Just Foreign Policy News
April 29, 2010
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https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/feingold-mcgovern
New House co-sponsors: Baldwin, Tammy [WI-2]; Olver, John [MA-1], Napolitano, Grace [CA-38]. Current House co-sponsors, according to Thomas: 38.
Amnesty International USA Urgent Action: Journalists at Risk in Honduras
Six journalists have been shot dead in the last eight weeks, and numerous others have received death threats. No one has been held to account and no action taken to support and protect journalists.
http://www.amnestyusa.org/actioncenter/actions/uaa09410.pdf
Summary:
U.S./Top News
1) A member of the Afghan parliament said U.S. soldiers raided her home and killed her relative early Thursday morning, the Washington Post reports. The raid set off an angry protest, with residents blocking the highway for hours and shouting "death to America." NATO officials said a patrol killed "one armed individual." But lawmaker Safiya Sidiqi said that story was false. After calls to police officials and relatives, Sidiqi said, she learned that Afghan and U.S. soldiers had entered the family compound, blindfolded and handcuffed men and women, and shot her relative. Based on those accounts, she said, she did not believe her relative was armed.
2) A Pentagon report concludes that Afghan people support or are sympathetic to the insurgency in 92 of 121 districts identified by the U.S. military as key terrain for stabilizing the country, the Los Angeles Times reports. Popular support for Karzai’s government is strong in only 29 of those districts, it concludes.
3) Notre Dame law professor Mary Ellen O’Connell told Congress that CIA strikes drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen are "a clear violation of international law," AP reports. CIA officers who operate the drones could be arrested and charged with murder in other countries, O’Connell warned, likening it to having the Mexican police or military bomb hotels in Arizona in order to target drug lords who may be hiding there.
4) A Haitian earthquake survivor is on a mission to figure out how the American Red Cross spent the $430 million it raised for the disaster, the Miami Herald reports. After consuming $106 million in the first 60 days, the Red Cross in the past month has tapped just $5 million more and has come under fire for what critics call anemic spending. Aid groups, members of Congress, and a former board member are asking what the Red Cross is doing with the money.
5) The Pentagon’s main supply agency has acknowledged awarding $1.4 billion in no-bid contracts to two foreign companies whose ownership and management seem extremely mysterious, Newsweek reports. The contracts, involving delivery of fuel to U.S. air bases in Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan, are under investigation by a subcommittee of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. A recent article in The Nation quotes the new Kyrgyzstan government’s chief of staff as alleging that the two companies, Mina and Red Star, served as "an indirect way for the Pentagon to bribe the ruling families of Kyrgyzstan."
6) Researchers at the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy say a systematic review of more than 300 international studies found that when police crack down on drug users and dealers, the result is almost always an increase in violence, AP reports. In 87 percent of the studies reviewed, intensifying drug law enforcement resulted in increased rates of drug market violence. None showed a significant decrease in violence.
7) Former Colombian President Ernesto Samper told Colombian radio he had been aware of plans by now-presidential candidate Juan Manuel Santos to coordinate a coup during Samper’s time as head of state, writes Colombia Reports. Samper’s statement was in reference to recent accusations by former AUC boss Salvatore Mancuso, who claimed Santos had solicited the help of paramilitary head Carlos Castaño to carry out a coup to overthrow then-President Samper.
Honduras
8) Since the coup last June, a number of Honduran trade union leaders have died under mysterious circumstances, In These Times reports. Many Hondurans believe the military-backed government to be responsible for these assassinations. Of the 43 members of the anti-coup National Front of Popular Resistance that have been killed, about half have been trade unionists.
Israel/Palestine
9) Israeli soldiers killed a Palestinian during a protest against a buffer zone being built between Gaza and Israel, Al Jazeera reports. Israeli human rights group B’Tselem released video footage which showed a relatively peaceful crowd being taken by surprise by a gunshot apparently fired by an Israeli soldier on the other side of the security fence on the Gaza-Israel border.
Iran
10) Brazil has offered to mediate to help end the West’s standoff with Iran over its nuclear program, Reuters reports. Having talked to all the major parties in the dispute, Foreign Minister Celso Amorim hinted that both Washington and Tehran might be willing to compromise. "We have heard from the Americans that they seem sceptical but they didn’t say anything that may discourage us from continuing in our efforts," Amorim said. Amorim said the US should not see securing U.N. sanctions as a victory and any other outcome as a failure. "If instead of the sanctions they get a good agreement, it would be a big victory," he said. "It would be a much better victory than sanctions that would only make the situation more difficult."
Egypt
11) Nearly every day since February, hundreds of workers from all over Egypt have staged demonstrations and sit-ins outside Parliament, the New York Times reports. The open question – one that analysts say the government fears – is whether the workers will connect their economic woes with virtual one-party rule and organize into a political force. "The current wave of protests is erupting from the largest social movement Egypt has witnessed in more than half a century," wrote Joel Beinin, author of a report on Egypt’s labor movement for the Solidarity Center. Hassan Nashaat al-Qasas, a member of Parliament and of the governing party, was quoted in the news media as calling on the Interior Ministry to shoot the protesters: "Instead of using water hoses to disperse them, the police ought to shoot them; they deserve it."
Mexico
12) An attack by masked gunmen in on Mexican and European human rights activists and journalists in Oaxaca has left two dead and at least four people missing, AP reports. The dead included a Finnish human rights activist, and a Belgian is one of two activists missing, along with two journalists from the Mexican magazine Contralinea.
Contents:
U.S./Top News
1) Afghan MP Says US Troops Raid Home, Kill Relative
Joshua Partlow and Javed Hamdard, Washington Post, April 29, 2010; 9:52 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/29/AR2010042900331.html
Kabul – A member of the Afghan parliament said U.S. soldiers raided her home and killed her relative early Thursday morning, the latest controversial allegation of civilian casualties in Afghanistan. The confrontation at the home of lawmaker Safiya Sidiqi set off an angry protest in the Surkh Rod district of eastern Afghanistan, with residents blocking the highway to Kabul for hours and shouting "death to America."
In a statement, NATO officials said a patrol with international and Afghan troops killed "one armed individual," while chasing a Taliban facilitator in the district. They said they tried to get him to lower his gun with hand signals and commands through a translator. "The individual ignored the repeated commands, raised his weapon and aimed at the combined force, and then was shot and killed," the statement read.
Sidiqi said that story was false. She said she was in Kabul when she received a late-night phone call from her brother, saying he believed a gang of thieves was approaching the family home near the village of Nazrabad. "He said ‘people are entering our house.’ Then the phone disconnected," she recalled.
After repeated calls to Nangarhar police officials and relatives over the next several hours, Sidiqi said, she learned that dozens of Afghan and U.S. soldiers had entered the family compound, blindfolded and handcuffed men and women, and shot her relative, whose name was Amanullah, as he stood in a doorway leading to the garden. Based on those accounts, she said, she did not believe her relative was armed.
Sidiqi described Amanullah, who like many Afghans goes by only one name, as the husband of her sister-in-law’s sister. He was a car mechanic, about 30 years old, with five children. "They shot him six times. In his heart, in his face, in his head. Both legs were broken," Sidiqi said Thursday as she waited for his funeral to begin.
[…] She has spoken with NATO officials, the provincial governor, several cabinet ministers, and the office of the president about the raid. She said she would try to prosecute the soldiers. "I want justice for his small children who are left behind," she said.
2) Afghan Taliban getting stronger, Pentagon says
A Pentagon assessment, while expressing confidence in U.S. strategy, says the movement has flourished despite repeated assaults.
Julian E. Barnes, Los Angeles Times, April 29, 2010
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-fg-0429-us-afghan-20100429,0,2848935.story
Washington – A Pentagon report presented a sobering new assessment Wednesday of the Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan, saying that its abilities are expanding and its operations are increasing in sophistication, despite recent major offensives by U.S. forces in the militants’ heartland.
The report, requested by Congress, portrays an insurgency with deep roots and broad reach, able to withstand repeated U.S. onslaughts and to reestablish its influence, while discrediting and undermining the country’s Western-backed government.
[…] The new report offers a grim take on the likely difficulty of establishing lasting security, especially in southern Afghanistan, where the insurgency enjoys broad support. The conclusions raise the prospect that the insurgency in the south may never be completely vanquished, but instead must be contained to prevent it from threatening the government of President Hamid Karzai.
The report concludes that Afghan people support or are sympathetic to the insurgency in 92 of 121 districts identified by the U.S. military as key terrain for stabilizing the country. Popular support for Karzai’s government is strong in only 29 of those districts, it concludes.
U.S.-led military operations have had "some success in clearing insurgents from their strongholds, particularly in central Helmand," the report said. But it adds: "The insurgent tactic of re-infiltrating the cleared areas to perform executions has played a role in dissuading locals from siding with the Afghan government, which has complicated efforts to introduce local governance."
The report concurs with earlier findings by the U.S. commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, and others that violence in Afghanistan began to level off in the first months of 2010. But the Pentagon also notes that Afghan insurgents consider 2009, Obama’s first year in office, to be their most successful year because of their ability to increase the level of violence.
The report issued Wednesday examines the period between October and the end of March, and is the first since the Obama administration put its new strategy in place.
A senior Defense official who briefed reporters on the report said violence increased last year in part because of the additional U.S. troops. "The level of violence has gone up in our judgment … because we have more forces confronting the Taliban in more areas," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The official acknowledged the assessment of the insurgency was more pessimistic than in previous assessments.
[…]
3) Legal Questions Raised Over CIA Drone Strikes
Lolita C. Baldor, Associated Press, Wednesday, April 28, 2010; 5:53 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/28/AR2010042804530.html
Washington – Is the CIA’s secret program of drone strikes against terrorists in Pakistan and Yemen a case of illegal assassinations or legitimate self defense? That was a central question Wednesday as the program came under fire from several legal scholars who called for greater oversight by Congress, arguing the attacks may violate international law and put intelligence officers at risk of prosecution for murder in foreign countries.
Four law professors offered conflicting views, underscoring the murky legal nature of America’s nine-year-old war against extremists. The conflict has spread from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to a complex campaign against al-Qaida, the Taliban and other insurgents worldwide.
Both the Bush and Obama administrations have defended the use of attacks from unmanned aircraft. But they have also tiptoed around the issue because the CIA program – which has escalated in Pakistan over the past year – is classified and has not yet been acknowledged publicly by the government.
The CIA strikes are "a clear violation of international law," said Mary Ellen O’Connell, law professor at the University of Notre Dame Law School, who added that going after terrorists should be a law enforcement activity. She said the rest of the world does not recognize American authority to carry out attacks in Yemen and Pakistan, countries where the U.S. is not involved in direct armed conflict.
CIA officers who operate the drones could be arrested and charged with murder in other countries, O’Connell warned, likening it to having the Mexican police or military bomb hotels in Arizona in order to target drug lords who may be hiding there.
Others on the panel disagreed, saying enemy forces are legitimate targets, particularly when they operate out of countries that won’t take action themselves. The U.S. has long declared the legal view that as important as sovereignty is, "it is lawful to go and strike a person where a country is unable or unwilling" to control its own territory, said Kenneth Anderson, a professor at American University’s Washington College of Law.
[…] Anderson said the secrecy around the program – which is written about extensively in the media – has become counterproductive for the CIA. He said it’s difficult for the administration to give a legal blessing to something the agency doesn’t admit takes place. An open discussion about the legal and policy issues would be more helpful, he said, and also would provide better legal protection for the CIA and the employees involved in the strikes.
[…]
4) Earthquake survivor puts the spotlight on Red Cross’ spending in Haiti
Frances Robles, Miami Herald, Tue, Apr. 27, 2010
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/04/27/1601420/spotlight-falls-on-red-cross-spending.html
Fred Sajous, a Haitian earthquake survivor armed with a video camera and a cause, is a man on a mission: to figure out how the American Red Cross spent the $430 million it raised for the disaster. The former Broward Community College student visited the tent city across the street from the American Red Cross’ Pétionville headquarters. Tent city leaders said they had not received anything from the Red Cross. With the organization’s monthly report in hand, he went to a dozen more settlements.
"I couldn’t find the $106 million," said Sajous, a 29-year-old mechanical engineer who left Fort Lauderdale for Port-au-Prince after being laid off last year. "I didn’t see a single sticker or anything."
More than three months since the American Red Cross raised hundreds of millions to aid Haiti in the aftermath of the 7.0 earthquake that killed an estimated 300,000 and left 1.3 million homeless, the organization says it has spent about a quarter of the money. But after consuming $106 million in the first 60 days, the Red Cross in the past month has tapped just $5 million more and has come under fire for what critics call anemic spending.
Other aid groups, members of Congress, bloggers and even a former board member are among the growing chorus asking what the Red Cross is doing with such a massive amount of money raised in such a short time. Red Cross records are not public, so Sajous settled on registering a watchdog organization called Kontrol Aid and making a video about his hunt for Red Cross relief supplies, which he posted on YouTube.
American Red Cross President and CEO Gail J. McGovern last week countered with an Internet video of her own, responding to those who say the organization lacks visibility. She also scheduled a conference call with members of Congress, underscoring the agency’s sudden drive to explain how it funded 43 percent of the global Red Cross efforts that assisted 2 million people, gave tarps and other supplies to 450,000 and distributed almost 24 million gallons of water.
[…] The Red Cross said that expenses so far have included $55 million for emergency relief, such as food and supplies, including $30 million to the World Food Program; $43.6 million for shelter, including tarp; $5.5 million for water and sanitation, and $1.5 million for health costs.
The organization says that after an initial flurry of spending, operations have slowed as the American Red Cross shifts to a three- to five-year recovery plan. Rather than spend donations distributing water bottles, the Red Cross says it will fund water sanitation systems instead.
"That’s not disaster relief, that’s long-term recovery, and that’s not the Red Cross’ mission and not the donor intent either," said former board member Victoria Cummock, a longtime Red Cross advocate and volunteer who has given the organization over $300,000.
The Coral Gables resident resigned from the national board of governors in 2008 after it disbanded the disaster oversight committee. She was disappointed in what she said were tepid responses she got from Red Cross officials when she asked about its operations in Haiti, so she decided to donate $25,000 each instead to Project Medishare and UNICEF. "You have to start to take credence in the outcry of the people saying their needs are not being met," she said. "If there are hungry people across the street from the Red Cross, what is that about?"
[…]
5) Pentagon Confirms It Gave $1.4 Billion In No-Bid Fuel Contracts To Mysterious Companies
Mark Hosenball, Newsweek, Wednesday, April 28, 2010 7:08 PM
http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/declassified/archive/2010/04/28/pentagon-confirms-it-gave-1-4-billion-in-no-bid-fuel-contracts-to-mysterious-companies.aspx
The Pentagon’s main supply agency has acknowledged awarding $1.4 billion in no-bid contracts to two foreign companies whose ownership and management seem extremely mysterious. The contracts, involving delivery of aviation fuel to U.S.-run air bases in Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan, are currently under investigation by a subcommittee of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, one of Congress’s most powerful panels. Among other things, the subcommittee is examining allegations by human-rights activists and others that the companies are connected to the families of two former Kyrgyz leaders who were toppled in the past several years amid allegations of corruption.
The Defense Logistics Agency said in a written statement to Declassified that last year it awarded a contract to a company called Mina Corp. Ltd. for supplying fuel to the Manas Transit Center, as the U.S.-run air base in Kyrgyzstan is known. The agency said Mina received the contract, potentially worth $729 million over three years, under a section of federal purchasing regulations allowing "contracting without providing for full and open competition." (The contract’s initial term, the agency said, is for one year, with options for two one-year extensions.) The agency also said it had awarded a $720 million contract under the same provisions to a company called Red Star Enterprises for the provision of Russian-grade aviation fuel and JP-8 jet fuel. The agency said Red Star was "the only company that had the capability to meet operational needs."
[…] At a hearing on April 22, the oversight subcommittee’s chairman, Rep. John Tierney (D-Mass.), said his panel is conducting a "wide-ranging investigation into allegations that the contractors who supply fuel to the Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan had significant dealings with the family" of Kurmanbek Bakiyev, the president of Kyrgyzstan who was deposed and fled the country after a popular uprising earlier this month. One of the witnesses at the subcommittee’s hearing, human-rights law professor Scott Horton, alleged in public testimony that the fuel deals, involving Red Star and two companies that seem to have been Mina’s forerunners, originated under the presidency of Bakiyev’s predecessor, Askar Akayev.
Horton alleged that in the years before Bakiyev toppled Akayev in 2005, Akayev’s son-in-law received subcontracts from Mina’s forerunners. Upon taking power, Bakiyev’s government launched an investigation into alleged corruption surrounding the contracts, but the inquiry was subsequently dropped. Horton testified that he personally observed Bakiyev’s son Maksim palling around with Chuck Squires, a retired U.S. Army intelligence officer identified in a 2008 Defense Logistics Agency publication as Red Star’s "director of operations." Kyrgyz opposition leaders who were involved in Bakiyev’s ouster have been quoted in The New York Times as charging that companies controlled by Maksim Bakiyev "skimmed as much as $8 million a month from fuel sales to the [American] base." And a recent article by investigative reporter Aram Roston in The Nation quotes the new government’s chief of staff as alleging that Mina and Red Star served as "an indirect way for the Pentagon to bribe the ruling families of Kyrgyzstan."
[…]
6) Study links drug enforcement to more violence
Martha Mendoza, Associated Press, Tuesday, April 27, 2010
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/27/AR2010042700296.html
Mexico City – The surge of gunbattles, beheadings and kidnappings that has accompanied Mexico’s war on drug cartels is an entirely predictable escalation in violence based on decades of scientific literature, a new study contends.
A systematic review published Tuesday of more than 300 international studies dating back 20 years found that when police crack down on drug users and dealers, the result is almost always an increase in violence, say researchers at the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy, a nonprofit group based in Britain and Canada.
When communities get tough on drug crime, that drives up the black market profits, prompting fierce battles to control the lucrative trade, their study says. And when powerful and successful drug bosses are taken out, it’s all too common for more brutal and less sophisticated criminals to step in.
"Law enforcement is the biggest single expenditure on drugs, yet has rarely been evaluated. This work indicates an urgent need to shift resources from counterproductive law enforcement to a health-based public health approach," said Gerry Stimson, executive director of the International Harm Reduction Association which is hosting a conference this week in Liverpool, England, where the study was released.
As happened with Mexico’s all-out drug crackdown launched when President Felipe Calderon took office a little over three years ago, murders shot up during the U.S. prohibition on liquor in the 1920s and during Colombia’s crackdown on its drug gangs in the 1990s.
In 87 percent of the studies reviewed, intensifying drug law enforcement resulted in increased rates of drug market violence. Some of the studies included in the report said violence increases because power vacuums are created when police kill or arrest top drug traffickers. None showed a significant decrease in violence.
[…]
7) Santos did plan coup: Samper
Camilla Pease-Watkin, Colombia Reports, Tuesday, 27 April 2010 11:05
http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/2010-elections/9381-samper-i-was-aware-of-santos-planned-coup.html
Former Colombian President Ernesto Samper said Tuesday that he had been aware of plans by now-presidential candidate Juan Manuel Santos to coordinate a coup during Samper’s time as head of state from 1994 to 1998.
Speaking on national radio station Caracol, the former president claimed that he had been alerted as to the existence of a "sinister" group wishing to overthrow his government. "I am sure that yes there were plans to gather a sinister coalition including Juan Manuel Santos, drug-traffickers, guerrillas and paramilitaries. I was made aware by Gilberto Echeverry, who was my minister, of the contacts that they were making, even with the FARC," said Samper.
[…] Samper’s statement was in reference to recent accusations by former AUC boss Salvatore Mancuso, who claimed that Santos had solicited the help of paramilitary head Carlos Castaño to carry out a coup to overthrow then-President Samper. The presidential candidate denied the claims, saying that former AUC boss Salvatore Mancuso accused him of having plotted a coup out of spite and that the accusations already had been investigated by the Prosecutor General’s Office without results.
Honduras
8) Return of the Death Squads
Honduran oligarchs target members of the National Front of Popular Resistance.
Jeremy Kryt, In These Times, April 27, 2010
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/5913/return_of_the_death_squads/
Tegucigalpa, Honduras – Late in the afternoon on February 3, Vanessa Zepeda, a 28-year-old registered nurse, left a union hall after a meeting and began walking to the supermarket to buy school supplies for her children and formula for her baby girl. She never made it.
According to witnesses, as she was leaving the union hall parking lot in this sprawling capital city, Zepeda was forced into an unmarked white sedan by two masked men dressed in fatigues. A few hours after she was kidnapped, her corpse, still dressed in blue hospital scrubs, was tossed from a moving car in the Loarque neighborhood on the southern side of the city-a well-known stronghold of the resistance movement.
Zepeda was a member of the National Front of Popular Resistance (FNRP), which like many countries, including Brazil and Argentina, does not recognize the military-backed government of President Porfirio "Pepe" Lobo, who took office in January after much-disputed elections.
Zepeda was also a leader in the Social Security Workers Union. Prior to her abduction, she had attended the meeting at the Bottling Plant union building to talk about the need to join with other unions to peacefully resist the Lobo government.
"Vanessa was very committed to helping others," says Bessi Torrez, Zepeda’s mother, in a phone interview with In These Times. (Torrez had agreed to meet in public, but later canceled due to fear of being seen with a foreign journalist.) "She also worked hard to help unite the different syndicates, so that they could consolidate their interests. She sacrificed everything for the Resistance."
After Zepeda’s body was found, her mother was notified and told to come straight to the morgue, instead of the crime scene itself. When Torrez arrived, she was not allowed to see any of the forensic evidence or investigation records. "It was very strange," she says. "The process has been so mysterious."
Since the coup last June, a number of union leaders have died under equally mysterious circumstances. Many Hondurans believe the military-backed government to be responsible for these assassinations. Of the 43 members of the FNRP that have been killed, about half have been trade unionists.
Gilda Batista, director of the Tegucigalpa-based human rights organization Refuge Without Limits (ASL), has investigated the murder of Zepeda and other recently executed union leaders. Batista says her research leads her to believe that assassination squads are being "financed by the corporatocracy and military."
Batista believes the targeting of key individuals like Zepeda "sends a message to the Resistance that union members will be murdered if they meddle in the political arena." In Zepeda’s case, forensics experts finally labeled the case a homicide, but still have not disclosed any details about the cause of death. More than three weeks after the autopsy, Torrez is still awaiting an explanation from the government concerning her daughter’s murder.
"[The Lobo government] knows that the trade unionists are one of the biggest threats economically. The labor movement has been really central to the resistance," says Dana Frank, professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in an interview in a Tegucigalpa human rights office. "In Tegucigalpa, many of the biggest Resistance meetings are happening in the Bottling Plant Union building. The unions are a direct economic threat [because] they have a larger vision for Honduras."
[…] Although the U.S. State Department does recognize the Lobo government, assassinations of union leaders and other human-rights abuses in Honduras have reached such a pitch that nine members of the House of Representatives sent a letter to Hillary Clinton in early March, asking the secretary of state to investigate the violence.
"I am extremely concerned that U.S. attention to ongoing human-rights abuses in Honduras will wane now that the acute political crisis has ended," Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) wrote in an e-mail to In These Times. "It’s tempting for the United States to immediately normalize relations and resume aid now that Honduras has held elections, but I believe that we need to keep the focus on the serious violations that continue to occur."
Rep. Schakowsky, who traveled to Honduras on a fact-finding trip in November 2009 and signed the March letter, says she saw the deterioration of human rights "firsthand." "I am extremely concerned that these abuses are continuing under the new government," she wrote.
[…]
Israel/Palestine
9) Israeli Troops Kill Gaza Protester
Al Jazeera, Thursday, April 29, 2010
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/04/2010428184658638631.html
Israeli soldiers have shot and killed a 19-year-old Palestinian during a protest against a buffer zone being built between the eastern Gaza Strip and Israel, Gaza medical officials have said. Moaweya Hassanein, was shot in the abdomen, the head of Gaza’s emergency services, told reporters. He was evacuated to hospital in critical condition, where he later died of his wounds.
An Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem, released video footage shot by one of its Palestinian field workers, which showed a relatively peaceful crowd of several dozen demonstrators being taken by surprise by a gunshot apparently fired by an Israeli soldier on the other side of the nearby security fence on the Gaza-Israel border. The Palestinian teenager who was shot is then seen being carried away on a stretcher. No armed protesters could immediately be noticed in the unsteady video footage.
An Israeli military spokeswoman in Tel Aviv said the Israeli army was investigating the incident.
[…]
Iran
10) Brazil offers to mediate in Iran nuclear standoff
Brazil, Turkey can broker compromise – foreign minister
Avoiding sanctions, getting deal would be "big victory"
Robin Pomeroy, Reuters, April 27
http://in.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idINLDE63Q1JO20100427
Tehran – Brazil has offered to mediate to help end the West’s standoff with Iran over its nuclear programme, Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said on Tuesday. He said Brazil could work with Turkey, which has already offered to help, and act as an honest broker to resolve "the single most important security issue that the world faces today".
[…] Brazil, whose trade ties with Iran have strengthened in recent years, wants to avoid sanctions it believes will be counter-productive and Amorim said he hoped a deal agreed last year but never implemented could be revived. "Our role, rather than reinventing the wheel, is helping put (the parties) together," Amorim told reporters in Tehran before meeting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "Because, on the basis of what was proposed last September, … an agreement may be possible."
That deal was for Iran to ship 1,200 kg (2,646 lb) of low-enriched uranium – enough for a single bomb if purified to a high enough level – to Russia and France to make into fuel for a medical research reactor in Tehran. Iran later said it would only swap its low-enriched uranium directly for higher grade material, and only on Iranian soil.
When asked whether such a swap could happen in Turkey – a NATO member which borders Iran and is also a temporary member of the U.N. Security Council – Amorim said: "I think that probably would be part of the deal."
Having talked to all the major parties in the dispute, Amorim hinted that both Washington and Tehran might be willing to compromise. Iran denies seeking an atomic bomb and says its nuclear programme is solely for producing electricity. "We have heard from the Americans that they seem sceptical but they didn’t say anything that may discourage us from continuing in our efforts," Amorim said.
And he added that the United States should not see securing U.N. sanctions as a victory and any other outcome as a failure. "Maybe it would be considered a defeat if they don’t get the sanctions and don’t get anything. If instead of the sanctions they get a good agreement, it would be a big victory," he said. "It would be a much better victory than sanctions that would only make the situation more difficult."
[…]
Egypt
11) Labor Protests Test Egypt’s Government
Michael Slackman, New York Times, April 28, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/29/world/middleeast/29egypt.html
Cairo – Day after day, hundreds of workers from all over Egypt have staged demonstrations and sit-ins outside Parliament, turning sidewalks in the heart of the capital into makeshift camps and confounding government efforts to bring an end to the protests.
Nearly every day since February, protesters have chanted demands outside Parliament during daylight and laid out bedrolls along the pavement at night. The government and its allies have been unable to silence the workers, who are angry about a range of issues, including low salaries.
Using an emergency law that allows arrest without charge and restricts the ability to organize, the Egyptian government and the ruling National Democratic Party have for decades blocked development of an effective opposition while monopolizing the levers of power. The open question – one that analysts say the government fears – is whether the workers will connect their economic woes with virtual one-party rule and organize into a political force.
This week, with blankets stacked neatly behind them, at least four different groups were banging pots, pans and empty bottles and chanting slogans. There were factory workers, government workers, employees of a telephone company and handicapped men and women. The group of handicapped people said they had been there for 47 days, demanding jobs and housing. "If we get our rights, we will leave," said Gamal Sharqawy, 42, a government worker who said that he and about 200 others had spent 22 days on the pavement. His demand was for a pay raise. He earns $18 a month.
[…] While political demonstrations are still dealt with harshly, the government’s approach to labor protests has been to negotiate, offering raises and back pay to get workers off the street.
"The current wave of protests is erupting from the largest social movement Egypt has witnessed in more than half a century," wrote Joel Beinin, a professor of Middle East history at Stanford and principal author of a report on Egypt’s labor movement for the Solidarity Center, a labor-financed advocacy group in Washington. The report said that 1.7 million workers engaged in 1,900 "strikes and other forms of protest" from 2004 through 2008.
The government has tried to define workers’ complaints as pocketbook issues, analysts said, hoping that if specific demands are met, workers will disband without blaming those in charge and without adding political change to their list of priorities. For a time, that seemed to work.
"The government realizes the most important thing is to ensure these protests are kept at a wide distance from the political opposition elite, because then it will not gain momentum," said Hossam Bahgat, director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.
As evidence, he said the leaders of the state security agencies had held negotiations between protesters and the government, often pressing ministries to meet workers’ demands. "They think this is a way to contain protests, but what happened is the workers have come away empowered," Mr. Bahgat said.
Workers say they have learned that if they stage job actions in their factories, as they used to do, they will be dealt with harshly by the police. But if they make noise on the streets of Cairo, the government will relent. Surrounded by barricades and the police 24 hours a day, the demonstrators have turned the sidewalks into a revolving door of protests. Nearly every work sector has appeared at one time, including tax collectors, who struck for three months. About the only group that has not is the security force.
The workers’ protests and their implications have become a hot button topic here in part because parliamentary elections are coming up. The intensity of the discussion has been stoked by the government’s newest and most problematic opponent, the former director of the United Nations nuclear agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, who has publicly made the case to link the economic plight of average Egyptians with the lack of democracy and political accountability.
[…] But there are other indications that the leadership’s tolerance is beginning to fray. This month, Hassan Nashaat al-Qasas, a member of Parliament and of the governing party, was quoted in the news media as calling on the Interior Ministry to shoot the protesters: "Instead of using water hoses to disperse them, the police ought to shoot them; they deserve it."
[…]
Mexico
12) 2 dead in attack on rights caravan in south Mexico
Morgan Lee, Associated Press, Thursday, April 29, 2010; 11:03 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/29/AR2010042902078.html
Oaxaca, Mexico – An attack by masked gunmen on a convoy of about 40 Mexican and European human rights activists and journalists has left two dead and at least four people missing in a remote area of this southern Mexican state.
Targets of the assault included members of a radical movement that seized control of the capital of Oaxaca state for five months in 2006, and there were fears a long-standing conflict between the group and the state government could be reignited.
The dead included a Finnish human rights activist, and a Belgian is one of two activists missing, along with two journalists from the Mexican magazine Contralinea. The Mexican victim was identified as activist Beatriz Carino Trujillo.
At least one Italian activist also participated in the caravan, which was traveling to the remote Triqui Indian mountain town of San Juan Copala to support the town’s fight for more autonomy from the state government.
Police on Thursday scoured the mountains above the capital, Oaxaca city, for the attackers while survivors recounted their ordeal at a news conference. "They started to spray us with bullets," said activist Gabriela Jimenez Ramirez, who was traveling inside a sport utility vehicle with a dozen people, including the two who were killed. "Trying to back up, they blew out the tires of the vehicle. We threw ourselves on the floor. The vehicle was shaking because there were bursts of gunfire."
[…] Photos from the scene show a bullet-ridden SUV on a dirt road, and the body of Jyri Jaakkola, 33, of Finland, who appeared to have been shot in the head. Jaakkola was a member of a small, Finnish civil rights group Uusi Tuuli (New Wind), based in the southwestern city of Turku. Jaakkola, who traveled to Mexico about two months ago on his own initiative, financed the trip mainly with his savings and planned to stay a year advocating for human rights, Uusi Tuuli spokesman Jani Nevala said.
[…]
–
Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
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