Colombian army blamed for child massacre

By Yadira Ferrer

Bogota, Colombia, Aug. 16 (IPS)— Residents of Pueblo Rico, a village in northwestern Colombia, blame the army for the deaths of six children during a school fieldtrip, though, according to official reports, they were caught in the crossfire between the soldiers and guerrilla forces.

Hernando Higuita, a Pueblo Rico town councilor, told Radio Caracol that at the moment the army’s troops fired there had not been any recent fighting, and that the children may have been mistaken for guerrillas.

Higuita, who accompanied his schoolteacher wife on the children’s fieldtrip, said “there were no guerrilla groups in the area (...) there was only the army present,’’ whose soldiers fired their weapons across the road where the children were walking.

A girl who was injured in the incident said she saw two soldiers arrive at the scene and, seeing the dead children, “began to cry when they realized the mistake they had made,’’ according to Higuita. The councilor rejected the army’s version of the events, which is that guerrillas were using the children as “human shields,’’ and affirmed that he would take the case as far as necessary to prove that it was an attack “against innocent children.’’

Argemira Angarita, the mother of one of the dead children, asked the attorney general and government prosecutors to investigate the incident, and called on president Andrés Pastrana to take measures that ensure children are kept outside the country’s decades-long civil war.

Angarita said “it is inexplicable’’ that the army would open fire without noticing that the target was a group of children, ranging in age from six to 12, and easily differentiated from adults.

Bernardo Restrepo, a Pueblo Rico shop owner, said it does not matter where the bullets came from, “the serious issue is that they fired on children who were enjoying a walk without hurting anybody...Once again minors are the victims of the armed conflict.’’

Army commander Jorge Mora put the blame on the insurgent National Liberation Army (ELN) for the children’s deaths because it’s guerrillas mixed themselves among the minors during the battle in Pueblo Rico.

Giovanni Arias, of the non-governmental Two Worlds Foundation, an international children’s organization, condemned the killings and called on the government and the armed groups to prevent children from continuing to be victims of the war.

Arias told IPS the country cannot continue to accept “simplistic explanations’’ from the armed groups, which use children as soldiers or collaborators, or inflict suffering upon them by displacing them from their homes and causing deaths and injuries in areas of conflict.

Approximately 6,000 children can be found in the ranks of the right-wing paramilitary forces or of the leftist guerrilla groups, according to the Foundation, and 180,000 have been displaced from their homes while 1.1 million have quit school because of the ongoing civil war.

The government human rights ombudsman, meanwhile, estimates that of the daily average of 12 child deaths in Colombia, five are the result of civil war violence. Arias pointed out that this indicates the country is in violation of national and international laws for the protection of children in war.

According to the international human rights law, the parties to a conflict must provide children with the care and assistance they need, and that they must be accorded special respect and protected against all attacks.

President Pastrana stated Wednesday that “this senseless war’’ has cost the lives of six innocent children and the injuries of another five. He announced that he would personally head an investigation into the tragic events.

“Sadly, in Colombia, parents bury their children, children do not bury their parents,’’ Pastrana said.

MORAGE drops banner on Monsanto

Statement of MORAGE

St. Louis, Missouri, Aug. 19— At 7:30 am Thursday, August 17th, MORAGE activist Brent Maness scaled a 100 foot electric pole to unfurl a 10 by 25 foot banner reading “Congrats Monsanto:
World’s #1 Genetic Polluter” on Lindbergh Avenue at Monsanto’s World Headquarters in St. Louis, Missouri. At about 8:45 am he voluntarily descended the pole after the banner was cut down by employees of Union Electric, and was then arrested. This action kicks off the Mobilization for Safe Foods and Family Farms, a day of teach-ins and demonstrations on Friday, August 18th. Farmers, consumers, environmentalists, and students will gather in Monsanto’s hometown to protest genetically modified organisms and the company’s illegal and unethical actions. This protest will be accompanied by solidarity actions elsewhere in the United States and around the globe.

Missouri Resistance Against Genetic Engineering (MORAGE), is a non-violent, grass-roots group determined to rid Missouri (then the world!) of corporate bio-terrorists and genetic engineering.

MORAGE believes genetic engineering to be bio-terrorism. Multinational corporations have harnessed the destructive power of genetic engineering to fulfill their lust for profits at the expense of our food, families, health and environment —a true act of terrorism. Monsanto has hidden their greed for profit in myths of feeding the world and saving the environment while systematically discrediting and working against safe food, local and family agriculture, and a healthy planet. The company has intimidated and misinformed the public to gain the power to control our food system. We will tolerate this no longer.

MORAGE resists the patenting of life as a plot to control and commodify essential elements of survival —food. We denounce the assertion by government officials that Missouri will be the “silicon valley of genetic engineering.” Through direct action, MORAGE will eradicate the plague of Monsanto’s genetic pollution from Missouri’s fields, food, grocery stores, and institutions of learning.

Source: Heartwood: http://www.heartwood.org

First ice-free North Pole in 50 million years

By Anthony Browne

Arctic Ocean, Aug. 20— The icecap at the North Pole has turned to water for the first time in 50 million years. Scientists aboard a Russian icebreaker have discovered an ice-free patch of water a mile wide at the top of the world.

It is the first time humans have seen water at the pole, and it is the most dramatic evidence yet of the impact that global warming is having. Satellite studies have shown that the ice pack is more than 40 per cent thinner than it was 50 years ago. The last time the pole was awash with water was during the Eocene period, 55 million years ago, when the world’s climate grew significantly warmer.

“It was totally unexpected,” said Dr. James McCarthy, director of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University and co-leader of a group working for the UN-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. McCarthy was the lecturer aboard a tourist cruise to the North Pole on the Russian ice-breaker Yamal.

Global warming is thought to be affecting the Arctic far more than other regions of the world, with temperatures rising three to five times faster. The icecap is melting so fast that climatologists have predicted that within 50 years it will disappear totally during the summer. This would cause devastation to the wildlife on the ice floes. Already, polar bears are reported to be losing weight because of difficulties in finding food, and walruses are having fewer young. The permafrost in north Alaska and Canada is also melting.

the ice pack at the North Pole is three to 10 meters thick, but the Yamal crunched through thin ice and intermittent open water on its way to the pole from Spitsbergen, in the Svalbard archipelago. The ice was so thin that sunlight could penetrate it. When the ship reached the pole, water lapped at its bow. The captain of the ice-breaker, who had made the trip 10 times in recent years, said he had never before seen water at the pole. The scientists also reported seeing ivory sea-gulls, the first time they have been sighted there. The Yamal had to steam a further six miles before the 100 passengers could get out and be able to say that they had stood at - or near - the North Pole. McCarthy said the passengers were astounded by what they saw: “There was a sense of alarm. Global warming was real, and we were seeing its effects for the first time that far north.”

Dr. Malcom McKenna, of the American Museum of Natural History, also aboard the Yamal, said: “I don’t know if anybody in history has ever got to 90 degrees north to be greeted by water, not ice. Some people who pooh-pooh global warming might wake up if shown that even the pole is beginning to melt.”

The world’s climate grew significantly warmer during the Eocene period, when water and jungles dominated the polar regions. In the last 100 years, the world’s temperature has risen by about one degree Centigrade. Eight out of 10 of the hottest years have been in the last 20 years.