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Occupiers spend millions on
private army of security men

Iraqi women find no end
to their suffering

US Major attacks
Guantánamo justice

Argentine president hands
over former torture center

Thailand’s anti-privatization
protesters show their strength

Darfur, world’s greatest
humanitarian disaster --
UN official

Violence still plagues Haiti
one month after the
ousting of Aristide

Afghanistan puts
elections on hold

Congolese troops snuff
out coup attempt

Chirac’s PM faces the sack after
voters turn against center-right

 

 

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Occupiers spend millions on private
army of security men

By Robert Fisk and Severin Carrell

London, UK, Mar. 28—An army of thousands of mercenaries has appeared in Iraq’s major cities, many of them former British and American soldiers hired by the occupying Anglo-American authorities and by dozens of companies who fear for the lives of their employees.

Many of the armed Britons are former SAS (Special Air Service) soldiers and heavily armed South Africans are also working for the occupation. “My people know how to use weapons and they’re all SAS,” said the British leader of one security team in southern Baghdad. “But there are people running around with guns now who are just cowboys. We always conceal our weapons, but these guys think they’re in a Hollywood film.”

There are serious doubts even within the occupying power about America’s choice to send Chilean mercenaries, many trained during General Pinochet’s vicious US backed dictatorship, to guard the Baghdad airport. Many South Africans are in Iraq illegally - they are breaking new laws, passed by the government in Pretoria, to control South Africa’s booming export of mercenaries. Many have been arrested on their return home because they do not have the license now required by private soldiers.

Casualties among the mercenaries are not included in the regular body count put out by the occupation authorities, which may account for the persistent suspicion among Iraqis that the US is underestimating its figures of military dead and wounded. Some British experts claim that private policing is now the UK’s biggest export to Iraq - a growth fueled by the surge in bomb attacks on coalition forces, aid agencies and UN buildings since the official end of the war in May last year.

Many companies operate from villas in middle-class areas of Baghdad with no name on the door. Some security men claim they can earn more than $147,000 a year; but short-term, high-risk mercenary work can bring much higher rewards. Security personnel working a seven-day contract in cities like Fallujah, can make $1,000 a day.

Although they wear no uniform, some security men carry personal identification on their flak jackets, along with their rifles and pistols.

Others refuse to identify themselves even in hotels, drinking beer by the pool, their weapons at their feet. In several hotels, guests and staff have complained that security men have held drunken parties and one manager was forced to instruct mercenaries in his hotel that they must carry their guns in a bag when they leave the premises. His demand was ignored.

One British company director, David Claridge of the security firm Janusian, has estimated that British firms have earned up to $1 billion from their contracts in Iraq - barely a year after the invasion of Iraq. One British-run firm, Erinys, employs 14,000 Iraqis as watchmen and security guards to protect the country’s oil fields and pipelines.

The use of private security firms has led to some resentment amongst the Department for International Development’s (DFID) aid workers - who fear it undermines the trust of Iraqi civilians. “DFID staff would prefer not to have this,” said one source. “It’s much easier for them to do their job without any visible security, but the security risks are great down there.”

One South African-owned firm, Meteoric Tactical Solutions, has a $50,000 contract with DFID which, it is understood, involves providing bodyguards and drivers for its most senior official in Iraq and his small personal staff.

Another British-owned company, ArmorGroup has an £876,000 contract to supply 20 security guards for the Foreign Office. That figure will rise by 50 per cent in July. The firm also employs about 500 Gurkhas to guard executives with the US firms Bechtel and Kellogg Brown & Root.

Opposition Members of Parliment Ps were shocked by the scale of the Government’s use of private firms to guard British civil servants, and claimed it was further evidence that the British army was too small to cope. Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat’s foreign affairs spokesman, said: “This suggests that British forces are unable to provide adequate protection and raises the vexed question of overstretch - particularly in light of the remarks by the Chief of the Defense Staff, last week that Britain couldn’t stage another operation on the scale of Iraq for another five years.”

Andrew Robathan, a Tory MP on the international development select committee and former SAS officer, said: “The Army doesn’t have the troops to provide static guards on this scale. Surely it would have been cheaper to have another battalion of troops providing guards.”

The UK’s largest private security firm in Iraq, Global Risk Strategies, is helping the coalition provisional authority and the Iraqi administration to draft new regulations. It is expecting to increase its presence from 1,000 to 1,200 staff this spring, and could reach 1,800 this year. However, aid charities are disturbed by the sums being spent on security, since DFID has diverted $1.5 million from its mainstream aid budget for Iraqi reconstruction.

Dominic Nutt, of Christian Aid, said: “This sticks in the craw. It’s right that DFID protects its staff, but this is robbing Peter to pay Paul.”

Source: Independent (UK)

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Iraqi women find no end to their suffering

By Victoria Firmo-Fontan

Baghdad, Iraq, Mar. 28— For two days, 19-year-old Bedur Ibrahim lay in the mortuary of the al-Kindi hospital. Her family refused to collect her body, and the city authorities failed to provide a pathologist’s report on her death.

Like all victims of violence here, Bedur’s remains should have been brought to the city morgue. But doctors in Baghdad have admitted that - at the request of her parents - she was buried without ceremony in a common grave at the municipal cemetery.

The reason was as shameful as it was routine. Like many other women in Baghdad since the Anglo-American invasion a year ago, Bedur had been abducted from her home by armed men, gang-raped and murdered.

Even the head of the city mortuary, Dr. Faqr Bakr, admitted to the Independent on Sunday that he knew her family would not have collected her body had it been sent to him.

Most women who suffer Bedur’s fate leave no record of their ordeal. But she lived just long enough after being shot to tell nurses at the hospital what had happened.

Hanan Abdullah, the al-Kindi nurse who looked after Bedur until she died of her extensive injuries, described “a very distressed human being” who was looking for comfort in her last hours because she had been shunned by those she cared for most - her own family. “She told me what happened. She said: ‘They took me at gun point from my home, raped me for 16 days and then they shot me.’”

Bedur was brought unconscious to the emergency department by the Khadmiya police, with no details of her family. The police officer told the hospital he would try to contact her father, but to no avail. “We operated on Bedur, and when she recovered consciousness she repeatedly asked for her mother,” said the nurse. “When she realised that she would never come, I think she gave up and let herself die.”

According to the Iraqi “honor” system, a woman who has been raped or abducted is considered to have brought shame upon her family. Under Saddam’s regime, a rape victim would usually be killed by a brother or father to restore family honour unless she agreed to marry her abductor.

The day after Saddam Hussein’s capture, the US proconsul Paul Bremer told Iraqis that there would be “no more suffering.” But Yannar Mohammed, chairwoman of the Iraqi Women’s Coalition (IWC), says that since the end of the war, about 350 women have been abducted. The few who survive their ordeal require protection from “honour” killings by their family. The IWC is about to open the first women’s shelter in Baghdad, with no financial help from the occupation authorities.

The US State Department criticises countries which fail to curb human trafficking, but the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq has treated the fate of kidnapped women as an isolated phenomenon.

Source: Independent (UK)

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US Major attacks Guantánamo justice
Lawyer says detainees face unfair trials

By Tania Branigan

Mar. 25— A US military lawyer representing a detainee at Guantánamo Bay said yesterday that his client could not receive justice under the existing system of military commissions.

“The system is not set up to provide even the appearance of a fair trial,” said Major Michael Mori, who was appointed by the Pentagon to defend the Australian detainee David Hicks.

“If there’s credible evidence, take him to an established justice system,” he said at a press conference in London given by lawyers acting for the prisoners. “If it’s not credible, that doesn’t justify changing the rules.”

Two of the four Britons still being held at the US detention camp, Martin Mubanga and Richard Belmar, have been named as potential defendants in military hearings. The cases against the other two, Moazzam Begg and Feroz Abbasi, have been suspended pending further talks with Britain.

The government has said all four men should be returned to Britain or given fair trials. It said it was not satisfied with the current commission rules.

Michael Ratner, the lawyer representing detainees in a US supreme court case next month, told the press conference: “The idea the British government would let them go forward [for trial] is shocking.”

The hearings are unlikely to proceed until the American supreme court has ruled on whether US courts should have jurisdiction over the American naval base in Cuba.

“There’s no such place in the world as a law-free zone,” said Ratner, the president of the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights.

But Major John Smith, a military lawyer and the Pentagon’s spokesman on the commissions, told the Guardian the detainees would receive “full and fair trials,” as President George Bush had promised.

He said: “The fact Major Mori is out there arguing his client’s case says a lot about the fact these will be fair trials and shows we have provided vigilant defense lawyers. I support his zealous defense but absolutely disagree with his assertions.”

He claimed Mori had misrepresented the system. “Different doesn’t always mean unfair,” he said. “It’s very easy to be critical of the process because people haven’t seen it in action.”

Earlier Mori said that labeling the defendants as terrorists had allowed the US government to lower its standards of justice. He said the system lacked checks and balances, such as a truly independent appeal process.

“The appointing authority, who approves the charges, is the same person who gets to rule on defense motions,” he said. “He is basically reviewing his own decisions ... it’s like letting the bowler call leg before wicket.

“When you use an unfair system, all you do is risk convicting the innocent and providing somebody who is truly guilty with a valid complaint to attack his conviction. It doesn’t help anyone.”

The major said he was afraid the prosecution would present hearsay evidence in statements taken from detainees in Cuba whom he would be unable to cross-examine.

Other lawyers expressed concern that after two years without access to lawyers detainees were likely to invent information. Three of the five released Britons have claimed to have signed false confessions after lengthy interrogation and solitary confinement.

The Pentagon has dismissed the fears saying evidence would be ruled out if it was not “of probative value to a reasonable person.”

Joseph Belmar, the father of one of the Britons still being held in Cuba, accused the US of trying to smear detainees.

The Daily Telegraph (UK) recently quoted a senior US official as saying that one Briton - subsequently identified by the Guardian as Richard Belmar -- had trained at a terrorist camp in 1998.

But Belmar said his son had never been outside the UK until he visited Pakistan in 2001. “All this is a lie,” he said. “They are trying to build up something against him so they can bring charges.”

Ratner said: “The government is trying to come up with anything they can to justify their position. Why don’t they charge people if they have information?”

Source: Guardian (UK)

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Argentine president hands over former
torture center

By Marcela Valente

Buenos Aires, Mar. 24 (IPS) -- In a ceremony outside of the Navy School of Mechanics (ESMA) — the most notorious detention center operated by Argentina’s 1976-1983 dictatorship — President Néstor Kirchner apologized in the name of the state for the silence that has surrounded the atrocities committed by the de facto regime.

On the 28th anniversary of the coup d’etat that gave rise to one of Latin America’s bloodiest dictatorships — some 30,000 dissidents were “disappeared,’’ according to human rights groups — Kirchner lived up to two promises he had made to human rights activists.

First, he ordered the army chief Wednesday to remove the portraits of former dictators Jorge Videla and Reynaldo Bignone from a gallery in the military school — a gesture demanded by activists for the past two decades.

In a second ceremony, held outside ESMA, he officially handed over the 19-hectare naval complex to local human rights organizations, which will convert it into a memorial museum.

Visibly moved after hearing speeches by young people who were born in ESMA when their parents were held there as political prisoners, Kirchner told the crowd that “I have come as the president, to apologize in the name of the Argentine state for having remained silent regarding such atrocities during 20 years of democracy.’’

“This is neither rancour nor hatred. But we do not want impunity; we want justice,’’ said the president.

“Those who committed such macabre and sinister acts’’ in clandestine detention centers like ESMA “have only one name: they are murderers, repudiated by all Argentines,’’ said Kirchner, to loud applause by the relatives of victims, represented by groups like the Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo.

Shortly before Emiliano Hueravillo, a young man who was born in ESMA, went up on stage to speak, he told IPS that his parents were abducted and taken to the detention center, and never heard from again.

His mother, Mirta Alonso, was seven-months pregnant when she was taken away. When he was four-months old, he was left at the Pedro de Elizalde hospital with a letter that gave his name and those of his parents.

Standing nearby, Karina Castro could hardly talk, she was so choked up. But she managed to tell IPS that her mother, Graciela Campolongo, was taken from her grandmother’s home in 1976. Although the three-year-old Graciela was there, she remembers nothing.

“I don’t know if she was at ESMA because we never heard anything more from her. But I came because I believe this place is a symbol for all of us,’’ said Karina.

At least 5,000 of the disappeared were held at some point in ESMA, where the officers’ club served as the torture center. Many of the political prisoners who survived their torture sessions and “interrogations’’ ended up being drugged and thrown alive into the sea from airplanes.

Juan Cabandié, 26, who like Emiliano was born in ESMA, said he only found out his real identity two months ago, thanks to the efforts of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo.

“I always knew my name was Juan,’’ he said, referring to the name his mother gave him when he was born in a clandestine detention center, and which he now uses.

Hundreds of babies born to the disappeared were stolen and raised by military families.

The ceremony outside of ESMA ended with three songs: ‘La Memoria’ (Memory) and ‘Todavía cantamos’ (We Are Still Singing) performed by Argentine singer-songwriters León Gieco and Víctor Heredia, respectively; and ‘Para la libertad’ (For Freedom), by Spanish singer-songwriter Joan Manuel Serrat.

Two hours before the ceremony, human rights groups hung banners with the photos of thousands of disappeared on the bars surrounding ESMA.

Mabel Gutiérrez, a member of the group Relatives of Political Prisoners and the Disappeared, read out a message that stated that “the president’s political decision and the 28 years of struggle by the human rights groups to keep alive the memory of what happened made it possible’’ for ESMA to become “the property of all Argentines’’ today.

Mario Villani, who attended Wednesday’s ceremonies, was one of a group of around 30 torture survivors who toured ESMA last Friday with Kirchner.

Villani spent time in five different torture centers during the dictatorship. The last place he was held in was ESMA, from which he was not released until 1981.

“I think I survived because I’m a physicist, and I know something about electronics, so they used me to fix TV sets and other household appliances that they stole,’’ he told IPS, referring to the furnishings that the armed forces took from the homes of political prisoners, which were stored in an ESMA warehouse.

Villani commented to IPS that when he “returned to the world of the living’’ — he refuses to say he was “freed’’ because the Navy continued to keep surveillance over him — he thought he would want to kill one of his torturers with his own hands.

But that hatred, he explained, was transformed into a desire to fight against impunity, and to make sure that those responsible for the human rights crimes were brought to justice.

For rights groups, the removal of the portraits of the former dictators from the walls of the Military School and the hand-over of ESMA were two victories in their long struggle for justice.

There were a few signs of resistance by the military to Wednesday’s events. The portraits of the former dictators, which were removed by General Roberto Bendini in the military school, were actually amplified photos in gold frames put up hastily Tuesday after the original oil paintings mysteriously vanished.

The ceremony itself, in which Kirchner stated that the democratic “order in Argentina must never again be subverted,’’ was boycotted by a small group of officers.

Although Bendini had suggested taking down the pictures prior to the anniversary of the coup, and in private, the president insisted on making it a public event to mark Mar. 24.

In addition, despite the fact that Navy chief, Admiral Jorge Godoy admitted this month for the first time that “aberrant’’ acts were committed in ESMA during the “dirty war,” several Navy officers opposed the hand-over of the naval school.

The center-left Kirchner, who belongs to the Justicialista (Peronist) Party, has taken a proactive stance on human rights since he took office last May.

The president, who was himself an activist in the Peronist Youth and who belongs to the generation of many of the disappeared leftists, said at his inauguration that he was coming to the government as “a son of the Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo.’’

“I form part of a decimated generation, which was castigated with painful absences,’’ said the president, who was himself briefly imprisoned twice during the dictatorship, and who saw many of his friends and fellow activists disappear.

On his first day in office, on May 26, Kirchner ordered 27 army generals, 13 admirals and 12 brigadier-generals into retirement, in an unprecedented purge of the military brass.

He later overturned a decree that blocked the extradition of former members of the military wanted by foreign courts in connection with the disappearance in Argentina of citizens from Spain, Italy and other countries.

At the president’s behest, Congress annulled last August the amnesty laws that in the late 1980s put an end to prosecutions of junior officers and soldiers who were deemed to be “following orders’’ when they committed human rights crimes.

After the amnesty laws were revoked, the courts reopened human rights cases that had been closed in the late 1980s.

Last Monday, a federal judge declared unconstitutional the 1990 pardons granted by then-president Carlos Menem (1989-1999) to the former members of the dictatorship’s ruling junta, who had already been tried and sentenced.

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Thailand’s anti-privatization protesters
show their strength

By Marwaan Macan-Markar

Bangkok, Thailand, Mar. 28 (IPS) -- Thailand’s rapidly expanding movement against privatization is placing its faith in democracy to prove it has the edge over the government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

At a public rally over the weekend here, which drew close to 10,000 supporters, activists reiterated a demand that has converted the government’s planned privatization of the state-owned power utility into a political hot potato.

The government should seek public approval of the privatization of the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) by holding a referendum, say the leaders of EGAT’s trade union, which has been at the vanguard of the anti-privatization drive.

If Thaksin is averse to a referendum, he can test the popularity of his privatization drive by making it an election campaign pledge, says the president of the EGAT union, Sirichai Mai-ngam.

“If the government is confident that it is doing the correct thing for the country, it should seek people’s support for its privatization policy at the next election,’’ Sirichai told IPS. ‘’But we don’t think it will get public support, since more and more people are with us.’’

Thaksin’s Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thai) party, which came to power in January 2001 following a massive victory at the polls, is due to face a national election in less than a year. During the past three years, Thaksin has continued to enjoy high levels of popularity despite a slew of government polices that faced a battery of criticism.

The demand for public participation in the decision to privatize EGAT appears to resonate beyond the world of labor unions, as demonstrated during Saturday’s rally that was held in a field close to one the country’s symbols of political and civil liberties, the Democracy Monument.

Throwing his weight behind the unionists is Sulak Sivaraksa, one of Thailand’s champions of grassroots causes and a trenchant critic of the political establishment.

The public should decide at a referendum if the privatization policies of the Thaksin administration are healthy for the country, Sulak asserted at the rally, which was held under the banner, ‘To Sell Or Not To Sell: Let the Public Decide’.

That the government can ill afford to ignore this snowballing issue stems not only from the fact that an election is coming up, but that the EGAT labor union has succeeded in sustaining the momentum of its drive against privatization for over a month, which is significant in the Thai labor scene.

Following its first show of strength on Feb. 23, when it took to the streets with close to 10,000 people, the union has held daily, unbroken protests, with one gathering attracting as many as 50,000 people. Support for the EGAT union has also come from the unions of 41 other state enterprises, labor rights activists from the private sector and representatives from an estimated 130 civil society organizations, ranging from consumer groups to environmentalists.

Even academics, students and non-governmental organizations championing the concerns of Thailand’s rural poor have lined up with the EGAT union.

Since Feb. 23, the government has issued mixed messages about its EGAT plans that are under fire. Thaksin, for instance, went from striking an uncompromising stance that he would not meet with union leaders to sitting with them for a 20-minute meeting in mid-March. But that brief encounter failed to resolve the growing differences between the two sides.

Bangkok has not budged from its declared motive to privatize EGAT, which not only monopolizes the country’s power sector but it is also the most profitable of Thailand’s state ventures. For the government, privatizing EGAT is part of a plan to convert state enterprises to private entities. By registering it as a public company in the stock market, the government was hoping to raise 1.8 billion US dollars.

That money, officials have argued, will go to pay for new projects to meet the country’s power needs, rather than having the state borrow money if EGAT remains a state utility. Retaining the status quo would only burden taxpayers and increase the public debt, their argument goes. But up against that are the counter-arguments. Critics say that consumers will be hit when the price of electricity goes up, that the new company will be a monopoly in the hands of private owners and that select people connected to the government will be able to gobble up the lucrative EGAT shares.

“There is no independent regulatory body in place to check on this EGAT deal,’’ Chuenchom Sangarasri Greacen, an energy researcher, pointed out during an interview. “A regulatory body is important to monitor possible manipulation of share prices and other abuses that can take place.’’

Attempts by the government to project itself as an appropriate alternative to an independent regulator are unacceptable, she said, “because we cannot trust the government.’’

Such suspicion arises from the backroom deals that enabled a few people with close links to the government to buy up large amounts of shares when another state-owned utility, the Petroleum Authority, was privatized earlier. Further objections to privatization range from the fate of the hydroelectric power plants currently under EGAT -- which if privatized would go to the new company that would now have the power to control water in the dams — and its having the power to infringe on private property to pursue its work.

“The government has been forced on the defensive due to the show of strength by the EGAT union and the arguments against privatization,’’ a foreign labor rights activist who spoke on condition of anonymity told IPS. “There appears no way out at the moment.’’

The government’s attempt to isolate the unions has thus far failed, he added. “Unless the government offers a deal, I don’t think the unions will stop their campaign. They are well organized and determined to stand their ground.’’

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Darfur, world’s greatest
humanitarian disaster -- UN official

Nairobi, Kenya, Mar. 22-- The war-torn Darfur region of western Sudan is the “world’s greatest humanitarian crisis,” comparable to the Rwandan genocide of 1994 in terms of human rights abuses, according to a top UN official.

Mukesh Kapila, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan, told reporters in Nairobi that the “vicious war” in Darfur had led to violations on a scale that was comparable in character to the Rwandan situation. “The only difference between Rwanda and Darfur now is the numbers involved,” he said.

The pattern of organized attacks on civilians and villages, abductions, killings and organized rapes by militias was getting worse by the day, he said, and could deteriorate even further. “One can see how the situation might develop without prompt [action]...all the warning signs are there.”

“I think some people are using the term ethnic cleansing and I would say that is not far off the mark,” he added. “I think the term is being used by certain people because it’s one group of people organizing themselves to do away with another group of people, and that’s a definition of ethnic cleansing.”

Kapila added that the systematic depopulation of the Darfur region resembled a “scorched earth policy. This is more than just a conflict, it is an organized attempt to do away with a group of people.”

In an attack on Feb. 27 in the Tawilah area of northern Darfur, 30 villages were burned to the ground, over 200 people killed and over 200 girls and women raped -- some by up to 14 assailants and in front of their fathers who were later killed. A further 150 women and 200 children were abducted.

Since a rebellion in the region emerged in February 2004, about 700,000 people have been displaced while another 110,000 have fled to neighboring Chad. Over 10,000 are estimated to have lost their lives.

For the last six weeks the refugees in Chad have been attacked almost daily by militias, known as Janjawid, who cross the porous border to steal their cattle. Within Darfur the Janjawid regularly steal humanitarian aid given to displaced people.

About three thousand Darfurians, mostly women and children, who managed to escape to Khartoum were subjected to shooting and tear gas by riot police two days ago. By Thursday, the 3,000 had “disappeared” from the camp they were staying at on the outskirts of the city, forced to flee once again.

Kapila urged UN member states to exert pressure to bring the perpetrators of the crimes in Darfur to justice. “The Member states of the UN should be heavily engaged in not only seeking political settlement in Darfur but also exerting pressure to bring justice. What is going on in Darfur today is tantamount to war crimes.”

“Those who are doing these sorts of things should be brought to justice....Sooner or later it is not just bringing the war to an end in Darfur that is required, but also bringing justice and redress for the victims.”

The government of Sudan has admitted arming Arab militias to fight the region’s two rebel movements, who are using the opportunity to get rich by stealing cattle and taking over the region’s grazing lands and scarce water sources from the Fur, Massalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups.

Meanwhile the militias, some of whom wear army uniforms, are reportedly being assisted by the army and paramilitary units known as the Popular Defense Forces.

Just this week Amnesty International said “this is not a situation where the central government has lost control. Men, women and children are being killed and villages are burnt and looted because the central government is allowing militias aligned to it to pursue what amounts to a strategy of forced displacement through the destruction of homes and livelihood of the farming populations of the region.”

AI said it had received information indicating that “the Sudan government is encouraging the actions of the Janjawid.”

Kapila warned that the Darfur situation threatens a Sudanese peace deal between the government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army, who are currently negotiating in Kenya. “How can a new settlement be found when a huge region of the country is up in flames?” he asked.

Source: UN Integrated Regional Information Networks

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Violence still plagues Haiti one month
after the ousting of Aristide

Compiled by John Lapp

March 31 (AGR)— Nearly one month after ousted president Jean-Bertrand Aristide was forced to flee Haiti under amid a suspicious coup , many of his followers say they’re still being harassed, threatened, and killed. This week, the bodies of five people who backed Aristide were found dumped in the capital -- some said as part of a brutal crackdown against those faithful to the fallen leader.

Among them was Joel Lafrance, 21, whose mother said she would like to remember him as the shy, handsome young man he was, not the morgue photographs of his blood-splattered corpse, wrists bound with steel wire. “His face was completely ripped apart. I was only able to recognize him from a birthmark on his foot,” said Marie Carmelle Saint-Hilaire in the teeming La Salines slum.

Five police officers are being held on suspicion of killing Lafrance and the four other slain Aristide supporters, though no charges have been filed, said the National Coalition for Haitian Rights.

Meanwhile, residents of La Salines, a traditional Aristide stronghold and home to about 40,000 people, are hoping they can halt future violence by cooperating with authorities. On Saturday, they turned over about 200 weapons -- mostly old and rusted rifles and pistols -- to French troops and local police as a peace gesture. But just a few meters away, three women broke into song, swaying their arms in the air and stomping as they sang: “Five more years for Aristide” and “Aristide’s blood is our blood.”

During a Friday funeral procession for the five slain men, several police officers opened fire on mourners, injuring five, according to Sonia Nozan, a 31-year-old community leader. The incident could not be confirmed.

These attacks come as Haiti’s new US-backed government wages its own score-settling with the old regime, announcing Friday it will block dozens of former Aristide officials from leaving the country. Those barred from leaving Haiti include former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune, ex-police chief Jocelyne Pierre, and the former head of the Central Bank Venel Joseph.

New Justice Minister Bernard Gousse told Associated Press the move was an “insurance policy” that will make sure the officials are available for investigations into embezzlement and other alleged crimes.

Some Caribbean leaders said they were angery with Latortue, who was not invited to the summit, because he was allowing rebels who include convicted assassins to walk free.

CARRICOM denies recognition to new government

The 15-nation Caribbean Community (CARRICOM) withheld recognition from Haiti’s US-backed interim government Saturday as leaders closed a summit renewing calls for a United Nations (UN) investigation into the ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Leaders said they would take up the issue of whether to recognize the government again at a summit in July in Grenada the carribian island of Grenada.

Several officials said the regional bloc was under enormous US pressure to recognize the new government, which was appointed after Aristide was forced to leave on Feb. 29 amid a popular uprising. The leaders also lamented recent statements by Haiti’s Prime Minister Gerard Latortue hailing rebels as “freedom fighters” and saying he was freezing participation in the regional bloc for its stance in bringing Aristide to Jamaica for temporary exile.

The participating Caribbean leaders issued a statement early Saturday saying “no action should be taken to legitimize the rebel forces.” They said while Haiti remains a “welcome partner” in the Caribbean Community, “there has been an interruption of the democratic process.”

“We do not give comfort to thugs and rebels,” said Ralph Gonsalves, the prime minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines. “What we have done is to recognize a state, but we do not recognize governments and interim administrations.”

The leaders said they would ask the UN General Assembly or Secretary-General Kofi Annan to oversee an investigation into Aristide’s claims he was abducted at gunpoint by US agents when he left Feb. 29 as rebels threatened to attack Haiti’s capital. Delegates said the bloc wants the General Assembly to investigate Aristide’s departure rather than the Security Council, where the United States or France could veto the proposal.

US officials claim they organized his departure on a charter to Central African Republic at his own request and probably saved his life.

US threatens Jamaica over Aristide’s stay

Randall Robinson, author and founder of Tran Africa; is a close friend of Aristede and was on the delegation that returned the ousted president to the Caribbean. Robinson revealed on Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now! radio program that Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice is telling the Jamaican government that if Aristide is not immediately expelled from the country and if anything happens to American forces in Haiti, consequences would be exacted against Jamaica in full force by the US.

Aristide is currently staying in Jamaica to visit his family and is deciding where to take up permanent residence. He has not decided whether to accept permanent asylum in South Africa, his spokesman said yesterday, denying reports an asylum deal had been reached.

US State Deaprtment accuses Aristide of drug trafficking

Concern over the Aristide government’s involvement in illegal drugs trafficking has been cited as one of the main reasons why the US was keen to see the Haitian leader leave.

The annual US State Department report assessing the cooperation of foreign governments in the war against drug trafficking, published on Mar. 1, strongly criticizes the Aristide government.

Launching the report, a top State Department narcotics official said some members of the Aristide government had links to the drug trade. The state department report quotes frequent allegations that “members of the government and the Haiti National Police, most notably the Presidential Security Unit and the Palace Guard, were actively involved in drug trafficking.”

Another recent US Narcotics Control Report said about eight percent of illegal drugs entering the United States had passed through Haiti.

Aristide supporters deny this claim and in turn accuse the rebel forces of being backed by drug money.

The military regime which overthrew Aristide in September 1991 was reported to be in the pay of Colombian drugs cartel bosses, with the head of police Michel Francois allegedly controlling the trade.

One of the rebel leaders, Guy Philippe, had his US visa revoked because of involvement in the drugs trade when he was police commissioner of the north coast city of Cap-Haitian, and was indited for leading a death squad. Another prominent rebel, Jodel Chamblain, is known to have been close to drug lords in the early 1990s, when he was one of the leaders of the Front for the Advancement of Progress of the Haitian People (FRAPH) paramilitaries.

Chamblain vows to kill Aristide

Jodel Chamblain, a former army officer convicted of murder, said in an interview late Saturday at a plush, well-guarded hilltop retreat just outside Port-au-Prince that he sees himself as a patriotic leader of the Haitian people on a mission to stamp out Aristide’s following.

Chamblain, who returned from a decade in exile in neighboring Dominican Republic to lead last month’s uprising, accuses Aristide of ordering thugs to murder his seven-months pregnant wife in 1991 and vows he will never let another like him lead Haiti.

Chamblain is suspected of taking part in a 1987 election massacre in which 34 voters were killed. He was convicted in 1995 in absentia of the 1993 murder of a prominent pro-Aristide businessman who was dragged out of a church service and shot in the head.

The now defunct FRAPH paramilitary he co-founded in 1993 was blamed for 3,000 of the estimated 5,000 killings in the three years after a military junta ousted Aristide in 1991.

Chamblain and rebels in control of swaths of Haiti’s rural north are able to move around unhindered by a UN-backed multinational military force and local police.

Sources: AP, BBC NEWS, Reuters, Democracy Now!, Nigerian Guardian

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Afghanistan puts elections on hold

By Nilima Fox

Mar. 29 — President Hamid Karzai postponed Afghanistan’s first post-Taliban national elections until September yesterday because the United Nations urged more time was needed to disarm warlords that it called a leading threat to democracy.

UN leaders had warned a delay of the vote may be necessary because officials, security forces, and candidates were ill-prepared to register up to 10.5 million eligible Afghans in time for June elections.

Delaying the vote means Afghanistan can run the presidential and the parliamentary elections simultaneously, President Karzai said. “We wanted to have both elections together,” he added. “That’s also the desire of the people.”

Jean Arnault, the UN special representative to Afghanistan, welcomed the decision, saying it would allow Nato to expand its peacekeeping operations beyond Kabul. Arnault called on the Afghan government to guarantee a level playing field for challengers to President Karzai and a rash of new political parties. He said, “these elections will be free and fair depends on what happens between now and September.”

So far, the UN has registered only 1.6 million eligible voters, all of them in urban centers. It remains unclear how UN workers plan to execute a planned May push to give a further eight million a chance to sign up, especially in remote provinces, where President Karzai’s government holds little sway and fears of violence are high.

The Afghan government said it will disarm 40,000 irregular Afghan militia soldiers and round up heavy weapons in time for the vote to reduce the risk of voter intimidation. More than 200 people have died in violence around the country this year.

But the UN, the US-led military coalition, and the Afghan government are still working on plans to protect election workers from Taliban-led militants plaguing the south and east.

Hamid Agha, a Taliban spokesman, said the delay was “a humiliation and defeat” for President Karzai and his US backers and claimed the elections would be fixed. “They want to divert the attention of Afghans from the importance of jihad,” he siad.

Source: Independent (UK)

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