Pax Gaea Human Rights World Post

PAX GAEA WORLD POST HUMAN RIGHTS HEADLINES (12/22)

• American Iraqi war veterans depend on handouts to survive
• Acquitted accused Bali bomb cleric mastermind considers lawsuits against U.S. and Australia
• UN Human Rights Council demand investigation of Nepalese police torture and murder interrogation
• Israel defense minister approves construction of wall put thousand of West Bank acres inside Israel
• Low paid migrant workers in Saudi Arabia try to cash in on hajj in illegal employment
• Hundreds of thousands of Egyptian children toil away youth in menial jobs
• Latin American radical groups on the rise
• Aid groups criticize Indian government for shelters constructed after tsunami
• Kosovo official arrested with cache of weapons
• Rebel monks rumble in Greece

After the war, a struggle to survive

George Bush's heroes are forced to rely on handouts, writes Gerard Wright.

In the iconography of American history, no group or idea is more exalted than the United States Marine Corps. In wars, such as the one under way in Iraq for the fourth Christmas in a row, the marines are "the sharp end of the spear", suffering more casualties, as a proportion of deployed numbers, than their comrades in arms in the US Army. Which brings us to Sergeant Jeff Bentley, standing in a line on a footpath in the Marine base of Camp Pendleton, 60 kilometres north of San Diego. It's 9.15am outside the Abby Reinke Community Centre, with its noticeboard announcing classes in Middle Eastern dancing. The winter sun of southern California hangs bright and warm and low in the sky as the military families gather. They are waiting for a handout. The few, the proud, the reliant on charity. Today it's canned, dried and fresh food, and bottled water. On the other side of the base is the "mums' warehouse", where donated high chairs, strollers and disposable nappies are provided, also free. Bentley has been back for three months from his second tour in Iraq. He has a part-time job, as a doorman at private parties. And he stands in this line every second week or so. This is how he makes ends meet."The military gives you good pay and benefits," he says, "but it doesn't take care of everything. Any little thing like this helps."Sydney Morning Herald (11/22)

Bashir considering to claim damages against Indonesian govt.

JAKARTA: Firebrand cleric Abu Bakar Bashir praised a court ruling acquitting him of terrorism charges as an act of defiance against the United States, and said Friday he was considering suing for damages. The Supreme Court Thursday quash his conviction in the twin nightclub blasts in the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people. Bashir, who spent 2 1/2 years in prison for conspiracy in the Bali bombings was released from prison in June, was all smiles when speaking to journalists at his Islamic boarding school in the central Javanese town of Solo. Many countries and courts ``are too afraid to stand up to the United States, but the Supreme Court decision is honest and brave,'' he said, adding that he was considering filing a lawsuit to rehabilitate his name and seek damages. If awarded compensation, he will likely donate it to Islamic causes, his lawyer said. The United States and Australia have both publicly accused Bashir of being one of the key leaders of the militant network Jemaah Islamiyah, which has been blamed for the Bali attack and a series of other deadly bombings in the world's most populous Muslim nation. The International News (Pakistan) (12/22)

OHCHR wants police to probe Sunuwar death

Himalayan News Service

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has demanded a criminal investigation by the Nepal Police into the killing of Maina Sunuwar. It has demanded a “proper exhumation” of her body reportedly buried at the Birendra Peace Operations Centre. It had offered to “make forensic anthropology available to the Nepal Police to assist them in exhuming the body but has yet to receive a formal request” for the same. In a report titled ‘The torture and death in custody of Maina Sunuwar’ released here today, OHCHR said justice has not been done in the Sunuwar’s case. Fifteen-year-old Maina was allegedly tortured and died in the custody of the Nepal Army in February 2004 at the Birendra Peace Operations Training Centre in Panchkhal, Kavrepalanchowk district. NA officers took Maina from her home in Kavrepalanchowk to Birendra Peace Operations Centre where she was tortured under the orders of then Lt Col Babi Khatri in February 2004, it is alleged. Himalayan Times (Nepal) (12/22)

Peretz okays Ma'aleh Adumim barrier

By DAN IZENBERGDefense Minister Amir Peretz has approved the original route of the separation barrier surrounding the Ma'aleh Adumim enclave, placing 64,000 dunams of West Bank land on the Israeli side of the barrier, Jerusalem lawyer Shlomo Lecker told The Jerusalem Post Thursday. Lecker represents Palestinian petitioners from Abu Dis and Suahra A-Sharqia who are objecting to three segments of the 38-kilometer-long barrier. He said he had been informed of Peretz's decision by Justice Ministry attorney Orit Corinaldi-Sirkis, who is representing the state in the petitions. The Justice Ministry spokesman was unable to confirm or deny the report. Corinaldi-Sirkis was out of the country. A spokesman for Peretz told the Post the matter was being looked into. Jerusalem Post (12/22)

Illegals Seek Piece of hajj Pie

Zainy Abbas, Arab News

MAKKAH, 22 December 2006 — If you want to get a feel for the issue of foreign guest workers fleeing their sponsors for greener pastures inside the Kingdom, all you need to do is monitor the inbound traffic into the holy city during hajj. “I came to Makkah to perform hajj and to work,” said Arif (last name withheld), an Indonesian driver who was one of a group of illegal migrants who were arrested at a checkpoint near the city limits. “I paid the driver 200 riyals to bring me here,” he added. “I left my sponsor after five months, and paid some other guy 350 riyals to find me a better job. I was working in Buraidah. He found a better job for me in Jeddah: 1,000 riyals a month. I tried to come to Makkah because I can make five times that during the hajj season.”Instead, Arif and about a dozen others who were in custody with him will be processed and deported. Service workers who come to the Kingdom under sponsorship, including maids and drivers, generally earn about SR600($160) to SR800($213) a month. But once they arrive in the Kingdom, like Arif they can often find better salaries working illegally, hired by middle and upper class Saudis and expatriates who don’t want to weather the bureaucracy and expense of finding these workers through official channels. Arab News (Saudi Arabia) (12/22)

Egyptian children trade childhood for money

Alaa Shahine

CAIRO - Mohamed Gad walks barefoot through the muddy tannery, seemingly not bothered by the acrid odours of chemicals and the stink of unprocessed skins. He places piles of shaved leather on a cart, pulls it across the workshop and unloads the lot next to the colouring drums where the leather is cleaned and tanned using chrome. Tall and well-built, Gad joined the tannery shortly before turning 15, after working in several menial jobs for four years since quitting school. "The school was failing me every year and still charged me money, so I quit," he said while arranging the leather on the cart. "Now I want to learn this craft to make money out of it." Helping Gad was Mohamed, who looked younger but was too shy to speak. Around 2.7 million children work in Egypt, or about 10 per cent of the under-14 population, official figures show. The majority work in agriculture, mainly harvesting crops and hand-picking pests off cotton. Hundreds of thousands of children, many of them homeless, also toil in menial jobs at tanneries and garages, or sell tissues and newspapers at traffic lights. "There is abject poverty in Egypt, so families use children as breadwinners," said Nevine Osman, child labour expert for the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in Cairo. The Namibian (Namibia) (12/22)

Latin America's terrorist and insurgent groups

Skillfully and patiently networking their efforts to promote these issues, the NGOs have produced a reemergence of the left, of its main ideological mentor, Fidel Castro, and the emergence of new radical apostles by Prof. Alberto Bolívar With the exception of Colombia, with its long-standing Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) and Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) guerrilla groups, and Peru since the 2002 announcement of the return of its main internal foe, Sendero Luminoso (SL, or Shining Path),1 one might be tempted to consider that revolutionary violence in this region has been consigned to the past. But it has not. Revolutionaries have been adopting new and subtle ways, new justifications, and new timeframes for implementing their goals. The last decade saw what seemed to be a wave of economic liberalization in most Latin American countries, Chile in particular, and also a supposed strengthening of representative democracy. Both of these processes were thought to be planting the seeds of a new way of ideological thinking in the region: pragmatic, market-oriented, and strongly anti-leftist. Despite momentary institutional setbacks in some countries, and even economic crises like Brazil’s in 1998, the region was rejecting the old Marxist and leftist thinking that in the 1960s and 1970s swept many people away, mostly among the educated elites. This thinking in the end took the form of revolutionary war in “middle-class” countries like Argentina and Uruguay, countries that in Marxist terms theoretically were not poised for this. The Montoneros in Argentina and Tupamaros in Uruguay initiated a campaign of revolutionary violence that ended in an unselective repression against not only those who spearheaded the military actions, but also against those who gave or were suspected of giving passive support to the mostly urban guerrillas. Argentina Star (12/22)

NGOs criticise tsunami shelters

By Subir Bhaumik

BBC News, Calcutta

A group of NGOs have criticised the Indian government for not involving island victims of the 2004 tsunami in their rehabilitation process. Three NGOs, led by Action Aid, say tsunami victims in the eastern Andaman and Nicobar archipelago are unhappy with the quality of their new homes. The victims are being shifted to more than 8,500 new houses made for them with pre-fabricated structures. Officials say the tsunami killed more than 3,500 in the Andamans. "Across the world, communities affected by disasters are involved to achieve a satisfactory level of recovery. This has been disregarded [in Andamans] in favour of construction by large construction companies," the report by Action Aid, Society for Andaman Nicobar Ecology (Sane) and Tsunami Relief International Network (Trinet) says. BBC (12/22)

Kosovo Official Held After Peacekeepers Find Arms Cache

By Fatos BytyciReutersPRISTINA, Serbia, Dec. 21 -- A Kosovo government official and a party colleague have been arrested after a joint raid by police and NATO peacekeepers on a house packed with heavy weapons and ammunition. A police statement said the haul included a 75mm recoilless gun, 116 antitank mines and artillery grenades, automatic rifles, military uniforms and 2,500 rounds of ammunition.Local news reports said the cache, found late Wednesday in central Kosovo's Drenica region, was the largest discovered in Kosovo since the 1998-99 war and deployment of NATO peacekeepers. Police said three men had been arrested. Reports named two of them as members of the governing Alliance for the Future of Kosovo, including an adviser to the labor minister.The find sharpened fears of unrest in the U.N.-run province, where major powers have delayed a decision on the demand of 2 million ethnic Albanians for independence from Serbia. Washington Post (12/22)

Rebel monks maintain chapel barricade

COSTAS KANTOURIS Associated Press

THESSALONIKI, Greece — Police posted a guard outside a chapel at an Orthodox Greek monastic sanctuary where rebel monks remained barricaded on Thursday following clashes that left seven people injured. Wednesday's violence involved rival groups of monks carrying crowbars and sledgehammers, and is part of a long-standing dispute between legally recognized monks and a rebel monastery that opposes efforts by the Orthodox Church to improve relations with the Vatican. “We condemn these clashes and hope that calm will prevail,” Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis said. Monks at the rebel Esphigmenou monastery in northern Greece have turned against other monasteries on the all-male, self-governing peninsula of Mount Athos. Toronto Globe & Mail (12/22)

posted by Dave Carroll @ 12/22/2006 05:32:00 AM