Election turmoil roils Ukraine

Compiled by Greg White

Dec. 1 (AGR) — Hundreds of thousands of protesters have massed in the Ukrainian capital to protest alleged fraud in the country’s election.

Protests erupted immediately after the government declared Viktor Yanukovych winner over opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko in the Nov. 21 run-off poll. Tens of thousands of Ukrainians have thronged other major cities, demanding Yanukovych’s removal.

On Nov. 26, protests intensified in the capital as demonstrators linked arms to prevent Yanukovych and his staff from entering the cabinet building where he carries out his duties as prime minister.

“The prime minister could not get into his office in the government building and so could not hold his planned meetings,” a government official said.

Later in the day, hundreds of police marched to Independence Square showing their allegiance to the protest.

Thousands of protesters surrounded nearby government buildings, including the residence of outgoing President Leonid Kuchma, aiming to paralyze government business.

Angry Yushchenko supporters broke through a fence surrounding parliament on Nov. 30, massing around its main door. Protesters — some crawling on top of each other’s shoulders — got as far as the lobby of the building before police pushed them back. Yushchenko addressed the demonstrators in an effort to calm tensions.

Kiev’s city council and the administrations of four other cities — Lviv, Ternopil, Vinnytsia, and Ivano-Frankivsk — have refused to recognize a Yanukovych victory.

In Chernihiv, about 80 miles north of Kiev, police fired shots over the heads of a pro-Yushchenko crowd trying to enter a city council meeting. No injuries were reported.

In eastern Ukraine, Yanukovych’s stronghold, protesters denounced bids to overturn his victory and there were calls for “autonomy,” which were denounced by critics as camouflage for separatism.

Tens of thousands of Yanukovych supporters rallied in Donetsk, an industrial city in eastern Ukraine, to call for a referendum to grant the region autonomy. Calls in the region for greater autonomy in the case of a Yushchenko presidency have intensified in recent days.

Small demonstrations by Yanukovych supporters were also held in Kiev.

Yushchenko has claimed victory over Yanukovych in the presidential run-off and, in a sign he would not back off, took a symbolic oath of office.

“The election was rigged,” he said. “People are asking whether this country has a political elite capable of upholding a fair vote.”

Yushchenko’s lawyers cited turnout of above 100 percent in hundreds of precincts in the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions, problems with voting lists, and multiple voting with absentee ballots.

Beyond the opposition’s claims of fraud, an immense international outcry has erupted over the election. Condemnation has rang out from all corners of the globe, including criticism from the US.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which oversaw the election, reported large-scale irregularities.

“The second round did not meet a considerable number of [international] commitments for democratic elections,” said Bruce George, head of the OSCE mission in Kiev. The group said the election’s violations also included intimidation of observers and voters.

The OSCE also reported serious irregularities in the first round of voting which was held Oct. 31. None of the 26 candidates received more than half the votes, setting up the Nov. 21 runoff.

No confidence vote in parliament

On Dec. 1, the Ukrainian parliament voted out the ruling party government and replaced it with a “popular government” of a new interim coalition.

Two hundred and twenty nine members of parliament — three more than required in the 450-seat assembly — voted in favor of sacking Yanukovych as president and creating an interim government.

The measure automatically triggered the resignation of Yanukovych’s government. Leonid Kuchma can allow the government to continue to exercise its powers until a new Cabinet is formed, but not for longer than 60 days.

Outside, tens of thousands of his supporters followed the debate through loudspeakers, cheering wildly at every procedural measure and embracing as the outcome was announced.

Yanukovych has said he will not step down and described the parliament’s decision as illegal.

“I am still prime minister and I will stay so until the election of the new president. We do not accept the language of ultimatums,” Yanukovich said.

Following the no confidence vote, Yushchenko signed a deal that obliged his supporters to lift their siege of government buildings, but he said his followers will stay on the streets until an agreement is reached on a new vote for the country’s presidency.

Yushchenko proposed that a new run-off vote between himself and Yanukovych be held Dec. 19. Speaking to his supporters in the street, he said he would not accept a whole new election — an idea suggested earlier by Kuchma — and urged his backers not to give up their massive demonstrations.

Holding an entire new election would allow other candidates to enter the race again, which the government apparently hopes would weaken Yushchenko. A repeat of the run-off as the opposition seeks would limit the contest to the rivals.

Western hand seen in opposition protests

While the opposition demonstrations appear to be wholly homegrown, some critics have cited Western interference in the Ukrainian electoral process and the ensuing protests.

According to the London-based Guardian newspaper, the US NGO Freedom House and the Democratic party’s National Democratic Institute helped fund and organize the “largest civil regional election monitoring effort” in Ukraine, involving more than 1,000 trained observers. They also organized exit polls, which, on the night of Nov. 21, gave Yushchenko an 11-point lead and set the agenda for much of what followed.

The Serbian protest group Otpor that helped the opposition topple former president Slobodan Milosevic and helped the Georgian student group Kmara protest last year against former leader Eduard Shevardnadze, has apparently ‘exported’ its ways of protest to Ukraine. The group has reportedly received millions of dollars from western groups and the US government.

Otpor’s ties to the Ukrainian protest group Pora (It’s Time) became clear after two Otpor activists were expelled from Ukraine during the first round of elections.

Pora denies foreign funding and says accepting foreign aid would undermine the group’s local credibility. The US government also says that while it has provided $13.6 million in aid in recent years to encourage fair elections here, Pora has not been sponsored.

“We provide zero money, directly or indirectly, to Pora,” a US diplomat in Kiev said.

Sources: Agence France-Presse, Associated Press, BBC, Guardian (UK), Inter Press Service, Reuters

Aboriginal community riots against police violence

Compiled by Finn Finneran

Dec. 1 (AGR) — Up to 300 members of the Aboriginal community of Palm Island, off the east coast of the Australian state of Queensland, rioted over the death of 36-year-old Cameron Doomadgee, torching the island’s police station, lobbing gas bombs at the homes of police, and attacking other government-owned buildings on Nov. 26.

An autopsy showed Doomadgee had four broken ribs and died of a punctured lung in police custody after a “skirmish” with the Queensland police.

The violence erupted within minutes of a public meeting at which details of the autopsy were revealed.

Using emergency powers, police sent in around 80 heavily armed officers the night of the riot, taking control of the airport, school and hospital while government officials, teachers and some local police were evacuated from the small island.

As of Dec. 1, 28 people have been charged with 64 offenses, including a 60-year-old woman who was charged with riotous demolition of a building.

Queensland Police Union called for charges against those accused of firebombing the island’s police station during the riots to be upgraded to attempted murder.

Aboriginal leaders have told Queensland Premier Peter Beattie they felt terrorized by police sent to Palm Island to quell a riot, and blamed the violence on the Queensland government and police.

Beattie traveled to the strife-torn island to present a peace plan in a bid to head off further violence.

Beattie’s five-point plan included restoring law and order as a priority and re-establishing grief counseling, mediation and other services.

Beattie was handed an open letter drafted by the Palm Island Aboriginal Council.

“The council has been frustrated that you have not seen fit to communicate with us directly on these matters before now; our hands have been tied for these past few days by the state of emergency imposed upon us and our people are feeling under siege,” the letter read.

It also said the removal of services from the island had done more harm than good and that police had been heavy handed in their approach.

“Our children are feeling terrorized; 80 police are not necessary,” the letter stated in reference to the 80 additional police flown onto the island.

Palm Island chairwoman Erykah Kyle and other Aboriginal leaders accused police, who stormed several homes in riot gear throughout the weekend to arrest riot leaders, of treating the island like a terrorist enclave.

“Our only concern with Beattie’s five-point plan was that it was a government imposing a system on us rather than a problem being devised from the community up,” said a local who attended the meeting but did not wish to be named.

“But overall we were happy with the dialogue. The death in custody was just a trigger for the endemic health and social problems on the island that need to be fixed.”

The island, which is home to about 2,300 Aborigines, has a 90 percent unemployment rate, drug and alcohol abuse, and an average life expectancy of 50 years. Australia’s national average is 80 years.

Riot squads are expected to remain in place at least until Doomadgee’s funeral later this week despite demands from Aborigines to be left alone, but the Palm Island police, who evacuated the island on Nov. 26, have no plans to return.

“I have a clear indication from the members that they do not want to go back to their present positions, and I would envisage the police service will have considerable difficulty from here on in filling positions and providing this island with police,” said Queensland Police Union acting president Denis Fitzpatrick.

Fitzpatrick said Commissioner Bob Atkinson had offered all Palm Island police the chance to transfer and “all of them put their hand up.”

Aboriginal leaders are planning a nationwide protest on Dec. 11, at which time they will be declaring “enough is enough” over the treatment of indigenous people by the authorities.

The Palm Island riot is the second major riot in an Aboriginal community this year, following one in February in Sydney’s Aboriginal suburb of Redfern, also triggered by the controversial death of a young Aboriginal. The victim was chased by a squad car to his death when he fell off a squad car and was impaled on a fence.

Palm Island was given the title of the most violent place on Earth outside a combat zone in the 1998 by Guinness Book of World Records.

Sources: ABC, AP, AFP, Australian Associated Press, News.com.au

US has zero credibility with Muslims

By Jim Lobe

Washington, DC, Nov. 26 (IPS)— Al-Qaida and radical Islamists are winning the propaganda war against the United States, says a high-level Pentagon panel, which concluded that Bush administration policies in the Middle East, its fundamental failure to understand the Muslim world and a lack of imagination in using new communications technologies are responsible.

In a report concluded in September but only released this week, the Defense Science Board (DSB) called for a major overhaul of Washington’s “public diplomacy” and “strategic communication” apparatus that would include much more money and the creation of a new independent agency to enlist the support of the private sector, researchers and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to promote US messages to an increasingly hostile Islamic world.

“Strategic communication is a vital component of US national security,” stressed the 111-page report. “It is in crisis, and it must be transformed with a strength of purpose that matches our commitment to diplomacy, defence, intelligence, law enforcement and homeland security... Collaboration between government and the private sector on an unprecedented scale is imperative.”

The document also called on US policy makers to spend more time “listening” to their intended audience and use messages that “should seek to reduce, not increase, perceptions of arrogance, opportunism and double standards.”

The DSB, made up of private sector and academic experts appointed by Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, normally confines its advice to scientific and technological matters. While it has no executive authority, its prominence, the generally hawkish cast of its membership and the urgent tone of the report will likely place its recommendations high on the agenda in President George W Bush’s second term.

The study is based on interviews with senior US public-diplomacy, strategic-communication and psychological-warfare officials and experts, more than a dozen studies by NGOs, such as the Council on Foreign Relations, public-opinion surveys and internal government reports over the past three years.

All of them have shown a sharp plunge in US standing throughout the Arab and Islamic worlds, particularly since the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, as well as virtually total failure of the United States to effectively reverse that view, in large part due to the perception among Muslims that Washington’s policies are aimed at their submission.

As one task force headed by former President George H W Bush’s top Middle East adviser, Edward Djerejian, concluded 13 months ago, “‘Spin’ and manipulative public relations and propaganda are not the answer. Foreign policy counts ... Sugar-coating and fast talking are no solutions.”

The DSB report also stresses that US policies in the Mideast — notably Washington’s support for Israel, the Iraq invasion and its backing of autocratic leaders in the region — make it very difficult for Washington to persuade Muslims of its good intentions. The report, however, does not advise changing policies, which would be beyond its mandate.

The gap between Washington’s rhetoric and its actions in the region, as perceived by Muslims has contributed to a virtually total loss of credibility, argues the study.

“The larger goals of US strategy depend on separating the vast majority of non-violent Muslims from the radical-militant Islamist-jihadists,” it argues. “But American efforts have not only failed in this respect: they may also have achieved the opposite of what they intended” by essentially bearing out “the entire radical Islamist bill of particulars.”

Thus, contrary to the mantra of the administration and its neo-conservative advisers, asserts the report, “Muslims do not ‘hate our freedom,’ but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favour of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the longstanding even increasing support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan and the Gulf states.”

Moreover, “when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy,” while “saying that ‘freedom is the future of the Middle East’ is seen as patronising, suggesting that Arabs are like the enslaved peoples of the old Communist World,” which, asserts the report, is not how Arabs see their situation at all.

On the contrary, it adds, the large majority yearn “to be liberated perhaps from what they see as apostate tyrannies that the US so determinedly promotes and defends.”

“In the eyes of Muslims, American occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq has not led to democracy there, but only more chaos and suffering,” notes the document.

“The critical problem in American public diplomacy directed toward the Muslim world is not one of ‘dissemination of information,’ or even one of crafting and delivering the ‘right’ message,” the report states.

“Rather, it is a fundamental problem of credibility. Simply, there is none — the United States today is without a working channel of communication to the world of Muslims and of Islam. Inevitably, therefore, whatever Americans do and say only serves the party that has both the message and the ‘loud and clear’ channel: the enemy.”

Neo-conservative and administration efforts to depict the “war on terrorism” that Bush launched after the 9/11 attacks as a war against “another totalitarian evil,” as in the Cold War, have been a “strategic mistake,” according to the report.

“In stark contrast to the Cold War, the United States today is not seeking to contain a threatening state-empire, but rather seeking to convert a broad movement within Islamic civilisation to accept the value structure of western modernity — an agenda hidden within the official rubric of a ‘war on terrorism.’”

“If we really want to see the Muslim world as a whole and the Arab-speaking world in particular move more toward our understanding of ‘moderation’ and ‘tolerance,’ we must reassure Muslims that this does not mean they must submit to the American way,” argues the report.

To succeed, Washington must target those in the Islamic world “who support, or are likely to support, our views based on their own culture, traditions and attitudes about such things as personal control, choice and change,” it adds.

“We believe the most ‘movable’ targets will be the so-called secularists of the Muslim world: business people, scientists, non-religious educators, politicians or public administrators, musicians, artists, poets, writers, journalists, actors and their audiences and admirers.”

Key themes and messages that can persuade this group to back US goals include: “respect for human dignity and individual rights; individual education and economic opportunity; and personal freedom, safety and mobility,” suggests the report, which also stresses developing new techniques for reaching that audience, including electronic mail, Internet chat rooms, video games, and inter-active Internet games.

More traditional efforts, such as television broadcasts, person-to-person exchanges, the enlistment of celebrities in government public-diplomacy efforts, should also be expanded by injecting hundreds of millions of dollars into existing programmes that have, says the report, become “anaemic” since the Cold War.

The president should also establish a new deputy national security advisor for strategic communication post in the White House, as well as a “strategic communication committee” within the National Security Council (NSC) on which senior representatives from all relevant agencies should serve, it proposes.

Congress should also establish a Centre for Strategic Communication modelled after the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) that, among other things, would act as a think tank devising new programmes, such as a children’s TV series in Arabic, to communicate core messages.