Just Foreign Policy News
April 23, 2010
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$33 Billion for War, How Could I Spend Thee on Local Jobs?
If McGovern’s bill shortens the war in Afghanistan by a year, that would pay the two-year cost of the Local Jobs for America Act.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/33-billion-for-war-how-co_b_549890.html
Rallies Sunday Against the Okinawa Base
In DC, San Francisco, Hawaii – and all over Japan.
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=113284008691890
Urge Congress to End the War in Afghanistan
Urge your representatives to support the Feingold-McGovern-Jones bill for a timetable for military withdrawal.
If we can get 100 co-sponsors in the House in the next few weeks, we may able to get on a vote on a withdrawal timetable when the House considers the supplemental.
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/feingold-mcgovern
New co-sponsors as of 4/23: Frank; Holt; Visclosky.
Previous co-sponsors in the House: Capuano; Conyers; DeFazio; Delahunt; Duncan; Farr; Harman; Hirono; Johnson, Timothy; Jones, Walter; Kucinich; Lee, Barbara; Lujan, Ben Ray; Moran, James; Nadler; Pingree; Schrader; Serrano; Slaughter; Welch; Woolsey; Michaud; Filner; Oberstar; Moore, Gwen; Grijalva; Honda; Costello; Grayson.
Current total: 32
Current co-sponsors in the Senate: none. [!]
Global Labor Unions: A Financial Transactions Tax For Job Creation And Development
As the IMF and World Bank meet in Washington, the global labor movement calls for a finanical transactions tax to finance economic recovery and job creation, protect public services and promote development, and respond to climate change.
http://www.ituc-csi.org/IMG/pdf/No_14_-_statement-imfwb-0410-2.pdf
Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) The US is resisting a push by several NATO allies to withdraw its aging stockpile of tactical nuclear weapons from Europe, the New York Times reports. The push to withdraw tactical weapons from Europe has gained momentum in recent weeks, with Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Norway jointly petitioning NATO to take up the issue. Many analysts consider these weapons a dangerous relic of the cold war, expensive to safeguard and deadly if they fell into the wrong hands.
2) In coming years, President Obama will decide whether to deploy a new class of weapons capable of reaching any corner of the earth from the US in under an hour, the New York Times reports. Called Prompt Global Strike, the new weapon is designed to carry out tasks like destroying an Iranian nuclear site, the Times says. President Bush promoted the technology, but Russian leaders complained the technology could increase the risk of a nuclear war, because Russia would not know if the missiles carried nuclear warheads or conventional ones. Bush concluded the Russians were right. But the idea has been "embraced by the new administration." The final price of the system remains unknown.
3) Military health care spending is rising twice as fast as the nation’s overall health care costs, USA Today reports. The surging costs are prompting the Pentagon and Congress to consider the first hike in out-of-pocket fees for military retirees and some active-duty families in 15 years. The rapid rise has been driven by a surge in mental health and physical problems for troops who have deployed to war multiple times.
4) The Senate Budget Committee approved a resolution Thursday that cuts the foreign affairs budget by $4 billion, The Cable reports. Secretary of State Clinton says increases requested go mostly to supporting the increased State and USAID role in Iraq and Afghanistan.
5) Evangelist Franklin Graham’s invitation to speak at a Pentagon prayer service has been rescinded because his comments about Islam were inappropriate, AP reports. The decision suggests a growing sensitivity in recent years among senior Pentagon officials to the divide between the U.S. military and Muslims, AP says. Graham attended a Pentagon prayer service in 2003, despite objections by Muslim groups.
6) New data show there are an average of 950 suicide attempts each month by veterans who are receiving some type of treatment from the VA, Army Times reports. The numbers show about 18 veteran suicides a day. The VA’s suicide hotline has been receiving about 10,000 calls a month from current and former service members.
Israel/Palestine
7) Israel deported a Palestinian prisoner to Gaza instead of releasing him to his West Bank home, Palestinian officials said, charging Israel with using controversial new military orders for deporting Palestinians from the West Bank, AFP reports. The prisoner, Ahmad Sabah, was refusing to leave the Palestinian side of the main crossing between Israel and Gaza. "It is my right to return to my wife and family," he told AFP. The military orders have sparked widespread condemnation across the Arab world. On April 13, the Arab League called on the Palestinians to refuse to heed the orders. On Wednesday, Hamas and Fatah took part in a joint demonstration against the orders, reuniting for the first time since their 2007 split.
Kyrgyzstan
8) A panel of experts told Congress the US tolerated a corrupt government in Kyrgyzstan to maintain access to a base used in the war in Afghanistan, the Washington Post reports. One expert said the Manas air base had become "a source for rental payments and service contracts that have tended to serve the private interests of powerful Kyrgyz elites."
Eritrea
9) Eritrean president Isaias Afeworki said Eritrean rejected a demand from the U.S. military to have a base in the Red Sea port of Assab, Bloomberg reports. The U.S. made the request about a year after the attacks of 9/11, he said.
Colombia
10) The human rights organization Codhes said a band of drug-trafficking rightist paramilitaries has made deaths threats against three Colombian senators and some 60 other individuals and groups, EFE reports. Also threatened was the Colombia office of the U.N. Development Program.
Honduras
11) The Inter-American Press Association said Honduran authorities must investigate a "wave of violence" against the media that has made the Central American country one of the world’s most dangerous for journalists, Bloomberg reports. [This is an interesting development because, while other "press freedom" organizations have denounced the killings of journalists in Honduras and demanded that the Honduran authorities investigate, the IAPA is traditionally a right-wing organization of media owners, close to US policy – JFP.]
Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) U.S. Resists Push By Allies For Tactical Nuclear Cuts
Mark Landler, New York Times, April 22, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/world/europe/23diplo.html
Tallinn, Estonia – Fresh from signing a strategic nuclear arms agreement with Russia, the United States is parrying a push by several NATO allies to withdraw its aging stockpile of tactical nuclear weapons from Europe.
Speaking Thursday at a meeting of NATO foreign ministers here, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the Obama administration was not opposed to cuts in these battlefield weapons, mostly bombs and short-range missiles locked in underground vaults on air bases in five NATO countries.
But Mrs. Clinton ruled out removing these weapons unless Russia agreed to cuts in its arsenal, which is at least 10 times the size of the American one. And she also appeared to make reductions in the American stockpile contingent on Russia’s being more transparent about its weapons and willing to move them away from the borders of NATO countries.
[…] The push to withdraw tactical weapons from Europe has gained momentum in recent weeks, with Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Norway jointly petitioning NATO to take up the issue. Many analysts consider these weapons a dangerous relic of the cold war, expensive to safeguard and deadly if they fell into the wrong hands.
Domestic politics has also played a part: Germany recently elected a coalition government that favors removing tactical weapons from its soil. President Obama’s nuclear security summit and his successful effort to negotiate a successor to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia have helped put disarmament back on the agenda. "This is big progress, compared to the situation a few months ago," said Guido Westerwelle, the German foreign minister, whose Free Democratic Party calls for the weapons’ removal.
[…]
2) U.S. Faces Choice On New Weapons For Fast Strikes
David E. Sanger and Thom Shanker, New York Times, April 22, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/world/europe/23strike.html
Washington – In coming years, President Obama will decide whether to deploy a new class of weapons capable of reaching any corner of the earth from the United States in under an hour and with such accuracy and force that they would greatly diminish America’s reliance on its nuclear arsenal.
Yet even now, concerns about the technology are so strong that the Obama administration has acceded to a demand by Russia that the United States decommission one nuclear missile for every one of these conventional weapons fielded by the Pentagon. That provision, the White House said, is buried deep inside the New Start treaty that Mr. Obama and President Dmitri A. Medvedev signed in Prague two weeks ago.
Called Prompt Global Strike, the new weapon is designed to carry out tasks like picking off Osama bin Laden in a cave, if the right one could be found; taking out a North Korean missile while it is being rolled to the launch pad; or destroying an Iranian nuclear site – all without crossing the nuclear threshold. In theory, the weapon will hurl a conventional warhead of enormous weight at high speed and with pinpoint accuracy, generating the localized destructive power of a nuclear warhead.
The idea is not new: President George W. Bush and his staff promoted the technology, imagining that this new generation of conventional weapons would replace nuclear warheads on submarines.
In face-to-face meetings with President Bush, Russian leaders complained that the technology could increase the risk of a nuclear war, because Russia would not know if the missiles carried nuclear warheads or conventional ones. Mr. Bush and his aides concluded that the Russians were right.
Partly as a result, the idea "really hadn’t gone anywhere in the Bush administration," Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who has served both presidents, said recently on ABC’s "This Week." But he added that it was "embraced by the new administration."
Mr. Obama himself alluded to the concept in a recent interview with The New York Times, saying it was part of an effort "to move towards less emphasis on nuclear weapons" while insuring "that our conventional weapons capability is an effective deterrent in all but the most extreme circumstances."
The Obama national security team scrapped the idea of putting the new conventional weapon on submarines. Instead, the White House has asked Congress for about $250 million next year to explore a new alternative, one that uses some of the most advanced technology in the military today as well as some not yet even invented.
The final price of the system remains unknown. Senator John McCain of Arizona, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said at a hearing on Thursday that Prompt Global Strike would be "essential and critical, but also costly."
[…] But since the vehicle would remain within the atmosphere rather than going into space, it would be far more maneuverable than a ballistic missile, capable of avoiding the airspace of neutral countries, for example, or steering clear of hostile territory. Its designers note that it could fly straight up the middle of the Persian Gulf before making a sharp turn toward a target.
[…]
3) Military’s Health Care Costs Booming
Gregg Zoroya, USA Today, April 22, 2010
http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2010-04-22-vet_N.htm
Washington – Military health care spending is rising twice as fast as the nation’s overall health care costs, consuming a larger chunk of the defense budget as the Pentagon struggles to pay for two wars, military budget figures show.
The surging costs are prompting the Pentagon and Congress to consider the first hike in out-of-pocket fees for military retirees and some active-duty families in 15 years, said Rear Adm. Christine Hunter, deputy director of TRICARE, the military health care program.
Pentagon spending on health care has increased from $19 billion in 2001 to a projected $50.7 billion in 2011, a 167% increase.
The rapid rise has been driven by a surge in mental health and physical problems for troops who have deployed to war multiple times and by a flood of career military retirees fleeing less-generous civilian health programs, Hunter said.
Total U.S. spending on health care has climbed from nearly $1.5 trillion in 2001 to an estimated $2.7 trillion next year, an 84% increase.
As a share of overall defense spending, health care costs have risen from 6% to 9% and will keep growing, said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Kathleen Kesler, a Pentagon spokeswoman. That upward trend is "beginning to eat us alive," Defense Secretary Robert Gates told Congress in February.
In addition to mental issues, multiple combat tours have created more strains on joints, backs and legs, Pentagon statistics show. Medical visits for such problems rose from 2.8 million in 2005 to 3.7 million in 2009.
Behavioral-health counseling sessions for troops and family members rose 65% since 2004. The Pentagon paid for 7.3 million visits last year – treatment of 140,000 patients each week, according to TRICARE numbers.
Other factors driving up costs:
– Many new patients are children suffering anxiety or depression because of a parent away at war. Children had 42% more counseling sessions last year than in 2005, TRICARE numbers show.
– The number of TRICARE beneficiaries has grown by 370,000 in the past two years to 9.6 million troops, family members and military retirees.
– Nearly 200,000 prescriptions were filled each day at civilian pharmacies last year.
Active-duty troops and their families receive free health care except for out-of-pocket co-payments of $3 or $9 per prescription at civilian pharmacies. Retirees receive the same benefits by paying $230 a person or $460 a family each year, along with small co-payments for various types of care. The fees have not gone up since 1995. By contrast, private insurance plans try to limit expenses with frequent increases in premiums and copayments.
[…]
4) Senate Budget Committee Cuts Foreign Aid Request Despite Pleas From Everybody Involved
Josh Rogin, The Cable (Foreign Policy), Thursday, April 22, 2010
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/04/22/senate_budget_committee_cuts_foreign_aid_request_despite_pleas_from_everybody_invol
The Senate Budget Committee approved a resolution Thursday that cuts the foreign affairs budget by $4 billion, to the chagrin of everyone else involved in the foreign affairs budget debate.
[…] Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrote to Conrad on Tuesday to point out that the increases requested are relatively modest and go mostly to supporting the increased State and USAID role in Iraq and Afghanistan.
[…] The budget request still has many twists and turns to go through before it finally comes out on the other side of the legislative process. The House appropriations committee is expected to mark up its appropriations bill in May. And while it’s possible appropriators could restore funds, that’s going to be a difficult sell in a year where the fiscal outlook is not good and the political focus is on domestic problems.
"We’re going to be a strong an advocate as we can be, but with 10 percent unemployment, urgent needs at home, a trillion-dollar budget deficit, and focus on creating jobs, there is no doubt that these factors make it a difficult political environment for expanding our foreign assistance and development budgets," Rep. Nita Lowey, D-NY, the chairwoman of the House Appropriations State and Foreign Operations subcommittee, told The Cable in February.
5) Army disinvites Graham to Pentagon Prayer Day
Anne Flaherty, Associated Press, Thursday, April 22, 2010; 9:14 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/22/AR2010042204442.html
Washington – Evangelist Franklin Graham’s invitation to speak at a Pentagon prayer service has been rescinded because his comments about Islam were inappropriate, the Army said Thursday. Graham, the son of famed evangelist Billy Graham, in 2001 described Islam as evil. More recently, he has said he finds Islam offensive and wants Muslims to know that Jesus Christ died for their sins.
Army spokesman Col. Tom Collins said Graham’s remarks were "not appropriate."
"We’re an all-inclusive military," Collins said. "We honor all faiths. … Our message to our service and civilian work force is about the need for diversity and appreciation of all faiths."
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation had raised the objection to Graham’s appearance, citing his past remarks about Islam.
Collins said earlier this week that the invitation to attend the National Day of Prayer event at the Pentagon wasn’t from the military but from the Colorado-based National Day of Prayer Task Force, which works with the Pentagon chaplain’s office on the prayer event. As co-honorary chair of the task force, Graham was expected to be the lead speaker at the May 6 Pentagon service.
[…] The decision suggests a growing sensitivity in recent years among senior Pentagon officials to the divide between the U.S. military and Muslims. Graham attended a Pentagon prayer service in 2003, despite objections by Muslim groups.
[…] Nihad Awad, national executive director of Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Graham’s invitation would have sent "entirely the wrong message" at a time when troops are stationed in Muslim nations. "Promoting one’s own religious beliefs is something to be defended and encouraged, but other faiths should not be attacked or misrepresented in the process," Awad said.
[…] Mikey Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation said Graham shouldn’t have been invited in the first place. "I want to say this is a victory, but in a way it’s a Pyrrhic victory because it shows how far this got," Weinstein said. "We’re not exactly doing cartwheels."
[…]
6) 18 Veterans Commit Suicide Each Day
Rick Maze, Army Times, Friday Apr 23, 2010 12:58:45 EDT
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2010/04/military_veterans_suicide_042210w/
Troubling new data show there are an average of 950 suicide attempts each month by veterans who are receiving some type of treatment from the Veterans Affairs Department.
Seven percent of the attempts are successful, and 11 percent of those who don’t succeed on the first attempt try again within nine months.
The numbers, which come at a time when VA is strengthening its suicide prevention programs, show about 18 veteran suicides a day, about five by veterans who are receiving VA care.
Access to care appears to be a key factor, officials said, noting that once a veteran is inside the VA care program, screening programs are in place to identify those with problems, and special efforts are made to track those considered at high risk, such as monitoring whether they are keeping appointments.
A key part of the new data shows the suicide rate is lower for veterans aged 18 to 29 who are using VA health care services than those who are not. That leads VA officials to believe that about 250 lives have been saved each year as a result of VA treatment.
VA’s suicide hotline has been receiving about 10,000 calls a month from current and former service members. The number is 1-800-273-8255. Service members and veterans should push 1 for veterans’ services.
[…]
Israel/Palestine
7) Israel deports West Bank prisoner to Gaza: Palestinians
Hossam Ezzedine, AFP, Wed Apr 21, 3:35 pm ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100421/wl_mideast_afp/mideastconflictwestbankprisonerdeport_20100421194412
Ramallah, West Bank – Israel deported a Palestinian prisoner to the Gaza Strip instead of releasing him to his West Bank home, the man and Palestinian officials said, charging Israel with using controversial new military orders. The prisoner, Ahmad Sabah, 40, was refusing to leave the Palestinian side of the main crossing between Israel and the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
"It is inhumane what they are doing. He has no connection to Gaza, no relatives there, nothing," said Issa Qaraqi, the minister of prisoner affairs in the government of the Western-backed Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas. Qaraqi claimed Israel was implementing a new set of military orders that critics fear could lead to mass deportations from the occupied West Bank.
[…] Sabah was a member of the Palestininan security forces and was arrested in 2001 for security offences against Israel, AFP’s correspondent said.
Israel denies it plans to carry out mass expulsions, saying the new orders that came into effect last week concern only people staying in the West Bank illegally and that the changes will allow oversight of deportation orders.
Family members said Sabah was born in Jordan and since returning to the West Bank had lived in the town of Tulkarem with his wife and family. However, his ID document was issed in Gaza. They said they were waiting for him to be released on Wednesday at a West Bank crossing, when other prisoners said he had been sent to Gaza.
Sabah was refusing to leave the Erez crossing into Gaza. "It is my right to return to my wife and family," he told AFP.
The orders have sparked widespread condemnation from Palestinians and across the Arab world. Earlier this week Abbas vowed to confront them. "Israel has no right to deport any Palestinian, and the Palestinian Authority will not allow it and will confront it with various means," he said, quoted by Egypt’s official news agency MENA, without elaborating.
The move has been condemned in the Arab world at a time when peace talks between the Palestinians and Israel are locked in a dispute over Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
On April 13, the Cairo-based Arab League called on the Palestinians to refuse to heed the amended orders from the Israeli military that could trigger the West Bank deportations.
Earlier on Wednesday, the rival Palestinian movements Hamas and Fatah took part in a joint demonstration against the orders, reuniting for the first time since their violent 2007 split. Hundreds of Gazans as well as representatives of all Palestinian factions – including the Islamist Hamas movement and secular Fatah – attended the rally near the Erez crossing.
[…]
Kyrgyzstan
8) Kyrgyz air base linked to U.S. tolerance of corrupt government
Walter Pincus, Washington Post, Friday, April 23, 2010; A08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/22/AR2010042205880.html
A panel of experts told Congress on Thursday that the United States tolerated a corrupt government in Kyrgyzstan to maintain access to a base that is key to the fighting in Afghanistan.
Manas air base is a major transit point for coalition troops flying into and out of the war zone and home to air-refueling tankers that keep U.S. and coalition fighter-bombers in the air over Afghanistan. It has been the source of alleged corruption payments to two Kyrgyz presidents, and resentment over those payments helped fuel the ouster of both.
The most recently deposed president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, and family members were said to have transferred up to $200 million from the country before he left office, Alexander Cooley, an associate professor at Barnard College at Columbia University, told the House Government Reform subcommittee on national security and foreign affairs.
An observer of the U.S. military presence at Manas since its establishment in late 2001, Cooley said the air base had become "a source for rental payments and service contracts that have tended to serve the private interests of powerful Kyrgyz elites."
"It is not surprising that the U.S. military presence has become intertwined with allegations that the U.S. supported the repressive and corrupt rule of former president Bakiyev," Cooley said. And while Moscow and the Russian-language press in Kyrgyzstan sharply criticized the corrupt and repressive Bakiyev government, "members of the Kyrgyz opposition [said] that U.S. authorities muted their criticism when faced with threats . . . over the status of the base, and U.S. officials avoided meeting with members of the opposition."
Baktybek Abdrisaev, a former Kyrgyz ambassador to the United States, told the panel that the Obama administration must demonstrate that Kyrgyzstan means more to it than simply being "the Manas Transit Center."
Interim President Roza Otunbayeva has said the base agreement will be extended "automatically" when the current agreement expires in July. But Abdrisaev, who was in Washington from 1997 to 2005 and is a visiting professor at Utah Valley University, said not everyone in the interim government agrees with Otunbayeva.
If a new agreement is not quickly reached with the interim government, Abdrisaev said, the status of the base will become a major issue in the Kyrgyz presidential election, which is scheduled for October. He added that a number of candidates "will campaign on an anti-base platform."
Cooley suggested that the United States should "explore ways in which they can turn Manas-related payments and service contracts into a public benefit for Kyrgyzstan as a whole, rather than a private revenue stream for connected insiders."
[…]
Eritrea
9) Eritrea Rejected U.S. Demand of Red Sea Base, Gulf News Reports
Maher Chmaytelli, Bloomberg, April 23
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?sid=afaHpKlchiwo&pid=20601087
Eritrea rejected a demand from the U.S. military to have a base in the Red Sea port of Assab, the eastern African nation’s president Isaias Afeworki said in an interview with the newspaper Gulf News. The U.S. made the request about a year after the attacks of 9/11, 2001, he said, according to the Dubai-based daily. Eritrea rejected the demand so as not to become a "tool in the hands of the Western military command," he said.
Colombia
10) Colombian Militia Threatens Lawmakers, Rights Activists
EFE, April 21, 2010
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=355748&CategoryId=12393
Bogota – Los Rastrojos, a band of drug-trafficking rightist paramilitaries, has made deaths threats against three Colombian senators and some 60 other individuals and groups active on behalf of social justice, the human rights organization Codhes said. The threats were conveyed via e-mail and pamphlets, according to Codhes, which was among the targets.
Also threatened were the Colombia office of the U.N. Development Program, as well as Sens. Alexander Lopez, Guillermo Alfonso Jaramillo and Jorge Enrique Robledo, all with the main opposition leftist PDA party.
Leaders of displaced communities and union members likewise figure on the list of people and organizations accused by Los Rastrojos of collaborating with Colombia’s FARC and ELN rebel groups.
The recipients of the threats are invited "to put aside the archaic subversive discourse in favor of the rights and ideologies of the ‘narcoterrorists’ of the FARC and ELN and all their accomplices of past and present, attacking the government’s good and noble intentions in favor of peace." If the targets fail to comply, Los Rastrojos vow to "go beyond threats and return to actions of the (19)90s without any mercy or fear."
Regarded as Colombia’s largest criminal organization, Los Rastrojos emerged after the ostensible demobilization of some 31,000 militiamen as part of a peace process with the government of President Alvaro Uribe.
The militias are blamed for well in excess of 20,000 deaths since the mid-1980s. Though the paramilitaries claimed to be defending the populace from the FARC and the ELN, militia chiefs grew wealthy from drug trafficking, land grabs, theft of livestock and other assets and extortion.
Paramilitaries were also paid by business interests to drive peasants off their lands and suppress attempts to organize unions.
Uribe, due to step down in August after two four-year terms, has himself accused domestic and international human rights organizations of siding with the rebels, though groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are as critical of the FARC and ELN as they are of Colombian security forces.
Honduras
11) Honduras Must Investigate Deaths of Journalists, Group Says.
Blake Schmidt, Bloomberg, April 22, 2010, 3:07 AM EDT
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-04-22/honduras-must-investigate-deaths-of-journalists-group-says.html
Honduran authorities must investigate a "wave of violence" against the media that has made the Central American country one of the world’s most dangerous for journalists, the Miami-based Inter-American Press Association said.
The probe should include today’s killing of Georgino Orellana, host for channel TVH, the IAPA said. Orellana died in the hospital after he was shot in the head in the northern province of San Pedro Sula, Honduran Security Minister Oscar Alvarez told HRN radio. He is among seven Honduran journalists killed since the beginning of March, HRN reported. No one has been tried in the murders, it said.
"We note the slowness of the authorities in reacting decisively," IAPA President Alejandro Aguirre said in a statement on the association’s Web site, "There is no doubt that Honduras has become one of the most dangerous countries for journalists and the situation is very grave."
–
Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
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