Pax Gaea Human Rights World Post

PAX GAEA WORLD POST HUMAN RIGHTS HEADLINES TUESDAY, JANUARY 23, 2007

TOPICS

• Fijian willingness to send troops to Iraq spurs soft pedalling by NZ, UN about coup
• Filipino merchant seaman added to growing hostage list of Nigerian extremists
• Law and order take precedence over human rights, Nepal Prime Minister tells UN rep
• U.S. to introduce UN resolution condemning deniers of Holocaust
• India sends all woman police force to help peacekeeping effort in Liberia
• Hizbullah led general strike in Lebanon strikes violence concerns by majority party
• Women must struggle for rights in face of globalisation, advocates declare at forum
• Argentina vets of Falklands War outcasts among society
  West 'pleased' with Serbian elections but current PM could tilt it left or right
• Report damns North Ireland Police, accuses law enforcement of complicity in Catholic killings

Clark stance over Fiji troops 'weak'

By Ruth Berry

The Government is refusing to criticise a United Nations decision to enlist more Fijian soldiers in Iraq, despite having urged it to stop using them following the coup. The stance of both has annoyed National foreign affairs spokesman Murray McCully, who describes the UN decision as "unacceptable and unprincipled" and Helen Clark's as a "substantial backdown". He said Helen Clark, who defended the UN by saying it was struggling to recruit peacekeepers, had made a weak response. The criticism comes as the Government struggles over what stance to take on Fiji, where it is increasingly clear there is no real prospect of the ousted Government of Laisenia Qarase returning to power. Before the coup, then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned Fiji would be asked to withdraw from international peacekeeping operations if one occurred. Helen Clark and Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters also regularly raised the threat in the coup lead-up, warning the loss of peacekeeping revenue could substantially undermine the military's power. More than 200 Fijian soldiers were stationed in Baghdad before Christmas. In mid-December, Mr Peters called for the UN to ban the use of Fijian military, saying: "I think some principled responses from the West are required." This week, however, the Fijian military confirmed 12 soldiers would head to Iraq to provide security for UN personnel. New Zealand Herald (1/23)

Nigerian gunmen begin negotiations for release of 24 Pinoys

The Philippine Star

Gunmen have started negotiating for the release of 24 Filipino seafarers taken hostage aboard a German cargo ship in Nigerian waters, a foreign affairs official said Tuesday. The government initially said six sailors had been kidnapped. But in a press briefing Tuesday, foreign affairs undersecretary for migrant workers affairs Esteban Conejos Jr. said they received information from the owner of the oil cargo vessel that the entire crew of 24 Filipinos were abducted. The ship was near the Nigerian oil city of Warri when the gunmen took 17 sailors to a nearby village Saturday and forced the remaining sailors to stay on board, Conejos said. "Based on new information, the German-owned Baco Liner II was manned by a 24-Filipino crew," he said. "There’s reasonable belief to assume that the entire crew and the ship were hostaged. The ship owner has no radio communication and contact with the ship." Conejos met Tuesday with representatives of the local manning agency who handed him a letter from the ship’s owner stating what happened last Saturday. Local Nigerian government officials had already identified a negotiator and talks were underway, Conejos said, adding that all the Filipinos were apparently "safe and sound." The gunmen are from the militant Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, which has been seeking the release of the movement’s leader and two other men charged with treason, he said. ABS-CBN News (Philippines) (1/23)

Law, order scene cause for worry: PM

Government offers talks to agitating Terai outfits

Himalayan News Service

Kathmandu, January 23:- Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala today emphasised the need to be “patient and not be reactive” keeping in view the current “fluid” political scenario in the wake of the Terai outburst in the run-up to the elections to the constituent assembly. He expressed this view at a meeting of the Nepali Congress (NC) Parliamentary Party (PP), which was held at his official residence at Baluwatar today. He said if there were people who were ‘reactive’ there are likely to be others who could ‘turn destructive.’ Referring to the Lahan incident, Koirala conceded that the Maoists leaders, who met him yesterday, were “compelled to accept” their mistake. “They were compelled to realise their mistake in the Lahan incident,” Koirala said. He, however, assured his party-men that everything, including the Lahan incident, would be sorted out soon keeping in view the nation’s sovereignty and independence. “We are on the verge of success,” he said. Referring to concerns raised on human rights by the visiting United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louis Arbour, during their meeting, PM Koirala said: “She raised concern over the human rights situation here. I told her that the state’s sovereignty and independence cannot be compromised in the name of human rights.” Himalayan Times (Nepal) (1/23)

U.S. to present UN resolution condemning Holocaust deniers

By Reuters

The United States intends to introduce a United Nations resolution on Tuesday condemning deniers of the Holocaust, a document drafted in response to a conference in Iran last month dominated by delegates who questioned the extermination of six million Jews by the Nazis in World War II. U.S. officials hope the resolution, which so far is backed by 39 nations including European nations, Russia and China, could be adopted on Friday in the 192-member UN General Assembly. The measure urges member states "to reject any denial of the Holocaust as a historical event" and "condemns without reservation any denial of the Holocaust." It does not mention Iran by name, although American officials said it was a reaction to the Tehran conference convened in December by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Most speakers threw doubt on the mass extermination of Jews. Since coming to power in August 2005, Ahmadinejad has caused an international outcry by terming the Holocaust a "myth" and calling Israel a "tumor" in the Middle East. At the urging of former Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the General Assembly in 2005 held its first ever session on the Holocaust to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. The Assembly designated January 27 as the International Day of Commemoration for victims of the Holocaust and the U.S. resolution is timed to coincide with that date. Up to 1.5 million prisoners, most of them Jews, were killed in Auschwitz alone. A total of six million Jews and millions of others including Poles, homosexuals, Russians and Gypsies were murdered by the Nazis and their allies during the war. The UN was founded on the ashes of World War II and the UN Charter includes the words "untold sorrow" as the world was learning the full horror of the Nazi German death camps. Ha'aretz (Israel) (1/23)

Indian all-women UN peace force arrives in Liberia

By Indo Asian News Service

United Nations, Jan 23 (IANS) The commander of an all-women Indian UN police unit has arrived in Liberia to head the world body's first ever such specialized force sent on a peacekeeping operation. Commander Seema Dhundiya, who heads the Formed Police Unit (FPU), arrived in the capital Monrovia Sunday as part of an advance team that will pave the way for the landmark deployment of a 125-strong force this month. With her came logistics and engineering specialists who will prepare for the rest of her unit, expected around Jan 29, said Ben Dotsei Malor, spokesperson for the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL). The FPU contingent will be made up of 103 women officers and 22 male staff serving in logistic roles. The women will be formed into three platoons of 30 women each, comprising one platoon leader and 29 officers. While the contingent will be based in Monrovia, they may be deployed anywhere in the country. India's decision to send the all-women officers to assist the UNMIL operation was announced in September, and the team has been undergoing intensive training over the past few months. The UN has had increasing success with FPUs over the past few years as a means of bridging the gap between regular and lightly armed police and fully armed blue helmets. The FPU, which will be better armed than a regular unit, will provide general support to UN police activities in Liberia, including protecting UN officials and civilian police as they perform their duties. It will also act as a rapid reaction force for crowd control and help train local police officers, the world body said. Daily India (1/23)

Siniora Cabinet girds for rough ride as opposition launches general strike

Protesters ready to play 'cat and mouse' with security forces

By Rym Ghazal -Daily Star staff

BEIRUT: As the Hizbullah-led opposition forces move on Tuesday to launch a general strike that promises to paralyze the country, officials within the ruling parliamentary majority have urged Lebanese to ignore the calls for a work stoppage. After almost two months of an opposition sit-in in the heart of the capital aimed at bringing down the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, the campaign has progressed to ambitions of paralyzing the periphery of the capital and the rest of the country. However, Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah vowed on Monday that "we will not raise arms against anyone." Speaking during an Ashoura ceremony in Beirut's southern suburbs, Nasrallah reiterated earlier pledges that "if they kill 1,000 of us, we will not use our weapons against them." "They will try to belittle the strike," he predicted, "with the media and officials showing open shops as proof that we have failed." Addressing his supporters, Nasrallah said: "I have faith that you will remain disciplined and will avoid any insults and sectarian slogans." But the head of the Free Patriotic Movement, MP Michel Aoun, warned people that "if you have no business being out, then just stay home." In a news conference on Monday at his residence in Rabieh, Aoun said: "There will be people who will instigate riots and try to hamper the strike, so stay home and out of harm's reach." Daily Star (Lebanon) (1/23)

GLOBAL: Fight for your rights, despite globalisation, women urged

[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

NAIROBI, 22 Jan 2007 (IRIN) - Women, especially in the developing world, who continue to bear the burden of the negative impact of globalisation, must fight for their rights, a Kenyan civil rights activist said on Monday at the World Social Forum (WSF). "We are not powerless; women are standing together in spite of the burden to dispossess us," Wahu Kaara, an activist and one of the organisers of the WSF, said at the United Nations offices in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. The seventh WSF, under the banner, ‘People’s struggles, people’s alternatives - Another world is possible’, began on 20 January in Nairobi. It is intended to counter the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, where leaders from business, politics, academia, the media and civil society discuss how to improve the world economy. Monday's conference by the World Court of Women on Poverty was entitled ‘Lives, livelihoods and life worlds’. Anna Tibaijuka, the executive director of UN Habitat, said globalisation had contributed to the suffering of women as they continued to bear the burden of its negative impact. Because of globalisation, Tibaijuka said, increasing urbanisation had resulted in larger slum areas, thereby propelling many women into destitution and poverty and exposing them to violence and insecurity. "Slums pose a serious challenge to development and the girl-child and women continue to bear the brunt of urban poverty because they lack basic facilities, ownership, credit facilities and education," she said. "They are also exposed to prostitution, HIV/AIDS and risk being trafficked across borders." IRIN News (United Nations) (123)

Argentina: after Falklands defeat, outcasts at home

AFTERMATH REMAINS: A quarter of a century after the conflict, teens forced to fight remain haunted by the memory and are struggling to live

THE OBSERVER

BUENOS AIRES- As the train pulls into the central station of Buenos Aires, Jose is still walking down the aisle hawking a clutch of goods. An olive-green jacket, a patch with an Argentinian flag on his right arm and a silhouette of the Malvinas Islands signal he is one of the many veterans of the Falklands war supplementing their meager pensions. What he sells is patriotism -- small calendars and stickers bearing the slogan: "The Malvinas were, are and always will be Argentinian." But he tells a story of betrayal, of himself and 15,000 other veterans of the 1982 war with Britain. In a voice made automatic by repetition, he says: "A little help please, I am a veteran of the Malvinas, I have been repeatedly denied jobs simply for being a veteran, my pension is not always enough, I have been forgotten by my country for a long time." He has been saying it for 25 years. It is a story repeated by most veterans.Things have improved, but very late. The most important change came in 1991, when some veterans finally began to receive pensions. The next milestone was the election in 2003 of Nestor Kirchner. He became President on the back of promises on human rights, and increased the pension so the veterans felt able to pull down the green tents they had pitched in front of the government building on the Plaza de Mayo, protesting at lack of compensation and healthcare on the same spot where thousands congregated in April 1982 to cheer the capture of the Malvinas.But the difficulty of winning a pension is, veterans argue, evidence of neglect which goes back to the war itself. General Leopoldo Galtieri, "in his quest to stay in power, had no qualms in sending brave 18-year-old conscripts, with no military training whatever, into a war," says Norberto Santos, one of those 18-year-olds and now a member of the Center for Ex-Combatants Islas Malvinas.The troops had to endure shortages of ammunition, food, and clothing and suffered from cold, abuse and humiliation by their superiors. For Santos the war ended when a bomb blew off his left arm. A comrade, thinking he was dying, shot him to end his suffering. Instead, he prolonged it. The neglect continued despite the UK's victory, the fall of Galtieri and the re-establishment of democracy. Argentina Star/Taipei Times (1/23)

What's Next for Belgrade?

By Renate Flottau

Belgrade- The West seems pleased. Elections in Serbia appear to pave the way for a democratic coalition to take office in Belgrade. But with Kosovo looming, negotiations are going to be difficult. And then there's the Ratko Mladic question. Western politicians are celebrating -- for now. The democratic bloc composed of four major parties won the Serbian parliamentary elections over the weekend, thanks to an unexpectedly high electoral participation of about 61 percent. But the morning after may come soon. What looks like a clear majority on paper -- almost 150 cabinet members out of a total of 250 -- could soon encounter serious difficulties when it comes to forming a functioning coalition. The four parties still have substantial ideological differences, and each of them wants as many ministerial seats as they can get. Plus, Serbia's current prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, isn't keen on giving up his position either. Characterized and criticized in the Western media in the past for being more of a nationalist than a democrat, his Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) only received a less-than-impressive 16.51 percent of the vote, landing it in third place. To stay in power, the DSS is compelled to form a coalition , most likely with the Democratic Party (DS) of President Boris Tadic. The DS took second place with 22.7 percent of the vote.But there's also another possible outcome. The 62-year-old Kostunica could also cobble together a majority by teaming up with the ultra-nationalist Radical Party (SRS), which came out on top with fully 28.58 percent of the vote, and the Socialist Party of Slobodan Milosevic, which just managed to clear the 5 percent threshold necessary for parliamentary representation. Such an outcome would clearly not be to the West's liking. Der Spiegel (Germany) (1/23)

Report: N. Ireland Police Shielded Killers

Protestant Informers Avoided Prosecution; Victims Often Were Catholics

By Mary Jordan, Washington Post Foreign Service

LONDON, Jan. 22 -- Police in Northern Ireland colluded with Protestant paramilitary informers, protecting them from prosecution even as they were implicated in murders and other violent crimes, often committed against Catholics, according to a government report released Monday. In dozens of cases, most of which took place during the 1990s, police officers essentially gave the criminals immunity in exchange for information, according to the three-year investigation by an independent police ombudsman. To protect informers, police officers blocked weapons searches, created fake notes of their interviews and even "babysat" informers so they wouldn't incriminate themselves in crimes that included drug-dealing and a bomb attack. Police paid one informer, believed to be involved in more than 10 murders, more than $150,000 a year, the report said. Prime Minister Tony Blair called the report "deeply disturbing" and said the actions "were totally wrong and should never have happened." He also stressed that the report was "about the past" and that changes had been made so that "these events could not happen now." The role of the police remains a formidable and emotional stumbling block as Northern Ireland's Protestant and Catholic political parties attempt to devise a power-sharing government after more than 3,600 lives were lost in three decades of sectarian violence. Minority Catholics in the province have long accused the predominantly Protestant police force of discriminating against them and often participating in violence against them. Martin McGuinness, a leader of Sinn Fein, the largest Catholic political party in the province, called the report "critically important" and said it confirms what many Catholics have long alleged. But he said in an interview that it "only scratched the surface" and that "hundreds of families want the truth" of what happened to their sons, daughters and parents. Washington Post (1/23)

posted by Dave Carroll @ 1/23/2007 04:26:00 PM