world news
Please Note: You can now translate this site into French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. Please click here.
Napoleon Bonaparte Taken To Court, Times of India ~ Dec. 29
Peru Creates Web Site in Hunt for Former Spy Chief, Reuters ~ Dec. 27
More Than Half of Russians Want New Empire - Poll, Interfax ~ Dec. 26
Talking Past the Torture, William Branigin ~ Dec. 26
Confronting the Hard Realities of North America's Ongoing Indian War, by Anthony J. Hall ~ Dec. 21
Kashmir Ceasefire Extended by a Month, Economic Times ~ Dec. 21
Afghan Refugees Stranded, By Vladimir Davlatov ~ Dec. 21
Astana IMU Fears, By Iskander Amanjolov ~ Dec. 21
Osh Hepatitis Crisis, By Alla Pyatibratova ~ Dec. 21
UN Says Liberia is Weapons Conduit, By Evelyn Leopold ~ Dec. 20
Letter of Protest and Complaint of the IRU and the RNC on the Holocaust US Court Decision, RomNews Network ~ Dec. 19
Afghanistan Land Mine, By S. Frederick Starr ~ December 19
Letter to President Vladimir Putin, WPFC ~ December 19
The Dilemma of Intervention Criteria, By Yasushi Akashi ~ December 18
Russia Plans New Security Alliance to Counter NATO, World Tribune ~ December 18
Putin's Law, By Leopold Unger ~ Dec. 17
Letter President Putin About Journalist Oleg Luriye, IPI ~ Dec. 17
Ethiopian Woman Must Be Saved From the Death Sentence, Ethiopian Women Lawyers Association ~ December 12
Burmese Sales to the Pentagon Spark Criticism, By Steven Greenhouse ~ Dec. 19
Who Killed Newswatch Founding Editor-in-chief Dele Giwa? Tobs Agbaegbu ~ Dec. 18
The Powell Doctrine: Do What We Say - And Do Not Expect Help. A Do-Nothing Isolationist at State, The Guardian ~ Dec. 18
Supremacist Matt Hale wants Montana Practice, by Ron Selden, Today Correspondent
Taliban Bashing by Another Name, Shameem Akhtar, Dawn ~ Dec. 18
Week of Action to Ban Depleted Uranium Weapons, Tara Thornton ~ Dec. 18
South Armagh Farmers & Residents Organise Peaceful Mobilisation Against British Military Presence, South Armagh Farmers & Residents Committee ~ Dec. 17
No Human Rights Progress in Niger Delta, Protesters in Oil Regions of Nigeria Subject to Lethal Force, Human Rights Watch ~ December 14
Briefing Paper: Update on Human Rights Violations in the Niger Delta, Human Rights Watch ~ Dec. 14
Croatian Prime Minister Affirms Support For War Crimes Court, Snjezana Vukic ~ Dec. 14
Bombings of Civilian Targets in Sudan have Doubled, US Committee for Refugees ~ Dec. 13
Falun Gong Member Dies After Beating, BBC ~ Dec. 13
Extradition Based On False Evidence, Peltier Inquiry Says, By Kirk Makin ~ Dec. 11
China Sells Organs of Slain Convicts, By Ian Williams ~ Dec. 10
Few War Crimes in Kosova Will Ever be Prosecuted, Police Say, KosovaLive ~ Dec. 9
Russian President Urges U.N. to Intensify Anti-Terrorist Efforts, Russian Information Center ~ Dec. 10
Georgia's Lawmakers Call for Leaving CIS, Moscow Echo ~ Dec. 10
Close the School of Assassins!, "International Day of Action" January 17th, SOA Watch ~ Dec. 9
New Mass Grave Discovered in Bosnia, The Guardian ~ Dec. 8
Clinton Grants Stay of Execution to Study Race Gap, Reuters ~ Dec. 8
Russia Needs Reformed Secret Services, RBC ~ Dec. 7
Korea, US Show Wide Gap in Assessment of Nogun-ri Case, By Son Key-young ~ Dec. 6
Violence Against Jews Called on Rise, By Charles A. Radin ~ Dec. 6
How Helms is Sparking a Real Crisis, By James Carroll ~ Dec. 5
Criminal Tribunals for Sierra Leone, Sierra Bar Association ~ Dec. 10
Taleban Own Up To IMU, By Galima Bukharbaeva ~ Dec. 7
Kazak Opposition Intimidated, By Rozlana Taukina ~ Dec. 7
Alarm Over Kyrgyzk Death Sentences, By Yrysbek Omurzakov ~ Dec. 7
Ethnic Russian Migration, By Slujan Ismailova ~ Dec. 7
Kyrgyk Economic Woes, By Bektash Shamshiev ~ Dec. 7
Hundreds of Thousands March in Solidarity With Indigenous Australians, By Chris Sitka ~ Dec. 6
Commune Elections More Important Than Flawed KR Trial, By Ron Abney ~ Dec. 4
Meles Zenawi's Regime Intensifies Human Rights Abuse in Ethiopia, By Gashu Habte ~ Dec. 3
Biological Weapons in the Drug War: A Review of Opposition in South America, The Sunshine Project ~ Dec. 1
Eight Killed in Irian Jaya Protest, By Geoff Spencer ~ Dec. 2
Rebels With a New Cause; NATO, Yugoslavia Join to Rein In Deadly Successor To KLA Militia, By Peter Finn ~ December 2
Russians Seize Maskhadov's "Right-Hand Man", Dmitri Nepomnyaschy ~ Dec. 1
Visa Threat Spurs Georgia Into Action, Mikhail Ivanov ~ Dec. 1
Sukhumi's Monkeys Are Tough Nuts To Crack, Erik Batuev ~ Dec. 1
U.N. Adds Judges To Rwanda, Yugoslav Tribunals, Reuters ~ Dec. 1
Chile Places Pinochet Under House Arrest, Clifford Krauss, New York Times ~ Dec. 2
Spain Lawyers Praise Action, Reuters ~ Dec. 1
Chile Judge Indicts Former Dictator Pinochet for Kidnapping, Fox News ~ Dec. 1
Gulf War Uranium Warning Failed To Reach Troops, Nicholas Watt, Guardian of London ~ Dec. 1
Republicans Against Global War Crimes Tribunal, Times of India ~ Dec. 1
The Massacre Starts Tomorrow And Britain Will Share The Blame For What's About To Happen In West Papua, George Monbiot ~ Nov. 30
Tensions Mount as Independence Anniversary Approaches for Indonesian Province of Irian Jaya, Stratfor, Inc. ~ Dec. 1
Campaign Launched Against UN Court, Edith M. Lederer ~ Nov. 30
Horrors Behind Rebel Lines in Sierra Leone, By Noritmitsy Onishi ~ Nov. 30
Kazakstan Builds Bridges With Taleban, Adil Kojikhov & Tolgonai Umbetalieva ~ Nov. 27
Kyrgyz Opposition Upheaval, By Igor Grebenshikov ~ Nov. 27
"Peaceful" Uzbek Muslims Jailed, By Galima Bukharbaeva ~ Nov. 27
Astana Set To Curb Russian Broadcasts, By Slujan Ismailova ~ Nov. 27
Trouble At The Bazaar, By Yrysbek Omurzakov ~ Nov. 27
Mystery and Myth of Montesinos, Sebastian Rotella ~ Nov. 26
Slobodan Milosevic Denounced Yugoslavia's New Government as 'Western Traitors and Occupiers', Alex Todorovic in Belgrade ~ Nov. 26
Exposive Documents on India's Netaji to be Handed to Commission, Sunando Sarkar ~ Nov. 25
Algerian Press Wants French Action Over Wartime Torture, Agence France-Presse ~ Nov. 25
Getting Away With Murder, Isabel Hilton ~ Nov. 21
Tensions Grow In Stepanakert, Anatoly Kuprianov ~ Nov. 24
South Ossetia Faces Isolation, Valeri Dzutsev, IWPR ~ November 24
Black Sea Exotica, Askerbi Minasharov ~ November 24
1,700 Arrested at School of the Americas Protest, Elliott Minor ~ Nov. 23
Outspoken Mozambican Editor Assassinated, Charles Mangwiro & Justin Arenstein ~ November 22
Ex-GIs: U.S. Troops in Korea War Had Orders to Shoot Civilians, Richard Pyle ~ November 22
Call President Clinton Asking for Clemency for Leonard Peltier, LPDC ~ Nov. 22
Apartheid Alive and Well in the New South Africa, Fred Bridgland ~ Nov. 19
"My Unit Conspired in the Murder of Civilians in Ireland", Neil Mackay ~ Nov. 19
The Scot Behind Ulster's Dirty War, The Sunday Herald ~ Nov. 19
Rumours of Fujimori Seeking Asylum Abound, Times of India ~ Nov. 17
Clinton Not To Apologise To Vietnam, The Times of India ~ Nov. 17
Panama Authorities Arrest Would-Be Castro Assassin, Isabel Garcia-Zarza ~ Nov. 17
Bosnia-Herzegovina: Peace Without Justice, Amnesty International ~ Nov. 17
Haitian Court Sentences 30 Officers, Marie-Andre Auguste ~ Nov.
Haiti Jury Convicts 16 Ex-Army Members In Coup Massacre, The Haiti Support Group ~ Nov.
Palace Justifies Monitoring Of Anti-Estrada Demonstrations, Marichu Villanueva ~ Nov. 17
With Fujimori Away, Opposition Seizes Control Of Peru's Congress, Monte Hayes ~ Nov. 17
Malaysian Premier Denies Peru President Fujimori Seeks Asylum, IRNA ~ Nov. 17
Osce Slams Azerbaijani Elections, Shahin Rzaev ~ Nov. 17
Comment: Hijak Drama Descends Into Tragicomedy, Mikhail Ivanov ~ Nov. 17
Abkhazia: God's Country, Askerbi Minasharov ~ Nov. 17
Nalchik Authorities Launch Wahhabi Witch-Hunt, Musa Alibekov ~ Nov. 17
Central Asian Pawn, Igor Grebenshchikov ~ Nov. 17
Kazak Premier Under Threat, Dosym Satpaev ~ Nov. 17
Kyrgyz Security Agency Faces Curbs, Zhypara Abdrakhmanova ~ Nov. 17
Nazarbaev Granted New Military Powers, Andrei Chebotarev ~ Nov. 17
Bukharans Shun Radical Islam, Jennifer Balfour ~ Nov. 17
Kosovar Keeps Up Pressure For Prisoners' Release ~ Nov. 16
Clinton to Try to Juggle Past Horrors and Future Hopes on Vietnam Visit, By Seth Mydans ~ Nov. 15
Warcrimes Court Wants Croatian Spies' Testimonies ~ Nov. 15
Croatia Slams Serbian Minister's Unannounced Visit ~ Nov. 12
President Looking at Leonard Peltier Case, Call The White House ~ November 15
Keep the Torch Alive for Thousands of Political Prisoners in Ethiopia, Ethiopian Democratic Action League ~ Nov. 12
Germans Sue U.S. Over Death Penalty in World Court, By Jerome Socolovsky ~ Nov. 13
Belize's Rainforests Saved by Historic Agreement on Maya Land Rights ~ November 11
Four Roma Liquidated in the Kosovo by Head-Shot, By Jud Nirenberg ~ Nov. 10
Murdered Prisoners Web Site, Linda Tant Miller ~ November 11
Adygea Hits Back, Zarina Kanukova ~ November 10
Russian Defector May Prove A Disappointment, Mikhail Ivanov ~ November 10
Dagestan's Ethnic Experiment, Yuri Akbashev ~ November 10
Brothers In Arms, Erik Batuev ~ November 10
Central Asia Conflict Fears, Anthony Borden ~ November 10
Almaty Fears Uighur Militants, Aidar Kaliev ~ November 10
Comment: Uzber Brain Drain, By Shavkat Alimov ~ November 10
Dry Lands In Crisis - The Heart Of Asia's Development Challenge, United Nations Environment Programme ~ November 10
Fujimori Hunts For Spy Chief With Radar, Alistair Scrutton ~ November 10
The Lives of Our Children - and All of Us - Depend On It, By Eric M. LeCompte ~ Nov. 8
Getting Serious About White Deviance: An Open Letter to the Pioneer Fund, By Tim Wise ~ Nov. 8
Cole Incident: Serious Test to Yemeni-US Relations, Yemen Times ~ Nov. 6
Yemen Bans US Helicopters from its Airspace, Yemen Observer ~ Nov. 6
Lawsuit Would Seek Damages for Slavery in U.S., By Paul Shepar ~ Nov. 5
Everglades Restoration Bill Heads for President's Signature, By Cat Lazaroff ~ Nov. 3
Massive Police Repression In Malaysia, SUARAM ~ Nov. 5
Peru's Ex-spy Chief's Arrest Ordered, Miami Herald ~ November 4
Tudjman Junior Eyes Presidency, By Dragutin Hedl in Osijek ~ November 3
El Salvadoran Generals Not Liable for Churchwomen's Deaths ~ Nov. 3
Austrian Pol Haider's Career Takes A Turn for the Worse, Robert H. Reid ~ November 2
Indian Lawsuits on School Abuse May Bankrupt Canada Churches, James Brooke ~ November 2
Taiwan: A New President Faces a Complex Challenge, Stratfor, Inc. ~ November 2
Akaev Scores Stunning Victory, Sultan Jumagulove ~ November 3
Tashkent Tries Islamists, Galima Bukharbaeva ~ November 3
Uzbek Mini-Skirt War, Solekh Yakhyaev ~ November 3
Kazakstan Courts Moscow, Andrei Chebotarev ~ November 3
Armenian Political Upstart Arrested, Mark Grigorian ~ November 3
Heads Roll In Georgia's Justice Ministry, Irakly Kharabadze ~ November 3
Kabardino-Balkaria Faces A Bleak Winter, Cherkes Bek ~ November 3
Ossetians Revive Pagan Rituals, Valery Dzutsev ~ November 3
Largest Protest Against the ‘School of Assassins' on November 17-19, SOA Watch ~ November 3
Switzerland Asks Peru to Probe Ex-spy Chief's £32m Accounts, Anonova ~ November 3
Apocalypse Now, Kim Sengupta ~ November 3
Wetlands Protections Could Hinge On Supreme Court Decision, Brian Hansen ~ November 2
Jury Considers Wrongful Death Claims Against Former Generals, Karin Meadows ~ November 2
Serbia Has Lost Kosovo, Albanian Leader Tells Belgrade, By Richard Boudreaux ~ November 1
Napoleon Bonaparte Taken To Court
Times of India ~ Dec. 29
THE HAGUE, Netherlands: "Are you Napoleon Bonaparte, born August 15, 1769, in Ajaccio, Corsica?"
"Oui!" the defendant affirmed.
"How do you plead?"
"Non culpable!" he responded curtly. "Not guilty!"
The charges were war crimes and crimes against humanity. The venue was a mock courtroom at the Hague Academy of International Law earlier this year. The real French despot was never held accountable for his soldiers' rampages across Europe and Russia which left millions dead.
But when the actor wearing a cocked hat and gold-studded coat was presented with the charges, it offered a flavour of what may be in store for tomorrow's leaders - and not only megalomaniac dictators with a taste for bloody battle.
An International Criminal Court, supported by more than 120 countries, is expected to be established within two to three years in The Hague.
When that happens, victims of atrocities anywhere will be able to press charges against military and political leaders of foreign countries - including kings and presidents.
The criminal court statute, drawn up in a 1998 treaty in Rome, has been ratified by 25 of the 60 countries needed to make it a reality.
The statute gives the court global jurisdiction over anyone suspected of the most serious offenses under international law -genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Earlier this month, judges, jurists and politicians from around the world came to a Hague Academy conference on the implications of the court.
The refusal by the United States to sign the treaty took center stage.
"This court is a gift of hope for coming generations," Hans Corell, the U.N. undersecretary for legal affairs, said. "It is important that all states sign."
President Bill Clinton is being urged to sign the Rome treaty by December 31. Beginning next year, countries will have to ratify the statute in order to sign the treaty, a much more involved process requiring domestic legislative approval.
Advocates want Clinton to show his support for the world criminal court despite fears the court will be inundated with suits by enemies of the United States.
Fierce opposition to U.S. participation has been voiced by the Pentagon and prominent figures including former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and ex-CIA Director R. James Woolsey.
"The (International Criminal Court) is the League of Nations of international justice," Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms wrote in Israel's Haaretz newspaper, referring to the U.N. precursor which fell apart.
Because of its stance, delegates grouped the United States with pariah states such as Libya, Iraq and China, which also won't sign.
U.S. objections were not allayed by a statute clause which makes the international criminal court a court of last resort, stepping in only when countries are unwilling or unable to dispense justice themselves.
"We must face the fact that adversaries will seek to exploit the dramatic setting of a criminal courtroom to oppose military actions that represent good faith applications of humanitarian law," Yale law professor Ruth Wedgwood said in a discussion paper at the conference.
Despite Helm's warnings that the court would be hijacked by Arab states against Israel, Prime Minister Ehud Barak's aides have indicated he might sign by the year-end deadline.
Canadian member of parliament Irwin Cotler conceded that not all nations subscribing to the court have "noble intentions," but he warned that countries boycotting the court will be disadvantaged because they won't be able to influence the cases brought against them.
"Like Woody Allen said: 90 percent of the game is showing up," he told the AP.
But what would happen if Napoleon were alive today and could be brought to trial?
The moot court ruled there was not enough evidence to support allegations that French troops wantonly set a fire that decimated four-fifths of Moscow on September 16, 1812.
However, it did agree that Napoleon "planned, instigated, ordered, or otherwise aided and abetted in the planning, preparation or execution" of the systematic deportation of Moscow's residents.
Nevertheless, the judges could not make up their minds on how to sentence the emperor - 179 years after his death. (AP)
END
Peru Creates Web Site in Hunt for Former Spy Chief
(Reuters) ~ Dec. 27
The manhunt for Peru's former spy chief Vladimiro Montesinos, which has spanned Latin America and intrigued Peruvians with its James Bond-style tale of a fugitive on the run, has spread to the Internet.Want to know what the former spy chief may look like with a false beard? Need a psychological profile of the man with a taste for diamond-encrusted watches and who placed an escape tunnel underneath his bathtub at home? Turn to Peru's Interior Ministry, which on Wednesday launched a Web site -- with "Wanted" plastered in red across its home page -- offering information on Montesinos, who is facing charges ranging from money laundering to running death squads.
Corruption allegations against Montesinos culminated in the ouster last month of Alberto Fujimori, Peru's president for 10 years. He fled to Japan as the crisis escalated and was fired in absentia when Congress declared him "unfit to rule." The Web site also features hotline telephone numbers for anyone who has information that may lead to his capture. Information ranges from the mundane -- he speaks English and has black hair -- to the personal -- he wants to get rich at any cost and does not believe in the existence of friends, according to a psychological profile. The Web site reflects the national obsession about Fujimori's right-hand man, a 55-year-old lawyer known as "Rasputin" for being the power behind the throne.
Newspaper La Republica, which has long crusaded against Fujimori and Montesinos, set up an e-mail address for prospective whistle-blowers to send information on alleged accomplices of the spy chief, whose power extended across courts and media. Even though Montesinos' hooded eyes stare out from hundreds of newspaper photographs every day, authorities already have circulated posters with the former spy chief's face under the word "Wanted" to police stations across the country.
WANTED: Vladimiro Lenin Montesinos Torres Anyone with information on his whereabouts can send an e-mail to authorities at captura@mininter.gob.pe
END
More Than Half of Russians Want New Empire - Poll
Interfax ~ Dec. 26
More than half of Russians consider Russia a great power and believe it is the country's historic mission to bring peoples together in a new empire, pollsters announced on Tuesday.
Fifty-five percent believe it is Russia's historical mission to incorporate various peoples into one state that would be a successor to the pre-1917 Russian empire and the Soviet Union, the National Institute of Social Psychology Studies reported, citing the results of a poll taken earlier this month. Only 26% do not share this view, according to the report.
The institute also said 64% regard Russia as a great power and 39% hold the opposite view. While 20% said they see Russia as a European country and 13% as Asian, 51% thought of it as nation European to the same extent as it is Asian, the report said.
The poll, in which 1,600 people were surveyed, spanned more than 100 cities and towns in 47 of Russia's 89 regions, the report Interfax obtained said.
END
By William Branigin, Washington Post ~ December 26, 2000
As Osman Mohamed sat down for his weekly therapy session in a third-floor office in Falls Church, the sound of a jackhammer outside stopped him cold. To his therapist, it was merely background noise on busy Route 7, but to Mohamed, a Somali refugee, it brought back memories of an attack on his home by gunmen who beat and terrorized him. For Mohammad Ali, who was tortured in an Afghan prison, the sound of footsteps outside his apartment or a knock at the door can trigger a panic attack. For Khassan Baiev, a doctor from Chechnya, the whirring of a helicopter conjures up terrifying flashbacks of the air raids that ravaged his town and leveled his hospital. The three men are among thousands of torture and trauma survivors who have flooded the Washington region in recent years. Doctors have diagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder in all three, and they are part of a growing clientele at the nonprofit Center for Multicultural Human Services, a private mental health facility in Falls Church.
There, a project called the Program for Survivors of Torture and Severe Trauma, funded by U.N. and federal grants, offers therapy and other services to refugees and asylum-seekers, some of whom have endured treatment so horrific they can barely speak of it. "The Washington area is teeming with people who have suffered from torture or severe war trauma," said Judy Okawa, the clinical psychologist who heads the program. "It's downright frightening how many there are that need our services."
At least half a million torture survivors now reside in the United States, the Minneapolis-based Center for Victims of Torture estimates. The Washington area has one of the biggest concentrations -- 10,000 to 40,000, according to the Falls Church center. Since the late 1970s, they have arrived in waves from around the world: first Southeast Asia, then Central America and the Balkans, now mostly from Africa. As they create new lives in a new land, most torture victims suffer in silence.
Thousands of other refugees may struggle and prosper here, but torture survivors often remain prisoners of their wounded psyches. The Falls Church program, launched two years ago with a $30,000 annual contribution from the United Nations, has served about 200 such refugees from 35 countries. Just since Oct. 1, the center has received 44 referrals; it now has a waiting list. This fall, the program was awarded an annual grant of $500,000 from the State Department, part of $7.2 million in federal funding for 16 torture treatment centers nationwide. But the money cannot be spent on administration, so the Falls Church center needs to raise about $50,000 each year to support the grant. It also needs more trained mental health workers, Okawa said, plus volunteers to help clients with transportation and language barriers.
Rising Tide of Torture
The rising caseload reflects what human rights advocates say is a dramatic increase in torture worldwide. Amnesty International reported in June that the number of countries using torture increased 23 percent from 1989 to 1999. A subsequent report said torture occurs in more than 150 countries and is "widespread" in nearly half.
Many victims are women and -- increasingly -- children. According to Amnesty, beatings -- with fists, sticks, gun butts, whips, iron pipes and bats -- constitute the most common torture method. Others are rape, electric shocks, suspension of the body, suffocation and mock execution. Victims have been submerged in water, burned with cigarettes, dragged behind cars and deprived of sleep.
"The stories are so gruesome. We always think we've heard the worst story, then something even worse comes along," Okawa said. "Part of what makes torture still exist in the world is that people don't want to hear about it," said Ronda A. Bresnick, program coordinator at the center. The result is what therapists call "a conspiracy of silence." Several clients from Sudan, Okawa said, have described secret torture centers known as "houses of ghosts" because many who enter do not come out alive. In them, dissidents have been beaten while suspended from ceiling fans, she said, or forced to lie on searing tin roofs and stare into the sun.
Common household tools such as pliers are used to inflict excruciating pain, she said. Some of the worst accounts involve children: The center now has four child clients from Africa, one of whom was raped before she was a year old, Okawa said. Nearly 80 percent of the women in therapy and half the men have been raped or sexually tortured, she said.
Severe depression is a common reaction; about eight in 10 people seen at the center are suicidal, Okawa said.
Therapy and Its Toll
Besides listening to clients and talking to them about their fears, the therapists employ techniques such as art therapy and sand trays to draw out their feelings. The sand trays are used as settings for small figurines -- of people, animals, buildings and other objects -- that clients select and arrange as they wish. The therapists then encourage the trauma victims to explain their creations. Art and sand tray therapy are considered especially effective in treating children but also can help adults express thoughts and emotions they've repressed.
Some survivors' accounts are so disturbing that the therapists suffer "secondary traumatization" themselves, Okawa said. "We have nightmares. We may have intrusive memories. . . . We may feel the same sense of isolation that the survivor does, because no one else really understands."
Waking up one Saturday morning, Okawa recalled, she was shocked to see in the shadows on her ceiling the image of a man strung up by his wrists. "I considered that a warning sign," she said. Therapists also have reported that they cry more easily and are more affected by violence on television. They are encouraged to take time off, but the growing caseload makes that hard to do, Okawa said.
The ultimate aim of the therapy is to help clients process the experiences that traumatized them so they can "move on with their lives," Bresnick said.
No Escaping Trouble
Besides their psychic wounds, some refugees are afflicted by the anxiety of living in legal limbo. One of them is Mohamed, 35, who belonged to a minority clan in Somalia. In 1991, his home was invaded by gunmen who accused the clan of treason. They tied Mohamed up with an electrical cord, he said, beat and tortured him with bayonets, and terrorized his wife and children.
"I felt helpless. They told me, 'If we ever see you here again, you will die.' " He fled the Somali capital with his family, but his parents, an older brother and his brother's three children were killed. After eight years in Kenya -- first in a refugee camp and then in Nairobi -- he paid a smuggler to get him to the United States. He sneaked across the border from Mexico in 1999 and applied for asylum.
But his case has dragged on, and he worries about his wife and children, still illegal immigrants in Kenya. "They're in hiding, and I'm starving here," said Mohamed, who lives in Gaithersburg with a Somali family that lets him stay in their basement for now. "I'm supposed to be a good father and help them, but I can't."
Although he has a university education and speaks four languages, Mohamed lacks a work permit and fears that getting a job without one would jeopardize his asylum case, said his therapist, Afshin Nili, who began seeing him in July. He takes medication for depression but regularly experiences flashbacks, Nili said. He also frets that he is wearing out his welcome with the Somali family, headed by a friend of his dead brother. He eats sparingly and sometimes stays at a nearby mosque. "He's constantly in a state of anxiety about what happened to him, about his immigration status, his family and what they are going through right now," Nili said.
Another of the center's clients, Ali, still breaks down when speaking of his 1986 arrest and torture by Afghan secret police. He was caught working on behalf of Islamic rebels in Kabul and thrown into a dank cell, where, he said, he was tortured for 40 days. After two years in jail, he escaped to Pakistan, and he came to the United States in 1990, settling in Alexandria. His wife and two daughters joined him later, but it was not a happy reunion. Ali had learned that his wife inadvertently was responsible for his arrest in Kabul, and they soon divorced.
Angry, embittered and traumatized, Ali could no longer hold a job. Twice, he attempted suicide, he said. Two years ago, a friend got him into therapy. "I don't like people right now," he said in a recent interview. "I get nervous very fast, and I cannot control myself." Quick to anger, he has been fired from a number of jobs for arguing with customers, he said. Even hearing people curse can trigger memories of his torturers, he said, so he keeps to himself in the Alexandria apartment he shares with two other Afghans.
His Iranian-born therapist, Rouyan V. Jones, said Ali suffers from depression, panic attacks, obsessive thoughts and hallucinations. Yet, in their discussions, conducted in Farsi, "his conversation is filled with beautiful symbolic poems," she said. Now 53, Ali studies Persian poetry and does artwork as part of his therapy.
Witness to Slaughter
Unlike most of those in treatment at the Falls Church site, Baiev, the doctor from Chechnya, has gained wide renown. The 37-year-old performed heroically during fighting between Russian troops and Chechen rebels, treating civilians and combatants from both sides and earning accolades from human rights groups. The former judo champion was nearly executed three times, once after being held in a pit for a week in a Chechen mountain stronghold and more recently by Russian mercenaries who used him as a human shield while on patrol.
But his worst memories stem from January, when more than 300 people were blown up in a minefield while fleeing the siege of Grozny. Baiev, the only doctor left in his hospital, spent two days without sleep doing amputations and other surgery. Standing amid pools of blood and piles of body parts, he said he operated until he collapsed, then would be taken outside to have snow rubbed on his face to revive him. "It was like a nightmare," he said. "While I was operating on one, I dreaded to think how many other people would die."
Russian forces branded Baiev a "bandit doctor" for saving the life of a Chechen rebel leader, and his hospital was destroyed. A U.S. human rights group helped him escape, but his wife and five children were left behind. Now living with friends in suburban Maryland, he fears for his family's safety. Last month, his nephew was killed by gunmen in Chechnya.
Baiev confronts his grief and stress in his weekly therapy. Seated at a small table during a recent session, he gingerly placed figures in a sand tray. At one end he put a house; nearby, a mother and some children, two birds and a dolphin. The dolphin "strikes me as a very kind animal," he said. The birds to him were doves of peace.
"That was how it was in our country. We used to have big, happy families," he said. Okawa, sitting opposite, asked if those times might come again. "I'm afraid not," Baiev responded. When the first round of fighting in Chechnya ended four years ago, people rebuilt their houses and talked about raising families, he said. But now, after the second war, "I don't believe people have these hopes. There's not a single house that didn't lose somebody in the family. . . . There's no hope for them . . . no support for them."
But the scene in the sand tray before him was a hopeful one, Okawa pointed out. "As long as you can create this, you still have those feelings," she told him. The realization seemed to touch something deep inside the doctor. He took off his glasses, covered his face with his hands and wept silently for several minutes. "This came out of you naturally," Okawa said softly. Later, she reflected on Baiev's trauma: "He saved hundreds and hundreds of lives -- but he remembers the lives he couldn't save."
END
Confronting the Hard Realities of North America's Ongoing Indian War
by Anthony J. Hall, Dept. of Native American Studies University of Lethbridge ~ Dec. 21
Just days after the US Supreme Court exposed its thorough going politicization in the case of Bush versus Gore, the federal government's top law enforcers followed the judges by leaping into the political fray. For the first time in the 92-year history of the FBI, hundreds of federal agents gathered to protest at the White House in Washington DC. Their declared aim was to pre-empt the possibility that outgoing President Bill Clinton would pardon Leornard Peltier.
Peltier is the jailed activist of the American Indian Movement (AIM) believed by many, including Nelson Mandela, Robert Redford and Amnesty International, to have been wrongfully framed for the murder of two FBI agents. The killing of FBI agents, Jack Coler and Ronald Williams, took place during the virtual civil war on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in 1975. In many bloody exchanges about 100 AIM activists were also murdered by the federally-supported, para-military forces led by the Pine Ridge Reservation's infamous Tribal Chairman, Richard Wilson.
The Peltier case lies at the centre of a number of long-festering controversies that combine to form an amazing saga of official wrongdoing with sweeping international implications. As elaborately chronicled in a growing array of books, articles and films, including Peter Matthiessen's monumental " In The Spirit of Crazy Horse", there is a huge and growing mass of evidence to demonstrate that government agencies have systematically violated many of their own laws in what amounts to an ongoing Indian war of hemispheric dimensions. This covert campaign has been directed at incapacitating the most militant wing of the First Nations sovereignty movement.
The co-ordinated, international character of the war on the American Indian Movement and its many branches, including the Mohawk Warriors and the Ts'peten Defenders in Canada, has come to light through many venue including revelations about the dubious proceeedings leading to the extradition of Leonard Peltier from British Columbia in 1976. The tainted character of the evidence used to remove Peltier from Canada was highlighted recently during hearings in Toronto. At these quasi-judicial proceedings, Myrtle Poor Bear, whose affidavit was crucial in securing Peltier's extradition in 1976, testified how FBI agents had threatened to take away her child if she did not agree to lie in order to incriminate Peltier. Ms. Poor Bear went further, explaining how the FBI taunted her with pictures of the mutilated corpse of AIM activist, Anna Mae Aquash, threatening her with a similar fate if she did not co-operate with those FBI's Inquisitors charged to exorcise AIM's perceived heresies.
The USA's careless treatment of its Canadian ally in the Peltier case has long been an irritant in foreign relations between the two countries. In his long campaign for some reckoning with the legacy of the falsified evidence used in gaining Peltier's extradition, Warren Allmand, a former Solicitor General of Canada, has gradually won over a number of influential allies. They include about 60 parliamentarians, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples and, most recently, Peter Hogg, Dean of Toronto's prestigious Osgoode Law School. Said Hogg recently, "Mr. Peltier has served 25 years in prison, which is a terrible burden for someone who is probably innocent."
The international campaign to free Leonard Peltier, who many see as the USA's most obvious political prisoner, received a surprising boost in late November when a judge in Portland Oregon overruled the US State Department in a case that replayed in reverse some of the central features of the Peltier extradition case. In her ruling in the case of United States of America versus James Pitawanakwat, Judge Janice Stewart found that a Native veteran of the Battle of Gustafsen Lake, which took place in British Columbia in 1995, could not be extradited back to Canada because he qualified for the same kind of political asylum sought unsuccessfully by Leonard Peltier in 1976.
The extradition hearing in Portland last October matched lawyers for the State Department against Pitawanakwat's defence team in the Federal Public Defender's Office. The latter successfully argued that Canada's criminalization of Pitawanakwat fulfilled the "political offenses exception" in the Extradition Treaty between Canada and the USA. That provision is designed to afford protection to genuine freedom fighters whose criminalized actions arise in the context of legitimate liberation struggles waged against unjust, oppressive regimes.
In her ruling Judge Stewart drew attention to the tainted testimony used in Peltier's extradition hearings, even as she implicitly criticized Canadian officials for failing to extend the political offenses exception to their ward in 1976. In a passage that has provided President Clinton with American judicial backing to help edify the overwhelmingly compelling case for a grant of executive clemency to Peltier, Judge Stewart decided, "The Canadian tribunal ruled that Peltier should be extradited back to the United States, to a large extent on the basis of what subsequently turned out to be false affidavits....[Peltier] sought review by the Canadian Minister of Justice on the basis that he was being extradited for a political offense, but the Minister refused relief. Unfortunately, this court has been unable to determine why Canada deemed the political offense exception inapplicable."
In deciding the case Judge Stewart detailed a saga of Canadian government lawlessness reminiscent of the same kind of campaign waged by the US government to invalidate the political legitimacy of the American Indian Movement in the mid-1970s. Where AIM attracted enormous attention based largely on its armed stand in 1973 at Wounded Knee, the site of an infamous slaughter of Native people by the American military almost a century earlier, Mr. Pitawankwat was involved in a similar armed confrontation near Gustafsen Lake BC in 1995. That confrontation pitted members of the AIM-related Ts'peten Defenders against the largest mobilization of police and military in Western Canada since the stand of Louis Riel and the Canadian Metis was crushed by the regime of Prime Minister John A. Macdonald in 1885. In her ruling Judge Stewart placed high geopolitical significance on the involvement of the Canadian military in the operation at Gustafsen Lake.
The Canadian army's role marked "the seriousness of the challenge to Canadian jurisdiction over unceded tribal lands." She pointed to evidence of the confrontation's severity, noting that the trees on the site were "riddled with 77,000 rounds of bullet holes fired by the RCMP toward the camp." She also referred to the existence of Camp Zulu, the military headquarters for Canada's undeclared Indian war. This installation, she explained in her ruling, was "replete with armored personnel carriers, a field hospital, a communications centre, a landing field, military assault weapons, and a heavily armed militarized police force of 400 officers in camouflage gear." Moreover, Mr. Pitawanakwat was personally exposed to "10,000 to 20,000 government rounds" on September 11th after he fled from a red truck that ran over a government-detonated land mine.
One of the most disturbing features of Judge Stewart's historic ruling is her reference to "uncontradicted evidence that the Canadian government engaged in a smear and disinformation campaign to prevent the media from learning and publicizing the true extent of the political nature of the events." What is to be said of the apparent ease with which the security police in both Canada and the United States have been able to manipulate the mainstream media into knowing or inadvertent complicity in officialdom's persistent deployment of systematic lies to steer public attention away from those most serious constitutional arguments consistently raised by the most militant wing of the First Nations sovereignty movement? How sadly easy it so often was for offending governments to gain media co-operation in wrongfully characterizing what was at issue at Wounded Knee in 1973, at Oka in 1990 or at Gustafsen Lake and Ipperwash in 1995. As Judge Stewart's ruling attests, all these episodes tended to be misreported as episodes of mere Native criminality rather than as confrontations which highlighted consistent failures on the part of governments to live up even to their own commitments to recognize and affirm what is known in the Canadian constitution as "existing Aboriginal and treaty rights."
In her own judicial characterization of what was really at issue in the episodes leading up to Canada's request to extradite Mr. Pitawankwat from the USA, Judge Stewart ruled that "the Gustafsen incident involved an organized group rising up in their homeland against the occupation by the government of Canada of their sacred and unceded tribal land." In her statement of "facts" surrounding the case, she referred to "various acts in the 1800s" whereby the governments of Canada and British Columbia "illegally usurped jurisdiction over unsurrendered hunting grounds." In detailing the nature of this illegal usurpation, Judge Stewart drew attention to the arguments of the now-disbarred lawyer for the Ts'peten Defenders, Dr. Bruce Clark. Before Dr. Clark was criminalized for aggressively questioning the jurisdictional capacity of the British Columbian courts to hear the case of the Ts'peten Defenders, this controversial legal scholar advanced British imperial law as the true foundation of Canada's constitutional affirmation of Aboriginal rights and title.
The US judge rounded out her decision by indicating how the language of land claims or land disputes served "to trivialize" the true nature of the conflict over lands and resources in British Columbia. As in large parts of the USA and Canada, Indian title remains uncompromised through treaty negotiations with First Nations. "Control over land," concluded Judge Stewart, "is one of the primary reasons for the existence of a government and is often the cause of wars between nations." She added, "Given its substantial economic consequences, the Aboriginal land title question in Canada clearly is a highly charged issue for Native and non-Native people." As I see it, the unprecedented, White-House protest of FBI agents is an indication of the extent of both the desperation and determination on the part of the security police, who have been assigned the dirtiest jobs entailed in the continuation of the continent's undeclared Indian war.
The basic task assigned the federal agents has been to keep one of this continent's oldest and most profound human rights issues from spilling beyond the arena of the domestic courts into venues of international law. The aim has been to smear, discredit, criminalize, destabilize and dehabilitate those parts of the First Nations sovereignty movement who have refused to accept as legitimate that branch of Indian leadership whose funding and legislative authority comes primarily from federal as opposed to First Nations sources. Where the murderous regime of Pine Ridge Tribal Chairman, Dick Wilson, once embodied the internalized corruption that AIM was formed to combat, the dynamics of indirect rule in Indian Country have become more elaborate and complex during subsequent decades. At present it would be hard to locate a more illustrative example of the contamination through patronage politics of a once-promising initiative in federal-First Nation relations, than in the so-called treaty negotiations currently underway in British Columbia.
It is more than mere coincidence that also made BC the site of Leonard Peltier's wrongful extradition without due process to the USA as well as the site of Canada's most infamous undeclared Indian war in 1995. The execution of that war represented a new frontier of federal-provincial co-operation as expressed particularly in the operations of Camp Zulu. Its currency of effectiveness was as much media manipulation, in other words "smear and disinformation," as land mines and army armoured personnel carriers. In the final analysis the rationale for this expensive mobilization of the most coercive forms of state power were to retain the domestic framework of the negotiations on title and jurisdiction with the First Nations of BC.
With Judge Stewart's ruling in the Pitawankwat case the domestication of negotiations on Indigenous peoples' title to land and resources has effectively been obliterated. Regardless of any future challenges to the ruling, this ground-breaking judgment has unalterably made the matter of the Original title of North America's First Nations an issue of foreign policy for the world's only remaining superpower. That fact alone promises to have tremendous implications for the future course of Canada-US relations in a hemisphere dominated by nation states who uniformly have risen up from the European side of the Columbian conquests that began in 1492 and arguably continue until this day. The underlying theme of the Columbian conquests has been empire and nation building through the genocidal extinguishment of First Nations titles to lands and resources.
The federal agents who gathered at the White House cannot be blind to the fact that a critical information mass is fast being reached in bringing to light their own central role in North America's continuing Indian war. Thus their opposition to clemency for Leonard Peltier can be seen as tangential to a more basic agenda on the part of the continent's security forces. As I see it, they have been signalling an understandable unwillingness to be made the sole scapegoats in the upcoming revelations about the extent of government lawlessness in the covert and largely successful campaign to sabotage AIM as well as its many devotees and attending organizations.
In spite of the covert assaults on AIM, an organization born of shared struggle in the prisons of North America where a disproportionate percentage of Native people spend many of their days, its influence has been present at virtually every assertive expression of First Nations jurisdiction, from the fish wars at Cheam or Burnt Church to the contested sun dance grounds at Gustafsen Lake. In the final analysis those most responsible for government lawlessness in the continuing war on AIM and in the illegal subjugation Indian Country are not the secret police or even the media purveyors of smear and disinformation.
The individuals who need to be held most accountable are rather our elected officials, who have consistently failed to find viable means of expressing politically those legal protections of Aboriginal and treaty rights entrenched in North America's founding constitutional instruments. The sacrifices of rule of law to fulfill the expediencies of the rule of politics has effectively cleared the way for the consolidation of ruthless and arbitrary forms of tyranny. Thus officialdom's crimes against the marginalized few become crimes against the mainstream many, as law enforcement agencies protest in the streets and as judges pre-empt the sanctity of the electoral process in the heartland of the American empire.
END
Kashmir Ceasefire Extended by a Month
Economic Times ~ Dec. 21
The Centre extended the unilateral ceasefire in Kashmir by another month on Wednesday and said it would take exploratory steps to break the deadlock in peace talks with Pakistan. But a frontline pro-Pakistan guerrilla group responded quickly to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee?s move, dubbing the extended ceasefire "the second scene of the same old drama". Vajpayee told the Parliament there had been a decline in "terrorist activities" in rebellion-torn Jammu and Kashmir since India?s unprecedented truce went into effect at the start of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan on November 28. "After careful consideration of all aspects, the government has, therefore, taken a decision to extend the period of 'no initiation of combat operations' by another month," he said.
Vajpayee said there had been a recognisable decline in attempts by "terrorists" to cross the Kashmir frontier from Pakistan into India, but added: "They must cease entirely". "As the initiator of the dialogue process with Pakistan, India remains committed to it," Vajpayee said. "The existence of a suitable environment for such a process is self-evidently necessary." However, he said that as part of its commitment to past peace accords, India would initiate exploratory steps it considers necessary so that the composite dialogue process could be resumed. New Delhi and Islamabad have not held any talks under their composite dialogue process since 1998.
Pakistan responded to Vajpayee's initiative on December 2 by declaring that it would exercise maximum restraint along the Line of Control, where troops from both sides have exchanged fire for years. Vajpayee noted that there had been a "marked improvement" in incidents of exchange of fire and that relative peace had prevailed along the line which was drawn after the last full-scale conflict between India and Pakistan in 1971. The opposition Congress party threw its weight behind Vajpayee's move, saying in the upper house of parliament that it would not seek any clarification of his statement to ensure that a unified message went out from New Delhi.
However, the Hizbul Mujahideen militant group said in Pakistan that the ceasefire extension was meaningless, and if India was sincere in wanting peace it should accept calls for tripartite talks involving India, Pakistan and Kashmiri leaders. "Until then, it is just ceasefire for the sake of ceasefire and it is meaningless," the group's spokesman, Saleem Hashmir, said. Al Badar Mujahideen, another pro-Pakistan militant group that carried out several armed raids during the ceasefire, said in a statement it also rejected the ceasefire and its extension. "By extending the ceasefire, India has once again tried to eyewash the world... If India is sincere it should withdraw its forces from Kashmir," the group said.
END
By Vladimir Davlatov, IWPR ~ Dec. 21
The fate of thousands of Afghan refugees stranded on the Tajik border is hanging in the balance. The UN agency, UNHCR, is urging the Dushanbe authorities to admit the refugees, who fled fighting between the Northern Alliance and the Taleban movement in the north-east of Afghanistan. UNHCR is warning that 10,000 Afghans, marooned on islands in the Pyandj River, which runs along the border between the two countries, are threatened by disease and sporadic Taleban shelling. Military activity in the region has hampered efforts by aid agencies to supply food and clothing to the makeshift refugee camps. "UNHCR and other relief workers found that in addition to the grave security risks due to shelling, the Afghans suffer from a lack of food and an absence of proper shelter," said agency spokeswoman Delphine Marie. "Some of the people have been stuck in the border zone for up to six weeks now."
Taslimur Rahman, head of the UNHCR office in Dushanbe, called on Tajikistan to admit the refugees on December 4. There has been no official reply. Commentators suggest the procrastination stems from Dushanbe's fears of being inundated by further waves of displaced people. There are an estimated 200,000 refugees in Afghanistan. The official Afghan government is also nervous about an exodus of its citizens. Mohammed Solekh Registani, military attaché at the Afghan embassy in Dushanbe, warned that if Tajikistan accepted the stranded civilians more would follow. "The government of Afghanistan is against these people on the islands moving into Tajikistan, as this could lead to new waves of emigration," he said. Registani, who insisted Dushanbe didn't have the resources to care for the displaced Afghans, said he feared Taleban forces would occupy the homes of the refugees, discouraging them from eventually returning.
For the most part, the refugees are elderly men and women and children forced to leave their homes after recent Taleban victories in the north of Afghanistan. Since the capture of the Northern Alliance's stronghold of Taloqan in September, Islamic Movement has gone on to secure 90 per cent of the country. According to aid agencies, the refugees lack fuel, food and basic resources to survive the coming winter. There have already been outbreaks of typhoid and malaria. And some refugees have been killed or injured in Taleban rocket attacks.
Dushanbe is reluctant to admit the legions of displaced people assembling on its doorstep because Tajikistan, which experienced a serious drought this year, is itself in need of aid and is unlikely to be able to support a wave of Afghan civilians. In addition, Tajik officials are concerned that Taleban supporters may infiltrate the country under the guise of refugees. However, the governments of Tajikistan and Afghanistan both recognize that there is a serious need for immediate humanitarian aid. Registani has expressed regret that refugees are receiving limited amounts of aid, despite numerous appeals to the international community.
There are fears that plight of the refugees could worsen as the Taleban have called off UN-sponsored peace talks with the Northern Alliance after the Security Council imposed new sanctions on the Kabul regime. The move was aimed at pressuring the Taleban into handing over the Muslim militant Osama bin Laden. The sanctions - which include a tightening of the existing embargo and a new ban on arms sales to the Taleban - were denounced by the movement's leaders as an attack on the "Islamic system". Both sides in the Afghan conflict last month agreed to attend a peace summit, however, no date had been set. Meanwhile, the government of Tajikistan and the Russian border forces defending the Tajik-Afghan border have not ruled out the possibility of a wholesale acceptance of the refugees. This may take place in the event of a severe worsening of the refugees' living conditions or as a result of increasing pressure from the Taleban.
In a recent newspaper interview, the chief of the Russian border service in Tajikistan said preparations are already being made to accommodate the refugees. "The Tajik Ministry of Emergency Situations is preparing temporary dwellings and border checkpoints for the refugees, " said Vladimir Makarov. " As far as I know, Tajikistan can accommodate up to 20,000 refugees."
copyright IWPR 2000
END
By Iskander Amanjolov, IWPR ~ Dec. 21
The Kazak authorities are concerned the south of the country is on the brink of being dragged into a conflict with Islamic militants. Astana's neighbours Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan have been subjected to armed incursions by members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, IMU, for two consecutive years. The increasing extremist activity has alarmed the Kazak Security Council. "There is every reason to expect a worsening of the situation on the southern border of the region in the spring and summer of next year," said council secretary Marat Tajin. Kazak fears have also been raised by media reports of an increase in the number of unregistered religious organisations and even the existence of a remote military training camp in the south of the country. Meanwhile, orthodox groups such as the Khizbut-Takhrir have been stepping up their recruitment efforts in the region.
According to the Council for Relations with Religious Associations, half of the 2252 spiritual organizations in the country are unregistered. In the Southern Kazakstan Oblast (SKO) alone, 328 of the 426 religious groups operating in the area are unofficial. Some Kazak officials believe the SKO border with Uzbekistan, which runs through mountainous territory, is the most convenient location for IMU incursions. It is widely believed that many of the 1500 people recently deported for visa irregularities came from religious groups. It is unclear whether the security forces are equal to the task of dealing with the infiltration of Islamic militants. The question was raised by Foreign Minister Erlan Idrisov after a shoot out in Almaty in late September which left four Uigur separatists dead.
In an effort to counter the terrorism threat, Astana is introducing a number of measures, including plans to extend army service for reserve officers, the creation of a new military district in the south and the setting up of 25 new frontier checkpoints. The Defense Ministry's budget will count for 1 per cent of GDP next year - the first time a fixed minimum has been set. But this limited sum makes the ministry's recent announcement that the army is primed for action an unjustifiably optimistic one. There is urgent need for arms, ammunition and experienced fighters. But Kazakstan is lacking in both. Indeed, snipers are currently being recruited from the ranks of local hunters.
Apart from bolstering the country's military response to the extremist threat, the authorities should consider the extent to which the dire state of the economy is contributing to the spread of militancy. What's clear is that religious fanaticism is strongest in poor rural areas. Tajin accepts that religious extremism may have economic roots and that military might may prove ineffective in countering the threat. In order to guard against the spread of militancy "it may not be enough to simply lock up the state border, " he said.
With Central Asia republics beset by political instability, mutual distrust and concerns over porous borders, the prospects of combating terrorism in the region do not look good. Indeed, regional security is likely to be high on the agenda this week at the meeting of CIS defence ministers in Moscow. According to Colonel Maxim Shepelev at the Kazak Defense Ministry, "There have been repeated calls for regional military-technical cooperation in the face of extremism, but progress is being held up by the fact that Central Asian states tend to distrust each other. Uzbekistan is continually accusing Kazakstan and Russia of exaggerating the danger posed by the Taleban and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and raising tension in the region. The shortage of information about the problem and the absence of a willingness to share that information fully doesn't help either."
copyright IWPR 2000
END
By Alla Pyatibratova, IWPR ~ Dec. 21
Cases of viral hepatitis have almost tripled in the southern Kyrgyz oblast of Osh over the last year, as a result of the authorities' failure to enforce the most elementary sanitary and hygiene standards. The source for many of the infections are the new snack-bars and restaurants which sprang up in Osh, Kyrgyzstan's second largest city, in the run-up to its 3000th anniversary celebrations in early October. Historically a trading city, catering establishments have flourished in recent years and would have done so, with or without the anniversary, as demand for roadside helpings of local popular dishes like pilau, samsa, manty, lagman and shashlyk ensures constant custom. Such has been the growth in street trade, local authorities have failed completely to regulate the outlets. Meat, fish, fruit and vegetables vie for space on streets in every town and village amid piles of litter and traffic-choked streets.
On the rare occasions inspectors come calling, stallholders produce easily available stamped forms attesting to the sound health of their businesses. However, street vendors are only one reason behind the growth in the number of infections. Doctors, decrying the lamentable state of general hygiene levels, are particularly concerned about the state, or even absence of drinking water. From the suburbs of Osh to the more isolated regions of the oblast, there is still no clean water supply. Consequently, there are outbreaks of intestinal illnesses. Two years ago over a hundred cases were reported in Zhapalak after an outbreak of typhoid.
Those lucky enough to have running water are still advised to boil it when preparing food. Also, the danger of infection increases when it rains as tap water runs brown. Despite attending training programmes on the latest water purification techniques in the US and elsewhere, city officials seem powerless to prevent the seeping of river water into the system. This is because construction of the central water treatment plant on the banks of the Ak-Bura river was botched. Special dirt filtering sheets for the lining of reservoir basins were not available, so the builders simply used roofing material which lets unpurified river water leak into the basin. Due to a shortage of funds the city council was unable to complete the job, only managing to replace one of the sheets which cost up to $1000 a piece.
Insufficient financing also affects the work of the city's health department. Inspectors are limited for the most part to merely noting infringements. Their recommendations are usually ignored and fines are rarely paid. This summer, for example, milk infected with the hepatitis virus was found in one of the refrigeration units on Osh's main thoroughfare. Trading continued. Business as usual. At the end of every day rubbish piles up on the streets. But municipal authorities complain that they haven't even the funds to fuel garbage trucks never mind invest in new equipment.
Children have always been the most vulnerable to hepatitis and other infections. In the post-Soviet era, even more so. Before, one ill child would set alarm bells ringing. The kindergarten or school concerned would be shut down and quarantine restrictions imposed. Nowadays, staff are more likely to try hiding any evidence of, say, jaundice, concerned that the parents might demand the school be temporarily closed, depriving them of their salary. It's not uncommon for poorly paid teaching staff to take food, intended for pupils, home with them. The state has implemented various programmes in its struggle against infectious diseases. But there are ever-increasing numbers of sufferers. At the last meeting of the Emergency Anti-Epidemic Commission of the Osh oblast, it was noted that the situation concerning infectious illnesses, including viral hepatitis, was indeed a very complex issue. Yet another in a long line of decrees was adopted and all health services alerted that it's time they put their affairs in order. Time will tell.
copyright IWPR 2000
END
UN Says Liberia is Weapons Conduit
By Evelyn Leopold, Boston Globe ~ Dec. 20
Declaring Liberia was heavily involved in the arms-for-gems trade with brutal rebels in Sierra Leone, a UN panel has recommended a ''complete embargo'' on all diamonds from Liberia."Liberia's President Charles Taylor is actively involved in fueling the violence in Sierra Leone, and many businessmen close to his inner circle operate on an international scale,'' said a report commissioned by the Security Council that accused Liberia of violating UN sanctions ''with impunity.'' The five-member panel probed for six months the link between illicit diamond sales and the flow of weapons to Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Front rebels. In addition to Liberia, Burkina Faso was actively involved in smuggling banned arms to the rebels, known for a nine-year campaign of maiming, killing, and raping men, women, and children who oppose them, the report said. The Security Council has put an arms embargo on Sierra Leone rebels and banned the export of all diamonds not certified by the government. There is also a 1992 arms embargo against Liberia.
Aside from a ban on Liberian-exported diamonds, the panel recommended the council ground Liberian-registered airlines and impose a travel ban on senior Liberian officials and diplomats. It also suggested a ''temporary embargo'' on Liberian timber exports, saying that officials in that industry were involved in illicit weapons activities. The United States, which has diplomatic sanctions against Liberia, was already engaged in drawing up a resolution to this end, US sources said. The panel named Maurice Tempelsman, longtime companion to the late Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and chairman of the US-based Lazare Kaplan International diamond company, for dealing with rebel leader Foday Sankoh when Sankoh was a ''strategic mineral'' minister in the government.
Damian Canon, a Lazare Kaplan employee, visited Sankoh in March. In a subsequent letter, according to the UN report, Tempelsman wrote that Canon had reported a ''commonality of views between you and this company on the possibilities of LKI reentering the Sierra Leone diamond business in a manner beneficial to all the people of that country as well as our company.'' But a spokesman for LKI said the letter was taken out of context and in an ''outrageous fashion misstated what happened.'' He said that Canon was invited to Sierra Leone along with other diamond industry representatives, at the urging of the United States, to meet several government ministers as well as President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah.
The purpose, he said, was to get the country's diamond industry back on its feet, and Tempelsman wrote several letters to ministers Canon had visited, citing conditions under which Lazare Kaplan would conduct business. The Tempelsman example was used by the UN panel to show how Sankoh, now in jail, bargained with potential investors, mainly to enrich himself by duping them into ''thinking they would reap exclusive benefits from the same thing.'' The report also said that DeBeers, the mining group based in South Africa, which has said it had banned ''conflict diamonds,'' handled such a large volume of gems that it had to ''accept some responsibility for trade in illicit diamonds.'' DeBeers merited further study because of its control of 65 percent of the world's rough diamonds, the panel added.
The report estimated the volume of diamonds Liberia exported varied from $25 million to as much as $125 million a year, in any case more than enough to sustain the rebels' military activities. Although the rebels have captured many weapons during confrontations with the Sierra Leone Army, and West African and UN peacekeepers, the panel found ''unequivocal and overwhelming evidence'' of Liberian involvement. It has provided training, weapons, logistical support, a staging ground for attacks, and a safe haven for retreat and for public relations activities, the report said. ''In short, Liberia is actively breaking Security Council embargoes, regarding weapons imports into its own territory and into Sierra Leone. It is being actively assisted by Burkina Faso'' and others, the report said.
END
Letter of Protest and Complaint of the IRU and the RNC on the Holocaust US Court Decision
RomNews Network ~ December 19
The world's two largest international Romani organizations, the Roma National Congress and the International Romani Union are strongly concerned and protest the recent decision of the US Court dealing with the restitution of the assets and the other forms of racial persecution, including mass destruction of Roma and Sinti during the Nazi - World War II era. The Court showed no interest and respect to opinions expressed by Romani political representatives and attorneys, in overt violation of the legal proceedings needed to achieve not only a fair administration of justice, but a decent moral restitution of the dignity of the Roma and Sinti as individual persons, families and as a people.
For example, neither Judge Korman nor special Master Gribetz nether the Court officer ever replied to correspondence from the organizations. In the opinion of Dr. Hancock, letters from the attorneys of the RNC and IRU were not considered by the Judge at all. Allegedly, Judge Korman reached a final decision three days alter the last letters from the lawyers had been received. The Joint Co-Ordination Committee of the International Romani Union (IRU) and the Roma National Congress (RNC) are equally protesting and condemning the decision of Judge Korman who recommendations to entrust the International Organization for Migration (IOM) with the few money granted as restitution of Roma suffering and properties Europe-wide.
Signed by
Dr. Emil Scuka President International Romani Union
Rudko Kawczynski Chair of the Board of Directors Roma National Congress
RomNews is published by the RomNews Network on a Non-commercial basis European Central Office: PO Box 30 41 45 D - 20324 Hamburg, Germany Phone Hotline: ++ 49 170 58 12 852
END
By S. Frederick Starr, Washington Post ~ December 19
Three little-noted recent measures on Afghanistan mark a fundamental shift in U.S. policy not only toward that impoverished land but toward all Central Asia and even the Middle East. Whether it succeeds or fails, the outgoing administration's latest gambit will damage basic U.S. interests. First, the United States has quietly begun to align itself with those in the Russian government calling for military action against Afghanistan and has toyed with the idea of a new raid to wipe out Osama bin Laden. Until it backed off under local pressure, it went so far as to explore whether a Central Asian country would permit the use of its territory for such a purpose.
This comes at a time when Central Asians are as concerned over recent Russian activities as they are over the Taliban -- specifically over Russian efforts to use the specter of terrorism and Islamic radicalism to regain control of their region. In fact, the United States' new militancy arises just as Afghanistan's immediate neighbors are preparing to accept the Taliban regime so long as it puts a stop to cross-border actions and otherwise respects their sovereignty.
Second, Assistant Secretary of State Karl Inderfurth met recently with Russia's friends in the government of India to discuss what kind of government should replace the Taliban. Thus, while claiming to oppose a military solution to the Afghan problem, the United States is now talking about the overthrow of a regime that controls nearly the entire country, in the hope it can be replaced with a hypothetical government that does not exist even on paper.
Third, the United States is supporting a one-sided resolution in the United Nations that would strengthen sanctions against foreign military aid for the Taliban but take no action against its warlord opponents, who control a mere 3 to 5 percent of the country's territory. These warlords, when they ruled in key areas, showed a brutal disregard for human rights and for other minorities that was comparable to the Taliban at its worst. Yet the fragment of a government they support limps on and, with U.S. backing, occupies Afghanistan's seat in the United Nations.
How did the United States become the junior partner to a misguided Russian policy arising from that country's desire for revenge against humiliations suffered in Afghanistan and Chechnya and from a kind of post-imperial hangover? The trail goes back to the Clinton administration's desire to throw Moscow a bone after brushing the Russians aside during the Kosovo crisis. That bone was support for Russia's crusade against "Muslim fundamentalism" and "terrorism." We bought the Russians' line that these forces, rather than seven generations of savage Russian and Soviet misrule, fueled the revolt in Chechnya.
It appears likely that the Clinton administration also supplied the Russians with special equipment used against the Chechens. Confronted on this point in a Senate hearing, a State department spokesman took two weeks to produce a letter claiming disingenuously that the State Department itself provided no arms -- as if Secretary Albright, rather than the Pentagon, controlled America's arsenal. By making itself the junior partner in a Russian-Indian crusade against Muslim Afghanistan and Pakistan, the United States will eliminate itself as a future mediator in one of the world's major trouble spots. This is all the more unfortunate because even today the United States is better positioned than any other country to resolve the Afghan tragedy and associated pathologies infecting the entire region.
The United States supported opposition to the Russian invasion of 1979 and welcomed the Taliban to the extent it reduced killing within the country. Even today, $9 of every $10 of food aid distributed there by the United Nations comes from the United States, and the Afghans know this. But few in the Islamic world will doubt that the object of Russia's and India's efforts is not just Osama bin Laden or specific policies of the Taliban regime but Islam as such. This in turn will further damage America's position as a broker in the Middle East. It will weaken Israeli moderates who have reached out to Muslim states such as Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.
Equally serious, the new states of Central Asia already sense that the United States is subordinating its policy toward them to Russia's aspirations in the region. The considerable credibility America gained from a decade of support for independence and development in their region will evaporate. These shifts add up to a fundamental redirection of American policy toward the world's largest and most vexed zone of conflict. All this is occurring without public discussion, without consultation with Congress and without even informing those who are likely to make foreign policy in the next administration. Thus the Clinton State Department is preparing a kind of land mine that will explode in the face of the incoming Bush administration.
The writer is chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at Johns Hopkins's Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.
END
Letter to President Vladimir Putin
World Press Freedom Committee (WPFC) ~ December 19
President Vladimir Putin
15 December 2000
Your Excellency:
In keeping with our pledge to maintain a close watch on official developments affecting freedom of the press in the Federation of Russia, we are writing you to express our deep distress over governmental harassment of journalistic personalities in three different, high-profile cases -- those of Andrei Babitsky, Vladimir Gusinsky, and Grigor Pasko. While the cases are distinct from each other, there is a common thread in that each one involves a decision by official prosecutors to continue the legal harassment of someone who is prominent in the world of journalism. In each case, at some point, a court has already found the accused not guilty of official charges, or they have been amnestied. Yet prosecutors and courts insist on retrying them on the same or closely related charges. In each case, the accused was involved in journalistic activities critical of or embarrassing to your government. As you know:
1. Andrei Babitsky was reporting from the Chechen side of a civil conflict on the conduct of Russian Federal military forces in Chechnya. The Dagestan prosecutor's office has obtained a conviction of Mr. Babitsky for alleged use of a false Azeri passport given to him by captors linked to your services for the purpose of his "exfiltration" from Russian Federal territory.
2. Vladimir Gusinsky has headed the Media-MOST group of broadcasting and printed press, the leading independent press group in the Russian Federation. The group's outlets have often reported news in contradiction with the "line" pronounced by official spokesmen. Mr. Gusinsky was found to be innocent of fraud charges in connection with his purchase of a Saint Petersburg broadcast station. The Russian General Prosecutor's office has had him arrested in Spain for extradition to Russia on other fraud charges, involving a loan from a privatized company, even though Media-MOST had reached agreement with that company on the means of repaying that loan.
3. Grigor Pasko was found not guilty of espionage charges for publishing publicly available materials on the Russian Navy's dumping of radioactive waste materials in the Sea of Japan. But a military court has ordered him to return to Vladivostok for a new court martial on the same charges. Each case involves a decision to pursue a case after the defendant has satisfied his judges of his innocence. This pattern makes it hard to escape the conclusion that your government has embarked on a policy of systematic legal harassment of well-known journalistic figures.
The effect of such a policy can only be to create a threatening general climate for the exercise of press freedom in the Federation of Russia. If prominent journalistic personalities can be subjected to such determined, repeated legal harassment, what could be the reaction of other journalists who do not have the protection of general name recognition? We are forced to conclude that the situation of the free and independent press in Russia has continued to deteriorate since the visit to Moscow that we coordinated in July of the Russian Press Freedom Support Group, made up of six global free press organizations - the Committee to Protect Journalists, the International Federation of Journalists, the International Federation of the Periodical Press, the International Press Institute, the World Association of Newspapers, and the World Press Freedom Committee.
In September, ten weeks after that visit, we felt constrained to express our continued concerns, given ten new instances that we enumerated of official abuses against press freedom. Now, once again, we must sadly conclude that - despite Your Excellency's encouraging statements about your government's and your personal attachment to press freedom - the situation in Russia is as bad or worse than ever for a free press. This can only be damaging to the image and standing of Russia, with inevitable long-term consequences for the acceptance of Russia in the community of free and democratic countries, as well as being harmful to the efforts to reform Russian society and the State which should serve it. We therefore urge you in the national interest of Russia, in the interest of democracy in Russia and abroad, and in the interest of Russian and world press freedom, to give the appropriate instructions to the officials under your authority to respect and act to guarantee the freedom of expression of journalists and others in the Federation of Russia. Most respectfully, James H. Ottaway Jr.,Chairman World Press Freedom Committee
For further information, contact Marilyn J. Greene at the WPFC, 11690-C Sunrise Valley Drive, Reston, Virginia 20191 U.S.A., tel: +1 703 715 9811, fax: +1 703 620 6790, e-mail: freepress@wpfc.org
END
The Dilemma of Intervention Criteria
By Yasushi Akashi, The Daily Yomiuri ~ December 18
Issues involving humanitarian intervention in armed conflicts are the greatest among the challenges facing the United Nations at the threshold of the 21st century, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan has said. To put it differently, there is an urgent need "to forge unity behind the principle that massive and systematic violations of human rights--wherever they may take place--should not be allowed to stand," according to Annan.
In the 1990s, after the end of the Cold War, the number of wars between states has markedly decreased. In contrast, the number of civil wars and other armed conflicts within the boundaries of states has dramatically increased, because of ethnic, religious, cultural, tribal and other differences. As a result, the lives of more than 5 million people have been lost in such conflicts during the past decade. The international community has no grounds for turning a blind eye to such tragedies simply because they have been taking place within the boundaries of the states concerned.
An exodus of refugees from one country is bound to create problems for surrounding countries. When images of civil war victims and refugees are broadcast on TV and information concerning their plight is reported in the media in many countries, public opinion often surges, pressing strongly their governments and the United Nations to take measures to prevent further tragedies from occurring, and for dispatching U.N. peacekeepers. The United Nations has based its existence on the principle of the sovereign equality of all member states. The world body has therefore taken the position of noninterference in respective countries' internal affairs.
In recent years, however, the international community has begun to monitor more closely various aspects of the behavior of individual states toward their citizens. The Millennium Declaration adopted at the end of the U.N. Millennium Summit in September referred to the importance of all governments' responsibilities to their respective peoples and the concept of what was referred to in the declaration as "good governance" in each country. The Millennium Declaration is symbolic of the magnitude of change the world has undergone since the adoption of the Charter of the United Nations 55 years ago.
Wary of intervention
The current of the times in favor of putting a higher priority on human rights than individual state sovereignty is undoubtedly irreversible. However, the process of movement toward adopting and implementing this position can never go in a beeline. Instead the tension and conflict between citizens' demands for "justice" and their governments' insistence on "public order" will certainly continue in the future.Although the trend toward universalism and respect for human rights definitely points to the future direction of humanity, it is impossible to disregard as negligible the self-centeredness of the major powers or the problems stemming from differences in cultures, historical backgrounds and stages of developments among members of the international community.
Responses from different governments to Secretary General Annan's call for U.N. member states to take concerted action in dealing with humanitarian tragedies have varied widely. The United States and West European countries are fully in favor of his initiative. Many countries in Asia and Africa, however, are cautious about Annan's appeal, while such countries as China and India have explicitly expressed alarm. In the eyes of countries that are wary of championing humanitarianism, their utmost priority is to keep intact their independence and national unity, which they have obtained at the expense of much blood and sweat.
Should the principles of territorial integrity and noninterference in internal affairs be weakened, multiracial countries--for instance China with the Tibetan separatist problem and India with the Kashmir conflict--could be placed in jeopardy of disintegration. These countries in this connection have been very critical of European countries and the United States over their records of colonialism and imperialism under the guise of such euphemisms as civilization and modernization.
In March last year, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization intervened militarily in the Kosovo region of the former Yugoslavia. The intervention was aimed at putting an end to tragedies of huge numbers of refugees resulting from the ethnic cleansing policy of the administration of then Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, which targeted ethnic Albaniansin Kosovo. The intervention, however, was carried out without obtaining approval of the U.N. Security Council. The result is that controversy still lingers over the legitimacy of NATO's military actions in Kosovo.
Consent for East