael Fruhling, said last Friday that the
government and Congress had approved the new anti-terrorism law against
the opinion of the office he heads in Colombia.
Fruhling said many aspects of the new legislation invade the privacy
of citizens and amount to an abuse of basic human rights.
He also said that giving the military judicial police powers was in
violation of international human rights treaties signed by Colombia,
and would debilitate the independence of the judiciary.
But Carlos Franco, director of President Uribe’s human rights program,
said that “no human rights convention prohibits granting judicial
police functions to the security forces.’’
North American deal dismal after a decade
By Emad Mekay
Washington, DC, Dec. 26 (IPS)— After 10 years, a deal that
all sides say transformed trade and investment rules in North America
has still produced far fewer positive results than originally promised,
according to its critics.
“Had they (original promises) come true, NAFTA (the North American
Free Trade Agreementwould have been an enormous boom and we would all
be cracking champagne,” said Lori Wallach, director of the global
trade watch program at Washington-based Public Citizen, a consumer rights
group. “But instead we have got the 10-year record and it’s
pretty damn grim.”
When NAFTA was being sold to the US Congress and the public in Canada,
Mexico and the United States in the early 1990s, its promoters promised
the deal would create hundreds of thousands of high-wage US jobs, raise
living standards in all three countries and improve environmental conditions
and transform Mexico from a poor developing country into a booming economy.
But NAFTA’s real-life damage to jobs, wages and the environment after
10 years has made many people in North America furious about the trade
policies the deal was built upon (policies that provide the foundation
for subsequent agreements such as the forthcoming Free Trade Area of the
Americas (FTAA)).
“NAFTA’s 10-year record demonstrates that under the NAFTA model
most people in the three countries were losers, while only a few of the
largest corporations who helped write NAFTA were the major winners,”
Wallach said.
Thanks to NAFTA, which celebrates its anniversary Jan. 1, major companies
— like auto makers General Motors, Ford and Chrysler — can set
up shop in Mexico, employ cheap labor in that country and then export
the finished products to Canada and the United States.
NAFTA rules also limit each country’s domestic policies to deal with
issues ranging from environmental health and food safety to banking and
truck safety regulation.
Under the unprecedented investor rights sewn into the deal, investors
are allowed to demand compensation for “indirect expropriation,”
which has been interpreted to mean any government act — including
those directed at public health and the environment — that diminishes
the value of a foreign investment.
Following one such suit, the Mexican government was ordered in August
2000 to pay nearly 17 million dollars to a California firm that was denied
a permit from a Mexican municipality to operate a hazardous waste treatment
facility in an environmentally sensitive location.
US workers were promised 170,000 additional jobs in each of NAFTA’s
first 10 years, based on the deal increasing the trade surplus with Mexico
and lowering the pre-NAFTA trade deficit with Canada.
But instead of the surplus, the United States now runs an average 37-billion-dollar
annual deficit with Mexico, and has lost close to three million manufacturing
jobs.
Under one government program for displaced workers, the NAFTA Trade Adjustment
System — for which only a relatively small number of the deal’s
potential victims could qualify — 525,000 US workers were certified
as NAFTA casualties because their jobs were transferred to Mexico.
According to Public Citizen, despite the economic growth of the 1990s,
US real wages are still below 1972 levels, while income inequality has
skyrocketed because of the shift from manufacturing jobs to employment
in services, where wages are far less.
According to the Institute of Policy Studies, NAFTA has also had a detrimental
impact on the ability of US workers to fight for better wages and working
conditions. US employers now often threaten to move to Mexico and other
low-wage countries in order to fight unions and restrain wages.
The use of such threats in union organizing drives increased from about
50 percent in the early 1990s to 62 percent in 1998 and 68 percent in
1999, says the Washington-based institute.
The US government points to different figures to buttress its pro free-trade
arguments. According to data from the US Trade Representative office,
total trade among the NAFTA countries more than doubled between 1993 and
2002.
It says foreign direct investment by NAFTA partners in the three countries
jumped from 136.9 billion dollars in 1993 to 299.2 billion dollars in
2000.
Last week, the World Bank also said NAFTA was, overall, a positive deal,
especially for Mexico. For example, it triggered productivity growth,
as the country needed only about one-half the time to adopt foreign technology
during the span of the deal than it did before.
But according to a recent report by the Global Resource Action Center
for the Environment (GRACE), NAFTA has displaced 1.75 million Mexican
farmers from their land, forcing them to migrate to the cities or the
United States.
According to Lauren Carlsen, director of the Americas program of the Inter-hemispheric
Resource Center, an advocacy group based in Mexico City, farm prices —
especially for maize — have plummeted during the deal’s lifetime
in the face of heftily subsidized imports from the United States.
Incomes in Mexico have also nose-dived. According to the Center for Economic
and Policy Research (CEPR) in Washington, in 10 years income per person
has grown by only nine percent in Mexico, about one-fifth of the growth
in the 1960s and 1970s.
“No economist can honestly call that a success,” said Mark Weisbrot
co-director of the CEPR.
NAFTA was also promoted as a route to good jobs and improved living conditions,
especially via maquiladoras, companies that are permitted to operate duty-free
in nations that provide them with cheap labor — in the NAFTA case,
US firms setting up in Mexico.
“Instead, we got low wages, sexual harassment, environmental destruction
and birth defects,” said Marth Ojeda, director of the Coalition for
Justice in the Maquiladoras, herself a maquiladora worker.
“Most maquiladora workers are very young, between 16 and 25, because
their eyes, backs and hands haven’t given out yet — their hours
are so long that their youth passes without seeing the sun,” added
Ojeda.
Workers and government services in Canada, the third NAFTA partner, did
not fare any better.
Canada’s former prime minister Brian Mulroney called the deal a “cold
shower” at its inception, something the country needed to go from
a so-called welfare state to one primed to compete in the international
sphere.
But 10 years later, many critics say the business community has actually
exploited the deal to push for cuts in social programs, arguing they were
necessary to compete with the lower costs faced by US businesses, operating
in a nation with generally lower levels of worker protection.
The clearest example of that, critics say, is the impact is the scaling
back of Canada’s unemployment insurance.
According to the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives, the percentage
of unemployed workers who qualified for this scheme (now known as “employment
insurance”) dropped from 87 percent in 1989 to only 39 percent in
2001.
“We have lowered social spending so much that we have moved from
being first in the world in the United Nations human development index
to number eight last year,” said Maude Barlow, chairperson of the
Council of Canadians, the country’s largest public advocacy organization.
“And three target groups have been hit the worst: the unemployed,
low-income earners and the elderly,” she added. “It’s pretty
well time we stopped thinking that we are a kinder and gentler nation.”
If there is one major lesson of NAFTA that many analysts from all three
countries agree on, says the Institute of Policy Studies, it is that “there
is no guaranteed link between trade and investment liberalization and
improvements for workers or the environment.”
US ally in ‘terror war’ accused
of supplying ‘axis of evil’ with nuclear weapons technology
By Andrew Buncombe and Phil Reeves
Dec. 23— Pakistan has secretly been supplying Iran with
technology crucial to the development of a nuclear weapons program,
international inspectors say. There is also evidence Pakistan has been
supplying North Korea and other countries with such expertise.
Experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) - the
UN’s nuclear watchdog - have recently uncovered a huge procurement
network developed by Iran during the past 17 years to provide materials,
tools and specialist knowledge.
Iran has not yet directly identified Pakistan as a supplier but reports
say there is ample evidence to conclude it has provided crucial blueprints,
technical guidance and equipment. Pakistan officials said yesterday
that the father of its nuclear bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan, regarded as
a national hero for creating an “Islamic atomic bomb” to rival
India, is being questioned about possible links between Pakistan and
the Iranian nuclear program.
Reports suggested he had been under house arrest for several weeks after
Iran’s acknowledgment that it had been using centrifuge designs
apparently identical to those used in Pakistan’s nuclear weapons
program.
Masood Khan, the Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesman, said authorities
were also interviewing several nuclear scientists working at the A Q
Khan Research Laboratories. Masood said: “He [Abdul Qadeer Khan]
is too eminent a scientist to undergo a normal debriefing session. But
some questions have been raised with him in relation to the ongoing
debriefing sessions.” Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, Pakistan’s Information
Minister, said: “Some individuals may have been doing something
on their own. The government of Pakistan has not authorized any transfers
of sensitive nuclear technology to other countries. Only individuals
are being investigated.”
The investigators believe Pakistan’s transfer of information happened
many years ago, before General Pervez Musharraf, the present military
ruler, came to power.
General Musharraf has assured the United States that his government
is not, at least “in the present time,” providing nuclear
secrets to countries such as Iran and North Korea, Bush administration
officials said on Monday.
Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, called General Musharraf’s
personal assurances “important” and said close cooperation
between the US and Pakistan in the war on terrorism would continue,
despite any transfers of nuclear technology and know-how that might
have happened.
Experts said Pakistan’s transfer of key information was vital to
Iran. David Albright, a former IAEA inspector in Iraq and president
of the Institute for Science and International Security - a Washington
research group that has tracked Iran’s nuclear progress -
said: “The possession of detailed designs could allow Iran to skip
many difficult research steps.”
Until now, Islamabad has steadfastly denied allegations that it has
helped Iran and North Korea, countries regarded by the Bush administration
as “axis of evil” states, with atomic programs.
Diplomats from Britain, France and Germany obtained an agreement from
Iran last month to open its nuclear facilities to international inspectors.
The IAEA revealed soon afterwards that Iran had been secretly manufacturing
small amounts of plutonium, normally associated with nuclear weapons.
Iran has denied trying to develop such weapons, saying it is only developing
a supply of nuclear fuel.
Source: Independent (UK)
Blair’s WMD claim dismissed by US
Baghdad chief
By Raymond Whitaker
Dec. 28— Claims by Tony Blair and George Bush that the
threat of weapons of mass destruction justified the war in Iraq were
looking increasingly threadbare last night.
The Prime Minister’s allegation that British and American weapons
hunters had unearthed “massive evidence of a huge system of clandestine
laboratories” in Iraq was dismissed by Paul Bremer, America’s
most senior official in Baghdad. And as he left for Libya yesterday
at the head of a team from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA),
its director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, said the country did not appear
to have been close to building a nuclear weapon, as London and Washington
claimed.
The supposed danger from Saddam Hussein’s WMD was central to the
Government’s case for war in Iraq, but despite months of work,
the Iraq Survey Group, headed by David Kay, has all but given up hope
of finding them. Blair has remained undaunted, insisting that the evidence
would eventually turn up, and told British troops in his Christmas message
that the information on laboratories showed Hussein had attempted to
“conceal weapons.”
But when the claim was put to Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional
Authority, he said it was not true. Unaware that it had been made by
Blair, the American proconsul said it sounded like a “red herring”
put out by someone opposed to military action to undermine the coalition.
“I don’t know where those words come from, but that is not
what David Kay has said,” Bremer told ITV1’s Jonathan Dimbleby
program. “I have read his report, so I don’t know who said
that...It sounds like someone who doesn’t agree with the policy
sets up a red herring, then knocks it down.”
Bremer changed tack when told the statement was by America’s staunchest
ally. “There is actually a lot of evidence that had been made public,”
he said, adding that the group had found “clear evidence of biological
and chemical programs ongoing...and clear evidence of violation of UN
Security Council resolutions relating to rockets.”
Bremer rejected the conclusion by the former chief UN weapons inspector,
Hans Blix, that there were no WMD left for Hussein to give up, calling
Dr. Blix “out of touch.” War was justified “historically”
regardless of the issue of WMD, he said, pointing to the mass graves
of victims of the former regime.
Although Britain still insists there is information that Iraq tried
to buy uranium for its alleged nuclear program from the west African
country of Niger, for most the allegation lost all credibility after
ElBaradei revealed it was based on forged documents.
Source: Independent (UK)
UK working on technology to identify
people by scent
By Jason Burke and Peter Warren
Dec. 28— Farewell to black gloves, swag bags and crowbars.
Deodorants will soon be the burglar’s preferred tool.
Scientists in the employ of the British government are evaluating new
technology that allows people to be identified by body odor, making
the tracing of criminals by their unique whiff, whether of fear, greed
or excitement, a possibility within years.
A leaked memo from the Government’s top-secret GCHQ center lists
a series of “biometric technologies” that have been tested
by government specialists for possible use in the UK. The list includes
one “esoteric proposal” to identify individuals by their smell.
Biometric technologies, which effectively use the body itself as a password,
are becoming more common. Recently invigorated interest in controlling
terrorism and illegal international immigration have accelerated the
search for new ways to pinpoint individuals in a hi-tech world. Recent
reports from the Department of Trade and Industry and law enforcement
authorities in America have listed “identity theft” as the
fastest-growing type of crime and have highlighted “biometrics”
as a way to stay ahead of the thieves.
The leaked memo, Security Enforcement Notice 03/04, was compiled two
months ago by the Communications Electronics and Security Group at GCHQ,
the government spy center. It describes a series of “commonly used”
technologies, including “face recognition” as well as the
analysis of hand and finger geometry, voices and eyes, as “under
research.” Gait, retina patterns and ear-shape are also being looked
at, the memo says.
“Body odor” and “skull resonance” — by which
sound waves are passed through a head to produce a unique sonar profile
— are also listed as possibilities. Government sources confirmed
this weekend that both had been “evaluated” as part of an
investigation of biometric identity systems.
Biometrics are nothing new, with fingerprints being used for over 100
years as a form of identification. One modern technology under development
analyses “keyboard dynamics” — an individual’s typing
speed and repertoire of mistakes.
But smell is seen by security experts as having great potential. Every
person produces an odor with a different chemical formula. And we all
smell all the time, even if the smell is not detectable by the untrained
nose.
Our odor is largely produced by the bacteria on our skin and our pheromones,
the chemical we produce to signal to others of the same species. The
great advantage for law enforcement is that, however hard we scrub or
cover ourselves in deodorant, we cannot entirely obscure our own “sniff
signature.”
Various identification techniques using body odor have been evaluated
by government experts, security sources told The Observer. Most depend
on users holding the palm of their hand against a sensor that can recognize
their unique and complex scent once it has been broken down into a complex
algorithm. Once someone’s body odor has been registered, it could
be entered on a card, such as a credit or identity card, or on a document
such as a passport.
“It may sound completely ridiculous, but it’s a fantastic
way of identifying people. It’s almost impossible to fake or duplicate
someone’s own personal pong. It’s certainly a lot more efficient
than everyone trying to remember dozens of PIN numbers,” said one
private security expert. “And no one is going to force you at knife-point
to divulge the secrets of your body odor to let them withdraw money
from your cashpoint or drive your car off.”
Qinetiq, the technology research company that was formerly a government
agency, confirmed to The Observer that it has an expert who deals with
the degradation of human bacterial cell culture on the skin.
Some security experts anticipate the technology will develop sufficiently
to allow police to identify an individual in a large crowd purely on
their scent.
Biometrics are at the heart of a new plan by the Government to introduce
a nationwide identity card. David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, has
said that he wants to introduce a card, possibly based on technology
that scans people’s irises, as a key part of a £3 billion
plan to combat terrorism, immigration and benefit fraud. A pilot scheme,
which starts next month, will involve 10,000 volunteers receiving personalized
smartcards containing biometric information — initially a digital
image of their faces based on a passport photograph.
The Passport Agency is struggling to meet tough new requirements in
new US anti-terrorist legislation which will require all visitors to
the US who do not have a visa to have biometric information in their
passport. Three options are being tested for use within years: iris,
face and fingerprint recognition. The use of iris patterns or fingerprints
on ID cards, says the Home Secretary, “will make identity theft
and multiple identity impossible — not nearly impossible, impossible.”
However, the memo advises government departments not to use the technology
for their own internal use in checking and identifying their own staff,
because of doubts over its efficiency, and government advisers are privately
saying that it would be best to wait for at least three years for biometric
technology to “mature.” The rush to introduce unproven biometric
technologies has angered some British Ministers of Parliament.
Mark Oaten, Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary, said that the Home
Office had “put the cart before the horse in pretending that it
can build a £3 billion system on the back of technology which
is still in development.”
All biometrics, however, remain controversial with civil liberties groups
unhappy about “Big Brother” aspects of mass storage of identifying
information.
Attempts to build a database of the population’s smells would be
fiercely opposed, not least by the people whose job it was to go around
the nation compiling it.
“It’s not exactly the world’s most glamorous job,”
said one scientist last week. “You’d spend years of your life
working out how we all whiff.”
Source: Observer (UK)
War in Iraq more deadly since Bush declared
‘Mission Accomplished’
Compiled by Eamon Martin
Dec. 30 (AGR)— On the afternoon of Dec. 26, on a street
in Najaf, Iraq, an American-paid Iraqi cop was guarding the crumbling
brick house in which the bodies of the newly dead are washed before
being taken to the morgue. Inside were two new corpses; the dead of
Christmas Eve, newly arrived from the town of Beiji.
“Don’t talk to the relatives,” the policeman said to
British journalist Robert Fisk. “Both men were killed by the Americans.
One worked in a factory and was caught in the open when the resistance
fired at American soldiers. The Americans shot everyone they saw. The
people are angry because you look like an American.” But the Iraqis
stood in front of Fisk with their heads bowed and asked why the tragedy
of Iraq was growing worse. And the cop wanted the last word. “Saddam
brought us to this tragedy and the Americans used it,” he said.
“You want to know who is to blame? I say this: Fuck Saddam and
fuck the USA.”
The Iraqi policeman’s sentiments seem only amplified by what is
happening in his country right now. Since Saddam Hussein’s capture,
Iraq’s insurgent guerrilla war has shown no sign of abating. If
this past week’s events are any indication, the war is only intensifying.
By the time the officer had spoken, US-led occupation forces had bombed
Baghdad for three consecutive nights as resistance fighters lobbed rockets
and grenades at the occupation administration headquarters. US military
officials said they were launching “offensive operations”
involving ground and air units as part of what they called Operation
Iron Grip, aimed at stamping out resistance fighters in the capital.
The night attack came 17 hours after resistance fighters unleashed a
string of grenade, rocket and mortar attacks in central Baghdad on Christmas
Day, hitting a hotel housing foreigners for the second time in as many
days and targeting two banks, several embassies and a US Army base.
First they fired rockets into the palace from which the United States
proconsul, Paul Bremer, and his officials rule Iraq. Then gunmen fired
mortars at the Sheraton hotel, the prestigious, Baathist-constructed
pile in which American businessmen, journalists and occupation authorities
like to sleep.
Rockets then struck the outer wall of the Iranian embassy, the Turkish
embassy and a residential building next to the Germany embassy. A rocket
missed the Iraqi Interior Ministry and landed in a nearby street. Police
said US troops defused a rocket aimed at the Finance Ministry in another
neighborhood.
Attackers also struck Baghdad’s Rasheed and Rafidain banks, blowing
holes in the buildings. One rocket hit the Baghdad City Council building,
shattering windows. Guerrillas also fired a pair of grenades at the
gate of a 1st Armored Division base in east Baghdad.
Later that night, two soldiers were killed and four wounded in a mortar
attack on their forward operating base in Baqubah.
The day before, a roadside bomb hit a military convoy near Samarra killing
three US soldiers. A fourth soldier was killed later that day when a
bomb exploded in Baghdad. While, in the city of Irbil, a suicide bomber
detonated an explosives-packed car in front of the Kurdish Interior
Ministry killing four civilians — two guards, a 13-year-old girl
and a passing taxi driver — along with the bomber. The explosion
wounded 101 people.
But on Dec. 27, in the biggest rebel attack since Saddam Hussein’s
capture, suicide bombers and assailants with mortars and grenade launchers
blasted occupation military bases and the governor’s office in
Karbala, killing 18 people and wounding at least 172. The death toll
in included six coalition soldiers — four Bulgarians and two Thais;
six Iraqi police officers; and a civilian. The attacks forced troops
to evacuate one base near the city center.
The attackers targeted two allied force bases and a busy downtown Iraqi
police station where US military police were located. Thirty-seven soldiers,
including five Americans, were wounded. Shrapnel sprayed hundreds of
civilians in and around the police station with the BBC reporting that
Karbala’s governor was injured.
One of the other attacks occurred in front of the Karbala mayor’s
office, another outside the city at a rear logistics base, which houses
about 1,000 soldiers.
The next day, guerrillas detonated a powerful bomb in a busy Baghdad
shopping district, killing a US soldier and two Iraqi children, while
another US soldier died in an attack on a convoy west of the capital.
Northeast in Fallujah, another bomb attack on a convoy killed one soldier
and wounded three.
Officials targeted
In the city of Arbil, gunmen killed three bodyguards of Jawamer Atia,
deputy director-general of security at the local interior ministry,
during a bid to assassinate him on Dec. 28. Five people, including Atia,
were wounded in the attack.
Near Mahmudiya, gunmen opened fire on a car carrying foreign contractors
working with the Ministry of Electricity, killing two Iraqi security
guards. A British official said a British contractor was shot in the
leg.
On Dec. 24, a car bomb at the Arbil interior ministry building killed
four people.
A prominent lawyer working with occupation authorities, and his son,
were shot dead outside their home in Mosul on Dec. 26, a day after a
tribal leader and member of a US-appointed local council was assassinated
in the city.
On Dec. 28, Jwamair Atyia Kakawi, deputy director for security of the
Kurdistan Democratic Party escaped an assassination attempt, but three
of his bodyguards were killed in Irbil.
Pace of casualties accelerates
According to Pentagon statistics, twice as many US soldiers have been
killed or wounded in action in the past four months as in the previous
four, despite their commanders’ claim to have made significant
gains against the resistance.
From Sept. 1 through Dec. 26, 145 service members were killed in action
in Iraq, compared with 65 from May 1 to Aug. 30. The two four-month
intervals cover counterinsurgency operations, far costlier than major
combat operations, which US President George W. Bush declared to be
over while gesturing before a “Mission Accomplished” banner
on the deck of the US Abraham Lincoln on May 1.
Increases in those wounded in action have been equally dramatic this
autumn. Since Sept. 1, 1,380 soldiers have received battlefield wounds,
more than twice the 574 wounded in action from May 1 through Aug. 30.
Sources: Associated Press, Boston Globe,
CNN, Guardian (UK), Independent (UK), Reuters
Rumsfeld backed Hussein even after
chemical attacks
By Andrew Buncombe
Washington, DC, Dec. 24— Fresh controversy about Donald Rumsfeld’s
personal dealings with Saddam Hussein was provoked yesterday by new documents
that reveal he went to Iraq to show America’s support for the regime
despite its use of chemical weapons.
The formerly secret documents reveal the Defense Secretary traveled to
Baghdad 20 years ago to assure Iraq that America’s condemnation of
its use of chemical weapons was made “strictly” in principle.
The criticism in no way changed Washington’s wish to support Iraq
in its war against Iran and “to improve bilateral relations...at
a pace of Iraq’s choosing.”
Earlier this year, Rumsfeld and other members of the Bush administration
regularly cited Hussein’s willingness to use chemical weapons against
his own people as evidence of the threat presented to the rest of the
world.
Senior officials presented the attacks against the Kurds — particularly
the notorious attack in Halabja in 1988 — as a justification for
the invasion and the ousting of Hussein.
But the newly declassified documents reveal that 20 years ago America’s
position was different and that the administration of President Ronald
Reagan was concerned about maintaining good relations with Iraq despite
evidence of Hussein’s “almost daily” use of chemical weapons
against Iranian troops and Kurdish rebels.
In March 1984, under international pressure, the United States condemned
Iraq’s use of such chemical weapons. But realizing that Baghdad had
been upset, Secretary of State George Schultz asked Rumsfeld to travel
to Iraq as a special envoy to meet Hussein’s Foreign Minister, Tariq
Aziz, and smooth matters over.
In a briefing memo to Rumsfeld, Shultz wrote that he had met Iraqi officials
in Washington to stress that America’s interests remained “in
(1) preventing an Iranian victory and (2) continuing to improve bilateral
relations with Iraq.”
The memo adds: “This message bears reinforcing during your discussions.”
Exactly what Rumsfeld, who at the time did not hold government office,
told Aziz on Mar. 26, 1984, remains unclear and minutes from the meeting
remain classified. No one from Rumsfeld’s office was available to
comment yesterday.
It was not Rumsfeld’s first visit to Iraq. Four months earlier, in
December 1983, he had visited Hussein and was photographed shaking hands
with the dictator. When news of this visit was revealed last year, Rumsfeld
claimed he had “cautioned” Hussein to stop using chemical weapons.
When documents about the meeting disclosed he had said no such thing,
a spokesman for Rumsfeld said he had raised the issue with Aziz.
America’s relationship with Iraq at a time when Hussein was using
chemical weapons is well-documented but rarely reported.
During the war with Iran, the US provided combat assistance to Iraq that
included intelligence on Iranian deployments and bomb-damage assessments.
In 1987-88 American warships destroyed Iranian oil platforms in the Gulf
and broke the blockade of Iraqi shipping lanes.
Tom Blanton, the director of the National Security Archive, a non-profit
group that obtained the documents, told The New York Times: “Saddam
had chemical weapons in the 1980s and it didn’t make any difference
to US policy. The embrace of Saddam and what it emboldened him to do should
caution us as Americans that we have to look closely at all our murky
alliances.”
Last night, Danny Muller, a spokesperson for the anti-war group Voices
in the Wilderness, said the documents revealed America’s “blatant
hypocrisy.” He added: “This is not an isolated event. Continuing
administrations have said ‘we will do business.’ I am surprised
that Donald Rumsfeld does not resign right now.”
Source: Independent (UK)
Guinean poll marred by boycott and low
turnout
By Lansana Fofana
Conakry, Guinea, Dec. 22 (IPS)— “These elections had
been fixed even before actual polling; they are fraudulent,” cried
Mamadou Boye Barry of the opposition Union for National Progress. Boye
Barry was one of only two candidates in Guinea’s presidential election,
held on Sunday. The other was incumbent President Lansana Conte.
Boye Barry added, furiously: “The electoral commission is not independent
and supporters of the opposition were intimidated. Last year when we
had the legislative elections, the electoral list stood at three million.
Now, it’s about 5.9 million - this is unacceptable.”
These words notwithstanding, the little-known opposition figure is widely
thought to have been used by Conte to give the poll some semblance of
legitimacy. The main opposition parties all refused to take part in
Sunday’s election — this after the constitution was altered
to allow Conte to stand for a third term in office. The president had
held a referendum on the constitutional change.
Seven of the opposition groups formed a coalition known as the Revival
Front for Democratic Change (FRAD) and called for a nationwide boycott
of the poll. FRAD Chairman Mamadou Ba described the vote as “a
farce and a mockery of democracy.”
Ba, who is leader of the Union of Democratic Forces, told IPS in Conakry
that, “The election results are a foregone conclusion. Conte is
sure to win because his Unity and Progress Party (PUP) had fixed everything
ahead.”
“But, we will resist his undemocratic tendencies,” he added.
Sunday’s voting passed off quietly in many parts of the country,
with little enthusiasm on the part of disenchanted and poverty-stricken
voters. It seemed that the opposition’s call for a boycott had
been heeded.
“People just sat in front of their houses playing games like ludo,
cards and draughts. Others simply didn’t notice that elections
were taking place,” commented journalist Fantamady Condeh in the
capital.
Out of more than 25 political parties and associations, only Boye Barry’s
Union for National Progress was allowed to contest the poll. The Supreme
Court had earlier disqualified other parties, after they failed to pay
the 10,000 dollar registration fee required for participation.
In the run-up to the poll, opposition militants were also intimidated,
arrested, beaten and detained.
“I didn’t vote because the whole process is nonsense. I think
Lansana Conte and his PUP are bent on holding on to power. It is time
for change,” said Binta Sowe, a housewife.
Ibrahim Camar, a businessman in Conakry, asked “What’s the
purpose of voting? I haven’t eaten since daybreak, so why bother...about
voting for people who only care for their (own) families.”
The ailing Conte suffers from diabetes and other health problems, and
can barely walk. He runs the country from his home village, and is hardly
seen in the capital. On polling day, Conte was spotted voting in his
car.
The president, a former general in the Guinean army, came to power in
1984 after a military coup. He has kept a tight rein on the country’s
political scene ever since, frequently cracking down on the opposition.
There have been rumors of planned coups and dozens of military officers
were arrested and detained on the eve of elections.
This weekend’s vote attracted little international support. The
European Union (EU) is withholding about 345 million dollars in assistance
to Guinea, some of which was to have been used to fund the electoral
process. The EU’s support had been linked to the establishment
of an independent electoral commission, and to candidates being given
equal access to the state media. The government failed to meet these
requirements.
Results for Sunday’s poll are expected within a short time.
Regional leaders are watching developments in Guinea carefully, as difficulties
there could spill over into neighboring countries. This could spell
disaster for Liberia and Sierra Leone, which are enjoying a fragile
peace after years of civil conflict.
Student opposition bodes ill for Haitian
government
By Jane Regan
Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, Dec. 23 (IPS)— When over 15,000
people marched through the streets of Haiti’s capital Monday, psychology
student Vladimir Jean Charles was in the lead.
“We have to struggle. We have a responsibility to the majority
of poor people who stay on the sidelines,” said 25-year-old Jean
Charles, a psychology student.
To the north in St. Marc and to the south in Petit-Goaves, high school
and university students were also marching, taking part in separate
anti- government demonstrations, setting up burning tire barricades,
writing graffiti, shouting slogans.
“Too much blood has flowed! Aristide must go!” they shouted
in St. Marc, where a young member of an anti-government organization
was murdered last weekend.
“Down with Aristide! They got Saddam! You’re next!” thousands
sang in the capital as they flowed down the city’s main boulevard.
Across Haiti recently, a circumscribed but long-smoldering resentment
toward Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s rule has erupted
into a bona fide opposition movement, and in every city where demonstrators
have braved police reaction and attacks by Aristide supporters, students
are in the ranks.
Young people have been shot, beaten, gassed and stoned. Some have been
killed. They have also thrown back their share of rocks.
Estimates vary, but most put the death toll at about 30 since the latest
wave of demonstrations started three months ago.
Two men were shot on Monday when a group of unidentified gunmen opened
fire on the march and police shot back. The toll also includes those
shot by police during repeated raids in the northern port of Gonaives,
where an armed gang has taken control of the seaside slum neighborhood
of Raboteau.
The gang’s revolt against the government, which has been supported
by some students in the city, started Sept. 22 when its former leader
Amiot Métayer was found murdered. Previously, Métayer
had organized pro-Aristide demonstrations and virtually ruled Gonaives
through threats and even armed violence.
For three months now, his angry former followers have held almost daily
demonstrations, nearly shutting down the city for weeks on end. Violent
police reaction, which so far has left well over a dozen often-innocent
bystanders dead, fueled discontent across the country.
Students at Haiti’s state university, which has about 15,000 students
at 11 faculties, have been mobilizing against the Aristide government
for over a year, ever since pro-government students and government officials
tried to halt elections for the three-member dean’s office.
The conflict ended with a march of thousands of students and professors
to the administration building, and the resignation of the minister
of education.
The mobilization picked up again this fall. A turning point came when
pro-Aristide militants, some of whom say they are students, violently
attacked an anti-government protest Dec. 5 at the university’s
faculty of human sciences (FASCH), where Jean Charles is working on
his thesis.
The confrontation left over two dozen people injured, including Dean
Pierre-Marie Pacquiot. Tendons on both his knees were severely injured
when Aristide supporters beat him with iron rods.
The outrage was universal and widespread. Since then, three ministers,
including Minister of Education Marie Carmel Paul-Austin, and two ministry
directors have stepped down. Two senators have also disavowed their
party, Aristide’s Lavalas Family.
While Prime Minister Yvon Neptune immediately deplored the action, Aristide
remained silent for over a week, fueling further discontent.
Dozens of local and foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs), groups
in Europe, the United States and Canada and foreign governments all
issued harsh condemnations.
Aristide then spoke out against the action, saying he abhorred it and
that he deplored “all violence, no matter where it comes from,”
but he also called for mobilization against what he and other government
officials label a “campaign of disinformation.”
Government officials say student protesters are being manipulated by
Haiti’s opposition parties, who contested parliamentary elections
in 2000 but have refused to participate in elections since then.
As a result of the political impasse, some of Haiti’s foreign donors
and lenders have frozen or restricted several hundred million dollars
in aid, although the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) recently
announced some funds will be released.
Aristide has denounced the aid freeze as “economic terrorism”
and an “embargo” whose goal is to fuel protests and undermine
his rule.
But at the university — with its smashed computers and broken windows
— angry students are not interested in accusations or excuses.
“The university won’t open until Aristide resigns,” said
Jean Charles. FASCH has been closed since Dec. 5. “This is not
who we elected. He doesn’t care about students, about the state
university, about the country. He wants to control everything.”
Many of the capital’s private universities also closed in solidarity
following the Dec. 5 attack.
Jean Charles’ determination is not surprising given Haiti’s
history. Student mobilization in 1929 contributed to the fall of a puppet-
president and the end of the first US occupation of Haiti (1917-1934).
Student strikes and marches also contributed to the overthrow of four
heads of state, including dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc”
Duvalier in 1986. When Duvalier’s violent supporters, the Tonton
Macoutes, shot down three Gonaives students on Nov. 28, 1985, it was
the beginning of the end for his 29-year rule.
And student resistance against the army-led coup d’état
— which sent Aristide into exile from 1991 to 1994 — helped
bring the president back to power.
Like many others who were part of the “Lavalas Movement”,
including priests, unions, farmers’ groups and local and foreign
NGOs, large segments of the student population have renounced their
faith in Aristide and his government.
They say he has not kept his word to govern by the principles of “transparency,
participation and justice,” as he promised. Instead, they say,
Aristide is no different than the dictatorship that the original Lavalas
movement fought to overthrow, and that he oversees a corrupt regime
that uses state force to squelch any dissent.
“Regimes fall when students get upset, and students are upset,”
said Haitian-born University of Virginia Professor Robert Fatton Jr.
He recently published ‘Haiti’s Predatory Republic: The Unending
Transition to Democracy’, which looks at the current political
crisis and its economic and political roots, including Duvalierism and
Aristide’s populism.
“This is the most acute crisis Aristide has faced since his re-election
as president,” Fatton said in a telephone interview from his US
home. “I think he has lost legitimacy in the eyes of huge segments
of the population.”
One such segment is the vocal sector of the student population, who
feel deceived.
Following the Dec. 22 march, hundreds of students and professors from
public and private faculties, as well as supporters like musician Theodore
‘’Lolo’’ Beaubrun, leader of the internationally
known Haitian roots band Boukman Eksperyans, gathered in the yard of
FASCH.
In their speeches and their cheers, students vowed to continue their
mobilization with concerts, marches and sit-ins.
“It’s always the students who struggle in Haiti. We march.
We are willing to die,” said Pranel August Ketant, who is studying
business at the American University of Modern Business Sciences in the
capital.
“Not all students are willing to take to the streets. But those
who are, we are not afraid.”
|
