Women’s march goes global

By Jim Lobe

Washington, DC, Apr. 26 (IPS) — Women from Albania to Zambia joined hundreds of thousands of men and women from the United States on Apr. 25 to charge that the George W. Bush administration’s assault on women’s reproductive health rights is costing lives worldwide.

US policies are, in particular, raising maternal mortality rates, due to botched abortions and shortfalls in funding for family-planning programs, for which Washington was once by far the world’s most important donor, said the 200 foreign activists from 57 countries who joined in the March for Women’s Lives.

“USAID [United States Agency for International Development] has reduced aid in our region,” said Teresa Lanza, director of Catholics for the Right to Decide, in Bolivia. “Every year, maternal mortality is going up and up and up [in Bolivia]. I really hope this finishes soon,” she added in a statement.

Her remarks before the Apr. 25 march, in which some 750,000 people were estimated to have taken part, were echoed by other representatives of agencies from developing countries, who said they came to Washington to add their voices to those protesting the administration’s anti-abortion agenda.

“Unfortunately, what American [women] and women and men living in poor countries seem to have in common is a systematic and organized assault on our reproductive rights,” said India-born Anu Kumar, executive vice president of Ipas, a North Carolina-based agency that has worked for 30 years in developing countries to make safe abortions available to women.

“Instead of reaching out to help the world’s women,” she said in a statement, “the [Bush administration] has chosen to slap their hands.”

Ipas was one of two US-based groups that refused to renounce their pro-choice activities overseas after Bush reinstated the so-called “Global Gag Rule” immediately after taking office in 2001.

The rule bans non-governmental agencies abroad that receive US foreign aid from being involved in any abortion-related activities — including lobbying local governments to ease anti-abortion legislation — even if they use their own money. By refusing to tell their overseas partners to stop abortion-related activities, Ipas forfeited some $2 million in funding, according to Kumar.

The impact of the Gag Rule worldwide has been devastating for women, according to the administration’s critics. Agencies working in 29 countries have lost funding, not just for abortion counselling, but also for many other health services, from immunizations to AIDS testing and prenatal care, according to Ipas.

In 16 of those countries, USAID has ceased providing contraceptives, making it virtually certain that more women there will suffer unwanted pregnancies.

According to the United Nations, some 70,000 women worldwide die from unsafe or botched abortions each year, while another 500,000 die from for preventable pregnancy or birth-related problems, usually due to a shortfall in funding for family-planning programs.

While annual US aid for family planning has remained constant during Bush’s tenure, according to Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority, about one-half of the total, $200 million, is being spent on programs to promote abstinence — a focus that most public-health experts agree has generally proven ineffective.

Moreover, the administration has suspended $34 million approved by Congress for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) — the world’s most important provider of family-planning aid and advice — each of the past three years.

The White House claims that, by providing some unrelated technical assistance to China’s Health Ministry, which, in turn, has provided help to some districts that still use coercive techniques to promote abortions or sterilizations, the agency was indirectly violating a US law that forbids any aid for coercive birth-control programs.

Taken aback by the suspension of aid to UNFPA, members of the European Union (EU) pledged to increase their own funding to help bridge what they called the “decency gap.”

“Reproductive health is seen as a very important matter in Europe,” said Elfriede Harth, the European representative for Catholics for a Free Choice (CFC), who stressed that the US aid was still sorely missed.

“If Europeans could vote [in November’s US presidential election], they would certainly vote George Bush out of office,” said Harth, who came from France to take part in Sunday’s March. “Women around the world will be very, very grateful,” she added in a news release.

Application of the Gag Rule, according to Kumar, is hitting the world’s poorest countries — most of them in Africa — the hardest. “As a result of this policy, clinics are being forced to shut down, staff is being laid off, and contraceptives, including condoms to prevent HIV infection, are hard to find in places of high need like Zambia and Kenya,” she said.

In the latter, two leading family-planning agencies were forced to close five clinics and cut up to one-third of their staff. One of the clinics had served a crowded slum area of Nairobi since 1984, providing sexually transmissible infection (STI) screening and treatment, family planning, pre and post-natal obstetric services and infant care.

The Bush administration has also found itself in the ironic position of allying itself in international forums with the most conservative and fundamentalist Islamist governments in the world on issues of abortion and reproductive health rights, leading critics to charge that it is itself propounding fundamentalist views in conflict with basic US constitutional notions of the right to privacy and the separation of church and state.

Noting the Vatican’s alliance with fundamentalist Muslims, and now with the Bush administration, on the same issues, CFC President Frances Kissling said, “It is sometimes hard for Catholics, who are overwhelmingly pro-choice on all reproductive health issues, to call their own religious leaders fundamentalists.

“But the fact is that every form of fundamentalism has as one of its central tenets the control of women’s lives, especially over reproduction,” she added in a statement. “No other religion has blanket prohibitions against contraception for married couples and against abortion for all reasons, including when a woman’s life is in danger.”

Given the ongoing scandal here over the sexual abuse of boys by Catholic priests, she noted, “The Catholic Church is in no position to preach.”

Israeli political prisoner released

By Jack Cohen-Joppa and Alison Dellit

Apr. 29 — As he walked out the prison door on Apr. 21, the thumping beat of a police helicopter overhead, the shouts from the press and the cheers, and jeers of demonstrators just outside the massive gate may have prevented Mordechai Vanunu from hearing the flutter of 18 white doves taking flight.

These living symbols of peace, one for each year of his life lived behind bars, were set free by the international gathering of supporters to celebrate the whistleblower’s freedom.

Vanunu worked as a technician at Israel’s Dimona nuclear facility from 1976 to 1985. In a 1986 interview with the British Sunday Times, Vanunu revealed evidence that Israel possessed and produced nuclear weapons. Israel, which to date has refused to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, has never confirmed or denied the information.

Later that year, Vanunu was kidnapped by Israel’s secret service, Mossad, in Rome. After a secret trial in Israel, he was sentenced to 18 years’ imprisonment for treason and espionage.

On his release, Vanunu was restricted to living in a particular address and prevented from leaving the city of Jaffa at all, forbidden to talk to foreigners at all, denied his passport, forbidden to talk to anyone about his work at the plant, and forbidden to enter embassies or airports.

Nevertheless, he was not cowed. “I am Mordechai Vanunu. I am proud and happy to do what I did,” he told the crowd outside the prison.

Hostility to Vanunu is very high. As his car pulled out of the prison area, it was pelted with eggs and hit by fists and boots. On Apr. 23, the English edition of Maariv Online held a poll on what should be done with Vanunu, one of the options was “killed.” Due to protest, the site changed the poll to “Is Vanunu a hero or a traitor?” Nearly 60percent voted for “traitor.”

Given this, it was matter of some concern that Vanunu’s address was run in the press. Under pressure from supporters, the Israeli government announced on Apr. 22 that Vanunu would be able to speak to media and foreigners, as long as he did not discuss his work at the plant. Vanunu was also allowed to stay at a church until Apr. 25.

When asked what measures had been taken to ensure his safety, Israeli justice minister Tomy Lapid explained none were. “He’s surrounded by at least 100 radicals who are worshipping him so I’m sure they’ll take care of his safety,” Lapid said.

Vanunu has appealed to Norway to give him a passport on humanitarian grounds.

Source: Green Left Weekly

Venezuela to prohibit transgenic crops

By Jason Tockman

Caracas, Venezuela, Apr. 21 — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Frias has announced that the cultivation of genetically modified crops will be prohibited on Venezuelan soil, possibly establishing the most sweeping restrictions on transgenic crops in the Western Hemisphere. Though full details of the administration’s policy on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are still forthcoming, the statement by President Chavez will lead most immediately to the cancellation of a contract that Venezuela had negotiated with the US-based Monsanto Corporation.

Before a recent international gathering of supporters in Caracas, President Chavez criticized genetically engineered crops as contrary to the interests and needs of the nation’s farmers and farmworkers. He then zeroed in on Monsanto’s plans to plant up to 500,000 acres of transgenic soybeans in Venezuela.

“I ordered an end to the project,” said President Chavez, upon learning that transgenic crops were involved. “This project is terminated.”

President Chavez emphasized the importance of food sovereignty and security — required by the Venezuelan Constitution — as the basis of his decision. Instead of allowing Monsanto to grow its transgenic crops, these fields will be used to plant yuca, an indigenous crop, Chavez explained. He also announced the creation of a large seed bank facility to maintain indigenous seeds for peasants’ movements around the world.

The international peasants’ organization Via Campesina, representing more than 60 million farmers and farmworkers, had brought the issue to the attention of the Chavez Administration when it learned of the contract with Monsanto. According to Rafael Alegria, secretary for international operations of Via Campesina, both Monsanto and Cargill are seeking authorization to produce transgenic soy products in Venezuela.

“The agreement was against the principles of food sovereignty that guide the agricultural policy of Venezuela,” said Alegria when informed of the President’s decision. “This is a very important thing for the peasants and indigenous people of Latin America and the world.”

Alegria has good reason to be concerned. With a long history of social and environmental problems, Monsanto won early international fame with its production of the chemical Agent Orange — the Vietnam War defoliant linked to miscarriage, tremors, and memory loss, to which over a million people were exposed. More recently, the company has been criticized for side-effects that its transgenic crops and bovine growth hormone (rBGH) are believed to have on human health and the environment.

Closer to home in Venezuela, Monsanto manufactures the pesticide glyphosate, which is used by the neighboring Colombian government as part of its Plan Colombia offensive against coca production and rebel groups. The Colombian government aerially sprays hundreds of thousands of acres, destroying legitimate farms and natural areas like the Putomayo rainforest, and posing a direct threat to human health, including that of indigenous communities.

“If we want to achieve food sovereignty, we cannot rely on transnationals like Monsanto,” said Maximilien Arvelaiz, an advisor to President Chavez. “We need to strengthen local production, respecting our heritage and diversity.”

Alegria hopes that Venezuela’s move will serve as encouragement to other nations contemplating how to address the issue of GMOs.

“The people of the United States, of Latin America, and of the world need to follow the example of a Venezuela free of transgenics,” he said.

Source: Venezuelanalysis.com