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US Afghan allies committed massacre
American experts: warlords slaughtered prisoners
of war
By David Rose
Mar. 21— Dramatic corroboration of the massacre of Afghan
prisoners by the US-backed Northern Alliance at the start of the war
in 2001 was provided last night by US pathologists commissioned to investigate
the claims by the UN.
A vivid account of the slaughter was provided to The Observer last week
by three Britons who were released from the US detention camp at Guantanamo
Bay in Cuba more than two years after they were first seized in Afghanistan.
They told how they narrowly escaped the massacre before being handed
over to American forces and flown to Guantanamo Bay.
Forensic anthropologist William Haglund, who earlier led inquiries into
mass graves in Bosnia, Rwanda, Sri Lanka and Sierra Leone, told The
Observer how he dug into an area of recently disturbed desert soil outside
the town of Shebargan, and exhumed 15 bodies, a tiny sample, he said,
of what may be a very large total.
Thanks to the cold and arid climate, they were well enough preserved
to carry out autopsies. Haglund’s conclusion “that they died
from suffocation” exactly corroborates the stories told by the
Guantanamo detainees in last week’s Observer.
“They are the first survivors to describe what we already believed
happened to the victims we discovered,” Haglund said Mar. 20. “The
time has come for a full investigation, under the protection of the
international community.”
Asif Iqbal, Shafiq Rasul and Ruhal Ahmed, from Tipton in the West Midlands,
told in their interviews how weeks before they were handed over to the
Americans, they were captured by Northern Alliance forces led by General
Abdurrashid Dostum in November 2001, as they tried to flee war-torn
Afghanistan.
At Shebargan, they were herded into two of several truck containers.
Then, Iqbal said, the doors were sealed. He and the others lost consciousness,
and when he came to he was “lying on top of dead bodies, breathing
the stench of their blood and urine.”
“We lived because someone made holes with a machine gun, though
they were shooting low, and still more died from the bullets. When we
got out, about 20 in each container were still alive.”
Haglund visited the mass grave at Shebargan twice in 2002, in the wake
of the coalition’s war against the Taliban. On the first occasion,
he was part of a team from the US-based Physicians for Human Rights,
which identified dozens of mass graves in northern Afghanistan, many
containing the remains of prisoners killed by the proxy warlord forces
backed by Britain and America.
The team also inspected the Northern Alliance prison at Shebargan in
January, 2002, while the “Tipton Three” were still there.
Their findings, said John Heffernan, another team member, also corroborate
the Tipton men’s story. “There were nearly 3,000 of them being
held in squalid conditions under the control of Dostum, whose palatial
headquarters were across the street,” Heffernan said.
Iqbal and Rasul told how they had been marched through the desert towards
Shebargan past huge ditches already filled with bodies. Heffernan said:
“After taking into account the thousands crowded into the dilapidated
prison, the whereabouts of many taken captive remained unknown. We began
to suspect some might have met their fate on the way there. After we
left the prison and traveled down the road a few miles into the desert,
we smelled the unmistakable odor of decaying flesh and soon found bulldozer
tracks and skeletal remains.” Haglund came back under United Nations
auspices a few months later.
By chance, on the day he arrived at Shebargan, Dostum had gone into
the mountains, he said, leaving behind a military escort which allowed
him to open the grave. “I uncovered one small corner, exposing
15 remains which were quite complete, and did autopsies on three. There
were no signs of trauma and these were all young men. This is consistent
with death by asphyxiation.
“I told Dostum’s security chief that they had died from suffocation,
and there was this big silence hanging over the desert.”
The details about elements of the Tipton Three’s story assumed
a new importance last week, after the Sun published claims by a US Embassy
spokesman, Lee McClenny, that the three had trained at an al-Qaida camp
in 2000. They told The Observer last week that they had all confessed
to this accusation only after months of solitary confinement and 200
separate interrogation sessions, only to have it finally disproved by
MI5, which brought documents showing they had been in Britain at the
time.
After making his claims in the Sun, McClenny refused to answer further
questions from journalists, while Lt Col Leon Sumpter, the US spokesman
at Guantanamo Bay, said any allegations concerning detainees were highly
classified, even after their release: “I don’t know how the
Embassy got this,” he said. “It didn’t come from us,
and we knew nothing about it.” McClenny’s letter was widely
criticized as an attempt to nullify the Tipton men’s stories of
abuse at American hands.
Source: Observer (UK)
A deadly week for soldiers, sovereignty,
and human rights in Iraq
Compiled by Bud Howell
Mar. 25 (AGR)— The United Nations must not endorse Iraq’s
US-backed interim constitution because it could lead to the break-up
of the country, Iraq’s most influential religious leader said last
week in a letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s chief Iraq
advisor. A letter transcript reveals Shiite Muslim cleric Grand Ayatollah
Ali al-Sistani’s intention to boycott a UN team’s visit to
Iraq this week. At the request of the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council
and US-led coalition members, the UN team will monitor Baghdad’s
new government in light of June 30’s “transfer of power,”
at which point coalition forces are scheduled to hand sovereignty over
to the Iraqi people.
But Sistani “does not wish to be part of any meetings or deliberations
with the UN mission unless the UN adopts a clear position saying that
the fundamental law is not binding to the (Iraqi) National Assembly,”
the letter states. The consitution was ratified on Mar. 8, despite Sistani’s
concerns over the legitimacy of his country’s future sovereignty
under US influence. As it stands, the charter is geared to see Iraq
through its general elections before the end of January 2005.
While political tensions mounted between a cultural leader and a world
council whose majority spoke against an invasion now seeming to threaten
them both, another suicide bomb exploded over the weekend near a US
military base north of Baghdad. The attack, apparently aimed at Iraqis
who have befriended US-led coalition forces, killed an Iraqi soldier
as another roadside bomb the night before killed a US soldier and an
Iraqi interpreter.
Yet another car bomb pulverized a five-story hotel in central Baghdad
earlier in the week, killing an estimated 27 people and wounding dozens
more. Earlier that Wednesday, an American soldier was killed and two
Iraqi children injured when explosions in Karrada struck a neighborhood
council meeting.
US troops cited in journalist’s death
In other developments, US troops killed an Iraqi civilian working for
a Dubai-based Arab satellite television channel on Thursday in Baghdad.
“I tried to race away...and then the Americans started firing at
random. They hit the first car and then they started shooting at our
car.” said Ahmed Abdul Amiya, who survived the attack. After the
killings, US troops passed through a chanting gauntlet of Iraqi civilians
shouting, “Down, Down USA.” The US military has admitted to
killing the driver of another car at the scene.
Also on Sunday, a US soldier was reportedly shot and killed north of
Baghdad in a non-combat incident while soldiers were preparing for patrol.
Saturday night, insurgents launched rockets at a US military position
in Fallujah, killing two soldiers, according to a coalition spokesman.
In addition to the two soldiers killed Saturday night, there were three
US deaths reported by military sources on Friday: a Marine died from
hostile fire in western Iraq; a 1st Infantry Division soldier died of
injuries received in a Bradley Fighting Vehicle accident in Baji Wednesday
that also killed another soldier; and a 1st Infantry Division soldier
was electrocuted while working on communications equipment north of
Ba’qubah. The weekend’s attacks coincided with worldwide anti-war
demonstrations marking the one-year anniversary of the US-led invasion
of Iraq. But top administration officials, including head US administrator
Paul Bremer, remain steadfast in their assertion that the current US-led
occupation is necessary to protect America and the people of Iraq from
terrorism, blaming al-Qaida for many of the past months’ bombings.
Military officials doubt pre-war assertions
But US military personnel closer to the front lines offered a much different
view. Gen. Martin Dempsey, commander of the 1st Armored Brigade, told
reporters earlier this month that the link between al-Qaida and bombings
that occurred in Baghdad and Karbala “is just a theory,” adding
that there is no proof of the link. He and others have also said they
doubt there has been “massive infusion of foreign terrorists”
into Iraq. “There are several schools of doubt on replenishment
of foreign fighters and where they come from. I am not sure if I believe
that [they are coming from overseas]. A probable scenario illuminated
by interviews with officials inside Iraq shows most control of the new
Iraqi government being held indefinitely by US forces within the world’s
largest US Embassy, fortified by over 100,000 American Troops. Under
such future command, the fledgling Iraqi government will be capable
of tackling little more than drawing up a budget and preparing for elections.
“We’re going to have the world’s largest diplomatic mission
with a significant amount of political weight,” a US official said
on condition of anonymity.
Iraqi sovereignty up for grabs
In charge of the new government would be a new US-backed ambassador,
who will have a say in the allocation of $8 billion of the massive $18.4
billion aid package approved by US Congress last year, a huge tool with
which to influence Iraq’s political affairs.
Further clarifying plans for a US-based power structure are admissions
of members of the Iraqi council who say that they lack respect and authority
from the Iraqi people. “This council does not have much credibility
with most people because it was not elected and because it has not achieved
a whole lot in the past few months,” says Mahmoud Osman, a Kurdish
member of the council.
Allies consider pulling out
US allies are also expressing new doubts about the occupation. Citing
security concerns, South Korea has cancelled a plan to send troops to
the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk next month. The South Korean military
was preparing to dispatch 3,000 troops — which would have made
it the third largest contributor to the multinational force.
Meanwhile, Spain’s new prime minister-elect says Spain will withdraw
its 1,300 troops from Iraq by the end of June unless the UN takes charge
of the country. This follows last week’s historic power shift away
from Spain’s pro-Bush government and into the hands of it’s
Socialist Workers, a party adamantly opposed to the war on Iraq and
President Bush’s leadership regarding the “war on terror.”
Report: US-led war and occupation killed 10,000 civilians
In another alarming development, Amnesty International has released
a report on widespread neglect and abuse of human rights as a direct
result of the US’s war and subsequent occupation. Violence is now
endemic in the country, the war and occupation has killed over 10,000
civilians, and many people now live in fear for their safety, says the
report.
Based on a series of visits to Iraq over the past year, as well as media
accounts, “Iraq: One Year On” states that coalition forces
have fallen far short of their promise to improve human rights for Iraqis.
Instead, the report concludes that “millions [of Iraqis] have suffered
the consequences of destroyed or looted infrastructure, mass unemployment
and uncertainty about their future.” While welcoming Saddam Hussein’s
ouster, Amnesty and other human rights groups aren’t buying the
Bush administration’s attempt to justify the war and post-war occupation
on humanitarian grounds, particularly because Hussein was neither engaged
in nor planning mass killings when the conflict began and the vast majority
of abuses committed under his rule took place long before the war at
a time when Washington and other western capitals chose to ignore them.
Earlier this year, Kenneth Roth, director of Human Rights Watch, said
that such military interventions shouldn’t be used belatedly to
address atrocities that were ignored in the past.”
Amnesty’s report also addresses the killing and torturing of civilians
by coalition forces and other armed groups, as well as the demolition
of homes, increased acts of violence against women, and several cases
in which US soldiers shot and killed unarmed Iraqi demonstrators. The
report notes that no US soldier has been prosecuted for illegally killing
an Iraqi civilian. Under an order by the Coalition Provisional Authority,
Iraqi courts are barred from hearing cases against any US or coalition
soldier or official in Iraq. Meanwhile, during his weekly radio address,
President Bush defended the US invasion and occupation: “The liberation
of Iraq was good for the Iraqi people, good for America and good for
the world,” the president said Saturday. White House spokesman
Scott McClellan added in recent remarks that “Democracy is taking
root in Iraq and there is no turning back.”
Sources: Agence France-Presse, Associated
Press, BBC, CNN, IPS, Reuters
Taiwan: pro-independence president
survives gunfire
Compiled by Willy Rosencrans
Mar. 23 (AGR) -- The incumbent president of Taiwan, Chen Shui-bian,
and his running mate survived an apparent assassination attempt on Mar.
19, just one day before presidential elections. They won by a hair’s
breadth amid conspiracy speculations which have given rise to clashes
in the streets; at issue is the island’s potential for both sovereignty
and war with China.
China asserts that Taiwan is a part of its People’s Republic, and
a war could lead to US involvement, disruption of world computer supplies
and tumbling stock markets. Globalization has already led to the loss
of 770,000 US jobs to Chinese sweatshops and a major US-China trade
deficit, and the US and Taiwan are filing a joint complaint against
China in the World Trade Organization over its taxes on semiconductors.
The roots of the conflict lie in the Chinese Civil War (1926-1949) between
the Communists and the Kuomintang (KMT). The KMT fled to Taiwan in 1945
and mounted a challenge to the Soviet-supported People’s Republic
of China (PRC) with the establishment of the Republic of China (ROC);
both sides claimed sovereignty over the territories and traded mutual
blows across the 180-kilometer-wide Taiwan Strait until the 1960s.
In 1947 the KMT massacred 200,000 of its Taiwanese opponents and democratic
processes were postponed until the mainland could be “recovered.”
In the 1970s the KMT permitted “supplemental elections” but
opposition parties were still outlawed. The island moved toward a multi-party
democracy in the 1980s and martial law was ended in 1991.
In 1986 the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) began advocating an autonomous
Taiwan rather than a reunited China, and the party won control of the
ROC after Chen Shui-bian won presidential elections in 2000. The KMT
still maintains a vast business empire; its worth the year if its defeat
was estimated at $6.5 billion.
The DPP’s pro-independence stance is a risky one with regards to
China, which reportedly has 496 missiles aimed at the island; China
says that a declaration of Taiwanese independence would provoke it to
immediate military action. Beijing’s recently reasserted control
over Hong Kong and Macau leaves Taiwan the last territory resisting
PRC visions for a united Republic.
The island itself is sharply divided between the two parties. A majority
favors independence, though most of the island favors maintaining the
current status quo. Taiwan is a WTO member and is accorded all but diplomatic
recognition by a number of other nations including the US; finally clarifying
its relationship with China would entail inevitable conflict.
Such politically convenient vagueness has marked the KMT itself since
its inception. It was pro-Communist in its early years, anti-Communist
during the civil war, pro-independence once but pro-reunification for
much of its history. In December 2003 Lien Chan, the KMT candidate for
president, qualified that the party was opposed to “immediate independence”
but did not want to be viewed as pro-reunification.
There is an abiding ambiguity even over the meaning of the term “China,”
in part because the two rivals share language, culture, and history;
most islanders identify as both Taiwanese and Chinese.
The president and his running mate, Annette Lu, were shot as they rode
through the streets of Southern Taiwan the day before the Mar. 20 presidential
elections; he was grazed in the stomach and she was hit in the knee.
He won the next day with just 50.12 percent of the vote, or 6,470,839
votes; with a further 337,297 ballots declared invalid, a recount could
easily tip the balance.
Many of those who voted for Chen are ethnic Taiwanese who share his
view that the island, which has been their home for generations, is
independent of China. Lien’s supporters include descendants of
those who fled the Chinese mainland in 1949.
A large number of KMT supporters believe that the president staged the
assassination attempt, an allegation levelled just before the final
tally and derided as incredible by the DPP. Footage of the president
in the hospital, released by his own party to quell the allegations,
has only fueled them: he appears to be in good health, his clothes seem
to lack blood and he is able to talk on a mobile phone during the operation.
The administration has acquiesced to KMT demands and sealed ballot boxes
pending a full investigation of the invalid ballots.
An election-day referendum about China-Taiwan relations failed to pass
because only 45 percent of the population voted on it. Voters were asked
if the island should strengthen its defenses and if the ROC government
should open peaceful talks with the mainland. Beijing holds that the
referendum was illegal and decries it as a “provocative attempt”
to “split the motherland” that “goes against the will
of the people.” Over 90 percent of respondents said yes to the
two questions.
An indeterminate number of people were wounded on voting night, Mar.
20, during two violent skirmishes in Kaoshiung, and a motorcycle was
set on fire. Early Mar. 21, KMT supporters in the same city smashed
windows and threw stones at a local courthouse, and 10,000 more protested
for 10 hours in front of the presidential office in Taipei. In other
cities members of the opposing parties clashed repeatedly, and in Taichung
hundreds of KMT supporters pushed over a barricade at a courthouse,
shoved past a police line and began smashing windows.
30,000 KMT supporters continued protesting on Mar. 22 behind wire barricades
defending Taipei’s presidential office, vowing not to leave until
recount is held. On Mar. 23, President Chen offered to meet with Lien
if the opposition convinced the crowds to disperse. Lien has turned
him down.
Protests continued through Mar. 24 as thousands gathered outside the
presidential office, and Lien vowed to mobilize 200,000 people to march
on Mar. 27.
Sources: Agence France-Presse, Guardian
(UK), IPS, Miami Herald, Reuters, UPI, Washington Post
Women activists brave the dangers
in Colombia
By Constanza Vieira
Bogota, Colombia, Mar. 16 (IPS)— Women activists in Colombia’s
“oil capital,” Barrancabermeja, provide a lesson in bravery,
defying pressure and threats from the right-wing paramilitaries to continue
their social activism.
Just 328 yards from the city’s central police station, Inés
Peña, a pregnant 22-year-old member of the Organización
Femenina Popular (Popular Women’s Organization -- OFP) was forced
into a car by two armed members of the paramilitary militias on Jan.
28.
While the car -- which the young journalist all too vividly remembers
was red -- drove along, the men burned her feet with scalding water
and shaved her head.
“This is to make you leave that OFP that you’re involved in,
and for you to continue doing Culture for Life, but for real this time,”
said her aggressors, referring to the name of the segment of an OFP
TV program that Peña presents.
Culture for Life focuses on human rights abuses against children, domestic
violence, and the recruitment of minors by the armed groups involved
in Colombia’s four-decade civil war.
But “despite the threats and torture to which she was subjected,
Peña made her habitual presentation of her segment” of the
program on Feb. 1, the local Foundation for Press Freedom (FLIP) reported.
She was defying the odds: in the space of just one month, starting on
Jan. 1, 11 people were killed in the central oil port city of Barrancabermeja,
which is under paramilitary control.
The OFP emerged in 1972 when a group of homemakers began to organize
community soup kitchens to help feed their children and alleviate hunger
in their poor neighborhoods.
Today the group links more than 3,000 women nationwide, as well as local
and international human rights groups, working for “the reconstruction
of the social fabric of poor communities... and a more just and balanced
society in socioeconomic, cultural and political terms,” according
to the OFP web site.
One of the group’s slogans is that Colombian “women are not
giving birth to and raising children for the war.”
In and around Barrancabermeja there are 600 women’s groups that
“provide examples of courage in resisting forced displacement and
kidnapping, and in continuing their struggle when their fellow activists
are killed,” said Jesuit priest Francisco de Roux, director of
the Programme for Development and Peace in the Magdalena Medio region.
Peña is one of those who decided to stay in her city and continue
her work.
For decades, Barrancabermeja was a stronghold of the National Liberation
Army (ELN), Colombia’s second-largest rebel group and, to a lesser
extent, of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the main
insurgent group. (The FARC rose up in arms in 1964, and the ELN in 1965).
But the right-wing paramilitary militias began to move into the city
in 1990, and in 1998 they gained control over Barrancabermeja, waging
a neighborhood-by-neighborhood and house-by-house battle with the guerrillas.
According to official figures, 510 people were killed in the city of
around 300,000 between 1990 and 1998, as a result of the country’s
civil strife. In 2000, the US Embassy reported 567 murders.
In 2003, the ombudsman’s office documented 150 killings, 80 forced
disappearances and 800 cases of people forced to flee the city.
One of last year’s victims was Esperanza Amaríz, whose body
was found on Oct. 16, after she was forcibly disappeared.
When Amaríz’s body appeared, the Colombian office of the
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights urged the “paramilitary
groups to respect the right to life of all civilians, and of women in
particular, as well as the work carried out by their organizations.”
FLIP pointed out that in January, an international commission was shot
at while visiting a housing project that the OFP is building in the
municipality of San Pablo, to the north of Barrancabermeja.
In June 2003, the OFP addressed a statement to Colombia and the international
community, asking “Are we willing to accept the paramilitary groups
as the new authorities in the conflict zones?”
A report by the OFP describes the social control exercised by the paramilitaries
since they took over the city, stating that local “social organizations
are opposed to the paramilitary groups’ assuming of authority and
taking control of government functions and institutions.”
According to the OFP, the paramilitaries “call together the local
communities in the barrios to dictate their new rules,” “punish
children for what they consider ‘misbehavior’...like bad grades
in school, fighting or squabbling with their siblings, using drugs or
failing to respect the ‘curfew’ set” by the paramilitaries.
IPS gained access to the “Rules of Coexistence” that regulate
relations between the paramilitary militias — who call themselves
“self-defense groups” — and the local population of Barrancabermeja.
The rules stipulate a 12-hour detention of minors who return home after
9pm Monday through Friday and 10pm on Saturdays and Sundays.
The document sets curfews for public businesses and liquor sales, and
states that the paramilitaries must issue permits for carrying firearms
and wearing military fatigues.
It also provides for forced labor for those who fail to keep their homes
looking “presentable,” and underlines “respect for private
property,” establishing penalties for those found guilty of stealing
livestock, household goods, or personal belongings.
The rules also provide for the “confiscation” of farms and
homes located alongside roads, whose owners fail to “keep their
boundaries clear and clean, in such a way as to facilitate visibility.”
The paramilitaries “punish men and women, imposing penalties that
range from being tied up, to lashings, the shaving of heads and eyebrows,
and death,” states the OFP report.
They also “rape young women for refusing to be their girlfriends
and lovers,” and ban the use of miniskirts by girls and long hair
and earrings by boys.
“They drag people out of their homes to settle scores and punish
them, and the victims are later found dead, or their names swell the
long list of the ‘disappeared,’” according to the women’s
group.
“The Magdalena Medio river and surrounding areas are public cemeteries
of human remains. The bodies found there are almost always in a state
of decomposition and lacking parts,” the report adds.
According to the newspaper El Colombiano, “the self-defense groups
publicly punish children who disobey their parents. They do the same
with women who are unfaithful, making them carry a sign that reads,
for example, ‘adulterer’ or ‘prostitute.’”
The paramilitaries “threaten social organizations, and impede their
work. That is especially true in the case of the OFP, which faces more
and more frequent and harsh pressure,” the group complains.
Right-wing President Alvaro Uribe recently admitted that the leftistguerrillas
were not forced out of Barrancabermeja by the armed forces, but by the
paramilitaries.
He also acknowledged, according to de Roux, that the remedy “is
worse than the disease itself.”
The United Nations as well as leading human rights watchdogs like Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch hold the paramilitary umbrella,
the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), responsible for the
lion’s share of the abuses committed against civilians in Colombia’s
civil war.
The international organizations also report that the AUC has ties to
members of the Colombian armed forces.
As part of peace talks with the Uribe administration, a portion of the
AUC has agreed to demobilize in exchange for an amnesty-like arrangement
by which the group’s members will not go to jail for their abuses.
US firms try to block cheap AIDS drugs
By Sarah Boseley
Mar. 20 — The US, under pressure from its giant pharmaceutical
companies, is trying to undermine the use in poor countries of cheap,
copycat AIDS drugs, made by “pirate,” generic companies but
validated by the World Health Organization, campaigners claim.
US drug companies want the money promised for President George W. Bush’s
AIDS plan to be spent on their products.
The American Department of Health and Human Sciences has now convened
a conference in Botswana at the end of the month that will question
the WHO’s approval process for generic drugs, known as “pre-qualification.”
If the cheap drugs, which sell for less than $303 per patient per year,
are discredited and the more expensive brand-name drugs are bought instead,
the limited money available for treatment will help fewer people and
reduce the WHO’s hopes of getting 3 million on treatment by 2005.
“It is not quality and safety and efficacy they [the American companies]
are concerned about, but the protection of patents,” said Rachel
Cohen of Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders)
in the US. “The real reason this conference is being held is to
come up with ways of undermining generic drugs.”
Plans to put millions of people on drugs to try to stem the AIDS epidemic
are based in most African countries on the purchase of cheap copies
of drugs invented and under patent in the US and Europe. People with
HIV need a daily cocktail of three drugs to suppress the virus in the
body and stay alive and well.
Because the patents on the component drugs are held by different multinationals,
only the generic companies make a basic three-in-one pill. A very simple
regime, taking one pill, twice a day, is considered to be most feasible
in poor countries. Scientists working for the WHO have examined and
approved certain generic three-in-one pills.
About 50,000 people are already taking these generic AIDS drugs. MSF,
which runs free AIDS treatment programs in Africa, gives them to some
9,000 patients. In Zimbabwe, it treats patients for $201 to $251 a year.
A program by the US Centers for Disease Control uses brand-name drugs
at $600 per patient per year. In addition, the patient has to take six
pills a day, instead of two.
When President Bush pledged $15 billion for AIDS in his state of the
union address last year, and hailed the plunge in drug prices to $305
a year, it was assumed that the US would be willing to buy generics
to make the money go further. However, Randall Tobias, the former chief
executive of the giant US drug company Eli Lilly and the man appointed
to head the president’s AIDS strategy, claims that generic drugs
manufactured overseas may not be made to the consistency and quality
of those manufactured in the US.
“It would be a disaster if we invested in drugs that were not consistent,
don’t have all the right components and we just don’t know
whether some of these do or do not,” he told the House of Representatives’
international relations committee earlier this month.
But WHO officials involved in approving the generic drugs defend their
system, pointing out that the drug regulatory agencies of France, Switzerland,
Canada, and South Africa are among those involved in the process.
Source: Guardian (UK)
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