Pax Gaea Human Rights World Post

PAX GAEA WORLD POST HUMAN RIGHTS HEADLINES WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2007

• Human Rights group calls for release of Columbian rights activist
• Former UN weapons chief says Bolton removal blessing for new Secretary-General
• Global fight against children's HIV is being dramatically shortchanged
• Africa infant mortality more than double the rest of the world
• Cheap coffee could render rare Sumatra hairy rhino extinct
• Illegal child marriages proliferate in rural Ethiopia
• China, Russia UN veto guarantee more misery in Myanmar
• Turkey rattling sabres over concerns of Kurdish control of Iraqi north
• Defector broadcasts beaming into North Korea despite efforts to block signal
• Czech Republic education policies disproportionately brand Roma children as "special needs"

Call for Release of Imprisoned Colombian Human Rights Leader

Gabriel Gonzalez, a renowned human rights activist, has been imprisoned in harsh conditions for over a year in Bucaramanga, in North Eastern Colombia. On January 4, 2006, Mr. Gonzalez was arrested and detained, falsely accused of rebellion and being a guerrilla Commander. Throughout his career as a human rights defender, he has endured attacks and threats that seem calculated to deter him from performing his vital human rights advocacy. Mr. Gonzalez has been held in pre-trial detention for over a year and the trial process is only now beginning. Mr. Gonzalez is Regional Coordinator of the independent human rights organization the Political Prisoners Solidarity Committee (Fundacion Comite de Solidaridad con los Presos Politicos (FCSPP)). On January 4, 2006, Mr. Gonzalez was detained and briefly held in solitary confinement. Since then he has been imprisoned in Bucaramanga, Santander Department, falsely charged with the vague offense of rebellion. Mr. Gonzalez and the FCSPP have endured a series of attacks and threats which appear calculated to deter them from performing their legitimate non-violent activities as human rights defenders. Both the FCSPP and Mr. Gonzalez have previously been awarded protective measures by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in recognition of their work as human rights defenders and the danger that they face. The rebellion charges against Mr. Gonzalez are specious and rely on witness evidence that lacks credibility. Both of the witnesses in the case were allegedly former guerilla members and assert that Mr. Gonzalez was a guerrilla commander for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Yet one was unable to physically identify or even name Mr. Gonzalez before he was detained and the other has previously admitted to providing statements under duress from authorities. The legal proceedings against Mr. Gonzalez appear politically motivated and form part of a broader practice of instigating specious legal proceedings against FCSPP leaders and other human rights defenders to intimidate them and obstruct their legitimate activities. Human Rights First (1/17)

HANS BLIX on BOLTON, KOFI & BAN

(MaximsNews.com, U.N.)

UNITED NATIONS - / www.MaximsNews.com, UN/ - 17 January 2007 -- Ban Ki Moon has now assumed the office of Secretary-General of the UN after Kofi Annan and as American representative at the UN John Bolton has been succeeded by Zalmay Khalilzad, until now American Ambassador in Baghdad . Will there be a difference? Definitely. Perhaps not global warming but thaw. The instinct to push ahead alone and demonstratively ignore others – not least the UN – which has characterized the Bush administration and in which John Bolton excelled like a pit bull terrier will no doubt be more controlled. This will probably give better results in the UN (also for the US ) and make life a little easier for Ban Ki Moon than it was for Kofi Annan. Bolton represented a minimalist view on the role of the Secretary-General: to direct the administrative service that the representatives of the states need and not ever tell governments what they might or ought to do. Annan wisely avoided the role of some kind of secular pope but he was neither silent nor passive. While he worked for a further development of the UN, Bolton became famous for his statement that he would be happy to see ten floors disappear from the UN building. While Kofi Annan argued for an expansion of the rule of law in the world Bolton claimed that following customary rules of international law was chiefly public relations stuff and that the US could ignore international conventions it had entered into. It was said about a daughter of President Reagan who was sometimes sent to represent the US that her place in the political spectrum was a few inches to the right of Djengis Khan. Bolton was definitely located at least 30 degrees to the right of Bush. MaximsNews (1/17)

U.N. Says Global AIDS Effort for Children Falls Far Short

By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN

Some countries are making progress in treating children with AIDS and preventing others from becoming infected, but the overall global response is “tragically insufficient,” Unicef said yesterday. “Children affected by AIDS are now more visible and are taken more seriously in global, regional and national forums where they had received little consideration before,” the United Nations agency said in a report. Better testing to find children with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, and simpler formulations of the antiretroviral drugs that combat the infection have increased the number of children under treatment, Unicef said. Additional factors were lower prices for the drugs and improved skills among health workers. But the overall statistics for children are grim, Unicef found. It took stock of changes in 2005 and 2006, when the agency began a program to put what it called the “missing face” of children at the center of the world effort to halt and reverse the spread of H.I.V. by 2015. Central to that effort is testing pregnant women, providing short-term drug therapy to prevent them from transmitting the virus to their newborns, testing children and treating those infected. About two years ago, Unicef was concerned that a number of factors stopped children from getting treatment. One was the ability to detect infected children. Two others were whether the available drugs were safe for children and affordable for poor countries. New York Times (1/17)

Pregnancy Is a Dangerous Pursuit in Zambia

Isabel Chimangeni

LUSAKA, Jan 17 (IPS) - "Being pregnant in Africa is like having an unknown disease," says Zambian mother Alice Tembo, referring to many of her compatriots' lack of basic knowledge about pregnancy and childbirth. She has recently given birth without any complications, which is exceptional in a country where the maternal mortality ratio is 728 per 100,000 live births. However, Zambia's maternal death rate is still lower that the rate for the whole of the sub-Saharan African region, which stood at a shocking 920 per 100,000 live births in 2000 according to the United Nations Statistics Division. Internationally, sub-Saharan Africa has by far the highest ratio of maternal deaths. It is more than double the rate for the world as a whole, which is 400 deaths per 100,000 live births. The region also compares poorly with other developing regions, which collectively stood at 450 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2000. These statistics make Tembo's observation all the more salient. "One of the things that the government should do to protect pregnant women is to empower them with knowledge and finance. Secondly, we need things like good roads, clean hospitals and trained hospital staff." Inter Press News Service Agency (1/17)

Why a cup of instant coffee could spell doom for last hairy rhino

Nick Meo in Sumatra

After surviving the incursions of poachers, loggers and farmers, one of the last great tracts of protected virgin rainforest in South-East Asia is now being destroyed because of booming coffee exports, according to conservationists. They estimate that about 20 per cent of the Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park in Sumatra has been hacked down for illicit plantations. If the destruction continues unchecked in the 340,000-hectare (840,000-acre) park, some of Asia’s last surviving tigers and the critically endangered hairy rhino, as well as elephants, could vanish within a decade because of the world’s craving for caffeine. Gone in an Instant, a report published today by WWF, blames international coffee companies for buying illicit coffee — often unknowingly — from middlemen who abuse a lack of regulations to mix beans from the 20,000 tonnes grown illegally inside the park with legitimate crops from elsewhere in Lampung province. The low-grade robusta beans grown in the area are used to make instant and packet coffee and energy drinks by some of the biggest names in the business, including Kraft Foods, Nestlé and ED&F Man. Nestlé was one of the companies praised by researchers for trying to find ways of keeping illegal beans out of their coffee products. Others have pledged to take action to deal with the problem after researchers contacted them. Some who were approached, including London-based ED&F Man, denied purchasing any illicit beans, WWF said. Times of London (1/16)

Rural Ethiopia Ignores Law Against Child Brides

by Brenda Wilson

All Things Considered, January 15, 2007 · In the northern highlands of Ethiopia, there's a saying: The world is producing more children, but the land is not expanding. That's leading to a collision between the old world and a new one that is challenging age-old social customs about marriage and the rights of women and children. The government is backing a series of new family-planning policies, including a ban on the practice of marrying girls while they're still children. In the village of Yinsa, Ethiopia, some women are indifferent to the change. Others are welcoming it.Yinsa is a little more than a half-hour drive from the nearest town. Spreading out from a village center near the highway, tens of thousands of people live on the family compounds and farms scattered throughout eucalyptus forests and fields of corn and tef, a grain that goes into the making of the spongy bread, njera.Ethiopia was once seen as enlightened and progressive, but its image has been tarnished by the government's suppression of dissent and opposition. So Teshomo Mamo has to cajole Alemitu Yimer, our Yinsa guide, into talking about life in the village. National Public Radio (1/17)

UN vetoes prolong Burma agony

Simon Tisdall

Burma's military junta has been crowing this week over the defeat of a US- and British-backed United Nations security council resolution condemning the regime's egregious human rights abuses. It is a sickening sound for millions of oppressed Burmese effectively imprisoned in their own homeland. And the decisive UN vetoes cast by China and Russia, supported by South Africa of all countries, have dealt another Darfur-scale setback to the international community's newly proclaimed "responsibility to protect". For once, the Bush administration, democracy and human rights campaigners, and aid agencies are mostly in the same corner. "The US is deeply disappointed by the council's failure," said acting UN ambassador Alejandro Wolff. "The resolution would have been a strong and urgently needed statement about the need for change in Burma whose military regime arbitrarily arrests, tortures, rapes and executes its own people and wages war on minorities within its own borders while refugee flows increase, narcotics and human trafficking grow, and communicable diseases remain untreated." Britain's ambassador, Sir Emyr Jones Parry, said the decision to force a vote was an attempt to "do the right thing by the people of Myanmar [Burma]".Mark Farmaner, of the independent pressure group Burma Campaign UK, said poverty and humanitarian problems were worsening, especially in ethnic minority regions targeted by the junta. "Over 20,000 people have been forced from their homes since government troops began an offensive in the Karen areas last March. They have been unable to return," he said. New restrictions were also making foreign aid agency work increasingly difficult. Burma's average per capita income has been estimated at $175 (£90) a year, much lower even than neighbouring Bangladesh. Child malnutrition and mortality rates are reportedly rising. The Guardian (United Kingdom) (1/17)

Turkey Concerned as Kurds Take Control of Northern Iraq

By Annette Grossbongardt in Istanbul

Ankara is thinking aloud about a possible military intervention in northern Iraq. As the Kurdish population consolidates its hold on oil-rich Kirkuk, the Turkish government worries about increased sectarian violence among the separatist PKK. The confidential report on strategic threats to the Turkish nation issued by Turkey's National Intelligence Service (MIT) bore a simple title: "Iraq, Terror, Kirkuk and the PKK." Copies of the explosive document were already lying on the desks of the Turkish president and of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan before the beginning of the new year. And it is explicit about the threats facing Turkey -- especially the one posed by Iraq. Kurdish PKK militias have withdrawn to the northern part of Turkey's neighbor to the south, and the region's Kurdish population already enjoys far-reaching autonomy. Were Iraq to break apart, Ankara would suddenly be faced with a Kurdish state as a neighbor, a situation, the report makes clear, which could incite Kurdish separatists in south-eastern Turkey to continue their fight for independence. Kurds are already attempting to alter the demography of the oil-rich northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk in their favor, the document warns. Some 600,000 Kurds have already been drawn into the multi-ethnic city, many of them returnees after former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein followed a policy of increasing the city's Arab population. Some Kurds have even been lured back with cash -- while at the same time some 200,000 members of the Turkmen minority have been driven out, according to the confidential report. Come referendum time -- when Kirkuk residents will be asked to vote on whether the city should become part of the autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq -- the increase in Kurdish residents is meant to ensure a favorable result. Der Spiegel Germany (1/17)

Radio dials in voice of freedom for N. Korea

Despite the power wielded by the Kim Jong Il regime in North Korea to keep the country hermetically sealed, it cannot block the voice of freedom carried by radio waves. Kim Sung Min, a former officer in the North Korean People's Army, is on a personal mission to spark a democracy movement in the communist country via radio programs he beams from South Korea. Kim, 44, runs the Free North Korea Broadcast radio station in Seoul with the help of other North Korean defectors. "I want to convey truth to the people in North Korea. I want to contribute to the development of a democracy movement in the country," Kim said in a recent lecture in Tokyo. Access to information in North Korea is strictly controlled. People are prohibited from listening to radio or watching television programs broadcast from South Korea or other countries. It is also illegal to own personal computers without permission. When Kim was an officer in the army, he clandestinely listened to South Korean radio programs. After defecting to South Korea in 1999, he helped the country produce programs that were broadcast into North Korea. Later, however, the South Korean government drastically cut back broadcasts for fear they would hinder the growing reconciliatory atmosphere between the two Koreas. Undaunted, Kim, along with other defectors, set up a radio station in 2004 and began broadcasting programs to North Korea on the Internet. Asahi Shimbun (Japan) (1/17)

Czech Roma claim school injustice

Roma children in the Czech Republic were "systematically and wrongly" put in schools for pupils with learning facilities, a European court has heard. The 1990s policy led to a disproportionate number of Roma (Gypsy) children in Czech special schools. The families of 18 Roma children have appealed to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg to label the policy discriminatory. Their supporters compare the case to the end of segregation in US schools. In one region, Ostrava, more than 50% of Roma children were placed in special schools. "We are claiming that the mere statistical results that show that there is such an overwhelming over-representation of Roma children in special schools - or rather there was at the time in question - is sufficient proof of inferior differential treatment," the group's lawyer, David Strupek, told Radio Prague. "It practically means that more than 50% of Roma children are mentally deficient, which is a conclusion that cannot be accepted." "But for their Roma ethnicity, would these children have been treated in the same way?" the group's lawyer Anthony Lester asked the court in Strasbourg, France. The Czech government has argued that since the schools were not set up specifically for Roma children, the system was not discriminatory. BBC (1/17)

posted by Dave Carroll @ 1/17/2007 05:19:00 PM