Syndicated Content

HYDRO-COLONIALISM ADVANCES IN CANADA’S FAR NORTH

Cree Nation Divided Over James Bay Mega-Project

by Bill Weinberg, Indian Country Today

Hydro-Quebec, the provincial utility which is a major energy exporter to the Northeast US, has commenced construction on a new mega-project on Cree lands of the far north James Bay region. The project, which would divert the waters of the Rupert River, has divided the Cree nation. The last chief of the Cree Grand Council, Ted Moses, signed on to the project and aggressively pushed it, but a new and more critical administration has since taken office in Cree country. The chiefs of the three communities to be directly affected by the water diversion are in active opposition.

“People aren’t aware of how it will impact us and our way of life,” says Robert Weistche, chief of Waskaganish, one of the three dissenting communities. “We would lose the majority of the river, because we live at the mouth, at the estuary. In light of global warming, one year there might not be any water at all.”

The project consists of a series of dams, tunnels and canals on the Rupert River, diverting 70% of the flow a hundred miles north into the system of hydro-dams already built in the Eastmain River watershed. The Rupert River diversion is slated to add 888 megawatts of power, flooding 600 square kilometers of traditional Cree lands. New roads, power lines, temporary cities, and two new power stations are to be built in the remote region of boreal forest. The deal which approved the project also includes rights to timber and mineral exploitation in the region.

Canada’s federal authorities approved the project in December after completion of an impact statement by the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency. But two federal commissioners disagreed with the assessment’s methodology for evaluating methyl mercury contamination in the river. A Sierra Club study also maintains that the impact statement underestimates the amount of mercury that will be released by the new project.

“We depend a lot on the fish, and we’re very concerned about the methyl mercury,” says Chief Weistche.

Mercury contamination was a disastrous result of the so-called “James Bay I” mega-project, which saw construction of a series of dams on La Grande and Eastmain rivers in the 1970s, flooding 11,000 square kilometers. Most of the Eastmain River was then diverted into La Grande’s watershed. James Bay I is already considered the world’s largest hydroelectric complex. But Hydro-Quebec has eventual plans to dam every river flowing into James Bay, a southern extension of Hudson Bay.

In addition to flooding Cree hunting grounds, the James Bay I project poisoned Cree waters, with the increased pressure of the floodplains leaching mercury from the soil. The Cree were barred from consuming fish from the rivers, further eroding their self-sufficiency.

Waskaganish and fellow dissident community Nemska are both along the Rupert River. The third dissenting community is Chisasibi, along La Grande River, downstream of the dams. Many residents there say James Bay I has changed local climate conditions. Chisasibi’s Chief Abraham Rupert, reached by telephone at his office, says: “This is March. All the rivers should be frozen. But I look out my window now they aren’t. The dams increase velocity and turbulence, and this prevents freezing. In the cold months of the year, January and February, we’re lucky if it freezes over for a few weeks now. With this new diversion, the river probably won’t freeze at all.”

Rupert says the failure of the rivers to freeze means more moisture in air during the harsh winters, affecting community health.

But Rupert says the impacts ripple far beyond the river banks. “The dams have had a great impact on the James Bay coast,” he says. “In the fall we used to have thousands of thousands of Canadian geese coming through. The eel grass they fed off grew in abundance along the coast. Now there’s none at all. It took around 20 years for that to happen after the La Grande project.”

Rupert says the Canadian and brant geese have disappeared with the eel grass, and points out that his community has traditionally relied on them for food. Rupert attributes the eel grass decline to increased sediment, caused in turn by the hydro dams causing fluctuating water levels.

Chief Weistche acknowledges that the Cree-Quebec agreement permitting the Rupert River project “bars chiefs speaking against the signed deal. But our communities voted against it, and we have a responsibility to represent our people.”

In early 2002, the Cree Grand Council held a community-by-community referendum approving the project. Of the nine Cree communities, only Chisasibi voted “no.” But the impact study had not then been completed, and critics say the Cree had voted without knowing the project’s full impact.

Under the deal, the Cree will receive $70 million per year for the next 40 years, plus a share in logging and mineral rights for the region.

The agreement—signed February 7, 2002 in Waskaganish, and dubbed Paix des Braves (Peace of the Brave)—stipulates that the Rupert diversion will not be allowed without the full support of local communities. Waskagnish, Chisasibi and Nemaska held their own vote in November 2006, which defeated the project by some 80 percent.

Says Chief Weistche: “This question of acceptability is still up in the air, because three communities are opposed to the project. Yet things are going ahead as planned. The provincial government takes the position that the Cree signed the deal. But people were told, ‘You’re not agreeing to diversion, just to the process, we’ll come back to you after the environmental review.’ That never happened. It was done very swiftly.”

Conceived as an improved successor to the 1975 James Bay Agreement which approved James Bay I after decades of litigation, the 50-year Paix des Braves pact allows for joint jurisdiction between the Quebec government and Cree in the seven municipalities of the James Bay region. Upon its signing, Cree Grand Chief Moses declared: “Quebec becomes a leader in the application of the principles recognized by the United Nations in regards of aboriginal development. Quebec will be able to show that the respect of aboriginals is compatible with her national interest. The federal government should inspire itself with this agreement in its negotiations with Natives across Canada.”

New Grand Chief Matthew Mukash, who took office in 2006, is proposing the development of wind power on Cree land instead of the Rupert diversion, which is slated to actually take place in the summer or fall of 2008.

Weistche supports this proposal. “There are alternatives,” he says. “It’s been estimated we have the potential to generate 100 thousand megawatts from wind power in Cree country.”

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper supports the Rupert River project, and Quebec’s Premier Jean Charest hails the Rupert diversion as the “biggest project of the decade.” However, Quebec, like the Cree Grand Council, has changed government since the Paix des Braves agreement. The pact was negotiated by Premier Bernard Landry of the separatist Parti Québécois.

In this year’s March 27 provincial elections, the PQ came in third place after Charest’s Liberals and the upstart conservative populist Action Democratique. All three parties support the Rupert River project, and all three predicate Quebec’s economic future on continued exports of James Bay hydro-power. But their divergent views on Quebec’s political future have implications for Cree country.

In 1995, the then-ruling PQ held a provincial referendum on secession from Canada, which was narrowly defeated. Just before the 1995 referendum, the Cree held a plebiscite of their own—and overwhelmingly voted to stick with Canada.

It is Canadian federal courts which have upheld the right of the Cree to be consulted in provincial development plans for their land—starting with the key ruling over James Bay I in 1973. Even though it was overturned on appeal, the ruling for the Cree’s aboriginal title that forced Quebec to the table and resulted in the James Bay Agreement. Quebec secession from Ottawa would certainly mean Cree secession from Quebec, and carries the potential for a showdown over the James Bay region.

Whether a separatist Quebec would have the right to take Cree country with it is open to question. The name for the Rupert River agreement was inspired by the 1701 Great Peace of Montreal, also known as “La Paix des Braves,” which ended a century of war between the French-allied Algonquins and the English-allied Iroquois. But the Cree, isolated in the far north, were not involved in this struggle, or a part of Quebec. The James Bay region was then known as Rupert’s Land, established in 1670 as a holding of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Its status as a part of Canada was not settled until Britain passed the Rupert’s Land Act in 1868, the year after Canadian independence. The region was not formally incorporated into Quebec until 1912.

Asked about their stance in the event that the PQ take power again and hold a new referendum, Chief Weistche and Chief Rupert both recall the experience of 1995. “We’d stick with Canada,” Rupert says.

Rupert warns that the in 2001, the Quebec National Assembly established a Municipality of Baie-James (MBJ) in 2001, for white settlers in the region. “The MBJ is expanding on to category 2 and category 3 lands,” Rupert charges. Category 2 lands are those put aside for the use of the Cree village centers, which are considered category 1. Category 3 are the wide expanses of public land between the communities, where the Cree have also traditionally trapped, fished and hunted. Rupert sees the MBJ as a strategy to set a precedent for eroding Cree land title, and notes that the Rupert River project will bring a flood of new settlers into the region.

In Nunavut, the self-governing Inuit homeland carved out of the Northwest Territories in 1999, leaders are also concerned that the Rupert River project to their south will impact their arctic domain, and say they should have been consulted. Nunavut legislator Peter Kattuk says traditional Inuit knowledge was not given enough weight in the federal study approving the Rupert River project. He told the CBC earlier this year that local Inuit have observed changes in ice conditions in Hudson Bay since the James Bay I project was built, which he attributes to disruption in the balance of fresh and salt water inflows.

Chief Rupert emphasizes that he supports development. “We have the technology and know-how to produce energy through wind power. But the cost of this river project is too much for Cree people to bear at this time.”

“They say this power from the north is clean and cheap,” says Chief Weistche. “Well, its not clean because it is impacting the Cree. When you start losing the rivers that we’ve been given the responsibility to take care of for future generations, its not right.

——

A shorter version of this story appeared in the April 24 issue of Indian Country Today http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096414898

RESOURCES:

Grand Council of the Crees
http://www.gcc.ca

Government of Nunavut
http://www.gov.nu.ca

Hydro-Quebec
http://www.hydroquebec.com

One of Canada’s Last Wild Rivers is to be Sacrificed
Sierra Club of Canada, Dec. 20, 2006
http://www.sierraclub.ca/national/media/item.shtml?x=1036

From our weblog:

Inuit petition on climate change rejected
WW4 REPORT, Dec. 18, 2006
/node/2922

Native nations protest US-Canada border restrictions
WW4 REPORT, Feb. 16, 2007
/node/3156

From our archive:

Alberta Indians resist NATO
WW4 REPORT, Dec. 9, 2002
/static/63.html#canada8

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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, June 1, 2007
Reprinting permissible with attribution

AFRICA’S INDIGENOUS PEOPLES

The Fight for Inclusion

by Gumisai Mutume, Africa Renewal

The San, the indigenous people of the Kalahari Desert in Botswana, won a major victory in December 2006, at the end of the longest and most expensive court proceeding in that country’s history. The High Court ruled that the state had wrongfully evicted them from a reserve four years earlier and that they could return home. Civil society activists around the world hailed the ruling as a historic precedent for the rights of indigenous people everywhere, especially in Africa, where many governments have been reluctant to recognize the concept of indigenous rights.

The Botswana case stemmed from the San’s eviction from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR), one of the world’s largest reserves, in 2002. In response to a class action suit filed by the San that same year, the court ruled that the government had acted “unconstitutionally” and “unlawfully.” According to Rupert Isaacson of the Indigenous Land Rights Fund, a San advocacy group, “The removals were accompanied by beatings and the destruction of water sources.”

The British colonial government created the reserve, which is 52,800 square kilometers—larger than Switzerland—during the days leading up to Botswana’s independence in 1966. Anthropologists maintained that the San had inhabited the area for at least 40,000 years, but that their numbers were declining at an alarming rate. The colonial administration deemed them to be “endangered‚” and established the CKGR as a refuge.

After independence, the new government in Botswana encouraged the San to move out of the park into state-assisted settlements that were within reach of modern services such as schools and clinics and where they could assimilate into modern society. But many San refused, preferring to remain in a natural habitat where they could continue to live as hunters and gatherers, as they had done for thousands of years. Finally, the government decided to evict 3,000 San from the reserve, setting off the legal action.

Despite the court settlement, the battle is not over. The court ruled that the 189 applicants in the case and their children may return to the reserve. Some activists, such as members of the First Peoples of the Kalahari, contend that the ruling should cover all 50,000 San in the country. But the government of Botswana maintains that other San who wish to return may do so only if they apply for and obtain permits from the state.

Who is Indigenous?

The case of the San in Botswana brings to the fore a delicate question in Africa: who is an indigenous person? Some communities claim indigenous status in Africa today on the grounds that their ancestors resisted the influence of the massive waves of migration of Bantu-speaking agro-pastoralists who migrated from western to southern Africa beginning around 1000 BC. While some were subsumed by those migrations, others maintained their distinct linguistic, cultural and social characteristics, largely as communities of hunters, gatherers and herders.

Later, Arab language and culture spread across northern and eastern Africa. And finally, a number of European countries colonized the continent, bringing their own influences. Those colonial governments often favored the dominant, food-producing populations they found in their new colonies and marginalized the “aboriginal” peoples, as some historians refer to the indigenous people that had settled on the land before the Bantu.

Most governments that came to power following independence have been reluctant to acknowledge claims to rights, especially political rights, on the basis that a particular community regards itself as indigenous. After all, government officials argue, all black Africans consider themselves indigenous to the continent.

Nigel Crawhall, director of the Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee (IPACC), says the argument for recognizing indigenous rights does not rest on historical precedence. Communities arising from the Bantu migrations, he acknowledges, are just as African as everyone else. “The claims of indigenous peoples need to be seen in the context of their systematic discrimination and marginalization” under contemporary political and economic conditions.

“It was colonialism that brought new economic and political structures that reinforced the power of agricultural peoples over herders and gatherers, and set down the rules of who had access to the state apparatus,” Crawhall explains. This meant that during colonial rule, agricultural peoples had easier—if still very limited—access to education, health care and other social services that were almost completely denied to indigenous communities. When colonialism ended, it was these educated elites that were able to take over the institutions of political and social power.

Bottom of the Hierarchy

At the bottom of the colonial hierarchy were nomadic hunters and gatherers. They often withdrew into less hospitable environments, such as deep forests and deserts. In the worst cases, as in colonial South Africa, recalls Crawhall, European settlers tried to virtually exterminate the San. “They were hunted on horseback, killed with diseases, families were destroyed and children were given to other people as servants,” he told Africa Renewal. Among Africa’s many indigenous peoples are the hunter-gatherer forest peoples (“pygmies”) of central Africa, nomadic pastoralists such as the Maasai and Samburu in East Africa, the San in Southern Africa and the Amazigh people (Berbers) of North Africa and the Sahel.

“We may not all agree on the definition of indigenous or the categorization of communities as indigenous,” notes Angela Khaminwa, a Nairobi-based expert on social inclusion policies. “Regardless of what label we place on ethnic communities that maintain traditional lifestyles and livelihoods, there is no doubt that many of these communities are vulnerable to labor and sexual exploitation.”

Many such groups are struggling with the encroachment of farming into their areas. Others are threatened by conservation policies intended to protect species of animals and plants, but that forbid local communities to hunt or gather. Their languages and ways of life are being eroded. “The hesitancy of governments to address the issue of internal difference full force may be due to a need to promote national cohesion,” says Khaminwa. Giving a community special protection, she adds, might be perceived as political favoritism.

The fears of African governments are not baseless. Insurgents and politicians have all too often dwelt on ethnic differences to mobilize support against their competitors. Claims by different ethnic communities over land and mineral rights, often justified on the basis of historical precedence, have frequently contributed to armed conflict.

“A Legitimate Call”

The UN estimates that there are about 370 million indigenous people in more than 70 countries around the world. They are among the most marginalized people in economic, social and cultural terms. Despite the challenges, the world’s indigenous people have scored notable achievements in their efforts to reclaim rights during the last decade, designated by the UN as the International Decade of the World’s Indigenous People (1995-2004). That period saw many changes in Africa, notes Crawhall. One of the most profound was “the rise of an organized civil society representing diverse indigenous peoples from one end of the continent to the other.”

These civil-society groups lobbied the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights, a continental body, to recognize that the concept of indigenous peoples is applicable in Africa. In 2003 the commission adopted a report of the commission’s Working Group on Indigenous Populations/Communities, which acknowledged that “certain marginalized groups are discriminated against in particular ways because of their particular culture, mode of production and marginalized position within the state…[a] form of discrimination that other groups within the state do not suffer from. The call of these marginalized groups to protection of their rights is a legitimate call to alleviate this particular form of discrimination.”

The adoption of the report, in theory, subscribed all 53 member governments of the commission to the aims of promoting indigenous rights. But in reality, the majority of countries continue to struggle with putting such concepts into practice, explains Lucy Mulenkei, director of the Indigenous Information Network in Kenya. While a number of African governments argue that recognizing indigenous rights will foster ethnic tensions, “we who are working among indigenous communities still say we want to have these people recognized in order to deal with issues of marginalization and so forth,” she told Africa Renewal.

Under pressure from organizations representing indigenous people, some countries have made significant progress, she notes. Recently, Burundi amended its constitution to guarantee representation in the national assembly to the indigenous Twa people, who live in several countries in Africa’s Great Lakes region. In neighboring Rwanda, the government is working with the main Twa organization to investigate war crimes perpetrated against them during the 1994 genocide, in which an estimated one third of all Twa in that country were killed.

Elsewhere in Africa, Cameroon recognizes “pygmies” and nomadic pastoralists as indigenous people. The government agreed to comply with policies to compensate and resettle indigenous people affected by the construction of the Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline, an initiative supported by private investors and the World Bank. Morocco lifted a ban on the teaching of the Amazigh (Berber) language in schools and has set up a national commission to formulate policies on indigenous language and culture.

Contentious Negotiations

The Decade of the World’s Indigenous People also helped activists focus their attention on the creation of a Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues at the UN and draft a declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples. The Permanent Forum, which held its first meeting in 2002, gathers annually at UN headquarters to give a voice to the world’s indigenous people at an intergovernmental level.

Representatives of indigenous people and the international community first began working on the declaration on the rights of indigenous people in 1985. The draft was completed in 1993 and has been under negotiation since then. On the International Day of the World’s Indigenous People in August 2006, then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan described it as the product of “many years of complex and at times contentious negotiations.” The declaration, he said, was “an instrument of historic significance for the advancement of the rights and dignity of the world’s indigenous peoples.”

The expected adoption of the declaration by the UN General Assembly in November of that year, Annan noted, would be a major achievement. But that was not to be. Namibia and other African countries, joined by Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US, blocked the adoption of the agreement.

The Namibian representative to the meeting explained that some of the declaration’s provisions ran counter to the national constitutions of a number of African countries. However, he added, the declaration was of such critical importance that it was only “fair and reasonable” to defer its adoption to allow more consultations.

Kenya’s representative said the declaration contained a number of contradictions. For instance, it talks of “self-determination” as if it were referring to people living under colonial rule. In his country, he said, all citizens enjoyed the right to self-determination. Another African delegate noted that the concept of self-determination was in direct contradiction to efforts to integrate indigenous people into the mainstream of society. The declaration was divisive, he argued, isolating groups and inciting them to establish their own institutions alongside existing central ones.

The General Assembly delayed the adoption of the declaration until its next session, in September 2007. The failure to approve the draft declaration surprised many observers because in June 2006, African and other states had adopted it at the UN Human Rights Council. “We feel very sad about the failure to adopt the declaration,” says Mulenkei, a member of Kenya’s indigenous Maasai community.

Mulenkei notes that many of the concerns that African countries are now bringing up have been debated for a long time, over two decades of negotiations. She believes the real reasons for blocking the resolution are political and economic. Many of the countries opposing the declaration fear that it would give indigenous people the authority to reclaim land and seek compensation for centuries of discrimination.

“All these years that the discussions on the draft declaration have been going on, we barely had African governments participating,” Mulenkei says. “And then at the last minute they come in and say no to the draft declaration. This takes us back many years.” But, she adds, it is now too late for governments to break the momentum. She foresees more progress on indigenous rights in the near future.

——

This story first appeared in the April issue of Africa Renewal, a United Nations publication
http://www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/afrec/vol21no1/211-indigenous-rights.html

Sidebar:

Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
/node/3987

RESOURCES:

Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee (IPACC)
http://www.ipacc.org.za

African Commission on Human and People’s Rights (ACHPR)
http://www.achpr.org/

Indigenous Information Network—Kenya
http://www.indigenous-info-kenya.org/

Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII)
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/

See also:

PRESIDENTS IN THE DOCK
An End to Africa’s Reign of Impunity?
by Michael Fleshman
WW4 REPORT, February 2007
/node/3111

ALGERIA’S AMNESTY AND THE KABYLIA QUESTION
Berber Boycott in Restive Region Signals Continued Struggle
by Zighen Aymi
WW4 REPORT, November 2005
/node/1235

EXXON, PENTAGON AND JIHAD TARGET CHAD
Sinister Convergence in New Sahel Terror War Front
by Wynde Priddy
WW4 REPORT, April 2004
/static/chad.html

From our weblog:

Kalahari Bushmen win land battle
WW4 REPORT, Dec. 14, 2006
/node/2911

Mexco votes for UN indigenous rights declaration
WW4 REPORT, Sept. 25, 2006
/node/2542

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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, June 1, 2007
Reprinting permissible with attribution

ALGERIA: DEMOCRACY CRUMBLING?

Islamist Violence and State Legitimacy

by Kanishk Tharoor, Madrid11.net

In recent months, the specter of Islamist violence has grown across North Africa. After enduring a brutal decade-long civil war, Algeria has seen Salafist radicals regrouping under the ominous banner of “al-Qaeda in the Maghreb” (AQMI). The emergence of AQMI heralded fears of the internationalization of political violence in the region, fueled in large part by the presence of numerous North Africans in the battlefields of Iraq. In Algeria, police and military posts in the interior of the country have come under increased threat in 2007, but on April 11, the AQMI threat hit the heart of the political establishment. Bombs ripped through Algiers killing at least 33 people, in the first such violence witnessed in the capital since the black days of the civil war. The blasts coincided with a number of aborted and successful attacks in Morocco. Violence there has continued after raids into impoverished slum areas of Casablanca prompted reprisal bombings.

The international dimension 1

Islamic terrorism in the region has long been considered a distinctly Algerian phenomenon, confined to the country that denied the Front Islamique de Salut (FIS)—rightfully elected to power in 1992—the right to rule. A civil war ensued in which over 100,000 civilians are thought to have been killed. The Groupe Salafiste pour la Prédication et le Combat (GSPC)—the group said to have embraced the al-Qaeda cause last year—emerged in the turmoil of the war to fly the Islamist militant banner.

What was once mostly a national insurgency has now taken on the dimensions of the larger “war on terror.” Notably, Moroccan and Algerian officials have reacted very differently to recent developments. Algiers has readily acknowledged the involvement of “external” elements. At a recent rally against terrorism in the capital, Bouguerra Soltani, leader of the Islamist but moderate Mouvement de la Société pour la Paix (MSP), claimed that “we are living through a new genre of terrorism… [T]he executors of the attacks were Algerian, but the goal comes from the outside, from the cadre of international terrorism”.

Meanwhile, Rabat has insisted that its terrorists are “home-grown,” their causes restricted and local, despite evidence to the contrary. With Moroccans deeply involved in the Madrid bombings in Spain, the stern eye of international scrutiny has fallen on Morocco, as local officials scramble to head off the growing threat.

Adding to the muddle, Hassan Hattab, the founder of the GSPC, has disavowed his group’s new links with al-Qaeda and urged a process of political reconciliation between the government and local Islamists. Whom Hattab, nom de guerre “Abu Hamza”, speaks for at this point is uncertain. It also remains unclear to what extent the recent spurt of Islamic violence in the Maghreb derives material support and direction from a wider network of jihadists. Yet it is beyond doubt that the high profile of conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and of figureheads like Osama bin Laden, has galvanized militants across the region to adopt the symbols and trappings of a trans-national cause.

The international dimension 2

At the same time, the “local” conflicts in the Maghreb have become the stuff of international interest. Murli Deora, India’s petroleum and gas minister, toured Algeria last month in a bid to strengthen energy ties between New Delhi and Algiers. Talks will also touch upon security issues amidst fears over the stability of Algeria’s energy industry.

Russian and Algerian officials are also locked in negotiations that could make Algeria the largest buyer of Russian arms. A deal thought to be in the region of $7 billion is on the table, and would provide Algeria with new batches of fighter and bomber jets, tanks and air-defense systems.

Algiers’ growing strategic ties with the likes of Russia and India come at a time of growing domestic dissatisfaction with European policy on the Maghreb. Algerians and Moroccans resent the EU’s view of their countries as frontlines against terror, where violence welling up from the Sahel and the dusty interior of North Africa must be confined lest it spill across the Mediterranean. France, the former colonial master of the Maghreb, has grown particularly nervous about the re-emergence of the region’s Islamist militants. North African countries are also being increasingly relied upon to hold back the tide of African immigration, making them key parts of Europe’s regional security policy. Such a task is likely to become harder in the coming years unless significant work is done to mitigate the effects of climate change and growing economic discrepancies in sub-Saharan Africa.

The threat to democracy

Algeria’s human rights record has never been sparkling, particularly during the course of the civil war in the late 1980s and 1990s that saw the notorious intelligence service, the Département de Renseignement et de la Securité (DRS), cut its teeth in authoritarian control. The imperatives of safeguarding Europe’s frontier and Russian military support will heap further pressure on Algeria’s democratic institutions, cowed as they are by the robust voice of the army.

Algeria does boast a lively domestic press and a plethora of parties that operate with more than a modicum of freedom. In the wake of the April attacks, Algiers witnessed Madrid-style demonstrations against terrorism, urging civic action and a commitment to the democratic process. Politicians further encouraged participation in the impending May 17 elections as a “response” to the bombs and threats of the Islamist menace. The continuing heavy-handed activities of the DRS, like the disappearance of the Islamic student Abdelaziz Zoubida, will invariably undermine the legitimacy of such democratic pretensions, potentially spinning the Maghreb into further chaos.

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This article first ran April 19 on Madrid11.net
http://www.madrid11.net/articles/algeria190407

See also:

SUFISM: THE MIDWAY BETWEEN EXTREMISMS
Indigenous North Africa Between Jihad and Imperialism
WW4 REPORT, March 2007
/node/3263

From our weblog:

Algeria seeks closer US energy ties
WW4 REPORT, May 19, 2007
/node/3900

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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, June 1, 2007
Reprinting permissible with attribution

RESISTING THE NEW EURO-MISSILES

Czech Dissidents Stand Up Again—This Time to the Pentagon!

by Gwendolyn Albert, WW4 REPORT

In violation of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the and commitments made in the year 2000 at the UN Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, the United States is planning to expand its missile shield defenses—a system to target potential incoming missiles and shoot them down en route—to cover any potential missiles fired from the Middle East, seen as a growing threat due to Iran’s reported pursuit of ballistic missile technology.

The plan is to place 10 interceptor rockets in the northwestern town of Koszalin in Poland, and a radar base in the Brdy district southwest of Prague in the Czech Republic to track any incoming missiles. Iran reportedly is in possession of medium-range missiles now which could reach Israel or Turkey, and the US claims Iran could possess an ICBM by 2015. The cost of this European expansion of the missile defense shield is estimated at $3.5 billion. Around 200 US personnel, both military and civilian, are expected to work at the Czech base, which would be the first of its kind in Europe.

Since the idea of a missile defense shield was first proposed during the Reagan administration, the US has spent approximately $110 billion developing it. In response to the reported threat from North Korea, the US has already set up two sets of missile interceptors at Ft. Greely, Alaska, and Vandenberg Air Force Base, California—again in violation of international non-proliferation agreements—to defend against incoming missiles from that country.

Critics of the effort say it will not work: In 2004, the Union of Concerned Scientists issued a 76-page report entitled “Technical Realities” which found “no basis for believing the system will have any capability to defend against a real attack.”

Undaunted, the Bush administration has also announced plans to place interceptors—missiles to shoot down other missiles—not on earth, but in orbit, reviving and expanding a proposal which prompted critics of the plan two decades ago to nickname it “Star Wars.” This expansion could cost as much as $200 billion. The militarization of space is obviously fraught with ethical and political problems which will increase existing tensions in an unstable world and accelerate the arms race.

Back to Wenceslas Square

The first rumblings of dissent against the plan to locate the US anti-missile radar base in the Czech Republic came from two segments of civil society which can in no way be described as having “popular” appeal in this country: the tiny peace movement (whose efforts to protest the Iraq war are consistently undermined by the Czech Communist Party driving away potential centrist supporters) and the slightly more institutionalized (but still small) women’s movement. These two groups were ahead of the game on this issue years ago, when rumors of the plans for the US base first surfaced, and their activism has spurred what has become a genuinely popular, nationwide wave of protest, “NE zakladnam” (“No to Bases”), complete with petition drives and demonstrations all over the country. Recent public opinion polls show more than 60 % of the country is opposed to a US anti-missile radar base on Czech territory.

May 26, 2007: yet another demonstration against the base is called for 3 PM on Wenceslas Square in the capital Prague, site of the famous demonstrations that accompanied the collapse of the communist regime in 1989. Two thousand people turn out; in Poland, a similar demonstration draws one thousand people in the capital Warsaw. The “NE zakladnam” poster at the Prague protest reads “David vs. Goliath” and makes a pun on the similarity between the words “radar” and “zrada”—meaning treachery, betrayal, treason. Banners carried at the demonstrations often read: “1938 – Munich, 1968 – the Kremlin, 2006 – No more decisions about us without us!” The movement is not only protesting the planned base, but is calling for a nationwide referendum on the issue. Opinion polls show that as many as 73% of the Czech public agree a referendum should be held.

“Referendum” is a touchy word in this part of the world. Many here still remember Vaclav Havel’s hopeful prediction, prior to his political career, that the fall of the Berlin Wall would herald the dismantling of not only the Warsaw Pact, but also of NATO; that vision of a “peace dividend” and a nuclear weapons-free Europe has yet to be realized. As for including the public in decisions, referenda were never held on two of the largest decisions to ever affect this country, the decision to divide Czechoslovakia into two separate states and the decision to join NATO. A referendum on EU membership was held under the auspices of what was then a center-left government, and the Social Democrats, currently in opposition, are supporting the call for a referendum on the base issue as well.

One of the reasons the base strikes such a nerve with people here, besides their visceral dislike of the idea of foreign troops in a place that has had its fill of military occupation, is that it touches on the thorny issue of “sovereignty,” a concept which is not the territory of the right wing alone but resonates with the nationalism that is common currency across the political spectrum here. The issue is also providing a forum for Czech society to debate how it understands the events of the last twenty years of “transition,” as well as a test of the responsiveness of Czech democracy.

Czech critics of the radar base argue that there is no difference between a radar base and a missile base, and claim the base could be used offensively as well as defensively, all assurances notwithstanding. They say that by permitting the US base, the Czech Republic would simply become an instrument of America’s unilateral foreign policy, its attempt at military domination of the globe from space, and its “war on terror.” They argue that NATO membership does not require them to allow a US base to be located in the country, and finally, that the base will not only not make the Czech Republic more secure, it may actually make the country more of a target.

They also stress that the Czech authorities will have no right to monitor the US base as to its actual use once it is installed. Whether most opponents of the base genuinely identify with all these arguments is an open question; what is clear is that most people reject the idea because the decision to begin negotiations on the plan was made without their input. The question of whether to invite the US base in was never even raised during last year’s parliamentary election campaign.

The current right-wing government was only formed after an embarrassing post-election wrangling period of more than half a year, and it has a tenuous grip on power at best. The radar issue is not its only foreign policy challenge, but it is definitely the one that has prompted the most domestic debate and action. As on many other issues, the government has been its own worst enemy, with Czech PM Topolanek impatiently scoffing at the idea that the base is anything but a done deal. Indeed, attendance at a demonstration on the issue in Prague this winter was probably given an extra boost by the attempt of the (right-wing) Prague City Hall to “ban” the gathering, claiming it would “disrupt traffic.”

Technically the city has no powers to “ban” public gatherings; no official “permission” is required to assemble in public, just notification to the authorities of the planned location and route of the event. But the city can send police to disperse a gathering deemed unsafe, and the Czech media still use the term “ban” to describe the authorities’ expression of disagreement with certain gatherings. Turnout was higher than expected – the press reported 500 people gathered, but those attending estimated numbers at 2,000 – and the event took place without incident.

Who is the Enemy?

The mayors of 23 communities surrounding the military training area in Brdy, the planned site of the base, have written directly to the US Congress to express their opposition. Since the calls for a national referendum have so far gone unheeded, some local governments have held their own plebiscites on the matter, such as the village of Trokavec, located a mere two kilometers from the planned site. In that plebiscite 70 people voted against the radar, one voted in favor, and 16 eligible voters did not participate. Three more villages plan to hold plebiscites on the issue on June 2 in the run-up to President Bush’s planned visit here.

The votes are symbolic and have no legal effect, but they did prompt the US to send Gerald C. Augeri, assistant head of MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory, to visit the mayors and address their concerns. among its other activities, the Lincoln Lab runs an R&D program developing sensor systems for use in the missile defense shield program. Augeri told local politicians that the radar station would not affect electronic devices or mobile phones and would be placed at least four kilometers from the nearest houses.

Czech Greenpeace has also been active on the issue, trying to leverage the fact that Czech Foreign Minister Schwarzenberg ran on the Green Party ticket and should theoretically be much more susceptible to pressure by environmentalists than if he were from any other party in the governing coalition. Czech Greenpeace executive director Jiru Tutter issued a sharp critique of the text of the diplomatic note between the USA and Czech Republic proposing terms for the base agreement, reminding the foreign minister that any foreign army to be stationed on Czech territory for longer than 60 days must, according to Article 43 of the Czech Constitution, receive the support of parliament. Certain terms used by the USA in the note seemed to be an attempt to help the Czech government try to circumvent this requirement, but that did not wash for long. As a result of all this public pressure, the Czech foreign affairs and defense ministries announced on May 22 that they will submit their own counterproposal to Washington’s initial proposal within two months, and that the counterproposal would outline what sorts of “services” the US should provide in exchange for the base being located here.

Some Czech political commentators have noted that the country’s stance on the issue has been complicated by the fact that the government does not present a clear (or even a unified) foreign policy. Czech Foreign Minister Schwarzenberg is perceived as a figurehead, with most analysts saying the foreign policy show is really being run by deputy PM for European affairs Alexander Vondra of the governing Civic Democratic Party (ODS), a former Czech ambassador to the US who is the main person reporting on the progress of the Czech negotiations to parliament.

Vondra has spoken of a potential rejection of the base in catastrophic terms, claiming it could lead to Prague breaking its ties with NATO, which would in turn require the reintroduction of compulsory military service in the Czech Republic. Compulsory service was abolished in 2005. Czech Defense Minister Vlasta Parkanova, another cabinet member from a minority party to have been more or less sidelined by Vondra’s advocacy of the base, immediately contradicted his analysis.

Even though the missile defense shield is a US plan (not a NATO one), Washington claims the 26 NATO allies will all receive protection under the shield. But Germany expressed concern in April that Bulgaria, Greece, and Romania would actually be left out of the shield’s protective radius. The US move means debate at NATO about its own plans for missile interception is now on the front burner, and the NATO countries have held high-level talks with Russia—which has expressed its objection in no uncertain terms.

Czech Defense Ministry officials have repeatedly insisted that the base is not intended for use against Russia or China, as the communists contend, and that the technical parameters of its configuration and geographical location mean it can only be used to detect potential missiles from the Middle East. This contention is disputed by Russia, which claims that Iranian, North Korean or Syrian rockets would probably not go across Central Europe on their way to the US, but that a radar station in the Czech Republic would be able to monitor rocket installations in central Russia and the Russian Northern Fleet.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threat to train his missiles on the Czech Republic and Poland should they host the bases coverage in both the Czech press and global media, as has the maneuvers of US, EU and NATO diplomats. But criticism from another Russian source has received surprisingly little coverage. Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev made a statement in Kaliningrad on April 12, bluntly calling the planned US bases in the Czech Republic and Poland part of America’s plan to “control Europe.”

Certainly Germany, which currently holds the EU presidency, has not expressed the enthusiasm for the US plans that the UK has, but Germany has also not tried to raise the issue in NATO—which takes the position that the question is a purely bilateral one between the US and the countries concerned. Elsewhere in Europe, the issue was a key topic during the recent presidential elections in France, with the eventual right-wing victor Sarkozy expressing himself during the election campaign as follows: “It is rather disturbing, in my opinion, that the US is not discussing this anti-missile defense system with our European partners. I do not understand how anyone can say that this is simply a problem for the Czech Republic and Poland, and not a problem for Europe, unless we want to abandon our ambitions for a European defense policy.” At the European Parliament, Social Democratic MEPs from Austria, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, and Poland have also written to the US Congress expressing the socialist faction’s view that the plan could “divide the international community and therefore seriously threaten efforts to restrict the further spread of weapons of mass destruction.” Austrian President Heinz Fischer has also expressed opposition to the plan.

What are the Chances?

What of the 30 % of the Czech Republic that supports the base, according to polls? Protests are sometimes attended by an iconoclast or two holding the American flag in staunch support of the US base. Their argument runs thus: the Americans saved us last time (meaning WWII), and the rest of you will be crying for them to come save us again sooner or later, this time from Iran, or North Korea, or Syria. The US helped us end communism and we are allies again at long last, so let their radar in. One group even held a demonstration in favor of locating missiles as well as radar on Czech territory, but theirs is clearly a minority opinion. Polls do show that 56% of the Czech public believe the country should defend itself against a possible missile attack-but on its own, without the assistance of the global superpower.

The Defense Ministry says that the Czech Republic is in fact already within range of the existing missile capability of the countries from which the threat is presumed to come, but has tried to downplay the critics’ assertion that this is precisely why building such a target on Czech territory is undesirable. They have also claimed an 80% effectiveness rate for the system in the Czech media—a remarkable claim to anyone who has followed the debate on the system in the US, where the efficacy of this entire idea has been questioned for decades now. Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said last fall that the Pentagon had not yet performed operational testing with convincing enough results that the system would actually work when needed.

The Czech Defense Ministry website links to a fairly wide range of media coverage of the issue, including a piece on the actual equipment concerned, which is to be relocated from the Kwajalein atoll in the Pacific—a move which is also causing some controversy there. A poll in May 2007 for the Polish daily Rceczpospolita reported two-thirds of Poles also believe the decision to install the missile base in their country should be preceded by a national referendum. Fifty-one percent said they opposed the base, while 30% were in favor, a ratio similar to the Czech statistics. Plans are also afoot to locate another US radar base for the missile shield in the Caucasus.

The US has asked that the Czech Republic to make its final decision by next year, and that will depend on parliament. It is unclear at this time how the lower house will vote. The US Congress is also key, as it controls the funding for the plan, and members of the House Armed Services Committee are reluctant to commit funds without a clear, formal agreement with the Czech Republic and Poland and an expression of full support from NATO. The committee has already cut the Pentagon’s request for funds for the European part of the system by more than half, citing concerns that the technology is not ready, but the budget could still be restored later by the appropriations committee. If approved, the base would begin operations in 2011.

——

Gwendolyn Albert, a US citizen, is a permanent resident of the Czech Republic, a member of the Czech Government Human Rights Council representing civil society, and Director of the Women’s Initiatives Network at the Peacework Development Fund.

http://www.peacework.org

RESOURCES:

Technical Realities: An Analysis of the 2004 Deployment of a US National Missile Defense System
Union of Concerned Scientists, 2004
http://www.ucsusa.org/…

Czech Ministry of Defense — Information Campaign on Missile Defense
http://www.army.cz/scripts/detail.php?id=8798

From our weblog:

Putin: US missile shield threatens stability
WW4 REPORT, April 28, 2007
/node/3702

Syria: fortified missile city?
WW4 REPORT, April 30, 2007
/node/3724

From our archive:

Federal court: ABM treaty dead
WW4 REPORT, Jan. 13, 2003
/static/68.html#nuke1

Greenland Inuit protest “Star Wars” plans
WW4 REPORT, Dec. 30, 2002
/static/66.html#nuke6

Chretien waffles on “Star Wars” participation
WW4 REPORT, Dec. 16, 2002
/static/64.html#canadian1
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Special to WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, June 1, 2007
Reprinting permissible with attribution

INDIA AT WAR

Human Rights and the Naxalite Insurgency

by Suhas Chakma, Madrid11.net

With the March 15 slaughter of fifty-five policemen by Naxalites (or Maoists) in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, India’s Maoist insurgency once again entered the international limelight. The local state government launched an operation involving 8,000 security personnel, indelicately described as an “act of revenge.” As the conflict escalates, human rights monitoring becomes next to impossible. The ongoing counter-Maoist offensive remains largely opaque to scrutiny, with egregious violations on both sides.

In suppressing insurgencies, national and local authorities have developed a reputation for committing unlawful killings in so-called “fake encounters”–incidents fabricated by security forces in order to justify the murder of dissidents. The guidelines of the National Human Rights Commission of India on fake encounters were developed after incidents with Naxalites in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. On July 23, 2006, eight Maoist rebels, including Gurra Chennaiah, were shot dead by state police in an alleged encounter in the Nallamala forests in Prakasam district. The opposition Telugu Desam Party claimed state malfeasance, joining a groundswell of popular and intellectual protest. Despite the public outcry, the state Home Minister K. Jana Reddy rejected the demand for a judicial probe into the killings.

Maoist brutality

Government excesses are matched–if not exceeded–by the Maoists. Their targets are no longer restricted to the “petty bourgeoisie,” police informers or “class enemies.” The chilling massacres of 27 Adivasis (“tribal” people) at Darbhaguda on Feb. 28, 2006, of 13 Adivasis at Monikonta on April 25, 2006 and 31 Adivasis at Errabore on July 17, 2006 evidence the widening reach of Maoist violence. Hostages released after the Monikonta massacre told the Asian Centre for Human Rights that the Naxalites “selected” 13 hostages, tied their hands from behind and blindfolded them, before stabbing the bound captives repeatedly and slitting their throats in front of other hostages.

With increasingly brazen rebel attacks, it is difficult to foresee a negotiated solution to the insurgency. The ultimate aim of the Naxalites is to win power in Delhi, like their counterparts sought power in Nepal. India is not a weak state like Nepal, where the Maoists took advantage of the absence of governmental machinery and expanded their base of support to the point that they became a determinant factor in the democratic struggle against King Gyanendra. The Naxalites certainly speak the language of the rights of the poor and the “tribals,” a language that many Adivasis and Dalits can relate to, but their true interests are not Adivasi- or Dalit-centric. The Adivasis and the Dalits are pawns, both perpetrators and victims in the Maoist insurgency.

A robust challenge

The offensive capabilities of the Maoists should no longer surprise the Indian security establishment. In the past two years, attacks on state and national government facilities–including Jehanabad jail in Bihar on Nov. 13, 2005, security and electricity installations in the town of Udayagiri in Orissa on March 24, 2006, and the detention of the Tata-Kharagpur passenger train in the forests of Jharkhand on Dec. 10, 2006–show that the Maoists are not another rag-tag armed opposition group.

Officials from states in the grip of Maoist insurgency–which has cut through central India–have met frequently to hone their counterinsurgent efforts. These meetings do not seem to be having any impact on the ground. India has never been able to suppress armed insurgency in its forested areas through military means. Since independence, Indian forces have attempted to defeat separatist movements in the northeast of the country, which continue to plague the region. There is no reason to believe that the Maoists will prove any easier an opponent. Following the killing of 13 police personnel at Kanjkiro on Dec. 2, 2006, Madhu Koda, Chief Minister of Jharkhand, claimed that even with 50 companies, he could not guarantee security in the state. The recent killing of Jharkhand parliamentarian Sunil Mahato testifies to the precarious hold local forces have on sections of central India.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in April 2006 stressed a two-pronged strategy to addressing the Naxalite problem: effective policing and accelerated socio-economic development programs. However, at the state level, the demand for more security forces has been the common refrain.

Doing more harm than good

Given the lack of infrastructure in the areas where Naxalites are strongest, no development activity can be undertaken without creating the necessary security pre-conditions. Maoists have consistently opposed development activities, killing two villagers April 1 in Chhattisgarh for allowing the construction of a steel plant on their land. However, whenever security forces are deployed in a concerted manner, they only accentuate the conflict through gross human rights violations.

It does not appear that New Delhi foresaw the implications of the Salwa Judum campaign, an effort begun two years ago to equip paramilitary citizen militias against the Maoists. The central government has supported such so-called civilian “uprisings” in other insurgency-hit areas. However, Salwa Judum has made little positive impact. Poorly equipped (because state officials are wary of losing sophisticated weapons to the Maoists), the paramilitaries have struggled to compete with the strength and tactical sharpness of the Maoists. Furthermore, the militia has deeply disrupted the lives of locals, displacing nearly 50,000 civilians into government-managed relief camps in an effort to isolate the populace from the rebels. The paramilitary effort threatens to alienate local people despite being calculated to win their support. It is preposterous to expect that the ineffective Salwa Judum campaign in “six blocks” of one district (Dantewada, Chhattisarh state) can serve as a model in denting an insurgency spread over 170 districts in 13 states across the country.

Chhattisgarh state officials have not plotted a way out of the mess created by the Salwa Judum campaign. If the Salwa Judum relief camps are dismantled, the civilians living in them will be even more vulnerable to Maoist retaliation. At the same time, so long as the Salwa Judum campaign continues, the loss of lives will be high, and the killings will continue to draw international attention.

The present Naxalite movement is not similar to the guerilla movement launched in the backstreets of Calcutta in 1960s, one driven in large part by students in keeping with the idealistic uprisings of the period. The present Naxal conflict brings the peripheries of India to the national mainstream and directly springs from the concerns of those historically oppressed and dispossessed. If the Naxal conflict develops into the kind of intractable crisis plaguing Jammu and Kashmir, it will bleed mainland India.

Despite the difficulty of such a route, the Naxal conflict can be addressed only through the rule of law and rights-based approaches to development. The government must ensure compliance with the common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions and the Additional Protocol Relating to the Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts (Protocol II); ban forcible displacement of civilians, the recruitment of child soldiers and the destruction of the means of survival of civilian populations; better protect vulnerable civilians and ensure accountability for the violations by security forces.

Insurgent movements like that of the Maoists are in large part sustained by the human rights violations of the government. India has never before relied on the rule of law to combat its rebels. Such an approach may be New Delhi’s best and only option.

——

Suhas Chakma is director of the Asian Centre of Human Rights in New Delhi.
http://www.achrweb.org

This article first appeared April 2 on Madrid11.net
http://www.madrid11.net/articles/naxalites020407

From our weblog:

India: Maoists pledge to resist anti-guerilla drive
WW4 REPORT, March 27, 2007
/node/3451

Maoist-Madhesi violence in Nepal
WW4 REPORT, March 23, 2007
/node/3416

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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, May 1, 2007
Reprinting permissible with attribution

CHINA IN AFRICA: THE NEW DEBATE

by Walden Bello, Foreign Policy in Focus

It was unexpected.

At the Seventh World Social Forum (WSF), held in Nairobi, Kenya, in late January, the most controversial topic was not HIV-AIDS, the U.S. occupation of Iraq, or neoliberalism. The topic that generated the most heat was China’s relations with Africa.

At a packed panel discussion organized by a semi-official Chinese NGO, the discussion was candid and angry. “First, Europe and America took over our big businesses. Now China is driving our small and medium entrepreneurs to bankruptcy,” Humphrey Pole-Pole of the Tanzanian Social Forum told the Chinese speakers. “You don’t even contribute to employment because you bring in your own labor.”

Stung by such remarks from the floor, Cui Jianjun, secretary general of the China NGO Network for International Exchanges, lost his diplomatic cool and launched into an emotional defense of Chinese foreign investment, saying that “we Chinese had to make the same hard decision on whether to accept foreign investment many, many years ago. You have to make the right decision or you will lose, lose, lose. You have to decide right, or you will remain poor, poor, poor.”

The vigorous exchange should have been anticipated since many Africans view China as having the potential to bring either great promise or great harm. If African civil society representatives were hard on China, this was because they desperately wanted China to reverse course before it was too late, so that it would avoid the path trod by Europe and the United States.

Beijing’s High Profile in Africa

The debate at the WSF took place amid a marked elevation of Africa’s profile in China’s foreign policy. In early February, President Hu Jintao made his third trip to Africa in three years, following the success of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), which took place November 4-5, 2006. Attended by 48 African delegations, most of them led by heads of state, the Forum was the largest international summit held in Beijing.

At the start of the summit, Beijing unveiled a glittering trade and aid plan designed to cement its “strategic partnership” with Africa. The key items in the package committed China to doubling its 2006 assistance within three years, providing $3 billion worth of preferential loans and $2 billion worth of export credits, and canceling all interest-free government loans that matured at the end of 2005 and were owed by the heavily indebted and poorest African countries. In addition, the two sides agreed to raise the volume of trade from $40 billion in 2005 to $100 billion by 2010 and set up of a China-Africa Development Fund that would be capitalized to the tune of $5 billion to support Chinese companies investing in Africa.

If not yet the biggest external player in Africa, China is certainly the most dynamic. It now accounts for 60% of oil exports from Sudan and 35% of those from Angola. Chinese firms mine copper in Zambia and Congo-Brazzaville, cobalt in the Congo, gold in South Africa, and uranium in Zimbabwe. Its ecological footprint is large, says Michelle Chan-Fishel of Friends of the Earth International, consuming as it does 46% of Gabon’s forest exports, 60% of timber exported from Equatorial Guinea, and 11% of timber exports from Cameroon. Contrasting Images of China

China is popular with African governments. “There is something refreshing to China’s approach,” said a Nigerian diplomat who asked not to be identified. “They don’t attach all those conditionalities that accompany Western loans.” Adds Justin Fong, executive director of the Chinese NGO Moving Mountains: “Whether accurate or not, the image Africans have of the Chinese is that they get things done. They don’t waste their time in meetings. They just go ahead and build roads.”

An African development specialist working with a western aid organization claimed that Chinese projects are low-cost affairs compared to western projects. “Labor costs are low, they integrate African labor, so some transfer of skills takes place, and the Chinese workers live in the village, and this means living like the villagers, down to competing with them for dog meat.”

While they might dispute this characterization of China’s impact, most NGOs are nuanced in their assessments. They acknowledge that China has a different trajectory in Africa than Europe and the United States. Whereas the West began by exploiting Africa, China initiated its relations with Africa with “people-to-people” medical and technical assistance missions in the 1960s and 1970s, the most famous of which was the building of the now fabled Tanzania-Zambia (Tanzam) Railway. But with China’s rise as a modernizing economic superpower after the definitive decision in 1984 to use capitalism as the engine of growth, the old solidarity rationale has been replaced by a dangerously single-minded pursuit of economic interests– in this case, mainly oil and mineral resources to feed a red-hot economy.

If African governments were accountable to their people, say NGO critics, Chinese aid could play a very positive role, especially compared to World Bank and International Monetary Fund loans that come with conditions to bring down tariffs, loosen government regulation, and privatize state enterprises. But with non-accountable, non-transparent governments, such as those in the Sudan and Zimbabwe, say the critics, Chinese loan and aid programs contribute instead to consolidating the rule of non-democratic elites.

Crossing the Line in Sudan

Where China has definitely crossed the line is in Sudan. Using its veto power at the UN Security Council, China has prevented the international community from creating and deploying a multinational force to protect people in Darfur who are being killed or raped by militias backed by the Sudanese government. Even one African diplomat sympathetic to China asserts, “China’s strong backing for the Sudanese government has discouraged African governments that are trying to push it to accept an African Union solution to the problem.”

China has very substantial interests in Sudan. These are set out in detail in an important collection of studies launched at the WSF entitled African Perspectives on China in Africa, edited by Firoze Manji and Stephen Marks. China obtained oil exploration and production rights in 1995 when the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) bought a 40% stake in the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company, which is pumping over 300,000 barrels per day. Sinopec, another Chinese firm, is building a 1500-kilometer pipeline to Port Sudan on the Red Sea, where China’s Petroleum Engineering Construction Company is constructing a tanker terminal. Author John Rocha estimates Chinese investment in oil exploration to reach $8 billion.

Chinese interests go beyond oil. China’s investment in textile mills is estimated at $100 million. It has emerged as one of Sudan’s top arms suppliers. In one particular barter arrangement, China supplied $400 million worth of weapons in return for cotton. It is active in infrastructure, with its firms building bridges near the Merowe Dam and two other sites on the River Nile. It is involved in key hydropower projects, the most controversial being the Merowe Dam, which is expected to ultimately cost $1.8 billion.

The construction of the Merowe Dam has involved forced resettlement of the Hambdan people living at or near the site and armed repression of the Amri people who have been organizing to prevent the Sudanese government’s plan to transfer them to the desert. Local police and private agencies now provide 24-hour security to Chinese engineering detachments, but civil society observers say the aim of these groups is less protection of the Chinese than repression of growing opposition. As Ali Askari, director of the London-based Piankhi Research Group, puts it, “The sad truth is, both the Chinese and their elite partners in the Sudan government want to conceal some terrible facts about their partnership. They are joining hands to uproot poor people, expropriate their land, and appropriate their natural resources.”

Chinese and Sudanese officials tend to dismiss such criticism as the machinations of western powers. Such powers are alarmed at China’s becoming the top international player in a country long treated as being in the West’s sphere of influence. But, according to Beijing and Khartoum, the West’s dismal record of colonial plunder deprives its statements of any moral authority. Defending its close relations with the Sudanese government, a Chinese Foreign Ministry official, Zhai Jun, noted the contrast in African governments’ reception of China and the West: “Some people believe that by ‘taking’ resources and energy from Africa, China is looting Africa… If this was so, then African countries would express their dissatisfaction.”

Chinese officials are, however, wrong to think that African NGOs are merely parroting the rhetoric of self-interested western governments. In fact, civil society groups also consider such western criticism hypocritical. Commenting on the remark of a World Bank official to the effect that “Chinese handouts without reforms” would not be beneficial to Africa, John Karumbidza, a contributor to the China in Africa volume, acidly remarks, “It is the case…that this same bank and Western approach over the past half century has failed to deliver development, and left Africa in more debt than when they began.”

Other Problematic Partnerships

These criticisms are unlikely to go away, not only in Sudan but in many other countries where Chinese involvement with controversial regimes runs deep. With relations with the West and even South Africa deteriorating over his political record, President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe has increasingly turned to China, which one of his key ministers has characterized as an “all weather friend.” Chinese investment in mining, energy, telecommunications, agriculture, and other sectors was estimated at $600 million at the end of 2004, with another $600 million pledged in June 2005. The price, however, has been high, according to critics, who claim that Mugabe’s government has handed de facto control of key strategic industries to the Chinese. A contract with China to farm 386 square miles of land while millions of Zimbabweans remain landless has come under fire, with rural sociologist John Karumbidza blasting it as “nothing more than land renting and typical agri-business relations that turn the land holders and their workers into labor tenants and subject them to exploitation.”

The Nigerian government is another problematic Chinese partner, according to civil society activists. China has extensive interests in Nigeria, particularly in oil exploration and production. The China National Offshore Corporation (CNOOC), notes researcher John Rocha, has acquired a 45% working interest in an offshore enterprise, OML 130, for $2.3 billion; the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) has invested in the Port Harcourt refinery; and a joint venture between the Chinese Oil and Natural Gas Corporation and the L.N. Mittal Group, plans to invest $6 billion in railways, oil refining, and power in exchange for rights to drill oil.

These interests have led to an increasingly tight alliance with the faction of the ruling People’s Democratic Party dominated by President Olusegun Obasanjo. This relationship has a controversial security dimension. As Ndubisi Obiorah, another contributor to the China in Africa volume who is director of the Center for Law and Social Action in Lagos, notes: “The Nigerian government is increasingly turning to China for weapons to deal with the worsening insurgency in the oil-rich Niger Delta. The Nigerian Air Force purchased 14 Chinese-made versions of the upgraded MiG 21 jet fighter; the navy has ordered patrol boats to secure the swamps and creeks of the Niger Delta.” Not surprisingly, the rebel Movement for the Emancipation of the Nigerian Delta (MEND) has warned Chinese companies to keep out of the region or risk attack.

With their integrated political, military, economic, and diplomatic components, China’s “strategic partnerships” with governments such as those of Nigeria, Sudan, and Zimbabwe increasingly have the feel of the old U.S. and Soviet relationships with client states during the Cold War.

Will Civil Society Make the Difference?

Nevertheless, many civil society activists do not discount the possibility that things may yet be turned around. Though critical of current Chinese policies, Humphrey Pole-Pole of Tanzania appealed at the Nairobi meeting for a “win-win-win” strategy — that is, “a win for China, a win for African governments, and a win for African people. This is not impossible.”

The key to such a change may be the growth of Chinese civil society organizations, some of which are increasingly independent of and indeed critical of government policies within China.

But closer ties between Chinese and African NGOs are not enough, says Justin Fong. Mechanisms to ensure Chinese government accountability are needed. One point of vulnerability he identifies is the practice of Chinese government entities, such as the China Export-Import Bank, of going for co-financing for their Africa projects to international banks such as HSBC and Citigroup. When it comes to controversial projects, pressure might be indirectly placed on the Chinese by lobbying these institutions, which are more sensitive about their image than Beijing. Such tactics, which sometimes worked with western governments and firms, may not, however, succeed with China.

But whatever their differences, civil society activists, African and Chinese, agree on one thing. It will be a hard, uphill struggle to change the Chinese juggernaut’s direction in Africa.

——

Walden Bello is executive director of the Bangkok-based research and advocacy institute Focus on the Global South.

This article first appeared March 9 in the International Relations Center’s Foreign Policy in Focus http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4065

See also:

NIGER DELTA: BEHIND THE MASK
Ijaw Militia Fight the Oil Cartel
by Ike Okonta
WW4 REPORT #129, January 2007
/node/2974

From our weblog:

Ethiopia: Ogaden rebels attack Chinese oil field
WW4 REPORT, April 24, 2007
/node/3686

Darfur: guerillas warn off oil companies
WW4 REPORT, April 19, 2007
/node/3655

China and Sudan reaffirm military ties
WW4 REPORT, April 5, 2007
/node/3529

——————-

Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, May 1, 2007
Reprinting permissible with attribution

COSTA RICA: CAFTA REFERENDUM PLANNED

from Weekly News Update on the Americas:

Costa Rican president Oscar Arias announced on April 13 that his government will hold a referendum on the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA), a trade accord between the US and Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. “For the first time, Costa Ricans…will be able to decide directly the future of a very important law for the country,” Arias said at a news conference. He is to send Congress a decree on April 17 authorizing the referendum, which could take place within three months. Under Costa Rican law, the referendum will be binding if 30% of Costa Rica’s voters, a little more than 781,000, participate.

Costa Rica is the only one of the seven countries that signed DR-CAFTA in 2004 not to win approval for the pact from its legislature; it now becomes the only country to subject the controversial measure to a popular vote. DR-CAFTA took effect in the other countries during 2006. President Arias is a strong supporter of the pact; he acted on the referendum only after a decision by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) on April 12 to authorize the referendum if DR-CAFTA opponents could collect signatures from 5% of the country’s registered voters (about 130,000) in nine months. Observers said opponents could easily meet the requirement.

Anti-neoliberal activists described Arias’ announcement as a major victory for Costa Rican democracy. As recently as December, analysts expected Congress to approve DR-CAFTA by March or April. Now observers feel there’s a real possibility that the pact will be rejected. Opinion polls currently show less than 40% of those surveyed in full support of the trade accord. But Rafael Carrillo, president of the Union of Chambers of Private Enterprise (UCCAEP), insists that Costa Ricans will “certainly” vote to ratify the accord. Albino Vargas, a leader of the National Association of Public and Private Employees (ANEP) and of the campaign against DR-CAFTA, warned against “corrupt political manipulation.”

“We can’t allow money to decide the fate of the referendum, in defiance of the people’s wishes,” he said. (Boston Globe, April 13 from Reuters; La Nacion, Costa Rica, April 13 from AFP)

From Weekly News Update on the Americas, April 15

——

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

See our last report on Central America:

WW4 REPORT #132, April 2007
/node/3498

See related story:

TRADE PROTESTS ROCK COSTA RICA
Central America’s Last Stand Against CAFTA
from Weekly News Update on the Americas
WW4 REPORT #127, November 2006
/node/2707

——————-

Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, May. 1, 2007
Reprinting permissible with attribution

MINING IN MEXICO: VIOLENCE MADE IN CANADA

by Mandeep Dhillon, Upside Down World

The history of mining in Mexico is a long one. The riches of the Mexican sub-soil were a major motivation for Spanish colonizers and the mining industry is often accorded an important place in events leading to the Mexican Revolution; the 1906 bloody repression of striking miners working for U.S. Cananean Consolidated Copper in Sonora is often cited as a precursor to current labor struggles in Mexico. The authors of the Mexican Revolution sought to make a reality of the ideal that those who work the land should have control over it. In order to protect the land from foreign interests, Article 27 of the 1917 Mexican Constitution dictated that the land, the subsoil and its riches were all property of the Mexican State. More importantly, Article 27 recognized the lasting collective right of communities to land through the ejido system, and limited private land ownership.

As in the colonization of Indigenous lands elsewhere, mining was an activity of primary economic importance to colonizing forces and a major cause of injury, death, land destruction and impoverishment for Indigenous communities. Not much has changed in this imbalance today. And Canadian mining corporations– with wealth created from the historic (and ongoing) take-over and exploitation of Indigenous territory in Canada–are at the lead of these colonizing forces in present-day Mexico.

Important changes to the Mexican Constitution in anticipation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) resulted in the facilitation of land privatization and the entry of foreign corporations. One such change was the modification of Article 27, allowing for the sale of ejido land to private owners, including foreign multi-nationals. Another was the Mining Law of 1992 which together with the Law on Foreign Investment allowed for 100% foreign investment in exploration and production. Article 6 of this Mining Law also stipulates that the exploration and exploitation of minerals will have priority over any other use of the land, such as agriculture or housing. The modifications also allowed for the participation of the private sector in the production of some minerals previously reserved to the government, including coal and iron.

Though the Canadian corporate world is often seen as a secondary beneficiary of aggressive American corporate expansion, the reality of the mining industry certainly turns this myth onto its head. And the picture of mining activities in Mexico is a prime example.

The Scope of the Canadian Mining Industry

Canadian mining corporations lead the global mining industry. The Canadian industry ranks first in the global production of zinc, uranium, nickel and potash; second in sulphur, asbestos, aluminium and cadmium; third in copper and platinum group metals; fourth in gold; and fifth in lead. It has interests in over 8,300 properties worldwide–3,400 of which are in 100 foreign countries. In Latin America and the Caribbean, which has been identified as the main current geographical target for mineral exploration, Canadian mining corporations represent the largest percentage of foreign mining companies–with interests in more than 1,200 properties. In 1998, over $4.5 billion USD were raised by Canadian mining companies through domestic and foreign projects which represented 51% of the world’s mine capital.

Canadian Corporate Interest & Mining in Mexico

The politics of neo-liberalism in Mexico, which gained important ground in the 1980s and took flight with the implementation of NAFTA, have had a tremendous impact on the presence of Canadian corporate interests. Since NAFTA, bilateral trade between the two nations increased about 300%. According to the report, Opening Doors to the World: Canada’s International Market Priorities–2006: “Over 1,500 Canadian companies have a presence in Mexico, and a further 3,100 are currently working on their first sales in Mexico.” Canada is Mexico’s fifth largest investor. Some of Canada’s largest corporations which have a significant presence in Mexico include Scotiabank, TransAlta, Transcontinental, Magna International, Palliser, Presion Drilling, Fairmont and Four Seasons Hotels.

In a 2005 address, the Canadian Ambassador to Mexico, Gaetan Lavertu noted that “well over half of the foreign mining concessions issued in Mexico are registered to Canadian companies. The bulk of these investments are from British Columbia… Mexico recognizes Canada’s leadership and technological advantages in the minerals and mining equipment business.”

The importance of Mexico to Canada’s mining industry is confirmed by a 2004 report entitled Current Mexican-Canadian Relations in the Mining Sector by Cecilia Costero. The report describes Mexico as almost entirely mineralized with an estimate of 85% of mineral reserves yet untouched–this despite the 10,380 mines which have already been exploited. After the manufacturing industry, mining is the second largest Canadian capital interest in Mexico. In 2000, this interest was to the tune of over $150 million USD. In December 2001, 225 Canadian mining corporations were operating in Mexico (over 40% of the foreign investment), 209 of which owned over 50% of the capital in their projects. In the same year, Canada led foreign nations in terms of direct investment in the Mexican mining industry. Further, Mexico imports 75% of its machinery used for mining and Canada accounts for 4.4% of its total market needs.

Made in Canada: Violence & Displacement

The devastation and violence perpetrated by Canadian mining corporations has been documented clearly, with links to human rights violations in Guatemala, Peru, Romania, the Philippines, Honduras, Ecuador, Bolivia, Ghana, Suriname, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Papua New Guinea, Tanzania, India, Indonesia, Zambia and Sudan. Though the criticism of Canadian mining corporations taking advantage of so-called weak human rights protection in the South is made often enough, significantly less is said about the role of the same corporations in the destruction and displacement of Indigenous communities within Canadian borders. In Saskatchewan, on Deline Dene territory, over 1.7 million tons of radioactive waste and tailings were dumped in and around Great Bear Lake during the 1940s and 50s, contaminating all food sources of the Dene People. The community lost 50 men due to radiation effects. Since 1990, 27% of the 609 First Nations reserves in Canada have undergone some level of mineral exploration activity.

In British Columbia–where over 97% of the land is yet unceded First Nations land even according to Canadian and international law–the British Columbia Mining Plan of 2005 designated over 85% of the province’s land “open to exploration,” even setting up an online system for staking mineral claims. (In the right-wing Canadian think tank The Fraser Institute’s 2005/06 survey, mining corporation executives and representatives ranked B.C. second for “uncertainty about native land claims” as a deterrent to mining investment; only Venezuela was ranked higher.) Mining is a $5 billion industry in B.C. with a multitude of Canada’s mining corporations based in Vancouver. In a review of a non-exhaustive list of Canadian mining companies operating in Mexico, over 60 of them locate their head-quarters in Vancouver.

Selling Mining Projects

The website of Endeavour Silver, one of those Vancouver-based corporations, includes an industry article which attempts to answer the question, “Why Mexico?” The piece says that “Mexico is the world’s premier silver exploration and mining country for several reasons… mining is an integral part of national and local economies… this takes on increasing importance as migration from rural areas to cities increases due to lack of rural employment opportunities: mines create economic anchors wherever they are found, which mitigates this effect locally and allows rural residents to maintain well-paid, dignified and productive occupations.”

In actual fact, reviews of Mexican neo-liberal policies since the 1980s, including NAFTA, have concluded that land privatization for corporate use, including mining projects, has resulted in an exponential increase in displacement and migration. Since NAFTA came into effect in 1994, over 15 million Mexicans have been displaced from their lands. The myth that mining is a necessary activity for economic development has been central to the industry. Most employment created by mining projects for local residents is short-term and low-paid.

Furthermore, mining companies receive heavy government subsidies in most countries, leave virtual ghost-towns after their projects end, and leave local governments to dispose of wastes. The environmental price and the long-term cost to local communities are never calculated. The article goes on to state that “Mexico has strong environmental laws and a commitment to uphold them, but effective obstructionist environmental organizations are few.” As in the community of Cerro de San Pedro, San Luis Potosi, which has been battling Toronto-based Metallica Resources Inc. for over 10 years, communities pay with the loss of their land, homes, health and lives.

“Culturally,” writes the author, “Mexicans are friendly towards mining at all levels. This means…developers can expect to be welcomed when they enter an area…in stark contrast to their reception in many other parts of the world.”

Currently in Mexico, public audiences are not required by law prior to granting mining concessions. Local communities are often the last to find out about mining projects and are hardly ever informed about the projected effects of mining operations on their land and their health.

This phenomenon is not limited to Mexico. Communities affected by mining in Canada, which is often attributed respect for consultation processes, have related experiences of false consultation processes or deals made between corporations and so-called community leaders without community involvement. Such has been the case with Montreal-based Niocan Inc. which has been attempting to open a Niobium mine on unceded Mohawk territory next to the community of Kanehsatake, Quebec. Residents of Kanehsatake received notice of the consultation meetings only days prior and were shut out of negotiations carried out with Niocan by a Canadian government-backed band-council leader that the community had attempted to oust multiple times.

These myths are not supported solely by mining corporations. The Canadian government has been an active player in pushing forward Canadian mining projects in foreign countries, including Mexico, through its embassy representatives and trade councils. This type of Canadian government pressure continues even when mining projects result in the murders of opposing local residents such as occurred during the opposition to Vancouver-based Glamis Gold’s Marlin mine in Guatemala. Along these lines, Kenneth Cook, the Canadian ambassador to Guatemala, has recently been denounced for carrying out a disinformation campaign seeking to discredit a documentary film on the recent violent eviction of the Maya Q’eqchi Indigenous communities near El Estor, carried out on request of another Vancouver-based corporation, Skye Resources.

From B.C. to Oaxaca

Another reason given for Mexico being a prime location for silver exploitation on Endeavour’s website is that “politically, Mexico is the most stable country in Latin America.” Another industry report states that, “political and financial stability, legal security for investors…are all positive factors impacting Mexico’s mining industry today. However, one must also consider the highly unionized nature of its mining and metallurgical workers…and possible socio-economic issues generated by low wages and under-employment as possible road blocks to the continued prosperity of the industry.”

Weakened workers’ rights and the silencing of social movements are necessary pre-cursors to the flourishing of mining projects in Mexico and elsewhere. Industry reports such as this one are clear about it. The “political stability” that corporate and Canadian government reports refer to is certainly not social stability but rather the heavy-handed control of social movements, the militarization of the countryside and the displacement of local communities to protect corporate investment.

The world has recently become witness to Oaxaca’s social movement that is calling for an end to years of impoverishment through neo-liberal policies, displacement of Indigenous communities and government violence. The state violence against this movement has recently increased to unprecedented levels. Oaxaca, like the rest of Mexico’s south, is rich in natural resources that have been the target of foreign corporations for years. Vancouver-based Continuum Resources already has ten projects in Oaxaca at various stages, covering over 70, 000 hectares of land and “continuing to consolidate larger land positions.”

At the end of September, Vancouver-based Chesapeake Gold Corp announced it had optioned 70% of its two Oaxaca projects to Vancouver’s Pinnacle Mines. Horseshoe Gold Mining Inc., also based in Vancouver, acquired 60% interest in Almaden’s Fuego prospect located in Oaxaca. Halifax’s Linear Gold Corp also owns an active project in the state.

Neighboring Chiapas, another of Mexico’s most impoverished and most militarized states, is also the target of Canadian mining projects. From 2003 to 2006, the federal government has granted a total of 72 mining concessions in Chiapas, representing a total of 727,435 hectares. More than 55% (419,337 hectares) of these lands conceded without any information or consultation with local communities lies in the hands of two Canadian mining corporations alone: Linear Gold Corp and Fronteer Development Group.

Canadian mining corporations in Oaxaca and Chiapas are not just witnesses to the violence that is occurring there, but rely on that violence to protect their profits. Businesses and governments have identified one of NAFTA’s short-comings as the failure of its benefits to reach Mexico’s southern states rather than an increase in poverty and inequality caused by NAFTA itself. Recent talks between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico have focused on the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP). The opening of Mexico’s energy resources–in particular to Canadian corporations–has been accorded prime importance. (So has the further development of energy sources in Canada.) According to the Independent Task Force on the Future of North America, one of the major business think-tanks behind the SPP, “improvements in human capital and physical infrastructure in Mexico, particularly in the center and south of the country, would knit these regions more firmly into the North American economy and are in the economic and security interest of all three countries.”

It comes as no surprise that the same corporate and government bodies are calling for expansions of Canada’s exploitative agricultural guest-worker program which they cite as an example of bi-lateral success. For Canadian and Mexican governments and business, such guest-worker programs are a win-win situation as they provide a means to control forced migration caused by corporate and military displacement while reaping the economic benefits of a moveable, exploitable labor force in Canada, and through remittances sent to Mexico. According to a Mexican government official who ran the program for two years in one of the southern states, these programs also allow for the Mexican government to weaken social movements by intermittently removing thousands of its poorest citizens.

The perception of Canada as the United States’ junior partner often comes with a lack of clarity on Canadian responsibility in the history of violence and displacement within and beyond its national borders. Often, language around Canada-based solidarity work with the struggles of Indigenous communities, campesino and labor movements in Mexico distorts the responsibility of Canadian governmental and corporate players in the violence which has engendered those movements. Canadian mining corporations are but one example of how Canadians are complicit beyond just silence on the issues but through a very active process. The reality of mining also offers a concrete point of solidarity between those who have been displaced from the South and Indigenous communities in “Canada.”

Allies in Canada also cannot limit solidarity work to pointing fingers at a “corrupt Mexican government” or U.S. imperialist drive. To get to the roots of this displacement, there is a need to first look inwards at what is being perpetrated against Indigenous communities here and how the authors of that violence are also dictating crimes against the people of Oaxaca, Chiapas and other parts of Mexico.

On occupied Coast Salish land in Vancouver, these relationships visibly come full circle. As development for the 2010 Olympics causes the destruction of Indigenous land, the gentrification of the Down Town East Side and the repression of First Nations peoples both outside and inside the city, many of the unsafe, slave-wage construction jobs are being filled by Mexican men who are coming from impoverished communities that have similarly been repressed in the name of development. In the background stand the tall office buildings of West Vancouver that house the majority of its mining and “development” conglomerates.

——

Written by Mandeep Dhillon with help from Antoine Libert Amico. Dhillon is an organizer with No One Is Illegal-Vancouver and Justicia Para Trabajadores Migrantes B.C.

This story first appeared April 12 on Upside Down World
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=700&It
emid=0

See also:

GUATEMALA: MINERAL CARTEL EVICTS KEKCHI MAYA
Security Forces Burn Peasant Settlements for Canadian Nickel Firm
by Bill Weinberg, Indian Country Today
WW4 REPORT #130, February 2007
/node/3117

From our weblog:

Guerrero: GoldCorpt mine dispute settled
WW4 REPORT, April 30, 2006
/node/3729

NAFTA Security Summit held in Ottawa
WW4 REPORT, Feb. 25, 2007
/node/3230

RESOURCES:

Non-exhaustive list of Canadian Mining Corporations Currently Operating in Mexico
(many of these companies operate through subsidiaries)

Alamos Gold (Toronto): Sonora

Aquiline Resources (Vancouver): Sonora

Aurcana Corporation (Vancouver): Queretaro

Avino Silver and Gold Mines Ltd. (Vancouver): Durango

Baja Mining Corp. (Vancouver): Baja Peninsula

Bralorne Gold Mines Ltd. (Vancouver): Durango

Canasil (Vancouver): Durango, Sinaloa, Zacatecas

Canplats Resources Corporation (Vancouver) : Durango, Chihuahua

Capstone Gold Corp. (Vancouver): Zacatecas

Cardero Resource Group (Vancouver): Baja California,

CDG Investments Inc. (Calgary): Sinaloa

Chesapeake (Vancouver): Oaxaca, Sonora, Durango, Sinaloa, Chihuahua

Columbia Metals Corporation Ltd. (Toronto) : Sonora

Comaplex Minerals Corp. (Calgary): Mexico State

Coniagas Resources (Toronto): Zacatecas

Continuum Resources Ltd. (Vancouver): Oaxaca

Copper Ridge Explorations Inc. (Vancouver): Sonora

Corex Gold Corporation (Vancouver): Zacatecas

Cream Minerals Ltd. (Vancouver) : Nayarit

Diadem Resources (Toronto) : Zacatecas

ECU Silver Mining (Rouyn-Noranda): Durango

Endeavour Silver (Vancouver) : Durango

Energold Drilling Corp [Impact Silver Corp.] (Vancouver): Mexico State

Evolving Gold Corp. (Vancouver): currently exploring acquisitions in Mexico

Esperanza Silver Corp. (Vancouver): Morelos

Excellon Resources (Toronto): Durango

Exmin Resources Inc. (Vancouver): Chihuahua

Dundarave Resources Inc. (Vancouver): Chihuahua

Farallon Resources Ltd. [Hunter Dickinson] (Vancouver): Guerrero

Firesteel Resources (Vancouver): Durango

First Majestic Silver Corp. (Vancouver): Jalisco, Coahuila, Durango,
Zacatecas

Fording Canadian Coal Trust [NYCO] (Calgary): Sonora

Formation Capital Corporation (Vancouver): Tamaulipas

Fronteer Development Group (Vancouver): Jalisco, Chiapas

Frontera Copper Corporation (Toronto): Sonora

Gammon Lake Resources (Halifax): Chihuahua, Guanajuato

Genco Resources (Vancouver): Mexico State

Goldcorp Inc. (Vancouver): Sinaloa, Durango, Chihuahua, Guerrero, Zacatecas

Gold-Ore Resources Ltd. (Vancouver): Sinaloa

Golden Goliath Resources (Vancouver): Chihuahua

Grandcru Resources (Vancouver): Sinaloa

Grayd Resource Corporation (Vancouver): Sonora

Great Panther Resources Ltd. (Vancouver): Durango, Guanajuato, Chihuahua

Grid Capital Corporation (Vancouver): Chihuahua

Hawkeye Gold and Diamonds (Vancouver): Nayarit

Horseshoe Gold Mining (Vancouver): Oaxaca

Iamgold Corporation (Toronto): (royalties) Chihuahua

Iciena Ventures (Vancouver): Sonora

Impact Silver Corp. (Vancouver): Zacatecas

International Croesus Ltd. (Vancouver): Jalisco

Intrepid Mines (Toronto): Sonora

Kimber Resources (Vancouver): Chihuahua

Linear Gold Corp (Halifax): Chiapas, Oaxaca

Macmillan Gold (Toronto): Durango, Sinaloa, Zacatecas, Jalisco, Nayarit

MAG Silver Corp (Vancouver): Chihuahua, Zacatecas, Durango

Minefinders (Vancouver): Chihuahua, Sonora

Morgain Minerals Inc. (Vancouver): Durango, Sonora

Metallica Resources Inc. (Toronto): San Luis Potosi

Mexoro Minerals Ltd. (Vancouver): Chihuahua

Northair Group (Vancouver): Durango, Sinaloa

Northwestern Mineral Ventures (Toronto): Durango

Oromex Resources (Vancouver): Durango

Orko Silver Corp. (Vancouver): Durango

Pacific Comox Resources (Toronto): Sonora

Palmarejo Silver and Gold (Longueuil): Chihuahua

Pan American Silver (Vancouver): Sonora

Pinnacle Mines Ltd. (Vancouver): Mexico State, Oaxaca

Quaterra (Vancouver): Durango, Zacatecas

Rome Resources Ltd. (Vancouver): Sonora

Ross River Minerals (Vancouver): Sinaloa

Roxwell Gold Mines (Vancouver): Sinaloa

Santoy Resources Ltd. (Vancouver): Sinaloa

Scorpio Mining Corporation (Vancouver): Sinaloa

Silver Crest Mines (Vancouver): Sonora

Silver Standard Resources (Vancouver): Durango, Mexico

Soho Resources Group (Vancouver): Durango

Sonora Gold Corp (Vancouver): Sonora

Sparton Resources (Toronto): Sinaloa, Sonora

Starcore International Ventures (Vancouver): Puebla

Stingray Resources (Toronto) : Chihuahua

Southern Silver Exploration (Vancouver): Jalisco, Chihuahua

Stroud Resources (Toronto): Chihuahua

Teck Cominco Ltd. (Vancouver): Guerrero

Terra Novo Gold Corp. (Vancouver): Michoacan

Tumi Resources (Vancouver): Chihuahua, Sonora

Tyler Resources (Calgary): Chihuahua

UC Resources (Vancouver): Durango, Nayarit

Valdez Gold (Toronto): Chihuahua

War Eagle Mining Company (Vancouver): Chihuahua

West Timmins Mining Corp. (Vancouver): Sinaloa, Chihuahua

Zaruma Resources Inc. (Toronto): Sonora

——————-

Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, May 1, 2007
Reprinting permissible with attribution

CONTINENTAL INDIGENOUS SUMMIT IN GUATEMALA

by Marc Becker, Upside Down World

Thousands of Indigenous peoples from 24 countries gathered in Guatemala on March 26 for the Third Continental Summit of Indigenous Peoples and Nationalities of Abya Yala. After U.S. President George W. Bush visited the country two weeks earlier during his contentious “diplomatic” tour of Latin America, Maya priests cleansed the site of his “bad spirits” in preparation for the summit.

The week-long summit was held in Iximché, a sacred Maya site and main city of the Kaqchikel Maya people. The first day dawned bright and sunny. In Tecpán, a nearby town where many of the delegates to the summit were housed with local families, organizers gathered in the main plaza and exploded fireworks to celebrate the beginning of the meetings. In the early morning light, delegates crowded on buses to travel the four kilometers up to the Iximché ceremonial site. Nestled in a plaza among the pyramids, Maya leaders led the group in a spiritual ceremony as the sun peeked over the horizon. On subsequent days, people from North, South, and Central America all took their turns with the opening ceremonies.

After the ceremonies, delegates descended to the entrance of the archaeological site for breakfast (well organized in a communitarian and solidarity style) and the inauguration of the summit under a huge tent set up for this purpose. A Maya elder cleansed the speaker’s table with incense before the presentations began. Despite this cosmological framing, the summit’s discussions focused primarily on economic and political rather than cultural issues. The summit’s slogan “from resistance to power” captured the spirit of the event. It is not enough to resist oppression, but Indigenous peoples need to present concrete and positive alternatives to make a better and more inclusive world.

The summit’s ideological orientation was apparent from the inaugural panel onward. After Tecpán’s mayor welcomed delegates to Iximché, Ecuadorian Indigenous activist and Continental Council member Blanca Chancoso called for Indigenous peoples to be treated as citizens and members of a democracy. She rejected war-making, militarization, and free trade pacts.

“Our world is not for sale,” she declared. “Bush is not welcome here. We want, instead, people who support life. Yes to life. Imperialism and capitalism have left us with a historic debt, and they owe us for this debt.”

She emphasized the importance of people creating alternatives to the current system.

Joel Suárez from the Americas Social Forum was also present to announce that the Third Americas Social Forum will be held in Guatemala in 2008. For it to be successful, Suárez emphasized, the forum must have an Indigenous and female face. He called on delegates to support the forum.

Indigenous Peoples and Nation-States

Three plenary panels with invited speakers framed the discussions of the summit’s theme of moving from resistance to power. The panels examined relations between Indigenous peoples and nation-states, territory and natural resources, and Indigenous governments.

Irma Alicia Velásquez Nimatuj from Guatemala pointed to a gap between Indigenous political understandings and the technical skills necessary to achieve those visions. In particular, Indigenous leaders need better training in economics and international law. But this does not mean borrowing solutions from the outside world.

“There are no recipes for success,” Velásquez emphasized. “We need to make up our own alternatives.”

Bolivia’s Foreign Relations Minister David Choquehuanca argued that we should not rebuild current states, but dream and create new ones. “Our minds are colonized,” he stated, “but not our hearts. It is time to listen to our hearts, because this is what builds resistance.”

Development plans look for a better life, but this results in inequality. Indigenous peoples, instead, look to how to live well (vivir bien). Choquehuanca emphasized the need to look for a culture of life.

Rodolfo Pocop from the Guatemalan organization Waqib’ Kej argued that we need a new word for the term “resources” because it reflects a mercantilist concept foreign to Indigenous cosmology. He suggested using instead “mother earth” because if we don’t live in harmony with the earth we will not have life.

Isaac Avalos, secretary general of the Confederación Sindical Unica de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia (CSUTCB), picked up on this concept, suggesting that we should not talk about land but territory because it is a much broader term that includes everything–land, air, water, petroleum, gas, etc. Following along with this symbolism, we must take care of the earth as our mother so that it can continue to provide a future for its children. The discussions led the gathered delegates to advocate for very practical and concrete actions, such as drinking local water and boycotting Coca-Cola.

Following the panels, delegates broke into working groups that focused on a variety of themes including self-determination, intellectual property rights, identity and cosmology, globalization, and Indigenous justice systems. While public events were often filled with discourses long on rhetoric, the workshops provided a venue for substantive and concrete proposals.

Women’s Participation

Inclusion and equality are expressed values that have long run through many Indigenous communities and organizations. Nevertheless, aspects of the dominant culture’s inequalities surfaced throughout the summit, most visibly apparent in gender inequalities. Women participated actively and massively throughout the summit. But while organizers made honorable attempts at equality on the plenary panels, men still outnumbered women by about three to one at the speakers’ tables. The imbalance became even more notable during discussion periods during which there were about ten men for every woman who approached the mike. Finally, a woman from Peru rose to note that men always dominate these conversations. “We need parity,” she demanded, “both individually and collectively.”

Declaration of Iximché

The most visible and immediate outcome of the summit was the Declaration of Iximché. It is a strong statement that condemns the U.S. government’s militaristic and imperialistic policies, and calls for respect for human rights, territory, and self-determination. It ratified an ancestral right to territory and common resources of the mother earth, rejected free trade pacts, condemned the construction of a wall between Mexico and the United States, and called for the legalization of coca leaves.

For an Indigenous summit, the declaration is perhaps notable for its lack of explicit ethnic discourse. Instead, it spoke of struggles against neoliberalism and for food sovereignty. On one hand, this pointed to the Indigenous movement’s alignment with broader popular struggles in the Americas. On the other, it demonstrated a maturation of Indigenous ideologies that permeate throughout the human experience. Political and economic rights were focused through a lens of Indigenous identity, with a focus on concrete and pragmatic actions. For example, in justifying the declaration’s condemnation of a the construction of a wall on the United States/Mexico border, Tonatierra’s Tupac Enrique Acosta declared that nowhere in the Americas could Indigenous peoples be considered immigrants because colonial borders were imposed from the outside.

The declaration endorsed the candidacy of Bolivia’s Indigenous president Evo Morales for the Nobel Peace Prize. Morales was widely cheered at the summit. Initial plans called for him to attend the summit’s closing rally, but ongoing political tensions in Bolivia prevented him from traveling to Guatemala. Instead, he sent a letter that read: “After more than 500 years of oppression and domination, they have not been able to eliminate us. Here we are alive and united with nature. Today we resist to recuperate together our sovereignty.”

Morales’ reception was in notable contrast to Guatemala’s own 1992 Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú who is currently making a bid for the presidency of that country. She did not appear at the summit, nor did she send a message. A delegate’s proposal to include support for her presidential aspirations in the declaration was loudly rejected. Some justified this exclusion as a reluctance to become involved in the internal politics of a country. What it perhaps more accurately reflected, however, was the messy contradictions of aspiring to exactly what the summit’s theme advocated: political power. Menchú continues to enjoy more support outside of Guatemala than within, with some of the choices she has made for political alliances being unpopular among her base. The refusal to support her candidacy was the most visible fractionalization at the summit.

Integration of Indigenous Movements

In order to build toward the integration of a continental Indigenous movement, organizers called for regional coordinating committees in Central and North America similar to South America’s Coordinating Body for the Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA) and the Andean Coordinating Body of Indigenous Organizations that was formed last year. Delegates also agreed to establish a Continental Coordinating body for Nationalities and Indigenous Peoples of the Americas. The body will allow exchange of ideas about quality of life and the movement against neoliberal trade policy.

The final item of business at the closing session was the location for the next meeting. The first summit was held in Mexico in 2000 and the second in Ecuador in 2004. Organizers requested that proposals be done by region not country, and proposed that the next logical location would be either southern South America or the North. No proposal was forthcoming from the North, but Argentina proposed the Chilean side of the triple Peru/Bolivia/Chile border in 2009. Justification for the location included supporting socialist President Michelle Bachelet to lead Chile out of the shadow of the Pinochet dictatorship, and the lingering issue of Bolivia’s outlet to the sea.

The continental coordinating committee will be based in Chile to help organize the next summit. The idea of a continental Indigenous organization did not seem to inspire a good deal of enthusiasm among the assembled delegates, although when it came to a vote only three delegates indicated their opposition. Perhaps delegates recognized the value of international meetings but believed that the most important work would happen locally in their own communities. Regional Indigenous organizations in Latin America have a history of being subject to external co-optation and internal divisions, which naturally makes some activists hesitant to create another such supra-natural organization. Nevertheless, no one publicly questioned the wisdom of forming more regional coordinating bodies.

Despite these persistent concerns and other divisions that occasionally surfaced, the level of energy and optimism at the summit was high. The week closed with three marches that converged in a rally in Guatemala City’s main plaza, symbolically representing the unification of Indigenous struggles across the Americas. In the dimming light, organizers launched three hot air balloons, two with the rainbow colors of the Indigenous flag. As delegates slowly dispersed, a remaining determined group of activists danced in a circle waving Indigenous flags as a Bolivian tune, “Somos Más” (we are more), blasted on the sound system. An almost full moon hung over the national palace. The week-long summit ended on a high note. The meeting seemed to have built a lot of positive energy. Discussions reflected a deepening and broadening of concerns and strategies. The gathering successfully strengthened both local and transnational Indigenous organizing efforts.

——

Marc Becker is a Latin America historian and a founder of NativeWeb, a project to use the Internet to advance Indigenous struggles.

This story first appeared April 4 in Upside Down World
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/687/1/

RESOURCES:

Third Continental Summit of Indigenous Peoples and Nationalities of Abya Yala
http://www.cumbrecontinentalindigena.org/

From our weblog:

Hemispheric indigenous summit bashes bio-fuels
WW4 REPORT, April 2, 2007
/node/3517

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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, May 1, 2007
Reprinting permissible with attribution

CENTRAL AMERICA: DEATH SQUADS FREELANCE FOR NARCOS

from Weekly News Update on the Americas:

Guatemala: Three Salvadoran Reps Murdered; Accused Killers Follow Them to Grave

Three Salvadoran legislative deputies to the Central American Parliament (PARLACEN) were murdered along with their driver on the afternoon of Feb. 19 as they were visiting Guatemala to attend a session of the parliament. Assailants followed them in vehicles to a place about 36 km from Guatemala City, killed them and set their van on fire—although there was evidence that some of the victims may have been alive when the fire was set.

The deputies were Eduardo D’Aubuisson, William Pichinte and Jose Ramon Gonzalez; the driver was Gerardo Ramirez. All three deputies were from the rightwing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) of Salvadoran president Elias Antonio Saca; D’Aubuisson’s father, the late Roberto D’Aubuisson, founded ARENA and reportedly led the notorious death squads of the 1980s.

Four agents from the Criminal Investigation Division (DINC) of the National Civilian Police (PNC)—Luis Arturo Herrera Lopez, head of the Section Against Organized Crime, and agents Jose Adolfo Gutierrez, Marvin Langen Escobar Mendez and Jose Korki Lopez Arreaga—were arrested on Feb. 21 and Feb. 22 and charged with the murders. According to the Guatemalan government, the agents had followed the Salvadorans in a patrol car with global positioning equipment, which allowed investigators to place the agents at the crime scene.

The four police agents reportedly confessed to executing the Salvadorans but claimed they thought the victims were Colombian narco-traffickers. The agents refused to say who had told them to carry out the executions. Their lawyers, Sandra Aguilar and Amanda Salazar Rodriguez, charged that the agents were beaten and tortured after their arrests. The agents were placed in the El Boqueron maximum security prison in Cuilapa, Santa Rosa department. On Feb. 23 Salazar filed an appeal asking for her clients to be placed in a more secure unit on the grounds that they feared for their lives.

The four agents were found dead in El Boqueron on Feb. 25; a prison guard was also killed. According to Governance Minister Carlos Vielman, who is in charge of national security, a group of prisoners rioted, took the warden and four guards hostage, and cut the throats of the four agents with knives. According to the authorities, the 177 prisoners who rioted were members of the notorious Mara Salvatrucha gang. The authorities suggested that the killers were prisoners who had been arrested by these agents in the past. Some 300 polices and soldiers with anti-riot equipment regained control of the prison.

Some of the prisoners and family members visiting the prison gave a different version. According to them, a group of masked armed men entered the prison without opposition, cut the electricity and executed the agents. The other prisoners then took the warden and guards hostage because they feared that they too would be executed or would be blamed for the murders. The daily Siglo Veintiuno obtained a report from the Public Ministry that seemed to back the prisoners’ version. The killers had altered the scene to make it appear that they had had to force the lock, according to the report, which found no evidence of a struggle at the scene. The report said the agents were killed by gunfire; there was no mention of knives. Four eyewitnesses were willing to testify if they were guaranteed protection, according to the report.

On March 2 Governance Minister Vielman announced that police operations assistant director Javier Figueroa had resigned on Feb. 26 and that Victor Soto had been removed from his post as chief of DINC, the division to which the agents belonged. On Feb. 27 the Guatemalan Congress had passed a resolution calling for Vielman himself to resign, but Vielman said he would keep his position. (Guatemala Hoy, Feb. 21, 22, 23, 26, 28, March 3; Adital, March 26 from Grupo de Apoyo Mutuo, March 1)

The Mutual Support Group (GAM), a Guatemalan human rights organization, charged that the murders of the agents were “a demonstration of the degree to which organized crime and drug trafficking have penetrated the structures of Guatemalan state agencies, particularly in the national security forces.” Others noted that 43 complaints were filed against the DINC in 2006, including three for extrajudicial execution and 10 for forced disappearances. The GAM called the “indifference of the international community” to criminality in the Guatemalan government “worrying.” (GH, Feb. 23; Adital, Feb. 26 from GAM)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, March 4, 2007

PNC agent Marvin Roberto Contreras Natareno testified on March 16 for the first time since his arrest in connection with the murder of the Salvadoran deputies. In his three-hour testimony Contreras Natareno told Judge Nery Medina that he had been called in as backup after four police agents stopped the deputies’ vehicle. According to Contreras Natareno, the deputies and their driver were still alive when he arrived, and the police agents were searching the vehicle for drugs. Later the agents shot some or all of the deputies and set the car on fire with the deputies inside. As of March 16 the Public Ministry had not decided whether to charge Contreras Natareno with murder or treat him as a witness. (Diario Colatino, San Salvador, March 16; Miami Herald, March 16 from AP; La Prensa Grafica, San Salvador, March 16)

In an interview published on March 10, PNC director Erwin Sperisen told the Guatemalan daily Prensa Libre that “Guatemalan drug traffickers” were behind the murder, but he refused to give details. (El Nuevo Herald, Miami, March 11 from EFE) Salvadoran officials have said that the three lawmakers were not linked to organized crime. (MH, March 16 from AP) In Guatemala the case has led to the resignations of DINC director Victor Soto and assistant director Javier Figueroa; Figueroa fled to Costa Rica on March 4. (La Prensa Grafica, San Salvador, March 16)

Guatemalan authorities still maintain other prisoners were responsible for the execution-style killings of the four DINC agents. According to Mario Falla, head of the attorney general’s technical bureau, four pistols were found in electrical appliances that the prisoners had in their possession; three of the pistols were used in the killing of the agents, Falla says. Some prisoners said the weapons were in fact planted in the appliances, which had been in the hands of the authorities for several days. (La Nacion, Costa Rica, March 15 from AFP)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, March 18, 2007

Guatemala: Student Leader Murdered, Peasants Block Highways

On the night of March 9, unidentified assailants shot to death Guatemalan student leader Oscar Abelardo Chata as he was walking to his home in Peten. He was in his fourth year of teachers’ college. Chata’s killing is believed to be political, since none of his belongings were stolen. The Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity-Broad Movement of the Left (URNG-MAIZ) condemned the killing, noting that it was one in a string of recent attacks against leftist activists. (Guatemala Hoy, March 17)

The Movement of Human Rights has recorded 278 attacks in the past three years against community leaders, human rights and union activists, designed to intimidate them into discontinuing their work. Many of the attacks and threats have come from public security forces. (La Semana en Guatemala, March 14-19)

On March 15, members of the Committee of Campesino Unity (CUC) and the National Coordinating Committee of Campesino Organizations (CNOC) blocked several highways in Huehuetenango, Izabal, Zacapa and Chiquimula to demand justice for murdered community members. CUC leader Jose Domingo said the protest commemorated the second anniversary of the killing of CUC member Juan Lopez Velasquez by soldiers and police during protests against the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA) in Colotenango. Some 500 campesinos from Izabal, Zacapa and Chiquimula held a similar demonstration to demand a prompt and thorough investigation into the murder last Feb. 6 of community leader Israel Carias Ortiz and his two sons, nine and 10 years old, in Los Achiotes, Zacapa. (La Semana en Guatemala, March 14-19)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, March 25, 2007

Zacapa: Campesino Leader Murdered

On Feb. 6 in the Guatemalan municipality of Zacapa, unidentified assailants shot to death campesino leader Israel Carias Ortiz and his two sons, nine-year old Ledwin Anilson Carias Ramirez and 10-year-old Ronald Haroldo Carias Ramirez. The family was ambushed on a rural road while heading home to the Los Achiotes farm. According to Radio Sonora, Nelly Ortiz, the campesino leader’s mother, died of shock upon hearing the news. Carias Ortiz was a leader of the Los Achiotes Indigenous Campesino Development Association (ACIDEA), a group of 150 families fighting to recover their lands on the Los Achiotes farm in Zacapa, which is currently occupied illegally by large-scale landholders. The Committee of Campesino Unity (CUC) blamed the murders on landholders Geraldina Cordon, Faustina Barrillas, Jorge Madrid, Victor Hugo Salguero, Edwin Ruiz, Salvador Cabrera and others. According to CUC, these landholders have been threatening local campesino leaders, including Carias and his family, and regional CUC leader Abelardo Roldan. (AP, Feb. 7; CUC communique, Feb. 6)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, Feb. 11, 2007

Costa Rica: 50,000 Protest Free Trade

Some 50,000 people took to the streets of San Jose, Costa Rica, on Feb. 26 to demand that the country’s Legislative Assembly not ratify the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA), a US-sponsored trade pact referred to in Central America by the Spanish initials for free trade treaty, TLC. The demonstration, dubbed “A Day for the Homeland” and organized by the National Front to Support the Struggle Against the TLC, was the largest one yet in Central America against the trade pact, and one of the largest protests ever in Costa Rica.

Costa Rica signed DR-CAFTA last year but is the only participating nation which has not yet ratified the pact. The Legislative Assembly had planned to debate the TLC on Feb. 26. President Oscar Arias, who has been pushing heavily for DR-CAFTA’s approval, claimed his supporters have the 38 votes they need to ratify the pact. But in the end the Legislative Assembly was unable to debate the treaty on Feb. 26 because it lacked a quorum. (Red de Comunicacion Alternativa contra el TLC, Feb. 26; El Comerico, Peru, Feb. 27 from DPA; Inter Press Service, Feb. 26)

Ricardo Segura of the National Committee of Struggle Against the TLC said simultaneous demonstrations were also held in San Carlos and Palmares de Alajuela in Guanacaste province, in Coto Brus in the south of the country, and in Limon on the Atlantic coast, among other areas. Carlos Arguedas, leader of the Union of Agricultural and Plantation Workers (SITRAP), said riot police violently attacked more than 600 demonstrators who blocked Route 32 in Siquirres, Limon province. The agents destroyed banners and signs and confiscated a loudspeaker vehicle, detaining its driver. At least five people were arrested, and a group of at least 80 demonstrators encircled the Siquirres jail to demand their release. (Red de Comunicacion Alternativa contra el TLC, Feb. 26; Argenpress, March 4)

Leaders of the Union of National University Workers (SITUN) and the Union Association of Industrial Communication and Energy Workers (ASDEICE) said separately that police stopped and searched several buses taking workers to the demonstration in San Jose, and a number of protesters had to continue on foot. (Red de Comunicacion Alternativa contra el TLC, Feb. 26)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, March 4, 2007

El Salvador: Students Block Streets

In El Salvador, 27 people—most of them students of the University of San Salvador—were arrested on Feb. 28 for “public disorder” after blocking traffic on Constitucion Boulevard in the northern sector of San Salvador during a protest against DR-CAFTA. The protest marked the close of the country’s first year under DR-CAFTA; El Salvador was the first nation to implement the pact, on Mar. 1, 2006. (El Vocero de Michigan, March 2 from AFP)

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

See also:

WW4 REPORT #130, February 2007
/node/3112

From our weblog:

Guatemala: Maya priests to purify sacred site after Bush visit
WW4 REPORT, March 13, 2007
/node/3340

——————-

Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, April 1, 2007
Reprinting permissible with attribution

ARGENTINA: DIRTY WAR AND HISTORICAL MEMORY

from Weekly News Update on the Americas:

On March 24, two separate but nearly simultaneous marches were held in Buenos Aires to mark the anniversary of Argentina’s 1976 coup and remember the 30,000 people who were disappeared by the military regime.

The first march—attended by 10,000 people, according to the Buenos Aires daily Clarin—was called by organizations allied with or supportive of the government of President Nestor Kirchner, including the Grandmothers and Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo-Founding Line, the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights, the Good Memory Association, Relatives and Siblings of the Disappeared, and the Historical Memory Foundation. The second march was organized by the Memory, Truth and Justice Encounter, a coalition of 185 human rights, community, media and cultural groups not aligned with the government, including the HIJOS group of children of the disappeared and the Association of Former Detained-Disappeared. Both marches ended at the Plaza de Mayo, the second one arriving just after the first rally ended. According to the Buenos Aires daily Cronica, the two marches together drew about 100,000 people.

In addition to marking the coup anniversary, the marchers were commemorating the 30th anniversary of the murder of journalist Rodolfo Walsh, who authored an open letter to the military regime on March 24, 1977, the first anniversary of the coup, and was disappeared hours later. Both marches also coincided in demanding the reappearance—alive—of human rights activist Jorge Julio Lopez, who disappeared last September after testifying against former military officer Miguel Etchecolatz in a trial over dirty war human rights abuses. (Prensa Latina, March 24; Documento del 24 de marzo Memoria, Verdad y Justicia, March 24, posted on Argentina Indymedia; Clarin, March 25; Cronica, March 24; La Jornada, Mexico, March 25)

President Nestor Kirchner headed a separate commemoration earlier on March 24 at the former clandestine detention center of La Perla, in Cordoba province, where an estimated 2,000 political prisoners were held during the dictatorship. (PL, March 24; LJ, March 25)

In Jujuy, protesters held an “escrache”—a noisy human rights protest—at a police station where a detention center operated during the dictatorship. (Clarin, March 25) Protests were also held in Rosario, Salta, La Pampa, Chaco, Santiago del Estero and Entre Rios. (LJ, March 25)

Another protest was scheduled for March 25 at the former detention center of Campo de Mayo, in front of a building where pregnant political detainees gave birth; the regime routinely disappeared the mothers, and illegally gave the infants into adoption with falsified birth papers. (Clarin, March 25)

Santa Fe: Police Attack Water Protest

On the morning of March 22, World Water Day, activists from the Coordinating Committee of Neighborhood Unity-Teresa Rodriguez Movement (CUBa-MTR) in Rosario, Santa Fe province, held a demonstration protesting the government’s failure to provide running water to the city’s Santa Clara neighborhood. Provincial police attacked the protesters, firing metal bullets into the air and rubber bullets into the crowd. Dozens of people were wounded, and nine people—five women and four men—were arrested. An eight-year-old boy was among those hit by rubber bullets. Agents also used clubs to beat demonstrators, including children and pregnant women.

The protesters regrouped at the police station to demand the release of those arrested. The nine detainees were freed around 6:30 PM but were ordered to appear in court the next day. In a communique, the CUBa-MTR blamed the Santa Fe provincial government for the violence, and warned that its members would not be intimidated. (CUBa-MTR Communique, March 22)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, March 25, 2007

——

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

See also:

WW4 REPORT #130, February 2007
/node/3113

From our weblog:

South America protests Bush
WW4 REPORT, March 13, 2007
/node/3339

——————-

Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, April 1, 2007
Reprinting permissible with attribution

COLOMBIA: PARAMILITARY SCANDAL AND CORPORATE POWER

from Weekly News Update on the Americas:

On March 19 the Cincinnati-based banana company Chiquita Brands International formally admitted that its wholly owned Colombian subsidiary Banadex paid a total $1.7 million to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), a rightwing paramilitary group, between 1997 and 2004. The company agreed to pay the US federal government $25 million in fines for supporting a terrorist group; the AUC is on the US State Department’s list of terrorist organizations. On March 20 Colombian attorney general Mario Iguaran announced that he would seek the extradition of eight Chiquita officials to face trial in Colombia.

Chiquita officials claimed the company paid the paramilitary group to keep it from attacking Chiquita employees; the company said it had also paid off the two leftist guerrilla organizations, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN), for the same reason. But Colombian prosecutors indicate that Chiquita’s ties to the AUC are more extensive. They plan to ask the US Justice Department about a November 2001 incident in which a Banadex ship was used to unload 3,000 AK-47 rifles and more than 2.5 million bullets; these were bought by the paramilitaries from arms dealers who got them from Nicaraguan police. Colombia held Banadex’s legal representative, Giovanny Hurtado Torres, in jail for a year in the investigation of the arms smuggling, but finally released him for lack of evidence. (Reuters, March 20 via Yahoo en Espanol; Houston Chronicle, March 25 from AP)

On March 16 Sun-Times Media Group Inc., publisher of the Chicago Sun-Times, said the US may investigate its chief executive, Cyrus Freidheim Jr., who headed Chiquita from 2002 to 2004. (Reuters, March 17)

Meanwhile, a suit is proceeding against the Alabama-based mining company Drummond Co. Inc. in connection with the 2001 murder of three unionists representing workers at Drummond’s coal mine in northern Colombia. The suit, filed in US federal court in 2002 by the Colombian miners’ union, Sintramienergetica, and the United Steelworkers of America, is now set for trial on May 14.

On March 14 the 11th US Court of Appeals ruled that US District Judge Karon Bowdre had exceeded her authority by sealing the documents in the case. These documents included sworn testimony by Rafael Garcia, a former Colombian security official now in prison in Colombia, that he was present at a meeting where Augusto Jimenez, president of Drummond Ltd, the company’s Colombian branch, handed “a suitcase full of money” to a representative of paramilitary leader Rodrigo Tovar Pupo to have the three union leaders murdered. The sealed documents also showed that Drummond attempted to lobby the US State Department, apparently to get its help to have the lawsuit dismissed. The lobby effort included working with Baker Botts LLP, the law firm of James Baker, secretary of state in the 1989-1993 government of former US president George H.W. Bush.

On March 22 Drummond officials denied Rafael Garcia’s allegations. But Jose Miguel Linares, a local Drummond vice president, acknowledged that a Drummond Ltd. director, Alfredo Araujo, is a cousin of Senator Alvaro Araujo, who was jailed in February on charges of working with the paramilitaries to kidnap a political rival; Alvaro Araujo’s sister, Maria Consuelo Araujo, resigned from her post as foreign minister in the resulting scandal. On March 20 Colombia announced that it was starting a formal investigation of Drummond’s possible ties to paramilitaries. (Forbes, March 14 from AP; Associated Press, March 16; Houston Chronicle, March 22 from AP)

Army Kills Peasants on Eastern Plains

According to information provided by the Foundation of the Committee in Solidarity with Political Prisoners (FCSPP) and the Social Corporation for Community Advising and Training (COS-PACC), troops from the Colombian Army’s 16th Brigade executed two campesinos, Daniel Torres Arciniegas and 16-year-old Roque Julio Torres Torres, in the rural hamlet of El Triunfo, in Aguazul municipality, Casanare department. The army then presented the victims as “subversives killed in combat.” Torres Torres had been a witness to the earlier execution of Hugo Edgar Araque Rodriguez and Freddy Alexander Cardenas by members of the same 16th Brigade; several soldiers were under judicial investigation for that crime.

Since 1996, 13 campesinos from Aguazul have been executed, another 26 have been disappeared, and there have been multiple cases of torture, forced displacement, arbitrary detention and other abuses in the municipality. The community has reported the abuses and fears retaliation. (Agencia Prensa Rural, March 20)

At least three other campesinos have been murdered in Aguazul since the beginning of this year. On Jan. 18, Angel Camacho was murdered in the hamlet of Plan Cunama las Brisas by individuals who appeared to be from a unit of the GAULA, a national anti-kidnapping force, based in Yopal, capital of Casanare. Witnesses said that after killing Camacho, the assassins placed a gun in the victim’s hand and took photos of the body before taking it away.

On Jan. 29, two young individuals in civilian clothing who appeared to be leftist guerrillas murdered Reinaldo Zea in the hamlet of Retiro Milagro. After killing Zea, the assailants threatened his wife, warning her to stay quiet or face the same fate. On Feb. 12, a heavily armed group of men dressed in camouflage, accompanied by others in civilian clothing, stopped a bus transporting British Petroleum contract workers in the hamlet of La Florida; the men took Jaime Palacios off the bus and murdered him. (Message posted by FCSPP/COS-PACC March 20 on Colombia Indymedia)

On March 15, troops from Battalion 29 of the army’s 16th Brigade, based in Yopal, took campesino Carlos Guevara from his home in the village of Ocove, in Labranzagrande municipality, Boyaca department (just northwest of Casanare), and forced him to accompany them. Hours later members of the army told the community that they had killed a guerrilla; residents recognized the body as that of Guevara. Several months earlier, the army had detained Guevara and accused him of being a guerrilla; the courts had freed him after finding no evidence for that claim. (Message from FCSPP/COS-PACC, undated, received March 23)

Weekly News Update on the Americas, March 25, 2007

——

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

See also:

WW4 REPORT #126, October 2006
/node/2577

More on Drummond at WW4 REPORT #43:
/static/43.html#andean3

From our weblog:

Colombia rejects CIA report on army-para ties
WW4 REPORT, March 26, 2007
/node/3445

——————-

Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, April 1, 2007
Reprinting permissible with attribution

CounterVortex

Tag: Syndicated Content

HYDRO-COLONIALISM ADVANCES IN CANADA’S FAR NORTH

AFRICA’S INDIGENOUS PEOPLES

ALGERIA: DEMOCRACY CRUMBLING?

RESISTING THE NEW EURO-MISSILES

INDIA AT WAR

CHINA IN AFRICA: THE NEW DEBATE

COSTA RICA: CAFTA REFERENDUM PLANNED

MINING IN MEXICO: VIOLENCE MADE IN CANADA

CONTINENTAL INDIGENOUS SUMMIT IN GUATEMALA

CENTRAL AMERICA: DEATH SQUADS FREELANCE FOR NARCOS

ARGENTINA: DIRTY WAR AND HISTORICAL MEMORY

COLOMBIA: PARAMILITARY SCANDAL AND CORPORATE POWER