Colombian war refugees pour over border

By Kintto Lucas

Nueva Loja, Ecuador, Oct. 20 (IPS)— An upsurge in fighting between the guerrillas, paramilitaries and the army in southwestern Colombia has led to the displacement of thousands of people, with around 200 a day flowing into this Ecuadorian town, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Pedro Alzate, one of the Colombians who has taken refuge in Nueva Loja, the capital of the northern Ecuadorian province of Sucumbios, told IPS that fighting began to heat up in late September in La Dorada and other municipalities of the southwestern Colombian department of Putumayo, on the border with Ecuador.

On Sep 21, at five o’clock in the morning, “the ‘paracos’ (paramilitaries) came into La Dorada firing their guns and shouting that everyone was to gather in the central square, where they told us that they had come to eliminate the guerrillas, and that those who refused to collaborate would be considered enemies,’’ said Alzate.

The first person killed that day in La Dorada was a young man named Omar Piedrahita, who the right-wing paramilitaries grouped in the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) apparently mistook for a guerrilla commander, according to Alzate.

The leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) — the largest rebel group — recently launched an offensive against the paramilitaries in the coca-producing region of Putumayo, which has been practically cut off from the rest of the country.

The Colombian government has set up an air bridge to send in tons of food aid, while thousands of people have fled their homes in the department of Putumayo.

“Since AUC arrived, more than 30 people have gone missing in the area, because they ‘disappear’ the bodies of the people they kill,’’ said Joaquin, another displaced person.

The UNHCR and Ecuador’s Foreign Relations Ministry, with the support of the Defense Ministry, the police, the National Office of Civil Defense, the Red Cross and the Catholic Church of Sucumbios, have set up a Contingency Plan for receiving the refugees.

The stated aim of the plan is to “address the conditions of insecurity, income, reception, shelter, transport, food, infrastructure, sanitary conditions, health, education and repatriation of Colombian citizens.’’

But the fighting in southern Colombia got even heavier Thursday, and more and more refugees have begun to pour in, while the shelters are not even finished.

Catholic Bishop of Sucumbios, Gonzalo Lopez, said he did not agree that refugee camps should be set up, arguing that the Colombians fleeing that country’s civil war deserved better treatment.

“We would like existing structures to be used, to give a humanitarian touch to this misfortune,’’ said Lopez, who proposed using community centres for housing the refugees.

Nueva Loja Mayor Maximo Abad backed the bishop’s proposal, stating that “existing shelters in the towns should be adapted and equipped with sewerage systems, clean water and other conditions.’’

Lopez said the Catholic Church would like to see local residents of Sucumbios taking part in the work required to address the humanitarian crisis, which is expected to worsen in Colombia’s border areas when Bogota’s multibillion dollar anti-drug and military Plan Colombia goes into effect at yearend.

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) grouped in the Civic Group Monitoring the Effects of the Plan Colombia in Ecuador believe the implementation of that plan will lead to the displacement of around 15,000 people, 5,000 of whom are expected to flee across the border into Ecuador.

But UNHCR representatives believe as many as 30,000 people could be displaced in southern Colombia in the near future, driving up the total number of people displaced by the armed conflict in that country since 1985 to close to two million.

“I really hope we will find the way to receive the refugees as we should — as brothers and sisters,’’ said Lopez.

On a visit to Quito in August, United States Secretary of State Madeleine Albright pledged 15 million dollars in aid to Ecuador to mitigate the impact of the Plan Colombia on frontier areas.

Albright said the funds would be distributed through the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the UNHCR and the Red Cross.

The Colombian department of Putumayo, an area of 24,885 square kms, is home to 280,000 people. Human rights groups reported 68 extrajudicial executions and 39 forced disappearances in the region in 1999.

Last month, the Ecuadorian government set up a Unit for Development of the North, a centralized office in charge of infrastructure projects in areas along the Colombian border.

But municipal authorities in the provinces covered by the program protested the creation of the office, demanding in its place a strengthening of local governments.

They also declared their opposition to Plan Colombia, to which the United States has pledged 1.3 billion dollars, as “running counter to international law, and to the good neighbor and non- aggression agreements signed by Ecuador and Colombia.’’

Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Heinz Moeller told 40 delegates of the Sucumbios Civil Society Assembly and the UNHCR representative last month that “the social and economic reactivation of the frontier are top priorities, in order to prevent the metastasising drug trade from spilling over into Ecuador.’’

Moeller said the government was seeking 30 million dollars, in addition to the 15 million already promised by Albright, to be invested in Sucumbios.

However, he stressed that the first step was to beef up the military presence in the province.

Pablo De la Vega, with the Civic Group Monitoring the Effects of the Plan Colombia in Ecuador, asked the UNHCR and human rights groups to oversee “compliance with the Ecuadorian state’s obligations towards the displaced.’’

“The refugees have the right to be protected against being sent back, and to not be denied entry at the border,’’ said De la Vega.

According to the Contingency Plan, “the refugees are to remain in the areas assigned to house them for a maximum of six months, during which time long-lasting solutions will be identified.’’

Colombian paramilitaries reportedly moving in

Local authorities and residents of the northern Ecuadorian province of Sucumbíos, fear that Colombian drug-traffickers and paramilitaries have crossed over the border and are purchasing land in the area.

The alert was first sounded by the Permanent Assembly on Human Rights (APDH), which reported that the AUC, as well as drug traffickers, had begun to buy up land in Ecuador’s northern Amazon region to grow coca here.

The APDH report was backed up by Colombian peasant farmers forced to flee their homes in the southwestern department of Putumayo when their coca crops began to be destroyed by aerial spraying, and when fighting broke out again between the FARC, AUC, and the army.

Pedro, one of the farmers who sought refuge in this country, told IPS that FARC fighters advised a group of displaced people from Putumayo that if they crossed into Ecuador, they should not go to Sucumbíos because it was “a paramilitary zone.’’

“One of the commanders told us that we should try to go somewhere else, to the mountains for example, because the ‘paracos’ (paramilitaries) are here (in Sucumbíos), and that soon, if things go on like this, this will become an area of combat,’’ said Pedro, who added that it was the paramilitaries who expelled him and his family from their farm in Putumayo.

Municipal authorities in Nueva Loja also have information that AUC wants to set up shop in Sucumbíos to cut off any future retreat by the insurgents and to sever their supply lines.

A FARC source from Putumayo told IPS that leaders of his group had made contact with the Ecuadorian government through the Foreign Ministry, but that a meeting that had initially been arranged never took place.

The FARC wanted to turn over “confidential information’’ on the presence of paramilitaries in Ecuador’s Amazon region, said the source. But “unfortunately,’’ he added, “Ecuadorian authorities initially agreed to the meeting but then changed their mind, which means we were not able to inform them.’’

He said paramilitary groups, with support from the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and “international mercenaries,’’ could carry out “provocative actions’’ in Ecuador to pin the blame on the FARC.

Other reports indicate that people who have denounced the presence of Colombian paramilitaries in Ecuador have received death threats.

The doctors who picked up the bodies of two street children shot at pointblank range in Nueva Loja on Aug 20, then carried out the autopsies and filed a report with authorities, received a message that they would be kept in the sights of the paramilitaries.

Sardar Sarovar dam construction resumed despite opposition

By Peter Popham

Delhi, India, Oct. 22— When work resumes on the Sardar Sarovar Dam in the state of Gujarat in nine days, two visions of India will be pitted against each other.

Work on India’s biggest dam has been stalled for six years while opponents and supporters slugged it out in the Supreme Court. On Wednesday, by a majority verdict, judges gave the dam a green light.

The concrete mixers will start churning again on Oct. 31. But tomorrow, Arundhati Roy, the Booker Prize winner and prominent anti-dam campaigner, and thousands of the small farmers and landless peasants threatened by the Sardar Sarovar, will meet at the town of Badwani, on the edge of the area the dam will ultimately submerge, to protest and plan their next move.

“I don’t want any longer to say the movement should be violent or non-violent,” Roy told the Independent on Sunday. “The people affected by the project should make that decision. We live in our little islands of privilege amid terrible dispossession - we always live with the fear of what is just outside our door. We know all resources are scarce, so we have an almost religious respect for institutions like the Supreme Court to protect our interests.

“I don’t respect the court as an institution: I know it is as much a part of the system as anything else. It offers shelter to the privileged. The other India stands outside the pale.”

The opponents of the dam are adamant. This weekend Medha Patkar, leader of the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA or Narmada People’s Movement) said: “I stand by my statement of last year, that if the height of the dam is raised by an inch from [its present height of] 88 meters. I will sacrifice my life.”

News of the judgment was greeted by the Indian media with euphoria. In Gujarat, firecrackers were let off; government employees were granted a half-day holiday.

In Bombay, Ms. Patkar burst into tears at a press conference in Bombay, and Arundhati Roy called the decision “heartbreaking.” Ms. Patkar and her followers threatened to drown themselves in the dam.

Three days on, official joy was wilting. The bald assertions of the two judges who threw out the NBA’s case were beginning to look rather odd.

India’s experience of big dams, they stated, “did not show the construction of a large dam is not cost-effective or leads to ecological or environmental degradation. On the contrary, there has been ecological upgradation with the construction of large dams.”

But the NBA’s lawyer, Prashant Bhushan, said: “Every person in the country, including judges, is entitled to have a view on these matters. What is disturbing is when such personal views are delivered as the judgment of a court. Equally distressing is the fact that such pronouncements have been made without any evidence of the facts [being presented] before the judges.”

The findings fly in the face of research into the social damage big dams have inflicted on India, and the modest benefits obtained from them.

A report by the World Commission on Dams, set up by the World Bank, says that India’s behemoths have forced involuntary displacement of 56 million people since independence. They have soaked up 1,560bn rupees-- more than 23.6bn pounds- in the process, but contributed only 10 per cent to the nation’s grain production.

The Narmada River originates in the plateau of Amarkantah in Madhya Pradesh, close to the geographical center of India, and winds for 600 miles through broad-leaved forest and disgorges into the Arabian Sea in the state of Gujarat. The Narmada Valley Development Project, given government clearance in 1987 without an environmental review, is India’s biggest dam scheme.

It involves building 3,200 small, medium and large dams along the river for electricity and water, and will involve the forcible displacement of more people than any other dam project in the world except China’s Three Gorges Dam.

The first Narmada dam to be completed, in 1990, was the Bargi, which cost 10 times more than projected and submerged three times more land than engineers claimed it would. Some 114,000 people were displaced-- 44,000 more than the government predicted. They were given no land in compensation. There was no rehabilitation policy.

Madhya Pradesh has finally admitted that there is no land available to resettle those displaced by the Sardar Sarovar Dam. Usually, they are bribed off their land with a pittance, then condemned to scrabble and scrape to survive in the squalid fringes of the big cities.

Source: Independent (UK)

Concerned Halifax residents stick warning labels on GE foods

Halifax, Nova Scotia, Oct. 16— Over a dozen citizens converged on some of Halifax’s largest supermarkets over the weekend and stuck over 2000 warning labels on products containing genetically engineered (GE) ingredients. Members of the newly formed Citizens’ Voluntary Labeling Collective (CVLC) Halifax blew the whistle on the federal government’s blatant neglect of Canada’s Food and Drugs Act, which requires that adulterated food be labeled as such.

“An alarming number of the products on the shelves contain genetically engineered ingredients and that has to be exposed,” commented one labeler. “It’s no longer possible to have any confidence in the safety of our families’ diets.”

Products such as breakfast cereal, vegetable oil, cookies, corn, and baby food were labeled with stickers that read “WARNING: This product may contain genetically engineered material which has not been adequately tested and could be dangerous to your health.”

North American corn, soy and canola are among the most widely grown genetically engineered crops. “Just look at the ingredients list when you pick up a product,” says another labeler. “If there’s corn, soy, or canola in there, you can be almost certain that it’s been genetically engineered.”

A press release by the group stated, “The CVLC is part of the growing worldwide movement to highlight the lack of integrity and truth in the world’s food system. Though our government is supposed to regulate the safety of GE foods, it actually spends millions of dollars to promote them. This is an obvious conflict of interest. The CVLC will continue to reveal genetically engineered foods that would otherwise remain hidden from the public.”

Labelers received a thumbs-up from store staff and many shoppers took an interest in the labels’ message.

Source: Bioengineering Action Network (BAN): www.ban@tao.ca

Italians wage war on McDonalds

By Rory Carroll

Rome, Italy, Oct. 23— Riot police were mobilized on Monday to protect McDonald’s restaurants as thousands of demonstrators in 20 Italian cities declared war on the fast-food chain.

In Milan, marchers flung raw meat through police lines, splattering restaurant windows with blood. But most of the protests around the country were more peaceful, with crowds in Rome, Naples, Palermo and Turin chanting: “Better a day of tortellini than 100 days of hamburgers.”

Organizers of the protests have said they will intensify their campaign, predicting that Italy will overtake France in the strength of its opposition to the chain.

The government promised to draw up a charter of principles for multinational companies. The charter, to be approved by trade unions, was intended to defuse hostility by acting as a “civic defender,” said the industry minister, Enrico Letta. But, he added, “it would be a mistake to create a climate of tension. McDonald’s is one of the few foreign companies bringing investment to our country.”

A coalition of left-wing radicals, family-run bars and trade unions hopes to reverse, or at least slow down, McDonald’s planned opening of 200 outlets in the next two years. It says the chain is destroying consumer choice, exploiting staff, and selling unhealthy food.

McDonald’s says that it is employing 15,000 young people and has become hugely popular with families since opening its first restaurant in Rome 15 years ago.

The countrywide protests were bolstered by controversy over the chain’s treatment of staff. Last week 20 employees in Florence walked out in protest of an “intimidating” work climate.

The chain, which has 272 restaurants in Italy, suffered another blow when trade unions mobilized to defend five employees reprimanded for eating chocolate chips.

The Turin-based Slow Food movement, which champions traditional cooking and eating, joined the protests. Its spokesman, Silvio Barbero, told the Corriere della Sera newspaper: “It forces consumers to taste the same hamburger in Tokyo, New York, Helsinki and Palermo. A McDonald’s hamburger doesn’t evoke regional tastes or sensations, and its gastronomic origin is impossible to define.”

Ghettoized for years with a combined market share of 5%, McDonald’s and Burger King resolved to bring Italy up to the European average of 25%. Food purists said Italians would never succumb, but they were wrong, with pasta salads and pizza slices boosting the chains’ popularity.

Source: The Guardian (UK)

Protesters dismantle Navy fence in Vieques

Vieques, Puerto Rico, Oct. 22— Hundreds of Viequenses tore down enormous sections of military fence in the gate area to Camp García, an entrance to the bombing zone in Vieques, during a protest against the US Navy presence on the island. According to leaders of the community struggle, the Second Human Chain was organized to continue the process of taking down the fences that separate the people from their lands.

During the month of October, the Navy carried out the largest maneuvers since the death of David Sanes on April 19th, 1999. Tens of thousands of troops, a large number of warships from the US and NATO countries, intensely bombed the Eastern part of the island last week. In the middle of the bombing practice, nine Viequenses entered the impact area and remained in the bombing zone for twenty four hours until being arrested.

The process of taking down the military fences has been continuous, with small brigades working in different areas of the base perimeter. Today´s protest, however, was the first organized action in which hundreds participated in the project of taking down the Navy´s fence, a symbol of military control of the lands the people of Vieques want back.

Church leaders, merchants, fishermen, elderly people, children and representatives of the diverse groups that struggle for an end to the military presence on the island municipality all participated in the Human Chain.

Source: Grassroots Media Network: http://www.crosswinds.net/~rootmedia/

US designs remilitarization of El Salvador

San Salvador, El Salvador, Oct. 20— Among the many foreign policy issues yet to be mentioned by any of the presidential candidates is the fact that the United States is planning to build a military base in El Salvador.

As the US Army prepares to enter the civil war raging in Colombia, American military strategists are searching for a military beachhead from which to supply troops sent to Latin America.

El Salvador is the country of choice because Panama, Costa Rica, Venezuela and Mexico have all refused American requests for what the US military calls an “anti-drug listening post.”

US officials insist that the American garrison will have a limited presence in this war-shattered country. The military, they say, would fly only two P-3 Orion reconnaissance planes, build a small number of radar outposts and station 60 American soldiers and their families in El Salvador.

But according to the official accord signed between the United States and El Salvador, there is no limit on the total number of soldiers and planes or buildings on the new military base.

Many Salvadorans are wary about the prospect of a new American military base. Twenty years ago, the United States supported an authoritarian right-wing government whose death squads waged one of the harshest anti-insurgency campaigns against leftist guerrillas in Central America. Fierce opposition in Congress and a vocal anti-war movement ultimately ended American support in 1992, but not before 70,000 people had lost their lives in a brutal 12-year war.

Now former guerrilla fighters, who just last March won the majority of seats in the National Assembly, fear that the United States will attempt to undermine their electoral success.

Source: San Francisco Chronicle