Pax Gaea Human Rights World Post

PAX GAEA WORLD POST HUMAN RIGHTS HEADLINES SATURDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2006

• Hussein is executed, "It was very quick", witness testifies
• Japan factory caught hiring immigrant child labor, told to stop it though no punitive action expected
• Pilgrims in Saudi Arabia face cold wave at the beginning of haj
• African origin Jews wins suit against U.S. prison for violation of religious rights
• UN foot-dragging on Somalia believed intentional
• Hundreds feared dead in sinking of Indonesia ship
• 2006 death toll in Palestine triple last year
• Kidnappings of 'Dirty War' witnesses blamed on para-militaries by Argentina's Kirchner
• Rare international cooperation by U.S. nets war crime charges for deported Bosnian Serbs
• AIDS spreading unchecked in Washington D.C. as monitoring agency suffers staffing and funding shortfalls

Saddam's execution: 'It was very quick'

His face uncovered, his demeanour calm, Saddam Hussein said a brief prayer as Iraqi policemen walked him to the gallows yesterday and put a noose around his neck. After decades of fear, violence and a despotic rule, the end was brief as the former Iraqi leader was hanged at dawn in Baghdad for crimes against humanity. "It was very quick. He died right away," one of the official Iraqi witnesses told Reuters. However, the execution did not end the violence in Iraq. Car bombs set off by suspected insurgents from Saddam's once dominant Sunni minority killed over 70 people in Baghdad and near the Shi'ite holy city of Najaf, striking areas populated by Shi'ite Muslims oppressed for decades and now in the ascendancy. President George W. Bush, who branded Saddam a tyrant and a threat to global security even though alleged nuclear and other weapons were not found after the 2003 invasion, hailed the execution as a "milestone" on Iraq's path to democracy, but others - including the UN - condemned the trial which led to his execution. New Zealand Herald (12/30)

Gifu firms illegally hired Brazilian immigrants' children

TOKYO — Two temporary-job placement agencies in Gifu Prefecture had hired 12 children of Brazilian immigrants of Japanese origin for factory work in violation of Japan's labor regulations, officials of the labor ministry's Gifu bureau said Friday. The detection highlights the problem that many children among an increasing number of immigrant workers in Japan choose to work, rather than attend school, due to language problems and hardships in their families' livelihoods, experts say.A local labor standards inspection office has already told the two firms to stop the violation and the children are no longer at work, according to the officials of the Gifu Prefecture Labor Bureau.The two firms hired a total of 12 boys and girls aged 13 to 15 from around February at an hourly wage of 850 yen at the lowest, and sent them to factories of several companies in Gifu, including parts manufacturers, with which it has such service contracts, they said. The Labor Standards Act bans employment of any children aged up to 15, regardless of their nationality, from the viewpoint of child protection. Japan Today (12/30)

Pilgrims brave cold wave to begin Haj

Mohammed Wajihuddin

MINA (MECCA): Despite strong instruction from the local police not to venture out of home during Haj and brave a cold wave, Shahnawaz Alam sneaked into Mina on Thursday night. Without the relative comforts of a tent at Mina, Shahnawaz stayed up the night on a pavement, seeking Allah's mercies for himself and his family back home in India. Shahnawaz is not alone who, after ignoring the Saudi government's appeal to the residents of Mecca to stay away from the holy sites during Haj, sneaked into Mina and the plains of Arafat, swelling the pilgrims' number to around 3 million. "It's a dream come true. People spend their life's savings to come here. I think I got a call from Allah when he gave me a job in the holy city," said Shahnawaz, a worker with a Mecca-based construction company. "Why should I let this opportunity? when I am here." Times of India (12/30)

Black Hebrew inmate sues US prison

By AP AND JPOST.COM STAFF

RICHMOND, Virginia- In a ruling favorable to an inmate belonging to the Black Hebrews sect, who sued after a prison denied his request for kosher meals, a federal appeals court upheld a federal law that protects the religious rights of incarcerated people. The state of Virginia had challenged the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act after inmate Ira Madison complained in a 2001 lawsuit that prison officials were violating the act by denying him a kosher diet. Virginia argued that Congress had exceeded its authority by tying compliance with the act to federal funding for prisons. But the appellate judges rejected that argument, saying the law does not force states to change prison policies. "Because Virginia voluntarily accepted federal correctional funds, it cannot avoid the substantive requirements of RLUIPA," Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III wrote Friday. The law, enacted in 2000, blocks any government from passing a land use regulation - such as a zoning law - that would discriminate against a religious organization. It also prohibits prisons from blocking prisoners from worshipping as they please. Jerusalem Post (12/30)

U.N. Remains Paralysed Over Fighting in Somalia

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 28 (IPS) - When the United Nations failed to take immediate action during the month-long Israeli attacks on Lebanon last July, the Security Council was accused of deliberately dragging its feet to provide more time for a decisive military victory by the Jewish state. The 15-member Security Council took more than a month to adopt a resolution calling for a ceasefire, by which time hundreds and thousands of Lebanese civilians had been killed by Israeli airstrikes which left parts of Beirut in shambles. "We will probably watch a similar scenario in the Horn of Africa if the Security Council does not act immediately," predicts an Arab diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity. Since Sunday, the militarily-strong Ethiopian government has been unleashing its firepower against the ragtag forces of the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) based in the capital of Mogadishu. The Ethiopian government, which has received tacit support from the United States, is backing the forces of the Baidoa-based Transitional Federal Government (TFG) engaged in a turf battle with the UIC inside Somalia. Inter Press News Service Agency (12/30)

Indonesia ship sinks with hundreds aboard

JAKARTA, Saturday - A ferry with at least 600 aboard sank in bad weather during the night as it travelled between Borneo and Java islands, Indonesian navy officials said today. This is the second ferry disaster in as many days in Indonesia after a vessel sank on Thursday in rough seas off Sumatra island. High seas and bad weather were hampering rescue efforts in the Java Sea, the Navy officials said, but 26 survivors had been found. “The latest development (is) we have found 26 people. 17 were secured by fishermen and nine others by a small navy ship,” Toni Syaiful, a Navy spokesman in the East Java city of Surabaya, said by telephone. “They have been taken to Bawean island. They wore lifejackets,” he said. Bawean is 663 kilometres (412 miles) east of Jakarta, in the Java Sea. Central Java Navy commander Colonel Yan Simamora told Elshinta news radio the ship, the “Senopati”, had been travelling between Indonesia’s Central Kalimantan province on Borneo to Central Java province on the country’s main island. “The ship sank about midnight last night,” he said, adding that it was difficult to evacuate the survivors because of bad weather. Kenya Daily Nation (12/30)

Palestinian death toll triples this year

By Eric Silver in Jerusalem

The number of Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces in the West Bank and Gaza Strip tripled this year, according to an Israeli human rights organisation. B'Tselem said 660 Palestinians had been killed during 2006, including 141 minors. The report claimed that at least 322 of those killed were not fighters. At the same time, B'Tselem recorded a drop in the number of Israelis killed during the year. Palestinians killed 17 civilians, including one minor, and six members of the security forces. In Gaza alone, since the kidnapping of Corporal Gilad Shalit in a cross-border raid on 25 June, Israel has killed 405 Palestinians, including 88 minors. Of this total, 205 were defined as non-combatants. B'Tselem said the number of civilians killed showed a "deterioration in the human rights situation in the occupied territories". That impression was reinforced by the demolition of 292 homes, housing 1,769 people, 279 of them in the Gaza Strip. Israel also demolished 42 Arab homes in East Jerusalem built without a permit. Independent (United Kingdom) (12/30)

Argentine president blames paramilitaries for kidnappings

BUENOS AIRES (AFP) - President Nestor Kirchner has blamed ciminal elements linked to the past military dictatorship for the kidnapping of two witnesses in the trials of suspected human rights abusers. He said the recent abductions were meant to "put the breaks on the trials" and vowed to reject any call for amnesty for wrongdoers. "This president will not allow any type of amnesty" for hundreds of former military and police on trial around the country for crimes committed under the past military regime," Kirchner said on national television and radio. Kirchner's 10-minute speech came two days after human rights activist Luiz Gerez, 51, a key witness in several trials, was kidnapped. Three months ago 77-year-old bricklayer Julio Lopez, whose testimony helped put former chief of police Miguel Etchecolatz behind bars for life, also went missing. An Argentinian truth commission estimated several thousand people were killed or made to disappear during the country's 1976-1983 military dictatorship. Amnesty laws later protected many in the military from justice. Argentina Star (12/30)

Bosnian Serbs deported by US are indicted for war-crimes

As a result of landmark international cooperation, the two men were charged last week in connection with the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.

By Beth Kampschror Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

SARAJEVO, BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA – Mladen Blagojevic and Zdravko Bozic would probably be living unassuming lives as Bosnia Serb refugees in the Arizona desert if it weren't for a landmark international detective effort to track down war-crime suspects. Instead, they're in custody in wintry Bosnia, where they were charged last week in connection with the 1995 Srebrenica massacre. The case, say court sources, marks a precedent in international cooperation in the prosecution of war crimes, and could show the way forward for both the US and other countries that may be unwittingly hosting war-crimes suspects on their territory. "I would describe the cooperation with the US as unprecedented, as these are the first cases where war-crimes suspects have been returned to the country where the crimes were committed to face charges," says Toby Cadman, counsel to the prosecutor at Bosnia's war-crimes chamber. Mr. Blagojevic and Mr. Bozic were deported to Bosnia earlier this year after being arrested in the US for not disclosing their service in the Bosnian Serb military when its forces overran the Bosnian Muslim enclave of Srebrenica and killed up to 8,000 men and boys - a crime ruled genocide by the UN war-crimes tribunal in The Hague. On Dec. 21, they were indicted for crimes against humanity by Bosnia's war-crimes chamber and charged with the detention, murders, and forcible transfer of Srebrenica Muslims. Christian Science Monitor (12/30)

An Overwhelmed D.C. Agency Loses Count of AIDS Cases

By Jose Antonio Vargas, Washington Post Staff Writer

In late August, barely a month into her new job, Marie Sansone of the District's AIDS agency was astounded by what she discovered: five boxes of unexamined HIV and AIDS cases that had not been touched in more than a year. In the boxes were records of 2,000 to 3,000 cases that had yet to be entered in the city's database. The records are mostly from 2004 and 2005, some from 2003. Who's getting sicker, who needs treatment, who died. All boxed up. "Oh, my goodness," Sansone, surveillance chief for the city's Administration for HIV Policy and Programs (AHPP), remembers saying. "We were flabbergasted, just flabbergasted," adds Sansone's boss, AHPP Director Marsha Martin. That information is critical to managing a spreading epidemic, now in its 25th year. Under guidelines from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, AHPP is required to collect, maintain and distribute statistics on the disease, which dozens of community-based organizations depend on for their prevention and treatment programs. City officials acknowledge that the District is behind in tracking new cases of HIV, as well as in reporting the number of deaths from AIDS complications. AHPP reports that about 10,000 District residents -- nearly 1 in 50 -- have AIDS. It estimates that between 17,000 and 25,000 have HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Though AHPP started collecting HIV data in 2001, it has yet to release the statistics, and it hasn't released data on AIDS-related deaths since 2002. In contrast, Baltimore issues yearly and quarterly updates of HIV cases and AIDS-related deaths. With the additional five boxes, the District's big problem just got bigger. "This is very, very, very serious," Sansone says. "Getting through these boxes is of the highest priority." And Sansone's historically disorganized, chronically understaffed surveillance department shoulders the weight of correcting the public record. Since early September, Sansone and her staff have been going through the five boxes, looking at each case, going back to local health care providers to complete reports, making sure that an HIV case is not counted as an AIDS case and vice versa. She's kept a weekly tally. By the end of September, they'd added 15 AIDS cases and 236 HIV cases. Washington Post (12/30)

posted by Dave Carroll @ 12/30/2006 04:05:00 PM