Just Foreign Policy News
April 8, 2011
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I) Actions and Featured Articles
*Action: Urge Congress to Bar Ground Troops in Libya
Michigan Rep. John Conyers wants to explicitly prohibit U.S. ground forces from being introduced into Libya. Urge your Representative to support this prohibition. Supporters include: Cohen, Jones, Farr, Grijalva, Honda, Kucinich, McClintock, George Miller, Stark, Tonko, Woolsey.
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/nogroundtroops
Protect Your Manhood: End the War in Afghanistan
Every young man thinking of enlisting or facing deployment to Afghanistan should consider carefully the findings of a new study on combat injuries in Afghanistan.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/04/08-6
The Israeli Peace Initiative
A group including former top Israeli officials, including a former head of Mossad, accepts the 1967 borders as the basis for negotiations.
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/world/IPI-English.pdf
"Friends of the White Intifada" on Facebook
Are you on Facebook? Are you following nonviolent resistance against the Israeli occupation? Use this page to share information with others.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Friends-of-the-White-Intifada-no-violence/199836420048690
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II) Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) Army Gen. Carter Ham, the former U.S. commander of the military mission, said the U.S. may consider sending troops into Libya with a possible international ground force that could aid the rebels, AP reports. But Ham said US participation in a ground force would not be ideal, since it could erode the international coalition and make it more difficult to get Arab support. President Obama has said repeatedly there will be no U.S. troops on the ground in Libya.
Ham said he believes some Arab nations are starting to provide training or weapons to the rebels. Ham said it was important for the U.S. to turn control over to NATO because many of the troops involved in the Libya strikes are preparing to go to Iraq or Afghanistan or have just recently returned from the warfront.
2) The action plan signed by the US and Colombia to advance their trade agreement falls far short of guaranteeing fair and safe conditions in which Colombian workers can exercise their rights, said the Latin America Working Group, the U.S. Office on Colombia, and the Washington Office on Latin America in a joint statement. "We could see the same shocking numbers of murders of trade unionists when the FTA is implemented, and there’s nothing in this agreement or the accord itself that would stop it from going forward," said Lisa Haugaard, executive director of the Latin America Working Group. The groups said they were also concerned about the potential impact of the trade agreement on Colombian rural communities, including Afro-Colombians and indigenous peoples, which have been the most harshly affected by the war.
3) Congress should insist on vigorous enforcement of human rights commitments by Presidents Obama and Santos before moving forward on the US-Colombia trade agreement, Human Rights Watch said. Most union killings have never been investigated, there is considerable evidence that right-wing paramilitary organizations and their successor groups are responsible for the largest share of these crimes, HRW notes.
4) The US has admitted that it is operating secret prisons in Afghanistan that it had earlier denied, AP reports. U.S. officials told AP that detainees can be held at the temporary jails for up to nine weeks. Former detainees describe harsh treatment that some human rights groups claim borders on inhumane. More than a dozen former detainees claimed they were menaced and held for weeks at the Joint Special Operations Command site last year, forced to strip naked in front of other detainees, then kept in solitary confinement in windowless, often cold cells with lights on 24 hours a day, according to Human Rights First.
Yemen
5) Diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks show that Arab and European governments, as well as people close to President Saleh, have been warning the U.S. for more than a year that his government was increasingly isolated and unstable, the Washington Post reports. But despite those warnings, the Obama administration continued to embrace Saleh and became increasingly dependent on him to combat an al-Qaeda affiliate. Some independent analysts said the US didn’t pay enough attention to the dismal state of affairs in Yemen and was unprepared for the revolt. They said the Obama administration could have pressured Saleh harder to make democratic concessions and could have hedged their bets on his presidency by reaching out more to rivals.
Israel/Palestine
6) Judge Goldstone may have changed but the evidence on the Gaza war has not, writes Roger Cohen in the New York Times. A follow-up report by a U.N. committee of independent experts chaired by Mary McGowan Davis, a former New York judge, contained no new information that might buttress a change of heart.
Honduras
7) As the US embassy was praising purported achievements by the Honduran government in respecting human rights, police and the Honduran army were brutally repressing popular protests of teachers, students, and resistance members for the sixth day in a row, writes Rodolfo Pastor Campos for Foreign Policy in Focus. Meanwhile, the Inter-American Human Rights Commission of the OAS was condemning the government’s violent abuse of human rights activists, peasants, teachers, students, journalists, and other members and supporters of the popular resistance movement.
Peru
8) Leftist front-runner Ollanta Humala has widened his lead in Sunday’s presidential election over three rivals backed by the business class, Reuters reports. Peru’s currency, has been volatile on worries about an Humala victory, but some on Wall Street have said his promises to be fiscally prudent and respect the central bank’s independence sound credible.
Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) General: US May Consider Sending Troops Into Libya
Lolita C. Baldor, Associated Press, 04/07/11 8:07 AM
http://www.sfexaminer.com/politics/congress/2011/04/us-general-libya-stalemate-more-likely-now
The U.S. may consider sending troops into Libya with a possible international ground force that could aid the rebels, the former U.S. commander of the military mission said Thursday, describing the ongoing operation as a stalemate that is more likely to go on now that America has handed control to NATO.
But Army Gen. Carter Ham also told lawmakers that American participation in a ground force would not be ideal, since it could erode the international coalition attacking Moammar Gadhafi’s forces and make it more difficult to get Arab support for operations in Libya.
He said NATO has done an effective job in an increasingly complex combat situation. But he noted that, in a new tactic, Gadhafi’s forces are making airstrikes more difficult by staging their fighters and vehicles near civilian areas such as schools and mosques.
The use of an international ground force is a possible plan to bolster the Libyan rebels, Ham said at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.
Asked whether the U.S. would provide troops, Ham said, "I suspect there might be some consideration of that. My personal view at this point would be that that’s probably not the ideal circumstance, again for the regional reaction that having American boots on the ground would entail."
President Barack Obama has said repeatedly there will be no U.S. troops on the ground in Libya, although there are reports of small CIA teams in the country.
[…] Overall, he said the U.S. is providing less than 15 percent of the airstrikes and between 60 percent and 70 percent of the support effort, which includes intelligence gathering, surveillance, electronic warfare and refueling.
[…] Ham said he believes some Arab nations are starting to provide training or weapons to the rebels. And he repeated assertions that the U.S. needs to know more about the opposition forces before it would get more deeply involved in assisting them.
[…] Ham said it was important for the U.S. to turn control over to NATO because many of the troops involved in the Libya strikes are preparing to go to Iraq or Afghanistan or have just recently returned from the warfront.
"While we can certainly surge to meet operational needs," Ham said, "there is a longer-term effect if greater numbers of U.S. forces had been committed for a longer period of time in Libya and it would have had downstream operational effects in other missions."
[…]
2) U.S.-Colombia FTA Action Plan Falls Short of Protecting Rights
Beyond the labor and human rights issues, our organizations remain concerned about the potential impact of the trade agreement on Colombian rural communities
Latin America Working Group, U.S. Office on Colombia, and the Washington Office on Latin America, 7 Apr 2011
http://www.wola.org/news/us_colombia_fta_action_plan_falls_short_of_protecting_rights
Washington, D.C. – The action plan signed today between the U.S. and Colombian governments to advance the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) falls far short of guaranteeing fair and safe conditions in which Colombian workers can exercise their rights and fails to address the broader issues of security and human rights, according to the Latin America Working Group, the U.S. Office on Colombia, and the Washington Office on Latin America.
"We could see the same shocking numbers of murders of trade unionists when the FTA is implemented, and there’s nothing in this agreement or the accord itself that would stop it from going forward," said Lisa Haugaard, executive director of the Latin America Working Group. Fifty-one trade unionists were killed in Colombia in 2010, making Colombia still the world leader in anti-union violence.
With the action plan, the Colombian government does commit to some important steps, including expanding protection programs for trade unionists and designating 100 labor inspectors to address abuses committed by the so-called "cooperatives" that limit worker rights. Our organizations appreciate both that the Obama Administration has insisted on this important linkage of advancements in protection of trade unionists as well as labor rights improvements to the FTA, and that the Santos Administration has assumed this challenge. But it takes time as well as political will to ensure that these words and plans lead to a reduction in violence and effective exercise of labor rights. The priority appears to be to finalize this before the end of the year, rather than ensuring real and lasting results.
Moreover, the action plan does little to address the underlying conditions that cause the violence. "The last six months have seen an increase in attacks and threats against community leaders and human rights defenders," said Gimena Sánchez-Garzoli, senior associate at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA). "We find it incomprehensible that the plan fails to address steps to dismantle the paramilitaries and successor armed groups that are the source of so much of this brutal violence."
"The plan includes nothing about gross human rights violations by the Colombian armed forces, except in the cases of anti-union violence," said Kelly Nicholls, executive director of the U.S. Office on Colombia (USOC). "The Santos Administration has yet to make advances in bringing to justice those responsible for more than 3,000 civilians murdered, allegedly by members of Colombia’s own armed forces. And even those who have been convicted of these crimes are often kept in detention centers that appear more like a luxury resort than a prison."
Beyond the labor and human rights issues, our organizations remain concerned about the potential impact of the trade agreement on Colombian rural communities, including Afro-Colombians and indigenous peoples, which have been the most harshly affected by the war.
"We have yet to see any plan from either the U.S. or Colombian governments that spells out how they intend to mitigate the potentially devastating impacts on poor farmers who cannot compete with large-scale, subsidized U.S. farm exports. If this is not addressed, these farmers could be pushed into the illegal market," said Kelly Nicholls of USOC.
"What is the plan to ensure that the alternative development projects the U.S. government heavily supported are not undermined, and that farmers do not return to planting coca?" asked Gimena Sánchez-Garzoli from WOLA. "As the Santos Administration attempts to allow some of the 5.2 million people displaced by violence to return to their lands, what is the plan to ensure that the FTA does not affect their ability to stay?"
The Obama Administration has repeatedly stressed that the Colombia Free Trade Agreement will only advance "in accord with our values." LAWG, USOC, and WOLA agree that we are not yet there.
3) US/Colombia: Rights Conditions Crucial for Trade Deal
‘Action Plan’ Contains Important Steps, but Also Key Omissions
Human Rights Watch, April 7, 2011
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2011/04/07/uscolombia-rights-conditions-crucial-trade-deal
Washington, D.C. – The US Congress should insist on vigorous enforcement of human rights commitments by Presidents Barack Obama and Juan Manuel Santos before moving forward on the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement, Human Rights Watch said today. Congress should also insist on progress in confronting armed groups responsible for anti-union violence.
Obama and Santos are scheduled to present an "Action Plan" on April 7, 2011, with concrete steps to protect Colombian workers’ rights. The Obama administration said that Colombia must successfully carry out key measures of the plan as a precondition for ratifying the trade agreement.
"The Obama administration has rightly recognized the need to condition FTA ratification on protections for Colombian trade unionists, who have for decades been killed in record numbers," said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. "But today’s commitments, while very important in some areas, avoid an issue at the heart of the problem: the continued operation of the powerful armed groups behind the bulk of anti-union violence and other abuses."
The proposed Action Plan requires the Colombian Attorney General’s Office to improve the handling of crimes against union members. Ensuring compliance should include verifying that prosecutors pursue not only the direct perpetrator of a crime, but everyone with criminal responsibility, including those who order assassinations, Human Rights Watch said.
The Action Plan would also require the Attorney General’s Office to consult regularly with local labor leaders to accelerate action on outstanding labor violence cases. Compliance should require specialized prosecutors for labor union cases to address all the cases reported by labor groups, not just the small fraction they are currently investigating.
"To have any impact, the Action Plan will need to be vigorously enforced, with compliance measured in terms of concrete results," Vivanco said.
Colombia leads the world in killings of trade unionists, with more than 2,800 reported killings since 1986, according to the National Labor School (ENS), Colombia’s main nongovernmental organization monitoring labor rights. Levels of violence against organized labor remain alarmingly high: the ENS reports that, after dropping to 39 in 2007, the number of killings of unionists increased again, to 51 in 2008, 47 in 2009, and 51 in 2010.
Those responsible for union killings are rarely held accountable: only 25 percent of more than 2,800 ENS-documented killings of unionists are being investigated by the unit of the Attorney General’s Office mandated to prosecute such crimes. Out of the reduced number of crimes against unionists investigated by the specialized unit, only 15 percent of the cases had resulted in convictions as of October 2010, according to official sources.
While most union killings have never been investigated, there is considerable evidence that right-wing paramilitary organizations and their successor groups are responsible for the largest share of these crimes. The successor groups frequently target trade unionists and commit widespread atrocities against civilians, including massacres, killings, rapes, and forced displacement. They are responsible for a 34 percent increase in massacres in 2010, and are estimated by Colombia’s intelligence service to be responsible for 40 percent of the country’s homicides. Toleration of these organizations by some local officials and members of public security forces is a significant factor in their growth.
In early February, President Santos announced a new plan to combat these paramilitary successor groups, which the government officially labels "emerging criminal gangs." But this plan has not yet been fully implemented and has yet to produce results in reducing abuses against civilians.
"While the Santos government has announced a new strategy to go after these groups, the omission of this issue from the Action Plan has eliminated an important incentive for following through," Vivanco said.
4) US military holds terror suspects in secret jails for weeks without charge
Associated Press, Friday, April , 12:43 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/ap-exclusive-us-military-holds-terror-suspects-in-secret-jails-for-weeks-without-charge/2011/04/08/AF3fhbzC_story.html
Kabul, Afghanistan – The CIA’s infamous secret network of "black site" interrogation centers is gone. But suspected terrorists in Afghanistan are being held and interrogated for weeks at temporary sites, including one run by the elite special operations forces at Bagram Air Base, according to U.S. officials who revealed details of the detention network to The Associated Press.
The Pentagon has previously denied operating secret jails in Afghanistan, although human rights groups and former detainees have described the facilities. U.S. military and other government officials confirmed that the detention centers exist but described them as temporary holding pens whose primary purpose is to gather intelligence.
The Pentagon also has said that detainees only stay in temporary detention sites for 14 days, unless they are extended under extraordinary circumstances. But U.S. officials told the AP that detainees can be held at the temporary jails for up to nine weeks, depending on the value of information they produce. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the program is classified.
The most secretive of roughly 20 temporary sites is run by the military’s elite counterterrorism unit, the Joint Special Operations Command, at Bagram Air Base. Working together with CIA and other intelligence officers at the site, JSOC questions high-value targets, the detainees suspected of top roles in the Taliban, al-Qaida or other militant groups.
The site’s location, a short drive from a well-known public detention center, has been alleged for more than a year.
The secrecy under which the U.S. runs that jail and about 20 others is noteworthy because of President Barack Obama’s criticism of the old network of secret CIA prisons where interrogators sometimes used the harshest available methods, including the simulated drowning known as waterboarding.
Human rights advocates say the severest of the Bush-era interrogation methods are gone, but the conditions at the new interrogation sites still raise questions. Obama pledged when he took office that the United States would not torture anyone, but former detainees describe harsh treatment that some human rights groups claim borders on inhumane.
[…] More than a dozen former "high value" detainees claimed they were menaced and held for weeks at the Joint Special Operations Command site last year, forced to strip naked, then kept in solitary confinement in windowless, often cold cells with lights on 24 hours a day, according to Daphne Eviatar of the group Human Rights First, which interviewed them in Afghanistan.
Eviatar said her monitoring group does not believe the JSOC facility is using the full range of Bush-era interrogation techniques, but she said there’s a disturbing pattern of using fear and humiliation to soften up the suspects before interrogation.
Many of those interviewed said "they were forced to strip naked in front of other detainees, which is very humiliating for them," Eviatar said. "The forced nudity seems to be part of a pattern to make detainees feel disempowered."
The detainees also reported that their interrogators told them they could be held indefinitely, the group said.
Special Operations Command spokesman Col. Tim Nye denies the allegations, insisting the detainees are treated in accordance with U.S. detention laws, rewritten since the Bush era to prohibit the harshest interrogation techniques. "All detainees are treated humanely in compliance with all U.S. and international laws, including Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions," Nye wrote in an e-mail.
U.S. officials in Afghanistan add that Petraeus insisted on opening the Joint Special Operations Command site to inspection by Afghan officials and the International Red Cross last May.
International Red Cross ICRC spokesman Simon Schorno would not comment on the JSOC or conventional forces detention facilities, but confirmed the group "has access to internment, screening, and transit facilities under the control of the Department of Defense."
[…]
Yemen
5) U.S. was told of Yemen leader’s vulnerability
Craig Whitlock, Washington Post, Thursday, April 7, 10:01 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/us-was-told-of-plot-to-overthrow-yemen-leader/2011/04/07/AFBCY7xC_story.html
A billionaire Yemeni sheik met with a high-ranking officer from the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa less than two years ago and revealed a secret plan to overthrow President Ali Abdullah Saleh, the country’s longtime autocratic ruler.
Hamid al-Ahmar, an opposition party leader and a prominent businessman, vowed to trigger the revolt if Saleh did not guarantee the fairness of parliamentary elections scheduled for 2011, according to a classified U.S. diplomatic cable summarizing the meeting. The sheik said he would organize massive demonstrations modeled on protests that toppled Indonesia’s President Suharto a decade earlier.
"We cannot copy the Indonesians exactly, but the idea is controlled chaos," Ahmar told the unnamed embassy official. The embassy, however, was dismissive of the sheik, concluding that his challenge posed nothing more than "a mild irritation" for Saleh.
Today, Saleh is barely clinging to power amid a popular uprising in Yemen that is unfolding more or less along the lines that Ahmar predicted. Several previously undisclosed U.S. diplomatic cables, provided by the anti-secrecy site WikiLeaks, show that influential Yemenis and U.S. allies repeatedly warned U.S. diplomats of Saleh’s growing weakness in 2009 and 2010. But despite those warnings, the Obama administration continued to embrace Saleh and became increasingly dependent on him to combat an al-Qaeda affiliate that was plotting attacks against the United States from the Arabian peninsula.
The de facto chief of Yemen’s largest tribal confederation, Ahmar told the U.S. official in August 2009 that his scheme would hinge on persuading a powerful Yemeni general, Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar (no direct relation) to abandon the president and join the opposition. Last month, the general did just that, with Hamid al-Ahmar, now considered a potential presidential candidate, playing a key behind-the-scenes role.
Since January, spontaneous public revolts have seized the Arab world, sweeping aside autocrats in Tunisia and Egypt while threatening others in Libya, Bahrain and Syria. The classified cables from the embassy in Sanaa, however, make clear that Yemen’s revolution was different: It was plotted and predicted long in advance.
Those same cables reveal that U.S. officials were keenly aware of Yemen’s fragile political and economic straits but largely discounted the prospect that Saleh could be forced out, despite dire assessments of his standing from Arab and European counterparts, from members of Yemen’s political opposition, and even from Saleh’s inner circle.
The U.S. government has not explicitly called for Saleh’s ouster, even though his security forces have been blamed for the shooting deaths of dozens of protesters. U.S. officials and Arab diplomats have been mediating talks, however, between the Yemeni government and demonstrators that could lead to Saleh’s exit.
[…] At a Sept. 16, 2009, lunch in Sanaa with a visiting State Department official, European ambassadors said Washington had to push Saleh harder to reform his increasingly corrupt and isolated government. "The brusker, the blunter, the better," the British ambassador to Yemen said. "Saleh doesn’t understand anything if it’s framed diplomatically."
[…] Upon taking office, the Obama administration reviewed U.S. policy toward Yemen and pledged to give more money for counterterrorism programs and economic development. It later authorized U.S. military and intelligence teams to take part in secret, joint operations with Yemeni forces that targeted the al-Qaeda affiliate in the region.
But some independent analysts said the United States still didn’t pay enough attention to the dismal state of affairs in Yemen and was unprepared for the revolt against Saleh. They said the Obama administration could have pressured Saleh harder to make democratic concessions and could have hedged their bets on his presidency by reaching out more to rivals.
"Other allies have been talking about this with a lot more urgency and for a lot longer than the Americans have," said Christopher Boucek, a Yemen expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "Until a few weeks ago, most of the talk from the Obama administration was that there isn’t an alternative to Saleh, that ‘we don’t know what else to do.’ "
[…] In December 2009, a member of parliament with close personal ties to Saleh told an embassy official that the president was "overwhelmed, exhausted by the war, and more and more intolerant of internal criticism." According to a cable summarizing the meeting, the legislator characterized "the multitude of threats facing Saleh as qualitatively different and more threatening to the regime’s stability than those during any other time in Yemen’s history."
Four months earlier, a member of Saleh’s party who is a relative of the president suggested that it was time for Yemen’s ruler to quit. "He doesn’t listen to anyone," the relative told an embassy officer, adding that he was collaborating with the billionaire sheik, Hamid al-Ahmar, to organize public protests. The relative "hinted that if peaceful demonstrations were unsuccessful in achieving dramatic change, ‘we will use other means,’ " the cable reported.
The embassy took careful note of the swell of anti-Saleh anger in cables transmitted back to Washington, but also dismissed many of the complaints as sour grapes. "It is unsurprising in a state dominated by a strong leader that those unhappy with their situation blame that individual," read a May 30, 2009, cable signed by Stephen A. Seche, the U.S. ambassador at the time.
[…] In a separate cable two months earlier, the ambassador played down a prediction from yet another Yemeni political insider that Saleh’s demise was imminent. "For thirty years, Saleh has ruled Yemen," Seche wrote. "Observers have been predicting disaster here for almost as long."
Israel/Palestine
6) The Goldstone Chronicles
Roger Cohen, New York Times, April 7, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/08/opinion/08iht-edcohen08.html
London – We have a new verb, "to Goldstone." Its meaning: To make a finding, and then partially retract it for uncertain motive. Etymology: the strange actions of a respected South African Jewish jurist under intense pressure from Israel, the U.S. Congress and world Jewish groups.
Richard Goldstone is an author of the "Goldstone Report," an investigation of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza between December 2008 and January 2009. It found that Israel had engaged in a "deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population," for which responsibility lay "in the first place with those who designed, planned, ordered and oversaw the operations." It said both Israel and Hamas may have committed crimes against humanity in a conflict that saw a ratio of about 100 Palestinian dead (including many children) for every one Israeli.
Now Goldstone’s volte-face appears in the form of a Washington Post op-ed. It’s a bizarre effort. He says his report would have been different "if I had known then what I know now." The core difference the judge identifies is that he’s now convinced Gaza "civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy."
His shift is attributed to the findings of a follow-up report by a U.N. committee of independent experts chaired by Mary McGowan Davis, a former New York judge, and what is "recognized" therein about Israeli military investigations. Well, Goldstone and I have not been reading the same report.
McGowan Davis is in fact deeply critical of those Israeli investigations – their tardiness, leniency, lack of transparency and flawed structure. Her report – stymied by lack of access to Israel, Gaza or the West Bank – contains no new information I can see that might buttress a change of heart.
On the core issue of intentionality, it declares: "There is no indication that Israel has opened investigations into the actions of those who designed, planned, ordered and oversaw Operation Cast Lead."
It says Israel has not adequately answered the Goldstone Report’s allegations about the "design and implementation of the Gaza operations" or its "objectives and targets." Victims on both sides, McGowan Davis argues, can expect "no genuine accountability and no justice."
In short there is a mystery here. Goldstone has moved but the evidence has not, really. That raises the issue of whether the jurist buckled under pressure so unrelenting it almost got him barred from his grandson’s bar mitzvah in South Africa. Is this more a matter of judicial cojones than coherence?
[…] Goldstone expresses confidence that the Israeli officer responsible for the killing of 29 members of the al-Samouni family will be properly punished. Yet the McGowan Davis report is critical of this investigation and notes that "no decision had been made as to whether or not the officer would stand trial."
It also notes that more than a third of the 36 Gaza incidents identified in the Goldstone Report "are still unresolved or unclear." There have been just two convictions – and the one for credit card theft brought a more severe sentence than use of a Palestinian child as a human shield! And this gives Goldstone confidence?
Israel is celebrating what it calls a vindication. It is preparing to welcome Goldstone. It is demanding nullification of the report, even though Goldstone is only one of its four authors. Meanwhile the facts remain: the 1,400 plus Palestinian dead, the 13 Israelis killed, the devastation, the Hamas rockets – and the need for credible investigation of what all evidence suggests were large-scale, indiscriminate, unlawful Israeli attacks in Gaza, as well as Hamas’ crimes against civilians.
[…]
Honduras
7) An Inconvenient Truth in Honduras
Rodolfo Pastor Campos, Foreign Policy in Focus, April 7, 2011
http://www.fpif.org/articles/an_inconvenient_truth_in_honduras
At the same time that the police and the Honduran army were brutally repressing popular protests of teachers, students, and resistance members for the sixth day in a row, Julissa Reynoso was greeting Honduran President Porfirio Lobo at the presidential palace. According to the press release issued by the U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa, Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Reynoso was there to recognize President Lobo’s achievements regarding national reconciliation, human rights, and the return to democracy in Honduras.
That same day, in Washington DC, the Inter-American Human Rights Commission of the Organization of American States held a series of three hearings regarding the ongoing crisis in Honduras. National and international human rights organizations, renowned human rights activists, and the direct victims of the repression and political persecution presented the cases one after the other. Representatives of the Honduran government were also present to receive the reports and answer the accusations.
Documents, pictures, videos, and statistics of the beaten, the arbitrarily detained, the tortured, and the executed were all presented to the commission. The commissioners then listened to the Honduran government’s presentation before reaching their initial conclusions. By the end of each of the three sessions, the commission clearly and severely condemned the government’s violent abuse of human rights activists, peasants, teachers, students, journalists, and other members and supporters of the popular resistance movement.
[…] Throughout that day and all through Deputy Assistant Secretary Reynoso’s three-day visit, violent repression continued in Honduras. The police and the army once again beat the teachers and the students, as the Autonomous National University came under tear-gas attack with canisters made in the USA along with water cannons, rubber bullets and repeated blows of the batons.
A few days earlier, Ilse Velasquez, a teacher and one of the founders of the Committee of the Families of the Detained and the Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH), died when a tear gas canister hit her head during a protest. At the hearings, COFADEH representatives documented over 120 murders of members of the Honduran resistance, including union leaders and members of the LGBT community.
And then, just last week, the police burned and beat Miriam Miranda of the National Fraternal Black Organization of Honduras before detaining her on charges of sedition for participating in a popular resistance protest in solidarity with the teachers.
As Marcia Aguiluz from the Center for Justice and International Law in Washington, who has testified before the U.S. Congress and the IHRC about the crisis in Honduras pointed out, "President Lobo and his government have continued a state policy of repression against human rights activists and any kind of political dissent, a policy inherited directly from the de facto regime that came to power through the 2009 coup." Attorney Anjana Samant from the Center for Constitutional Rights, also said at the hearings that "this crisis is far from over. Many have died and more lives are still at risk given the worsening human rights situation in Honduras. To pretend that all is well and that the country is on the road to reconciliation after controversial elections that were neither free nor fair is to enable the continuation of repressive tactics and human rights violations."
[…] President Obama has been standing up for human rights and democracy in the Middle East and other parts of the world, supporting popular revolutions against tyrants. "Born, as we are, out of a revolution by those who longed to be free, we welcome the fact that history is on the move," said President Obama in his recent address to the nation regarding the bombing of Libya, "because wherever people long to be free, they will find a friend in the United States." Yet, over the same period, the United States has significantly increased the funding of the same police and army that executed the coup d’etat in Honduras in 2009.
The repression will likely continue as long as the United States turns a blind eye to the crisis and keeps funding the regime. President Obama should act promptly and in accordance with the principles he publicly stands for. The U.S. should immediately stop funding the police and the army of Honduras and demand that President Lobo halt the repression. Any genuine reconciliation and normalization in Honduras will demand profound reforms, a full commitment to human rights and an inclusive and transparent process that brings real justice and true democracy to the people.
Peru
8) Leftist Humala Woos Ethnic Vote, Widens Lead in Peru
Terry Wade, Reuters, April 8, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2011/04/08/world/americas/international-us-peru-election.html
Arequipa, Peru – Leftist front-runner Ollanta Humala, seeking to shore up the crucial ethnic vote, on Friday urged poor Peruvians with indigenous roots to back him in Sunday’s presidential election.
Humala, who has widened his lead over three rivals backed by the business class, wrapped up his campaign in the Andes by pledging to meet the needs of rural voters who often complain of being ignored by Peru’s elite of European descent.
The latest poll gave Humala a lead of up to 10 points, but he is not expected to win the 50 percent needed for outright victory, forcing a run-off with a second-placed candidate who could unite opposition to the populist leader.
Capturing the ethnic vote is vital in a nation that was the seat of the Inca empire and Humala’s rising poll ratings show he has stolen support in the highlands from former President Alejandro Toledo, who is nicknamed "the Cholo" because of his strong Andean features.
"The great transformation will be the big redistribution of wealth in the country. The wealth should be shared by all Peruvians," he told thousands of cheering supporters who waved the rainbow-colored flag of the Incan empire in a dusty district of the city of Arequipa.
[…] Humala, a former army officer who has moderated his hardline tone since narrowly losing the 2006 race, has promised "gradual change" to ensure the benefits of strong economic growth reach millions of poor Peruvians.
A third of Peru’s 30 million people still live in poverty despite a decade-long economic boom that has brought stability after years plagued by hyperinflation and guerrilla wars.
[…] Peru’s currency, the sol has been volatile on worries about an Humala victory, but some on Wall Street have said his promises to be fiscally prudent and respect the central bank’s independence sound credible.
[…] The poll by local survey firm Datum showed Humala extending his lead to 31.9 percent of the vote, followed by right-wing lawmaker Keiko Fujimori with 22.3 percent, a source who had seen the poll told Reuters on Friday. That outcome would pit Fujimori against Humala in a June 5 run-off vote.
The poll gave former finance minister Pedro Pablo Kuczynski 17.3 percent and put Toledo, who was the front-runner for much of the campaign, in fourth place with just 15.3 percent. The poll of 5,002 voters conducted between April 5-7 has a margin of error of 1.4 percentage points,
[…]
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