Pax Gaea Human Rights World Post

PAX GAEA WORLD POST HUMAN RIGHTS HEADLINES SUNDAY, JANUARY 21, 2007

TOPICS

• Australia Day concert promoter prohibits national flag as symbol of hate, racism
• As world watches China exalt to superpower status, put your money on India first
• Graves of the dead keep memories fresh for children of the Iran Revolution
• Jerusalem Muslims accuse Israel of tunneling under Temple Mount, attempting cave in to prompt erection of lost Temple
• Moroccan journalist prosecution decried by rights group, "wise" to government
• South Africa's vote against Burma UN sanctions "disappointment" to Tutu
• "Saving Private Ryan' type mission undertaken by Royal Marines in Afghanistan
• 25 American troops killed in one deadly day in Iraq as escalation forces begin arriving
• South American Union talks not as production as some had hoped
• Racism's ugly face in Georgia as mayor bans soccer, sport of refugees, from city parks but for the "Fugees", hope abounds

Ban concert, not flag: Robb

ORGANISERS should cancel the Australia Day eve Big Day Out concert in Sydney rather than ban the flag at Thursday's event, parliamentary secretary for immigration Andrew Robb said. NSW Premier Morris Iemma and the RSL also condemned the decision to ban the flag, describing it as "outrageous" and "unbelievable".The Daily Telegraph today reported that organisers of the Big Day Out at Homebush had decided they would confiscate any flag or bandana featuring the national symbol at the gates. Event organiser Ken West was quoted as saying fans' behaviour last year in the wake of the Cronulla riots and the recent ethnic violence at the Australian Open tennis tournament had forced his hand. "The Australian flag was being used as gang colours. It was racism disguised as patriotism and I'm not going to tolerate it," Mr West said. BDO organisers issued a statement this morning saying the flag was not banned, but they said they did not want concert-goers taking it into the event. "We are not banning the Australian flag but are simply discouraging its use for anti-social purposes at the Big Day Out," the statement said. Herald Sun (Australia) (1/21)

The dragon and elephant race to superpower status

Fomer 'Financial Times' reporter Edward Luce argues that though India is not on autopilot to greatness, it would take an incompetent pilot to crash the plane

By William Grimes, NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE, NEW YORK All eyes are on China as it races to become the world's next great power. Smart bettors would be wise to put some money on India to get there first, and Edward Luce explains why in In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India, his highly informative, wide-ranging survey. Luce, who reported from New Delhi for the Financial Times from 2001 to 2005, offers an Imax view of a nation so enormous that it embraces every possible contradiction. Always it seems to be teetering on the edge of either greatness or the abyss. Right now, the future looks inviting. India's dizzying economic ascent began in 1991, when the government abruptly dismantled the "license raj," a system of tight controls and permits in place since independence in 1947. Luce, as you might expect from a Financial Times reporter, does a superb job of explaining the new Indian economy and why its transformation qualifies as strange. Unlike China, India has not undergone an industrial revolution. Its economy is powered not by manufacturing but by its service industries. In a vast subcontinent of poor farmers whose tiny holdings shrink by the decade, a highly competitive, if small, technology sector and a welter of service businesses have helped create a middle class, materialistic and acquisitive, along with some spectacularly rich entrepreneurs. Taipei Times (1/21)

Children of the revolution

About a mile before the cemetery of Behesht-e-Zahra you begin to spot the flower sellers. Young men lined up by the sides of the road, holding out carnations and tuberoses as offerings for the dead. The gates of the cemetery, the main resting grounds for the martyrs of the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, are marked by red flags, the colour of tulips, commemorating the thousands who fought and died for their country. Two hundred thousand men were killed at the front, maimed by landmines and mustard gas dropped by Saddam’s brigades; while the number of those disabled by the fighting is approximated at 1.5 million Iranians — the unofficial number of martyrs is whispered to be closer to three hundred thousand. A man selling Shia Nouhay mourning tapes and books by Ayatollah Behesti, the assassinated founder of the Islamic Republic Party, told me that landmines planted by the Iraqi army have yet to be cleared and even today they bury men killed by the after effects of the war, and so the number of Shaheeds keeps rising and there is little respite from grief at Behesht-e-Zahra.The graves are marked by elevated steel and glass boxes that contain photographs of the dead. Personal belongings — an old watch, personal letters, a comb — and flowers are propped up against the photographs of the many men killed during the eight years of war. Tombstones, sometimes covering empty graves in cases when the body of the Shaheed is still missing, mark the date and location of the men’s death. Masoud Safarlou has no date of death on his tombstone; his body was found in a town called Faiyazi near the Iran-Iraq border; that is all his family knows. International News (Pakistan) (1/21)

Islamic Movement alleges Israeli dig under J'lem's Temple Mount

By Nadav Shragai, Yoav Stern and Meron Rapoport, Haaretz Correspondents

The Southern Branch of the Islamic Movement, headed by Ra'am-Ta'al chairman MK Ibrahim Sarsour, on Sunday accused Israel of carrying out excavations underneath Jerusalem's Temple Mount, known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary. Sarsour also claimed the Israel Antiquities Authority paid a Palestinian vendor $60,000 for his store along the Temple Mount. The Israel Antiquities Authority denied the accusation. Earlier on Sunday, the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement presented pictures taken two weeks ago that allegedly documented excavations near the Temple Mount. Northern Branch leader Sheikh Ra'ad Salah said the excavations were meant to "create a stranglehold around Al-Aqsa Mosque, in order for the Israeli establishment to fulfill its darkest dreams of building a Jewish Temple [in its place]." Islamic Movements representatives added that they have information on an upcoming dig that they will soon reveal. Ha'aretz (Israel) (1/21)

Nichane case: NGO denounces verdict as 'aggression',

Minister deems 'wisdom has prevailed'

Rabat, Jan. 15 - A Moroccan Human Right NGO has described as "an aggression against the freedom of speech," the condemnation on Monday by a Casablanca court of two journalists of the Arabic-speaking Magazine Nichane, while Moroccan Minister of Communication Nabil Benabdellah deemed that "wisdom has prevailed" in the trial of the magazine. Weekly Director, Driss Ksikes and journalist Sanaa Al Aji were given a three-year suspended sentence and fined to USD 7,500, while their magazine was banned for two months by the First Instance Court of Morocco's largest city. They were tried following a long article published last month on Moroccan jokes on Islam, sex and politics, which were considered as "harmful to Islam. In a press release, the AMDH (Moroccan Association for Human Rights) denounced the verdict as "an abuse against the freedom of speech and press, and a serious regression with regard to the partial achievements attained in Morocco in this field." For his part, Secretary General of the Syndicat national de la Presse Marocaine (Moroccan Press Union) said the verdict was “severe”, in an interview with the satellite TV Al Jazeera. Earlier, Ksikes told MAP that the case was handled with "a lot of wisdom," by the court as it did not follow the public prosecutor who recommended a three to five-year imprisonment and banning the two defendants from practicing journalism. Nabil Abdellah who is also spokesman for the Government deemed that “wisdom has prevailed” in Nichane’s case. “We are undertaking a profound reform of the Press Code and, consequently, there is a need to strengthen this orientation”, he told 2M TV Monday evening. Maghreb Arab Presse (1/21)

Tutu 'disappointed' by SA's Burma vote

Celean Jacobson

Johannesburg, South Africa- Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu has expressed his deep disappointment at South Africa's vote to block a United Nations Security Council resolution demanding an end to human rights abuses in Burma, saying it was a betrayal of his country's "noble past". The retired South African archbishop urged the Security Council to take action against the military regime of the South-east Asian country, in a 2005 report written with fellow Nobel laureate and former Czech President Vaclav Havel. "I am deeply disappointed by our vote. It is a betrayal of our own noble past. Many in the international community can hardly believe it. It is inexplicable," Tutu said in an e-mail no Saturday to the Associated Press. In its first vote since it secured a non-permanent seat on the Security Council last year, South Africa joined China and Russia in opposing the resolution proposed by the United States and backed by Britain and France. The vote in the Security Council on January 12 was nine to three in favour of the resolution, with three abstentions. However, China and Russia cast a rare double veto, which blocked the resolution's passage.South Africa does not have veto power. Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Aziz Pahad said in a statement that while South Africa was "deeply concerned at the situation in Myanmar [Burma]," the country's vote against the resolution had been technical.He said Myanmar did not pose a threat to international peace and security and was a matter best left to the UN Human Rights Council. Mail & Guardian (south Africa) (1/21)

Heroes of Helmand: the first amazing pictures

It was a daring rescue mission - two soldiers strapped to the wing pods of a helicopter, determined to bring back the body of a fallen colleague. Mark Townsend reconstructs the remarkable flight to Jugroom Fort

Robert Magowan gazed over the parched flatlands of Helmand and wondered what might lay ahead. The lieutenant-colonel of the Royal Marines knew his men were preparing for a trip into the unknown, a mercy mission that has already etched itself into contemporary military folklore. He had been told they were missing a man following a firefight that forced British troops to retreat from a dawn raid against a Taliban fort nearly four miles beyond the horizon. Now in a remarkable sequence of images, the bravery of the men involved in one of the most extraordinary, but ultimately tragic rescue operations carried out by the British army in Afghanistan can be revealed. Military photographers chronicle how, in a feat never previously attempted, four Royal Marines strapped themselves to the wing pods of two Apache gunships and flew back to heavily fortified Jugroom fort in an audacious attempt to recover Lance-Corporal Matthew Ford. The men are shown clinging to the side of a gunship as it rumbles just 100ft above the desert landscape at speeds of 50mph, lower than normal to avoid the effects of wind-chill during the Afghan winter.Earlier, hundreds of British troops led by the Royal Marines had retreated back over the Helmand river before word spread that Ford was missing. An unmanned probe was dispatched to Jugwood, a Taliban stronghold ringed by watchtowers, the command headquarters for insurgents' activity across the district. An alert RAF soldier noticed an unusual light blob, just outside the fort's imposing walls. It was Ford. Retrieving the stricken soldier with Viking amphibious vehicles might cost more men. A 39-year-old helicopter pilot, known only as 'Tom', said that strapping soldiers to the helicopter would be the quickest way to rescue Ford. When the request for volunteers rang out, everyone in the Helmand Operational Post at Garmsar stepped forward for a mission that carried echoes of Saving Private Ryan, the Hollywood film in which a battalion risk their lives to rescue a soldier behind enemy lines. Guardian (United Kingdom) (1/21)

25 US troops killed in a single day in Iraq

BAGHDAD (AFP) - At least 25 US troops were killed across Iraq in one of the deadliest days for the American forces since the invasion began, as the military said 3,200 new troops had arrived to quell Baghdad violence. On the political front, lawmakers from radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's group ended a nearly two-month-old parliamentary boycott in a significant boost for Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's beleaguered government. According to the US military, 25 troops were killed on Saturday alone, making it one of the bloodiest days for the American forces since January 26, 2005, when 36 servicemembers died. The military in a series of statements piling up the body count, listed a helicopter crash, insurgent attacks and roadside bombs as being responsible for Saturday's high casualty rate. Five troops, it said in a statement Sunday, died in separate enemy attacks in the western Sunni Al-Anbar province, a hotbed of anti-US insurgency where the military has lost the bulk of its troops since the invasion. In another daring attack by militants, five soldiers were killed in the southern shrine city of Karbala during a meeting to plan security measures for the 10-day Shiite mourning ceremony of Ashura that began Sunday.The attack was carried out by militants wearing uniforms similar to those worn by Iraqi and US soldiers, the governor of Karbala Akhil al-Khazali said. Agence France Presse (1/21)

South American unification elusive at Mercosur summit

By Michael Astor, ASSOCIATED PRESS

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil – South American leaders agree continentwide integration is a worthy goal. Now, if they could only agree on how to get there. Discord at the two-day Mercosur summit that ended Friday left many to wonder about the future of a trade bloc that has never lived up to its promise of integrating much of South America into an influential body like the European Union. Brazil's business-friendly President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva closed the summit proclaiming that “there has never been such a promising political climate for the integration of Mercosur.” But Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela – Mercosur's newest member – stole the show from the moment he arrived by threatening to “decontaminate” the trade bloc of its free-market impulses. Bolivia's President Evo Morales, another ardent leftist, joined his Venezuelan ally in saying Mercosur needs “profound reforms” – even while requesting full membership into the bloc. The Southern Cone Common Market, or Mercosur, unites some 250 million people with a gross domestic product of $1 trillion, or about 76 percent of the total for South America. Made up of Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela, the trade bloc has long suffered from internal bickering over matters as mundane as trade in pork and appliances. But this time, leaders such as Chavez and Silva vowed to reform and expand Mercosur so it can finally come through on promises to ease a long-standing South American divide between rich and poor. Argentina Star/San Diego Union Tribune (1/21)

posted by Dave Carroll @ 1/21/2007 05:54:00 PM