CounterVortex

WHY DOES Z MAGAZINE SUPPORT GENOCIDE?

Against “Leftist” Revisionism on the Srebrenica Massacre

by Bill Weinberg

With all of the current horrors in the headlines, the world has paid little note to the tenth anniversary of the July 1995 massacre of 8,000 at the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica after it was overrun by besieging Serb rebel forces. The town’s women, children and elderly were put on buses at gunpoint and expelled to Bosnian government-held territory. But the adult men were separated out and kept by the Serb forces for “interrogation.” Their whereabouts became the subject of an international investigation which is now bearing grim fruit–thousands of corpses exhumed from mass graves, held in Bosnia’s morgues, where international teams are conducting the lugubrious work of DNA identification, matching genetic material from the bones with samples provided by relatives of the missing. Some 2,000 of the dead have now been thusly identified, the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) reports. The massacre is rightly called Europe’s worst since World War II.

The leadership of the Bosnian Serb Republic (which now has de facto independence under a peace deal brokered by the US shortly after the massacre) has also formally investigated, confessed to and apologized for the crime. A total of 19 people have been charged by the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY) in the Srebrenica massacre, and 16 are currently being held at The Hague. Three Bosnian Serb soldiers have pleaded guilty to many of the charges against them.

But the supposedly “progressive” Z Magazine, and its online extension ZNet, mark the anniversary of Srebrenica by running a lengthy piece by Edward S. Herman (one of the American left’s official darlings and a one-time Noam Chomsky co-author) arguing that the massacre never happened–or that it was exaggerated, or that the victims deserved it. Like most genocide-apologist propaganda, the piece never makes its arguments explicit: it just leaves the uninitiated reader with the vague but strong impression that anyone who believes that there was a massacre at Srebrenica is a dupe of imperialist propaganda.

The piece, entitled “The Politics of the Srebrenica Massacre,” spends its first half arguing that the affair must be placed in the “context” of the “convenience” of the massacre to the Bosnian Muslims, who sought Western military intervention against the Serb forces. Herman notes a string of “convenient” atrocities attributed to the Serbs, such as the deadly rocket raids on Sarajevo’s market, suggesting that they were “planned and executed by Bosnian Muslims.” Ironically, the suspicions (not facts) Herman cites in support of this speculation come almost entirely from US military and government sources. Herman does not point out the obvious “convenience” of such charges to a Pentagon that was reluctant to intercede as the Serb rebel army attempted to strangle in its birth Europe’s first Muslim-led nation.

One footnote for the claim that the Bosnian government bombed its own people in Sarajevo is an Internet link for a 1997 report from the US Senate Republican Policy Committee–so heartwarming to see leftists making common cause with their domestic enemies. This page, at least, cites some mostly European media accounts claiming secret UN studies had determined that the shells that hit Sarajevo’s market came from Bosnian government lines. But the studies themselves are not cited, and in any case these attacks account for but a handful of the 10,000 Sarajevo residents killed during the three-and-a-half-year siege of the city by the Serbs. Furthermore, even if these attacks were faked, it says nothing about whether the far more massive Srebrenica massacre was faked–and not even Republicans have dared to assert that. Yet that is implicitly (not explicitly, which would require more courage) what Herman argues. This line of reasoning (if we may so flatter it) is akin to arguing that My Lai didn’t happen because it was “convenient” to the NLF.

Most bizarrely, this pseudo-thinking fails to consider that in the post-Srebrenica peace deal brokered by the Clinton White House, the Bosnian government was forced to cede effective control of the majority of its national territory to the Serb and Croat rebel zones, which then gained a cover of legitimacy. A more accurate reading of the situation would suggest the atrocities were far more “convenient” to the Serbs, helping to force the Bosnian government to accept these harsh terms. Crime, it seems, does pay.

When Herman finally turns to the actual mechanics of the massacre, the results are even worse. Herman’s principal argument seems to be that the supposedly UN-protected “safe areas” such as Srebrenica weren’t disarmed, so (again, implicitly) the Serbs were justified in overrunning them and slaughtering 8,000 mostly civilian war captives. (He expresses no outrage that the Dutch UN peacekeepers offered no resistance as the Serbs overran the city.) He claims that Srebrenica was being used as a staging ground for raids on Serb villages in which up to a thousand civilians were killed in the three years prior to the massacre–an assertion footnoted to a report from Yugoslavia’s UN ambassador, without the slightest suggestion that this might be a dubious touchstone for veracity. This is especially ironic given that all pronouncements from the Bosnian leadership are summarily dismissed as lies. Herman regales us with horror stories about atrocities committed by Nasir Oric, a Muslim commander at Srebrenica. These are footnoted to more credible sources, but Herman seems pretty oblivious to the overwhelmingly obvious “context” (to use his favorite word)–Serb rebel armies had overrun some 70% of Bosnia by that point, expelling the Muslim inhabitants, leaving Srebrenica and a few other towns besieged pockets. This doesn’t let Oric off the hook, but it does point up Herman’s hideous double standards.

Herman’s secondary argument (more explicit if no more honest) is that the bodies said to be those of the Srebrenica victims have been unearthed from several mass graves around eastern Bosnia rather than “huge grave sites” at Srebrenica. A look at the ICMP website would tell Herman this was due to Serb commanders ordering bodies exhumed and reburied at scattered sites to hide evidence of the crime. This finding is backed up by the Serb Republic’s own investigation into the massacre–which, it emerges, actually took place at several different locations, with reburial in secondary graves intentionally adding to the confusion. Herman, who is now more intransigent on the question than the Bosnian Serb leadership, dismisses the reburial findings as “singularly unconvincing.”

Next Herman turns to the old genocide-denial trick of fudging the numbers. He guides the reader through arithmetic somersaults to “prove” that if 8,000 were executed Srebrenica’s population would have had to have exceeded its actual 37,000. Yet the ICMP has a database of 7,800 listed as missing from Srebrenica. Were these names simply invented? (Fans of such pseudo-demographic sophistry will have lots of fun at the Holocaust revisionist websites.)

Next he turns to another standard of the genocide-denial set: arguing that the majority of the dead were not executed but killed in combat. This is contradicted by the testimony of the accused at the ICTY. Momir Nikolic, former chief of intelligence in the Bratunac Brigade, one of the Serb units at Srebrenica, has pleaded guilty to his role in the massacre, stating openly that “able-bodied Muslim men within the crowd of Muslim civilians would be separated…and killed shortly thereafter. I was told that it was my responsibility to help coordinate and organize this operation.”

Nikolic’s testimony is called into question by admissions that he perjured himself following his plea-bargain, the massacre-denial crowd is quick to point out–although why he would do so is still mysterious, and he did not contradict himself on what the basic orders were, only his own role in carrying them out. But there are numerous other examples untainted by any such contradictions. Nikolic’s co-defendant Dragan Obrenovic states that he received orders that prisoners were to be shot, and describes the slaughter in intimate detail in his official confession. He notes at one point that a commander “was angry as the last group of prisoners were not taken to the dam to be executed, but were executed right there at the school and that his men (the 6th Battalion Rear Services) had to clean up the mess at the school, including the removal of the bodies to the dam.” Bosnian Serb Army infantryman Drazen Erdemovic (who first volunteered his guilt to foreign journalists and pleaded for their help in fleeing Bosnia) tearfully told the court of his participation in the killing. “I had to do it. If I’d refused, I would have been killed together with the victims.”

These accounts are also backed up by forensic evidence: tribunal investigators exhumed hundreds of blindfolds and ligatures along with the bodies, and in many cases hands were still tied behind the back. Foresnic specialists also found evidence of reburial, such as parts of the same body in separate graves. This may not be conclusive proof that all 8,000 were killed in cold blood–but it is certainly suggestive of this, and it shows Herman’s bad faith that he doesn’t even mention it.

That Herman is getting his information overwhelmingly (and his analysis exclusively) from the Serb extremists is evident from his terminology. He routinely uses the acronym BMA, for “Bosnian Muslim Army,” to refer to the Bosnian goverment’s military. The official name was the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH), and (in contrast to the self-declared “Bosnian Serb Army” of Bosnia’s “Serb Republic”) it was explicitly multi-ethnic, not “Muslim.” BMA is a propaganda term, and capitalizing it as if it were a proper noun is extremely misleading.

Finally, Herman makes much of what he calls Bosnian President Alija “Izetbegovic’s close alliance with Osama bin Laden,” how the Bosnian government provided “Al Qaeda a foothold in the Balkans.” Now isn’t this funny. The same ZNet which asks us to believe (in a Jan. 13 piece by Robert Scheer–whose name ZNet mis-spells) that “Al Qaeda [is] Just a Bush Boogeyman” prints shamelessly lurid propaganda about the Islamic menace in Bosnia. I guess al-Qaeda is just a “boogeyman” when it slams jets into New York skyscrapers or blows up trains in London and Madrid, but suddenly becomes real when it loans a few mujahedeen to protect the legitimate government of multi-ethnic Bosnia from a lawless fascist rebellion. Herman offers not a word about how Izetbegovic was driven to this alliance (if, in fact, it existed) by the West’s betrayal of Bosnia’s legal government into the hands of the Serb rebels who, with superior firepower thanks to their patrons in Belgrade, quickly subsumed the majority of Bosnia’s territory. Herman dismisses this version of events as a mere “narrative”–a word which has been subject to such abuse at the hands of the “post-modernists” that it should now be purged from the English language. Herman, who is not bothered by the use of the Islamic terrorist image to justify this illegal usurpation of power, calls the “‘Srebrenica massacre'” (in quotes of course) the “greatest triumph of propaganda” for the “colonial occupations in Bosnia and Kosovo” by NATO. One wonders if Herman is himself aware of the cognitive dissonance.

This is but the latest in a whole string of such articles Z has run by Herman and others in the decade since the climax of the Bosnian horror show, all minimizing Serb war crimes and essentially arguing (as Reagan said about the genocidal Guatemalan dictatorship) that the Serbs have been given a “bum rap.” And Z still seems to think it has any moral ground to stand on to oppose US-backed genocide in Guatemala, Colombia and so on. It is both demoralizing and terrifying that this is the level to which the supposed “left” press has sunk in this dumbed-down age.

NOTE: This article started out as a post on our weblog, and was expanded as Ed Herman (and others) weighed in with retorts. If Herman (or anyone else) has any further responses, they can be posted there: /node/757

RESOURCES:

“The Politics of the Srebrenica Massacre,” by Ed Herman
http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=8244&sectionID=74

“Debating Srebrenica”: responses to Herman on ZNet
http://www.zmag.org/hermanserbdebate.htm

“Srebrenica: Anatomy of a Massacre,” Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR)
http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl?archive/tri/tri_414_1_eng.txt

Dragan Obrenovic statement to ICTY
http://www.un.org/icty/obrenovic/trialc/facts_030520.htm

Momir Nikolic statement to ICTY
http://www.un.org/icty/mnikolic/trialc/facts030506.htm

IWPR story on Momir Nikolic perjury, from FreeRepublic
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/991985/posts

ICMP press release on identification of bodies
http://www.ic-mp.org/home.php?act=news&n_id=97&

Open Democracy report, “Srebrenica: ten years on”
http://www.opendemocracy.net/conflict-yugoslavia/srebrenica_2651.jsp

Radio Netherlands report on the Tribunal ten years after Srebrenica
http://www2.rnw.nl/rnw/en/currentaffairs/region/easterneurope/srb050708?view=Standard

BBC story on Serb Republic apology for massacre
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3999985.stm

“Serbia Struggles to Face the Truth about Srebrenica,” by Tim Judah, Crimes of War Project
http://www.crimesofwar.org//news-srebrenica2.html

“Is Al Qaeda Just a Bush Boogeyman?” by Robert Sheer [sic], ZNet
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=40&ItemID=7015

Deniers of Serbia’s War Crimes, Balkan Witness
http://www.glypx.com/balkanwitness/Articles-deniers.htm

“Did Six Million Really Die?” Holocaust-denial numbers-fudging
http://theunjustmedia.com/Holocaust/Did%20Six%20Million%20Really%20Die.htm

—————

Special to WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Aug. 1, 2005
Reprinting permissible with attribution

http://WW4Report.com

TRUTH, DEATH AND MEDIA IN IRAQ

Part Two in an Unfortunately Continuing Series

by Michael I. Niman

Earlier this year the media reported on “The Salvador Option,” referring to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s stated intent to train and employ Salvadoran-style death squads to hunt down and kill or “disappear” suspected Iraqi resistance fighters and their alleged supporters. Such wholesale execution of political opponents resulted in approximately 70,000 deaths in El Salvador during Ronald Reagan’s reign in the White House.

Knight Ridder correspondent Yasser Salihee also covered this story. Unlike stateside journalists doing research online, Salihee was on the ground in Iraq, compiling primary data–including damning evidence about extra-judicial killings. Knight Ridder, on June 27, published Salihee’s preliminary findings. Working less than a week, Salihee and another Knight Ridder journalist turned up over 30 cases of suspected extra-judicial executions by U.S.-backed Iraqi death squads.

In the article, Salihee and his co-author document how victims show up at the morgue blindfolded, with their hands tied or cuffed behind their backs. Most showed signs of Abu Ghraib-style torture. Many were last seen in police custody. They were usually killed with a singe shot to the head.

On June 24, while Salihee’s article was in-press, a U.S. military sniper killed him, also with a single shot to the head. According to Knight Ridder, it was his day off. He was on his way to his neighborhood gas station to fuel up before a family trip to a swimming pool when he encountered a makeshift U.S. checkpoint unexpectedly set up blocks from his home. Witnesses say he was shot without warning and for no apparent reason. For the record, Knight Ridder says: “There’s no reason to think that the shooting had anything to do with his reporting work.” Such disclaimers seem to be a de facto mandate these days. When an investigative reporter is shot dead by a member of an organization he or she is investigating, there’s clear reason for suspicion.

Also earlier this year, CNN chief news executive Eason Jordan made his now famous retracted comment about U.S. forces in Iraq targeting journalists. Eason’s comment cost him his job–and no genuflecting to the god of disclaimers and apologies could save it. He resigned. The problem was that he was right. This was the conclusion of a Reporters Without Borders investigation into the deaths of two journalists killed by U.S. troops in Baghdad. U.S. military documentation of the killings of journalists by U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Iraq and Serbia indicate that many were in fact deliberately targeted.

Journalists are the outside world’s pipeline for documentation of atrocities in war zones. When military forces remove journalists from war zones–usually through terror and intimidation, if not outright murder–they’ve successfully removed the most credible witnesses working to document their crimes. Salihee certainly appears to be one of these witnesses–uncovering the smoking gun behind a series of what appear to be Rumsfeld-ordered war crimes. It’s the brave reporting by the few remaining unembedded journalists on the ground in Iraq that allow armchair columnists like myself to write about Iraq, citing sources such as Salihee, Robert Fisk and Dahr Jamal.

Salihee’s killing at the hands of a U.S. military sniper is not an isolated incident. Since his death, two more Iraqi journalists were also shot dead by U.S. forces. Maha Ibrahim, a TV news editor who publicly opposed the U.S. occupation, was shot to death by U.S. troops who opened fire on her car as she drove to work on June 26. On June 28 , al-Sharqiya TV program director Ahmad Wail Bakri was also shot to death by U.S. troops as he drove near an American military convoy in Baghdad. The International Federation of Journalists has called for investigations into all three murders. The Committee to Protect Journalists has also expresses alarm over the killings and is launching its own investigation.

If these journalists in fact were not targeted by U.S. forces, and were instead just killed as unintended victims of jittery soldiers shooting up Baghdad, these killings are evidence of a depraved indifference to human life–resulting from the stress of fighting a prolonged war against a civilian population, with no clear goals or exit strategy.

If any of these journalists were killed because of their work–and Yasser Salihee’s damning investigative work certainly raises that question–then what we are witnessing is not only a war against Iraq, but against the world’s right to know what is going on in Iraq as well. With Salihee dead, it will now be more difficult to document death squad activity in Iraq. When you kill the messenger you kill the truth.

———

Dr. Michael I. Niman’s previous columns are archived at
http://www.mediastudy.com.

RESOURCES:

Reporters Without Borders investigation of the US Army’s firing at the Palestine Hotel, April 2003, at TruthOut:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/022505A.shtml

OPERATION IRON FIST

UN Troops Chase Down Child Soldiers in Congo’s Forgotten War;
Hutu Militias as Pawn in Great Game for Central Africa’s Mineral Wealth

by keith harmon snow

NINDJA, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) — For some hill-tribe peasants in the remote reaches of the Congo’s South Kivu hills, the arrival of hundreds of UN ground troops on July 7 seemed more like an invasion than the liberation most have long since given up on. For Hutu rebels, it was reason to disappear.

Peasant women cultivating the steep hill slopes with primitive tools pretended to ignore the unimaginable: the sudden appearance of heavily armed Pakistani troops, backed by Guatemalan special operations forces, marching on footpaths that may have seen no outsiders for decades. Indian forces in combat helicopters supported the UN mission.

Some 1,000 troops from the South Kivu Brigade of the United Nations Observer Mission in Congo (MONUC), joined by a score of troops from the Congolese Armed Forces (FARDC), participated in “Operation Iron Fist.” Its compliment, “Operation Falcon Sweep,” an ongoing heli-borne operation, was launched on July 4.

Both operations seek to infiltrate territories held by the Rwandan Hutu fighters to the north and southeast of Bukavu, in the Walungu and Kabare areas. The target areas include the vast and mysterious Kahuzi Beiga National Park.

“The Hutu rebels came here ten years ago,” says William Mukale, 30, a teacher from Bukavu. “They have done terrible things and people are suffering.” William points at the long line of UN troops moving through the hills across the valley. “But no foreigners or outsiders have been in there for many years.”

It may be as much as forty years: Belgian colonizers were here in the 1960s. It is unclear when the last white people ventured back in these hills. Hutus from Rwanda arrived in 1994.

Both Iron Fist and Falcon Sweep aim to clear the area of Hutu rebels belonging to the Forces for the Democratic Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR). Looking more like a rag-tag bunch of child soldiers and armed peasants in plastic boots than the battle-hardened terrorists they are almost universally portrayed as, the FDLR are accused of committing genocide in Rwanda in 1994.

“Most of the FDLR combatants are very young,” says Sylvie van den Wildenberg, UN Public Information Officer in Bukavu. “They obviously were not involved in genocide in Rwanda. They have been manipulated and used by their leaders.”

Congo President Joseph Kabila issued a statement June 29 that the FDLR are the enemy of Congo and the FARDC will forcibly deploy against them. The MONUC goal is to displace or drive out the FDLR in what the UN describes as “domination area operations.”

During Iron Fist, a few FDLR were sighted along remote trails as they fled. MONUC soldiers fanned out through burnt fields and searched the area but no FDLR were found. FDLR camps were located, but soldiers had fled. No shots were fired.

The Invisible Face of Terror

Over the weekend of July 10 however, some 39 civilians–most women and children–were hacked to death or burned alive in huts. Some believe this was the FDLR retaliating against locals who support the MONUC and FARDC initiatives. Some say only they were Kinyarwanda-speaking Rwandans. Some maintain that the perpetrators were infiltrators sent by the Rwandan regime of Paul Kagame’s Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF). International media–absent the area–quickly attributed the killings to Hutu FDLR.

Other areas around Walungu and Nindja have seen recent clashes, some including heavy weapons fire, believed to be FARDC fighting with FDLR. Some people fear that combatants will move deeper into Congo’s forests. On July 11, FDLR combatants, with wives and children, were reported leaving Nindja.

Atrocities committed in South Kivu have been mostly attributed to the FDLR. Massacres in past months have occurred at night, and notes left behind were signed the “Rastas.” The Rastas are described as a mix of FDLR, Congolese collaborators, local bandits and other disaffected ex-militia. They are generally equated with the FDLR.

“All terrorist groups have two faces,” says Gen. Shujatt Alikahn, commander of MONUC’s 10th Military Region in South Kivu. “The face that is friendly to the community, and the face of terror.” He is personally leading his troops along a trail that hangs over a deep chasm in the mountains. His position on the FDLR is clear–get out of the area.

The region has for years seethed with warlords and militias who exact taxes, goods and labor from the poorest people in the world. Local fiefdoms have seen unspeakable horrors and targeted robberies believed to be committed by FDLR factions in cahoots with Congolese military collaborators or civilians. Former combatants of the Mayi-Mayi, a militia opposing Rwanda’s military presence in Kivu, and Burundian Hutu militia have also been here.

The terror is directly linked to access to minerals. Some villages suffer less than others because combatants and warlords understand that atrocities committed against the population will bring MONUC troops who will threaten their mining and taxation networks. Some areas are tenuously “managed” by both FDLR militias and FARDC soldiers.

The UN Panel on the Illegal Exploitation of DRC’s Natural Resources cites “military commercialism” as pivotal to war in Congo. Key agents included military officers from Rwanda and Uganda, with companies from the US and Europe behind them. But the recommendations of the UN investigation were ignored; multinational and regional companies and individuals named for violations successfully lobbied to be removed from the list. No government took action to stop or deter the guns-for-minerals racketeering.

A June 2005 report by Amnesty International revealed that massive arms flows to Congo continue. Weapons keep coming across the Great Lakes from Rwanda and Uganda. Gold departs the area for Uganda; coltan (coumbium-tantalite) used in cellphones and Sony Playstations crosses Lake Kivu by boat to Rwanda; there is also cassiterite (tin) mining here. Human Rights Watch (HRW) recently published a report detailing South Africa-based multinational AngloGold Ashanti’s role in supporting war and atrocities in Congo’s Ituri zone. On July 12, HRW issued a brief warning that factions are still being armed in North Kivu.

“We see the same situation in Ituri and the Kivus,” said MONUC’s Dutch Major Gen. Patrick Cammaert on July 12. Cammaert commands all MONUC forces in the provinces of Ituri, North and South Kivu. “Groups are receiving arms, equipment and ammunition from groups, organizations, and individuals from foreign countries.”

Multinational Occupation

Soldiers of one stripe or another are everywhere. There are Guatemalan soldiers speaking only Spanish; Pakistanis speaking Urdu, and some English; Indians speaking Hindi. Congolese soldiers speak French, Lingala, and some English. Hutu rebels speak Kinyarwanda and Swahili. The impoverished villagers in the remote hills around Nindja speak Swahili, French, or the local Mashi dialect of the Bashi tribe–but the voices of the average Congolese remain mostly unheard.

Operation Falcon Sweep aims to extend the security perimeter in the Walungu territory, and it is heavily focused on the dense forests around Nindja. The northern perimeter opens into the vast and wild Kahuzi Beiga National Park.

In mid-July Operation Falcon Sweep dropped Guatemalan and Pakistani special operations forces from helicopters into unknown terrain. Some missions dropped under the dense canopy of the Kahuzi Beiga forests. FDLR camps inside the park were located.

“The Park was completely a no-go zone,” says one MONUC officer. “Even the UN could not go there. It remained a mystery for about five months. The FARDC controlled the checkpoints. This is one of the richest mineral areas in South Kivu.”

Until recently, the Congolese government refused all MONUC requests for reconnaissance in the park. In late June MONUC was allowed to send sorties of armored personnel carriers (APCs) into the park. The southeastern corner of the park links directly to Lake Kivu and Rwanda.

On July 7, Operation Iron Fist deployed UN peacekeepers in vehicles and on foot, with the Indian contingent providing close air support from Russian MI-35 attack helicopters. Operation Falcon Sweep resumed with a large operation on July 10, and MONUCs Gen. Alikahn personally oversaw the burning of some remote FDLR camps on July 14.

APCs used in other MONUC operations are useless on many roads here: the roads to outposts like Nindja are rough dirt tracks with a few logs thrown over mountain streams. But flimsy bridges are the least of MONUC concerns.

Trekking Back in Time

Trekking in the mountains beyond Nindja feels like journeying back to an earlier age. Women and girls haul huge loads over narrow trails, their backs bent with heavy loads in handwoven baskets supported by braided straps lashed around their foreheads. Coming and going to local markets, their eyes speak fear as they wait aside the trail while hundreds of UN foot soldiers pass by. Some girls disappear into the bushes.

A grueling two-hour trek out of Nindja, most MONUC soldiers ran out of water. They refilled bottles from clear mountain streams that spill over waterfalls and splash through the dense undergrowth of forested valleys where guerrillas can easily hide.

Plots ablaze with fire to clear the grass and stumps of hacked-up forest blanket the scorching sun with stifling haze. Burned hillsides evidence the slash-and-burn economy of locals who have no electricity, no stores, no modern amenities, no technology, and only the crudest tools.

“And no security.” Villager Robert Mushale, 27, points down the valley where he says 15 people massacred by the Rastas are buried in a mass grave. “We all want MONUC to move the FDLR. They take taxes from us twice a week. They tax us at market. We go through their barricades and we pay taxes. It’s clear the FDLR and Rastas are working together.”

Most homes here are huts of grass and bamboo and many stand in small compounds amidst groves of banana trees. Toilets are two boards over a festering hole in a rickety shed. Huts and groves sit on small plateaus dwarfed by the abutting hills, but the outward suggestion of a tranquil, ordinary life is belied by the ubiquitous threat of terror.

Hungry people dig up riverbeds and sift through dust for minerals sold by the fractions of ounces in remote markets. Trees are felled for firewood and charcoal, and to make way for crops. Under the constant assault of six-foot long steel blades manually drawn and pushed by two laborers, the last pockets of unprotected forests in the area are falling plank by plank.

Operation Night Flash

Three and half hours march from Nindja the troops of the two spikes of Operation Iron Fist meet in a high clearing. There are two FDLR camps nearby. But for the crackle of distant fire carried like the white-naped ravens on the mountain breezes, the land is still: even the local civilians disappear in fear of the alien soldiers.

With daily killings, raping and looting from at least 2003, some areas have become almost uninhabited, especially after September 2004. March 2005 found 2500 families in Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps.

“Armed factions abduct groups of civilians and hold them hostage to extort cash ransoms,” MONUC’s Human Rights section reported in March. “Women and girls held are often subjected to sexual violence and younger girls may be held for months at a time in camps where they are used as domestic workers or sex slaves. Armed Rwandan Hutu groups abducted around sixty persons in January in Walungu territory. Attacks in other nearby territories also occurred.”

On March, 12 Pakistani and FARDC soldiers began patrolling villages at night. With some 524 villages in the Walungu territory, MONUC’s “Operation Night Flash” couldn’t cover every village. Village defense committees were organized by MONUC, with village youths patrolling through the night, banging pots and blowing whistles to alert nearby soldiers’ camps when any strangers arrived.

Some 2,500 Congolese FARDC troops committing atrocities were relocated by MONUC in March and replaced with MONUC-trained integrated FARDC brigades. Incidents of terror declined with deterrence actions by MONUC, and most families filtered back to their homes.

“The new troops are better taking care of the local population,” says Pakistani Major Waqar, at an outpost in Walungu, “And they know how to behave in a military fashion.”

While the situation near Walungu has improved, Waqar believes that the Rastas likely moved into the northern zone. “Twelve girls were recently kidnapped near Kahuzi Beiga Park,” he says.

Military and civilian MONUC staff note that it is just a matter of time before unpaid and mostly uneducated FARDC soldiers recently moved to the area begin to take exactions on the populace, with the concomitant violence, corruption and impunity.

And with transnational corporations and international NGOs pouring money into Congo, there is no shortage of funds in Kinshasa from which soldiers could be paid. Four hundred million dollars poured into Congo for elections alone in recent months.

“We are supposed to have 3,000 FARDC troops,” says one MONUC staffer in Bukavu. “We trained these troops with the hopes that they would be made available to Pakistani troops for operations. When we called on them they said, ‘Oh, sorry, we have no logistics supply.'”

Biscuit Diplomacy

June to August is the dry season here. MONUC trucks fly over red dirt roads that have seen little rain for weeks. The red powder gets into everything. As the convoys pass, women turn their overloaded backs to the road and hang their heads under dust-soaked shawls, and the pitiful peddlers of biscuits or cigarettes or little piles of food duck under coats or plastic bags.

Crowds of wide-eyed, bony children, dressed in rags, hover around grassy banks with grasping hands and desperate ideas. “BEES-QUEET, BEES-QUEET, BEES-QUEET,” they scream. Months of experience tell the children that a handful of two-penny butter biscuits may fly from a passing MONUC truck: some trucks stop and hand them out; others pitch biscuits into the crowd, inciting brief riots.

MONUC soldiers and staff are sensitive to the criticisms about their troops throwing biscuits to children, to the news reports accusing MONUC of doing nothing, and to the Congolese people’s perceptions about MONUC largesse and inaction.

“People are really hungry around here,” says Major Waqar. “Just look around. They love us for sharing food. We have really changed the perceptions about what we are doing and why we are here. We are trying to bring peace. Anyway, is it wrong to give biscuits to starving children?”

Gen. Shujatt Alikahn is more blunt. “The UN Security Council said ‘no forcible disarmament by MONUC.’ Everything changed on May 23 when the FDLR mutilated 23 people. Pakistan has fifty years in the United Nations and we won’t let this terrorism happen to these people. We decided to take the risks upon ourselves.”

MONUC is one player amongst many. The MONUC mission is limited in mandate and troop strength, staff point out, but MONUC is tasked with fighting a bullet-less war against a complex and ever-moving target, and it is criticized for every effort at every turn. While atrocities have abated or declined in some areas under MONUC control, MONUC’s security reach is limited. Remote areas of northern and eastern DRC remain completely inaccessible to MONUC peacekeepers; rape remains widespread, with extortion, pillage, and sporadic massacres continuing in many areas.

Frank conversations with UN personnel about MONUC reveal the following: Bureaucracy is thick and unwieldy. Conspirators lurk within and without. Decisions are deeply politicized. Critical reports and investigations are internally buried. Essential maps and information are unavailable. Slackers who should long ago have been fired are getting a free ride because the system disallows appropriate action. Rules and regulations drafted in the 1950’s have not evolved or changed with the times. Ditto for the leadership, who are seen to be stodgy, unimaginative, hopelessly entrenched in a failed system.

Multinational corporations are pulling many strings, and profiting widely. Budgets are obscene, given the absolute poverty evident in the Congo. Member states don’t pay their dues, and then their diplomats say that the United Nations is a failure, that it needs to be dismantled. Agents bought and paid for by powerful governments serve only the narrow mandates of their masters. The United States is cited as the most obvious and shameless culprit. Recent stories about Congo that have appeared in western media only reinforce the biases held by the general public.

MONUC has around 20 soldiers from western nations: three French; four British; eight Canadians; three Irish; three Swiss; and zero from the U.S. Soldiers come from the poorest Third World countries: they are cheap, easily manipulated and–notably–they are expendable. Indeed, there is a hierarchy of value attached to the lives of UN soldiers that varies with nationality. While soldiers suffer the hardships of malaria and rat-filled camps, risking their lives against an enemy they know little about, many are happy for low paying work and any opportunity to rise above squalid conditions in their own countries. However, incentives to high performance are often lacking, and military contingents vary in devotion to the peacekeeping cause. However, many MONUC staff, both civilian and military, put in twelve to fourteen hour days, at least six days a week, with no personal life and total dedication to stopping this brutal, ugly war.

The End of the Hutu Line

UN sources are unclear how many foreign rebels have been returned from DRC to Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda through the MONUC Disarmament, Demobilization, Repatriation, Reintegration and Reinsertion (DDRRR) program in Bukavu: estimates vary between 12,000 and 4000. Most rebels returned in the early stages of the program, but returnees reduced to a trickle after 2003.

The FDLR foot soldiers are in a tight position. Amongst them are battle-hardened Hutus accused of participating in genocide against hundreds of thousands of Tutsis killed in 1994.

But the Rwandan military led by Paul Kagame has persecuted Hutus and Tutsis alike both inside and outside of Rwanda. Thousands of Hutu refugees and returnees to Rwanda are said to have been killed over the past several years. UN High Commission for Refugees investigator Robert Gersony in September 1994 produced the first report about Rwandan Tutsi forces committing massive atrocities against Hutus. The UN in New York buried the report.

By some estimates, hundreds of thousands of Hutu refugees were hunted down and murdered by Rwandan and Ugandan militaries that invaded Congo (then Zaire) in 1996 in what the Congolese know officially as the “War of Liberation” that ultimately overthrew the dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko. New York Times journalist Howard French reported the “counter-genocide” against Hutus as early as 1997: at least 80% were women and children, and 50% were believed to be under 14 years old.

Hutus from Rwanda who survived the RPF onslaught later fought for Mobutu, but Rwanda and Uganda, with US-support, ousted Mobutu’s regime. Hutu FDLR in Congo then fought to defend President Laurent Kabila against the second Rwanda/Uganda invasion in 1998, that the Congolese now know as the “First War of Aggression.” Many of the FDLR now in the Kivus are believed to have arrived from Kinshasa as recent as 2003.

In April, 2005, thousands of Hutus fled Rwanda to Burundi after the RPF-organized “Gacaca” village genocide courts began operating, unjustly they said. The village courts–like the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda–are accused of doling out “victor’s justice” that favors the Tutsi-dominated RPF military.

The International Forum for Truth and Justice in the Great Lakes Region of Africa recently filed a lawsuit in a Spanish court, based on years of research, against Paul Kagame and other Rwandan military leaders. The suit accuses them of massive war crimes in the series of conflicts that engulfed Central Africa following the RPF invasion of Rwanda from Uganda in 1990.

“Rwanda will never be interested in these people going back,” a high-level MONUC source said. “The moment these FDLR go back to Rwanda the international mining companies will take over the mining areas that today benefit Rwanda. Rwanda is working with the FDLR and Congolese are definitely involved or these people wouldn’t be able to do what they are doing.”

Paradoxically, the Rwanda regime is accused of collaborating with the FDLR’s resource-extraction operations, even while intervening in Congo to hunt them down, accusing them of being filled with “genocidiares”–veterans of the Interahamwe militias that carried out mass slaughter of Hutus in 1994.

Internal squabbles have repeatedly divided the FDLR over the decade since the militia first arrived from Rwanda. Late June 2005 saw the most recent split, where a local low-ranking militiaman named Amani declared himself the leader of the FDLR and guide for their return to Rwanda.

Col. Joseph Hagirimana, an important local FDLR leader, rejected Amani’s declaration. Some FDLR interviewed by MONUC’s DDRRR team appear confused and frightened, uncertain who to trust or where to turn for help. DDRRR personnel face their own challenges here. “We have seen many FDLR declarations,” said Gen. Cammaert. “We want to see action.”

Some believe the Amani made a deal with the Congolese government, that he will be given a military command and a villa in Rwanda in exchange for removing the FDLR–the main obstacle to the vast mineral reserves of South Kivu.

“Many members rejected the FDLR leadership and broke with it in 2004,” says Jean-Marie Higiro, past president of the unarmed political wing of the FDLR. “That FDLR leadership recently split again, into factions led by Lt. Colonel Christophe Hakizabera and Dr. Ignace Murwanashyaka, who both live in Europe.”

In September 2004 exiled and disaffected Rwandans who rejected the FDLR position– mostly Hutu, and mostly in Europe–created a new organization, Urunana, with an armed wing, Imbonera, dedicated to “overthrowing the fascist dictatorship of Paul Kagame in Rwanda.” With bases inside and out of Rwanda, Imbonera will intervene in the DRC “if Rwandan refugees are hunted down as animals by General Paul Kagame’s forces.”

Congolese Air Force Gen. John Numbe is adamant that Rwanda uses the FDLR to justify meddling in Congo. “We are finishing these FDLR before the Congolese elections [in November]… Rwandan sources have told us that Kagame has a plan to destabilize the elections in Congo. We must remove the FDLR because they are the reason Kagame is always invading Congo.”

“The UN still hopes that every means of peaceful resolution can be used to deal with the FDLR,” says MONUCís Sylvie van den Wildenberg. “It is the hardliners, the Hutus, most probably involved in genocide, that are blocking the process. Rwanda has said that there will be an amnesty for people who were under fourteen years old in 1994. We think that every human being should have a choice.”

Christian is an FDLR soldier. He watched listlessly as Operation Iron Fist unfolded in Nindja. “I don’t want to go back to Rwanda because the problem I have is still there. Kagame killed my parents at Ryabega [northern Rwanda] in 1990. We cannot trust Kagame. He will kill us all.”

Christian is wearing a tattered Patagonia brand jacket made in America. Christian insists he is twenty years old, but, clearly, he is no older than sixteen. His gun is almost as big as he is, but there is no question that he knows how to use it.

“Instead of going home to be killed by Kagame, I accept to be killed by MONUC or FARDC,” he says. Alphonse has the bravado of a cornered teenage boy; behind this front is only fear.

Like Christian, many FDLR are child soldiers hardly old enough to recall the details of their flight from Rwanda. Most know nothing of the complexity of the cause they fight for. Many FDLR were born in Congo; some are held hostage here.

Christian wants only to go home. But to most of the world, Christian is no longer a human being, he is a Hutu, and there is no home on earth where he will be welcome.

RESOURCES:

“DRC: Illegal arms exports fuelling killings, mass rape and torture,” Amnesty International, July 2005 http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAFR620082005

“DRC: Arming Civilians Adds Fuel to the Fire,” Human Rights Watch, July 2005 http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/07/12/congo11314.htm

“DRC: Gold Fuels Massive Human Rights Atrocities,” Human Rights Watch, June 2005 http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/06/02/congo11041.htm

Veritas Rwanda Forum page on the Spanish lawsuit
http://www.veritasrwandaforum.org/

COLOMBIA: EX-MINISTER ARRESTED; U.S. ARMING DEATH SQUADS?

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

EX-JUSTICE MINISTER ARRESTED

On May 12, Colombian authorities arrested former justice minister Alberto Santofimio Botero in connection with the 1989 murder of populist Liberal Party presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan. A statement from the attorney general’s office said Santofimio was arrested in the city of Armenia, Quindio department, because of new information linking him to the Galan case. The statement gave no details.

The attorney general’s office has evidence suggesting that Santofimio ordered the Galan assassination at an August 1989 meeting with drug lords Pablo Escobar Gaviria and Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha at the Alsacia estate in Venadillo municipality, Tolima department. Santofimio was detained and questioned by prosecutors about Galan’s assassination several years ago, but was released due to lack of evidence. Current president Alvaro Uribe Velez accepted significant donations for his presidential election campaign from Santofimio, though the former justice minister had already been convicted for bank fraud and for taking money from the Cali drug cartel. Uribe repaid Santofimio’s support by naming his son, Alberto Santofimio, as first secretary of the Colombian embassy in Paris, a post he still holds.

John Jairo Velasquez Vasquez, a former hit-man for Escobar, is serving a 30-year prison sentence for the murder of Galan. Soon after the killing, 11 suspects were arrested, tried and jailed–until new evidence three years later showed they were innocent. At least four other suspects in the case were assassinated, some disappeared and others reportedly underwent plastic surgery to avoid detection. Another suspect, retired army officer Carlos Humberto Flores Franco, was jailed recently and is awaiting the outcome of an investigation into allegations that he played a role in the crime. (Miami Herald, El Nuevo Herald, May 13 from correspondents)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, May 22

U.S. ARMING DEATH SQUADS?

On May 3, Colombian authorities arrested two US soldiers at a luxury estate in Tolima department, where they were allegedly preparing to deliver 40,000 rounds of ammunition to a right-wing paramilitary group. The Colombian government turned over Warrant Officer Allan Tanquary and Sgt. Jesus Hernandez to US authorities on May 5, despite widespread demands that the soldiers face trial in Colombia.

On May 6, during a visit to Tolima, US ambassador William Wood ruled out lifting the diplomatic immunity granted to the soldiers under a 1974 treaty between the US and Colombia, though he said Colombian prosecutors would be allowed to question the two at the US embassy in Bogota in the coming days, before they are flown to the US. The Colombian attorney general’s office formally sought permission earlier on May 6 to conduct the questioning. Wood said Tanquary and Hernandez will be tried by a US military court and will be severely punished if found guilty.

The case has deeply embarrassed the US government, coming just five weeks after five US service members were detained for allegedly smuggling cocaine aboard a military aircraft to the US. The US has denied secretly helping the paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), which have been blamed for countless atrocities. The US government has designated the AUC a terrorist organization. (Miami Herald, May 7 from AP)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, May 8

Weekly News Update on the Americas
http://home.earthlink.net/~nicadlw/wnuhome.html

THE NEW RESISTANCE IN ARGENTINA

Workers Defend “Recovered Factories”

by Yeidy Rosa

When Luis Zanon decided to abandon the ceramic factory in Argentina’s southern province of Neuquen, over which his family had held legal ownership since 1984, the factory’s debt was more than $170 million. Following Argentina’s economic collapse in 2001, the Zanon family left the country, accessing foreign accounts that had accumulated millions, and presumably leaving the factory to become a forgotten warehouse with broken windows, overgrown weeds and rusty machinery.

But 266 out of the 331 employees of the Zanon factory–some of whom had worked there for more than 15 years, and all of whom were owed months in back pay–had a more creative response. They would continue going to work every day, producing the tiles and running the factory themselves. In place of the strike, where labor is withheld in protest, Zanon’s workers opted for re-inventing forms of labor and counter-power, where organizing emerged out of participation in lived experience.

Today, Argentina’s “recovered factory “movement includes more than 200 businesses that have been successfully producing without owners or bosses, incorporating more than 10,000 otherwise unemployed or underemployed workers. Threats of eviction, kidnapings, police violence, terror by hired gangs, direct opposition from local politicians and apathy on the part of Argentina’s current president, Nestor Kirchner, are all obstacles to the movement–and constant reminders of a weak transition to democracy from the military regime that ruled Argentina from 1976 until 1983.

As workers struggle to gain legal status for their cooperatives and full expropriation of the factories within a court system designed to protect private property, a network of solidarity has formed strong links despite the state’s repressive apparatus. A laboratory of democracy within the factories and their surrounding communities has emerged, where a concrete alternative to corporate capitalism has redefined success as the creation of work and social inclusion, rather than a measurement of profits.

The Argentinazo Crisis of 2001

The failure of the neo-liberal model is epitomized in the case of Argentina, as 20 years of unrestrained borrowing left the country with the world’s highest per-capita debt by the end of 2001. When the government defaulted on its $140 billion debt to the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and private lenders such as Bank of Boston and Citibank, the peso, pegged one-to-one with the U.S. dollar by President Carlos Menem (1989-1999), devalued 70%–forcing half of the country’s 37 million residents below the poverty line overnight. Once the jewel of Latin American economic prosperity, Argentina found itself with unemployment rates as high as 25 percent. Menem had doubled the country’s gross domestic product by privatizing almost all national assets. Despite a rise in unemployment due to downsizing brought about by privatization, banks continued to loan Argentina billions of dollars. On December 19, 2001, the citizens of Argentina woke up to find their bank accounts frozen. With this, Argentina’s working middle class nearly evaporated.

Over the next two days, mass protests and demonstrations were staged by groups of workers and large sections of the (now former) middle class, as a shocked nation poured onto the streets of all the major cities. Over the next week, the populace forced out a total of four presidents. By refusing to wait until the next election to vote the president out, the citizens of Argentina exercised horizontal accountability in its ultimate form. “Que se vayan todos!”( “They must all go!”) was the popular cry. Argentina was holding accountable not only individual politicians, but the system itself. Notwithstanding, the country was left devastated, as police repression left 35 dead, thousands wounded and another 4,500 imprisoned. Shortly after, civil society spontaneously organized popular assemblies and elaborate barter systems termed trueque, and the piquetero movement of unemployed workers organized protests throughout the country.

The Workers Take Over

Referred to as occupied or recuperated factories, worker-run factories, grass-roots cooperatives, factories under worker control, self-organized and self-managed factories or democratic workplaces, the recovered factories of Argentina are a concrete economic alternative to corporate capitalism. The pattern is typical: The owner, after a period of cutting back on worker wages and benefits in order to cut on costs and minimize debt, locks out workers and abandons the property, perhaps filing bankruptcy and liquidating other assets in order to salvage whatever possible. The workers, defending their jobs and livelihood, organize and prepare to occupy the property, opting to get the factory running again, rather than face unemployment. Working together with other organized sectors of the community, the workers gain support from students, unions and members of the unemployed worker’s movement known as piqueteros. Together, they stage demonstrations, camp out on the property and produce literature regarding their struggle. The space is then recovered and production begins. When state forces attempt to evict the workers, the aforementioned groups unite and collectively prevent police entry. The internal organization of the factories is based on horizontalism, direct democracy and autonomy.

This process is not limited to factories, as other recovered workspaces include clinics, book publishers, hotels, supermarkets and bakeries. A working-class solution and successful act of resistance, it has not come with ease and does not enjoy certainty or security. Legal attacks, death threats and physical harm have come to workers at many of the 200 recuperated businesses operating without bosses, owners or foremen since idle workplaces began to be taken over in the late 1990s. Yet of those recovered since the 2001 economic crisis, which left 3,900 bankrupt factories in Buenos Aires alone, 60% have taken on more personnel, employees earn more, and production is higher than at the time of abandonment.

Though unique circumstances surround each case, the dominant pattern within recovered factories is the practice of direct democracy and direct action, with decisions made in a general assembly and each worker having a vote and a voice. Some are demanding to be recognized as co-operatives while others want state ownership, but all demand a say in what happens to the bankrupt businesses.

Perhaps the most crucial issue the movement has brought to light is that of legitimate ownership: What claims do workers have over factories and the machinery within them, and how does this challenge normative notions of private property? This takes on a particular relevance, since part of Menem’s neo-liberal policies was to heavily subsidize businesses such as those now “recovered” by the workers. In this way, the factories were built and run with public funds and on public land, leading workers and community members to consider themselves the subsidizers of the factories and the machines therein.

Though the government of Argentina gave many recovered businesses temporary two-year permits to function, these have all expired. The Federal Supreme Court of Argentina has ordered the eviction of workers, offering instead government-sponsored micro-enterprise projects for 150 pesos a week (roughly US$50). In the recovered factories, where all are paid equally, a worker may earn up to 800 pesos. The workers’ response has been to lobby the courts to recognize the workers’ administration as legitimate and legal. Within the present legal limbo, it is impossible for workers to secure bank loans for machinery repair or replacement costs. In defending the autonomous management of their workplaces, the workers are also petitioning the courts for a one-time government subsidy of US$5,000 per job to cover start-up costs.

The Case of FaSinPat

In Neuquen, the Zanon ceramic factory has been renamed FaSinPat by its workers, short for “Fabrica Sin Patrones” (“Factory Without Bosses”). It is the best-known and most politicized of all the recovered factories, producing without an owner or boss since March 2002. The Zanon family, who gave Italian names to the tiles they sold, had never paid taxes, had exploited workers and had stolen land and raw resources from the region’s indigenous Mapuche community. Under the management of the Zanon family, the factory had between 25 and 30 serious occupational accidents per month and one fatality per year.

Since the workers recovered the factory, working relationships have been reinvented; elected committees oversee the running of the plant and all decisions are made in assembly on general consensus, everyone has the right to be heard, every worker has a vote, all workers are paid equally, and there have been no occupational health and safety crises. There have been 170 new hires as of April 2005, production is higher than when the Zanon family locked out the workers, and the tiles now have Mapuche names in honor of the factory’s neighbors and allies.

The workers keep the community informed and involved, and a space has been created within the factory for meetings, art exhibits, musical events and community gatherings. The FaSinPat workers have resisted five eviction attempts with the solidarity and help of the Mapuche, neighbors, students, workers from the piquetero movement, and even the prisoners of the nearby Prison #11–who shared their food rations with workers when they initially recovered the factory. They have also received support from the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo–the organization of mothers and grandmothers of some of the 35,000 students, workers, union organizers and activists who disappeared during the “Dirty War” waged by the military dictatorship of 1976-1983, who have marched in Buenos Aires’ central Plaza de Mayo since 1977, demanding to know the fates of their loved ones.

Each eviction attempt has been ordered by the Federal Supreme Court and, each time, the police have been met by thousands of people defending the workers. But the eviction attempts have become increasingly violent. On March 4, a worker was kidnapped and tortured in a green Ford Falcon–the same make and model that security operatives used during the Dirty War.

For one week this past April, bids were accepted on the factory in a court-ordered process for paying back the debt as an alternative to declaring the company bankrupt. Under Argentina’s new bankruptcy law such “cram-down” bidding makes it easier for private (often foreign) companies to take over Argentine assets. When the week passed and nobody had placed a bid, the workers at FaSinPat considered it a step forward in their struggle to be legally recognized as a cooperative. But the judge who announced the cram down suddenly made an exception, accepting a bid that came in after the deadline. The bid came from a company named Ocabamba SA. Its owners are the son and wife of Luis Zanon.

Moving Forward

Some recovered factory workers have adopted the cry, “Stop Asking.” They have shown what happens when we stop asking and start doing. Their creativity has redefined their social and political relation to Argentina and the world, deconstructed hierarchical forms of production and social organization and challenged norms of legitimate ownership and private property–all through their refusal to allow their workplace to be taken from them. Their positive act of working has had the power to disrupt (neo-liberal) business as usual. Their experimental alternative to profit-driven production in their laboratory of democracy holds out the hope of new economic relations across the globe.

Shortly after his election in 2003, President Kirchner was visited by IMF managing director Rodrigo Rato. During the visit Rato said to Kirchner, “At the IMF we have a problem called Argentina.” Kirchner replied, “I have a problem called 15 million poor people.” Perhaps now, what is needed is for President Kirchner to act on the human rights platform he ran on and recognize the solution that Argentina’s own workers have forged.

—-

Yeidy Rosa has a master’s degree in human rights with a specialty in Latin America. She is currently the administrative associate in the national office of the War Resisters League in New York City. This article was originally published in the June issue of Nonviolent Activist, the magazine of the War Resisters League, 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012, (212)228-0450, www.warresisters.org.

RESOURCES:

Obreros de Zanon: Zanon/FaSinPat workers website
http://www.obrerosdezanon.org/

Grassroots Toolkit for Action on supporting the workers of Zanon/FaSinPat http://www.hellocoolworld.com/thetake/grassroots/action/urgent/

Online petition for the Zanon/FaSinPat workers
http://www.petitiononline.com/zanon/petition.html

#. 111. July 2005

THE RE-OCCUPATION OF HAITI
Lawlessness Brings Call for New U.S. Military Role
by Kody Emmanuel

THE NEW RESISTANCE IN ARGENTINA
Workers Defend “Recovered Factories”
by Yeidy Rosa

LEBANON’S POST-ELECTORAL CROSSROADS
Michel Aoun and the Sectarian Shadow
by Bilal El-Amine with David Bloom

IRAQ: MEMOGATE AND THE COMFORTS OF VINDICATION
Yeah, Bush Lied–So What Do We Do About It?
by Bill Weinberg

BATTLEGROUND BROOKLYN
Muslims Still Targeted for Police, FBI Harassment
by Thomas Tracy and Stephen Witt

From Weekly News Update on the Americas:

BOLIVIA: PRESIDENT OUSTED AGAIN
PERU: COCALEROS CLASH WITH COPS
ECUADOR: HUAORANI BLOCK OIL DRILLING
COLOMBIA: PARAMILITARY AMNESTY PASSES
VENEZUELA: PARAMILITARY TERROR EMERGES
CENTRAL AMERICA: CAFTA ENDGAME LOOMS

Book Review:
PARANOIA ON ROUTE 66
An Algerian Immigrant’s Kafkaesque Journey in Post-9-11 America

SPECIAL MESSAGE TO OUR READERS

“The History of the present King [George] is a history of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States… He has erected a Multitude of new Offices, and sent hither Swarms of Officers to harrass our People, and eat out their Substance… He has affected to render the Military independent of, and superior to the Civil Power. He has combined with others to subject us to a Jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, and unacknowledged by our Laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended legislation: For quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us; For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from Punishment for any Murders which they should commit… For depriving us in many cases, of the Benefits of Trial by Jury… For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences… He has plundered our Seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our Towns, and destroyed the Lives of our People… In every stage of these Oppressions we have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble Terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated Injury. A Prince, whose Character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the Ruler of a free People.”

–Declaration of Independence, Philadelphia, July 4, 1776

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Our fund-raising drive has been forced to go into extra innings due to considerably underwhelming results. We really want to know that our readers care about what we do, so please—either send something, or answer the exit poll or otherwise send us feedback. To provide some incentive, and apropos of our story this issue on the politics of the Srebrenica massacre ten years later, we are offering free to anyone who sends ten dollars or more a copy of War at the Crossroads: An Historical Guide Through the Balkan Labyrinth by Bill Weinberg and Dorie Wilsnack. Printed in pamphlet form with maps and drawings by the great Belgrade political cartoonist Miro Stefanovic, this primer covers the history of the once-and-future Yugoslavia from before the Roman Empire to the Kosovo crisis and NATO intervention of 1999—all in concise, easy-to-read form. This was a limited-run edition, and a sure-shot for collector’s itemhood. Don’t miss this great opportunity!

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July 10, 2005

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PARANOIA ON ROUTE 66

An Algerian Immigrant’s Kafkaesque Journey in Post-9-11 America

by Bill Weinberg

Still Moments
A Story About Faded Dreams & Forbidden Pictures
Zighen Aym
ZAWP, POB 411, Mossville, IL 61552-411

Of all the nightmares which have befallen immigrants from the Islamic world since the September 11 attacks, those related in this short self-published memoir, Still Moments, are far from the most egregious. But the nearly surreal ironies of this story, and the straightforward, almost innocent way it is told, make it a powerful testament to how freedom is contracting as our leaders wage wars in the name of expanding freedom. As if synchronicity had conspired to drive home this point, the critical incident on which the tale turns takes place on Route 66, fabled in song (Chuck Berry) and story (Jack Kerouac) as a symbol of the uniquely American freedom of the Open Road.

The (probably pseudonymous) protagonist, Zighen Aym, who tells his tale in the first person, is a middle-class professional working as a mechanical engineer for an unnamed company in central Illinois. He is a husband and father, a naturalized US citizen, and had been in the country seven years at the time of the 9-11 disaster. He was the archetype of the “good” immigrant who really believed that the USA represents freedom. He had left his native Algeria to escape violence and repression, which was endemic there in the 1990s, and doubly targeted at members of his own people, the Berber ethnic minority.

News from home never failed to confirm the wisdom of his decision to leave. In May 1997, his young sister-in-law was killed when a bomb exploded at her high school in Algiers. But some of the salient incidents which prompted Aym to leave his homeland would take on an ironic significance as he was “profiled” as a potential terrorist by the FBI for the most unassuming acts after 9-11.

The first came in 1986, when he was vacationing with a friend at the Mediterranean port of Bejaia. An avid photographer, he began taking pictures of the port below from a scenic vista point. This activity came to the attention of a police officer. Aym was detained at the local police station, interrogated about his purposes in photographing the harbor, and given a verbal drumming about the threat of espionage and subversion from the imperialist powers. This degree of paranoia over something as innocent as photography helped inform his decision to leave the country years later.

Another concerned the food shortages which were chronic, despite the oil boom of the 1980s. After waiting in a long line for hours to triumphantly return home with ten pounds of garbanzo beans and four pounds of butter, he began to realize how his standards for material security had eroded.

Early one morning in October 2002, Aym, now living happily in Illinois, was driving along Route 66 with his camera, his eye drawn by images that could make for interesting shots, unaware of how his comfortable world was about to change. First he stops to shoot dew-glistening spider webs interlacing between corn stalks in a farmer’s field. Then—fatefully—he notices a pair of railroad tracks, “their flat surfaces reflecting sunlight and shining like two silver lines drawn into the horizon.” His interest is purely aesthetic, not at all technical: “The scene of converging rail tracks and obsolete telephone poles was a harmonious display of increasing distance and decreasing height and span; a natural 3-D visual agreement.” He again stops the car and starts clicking.

As at the port at Bejaia 15 years earlier, this activity draws the attention of the local constabulary. A state trooper pulls up, questions him about what he is doing and where he is from, asks for ID, runs a check. Aym is finally allowed to go. Weeks later, the FBI issues an alert warning of terrorist attacks on Amtrak.

In January 2003, Aym receives a call at his home from the FBI. They request an interview to discuss his “love of trains.” (The assumption seems to be he is either a terrorist or a train-spotting geek.) “I don’t love trains,” he answers. He is aware he can refuse the interview, but also aware that this would only invite an FBI visit at his workplace, which would be a public embarrassment and could even jeopardize his job. He realizes his official rights are somewhat irrelevant. He agrees to the interview.

“Even if the FBI suspects me of being a terrorist, it is better to be in America than Algeria,” he jokes to his worried wife. “Here, at least I can buy garbanzo beans at any time of the day and night.”

In the following days, as he frets over his impending interview, contacts the ACLU and is referred to a lawyer, he contemplates how freedom is diminishing in both his native and adoptive countries—and for related reasons. In the ’90s, as the Algerian regime turned post-socialist and came to be dominated by a “mafia” of corrupt generals, the new populist mantle was assumed by the Islamic fundamentalists. Their electoral victory in 1992 only prompted the regime to annul the elections and declare military rule—which in turn prompted the Islamists to take up arms, precipitating nearly ten years of civil war in which 200,000 Algerians lost their lives. And neither side—the military mafia or the Islamist guerillas—saw the Berbers as anything other than a dangerous threat to national unity.

The resurgence of a Berber movement for human and cultural rights came, unfortunately, just as 9-11 was about to transform the political landscape for the worse. On June 14, 2001, over 1 million Berbers marched in Algiers to protest the killing of an unarmed youth by the police in Kabylia, the Berber region. Ten were killed as police attacked the protesters. The White House said nothing. On July 12, 2001, Algeria’s President Abdelaziz Bouteflika was at the White House for an official visit; a small group of Berber protesters stood outside with a banner reading “ALGERIAN PRESIDENT AND GENERALS TO THE HAGUE.” A few weeks later, Algeria awarded a $700 million contract to Halliburton subsidiary KBR to help modernize the country’s oil industry. After 9-11, the US would step up arms sales and military-intelligence cooperation with the Algerian regime, and human and minority rights in Algeria would become more of an inconvenience than ever for Algiers and Washington alike.

So Aym’s people face persecution in his homeland precisely because they are not Arab, Algeria’s dominant ethnicity. And the Islamists and government are seen as equal threats to Berber freedom and identity. Yet in Illinois, he is profiled as an Arab/Islamic terrorist.

Aym’s interview with the FBI takes place at a federal building in a Bloomington suburb named (more irony) Normal. Once ensconced in the office of the interrogating agent, he offers to do a Google search of his own name, which would turn up freelance work confirming that he is, in fact, a photographer. The agent declines, instead asking a barrage of banal questions: “Do you know anyone, associates or friends, who may be working for any terrorist government or terrorist organization?” “Are you a terrorist or linked to a terrorist organization?”

Writes Aym: “I had a feeling of deja vu: I saw the Algerian policeman at the police station in 1986. The agent’s blank face and small but muscular body made him an extension of the repressive system. How interesting to see that repression and love of power easily cross cultural, national, and religious boundaries!”

After answering a requisite “no” to the agent’s questions, he is free to leave—until, in one final flourish of paranoid sleuthwork, the agent notices the decal on Aym’s notepad and demands he explain it. It reads “UBL,” for Ultimate Band List, a music e-store. The agent accepts this explanation. Aym is confused until his lawyer, who was allowed to be present for the interview, says to the agent, “I see that you have the picture of UBL here.” He indicates a WANTED poster for Usama bin Laden—using the FBI’s unorthodox spelling of the first name.

“I was stunned when I realized how naive I was,” Aym writes. “Both my lawyer and the agent had made the link between my UBL decal and Usama Bin Laden. My lawyer used the initials UBL as if he purposely wanted to expose my naivete to me.”

The interview had lasted an hour, but of course felt like an eternity. Upon leaving, Aym considers “heading north to get my kicks on Route 66 one more time. Instead, I drove home.”

The story is told in a brief 65 pages, and does often come across as slightly naive. But a lot of meaning is packed into this slim volume—about lost innocence, about the paradoxes of identity, and about the diminishing prospects for human freedom in both the United States of America and on planet Earth generally in the long aftermath of September 11.

RESOURCES

Zighen Aym’s homepage
http://www.geocities.com/zighenaym

——————-

Special to WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, July 10, 2005
Reprinting permissible with attribution

http://WW4Report.com

CENTRAL AMERICA: CAFTA ENDGAME LOOMS

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

DR-CAFTA SHOWDOWN NEARS

On June 30 the US Senate voted 54-45 to approve the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA), a pact largely eliminating tariffs on about $32 billion in annual trade between Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and the US. Also on June 30, the House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee voted 30-11 to send the measure to the full House for a vote. The House debate will probably start on July 11, when Congress returns from its Independence Day recess.

DR-CAFTA, which is strongly backed by the administration of US president George W. Bush, is expected to face serious opposition in the House, especially from Democrats. DR-CAFTA opponents are urging activists to communicate with their representatives during the recess and pressure them to vote against it. The Stop CAFTA Coalition has set up a website (www.stopcafta.org) with talking points and additional background. So far only the legislatures of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras have approved the measure. (Radio Mundo Real, July 1; NYT, July 1; Campaign for Labor Rights Action Alert, June 30)

On June 29, the day before the Senate vote, the Associated Press wire service revealed that for more than a year the US Labor Department suppressed studies it had commissioned from the International Labor Rights Fund on labor conditions in Central American countries. “In practice,” one study said, “labor laws on the books in Central America are not sufficient to deter employers from violations, as actual sanctions for violations of the law are weak or nonexistent.” The Bush administration claims Central America has made progress on working conditions, and is using this as an argument in favor of DR-CAFTA. The Labor Department, which calls the studies “unsubstantiated” and “biased,” initially barred the contractor from distributing them and ordered it to remove them from its website. Under a new agreement, the International Labor Rights Fund can now distribute the studies, but it will not receive $250,000 of the $937,000 it was to be paid for the work. (Miami Herald, June 30 from AP; NYT, July 1)

In the middle of June former Wal-Mart Stores executive James Lynn filed a suit in Arkansas against the company charging that he was fired in 2002 “for truthfully reporting the abysmal working conditions in Central American factories utilized by Wal-Mart and for refusing to comply with Wal-Mart’s demand that he certify the factories in order to get Wal-Mart’s goods to market.” Wal-Mart says it fired Lynn for “having inappropriate contact with a woman who directly reported to him,” but it acknowledges it spied on him. Wal-Mart says several factories that Lynn reported on subsequently corrected their problems. But Charles Kernaghan of the New York-based National Labor Committee told the New York Times that workers at one of the factories, located in Honduras, reported continuing problems as recently as April of this year. (NYT, July 1)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 3

GUATEMALA: UNION OFFICE RAIDED

Unknown persons raided the Union of Education Workers of Guatemala (STEG) office in Guatemala City some time between the evening of June 25 and the morning of June 27. The intruders stole a computer with extensive information on the National Assembly of Teachers’ programs and history; destroyed two other computers; spilled red paint on all the files and destroyed other papers; and painted red crosses on walls and desks. A desk drawer containing cash was left open, but the money was not stolen.

Unidentified vehicles began to park outside STEG’s office in March after the union joined other groups in demonstrating against DR-CAFTA. STEG has also opposed the Law of Concessions, a measure for the privatization of public resources, and has protested government corruption and human rights abuses. Social organizations, especially those that oppose DF-CAFTA, have been subject to a large number of break-ins this year. The Guatemala Human Rights Commission-USA (GHRC-USA) is asking for appeals to Guatemalan president Oscar Berger Perdomo (fax +502-2-251-2218, presidente@scspr.gob.gt) and Attorney General Juan Luis Florido (fax +502 251 2218) to insure the safety of STEG members and to carry out a thorough investigation of the break-in. (GHRC-USA Urgent Action 6/28/05; Guatemala Hoy, June 30)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 3

HONDURAS: COMMUNITY LEADER SHOT

On June 5, paramilitaries stabbed and wounded Feliciano Pineda, a leader of the Montana Verde community in Gracias municipality, Lempira department in western Honduras. Pineda was left in critical condition with stab wounds to his face, neck, back, sides and hands, and a blow to his spine. Community members took Pineda to a hospital in Tegucigalpa, but despite his precarious state of health, agents from the General Department of Criminal Investigation (DGIC) transferred him in chains to the regional jail in Gracias. (Rights Action, June 10; Consejo Civico de Organizaciones Populares e Indigenas de Honduras-COPINH Urgent Alert, June 10/) The Civic Council of Grassroots and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) points out that the DGIC is run by Napoleon Nazar, who in the 1980s belonged to an army death squad linked to the disappearance of more than 150 activists. (Prensa Latina, June 10)

The paramilitaries who shot Pineda have been identified by eyewitnesses as Delfino Reyes, Santos Reyes, Pablo Reyes and Cecilio Reyes, some of whom were involved in the Jan. 8, 2003, violent arrest and subsequent torture of Montana Verde Lenca indigenous council members Leonardo and Marcelino Miranda, as well as in legal proceedings as false witnesses against Montana Verde community leaders. The Miranda brothers remain jailed in Gracias since their arrest. (RA, June 10; COPINH Urgent Alert, June 10)

The four paramilitaries were briefly detained but were then granted conditional freedom by Gracias judge Atiliano Vasquez. Vasquez previously served as the private accusing lawyer in two politically motivated cases against Montana Verde community leaders; after becoming a judge, he was put in charge of all the Montana Verde cases and has consistently issued flawed rulings against community members. (RA, June 10)

COPINH is calling for messages of protest to President Ricardo Maduro (fax #504-221-4552, 221-4545, 221-4647); Supreme Court president Vilma Morales (504-233-8089, 234-2367); and Congress president Porfirio Lobo Sosa (504-238-6048, 222-3471, 237-0663). Rights Action also suggests contacting US ambassador to Honduras Larry Palmer (fax #504-236-9037); Honduran ambassador to the US Mario Miguel Canahuati (fax #202-966-9751, embassy@hondurasemb.org); and Human Rights Commissioner Ramon Custodio Lopez (fax #504-232-6894, custodiolopez@conadeh.hn); with copies to COPINH at fax 504-783-0817, copinhonduras@yahoo.es.

On June 8, police and local judicial authorities carried out a violent eviction of the Lenca indigenous community of Golondrinas, in Marcala municipality, La Paz department. Police beat up and arrested dozens of community members, stole work tools and other property and bulldozed the entire community’s homes and property to the ground. The land had been abandoned for 25 years when the community began squatting it in May 2004, and although the National Agrarian Institute (INA) ruled that the lands belonged to the municipality of Marcala, they have now been transferred to a private construction company, ASOTRAMM. (RA, June 10; PL, June 10; Community Member’s Eyewitness Report posted on indigena.nodo50.org, June 15)

In other news, some 500 members of the gay and lesbian community of San Pedro Sula marched on June 4, demanding respect for their rights. (La Prensa, Honduras, June 5)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, June 19

EL SALVADOR: FIRED WORKERS ON HUNGER STRIKE

Eight former employees of the Salvadoran Interior Ministry began a liquids-only hunger strike outside the Metropolitan Cathedral in San Salvador on May 26 to demand severance pay. They were among 106 employees dismissed in December 2004 and denied severance pay because they worked on an annual contract and were not covered under laws against unjustified dismissal. Many had worked for the Salvadoran government for more than 20 years.

On June 23, some of the hunger strikers moved to the Legislative Assembly and occupied the chamber, causing the session to be suspended. William Huezo, president of the General Association of Public and Municipal Employees (AGEPYM), said the hunger strikers were in “critical health,” but he hoped Deputy Archbishop Gregorio Rosa Chavez would mediate so that they could win the payment of one month’s wages for each year they worked. (La Nacion, Costa Rica, June 19 from ACAN-EFE; El Diario de Hoy, San Salvador, June 24)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, June 26

PANAMA: SOCIAL SECURITY REFORM HALTED

Panama’s grassroots movements won a victory on June 27 in their fight against changes to the country’s Social Security Agency (CSS) when President Martin Torrijos and his council of ministers formally asked the National Assembly to approve a bill suspending the reform package for 90 days. The National Front for the Defense of Social Security (FRENADESSO)–representing thousands of construction workers, teachers, doctors and CSS workers, among other sectors–responded by immediately calling off the strike it began on May 27. The National Assembly unanimously approved the 90-day suspension of the CSS reforms on June 30, and Torrijos signed the suspension into law on July 1, exactly a month after he signed the bill enacting the reforms.

FRENADESSO had set suspension of the reforms as a condition for beginning a dialogue with the government over the measure’s more than 180 articles. The talks began on June 28, although FRENADESSO chose not to join them until the suspension of the reforms is officially enacted. Participants in the dialogue include government representatives, business associations, retiree organizations, unions and professional guilds. The Council of Rectors of Panama’s public and private universities is facilitating, with the Panama Bishop’s Conference and the National Ecumenical Committee acting as observers. The talks are scheduled to conclude on Aug. 29. (El Nuevo Herald, Miami, June 28 from AP; EFE, June 30, July 1)

Weekly News Update in the Americas, July 3

Some 6,000 Panamanians (or 2,500 to 3,000, according to police) marched on June 16 in Panama City to demand the repeal of reforms to the Social Security Agency (CSS). During the march, police used tear gas to break up a roadblock set up by students, workers and CSS employees along the trans-isthmus road. Marches also took place in the cities of Colon and David. (EFE, June 16)

Weekly News Update in the Americas, June 19

On June 4, after a six-hour meeting by strike leaders, FRENADESSO urged Panamanians to reject a planned referendum on the broadening of the Panama Canal, free trade agreements and the Puebla-Panama Plan. (La Prensa, Panama, June 5)

Weekly News Update in the Americas, June 5

Weekly News Update on the Americas
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VENEZUELA: PARAMILITARY TERROR EMERGES

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

On June 23, several armed assailants firing from a pickup truck shot and wounded Venezuelan campesino leader Braulio Alvarez in the community of Sabana de Parra, Pena municipality, Yaracuy state. Alvarez is a leader of the Ezequiel Zamora National Campesino Front (FNCEZ); he also serves as a deputy to the Yaracuy State Legislative Council (CLEY) and as a regional leader of the National Tactical Command of the Fifth Republic Movement (MVR) led by President Hugo Chavez Frias. He was shot as he was driving home from a campesino meeting in Copa Redonda, Paez municipality, in Yaracuy. Alvarez was hit by two bullets, in the shoulder and leg; he was reported to be in stable condition after undergoing surgery, and was being transferred to Caracas for further medical treatment.

The FNCEZ is leading the struggle for agrarian reform in Venezuela, seeking to speed up distribution of unused lands to landless campesinos under the Land Law. Alvarez’s family and fellow campesino leaders believe the attack was a murder attempt. A few months ago landholder Vicente Lecuna said publicly that the land problems in Yaracuy state could be resolved with a shot to Alvarez’s head. More than 100 campesinos have been murdered since 2001, according to the FNCEZ, mostly by professional killers hired by large landowners. (Aporrea.org News, June 24; Radio Nacional de Venezuela, June 24; Prensa Latina, June 24) FCNEZ leader Luis Enrique Perez was murdered in Barinas state on March 19 or 20.

On May 4, hired killers shot to death Jose Luis Paz and his son-in-law, Julio Fernandez at their squatted homes in El Valle sector of the municipality of Machiques de Perija, Zulia state. The victims were indigenous campesinos, members of El Chamin agricultural cooperative who took over abandoned land over a year ago and began subsistence farming. The killers also fired at a neighbor, Favio Alvear, wounding him in the leg. Alvear said local ranchers had been threatening the squatters for some time. Dozens of campesinos protested the killings; the community fears more attacks. (Colombia Indymedia, May 6)

The National Land Institute (INTI) reports that the Venezuelan government has designated six large estates to be expropriated for redistribution to campesinos under the Land Law. The estates, totalling 284,267 hectares, are located in the states of Apure, Barinas, Bolivar and Zulia. (La Jornada, Mexico, June 21 from AFP)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, June 26

Weekly News Update on the Americas
http://home.earthlink.net/~nicadlw/wnuhome.html

ECUADOR: HUAORANI BLOCK OIL DRILLING

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

The Government Council of the Huaorani Nationality of the Ecuadoran Amazon (ONHAE) announced on July 1 that it will seek to block the Brazilian oil company Petrobras from entering the Yasuni National Park in northeastern Ecuador. Petrobras plans to carry out infrastructure projects this year in Block 31 of the protected park, in order to begin oil drilling there in 2006. ONHAE coordinator Ramon Huani said that the Huaorani have broken off relations with Petrobras and will not abide by an accord which the previous Huaorani leadership signed with the company last January, under which Petrobras would have spent $200,000 ayear for five years on development and social assistance projects. ONHAE said Petrobras didn’t fulfill its commitments, but the decision to rescind the agreement came mainly in response to pressure from the Huaorani base communities, particularly women. About 3,000 Huaorani live in the Ecuadoran Amazon, mostly in the provinces of Orellana, Napo and Pastaza. Most of the Yasuni National Park is in Orellana.

Alicia Cahuiya, president of the Waorani Women’s Association (AMWAE), said her organization opposes oil exploration in the Yasuni National Park, and that Huaorani women want to keep their territory–and their subsistence farmland–free of contamination for their children. Cahuiya noted that oil companies have already polluted many rivers in the Amazon region, and no one is doing anything to clean them up. Cahuiya criticized the previous Huaorani government council for signing the accord with Petrobras without consulting the communities. AMWAE also opposes the planned construction by Petrobras of a highway along the Napo river; Cahuiya said it would bring “deforestation, disappearance of the forest animals and the introduction of bad western customs such as alcoholism and prostitution.” (El Comercio, Quito, July 1; Notimex, July 1; AFP, July 1)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 3

Weekly News Update on the Americas
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PERU: COCALEROS CLASH WITH COPS

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

On May 29 in Tocache province, in the Huallaga valley of San Martin in north central Peru, at least 3,500 campesino coca growers (cocaleros) armed with sticks surrounded a group of 230 police agents charged with carrying out coca leaf eradication operations. According to police, the resulting clash left 17 agents hurt–one by a bullet, the rest by beatings. Twenty cocaleros were injured; Tocache mayor Nancy Zagerra said three of them are in serious condition with bullet wounds. (La Jornada, Mexico, May 31, from DPA)

The 230 anti-drug police agents had arrived in the area on May 26, along with 50 workers from the Control and Reduction of Coca Crops in the Alto Huallaga (CORAH) project. On May 28, the anti-drug forces set up camp in the village of 5 de Diciembre, where according to cocalero leader Nancy Obregon they forced the campesinos from their homes and destroyed their crops, even after the campesinos showed them documents from the state-run National Coca Company (ENACO) demonstrating that the crops were legal. “They said those [documents] were no good and they threw everyone out. The people have had to sleep outside,” said Obregon. Outraged at the incident, Obregon organized nearly 4,000 cocaleros to confront the agents at their camp the next day. (La Republica, Lima, May 30)

On May 31 a representative of the Office of the Defender of the People, Manlio Alvarez Soto, traveled to Tocache from Tingo Maria, in neighboring Huanuco region, to meet with the cocaleros and gather information about the conflict. Alvarez also visited two of the wounded cocaleros in the Tingo Maria hospital, where they were taken for treatment. (LR, June 1) On June 3, some 6,000 cocaleros from Monzon and Alto Huallaga marched in Tingo Maria in support of the Tocache cocaleros. (LR, June 4) Obregon said the cocaleros will start an open-ended strike on June 27. (LR, May 30)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, June 5

Weekly News Update on the Americas
http://home.earthlink.net/~nicadlw/wnuhome.html