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Guantanamo military commissions continue
down rocky path
By Jim Lobe
Washington, DC, Nov. 8 (OneWorld) – While Americans spent
the latter part of last week absorbing the implications of President
George W. Bush ’s reelection, human-rights observers at the first
of the long-awaited military tribunals of terrorism suspects at the
Guantanamo Bay naval base said their fears of an arbitrary process appear
increasingly well-founded.
By the end of the week, New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) reiterated
its call for the tribunals to be dissolved and for the administration
to instead bring any prosecutions before the federal courts of court-martial
that are subject to military law, instead of the ad hoc procedures which,
according to major international rights groups, fall far short of international
standards for minimum due process.
It noted that the tribunal’s three commissioners – who are
supposed to decide the fate of those brought before them – had
grappled over three days with testimony regarding the elementary laws
of war and international criminal justice for which none of them had
any training or experience. This was particularly true, according to
HRW, for the two members of the tribunal who have had no legal training
at all.
“It’s astonishing that the United States should try a case
of historic importance with officials who are struggling to grasp basic
legal concepts,” said James Ross, HRW’s senior legal advisor,
who is the group’s observer at the hearings. “Real courts
with real judges should be trying these complex cases, not tribunals
started from scratch.”
Observers from other human-rights groups that have been permitted to
monitor the proceedings expressed similar concerns. Both Amnesty International
and Human Rights First (HRF), formerly Lawyers Committee for Human Rights,
have observers who are filing daily reports on the proceedings that
are posted on their respective websites (www.amnesty.org and www.humanrightsfirst.org.)
Amnesty International said one of the most dramatic moments of the past
week came when the prosecution attempted to admit the record of one
defendant’s Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT) into the commission’s
record.
CSRTs, three-hour hearings that began July 30 after the US Supreme Court
ruled that detainees could not be held indefinitely without a chance
to challenge their detention in an independent legal process, have so
far been conducted for 104 detainees who have been denied, however,
the right to call witnesses or be represented by an attorney.
“Amnesty International has pointed out that these tribunals in
no way represent a substitute for full and proper judicial review, which
none of the Guantanamo detainees has had more than four months after
the [Supreme Court’s] Rasul decision,” Amnesty said. “Indeed,
the organization has expressed its deep concern that the CSRT process
may have been devised as an attempt by the government to narrow the
scope of any judicial review.”
While the commission put off a decision on whether to admit the CSRT
record into evidence – and delayed the trial of the defendant in
question, Australian David Hicks, from January until March – the
week’s proceedings did not inspire confidence in the fairness of
the commissions which have been controversial since they were first
announced in November, 2001.
The Bush administration has insisted from the start that suspected terrorists
captured on the battlefield were not entitled to protections guaranteed
to prisoners of war (POWs) under the Geneva Convention. Under the Convention,
POWS must not only be treated humanely but may also challenge the grounds
for their detention to an independent body.
In a June decision, a majority of six justices of the US Supreme Court
ruled that the 600 foreign terror suspects held at Guantanamo were at
least entitled to lawyers and the chance to challenge their detention
before an independent tribunal although it was vague about precisely
what such a tribunal should consist of.
The Pentagon has taken advantage of that vagueness, both by establishing
the CSRTs which virtually all legal experts believe fall far short of
the Court’s minimum requirements for independence and by proceeding
with the military commissions against selected terror suspects.
In its first hearings late last summer, the commissions were assailed
by observers for, among other things, providing what observers called
grossly inadequate interpretation services, as well as insufficient
support and resources for defense attorneys.
Defense attorneys also objected to the presumed bias by some of the
six commissioners to the tribunal who had played some role in the apprehension
or detention of the defendants in Afghanistan and asked that they be
excused. Of the six, only one, Col. Peter Brownback III, is a trained
attorney.
Last month, Gen. John D. Altenburg, Jr. (ret.), the Military Commission
Appointing Authority, agreed to remove three members of the commission
in three pending cases. In two of those, he said, he would replace the
excused commissioners with new appointees, but he added he would not
do so with respect to the case involving Hicks and Salim Hamdan, who
allegedly served as a former driver and bodyguard for al-Qaida chief
Osama bin Laden .
That ruling raised new questions about the proceedings’ fairness
because, under the rules, a two-thirds vote of commissioners is necessary
for a conviction. In the case of a standard, five-member commission
(plus one alternate), that rule would require a four-vote majority.
In the case of a three-member commission, on the other hand, only two
commissioners are needed to convict, significantly increasing the prosecution’s
advantage.
“It’s good that Gen. Altenburg has acted to address the real
appearance of bias,” said HRF’s Deborah Pearlstein after the
decision was released, “but it seems that justice is advancing
one step forward and two steps backward at Guatanamo.” She noted
that Altenburg had provided no explanation for not appointing a full
panel in the Hicks and Hamdan cases, a point Amnesty said suggested
retaliation against the two defendants’ attorneys for mounting
an aggressive defense.
These concerns have now been compounded by the past week’s proceedings,
including indications that the two non-lawyer commissioners in the Hicks
and Hamdan cases have been unable to grasp basic legal concepts.
HRW noted that the two contested the meaning of ex post facto laws –
laws that make criminal actions that were not crimes when they were
committed – and the requirement that criminal charges contain a
specified criminal offense. At one point, one commission suggested he
had little concern than Hicks could be charged with conspiracy to commit
a war crime even if such a crime does not now exist under the laws of
war.
The group also noted that commission members appeared unfamiliar with
the meaning of such basic concepts as an “unprivileged belligerent”
– a civilian who takes up arms – and the difference between
an international and a non-international armed conflict under the laws
of war. Both concepts are critical to establishing jurisdiction over
the defendants.
“The hearings in the Hicks case,” said Ross, “resembled
an introductory law school class. A man whose fate is hanging in the
balance should not be tried by judges unfamiliar with the law.”
Moreover, commission members appeared to reject out of hand defense
motions to allow expert testimony from six international law scholars
competent to testify about the legal issues for consideration by the
commission.
When Brownback, the presiding officer, disagreed with a basic point
of international law raised by one defense lawyer, he dismissed him
with the remark, “No way, sunshine,” a phrase he used against
the same attorney later in the hearing. HRW suggested that such conduct
is unlikely to enhance confidence in the tribunal.
For its part, Amnesty cited two exchanges between the commissioners
and defense attorneys which it said “illustrated the arbitrary
nature of these proceedings.”
After the Taliban, women still suffer
By Declan Walsh
Kandahar, Afghanistan, Nov. 7 — Eyes darting back and forth,
crouching against a wall, Anar Gul has the distressed look of a chained
animal. That’s because, until recently, she lived like one.
Pulling back her burqa, the nervous mother told how she had been tortured
for 20 days by her opium-addicted former husband in Kandahar, southern
Afghanistan.
Humiliated by their recent divorce, he lured Anar to their one-room
house, bound her in rusty chains and flung her into a dark alcove. For
almost three weeks she cowered in the gloom, unable to move, eating
scraps from a dog bowl and enduring relentless beatings.
Her former husband used the flat of a large knife, an electric cable,
or his bare hands. “Like this,” said Anar, gripping her ears
and violently banging her head against the wall, “until I was unconscious.”
Her savior arrived in a blue whirl. Alerted by neighbors, Kandahar’s
chief policewoman, Malalai Kakar, burst into the high-walled compound
carrying a pistol and a truncheon beneath her burqa, and found a weeping
Anar half-driven to madness. She dispensed instant justice.
“I beat the husband,” Kakar said, “first in the house,
then in the police station: punch, kick, slap, I was so angry. If I’d
used my stick, he would have died.”
Much has changed for many Afghan women since the fall of the Taliban
regime three years ago. In theory they now have the same rights as men
to work and go to school. Last month’s election was vaunted as
a leap forward. Women accounted for 40 percent of voters and the first
ballot was cast by a 19-year-old woman.
“Freedom is powerful,” boasted President George Bush afterwards.
“Think about a society in which young girls couldn’t go to
school and their mothers were whipped in the public square.”
Yet in the Pashtun tribal belt of the arch-conservative south, the reality
is very different. There are few signs of the changes that have swept
through the capital Kabul and other northern cities. Here, girls still
don’t go to school, and their mothers are still being whipped.
The United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF, says 80 percent of
girls aged between seven and 12 in Kandahar province do not attend school,
compared with 45 percent of boys. The comparable figures in Kabul are
33 percent and 14 percent. Teachers in the province’s handful of
girls’ schools say they regularly receive death threats.
The election was no feminist glory either. While half the women in the
north voted, only 20 percent did so in Kandahar. In neighboring Uruzgan
province their turnout was just 2 percent.
“It’s not like the Taliban put a cage around women and took
it with them when they left,” said Rangina Hamidi, 27, an Afghan
American who returned to run an aid project for women. “A lot of
women led the same life before the Taliban, after them and they still
do today.”
Those in rural areas are invisible, hidden inside high-walled compounds.
Hamidi visited one household where six women — spanning three generations
— had not stepped outside their front door for the three years.
“The understanding is that you walk in the door on your wedding
day and leave in a coffin,” she said.
These traditions remain unchallenged because of the perilous security
situation. Skirmishes between Taliban and US-led forces continue in
the desert and mountain ranges near Kandahar. Foreigners have fled,
taking with them any modernizing influences.
“Even to talk about women’s rights can be very dangerous,”
said Nisha Varia, of Human Rights Watch. “The conditions are too
difficult for most women, and consequences can be violent.”
The worst cases of domestic violence reach the desk of Kakar, 35, who
leads investigations related to women because Afghan culture forbids
one man from approaching another’s wife.
On her desk lie a pile of Polaroid photographs of women who have been
bludgeoned, raped or shot.
“We don’t hear about most of them,” she said. “People
don’t talk about it. Sometimes I feel there are no human rights
in Afghanistan.”
The police catch only a small number of the perpetrators. Even then
hopes of justice are low. Those linked to warlords enjoy virtual immunity
from prosecution, and anyone who is sent to prison can easily buy their
freedom from corrupt jailers.
“If you get sentenced to eight years, you can be out after eight
months,” said fellow officer Mohammed Dost.
He believes that a quarter of Afghan men beat their wives. “Illiterate
men do not know the value of a female, and if a man does not know the
value of something he mistreats it.”
The policewoman, who has six children, personifies the contradictions
and halting progress of Kandahari women. The Taliban forced her into
exile. Then during the recent elections she guarded the city stadium
where the zealots stoned and flogged “immoral” women.
She travels the area with her younger brother, a fellow officer, to
“protect her honor.” Clad in her burqa she beats women accused
of illicit sexual encounters. “That is our culture,” she said.
There is hope, however. Ten women study alongside 600 men at Kandahar
University, a former male bastion.
Zora Koshan, 20, a returned refugee from Pakistan, is one. Koshan, who
spurns the burqa, said: “Many women are under the control of their
husbands. They need their permission to do anything. We want an education,
to be able to work and bring money to our families.”
Other women have been emboldened by circumstance. Widow Bibi Gul, 60,
gathered her two daughters in a quiet room to tell her story. After
her husband died, said Gul, she refused to surrender the deeds to their
house, so her two youngest sons drove her into the desert and threatened
to kill her.
“They pulled me out of the car and beat me,” she said. “They
said they would throw me into a well.”
Gul’s daughter Aailia, 37, a nurse, showed a large bald patch on
her head which she said had been made when the brothers attacked her.
Aailia’s sister Anar, who suffered at the hands of her opium addict
former husband spoke last, telling how she left him because he took
a second wife. His torture left her partially blind, she said.
Now the three women live together. Talking to a male Western reporter
could provoke even more abuse, but they no longer care.
Her mother nodded towards three blue burqas piled on her bed and said:
“I want to pour oil on top and set them on fire. I hate them.”
Source: The Observer (UK)
Uruguay referendum says emphatic ‘no’
to water privatization
By Raúl Pierri
Montevideo, Uruguay, Nov. 1 (IPS) — Uruguayan voters
not only made a dramatic shift to the left in the presidential and
parliamentary elections Oct. 31, but also approved a constitutional
reform that defines water as a public good and guarantees civil society
participation at every level of management of the country’s water
resources.
While at least 51 percent of voters elected the country’s first
leftist president on Oct. 31, more than 60 percent came out in favor
of introducing a constitutional clause stating that “water is
a natural resource essential to life” and that access to piped
water and sanitation services are “fundamental human rights.”
The referendum, promoted by the National Commission for the Defense
of Water and Life, made up of the trade union representing the employees
of the state-owned water and sewerage company Obras Sanitarias del
Estado (OSE) and several civil society organizations, needed the support
of at least 50 percent of voters to pass. Socialist president-elect
Tabaré Vázquez, the candidate of the left-wing Broad
Front coalition, was one of the advocates of the constitutional reform.
The groups underline that the constitutional amendment “Secures
the protection and sovereignty of this natural resource against attacks
from transnational corporations transcending the national limits of
Uruguay and setting a strong political precedent for the whole region.”
It will be up to the new parliament elected Oct. 31 (in which the
Broad Front will have an absolute majority in both houses) to draft
legislation outlining the mechanisms for implementing the constitutional
reform. When that occurs, piped water will be supplied in this South
American country of 3.3 million “exclusively and directly by
state-owned legal entities,” and concessions to private firms
will be cancelled.
The Spanish companies Uragua and Aguas de la Costa, which have contracts
to supply water in the southeastern department (province) of Maldonado,
will apparently be hit hardest by the reform. The proposed cancellation
of concessions drew criticism from the conservative governing Colorado
Party, the business community and sectors of the center-right National
Party, who argued that the constitutional reform would scare off investment
and “authorize expropriation, in the style of totalitarian regimes.”
But both Vázquez and Senator Danilo Astori, the future economy
minister, gave assurances during the campaign that the reform would
not be retroactive, and implied that the Spanish companies would not
be affected. They made an effort to calm the fears of those firms
on a visit to Europe earlier this year.
The president-elect, told business leaders during the campaign that
the reform would not affect the foreign companies already providing
water services here.
“The legal consultations that we have carried out within our
political grouping establish that the new criteria, if the reform
is approved, will not be applied retroactively for obvious reasons,”
said Vázquez. However, “not only the Uruguayan state will
have to live up to the previously assumed commitments, but the companies
as well,” he added.
But members of the National Commission for the Defense of Water and
Life and of the Broad Front itself said previous contracts with private
companies would be voided by the constitutional amendment.
“The debate on retroactivity is misleading,” the Broad Front
delegate to the Commission, Carlos Coitiño, told IPS. “The
concept of retroactivity has nothing to do with the text of the referendum.
Once the reform is approved, the current concessions will simply be
voided.”
Jurist Guillermo García Duchini, a co-author of the draft constitutional
reform, commented to IPS that the very contracts themselves state
that the concessions can be suspended by the state if they go against
the public interest. And that is the situation here, said the legal
expert, because the reform says that the country’s water resources
form part of the public domain, and must thus be administered in such
a way that “social concerns take precedence over economic interests.”
If the concessions are cancelled, the firms are to be indemnified.
But they will only receive reimbursement on investments, not compensation
for lost future earnings.
But “The concession to Uragua will be suspended due to lack of
compliance with the contract, and the concession to Aguas de la Costa
because it failed to put social concerns before economic interests.
It’s true that there is no retroactivity. But approval of the
reform makes the activities of these companies unconstitutional,”
said Ortiz.
Aguas de la Costa belongs to the Spanish Aguas de Barcelona, which
is in turn an affiliate of Suez-Lyonnaise des Eaux. Since the firm
began to operate in the region of Maldonado in 1992, rates have climbed
to seven times the cost of water services in the rest of the country.
In January 2002, at the peak of the tourist season in the southern
hemisphere summer, OSE recommended that the people of Maldonado boil
the water distributed by that Spanish firm before drinking it, as
fecal e-coli bacteria had been detected in the water.
Activists say that in just a few years time, a handful of companies
will control almost 75 percent of all water for human consumption
in the world, as an increasing number of governments privatize water
and sewerage services. The biggest firms are the French Vivendi-Générale
des Eaux and Suez-Lyonnaise des Eaux, which control 40 percent of
the market and provide services to some 110 million people in more
than 100 countries.
The International Monetary Fund and World Bank have actively encouraged
the privatization of water resources in the developing South, making
privatization a condition for granting loans, says Canadian activist
Maude Barlow in her book, Blue Gold.
Mass movement on Bolivian ascendancy
By Frederico Fuentes
Nov. 3 — Facing extradition proceedings to stand trial
in Bolivia for the deaths of 67 people during the October 2003 popular
uprising that forced his resignation, former Bolivian president Gonzalo
Sanchez de Lozada told the Oct. 22 Miami Herald that his country was
in the grip of a “lynch-mob environment.”
Sanchez de Lozada’s sentiment was echoed in the following days
by representatives of the big foreign-owned oil and gas companies
operating in Bolivia, the pro-business civic committees in the cities
of Santa Cruz and Tarija, and by Carlos Mesa, Sanchez de Lozada’s
vice-president and successor as president.
Branko Marinkovic, president of Santa Cruz’s Business Federation,
said: “Let us be frank, in Bolivia, we can no longer talk of
a crisis, but rather chaos... We live in a chaotic situation which
can only have one solution: confrontation and disintegration.”
These comments have been provoked by three important events that have
taken place in Bolivia during October.
On Oct. 3 a memorandum of understanding was signed by President Mesa
and the cocaleros (coca-leaf growers) in the Chapare region, near
the city of Cochabamba — known as the Tropic of Cochabamba. The
agreement allows a temporary halt to the forced eradication of coca
crops and the cultivation of 7,907 acres of coca crops in the Chapare.
Under the MOU, this land will be divided between the 23,000 members
of the Six Federations of the Tropic of Cochabamba, the main coca
growers’ federation.
During the truce, a study on the demand for legal coca consumption
will be carried out, as requested by the cocaleros.
The agreement came in the wake of the death of a cocalero as a result
of a confrontation between growers and the military in the town of
Bustillos on Sept. 28 when the military resumed forced eradication
of coca crops at the demand of the US embassy. Enraged by the killing,
thousands of growers surrounded military outposts in the Chapare region,
leaving the government with little choice but to temporarily halt
the forced eradication program.
The agreement was celebrated by Evo Morales, the cocalero leader,
who declared the result “a product of many years of struggle
with previous governments, who were subject to the will of the US
embassy.” Since 1988, the US has pushed its program of “zero
coca,” an attempt to forcibly eliminate coca production, on successive
Bolivian governments.
The second event was the decision by the overwhelming majority of
the Bolivian parliament on Oct. 14 to put former president Sanchez
de Lozada — a mining tycoon — and 15 members of his government
on trial for the deaths of protesters during last year’s uprising.
Pressure from the victims’ families and other protesters, who
surrounded the parliament building as the legislators met, and vowed
not to leave until they won justice for the victims.
The final, and decisive, event was the vote by the lower house of
parliament (Chamber of Deputies) on Oct. 20 to reject Mesa’s
proposed hydrocarbon bill and instead begin discussion of a new bill
presented by the parliamentary commission on economic development.
Bolivia, South America’s poorest nation, in which 70 percent
of the population lives below the poverty line, is rich in natural
gas, with reserves of around 800 billion cubic yards. Of its current
annual output of four billion cubic yards, 75 percent is exported.
If the new bill is passed, all the existing contracts favorable to
the foreign companies would be nullified and the royalty on natural
gas production would be raised 50 percent. The companies that dominate
Bolivia’s natural gas production currently pay a royalty of 18
percent on gas they buy at 12 times less than that sold back to Bolivians.
The bill also proposes that a new state-owned company, PetroBolivia,
would acquire a monopoly over gas exports.
Morales calls the bill’s proposals “nationalization by right,”
while the US government, Mesa, and the energy companies claim it is
“confiscatory.”
While preliminary reading of the bill was accepted almost unanimously
by legislators on Oct. 20, the government parties have stated that
they aim to amend the bill.
Since 2000, the various social movements across Bolivia have been
on the ascendency. The initial break came with the defeat of the attempted
privatization of water in Cochabamba. Faced with the situation where
Cochabambans would have had to pay the giant US construction company
Bechtel even for the rainwater they collected, the workers and peasants
of the region rose up and in April 2000 forced the government to back
down.
Since then Bolivia has lived through tumultuous times, as the poor
have time and time again risen up, from the coca war in the Chapare
and Yungas regions to opposition to Sanchez de Lozada’s attempt
in February 2003 to tax the poor.
His replacement by Mesa put a temporary halt to the mobilizations,
as the key organizing groups — the Movement towards Socialism
(MAS), the Confederation of Peasant Unions (CSUTCB), led by Aymara
Felipe Quispe, and the Bolivian trade union federation (COB), under
the newly elected left-wing leadership of Jamie Solares, gave Mesa
a three-month truce to fulfill his promise of a fundamental shift
away from the neoliberal policies of governments.
The truce came to an end in April, when the COB and the CSUTCB, declared
Mesa’s proposed July gas referendum a fraud, as the option of
nationalization, supported by 80 percent of the population was not
on the ballot.
The MAS, which continued to give “critical support” to Mesa,
called on their followers to participate in the referendum, but to
vote in a way contrary to that proposed by Mesa.
The recent mobilization was significant for the role of the mining
cooperativists, in essence independent contractors, who were crucial
to the complete shut down of La Paz. According to two Bolivian activists,
Lina Britto and Lucia Suarez, in an Oct. 22 article published on the
Counterpunch website, unlike last year when the miners arrived as
“last-minute reinforcements,” this time they “acted
as a vanguard” in the mobilizations. The miners were able to
force the government to approve allocating $7 million towards reactivating
some of Bolivia’s closed tin mines.
Source: Green Left Weekly
Latin America peacekeeping in Haiti:
a ‘mission impossible?’
By Gustavo González
Santiago, Chile, Nov. 5 (IPS) — Analysts in Latin America
are not overly optimistic with respect to the prospect of success
for the United Nations peacekeeping mission aimed at stabilizing Haiti,
in which Brazil and Chile are playing a key role.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s chief
foreign policy adviser Marco Aurelio García flew to Haiti on
Nov. 5 with what appeared to be a mission impossible: bringing the
different political and military factions together for talks in order
to pave the way for the longed-for stability.
The new upsurge of violence in Haiti since Hurricane Jeanne wrought
havoc there in September meant it was practically back to zero for
the UN mission’s efforts to stabilize the country on a Security
Council mandate issued after the controversial ouster of President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide on Feb. 29.
The current Haitian government, headed by interim President Boniface
Alexandre (the chief justice of the Supreme Court) and Prime Minister
Gérard Latortue, has pledged to hold elections in 2005, but
has so far failed to bring about any semblance of stability.
Brazil is leading the UN mission of 3,500 peacekeeping troops, of
which it has provided the largest contingent (1,200). Other Latin
American countries that have sent soldiers are Chile, Argentina and
Uruguay.
Also participating are France, Sri Lanka, Spain, Morocco, and China.
Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim has repeatedly reminded the
governments of the United States and France of the need to bring the
number of “blue helmets” up to the 6,500 originally projected
by the UN, in order to control the armed groups that have been active
again in Haiti since late September, killing at least 60 people.
The success of the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), headed
by former Chilean foreign minister Juan Gabriel Valdés, also
depends on whether or not the world’s rich nations will contribute
the one billion dollars considered necessary to get the Haitian economy
back on its feet over the next two years.
Valdés, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s special representative
in Haiti, acknowledged this week in Santiago that the concern of officials
in Chile and other Latin American countries is legitimate regarding
the deterioration in the situation in the Caribbean island nation.
“I hope the conditions in Haiti a year from now will be substantially
better than they are today,” the diplomat, the highest UN official
in Port-au-Prince, said Nov. 5, after meeting here with President
Ricardo Lagos.
Valdés said he provided Lagos with a “realistic”
report on the situation in Haiti, which remains difficult, but with
some room for hope.
Argemiro Procopio, a professor of international relations at the University
of Brasilia, in the Brazilian capital, told IPS that Haiti looks like
it might become “the first failure of President Lula’s foreign
policy,” since “the situation is getting worse, and for
now there’s no solution in sight.”
According to Procopio, Brazil was hoping to strengthen its international
prestige — “taking advantage of the proximity of Haiti and
the United States” — and supposed that pacification would
be relatively easy. He noted that it even sent the national football
team to play a goodwill match in Haiti in August, to promote peace
and reconciliation.
But, he said, “there was an error of evaluation” which led
the Brazilian government to stake its bets on success on the military
front, rather than putting the accent on development aid, “which
would be coherent with Lula’s slogan of zero hunger in the world.”
“You don’t fight with weapons what can be fought with bread,”
he said.
“I think the possibility of success for this joint Latin American
peacekeeping operation is fading, and that is bad,” analyst Walter
Sánchez, at the University of Chile Institute of International
Studies, told IPS.
Latin America has also failed to come together as a region to help
find a solution to the armed conflict in Colombia, which thus reduces
its authority to oppose “intervention by others,” Sánchez
added.
But Senator Ricardo Núñez, the spokesman for international
affairs of Chile’s co-governing Socialist Party, took a more
upbeat tone. “I believe we aren’t going to fail in Haiti,
although the missions, both military and political, will be difficult,”
he remarked to IPS.
“I think Latin America, with Brazil and Chile and the others,
is in a position to give a different focus to the process of re-establishing
normalcy and peace in Haiti,” he said. “It is Europe and
the United States that have failed, after trying to help establish
order in the past but being unable to do so.”
Núñez clarified that he did not foresee success in the
near future, but in the medium to long-range, once certain basic conditions
are in place, such as achieving effective development that would create
a more dynamic economic foundation which would generate jobs, because
in his view it is not enough merely to attack the dire poverty that
plagues two-thirds of Haiti’s eight million people.
Haiti’s economic prospects are dismal. In August, the Economic
Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) predicted that
the Haitian economy would shrink between two and five percent in the
October 2003-September 2004 fiscal year.
Keeping a lookout for human cargo
By Marwaan Macan-Markar
Chiang Rai, Thailand, Nov. 8 (IPS) — Besides keeping
a close watch for narcotics, the policemen who monitor the flow
of vehicles from the Burmese border to this northern Thai town are
on guard for a different type of merchandise — women and girls
being trafficked into a thriving sex industry.
On a recent evening, a long queue of cars, buses and vans inched
their way along a highway to a check-point, where they were searched
by six policemen and two sniffer dogs. The police officers went
over the identification papers of the passengers and looked for
any tell-tale signs of Burmese females being smuggled into Thailand
by trafficking networks.
This check-point on an isolated stretch of road lined with shrubs
and a thick growth of teak and mango trees is one of 13 positions
being manned by the police in this part of northern Thailand as
part of Bangkok’s operation to combat the scourge of human
trafficking.
“Crime gangs trafficking people or bringing in illegal immigrants
prefer private vehicles,” Sopon Muangfuang, a police lieutenant
colonel who is part of the 36 strong force at the check-point, told
IPS.
So far this year, Sopon’s men have not saved a single trafficked
victim. But his colleagues in nearby Mae Sai, the Thai town on the
border with Burma, have made a breakthrough. They arrested four
suspected traffickers, all Thai nationals, and rescued four female
trafficking victims from Burma in September.
The police chief for this northern region admits that the challenge
is daunting, given that there are over 160 points of entry along
the 725 miles Thai-Burmese border in the nine provinces under his
command.
“The police know of five to six criminal networks operating
in the area. Even government officials are involved,” says
Police Commissioner Panupong Singhara na Ayuddhaya. “We have
a specially trained force to handle trafficking cases.”
Such a drive to crackdown on human trafficking is expected to intensify
in the wake of an unprecedented agreement signed by the six countries
that share the Mekong River to mount a multilateral effort against
the crime syndicates profiting from this modern form of slavery.
On Oct. 29, the governments from the six countries -- Burma, Cambodia,
China, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam -- signed a memorandum of understanding
(MoU) to create a regional network aimed at sharing information
among the various police forces to arrest the traffickers and assist
the victims.
“This is a first in Asia, and the best way to counter trafficking,
since it involves more than two countries,” Kitiya Phornsadja,
a child protection officer at the Thai office of the United Nations
Children’s Fund (UNICEF), told IPS.
The deal comes after almost six years of campaigning by child rights
activists. It also represents a victory for advocates who have lobbied
governments to endorse 10-point agenda to stop the scourge of commercial
sexual exploitation of children that emerged from an international
conference in Yokohama, Japan, in 2001. The call to implement MoUs
on cross-border trafficking of children was one of them.
That this northern town has a catapulted to the frontlines of this
battle against trafficking is with reason. It shares a vast area
in this rural part of Thailand that has been identified as supplying
women and girls to the regional trafficking networks.
It is also a place frequented by women from neighboring Burma, Laos
and even southern China. The northern provinces are also reputed
for being a transit point for non-Thai women to pass through on
their way to the flesh markets in Bangkok or other Asian capitals.
According to Ben Svasti, program coordinator of TRAFCORD, an anti-trafficking
body in northern Thailand, Mai Sai remains a main route for traffickers
to bring in victims who are either Burmans or Shan ethnic minorities
— both groups living under a brutal military dictatorship in
neighboring Burma.
“Women and girls trafficked for commercial sex work are the
main cases reported, because the places they work are open and need
customers,” he said. “But there are large number of victims
trafficked to work on farms along the border and as domestic labor.”
Government officials in the neighboring province of Chiang Mai revealed
that customers in Thailand pay up to $750 to have sex with a virgin
from Burma. The girls are available in places like karaoke bars
and massage parlors and not limited to brothels like before, said
Prinya Panthong, Chiang Mai’s vice governor for security.
TRAFCORD has rescued 51 girls and women over the past two years,
state Chiang Mai officials. In 2000, 26 women and nine trafficked
victims were saved from the sex industry and in 2001, 26 women and
16 girls were saved.
Such numbers are only a fraction of the poor and economically vulnerable
women and girls trafficked into the sex trade across the world.
Reports by the US government, for instance, reveal that close to
two million children, some as young as five years old, are trapped
in the global child-sex trade.
And studies done by the UN Fund for Women (UNIFEM) state that the
number of women and children trafficked in South-east Asia could
be about 225,000 out of a global figure of more than 700,000.
“Breaking this network will depend on the governments implementing
the MoU they signed,” says UNICEF’s Kitiya. “They
have to act collectively to fight this.”
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