To return to AGR, click here

To read an article, click on the headline.

To read WORLD BREIFS, click here

Land developer bribed Sharon,
indictment alleges

New UK law strengthens
9/11 hangover

Ethiopian Genocide
Military massacres Anuak

Washington trades human rights
for oil in Azerbaijan

Free trade pact with US may
hurt access to drugs

Human rights groups hail
Mack case ruling

Zambian women want gender equity

 

 

back to top

back to top

New UK law strengthens 9/11 hangover

By Sanjay Suri

London, Jan. 23 (IPS) — A new bill gives the British government wide-ranging new powers in what it may determine to be an emergency.

The bill follows an Act of Parliament introduced following 9/11 that vests the government with powers to detain foreigners without trial indefinitely. Fourteen men are kept in custody at present under this Act, some of them for more than two years.

The new Civil Contingencies Bill brought in this month gives the government new powers to deal with terror attacks and other emergencies.

Under new powers set out in the bill the government would have the right to send armed forces into any place in Britain, ban movement of people and vehicles, order evacuation, seize, confiscate or destroy property with or without confiscation, and ban assembly of people.

The bill also seeks to empower the government to overrule Acts of Parliament.

The bill seeks to arm the government particularly against chemical or biological attacks. It covers situations of war, terrorism, contamination of land with “harmful biological, chemical or radioactive matter or oil,” flooding, and “disruption of plant life or animal life.”

Some of these new powers seek to handle situations such as natural flooding or the foot-and-mouth disease. But the thrust of the new powers is against the threat of terror attacks of varying kinds.

The bill is a considerably watered down version of an earlier draft tabled by the government, which was amended following strong objections by a group of members of parliament (MPs).

The previous draft sought to activate the new powers in the face of a threat to “political, administrative or economic stability.” The new draft defines an emergency as a situation which “threatens serious damage to human welfare, the environment or the security of the UK or part of it.”

The MPs objected to the “one-size-fits-all” nature of the earlier definition. “We are concerned that as a result the draft bill does not provide adequate safeguards to protect against the misuse of emergency powers,” chairman of the MPs committee Lewis Moonie said earlier.

“In the wrong hands it could be used to undermine or even remove legislation underpinning the British constitution, and infringe human rights,” Moonie said.

The panel asked the government to prohibit regulations which would contravene the European Convention on Human Rights, the Geneva Conventions or “those Acts of Parliament which form the bedrock of our Constitution.”

The government agreed also to restore the right for courts to review decisions taken under the powers the bill would provide.

The bill is set to become law after it is debated and approved by both houses of Parliament later this year. Aspects of the bill could still be amended in the course of those debates.

“The government has taken a step in the right direction,” said Sami Chakrabarti, director of the civil rights group Liberty. “Their initial proposals were quite terrifying. But these present proposals remain worrisome.”

Chakrabarti said “sweeping and draconian powers should not be exercised unless there is a serious and immediate threat to life and limb.”

Reinstating the powers of courts to consider human rights abuses under these laws was “an important concession,” she said. “I very much hope that further compromises will be possible when the Bill is debated in Parliament.”

Civil rights campaigners fear that new emergency laws could become particularly potent taken together with government powers under the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 (ACTSA).

”We are talking here of a situation in which the government could arrest someone for not obeying the emergency laws and then use another law to detain them indefinitely,” said a spokesperson for the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, an independent group in London.

Under ACTSA the government needs no evidence to prove that a suspect is a terrorist or a threat to security, but only “reasonable grounds” to believe this is the case. They can only be defended by “special advocates” approved by the government.

Amnesty International says the detention of 14 men under this Act “violates the right to the presumption of innocence to which anyone subject to criminal proceedings is entitled.”

A spokeswoman for Human Rights Watch in London told IPS earlier that “it is amazing that if the evidence is good enough to hold them in detention for two years, these people have not been put on trial.”

back to top

Ethiopian Genocide
Military massacres Anuak

By Doug McGill

Jan. 19 — On Dec. 13, 2003 in a single bloody burst of targeted mass murder, Ethiopia became the world’s latest sovereignty to attempt genocide as a way to solve its problems with a troublesome minority.

The United States, which gave Ethiopia $32 million in foreign aid last year, is investigating the massacre, in which eyewitnesses say uniformed Ethiopian soldiers aided in the murder of more than 400 members of the Anuak tribe.

The charge is being made by dozens of refugees who live in the United States who spoke by telephone to surviving relatives. During the last decade more than 2,000 Anuak have settled in the United States after fleeing ethnic cleansing — said to be carried out by rival tribes backed by the Ethiopian government.

December’s massacre, by far the worst single-day killing of Anuak, was the first time Ethiopian soldiers were widely witnessed leading such an attack. It took place in Gambella, the capital of the state of Gambella in remote western Ethiopia, which shares a long border with Sudan.

According to eyewitnesses, the soldiers were joined by dozens of members of the Amara, Oromo and Tigray tribes who were seen chopping and stabbing Anuak with machetes.

Omod, an Anuak survivor, described what happened in a telephone interview: “About 300 uniformed soldiers marched into the town. They knocked on doors or pushed them down and pulled out all the men and the boys. Then they beat them on the street and told them to run. When they ran, they shot them. They killed my boy. He was a driver and they shot him in his car. I hid in the bush and I saw them beating people, shooting people and burning houses. We collected 403 bodies. They are in a mass grave.”

The Anuak have lived for centuries in a verdant western region of Ethiopia. There are active gold pits and oil reserves on the Anuak’s ancestral land, resources the Ethiopian government covets. Over the past decade the Anuak have pressed the factional government in Addis Ababa for a share in the projected development of these resources and have been answered in political subjugation, physical beatings and now the government-led pogrom.

It is a small genocide compared to those of the Turks, Jews, Cambodians, Tutsis and Bosnian Muslims, but it has all the markings of a state-sponsored attempt to extinguish an entire race.

Over the past decade some 20,000 Anuak have fled to refugee camps in northern Kenya (primarily the Ifo camp), and into southern Sudan. Until Dec. 13, most of the killings of Anuak were by their ancient tribal enemies, the Nuer, many of whom have resettled on Anuak land as civil war refugees from Sudan. The United Nations runs three camps in western Ethiopia for these refugees, most of whom are Nuer.

Anthropologists and missionaries say the Anuak and the Nuer in previous decades evolved ritualistic peaceful ways to solve grazing rights disputes that arose between their tribes. The displacement of more than 100,000 Sudanese civil war refugees onto Anuak land upset those traditional ways.

The Anuak for years have claimed that the Ethiopian government was using the Anuak-Nuer rivalry as its main tool for Anuak extermination, arming Nuers and de-arming Anuak and then standing by when the inevitable occurred.

According to witnesses and United Nations accounts, the massacre began when a van containing eight UN and Ethiopian government refugee camp officials was ambushed on a road connecting the towns of Itang and Gambella. All eight occupants of the van were killed.

At 1 pm that afternoon, Ethiopian soldiers brought the van and the corpses to Gambella, attracting crowds of angry onlookers. Here are three Anuak eyewitness accounts:

Obang: “The crowd of highlanders was angry about the killings [of the people in the van]. They asked ‘Who killed these people? Who killed these highlanders?’ All these people followed the van to the hospital. They are all angry. One soldier fired his gun in the air, and all the highlanders scattered and ran home. In a few minutes they came back carrying anything they could get from their homes – knives, guns, machetes, spears.”

Romeago: “They burned down my mom’s house and my sister’s house. My mom said about 400 Anuak were killed and they are still finding bodies in the bush and in the river. My other sister ran with her family into the bush; we haven’t heard from her. We don’t know if she and her kids are alive.”

Okun: “The soldiers knew who they were looking for. They went only to the houses of the Anuak, and then mainly for the educated ones, the students, the leaders. I talked to a cousin on my mom’s side. He hid under his bed to survive. He saw a soldier kill a boy in the street. They told the boy to run and then they shot him. He saw another boy who was shot in the leg but wasn’t killed; he was just lying in the street, calling for help. No one could go to him. The soldiers burned down houses and stole TVs, refrigerators and cash. All the houses with grass roofs, they burned.”

A spokesperson with the Ethiopian embassy in Washington said eyewitness accounts of uniformed Ethiopian soldiers killing Anuak were “completely false and unfounded. The defense forces are doing their level best to look for those people who were involved in this sad event.”

When asked why 2,000 Anuak had fled Ethiopia as refugees, the spokesman said they had not fled ethnic cleansing. Rather, “they are enjoying the right of movement to live anywhere they like and to enjoy their own pursuit of life.”

A spokesperson for the US State Department, which has advised Americans not to travel to Gambella, said it had confirmed 113 dead and has sent a security team to the area to investigate the massacre.

In St. Paul, Minnesota, the Anuak tribe’s leadership in exile meets Saturday afternoons at an Ethiopian restaurant to plan relief efforts and a lobbying campaign to catch the attention of US Sens. Mark Dayton (D-Minn.) and Norm Coleman (R-Minn.).

The Anuak held a rally Dec. 20 on the steps of the state capital. More than 100 Anuak men and women marched in a circle carrying signs asking “Mr. Bush, Terrorism? Now Genocide?” and “Where is the International Body?”

An Anuak leader in St. Paul sent a New Year’s e-mail to a dozen Anuak friends in the United States, Australia and Canada. The e-mail had photographs of smiling Anuak boys and girls, and the message read:

“No one is going to stand up for us, so we must stand up for ourselves. We all need to come together and tell the whole world, and our enemies too, that the Anuak people have a right to live in this, God’s world. It is our birth place, just like the rest of the human species.”

Source: In These Times

back to top

Washington trades human rights for
oil in Azerbaijan

By Jim Lobe

Washington, DC, Jan. 23 (IPS)— Arbitrary arrests, widespread beatings and tortures, and politically-motivated firings of opposition activists followed the troubled Oct. 15 presidential election in oil-rich Azerbaijan, an increasingly close US ally, says a new report by Human Rights Watch (HRW).

The repression is the worst the country has faced since it became an independent state after the Soviet collapse more than a decade ago, adds HRW in the 55-page report, ‘Crushing Dissent: Repression Violence and Azerbaijan’s Elections’.

The election of Ilham Aliev as president was widely denounced as unfair and fraudulent by western and other observers.

The new president is the son of Heidar Aliev, a former top official of the Soviet secret police and a Kremlin adviser, who became president two years after Azerbaijan became independent in 1991. The elder Aliev died last month while receiving medical treatment in the United States.

“Azerbaijan is experiencing its gravest human rights crisis of the past 10 years,” said Rachel Denber, acting director of HRW’s Europe and Central Asia Division. “The government must take immediate steps to end the repression.”

The report, based on hundreds of interviews with victims and witnesses in 13 towns and cities during and immediately after the elections, as well as testimonies and press reports since then, found that repression has only intensified over the last several months.

It also accused Washington and other western governments of responding to the elections and the crackdown that followed them with muted and contradictory messages.

They were capped by US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s visit last month, during which he personally congratulated the younger Aliev on his election victory but otherwise refused to comment on the political situation.

“The international community needs to take a strong and consistent stance against the rising tide of abuse,” said Denber. “In light of President Bush’s recent statements on democracy in neighboring countries in the Middle East, US inaction on Azerbaijan is particularly troubling.”

Despite its vast oil wealth, Azerbaijan remains a poor country, with an annual per capita income well below $4,000, and about one-half of the population living below the poverty line.

Corruption under the Alievs has reportedly been rampant, particularly with the investment of billions of dollars by foreign oil companies eager to exploit the country’s energy resources, which are found primarily in and around the capital, Baku, and beneath Azerbaijan’s territorial waters in the Caspian Sea.

Washington has been interested in Azerbaijan as a major future supplier of oil for the past decade. It has played a leading role in promoting the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which will carry oil from the Caspian through Azerbaijan and Georgia to Turkey’s easternmost Mediterranean port.

The controversial project is designed to circumvent Russia and Iran, even though using the existing grids of Azerbaijan’s two bigger neighbors would be a much cheaper transport method.

Azerbaijan was quick to offer assistance to Washington after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, and military ties between the two nations have grown steadily. Beginning in 2002, Bush has waived a ban on security assistance to Azerbaijan that was first imposed during its war with Armenia in the early 1990’s.

Indeed, Rumsfeld’s recent trip was aimed at intensifying military cooperation and assessing Baku’s willingness to host US military facilities. Washington has also expressed interest in providing Azerbaijan training and equipment, including a Coast Guard cutter, to permit its navy to patrol its waters.

But some analysts say the growing coziness with the Aliev government carries serious risks, particularly if repression and corruption are not soon curbed. That it had to resort to fraud to ensure its election victory, according to this view, suggests the leadership is deeply unpopular and could be destabilized.

“A failure to fully promote democracy will ensure that the profits from oil production will end up in the Swiss bank accounts of corrupt leaders and government officials,” warned US House of Representatives member Tom Lantos in a recent article in which he argued that Washington faces similar challenges throughout the Caucasus region.

Some days later, Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze was ousted in a popular uprising.

But while the Georgian crisis was resolved in a free election swept by a pro-US opposition, the October vote in Azerbaijan was anything but free, according to HRW and other independent analysts.

HRW found that the government prevented many opposition candidates from campaigning effectively — often through police brutality, arbitrary arrests and intimidation — during the election campaign, while, on election day, it carried out a well-organized campaign of fraud to ensure victory for Ilham Aliev, who won some 75 percent of the official vote.

Immediately after the election, protest demonstrations were met by “brutal and excessive force” carried out by the police, says the report. At least 300 protesters suffered serious injuries and one was killed.

Azerbaijani authorities have so far refused to investigate the police violence, let alone punish any of the security forces involved.

In the weeks following the election, authorities used the violence as a pretext to round up nearly 1,000 people — among them opposition leaders and activists, activists of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) perceived as supporting the opposition, journalists and election officials and observers who challenged the fraud, added HRW.

Those detained routinely suffered beatings by police, while opposition leaders held at the organized crime unit of the Interior Ministry were tortured by electric shock, severe beating and threats that they would be raped.

As of last week, more than 100 detainees remain in custody and, if convicted of various crimes with which they have been charged, might face up to 12 years in prison.

HRW called on the government to immediately release all of those detained for political reasons and to thoroughly investigate acts of torture and other official misconduct. It stressed that the international community, particularly western powers, could play a critical role.

Next Tuesday, the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly is scheduled to debate Azerbaijan’s compliance with the council’s human rights requirements — an opportunity, according to HRW, for European governments to express stronger concern.

“The assembly needs to adopt a strong resolution making clear that Azerbaijan’s credentials are at risk unless the government remedies the situation,” said Denber.

Azerbaijan was admitted to the council in February 2001.

Washington also needs to convey a clearer message, according to HRW. The administration recognized Aliev’s election victory, even as US observers it dispatched to the country denounced them as a “sham.”

back to top

Free trade pact with US may hurt access to drugs

By Bob Burton

Canaberra, Australia, Jan. 24 (IPS)— A dangerous global precedent will be set if lobbying by the US drug industry ensures that a US-Australia free trade agreement being finalized this coming week weakens Australia’s controls on the prices of prescription drugs, say health and consumer advocates here.

So far, the powerful US drug industry has persuaded US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick to propose far-reaching changes to the Australian government’s $3.4 billion Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) — revisions that would ensure higher prices for patented prescription drugs.

This alarms health advocates like David Henry, an adviser to the World Health Organization and of the University of Newcastle School of Medical Practice & Population Health, who says such a free trade pact would harm a key social benefit Australia provides.

“The demise of the PBS would be seen as a major victory for the drug industry and a major blow amongst the community of people that are concerned about drug prices both within the region and globally,” he said.

The 50-year-old PBS subsidy scheme guarantees drug companies access to a larger market — mostly poorer consumers — while allowing the government to negotiate “price-for-volume” discounts on approved drugs.

However, to the annoyance of the major US drug companies, new drugs are only included in the subsidy scheme if they are found to deliver health advantages and are cost-effective compared to already listed drugs.

In a December 2003 report on foreign trade barriers, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the peak US drug industry association, complained that Australia’s requirement for a cost effectiveness analysis before a drug is listed on the PBS is part of a “draconian regulatory and budgetary cost control” scheme.

PhRMA is much more upbeat about the provisions of the US-Singapore free trade agreement. It says this accord “will establish Singapore as a model in the Asia-Pacific region for policies that support pharmaceutical innovation, science-based regulation, strong intellectual property protection, transparency and the rule of law.”

According to PhRMA, the increasing interest by the Asia-Pacific in controlling drug prices — with a view to improving access to drugs to consumers — represents a major problem for US drug companies.

In China, it complained, new expensive drugs are “being tied to an extremely low cost basis” while in Japan “drug cost containment policies have led to a virtual leveling off in the size of the pharmaceutical market.” Worse still in its view, the Philippine government last year proposed that the drug industry reduce the prices of its top-selling 50 drugs by 50 percent and put a moratorium on any price increases.

All of this is bad news for the US drug companies, which want to be able to market new drugs and command a premium price to recoup their investments.

However, the PBS system is viewed by the WHO as a model scheme for keeping costs down while ensuring patients have access to the best medicines. “At the core of the Australian system is that you shouldn’t get a higher price for a drug that doesn’t offer any additional benefit,” Henry said.

But Australian Prime Minister John Howard has flagged a willingness to accept trade-offs to benefit the interests of agricultural lobby groups. “The big areas are sugar, beef, and dairy. I think if we can get progress on agriculture and don’t give up anything vital to us in other areas, then it is worth signing because we will have enormous access to the American market,” he said on Thursday.

Zoellick has adopted what he terms “competitive liberalization,” where concessions gained in a free trade agreement become the template for the next agreement.

Through a series of bilateral and regional free trade agreements, the US government hopes to extract concessions from governments and effectively bypass the stalled multilateral trade talks at the World Trade Organization.

On Jan. 15, US Democratic Party leader Nancy Pelosi, supported by eight other senior Democrat party leaders, wrote to US President George W. Bush to express alarm at the global implications of the US bid to gut the PBS.

“Given that far too many Americans cannot afford access to life-saving or life-prolonging medicines, it is astounding that the United States may seek to impose these shortcomings not only on Australia today, but on the rest of the world tomorrow,” they wrote.

In an attempt to ensure bipartisan congressional support for any eventual deal, Pelosi and other Democrat Party leaders have been shown a copy of the US government proposal, but have agreed not to disclose the proposed text.

Pelosi and her colleagues also object to the possibility that schemes operating in the United States, such as Medicaid for veterans or Indian communities, could be subject to the same conditions. “We believe it is inappropriate to seek changes in other countries’ policies or programs that we would not be willing to accept here,” Pelosi wrote.

Dr. Patricia Ranald, convener of the Australian Fair Trade and Investment Network (AFTINET) - a coalition of community, trade union and religious groups - fears that the Australian government will agree to weaken the PBS in return for increased access to the lucrative US agricultural market.

“We should not trade away our right to policies in the public interest,” she said.

At a briefing last week, Australian Trade Minister Mark Vaile, who is in Washington to finalize the free trade negotiations with Zoellick, downplayed the prospect of the free trade deal resulting in increased drug prices.

“As a result of these negotiations, there is no way Australians will be paying more for their drugs in Australia,” Vaile insisted. However, he declined to rule out an increased cost to taxpayers for prescription drugs.

back to top

Human rights groups hail Mack case ruling

By Jim Lobe

Washington, DC, Jan. 22 (IPS)— US and international human rights groups Thursday hailed the Guatemalan Supreme Court’s breakthrough decision this week to reinstate the conviction of a former high-ranking military officer for the 1990 murder of a prominent anthropologist.

The judgment marked the first time that a military officer accused of human rights abuses committed during Guatemala’s 36-year bloody civil war has failed to escape criminal sanction.

The Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (LCHR), the Center for Justice and International Law (CJIL), and the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) said the court’s decision marked a “tremendous victory’’ for the family of the victim, Dr. Myrna Mack Chang, and for all those in Guatemala “who have challenged entrenched impunity.’’

“We hope that this decision marks the beginning of a new period in Guatemala where rights abusers are held accountable for their actions, no matter their positions in previous power structures,’’ said Neil Hicks, director of LCHR’s human rights defenders program.

But even as the verdict was being celebrated, the Lawyers Committee and Amnesty International (AI) expressed concern about the fate of another human rights defender in Guatemala, who faces trial this week for criminal defamation.

Bruce Harris, the Latin American director for the children’s rights group Casa Alianza, was set to go on trial Thursday for “defaming’’ a prominent Guatemalan attorney by asserting at a 1997 press conference that she exercised “undue influence’’ over government officials in facilitating international adoptions of Guatemalan children.

Child advocates have long been concerned about reports of abuses — including outright kidnapping — as well as more subtle means of persuading parents to give up their children in Guatemala, which has had the highest per capita rate of foreign adoptions worldwide over the past decade.

“Mr. Harris is one of the foremost defenders of children’s rights, and it is imperative that he is able to fully exercise his rights to freedom of expression in order to continue his crucial work,’’ said Hicks, who appealed to Guatemala’s new president, Oscar Berger, to intervene in the case.

London-based AI also expressed “alarm’’ about the case, noting that if convicted, Harris could face up to five years in prison.

“We are concerned that the case demonstrates that the use of criminal defamation charges against those who expose human rights abuses and issues of social concern in Guatemala is yet another form of persecution of human rights defenders,’’ Amnesty said, adding that 18 defenders have been killed in the country in just the past three years.

The Supreme Court’s decision in the Mack case came one month after the San Jose-based Inter-American Court for Human Rights (IACHR) ordered the Guatemalan government to pay more than $600,000 in damages to Mack’s surviving family members and to establish a scholarship in her name, among other measures.

It was the highest monetary award ever awarded by the court.

The IACHR found the government ignored several provisions of the American Convention on Human Rights, to which it is a party, in its handling of the killing by state security forces.

This week’s decision also came less than two weeks after Berger’s inauguration Jan. 14. His campaign promises to crack down on security institutions suspected of continuing rights violations and to protect efforts to uncover serious abuses committed during and after the civil war, which formally ended with a United Nations-mediated peace agreement in 1996, have been followed by a number of steps that have stoked the hopes of rights activists.

In a surprise move last week, Berger indicated he intended to appoint 1992 Nobel Peace laureate and long-time indigenous activist, Rigoberta Menchu, to a government post dealing with the long-stalled implementation of the peace accords.

He has also appointed long-time rights activist Frank LaRue, and a number of his civil-society colleagues, to a presidential commission on human rights.

In addition, global rights groups have long regarded Vice President Eduardo Stein as an advocate for human and indigenous rights.

“There is belief that Berger’s coming to power represents a real opening,’’ said Adriana Beltran, WOLA’s Guatemala expert and the author of a recent report titled “Hidden Powers: Illegal Groups in Post-Conflict Guatemala and the Forces Behind Them.”

Beltran said she was surprised and very pleased by the Mack decision, which took more than 13 years to reach its conclusion.

“The countless delays and obstacles in the case provide a prominent example of the influence and impunity enjoyed by clandestine power structures in Guatemala,’’ she told IPS.

Indeed, the Mack case has served in many ways as the ultimate test of military impunity in Guatemala.

Investigations, reports, testimony and court verdicts have established that the US-trained anthropologist was stabbed to death by members of a military death squad while on her way home from work Sept. 11, 1990.

Her work at the time — investigating the destruction and massacre of entire indigenous communities by the military at the height of the civil war from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s — was apparently the motive.

Police initially informed her family that she died in a traffic accident, and later suppressed a 60-page internal report that concluded it was a political killing ordered by a key military intelligence unit, known at the time as the Estado Mayor Presidencial (EMP).

But through the tenacity of her sister, Helen Mack, as well as other rights activists both in Guatemala and overseas, sufficient pressure was brought to bear on the government that an army sergeant serving in the EMP was convicted of the murder and sentenced to 25 years in prison in 1993.

Further investigation and pressure led to the indictment and trial of two colonels and a general — the highest-ranking officers ever to face trial for human rights abuses in Guatemala.

On Oct. 3, 2002, a Guatemalan criminal court convicted former EMP director Colonel Juan Valencia Osorio for his role in ordering the murder, and sentenced him to 30 years’ imprisonment. It acquitted the two other defendants.

But last May, in a ruling that provoked anger and outrage from rights groups worldwide,

an appeals court overturned the conviction.

In this week’s decision, however, the Supreme Court reinstated the conviction after finding that the appeals courts had erred in its reasoning regarding the evidence of the EMP’s role.

An estimated 200,000 people were killed during the civil war, most of them members of the indigenous majority of Guatemala, according to a UN Commission that found that the military was responsible for the vast majority of deaths.

back to top

Zambian women want gender equity

Jan. 23— The Zambia National Women’s Lobby (ZNWL) has proposed that issues of gender equity should be enshrined in the electoral laws.

The Women’s movement submitted in Lusaka yesterday that all structures managing elections must be committed to the concept of gender equity and employ women at all levels of development.

ZNWL chairperson Mary Nandazi made the submission to the Electoral Reform Technical Committee sitting in the Lusaka City Council chambers in Lusaka yesterday. She said acts of violence during elections had negatively affected women participation in elections, and called for intensified police operations to ensure the security of the electorate.

She called for the repealing of the Public Order Act, as it had been only used for political activism, and to suppress the opposition.

Nandazi said that the introduction of the accreditation fees for monitors had restricted civil society organizations from placing monitors in polling stations, and recommended that the fees on local election monitors be discarded to promote the integrity and credibility of the country’s electoral system.

On access of the public media, ZNWL recommended if a political party feels offended in the manner of coverage, the case should be taken before a constitutional court which would compel the erring media institution to abide by the Electoral Code of Conduct.

She recommended that Article 34 (8) in the Republican Constitution be repealed and restore the Clause requiring a winning Presidential candidate to receive 50 percent of the votes.

In the event that the presidential elect fails to get the 50 percent, the Constitution should provide for a coalition government as this would help restore political harmony. And the Bahai Faith has urged religious organizations in the country to provide spiritual guidelines towards the electoral reform process.

Bahai Faith member of the national spiritual assembly Chunga Malitonga said the Faith did not take part in partisan politics, but that it was comfortable with the current electoral system.

And the Hindu Association of Zambia has proposed that foreign citizens resident in

Zambia should be allowed to participate in local government elections.

Making submissions to the Electoral Reform and Technical Committee yesterday, association president Ashok Oza submitted that those eligible should include Zambians and non Zambian citizens who were rate payers and were legal and permanent residents in the country.

Oza recommended that the voter registration card be replaced by the national registration card during voting exercise.

Oza, who was accompanied by other association officials, however, said the current registration of voters should be a continuous process.

He submitted that there was need for an effective national registration process throughout the country and proper financing of the responsible Government department. The association presented that the elections should not be conducted during the rainy season as this made the exercise difficult for both the electorate and the Electoral Commission of Zambia.

On election campaigns, he said it should be enshrined in the law that any candidate issuing inflammatory language must not be allowed to proceed in any election race. “Over zealous and short sighted politicians must not be allowed to undermine the ethnic harmony that Zambia enjoys, in sharp contrast to some neighboring countries,” he said.

He said members of Parliament who cross the floor should not be permitted to recontest their seat until after a five-year period.

Source: Times of Zambia (Ndola)

back to top