German deported, anti-Kudankulam activist cries foul
A German national was deported from India Tuesday on grounds of raising funds for protests against the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project, prompting an anti-nuclear activist to say the move was anti-tourist.
A police officer told IANS in Chennai that Sonnteg Reiner Hermann's visa was cancelled and he was put on a flight to Germany Tuesday morning and deported. He was brought to Chennai Monday night.
In New Delhi, Acting German Ambassador Cord Meier-Klodtsaid his government was not in touch with the Indian authorities on the matter.
"We learned about the incident this morning and through our channels we were informed that by now he has left the country," Meier-Klodt told reporters.
Activist R.S. Lal Mohan termed the development “unfortunate”.
“It is an unfortunate news. He is a genuine tourist and has been visiting various countries. It is a bad development for the country's tourism,” Lal Mohan said in Chennai.
In a joint operation by central intelligence agencies and Tamil Nadu police, Hermann who was staying at Nagercoil in Tamil Nadu on a tourist visa was Monday questioned about his involvement in raising funds for anti-KNPP protests. Nagercoil is 645 km from here.
According to police, based on the information from central intelligence agencies, Hermann's room was checked and he was questioned.
Police said Hermann was in touch with Lal.
Confirming that he knows the German, Lal said: “I don't know whether he was involved in raising funds for anti-KNPP protestors. But being anti-nuclear does not mean one is anti-national.”
The development comes days after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in an interview to the American Science magazine accused NGOs based in the US and Scandinavian countries of funding the protests.
The central government later said it has cancelled the licences of three NGOs without revealing their names.
India's nuclear power plant operator, NPCIL, is building two 1,000 MW atomic power reactors with Russian collaboration at Kudankulam in Tirunelveli district, around 650 km from Chennai.
However, villagers in Kudankulam, Idinthakarai and nearby areas, fearing their safety in case of any accident, are dead set against the project.
Their agitation, led by the People's Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE), has put a stop to the project work, delaying the commissioning of the first unit slated for December 2011.
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India Digest: Walmart to Sell Hero Bicycles Worldwide
Here is a roundup of news from Indian newspapers, news wires and websites on Thursday, March 1, 2012. The Wall Street Journal has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.
Walmart to Sell Hero Bicycles Worldwide: Breaking the near monopoly of Chinese bicycle manufacturers, the Pankaj Munjal-promoted Hero Cycles has clinched an agreement with Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, to supply bicycles across the world. (Source: Business Standard)
Govt to Probe 12 More Cases of NGOs’ ‘Fund Diversion:’ The Centre has written to the Tamil Nadu government seeking a green signal to probe 12 additional cases of ‘fund diversion’ against other organizations under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA). (Source: The Times of India)
India Ignores US, Keeps Iran Ties: Even as US secretary of state Hillary Clinton has gone public with a “blunt and intense” message to India to isolate Iran, New Delhi has continued with functional and transactional relationship with Tehran. (Source: Hindustan Times)
Some Suspects in Israeli Embassy Car Blast Case Identified: Investigations so far have revealed that only one person riding a motorcycle, a foreign national, attached the improvised explosive device with a flexible magnetic strip to the Israeli official’s car. (Source: The Hindu)
Kathryn Bigelow Shoots Osama Film in Chandigarh: The 60-year-old director was in the heart of Chandigarh today, shooting for her next — the story of the hunting down of Osama bin Laden by the US Navy Seals, a film for now titled Zero Dark Thirty or ZD30. (Source: The Indian Express)
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Dow paid U.S. firms to spy on Bhopal activists: WikiLeaks emails
Even as Dow Chemical has resisted all compensation claims with regard to the Union Carbide gas leak disaster in Bhopal, it found the money to hire an intelligence research firm to intensively monitor all NGOs and activists working on the issue.
On Monday, WikiLeaks released a cache of 5.5 million emails from the Texas-based intelligence company Stratfor, which revealed that regular monitoring reports of NGO activity as well as media coverage were sent to Dow and Union Carbide communications directors.
Dow Chemical, which bought Union Carbide in 2001, insists that it bears no responsibility to compensate victims or clean up the contaminated site of the 1984 disaster. However, these emails prove that it is still very much invested in monitoring the fallout of the disaster, and its impact on Dow's image.
A typical monitoring report begins with a round-up of all news items referencing Dow, Union Carbide or Bhopal from news wires, newspapers, television channels and news websites, both in India and abroad. It includes a comprehensive dossier on activist activity — covering court cases, online petitions, film screenings, fundraisers and publicity events, press releases, blog posts, items on message boards, emails to mailing lists, Facebook pages and Twitter feeds. No event or statement seems to have been too obscure for Allis Information Management, the Michigan-based firm that prepared the monitoring reports for Dow. Intelligence analysts going so far as to track petition signers, commenters on blog posts, or those who might have re-tweeted a Dow-related article. Names such as Bhopal-based activists Rachna Dhingra and Satinath Sarangi find frequent mention, as well as anti-corporate pranksters, the Yes Men. In the latter part of 2011, much attention was paid to the campaign protesting Dow's sponsorship of the London Olympics.
In the lead-up to the 25th anniversary of the Bhopal disaster, Stratfor analysts also discussed the trends in activist strategies, speculating whether major NGO players would be able to connect Bhopal to the larger issue of corporate irresponsibility, the issue of “other Bhopals.”
The Yes Men activists accused Dow of using “sinister spy tactics” and corporate paranoia. “These leaks seem to show that corporate power is most afraid of whatever reveals ‘the larger whole' and ‘broader issues', i.e., whatever brings systemic criminal behaviour to light,” a Yes Men statement said on Monday.
However, while the monitoring was extensive and intensive, there does not seem to be any evidence of espionage, or of any illegal activity by Dow in this cache of emails. All the data mined by the intelligence research firm seems to be in the public domain, and openly available to any interested person.
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Somalia: NGOs urge 'solution from within'
Brussels/Juba (Belgium/South Sudan) — While the international community discusses Somalia's future in London and Brussels, European and Somali non-governmental organisations are calling for a radical shift from a military to a humanitarian approach as the only solution to the country's war-torn condition.
Africa News Update (ANU)
Somalia has still not recovered from its last humanitarian crisis. Six months after the United Nations declared a famine in the country, more than 325, 000 children are still suffering from acute malnutrition. Though last summer's response from the international community and civil society did succeed in saving many lives, expulsions of aid agencies and internationally backed military operations still impede humanitarian assistance from reaching those who are most in need.
During the London Somalia Conference last Thursday, world leaders reached an agreement on seven key areas to put an end to Somalia's precarious situation, including security, piracy, terrorism, humanitarian assistance, local stability, a reinstallment of the political process and international cooperation.
Talks about the country will resume at the European Union Foreign Affairs meeting starting next Monday in Brussels.
Although NGOs applaud the international community's initiative and effort to help Somalia, the proposed seven key areas were received with mixed feelings.
"What we had hoped for was a recognition that twenty years of internationally imposed solutions have failed. However, what we've seen once again were externally driven solutions that haven't worked, aren't working and will not work," Barbara Stocking from Oxfam International said in a press release on Thursday.
Oxfam is demanding that the international community radically shift its approach in order to effectively brighten Somalia's future. In its new report 'Putting the Interests of Somali People First', the organisation states that although responsibility for Somalia's crisis lies foremost with factions inside the country, international engagement has at times made matters worst.
For many governments involved in Somalia, military action is seen as a means of providing security and stability, but reports from inside tell a different story.
"Setting out a new approach by shifting the emphasis away from anti-piracy and security concerns and taking practical steps towards an inclusive political process must be at the top of Europe's agenda if it is serious about bringing long-term peace and security to ordinary Somalis and the region," Natalia Alonso, Head of Oxfam's EU office in Brussels, stated in a press release on Wednesday.
"For more than twenty years foreign armies have been coming in and going out of Somalia, without any success," Tidhar Wald, Oxfam's EU humanitarian policy advisor told IPS. "What we need right now is an inclusive, Somali-led peace process. Somalis themselves should have a say in the solution the international community is outlining. If you look at the conferences that are taking place right now, you can clearly see there are not enough Somali voices taking part in the decision-making."
Oxfam's standpoint is reflected on the ground in Somalia itself.
"The last twenty years have seen numerous military interventions in Somalia," Aydris Daar, CEO of the Wajir South Development Association (WASDA) in Juba, Somalia, told IPS. "Whenever they occurred, they led to an increase of conflicts inside the country. And when conflicts increase, regular people do not have time to attend to ther daily work, children cannot go to school and there is no time or space to do business, which affects the economic situation. Military actions in Somalia have never improved the humanitarian situation," he said.
According to WASDA, any solution for Somalia's war-torn condition should be fully grounded in a humanitarian principle.
"International action should not lead to further suffering in Somalia," Aydris Daar told IPS, "The solution must come from within but before that can happen, we need support: funding for Somalia must be (long term), so it can go beyond relief into recovery and development. Seventy percent of the people in Somalia are younger than 35; it is their poverty and unemployment that is pushing them to take sides in the conflicts. This is what is fuelling conflicts in Somalia."
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Afghanistan’s Secret Prostitutes
“I hate this life,” she says, tears rolling down her cheeks
You never have to wander far from your front door in Kabul to be confronted by the dire poverty in a city where billions have been spent in foreign aid over the past decade of occupation by the west. Where an entire sub-economy has grown up around the semi-permanent presence of foreign NGOs.
You will see the beggars somehow surviving in the middle of traffic-choked streets (this city has some of the worst air-pollution on the planet) pleading with their missing body parts , appealing for alms, mouthing words that can never be heard above the din of the traffic at a near standstill in the freezing crisp air.
Or the widows, invisible in their burkhas, who sit in the snow at the roadsides, holding babies swaddled, but still coughing in the sub-zero air, for hour after hour after hour. They too, hope for the odd Afghani from generous passers-by.
Or get up early and go to the known places where they gather. Men, often hundreds of them, desperate for work of any kind for perhaps a dollar or two per day – maybe 100 Afghanis in their pockets after 10 or 12 hours hard labour in sub-zero conditions. Anything’s considered. No, change that. Anything’s grabbed with both hands unconsidered.
But behind closed doors of houses, reasonably well-to-do houses, there is also quiet despair.
In a Kabul suburb we have come to a woman’s house. We’ll call her Habiba. She’s playing with her daughter on the carpet, a toddler. There’s a small but modern flatscreen TV in the corner. A house of several bedrooms. In her headscarf and jeans she is very westernised by Afghan standards. On several occasions Channel 4 News meets Habiba and films and talks to her, with her husband not present. Even meeting an Afghan woman at all in her home would be quite unthinkable in most parts of this country and most of this city too – let alone doing so with no husband in the room.
But what we shall witness in this house goes so far beyond the norms of Afghanistan’s conservative society – so far beyond the norms of British society come to that – it is hard to find words to frame it.
Habiba, in her late 20s, is a schoolteacher. Her husband, a civil-servant. Or at least they were.
Prostitution in Afghanistan has increased
Some months back her husband’s epilepsy and other health problems forced him to leave his job, he said. And then he took to drink. And he also took to beating Habiba up if she declined to do his bidding.
By any standards in any society that bidding is extraordinary. He has forced her to leave the classroom and become a prostitute. He, the husband, is now also the pimp.
“I hate this life,” she says, tears rolling down her cheeks. “Right now I hate myself and my husband. I think I am the worst person in the world. It is horrible. And what about my daughter?”
She cries uncontrollably. “What kind of example – what kind of role model am I for her? But if I don’t do this I will get beaten.”
And you do not have to tell Habiba that in Afghanistan, if you leave your husband then you leave your children too and there will be no coming back and no safety net at all, financially. And your life and safety will be in real jeopardy. Habiba is trapped and Habiba knows it.
The motive for this couple in allowing us to film them and their extreme means of maintaining their income, is curious. They both think that if there is publicity in the west about this kind of thing and the lack of any kind of real support for people too ill to work, then things will somehow improve. It seems a deeply far-fetched, not least in a world where that same west is hell-bent on getting out of its Afghan mire as fast as it possibly can.
“I want her to go back to teaching. I want to get treatment and go back to work myself.” Says her husband in one breath. But in the next, he turns to Habiba and shouts:
“Get this place ready – we’ve got guests arriving.”
And Habiba will – must – obey. She must prepare the food and the tea. Tidy the front room to receive the guests. Make sure that everything is in order in the room behind the curtain where, after a little cursory chat and the exchange of a wad of Afghanis given to the husband (not to her) she will be taken by the hand by one of two men come to visit.
Behind that curtain in a room used for the business, she will make more money in a little over eight minutes, than she will in two weeks in the classroom. Except she won’t of course. the cash never was – never will be – given to her.
When the client returns to sit down and take a little more tea, she will follow meekly and sit too, in her own home, with the husband she now says she hates.
Then there will be laughter as the husband, the cliient and his friend pass an enjoyable afternoon. Habiba will offer food. She will offer and pour green tea. She will say nothing. And after twenty minutes or so, warm handshakes from the two visiting men for the pimp. Then a cursory slap of Habiba’s feebly proffered hand, from the punter – a sort of horizontal high-five, without the joy and happiness. And they are gone, out into the snow and another item of this secret business has been transacted.
She will now clear up the food and do the dishes. And only then will she confront her husband, all of it captured on the camera we have left running – with their agreement – in a corner of the room.
“Look at you – you just sit there and don’t say a thing. Say something – for God’s sake!! How can we go on living like this? You should be scared – God is watching you and you should be really scared.”
Her husband – her pimp – just sits there and says nothing it all.
A little later in the day they will go out shopping. They will trudge through the snow to the bazaar close by. He, carrying their daughter. She, dutifully walking a couple of faces behind her man as tradition demands, and clad in the full blue burkha one sees so much in Kabul. Just another Afghan family. Outside they follow the customs, culture, traditions. Indoors in secret, they are all obliterated for money, but at huge cost.
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Towards a More Enabling Environment for HIV/AIDS Responses
Towards a More Enabling Environment for Effective HIV/AIDS Responses
Shobha Shukla | CNS
February 24, 2012
A regional consultation, organized jointly by South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation in Law (SAARCLAW), UNAIDS Technical Support Facility for South Asia (TSF-SA) and Maitri, was held recently in New Delhi. It was part of the UNDP funded project ‘Support to the development of enabling environment by scanning of laws that impede effective HIV and AIDS responses in India,’ which aims to develop a comprehensive study on the issue, informed by engagement with the affected communities and other stakeholders during the consultations.
The meeting focussed on the legal and social environments that support or hinder programmes for populations that are vulnerable to, and affected by HIV and AIDS. The session proved to be highly interactive wherein all the participants shared their experiences on strategies, effective partnerships, and policies that can overcome the legal barriers to treatment, care and prevention efforts with key populations at high risk of HIV in India, and suggested recommendations to be reflected in the final report.
It was unanimously agreed that along with amending regressive laws, it will be in the interest of Key Affected Populations (KAP) to interact with the law enforcers, in order to sensitize them about them the problems faced by the communities. There is documented evidence to show that partnerships between law enforcement authorities and affected communities play a crucial role in increasing access to HIV prevention and reducing stigma.
Some good practice targeted interventions (TI) shared by the participants were:-
(i) A very community friendly and successful targeted intervention (TI) program being run amongst Injecting Drug Users (IDUs) in Kozikhode, Kerala for the last 12 years. The program involves participation of the law enforcers with a community friendly approach. The team leader of this TI, started by NACO, was an advocate, who collaborated with the police and narcotics department, making DIG a contact person. Many IDUs in this area are fishermen who need fresh needles when they return from fishing around 3 am when no TI works. On their suggestion, clean needles and other equipment are kept hidden in some pre-selected spots, from where the fishermen pick them up at their convenience.
(ii) A good practice TI program being run by Bharosa in Lucknow for the MSM community. Bharosa has organized around 5 workshops during the last 3 years, to train/ sensitize more than 900 policemen over MSM and HIV issues. Thus the community and the law enforcers have come together on one platform and made each other understand that homosexuality is neither wrong nor illegal. This unified action and regular interaction with the police has empowered the community, who now are no longer easy targets for police harassment. The havildar may still not know the connection between MSMs and HIV issues. But they at least understand that there are people like MSMs who are normal like anyone else.
(iii) Excellent intervention programs have also been initiated by law enforcers in Kolkata and Asansol amongst IDUs and sex workers. In Andhra Pradesh also there are good practices and the DGP works with the community and.
But such examples are few and far between. Some bad and ineffective practices were also mentioned, like some interventions for MSMs by church led groups in Kerala, where MSM intervention is supported by State AIDS Control Society (SACS) of Kerala. The group would invite gay people to attend church services so that they could be counselled to become straight. When asked if they promoted condom use, they said that condoms were given after the person got married. Similarly Delhi SACS was cited to have engaged a church based organization which distributes bibles to MSMs and tries to change their behaviour asking them to become straight.
There were concerns about the confusion around the meaning of ‘enabling environment’ as, even some of the law professionals are not clear about what this environment is. TIs are a component of enabling environment and National AIDS Control Organization (NACO) should clearly define and spell out the guidelines as to what is meant by enabling environment.
It was felt by all participants that there is a dire need for legal aid cells/clinics in every state. Legal aid delivery systems for PLHIV are not operative in most states, especially in rural areas. It was recommended that all SACS should have selected lawyers on their payroll, who are made members of these cells. They should be sensitized and trained in the basic issues pertaining to PLHIV, like Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender community (LGBT), sex workers, and women. Any community member should be able to avail of their services free of cost to settle any legal dispute. This is already happening in Kerala, (where Kerala SACS has trained and empanelled 70 lawyers from 40 districts) and needs to be replicated in other states. This would go a long way in creating an enabling environment by taking care of legal problems of key affected populations, especially of women who are thrown out of their houses without getting any share in property. As of now, KAP do not know whom to approach for legal advice.
Aditya Bandopadhyaya, an activist, pleaded for targeted interventions to be led by Community Based Organizations (CBOs) and not by NGOs, as is currently happening. He was emphatic that, “effective empowerment of community will happen only when NACO junks its policy of supporting NGOs and favours targeted interventions only through the medium of CBOs. It is high time that NGOs restrict themselves to be technical support agencies and TIs be CBO led without any NGO intervention.”
Many from KAP felt that there should be no line/forced testing for HIV. Currently everyone in the TI has to be tested for HIV twice a year, and get his/her details recorded. This or any other kind of coercive regimen can never lead to any positive steps in the field of HIV. It has perhaps led to 50% fall in attendance, across the country, at Integrated Counselling and Testing Centres during the past one year.
National programs should also address gender inequality so that women have the power to negotiate for condom use and safe sex practices, which are currently male-dominated. Female condoms should be promoted (many women are not even aware that such a thing exists). Also PLHIV should have the right to marriage, and to have/adopt children. NACO should have a special policy/program to address the problems of HIV widows and orphans, whose numbers have increased over the years.
PLHIV should be made to understand that they can only get empowered to fight for their rights if they do not self-discriminate. They should feel comfortable to talk about their sexuality and HIV status. Also, when we talk of stigma we will have to go beyond affected communities. Stigma is there because unaffected populations do not understand the issue. So everyone should be made aware of the issues of HIV and LGBT. Health education must become a compulsory part of school/college curriculum where all information about reproductive and sexual health rights, safe sex practices, HIV/AIDS should be told to students, as there is a near total lack of awareness about all this which often lands youngsters in dire situations.
Sarita from the United Nations Development Programme stressed upon the need for documentation and compilation of all the good/bad practices of NGOs/CBOs, and other HIV related issues, on one platform in the public domain, to be shared with communities of different states in their local language. Interstate/community exchange/dissemination of practical doable strategies and other HIIV/AIDS related information is the need of the hour. Alongside, we can have annual high level intellectual discussions on law with likeminded people, and disseminate the information to community groups, for them to know their rights and responsibilities, and also connect them with policy makers. This knowledge sharing would also make them treatment/prevention literate and dispel several misconceptions, like becoming victims of false promises of cure made by quack doctors. Many such doctors operate not only in villages but even close metro cities.
The final report, will be a comprehensive overview of the laws impeding an effective HIV and AIDS response, reflecting the situation on the ground, the realities of affected communities and the views of key stakeholders working in the field in India, based upon the recommendations from all the regional consultations. It is hope that the report will act as a comprehensive resource document and advocacy tool that stakeholders can use to advocate for an environment that is legally and socially enabling for PLHIV as well as key populations at high risk of HIV/AIDS.
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Shobha Shukla is the Managing Editor of Citizen News Service (CNS). She is a J2J Fellow of National Press Foundation (NPF) USA. She has worked earlier with State Planning Institute, UP and taught physics at India's prestigious Loreto Convent. She also co-authored a book (translated in three languages) "Voices from the field on childhood pneumonia" and a report on Hepatitis C and HIV treatment access issues in 2011.
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IDF raids private Palestinian television station
Troops reportedly seize equipment, files, forcing station off the air; station is owned by NGOs, broadcasts local news.
RAMALLAH - IDF soldiers raided a Palestinian television station in the West Bank on Wednesday and seized broadcast equipment, computers and files, an employee said.
Ahmed Milhem said soldiers gave no reason for the raid on privately-owned Watan TV in Ramallah, which began at 0200 a.m. (1200 GMT) and lasted for three hours.
"They seized computers, broadcast equipment and administrative files," Milhem told Reuters by telephone. "The station is now off the air," he added.
An IDF military spokeswoman said she had no initial information but was checking for details.
The television station is owned by local non-governmental organizations and broadcasts local news and cultural and political programs over the Internet.
Ramallah is the seat of the Palestinian Authority, which Israel has accused of not doing enough to fight incitement against the Jewish state. The Palestinians say Israeli raids undermine their authority over West Bank areas under their civilian control.
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The Most Powerful Weapon of Egypt's Ruling Generals: State TV
The hallways are dark, curving, windowless passages. The ceilings drip with water in some places. People and papers are shuffled about, and control room walls flicker with multiple screens conveying the live feeds of faces, buildings and words. For an outsider, it's nearly impossible to get in; the building's walls are rimmed by fences, soldiers, and coiled stacks of barbed wire. And on the inside, throughout the maze — where it's often impossible to tell day from night or even the cardinal direction — soldiers clutching semi-automatic rifles stand guard at critical junctions, ever protective of the task at hand in this Orwellian fortress that employs some 43,000 people in the heart of Egypt's capital. The precautions might sound extreme for a government ministry that conducts neither security nor justice. But you could say that this is where the magic happens.
Welcome to Egyptian state TV. Once the mouthpiece of ousted President Hosni Mubarak, it's now the tool of the generals who took over after his fall. And there's a reason it looks this way. "It's the SCAF's [the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces] most powerful tool," says Saleh Fekry, a youth activist who ranks dismantlement of the state's media machine as even more pertinent than the reform of its hated police force. "That's why you have heavy loads of officers inside the building to protect it."
(SPECIAL: The Middle East in Revolt)
In the year since Mubarak's fall, the state media has pulled off seemingly contradictory feats: broadcasting the figures of Egypt's plummeting stock market while simultaneously proclaiming the market's strength; convincing viewers that pro-democracy NGOs have sought to undermine Egypt's burgeoning democracy; and obtaining the kind of exclusive footage of protester-police clashes that no private network could ever hope to get — because the film is shot from the Interior Ministry. Throughout it all, the youth activists — who have seen their own public approval ratings drop as the result of a vilification campaign by state TV — have come to understand better than most that the media can be a powerful weapon. And as the country struggles to shed its decades of authoritarianism and transform itself into a free and democratic society, a highly politicized and partisan state TV — in a country where at least 34% of the population is illiterate — may be one of the most significant obstacles in its way.
News talk shows on the Nile News Channel, the state's 24-hour answer to private networks like Al-Jazeera, are rife with discussion of "thugs," warnings of "foreign" interference in Egyptian affairs, rising insecurity, and crime. And youth-led protests against military rule are labeled dangerous and destabilizing events, driven by foreign agents. The regime's use of media comes at a critical time, media experts say, when public views on rights and policies could prove decisive in shaping Egypt's post-Mubarak system. A recent episode of the evening news show, "The Other Dimension" reported on the role of street children and thugs in this month's protests. "They were kids who didn't know what was happening or even the meaning of the revolution, which raises a lot of questions about why they were there, and who was behind them," the reporter said over a montage of violent footage. "A lot of people blame the NDP [the ex-ruling party] for these kids because they are trying to destroy the revolution."
(SPECIAL: TIME's 2011 Person of the Year: The Protester)
There are no official statistics on just how many of Egypt's 85 million watch state TV, or read the state-sponsored newspapers. But public opinion polls seem to echo TV rhetoric, hinting at its wide impact. "Repeated exposure to something over an extended period of time is going to have a powerful effect on how people construct their reality," says Rasha Abdulla, an associate professor of journalism at the American University in Cairo. "If whenever you flip on the channel, you hear someone refer to the people in Tahrir as thugs, then that's how you're going to think of the people in Tahrir." This is especially true for viewers who have no personal connection to the historic and continuing events at the square. "Then that becomes your only way of constructing your reality."
The effect has proven devastating for Egypt's youth protest movement, which has struggled to condemn the military's abuses in the face of a state media that paints them as stability-wrecking thugs. One group of youth activists launched the "Kazeboon" movement — literally, "liars" — to combat media with media, projecting footage of military abuses in central Egyptian squares and neighborhoods. But their competition is stronger. New media like Kazeboon may be flourishing, says Nancy Okail, the Egypt Director of Freedom House, a Washington-based democracy promotion group. "But at the same time, there is the question of: how many people does it reach? It's about influence." (As of Wednesday, Okail was still on trial, along with 42 other NGO workers, as part of a government crackdown on foreign financed non-profits; State TV has fueled official and public outrage against the NGOs.) And whoever wields the most influence plays a decisive role in public opinion. "Public opinion is a very crucial factor in democracy. It affects how people choose their candidates, who they support, what kind of issues and cases they stand by and what they stand against," she says.
(MORE: Disorder in the Court as Egypt's Trial of NGO Activists Begins)
So far, the winning narrative may be the one propagated by state TV. Abdulla says the state networks have created a "culture of fear" that directly serves the military's interests. News reports highlighting thuggery, crime, and a faltering economy, while placing blame squarely on protesters and "foreign" agents, play a fundamental role in hindering Egypt's path to a free and transparent democracy. "It's the oldest trick in the book. You spread fear and then people are willing to relinquish their personal rights," says Abdulla. "And when you know that there's a lack of security everywhere you go, how likely are you to do things [to protest the status quo], and how likely are you to accept impediments to your freedom?"
Activists say that one of the most dangerous examples of state media's impact since the uprising came on Oct. 9th, when the army and Muslim supporters massacred more than two dozen mostly Christian protesters outside the TV building — popularly known as Maspero. Anchor Rasha Magdy, speaking live on Egypt News at the time, did more than objectively cover the protest. "The slogan on our screen and the anchor, for half an hour, was saying that the good Samaritans of Egypt should go down to the streets and protect the military against the Christians," says Abdulla. "My god — there is no way on earth that she could have said that without clear directives." The episode sparked a furious backlash by liberal activists and Christians against state television, but failed to spread to the larger population. Some local news sources reported that Magdy was investigated (when TIME asked to speak to her, state TV employees said she was "on vacation"), but she was later absolved of any wrongdoing. "I tend to think of Maspero now as part of the SCAF entity," says Abdulla. "It's not a matter of taking a few people out of office or even changing the minister of information . . . We need a media revolution."
(MORE: How Democracy Can Work in the Middle East)
Those who work for state media argue that the attacks are overblown. "There are some faults, but I think they're exaggerated," says Makram Mohamed Ahmed, a columnist at the state-run Al-Ahram newspaper. "They accuse the press of being the ghost behind the violence. When they don't have the courage to state the reality, the easiest thing to do is accuse the press."
But crucially, perhaps: the need for reform has not been lost on everyone inside the machine. Nile News' Editor-In-Chief, Ahmed Sharaf, wants to see state TV's employee payroll cut by more than 90%, and its long list of channels cut down to two or three. "Most of them are rubbish," he says with a laugh — and most of the system's 43,000 employees don't even show up to work. The networks are more than 13 million Egyptian pounds (roughly $2.2 million) in debt, he adds. (Nile News doesn't run commercials in between programs — just an endless stream of evocative video montages that pay tribute to the revolution, the military, and the power of parliament). "They should turn state television into a corporation that can produce and sell its productions and generate money," he says. He envisions a future state TV that more closely resembles Britain's BBC. If the whole system is restructured, he argues, "then there wouldn't be any need for a Ministry of Information" because a corporation would be able to operate with independent editorial policy.
But that dream may be a long way from realization. A recent demonstration for change by others within Maspero earned six news staffers an investigation by the general prosecutor; another staffer received a two-week suspension for raising a banner that read "Freedom for Nile News Channel" behind the anchor during the airing of a popular talk show. And the manner in which state media has been constructed over the decades — built almost entirely on a patronage system that begets loyalty, Abdulla says — suggests there is little desire for change from the inside out. Serious reform like the vision articulated by Ahmed Sharaf is unlikely and unrealistic under military rule, she says. But once there's a will, there's a way. "It depends on how fast we achieve political change," she says. Publicly funded media isn't inherently bad, and ultimately, an independent media body could further Egypt's ongoing revolution, rather than hinder it. "You're supposed to have something that really serves the public, not the government."
With reporting by Sharaf al-Hourani/Cairo
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The Egyptian revolution should not be subsidised
The initial clarity of Egypt's revolutionary discourse has been replaced by perplexing discussions involving a range of issues from ‘Islamists vs liberals' to football violence. The latest such issue involves the rift between the US and the Egyptian government over the latter's crackdowns on organisations with questionable sources of funds.
Following the ousting of Egypt's former president Hosni Mubarak last February, a brief period of euphoria ensued. Then shortly after, Egypt once more fell into disarray, if not complete chaos.
This time round, pinpointing the culprits was no simple task. Some blamed the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (Scaf) — accused of championing the same corrupt and violent legacy of Mubarak's. Others spoke of counter-revolutionaries and remnants of the Mubarak era, or a conspiracy involving Islamic political forces — which secured clear majority in the country's parliamentary elections — Scaf, and outside parties.
Scaf on the other hand, eluded to outside forces aiming to weaken Egypt politically. The Islamists blamed the liberals for attempting to circumvent the clear election results, perpetuating the state of anarchy that forced Scaf to reinstate emergency laws.
The episode of finger-pointing hardly ends here. Ultimately the new and confounding narratives replaced the clarity of the revolution's early demands, which were concerned with political freedom, equal distribution of wealth, social and job security, the end of corruption, and so on.
Whether the current upheaval in Egypt is an unfortunate but expected bedlam that will eventually usher in a new democratic era, or is in fact an orchestrated campaign to humiliate this Arab country is too difficult to ascertain.
That said, there are indeed many signs that point to international — western and Arab — clamour to contain the possibility of a truly democratic Egypt. While containment policies are not easily applicable to Egypt, the second best alternative is renewing the dependency relationship that existed before the ousting of Mubarak.
The US has dangled a carrot worth $1.5 billion (Dh5.5 billion) annually before the Egyptian government for the last three decades, benefiting mostly the country's military apparatus.
Some Arab countries also offered politically-motivated financial support that helped keep the Egyptian budget (barely) afloat. International institutions and western governments offered loans and other perks to secure Mubarak's position as a reliable ally for the US, Israel and others.
Although the revolution didn't instantly break away from that decades-long dependency, its political outcomes threatened to destabilise it. Early signs included the transitional government's flat rejection of loans by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Accepting such funding would once more hold Egypt to US-western diktats ranging between ‘structural adjustments' and specifically tailored ‘political reforms'.
The crises that have engulfed Egypt since last year invite legitimate questions about the seemingly hidden parties that attempt to manage the Egyptian revolution. Why the keen interest in maintaining an environment of crisis? And how does this relate to the recent government crackdown on Egypt-based US NGOs, known for their affiliation with the two main political parties in the US?
The crackdown on US-affiliated NGOs has been lumped with the larger issue of Egypt's unwarranted attempts to curtail civil society organisations altogether. Currently there are an estimated 40,000 such organisations (10,000 NGOs reportedly sprung in the last year alone, according to Inter Press Service, February 22). But these are fundamentally different points of contention.
Under pressure
"The ideological and governmental character of the US organisations [subject to the Egyptian government crackdown] is epitomised by the nature of their leadership," wrote independent UN human rights envoy Dr Richard Falk.
"Madeleine Albright, Secretary of State during the Clinton presidency, is chair of the [National Democratic Institute] NDI board, while former Republican presidential candidate and prominent current senator, John McCain, holds the same position at the [International Republican Institute] IRI" (Al Jazeera, Feb 21).
There is little doubt that the US is actively pursuing its own agenda in Egypt. Unfortunately, between the ‘Washington consensus' and the unclear agendas of the NGOs, Egypt is already showing signs of weakening under pressure.
These two headlines, seven months apart, are enough indication of the faltering political will of the ‘new Egypt': Egypt Drops Plans for IMF Loan amid Popular Distrust (BBC, June 25, 2011) and Pressed by Unrest and Money Woes, Egypt Accepts IMF Loan (New York Times, Feb 19, 2012).
One cannot expect Egypt's lenders to wait for long before forcing their demands, exacting political concessions in exchange for money. We know this from previous histories involving Washington-based institutions, and also because Washington is already threatening to cut its aid to Egypt if the latter doesn't modify its behaviour regarding US NGOs.
James Phillips and Helle Dale of the conservative Heritage Foundation have started stating the terms. "The Obama administration should take off the kid gloves and firmly warn Egypt's transitional leaders that they will pay a heavy price for their crackdown on NGOs that support freedom, human rights, and the rule of law in Egypt," they wrote on February 9.
Predictably, they urged further support for Israel and suggested that "the prospective loss of $1.5 billion in annual assistance and American opposition to new loans from international lending institutions may exert a powerful influence in persuading Egypt's new leaders to discontinue their politically motivated prosecutions."
If the new political phase in Egypt doesn't lead to an assertive new set of policies and finalise a workable democratic (by Egyptian standards) transition, Egypt could continue to teeter between internal mayhem and external dependency. This fate would unfortunately be no less terrible than the years of Mubarak and his family.
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Don’t deprive Pakistani prisoners of rights, dignity: Indian SC
LAHORE: The Indian Supreme Court (SC) said on Tuesday that Pakistani nationals languishing in Indian jails long after completing their jail sentences could not be deprived of their dignity and rights, and can no longer be considered prisoners, IANS reported.
Justice RM Lodha and Justice HR Gokhale observed this after the Indian government told the court that 37 Pakistani nationals who had completed their jail sentences in 2007, 2008 and 2009 were still incarcerated because “Pakistani authorities have not so far confirmed their nationality”, according to IANS.
It said the court also ordered treatment of 21 Pakistani nationals who were stated to be mentally challenged.
“The 21 people who are mentally challenged have to be given proper medical and health assistance in suitable government hospital or in the hospitals or clinics run by NGOs,” IANS quoted the court saying in its order.
“It will suffice to say that these 37 people must be released formally from the jails and having regard to national security, may be kept at an appropriate place with movement restricted pending their repatriation/deportation,” the court ordered. Saying that whatever may be the reason for delay in their repatriation, the court said, “We don’t even have a slightest doubt that their continued imprisonment is uncalled for.”
Directing the government to shift these prisoners to some other place or detention centre where they can have some restricted mobility, the court in its order said, “In no way these 37 Pakistanis can be treated as prisoners once they have served their sentences.”
“It is true that until their nationality is confirmed, they can’t be repatriated and have to be asked to remain here. During this time they can’t be deprived of their human rights and human dignity,” IANS quoted Justice Lodha as saying.
The order, according to the news agency, said it was “indeed unfortunate” that these 37 Pakistani prisoners who have completed their sentences and are not required by India under its law are in jail because their nationality has not been confirmed.
The court noted that these prisoners were granted consular access to the Pakistani High Commission just a few months before their actual release, IANS reported.
The court also asked the Indian Gujarat government to make similar arrangements for 11 Pakistani fishermen in its jails against whom no offence has been registered.
The court asked the government to ensure that the exercise for the confirmation of the 37 people’s nationality is completed expeditiously.
It observed, “We have no doubt that Pakistan High Commission will complete the exercise as early as possible.” When it was told that there was one centre in New Delhi and another in Amritsar where these prisoners could be lodged, the court said, “What is important is not the location where these 37 people would be lodged, but we must have basic amenities and adequate provision for their stay.” The court directed the listing of the matter after four weeks, IANS said. daily times monitor
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Rights Group: Iran Crushing Dissent Before Election
Iran is crushing dissent leading up to its March 2 parliamentary elections and has launched a “cyber army” to block Internet and social media communication, according to Amnesty International.
“What we’ve seen is an intensification of patterns of human rights violations” Suzanne Nossel, executive director of Amnesty USA, told VOA’s Persian News Network. She said the Tehran government has cracked down on journalists, NGOs, think tanks and opposition figures.
Nossel said Tehran has put a trained corps of cyber police in Internet cafes to enforce the crackdown, making it very difficult for anyone to document or relate to the world any abuses - as they did in 2009 when massive protests were brutally squashed by the government.
Opposition activists, reformists, and students at the time used Facebook, Twitter, and mobile phone videos to alert the world to the bloody crackdown, a technique also used in uprisings across the Arabic-speaking world in the past year.
“They’ve seen people use their cell phones, their computers, the Internet to connect with one another, to organize and mobilize, and I think this decision to focus so heavily on creating a cyber police force, and putting such intense restrictions on access to the Internet and the ability of people to connect is a direct response to that,” Nossel said.
Iran's protests were a reaction to the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a vote many Iranians said was fraudulent.
Many reformists believed opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi would have been the winner in an accurate count. Tens of thousands took to the streets in what became known as the Green Movement, because demonstrators adopted the color green, a symbol for Mousavi's campaign.
The demonstrations led to clashes with police and pro-government militia. One person who died in the protests was a young woman, Neda Agha-Soltan, whose shooting death was captured on cell phone videos that reverberated around the world.
Khamenei: Questioning election results a crime
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei attends a meeting with Iranian nuclear scientists and managers in Tehran, February 22, 2012
Reuters
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei attends a meeting with Iranian nuclear scientists and managers in Tehran, February 22, 2012
In August of 2009, Mr. Ahmadinejad demanded that opposition leaders be prosecuted for what he said was their role in masterminding the unrest. The protests eventually faded due to the crackdown and in October, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said questioning the results of the election was a crime.
Pro-reform political parties have been banned, and opposition leaders Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi have been under house arrest for the last year. Nossel believes the “repression of political opponents, placing them under house arrest, is just a deliberate effort to shore up the regime.”
Iranian authorities have been urging the security forces to be vigilant against “enemy threats” leading up to this year's vote.
“The enemy's propaganda machines and the media of arrogant circles have begun an extensive effort so that the assembly election is without splendor," Ayatollah Khamenei said recently. "But all should know that the people's participation in the elections will take the country forward... an election full of excitement will be a major blow to the enemy."
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Mercury pact falls short on Minamata
There is growing debate over how best to reflect the lessons learned from Minamata disease in the so-called Mercury Treaty now being discussed with the aim of reducing the use of mercury around the world to prevent environmental damage and harm to humans.
News photo
Long march: Akio Mizoguchi enters the Fukuoka High Court on Monday carrying a photo of his mother, Chie Mizoguchi, who was posthumously recognized by the court as a victim of the Minamata mercury poisoning later the same day. KYODO
The treaty is scheduled to be signed in Japan in late 2013. Former Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama said in a commemorative ceremony for the victims of Minamata disease in 2010 that Japan wanted to host a diplomatic conference to adopt the pact and call it the Minamata Treaty to demonstrate the nation's determination that the grave damage caused by mercury poisoning is not repeated in other countries.
Three rounds of international discussions on the treaty have been held, in Sweden, Japan and Kenya.
There will be two more conferences, including one in Uruguay in late June, and a final session in 2013 in Japan, with the U.N. Environment Program serving as secretariat.
Despite Hatoyama's passionate commitment, the draft treaty in its current form does not refer to "the core elements of the lessons learned from Minamata," according to a Japanese nongovernmental organization that has participated in the negotiations.
When there is mercury contamination, the polluter and administrative authorities must uncover the full scope of the damage through sufficient study and disclose all information, while assuming the responsibility of compensating the affected people and cleaning up the contaminated site, said the NGO, the Citizens Against Chemicals Pollution.
"These are the major lessons learned from Minamata, but the draft does not specifically refer to the responsibility that should be assumed by the polluter and the administration," said Takeshi Yasuma, a CACP official.
"If this goes on, the envisaged treaty will not be useful for contamination victims in seeking compensation and restoration of the polluted site and in demanding sufficient investigation and information disclosure about the disaster," the Tokyo-based group argued in a statement issued jointly with around 500 individuals and NGOs around the world.
The statement was recently submitted to Japan's environment, foreign and industry ministers.
The NGOs and those who have supported Minamata victims also say they have concerns that adopting the pact and naming it the Minamata Treaty may create a misunderstanding that Japan's Minamata problems are settled.
The Minamata disaster was caused by chemical maker Chisso Corp. dumping mercury-laced wastewater into Minamata Bay. It is still unknown how many people have been affected, even 56 years after the health problems were officially recognized, as intensive medical checkups have never been conducted in and around the affected areas in Kumamoto and Kagoshima prefectures.
A similar disease was later confirmed in Niigata Prefecture, this one caused by a Showa Denko K.K. plant dumping wastewater.
The government introduced redress measures for uncertified patients in 2010, featuring a lump sum of ¥2.1 million and monthly medical allowances, for which more than 50,000 people have applied.
Compared with this, the number of officially recognized patients is only around 3,000, of whom three-quarters have died.
It has been pointed out that there are no doubt more potential patients who could develop symptoms as they grow older, but the government has decided to stop accepting applications at the end of July.
Criticizing the decision, Kenji Utsunomiya, president of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations, said in a statement that it is "premature" to set the deadline because it will lead to "deserting potential victims."
It has also not yet been decided how to deal with around 1.5 million cu. meters of dredged sludge that contains methylmercury.
Improving the iron wall holding the sludge, including earthquake-proof reinforcements, is going to be a major problem going forward, according to local authorities, especially because the wall is rated to last only about 50 years.
Yasuma said these issues should be resolved so the envisaged pact will deserve to be called the Minamata Treaty, and he expects Japan, which has dealt with Minamata disease, "to take the initiative in making the treaty suited to the name."
"It is significant to name the pact the Minamata Treaty as it will enable the world to preserve the experiences of Minamata," said Teruyoshi Hayamizu, head of the Environment Ministry's Environmental Health and Safety Division, while indicating that it is on the agenda of how to reflect regional issues in international efforts to tackle mercury-related problems.
As part of the effort to share the experiences of Minamata with the international community, the government compiled a booklet titled "Lessons from Minamata Disease and Mercury Management in Japan" in Japanese and six other languages — Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish — to be distributed at the treaty meetings, according to Hayamizu.
On the expansion of Minamata disease, the booklet notes: "The government's failure to prevent the harmful impact on human health from increasing, due to not taking strict measures against the responsible companies for a long time, still provides valuable lessons today.
"It shows how important it is to take countermeasures quickly, as well as how preventive measures should be taken even when there is scientific uncertainty over the cause of the problem," it says.
Hayamizu also said the government is willing to hold another seminar in Minamata, Kumamoto Prefecture, after the June Uruguay meeting to brief the residents there on how the negotiations are going and to exchange views with them on the treaty.
In Minamata, meanwhile, Yoichi Tani, 63, is keeping an eye on the treaty negotiations.
"The ongoing talks must aim at mediating the differences among the countries before concluding the treaty. Thus, there must be a gap between their realistic decisions and the ideals of the local people (of Minamata)," said Tani, who has supported disease victims for more than 40 years.
"But I expect the international community to share its knowledge about the hazardous nature of mercury, based on the experiences of Minamata, and I hope the conclusion of the Minamata Treaty will not close the curtain on the Minamata issue as the whole picture of this issue remains unexplained," he said.
A German national was deported from India Tuesday on grounds of raising funds for protests against the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project, prompting an anti-nuclear activist to say the move was anti-tourist.
A police officer told IANS in Chennai that Sonnteg Reiner Hermann's visa was cancelled and he was put on a flight to Germany Tuesday morning and deported. He was brought to Chennai Monday night.
In New Delhi, Acting German Ambassador Cord Meier-Klodtsaid his government was not in touch with the Indian authorities on the matter.
"We learned about the incident this morning and through our channels we were informed that by now he has left the country," Meier-Klodt told reporters.
Activist R.S. Lal Mohan termed the development “unfortunate”.
“It is an unfortunate news. He is a genuine tourist and has been visiting various countries. It is a bad development for the country's tourism,” Lal Mohan said in Chennai.
In a joint operation by central intelligence agencies and Tamil Nadu police, Hermann who was staying at Nagercoil in Tamil Nadu on a tourist visa was Monday questioned about his involvement in raising funds for anti-KNPP protests. Nagercoil is 645 km from here.
According to police, based on the information from central intelligence agencies, Hermann's room was checked and he was questioned.
Police said Hermann was in touch with Lal.
Confirming that he knows the German, Lal said: “I don't know whether he was involved in raising funds for anti-KNPP protestors. But being anti-nuclear does not mean one is anti-national.”
The development comes days after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in an interview to the American Science magazine accused NGOs based in the US and Scandinavian countries of funding the protests.
The central government later said it has cancelled the licences of three NGOs without revealing their names.
India's nuclear power plant operator, NPCIL, is building two 1,000 MW atomic power reactors with Russian collaboration at Kudankulam in Tirunelveli district, around 650 km from Chennai.
However, villagers in Kudankulam, Idinthakarai and nearby areas, fearing their safety in case of any accident, are dead set against the project.
Their agitation, led by the People's Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE), has put a stop to the project work, delaying the commissioning of the first unit slated for December 2011.
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India Digest: Walmart to Sell Hero Bicycles Worldwide
Here is a roundup of news from Indian newspapers, news wires and websites on Thursday, March 1, 2012. The Wall Street Journal has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.
Walmart to Sell Hero Bicycles Worldwide: Breaking the near monopoly of Chinese bicycle manufacturers, the Pankaj Munjal-promoted Hero Cycles has clinched an agreement with Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, to supply bicycles across the world. (Source: Business Standard)
Govt to Probe 12 More Cases of NGOs’ ‘Fund Diversion:’ The Centre has written to the Tamil Nadu government seeking a green signal to probe 12 additional cases of ‘fund diversion’ against other organizations under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA). (Source: The Times of India)
India Ignores US, Keeps Iran Ties: Even as US secretary of state Hillary Clinton has gone public with a “blunt and intense” message to India to isolate Iran, New Delhi has continued with functional and transactional relationship with Tehran. (Source: Hindustan Times)
Some Suspects in Israeli Embassy Car Blast Case Identified: Investigations so far have revealed that only one person riding a motorcycle, a foreign national, attached the improvised explosive device with a flexible magnetic strip to the Israeli official’s car. (Source: The Hindu)
Kathryn Bigelow Shoots Osama Film in Chandigarh: The 60-year-old director was in the heart of Chandigarh today, shooting for her next — the story of the hunting down of Osama bin Laden by the US Navy Seals, a film for now titled Zero Dark Thirty or ZD30. (Source: The Indian Express)
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Dow paid U.S. firms to spy on Bhopal activists: WikiLeaks emails
Even as Dow Chemical has resisted all compensation claims with regard to the Union Carbide gas leak disaster in Bhopal, it found the money to hire an intelligence research firm to intensively monitor all NGOs and activists working on the issue.
On Monday, WikiLeaks released a cache of 5.5 million emails from the Texas-based intelligence company Stratfor, which revealed that regular monitoring reports of NGO activity as well as media coverage were sent to Dow and Union Carbide communications directors.
Dow Chemical, which bought Union Carbide in 2001, insists that it bears no responsibility to compensate victims or clean up the contaminated site of the 1984 disaster. However, these emails prove that it is still very much invested in monitoring the fallout of the disaster, and its impact on Dow's image.
A typical monitoring report begins with a round-up of all news items referencing Dow, Union Carbide or Bhopal from news wires, newspapers, television channels and news websites, both in India and abroad. It includes a comprehensive dossier on activist activity — covering court cases, online petitions, film screenings, fundraisers and publicity events, press releases, blog posts, items on message boards, emails to mailing lists, Facebook pages and Twitter feeds. No event or statement seems to have been too obscure for Allis Information Management, the Michigan-based firm that prepared the monitoring reports for Dow. Intelligence analysts going so far as to track petition signers, commenters on blog posts, or those who might have re-tweeted a Dow-related article. Names such as Bhopal-based activists Rachna Dhingra and Satinath Sarangi find frequent mention, as well as anti-corporate pranksters, the Yes Men. In the latter part of 2011, much attention was paid to the campaign protesting Dow's sponsorship of the London Olympics.
In the lead-up to the 25th anniversary of the Bhopal disaster, Stratfor analysts also discussed the trends in activist strategies, speculating whether major NGO players would be able to connect Bhopal to the larger issue of corporate irresponsibility, the issue of “other Bhopals.”
The Yes Men activists accused Dow of using “sinister spy tactics” and corporate paranoia. “These leaks seem to show that corporate power is most afraid of whatever reveals ‘the larger whole' and ‘broader issues', i.e., whatever brings systemic criminal behaviour to light,” a Yes Men statement said on Monday.
However, while the monitoring was extensive and intensive, there does not seem to be any evidence of espionage, or of any illegal activity by Dow in this cache of emails. All the data mined by the intelligence research firm seems to be in the public domain, and openly available to any interested person.
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Somalia: NGOs urge 'solution from within'
Brussels/Juba (Belgium/South Sudan) — While the international community discusses Somalia's future in London and Brussels, European and Somali non-governmental organisations are calling for a radical shift from a military to a humanitarian approach as the only solution to the country's war-torn condition.
Africa News Update (ANU)
Somalia has still not recovered from its last humanitarian crisis. Six months after the United Nations declared a famine in the country, more than 325, 000 children are still suffering from acute malnutrition. Though last summer's response from the international community and civil society did succeed in saving many lives, expulsions of aid agencies and internationally backed military operations still impede humanitarian assistance from reaching those who are most in need.
During the London Somalia Conference last Thursday, world leaders reached an agreement on seven key areas to put an end to Somalia's precarious situation, including security, piracy, terrorism, humanitarian assistance, local stability, a reinstallment of the political process and international cooperation.
Talks about the country will resume at the European Union Foreign Affairs meeting starting next Monday in Brussels.
Although NGOs applaud the international community's initiative and effort to help Somalia, the proposed seven key areas were received with mixed feelings.
"What we had hoped for was a recognition that twenty years of internationally imposed solutions have failed. However, what we've seen once again were externally driven solutions that haven't worked, aren't working and will not work," Barbara Stocking from Oxfam International said in a press release on Thursday.
Oxfam is demanding that the international community radically shift its approach in order to effectively brighten Somalia's future. In its new report 'Putting the Interests of Somali People First', the organisation states that although responsibility for Somalia's crisis lies foremost with factions inside the country, international engagement has at times made matters worst.
For many governments involved in Somalia, military action is seen as a means of providing security and stability, but reports from inside tell a different story.
"Setting out a new approach by shifting the emphasis away from anti-piracy and security concerns and taking practical steps towards an inclusive political process must be at the top of Europe's agenda if it is serious about bringing long-term peace and security to ordinary Somalis and the region," Natalia Alonso, Head of Oxfam's EU office in Brussels, stated in a press release on Wednesday.
"For more than twenty years foreign armies have been coming in and going out of Somalia, without any success," Tidhar Wald, Oxfam's EU humanitarian policy advisor told IPS. "What we need right now is an inclusive, Somali-led peace process. Somalis themselves should have a say in the solution the international community is outlining. If you look at the conferences that are taking place right now, you can clearly see there are not enough Somali voices taking part in the decision-making."
Oxfam's standpoint is reflected on the ground in Somalia itself.
"The last twenty years have seen numerous military interventions in Somalia," Aydris Daar, CEO of the Wajir South Development Association (WASDA) in Juba, Somalia, told IPS. "Whenever they occurred, they led to an increase of conflicts inside the country. And when conflicts increase, regular people do not have time to attend to ther daily work, children cannot go to school and there is no time or space to do business, which affects the economic situation. Military actions in Somalia have never improved the humanitarian situation," he said.
According to WASDA, any solution for Somalia's war-torn condition should be fully grounded in a humanitarian principle.
"International action should not lead to further suffering in Somalia," Aydris Daar told IPS, "The solution must come from within but before that can happen, we need support: funding for Somalia must be (long term), so it can go beyond relief into recovery and development. Seventy percent of the people in Somalia are younger than 35; it is their poverty and unemployment that is pushing them to take sides in the conflicts. This is what is fuelling conflicts in Somalia."
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Afghanistan’s Secret Prostitutes
“I hate this life,” she says, tears rolling down her cheeks
You never have to wander far from your front door in Kabul to be confronted by the dire poverty in a city where billions have been spent in foreign aid over the past decade of occupation by the west. Where an entire sub-economy has grown up around the semi-permanent presence of foreign NGOs.
You will see the beggars somehow surviving in the middle of traffic-choked streets (this city has some of the worst air-pollution on the planet) pleading with their missing body parts , appealing for alms, mouthing words that can never be heard above the din of the traffic at a near standstill in the freezing crisp air.
Or the widows, invisible in their burkhas, who sit in the snow at the roadsides, holding babies swaddled, but still coughing in the sub-zero air, for hour after hour after hour. They too, hope for the odd Afghani from generous passers-by.
Or get up early and go to the known places where they gather. Men, often hundreds of them, desperate for work of any kind for perhaps a dollar or two per day – maybe 100 Afghanis in their pockets after 10 or 12 hours hard labour in sub-zero conditions. Anything’s considered. No, change that. Anything’s grabbed with both hands unconsidered.
But behind closed doors of houses, reasonably well-to-do houses, there is also quiet despair.
In a Kabul suburb we have come to a woman’s house. We’ll call her Habiba. She’s playing with her daughter on the carpet, a toddler. There’s a small but modern flatscreen TV in the corner. A house of several bedrooms. In her headscarf and jeans she is very westernised by Afghan standards. On several occasions Channel 4 News meets Habiba and films and talks to her, with her husband not present. Even meeting an Afghan woman at all in her home would be quite unthinkable in most parts of this country and most of this city too – let alone doing so with no husband in the room.
But what we shall witness in this house goes so far beyond the norms of Afghanistan’s conservative society – so far beyond the norms of British society come to that – it is hard to find words to frame it.
Habiba, in her late 20s, is a schoolteacher. Her husband, a civil-servant. Or at least they were.
Prostitution in Afghanistan has increased
Some months back her husband’s epilepsy and other health problems forced him to leave his job, he said. And then he took to drink. And he also took to beating Habiba up if she declined to do his bidding.
By any standards in any society that bidding is extraordinary. He has forced her to leave the classroom and become a prostitute. He, the husband, is now also the pimp.
“I hate this life,” she says, tears rolling down her cheeks. “Right now I hate myself and my husband. I think I am the worst person in the world. It is horrible. And what about my daughter?”
She cries uncontrollably. “What kind of example – what kind of role model am I for her? But if I don’t do this I will get beaten.”
And you do not have to tell Habiba that in Afghanistan, if you leave your husband then you leave your children too and there will be no coming back and no safety net at all, financially. And your life and safety will be in real jeopardy. Habiba is trapped and Habiba knows it.
The motive for this couple in allowing us to film them and their extreme means of maintaining their income, is curious. They both think that if there is publicity in the west about this kind of thing and the lack of any kind of real support for people too ill to work, then things will somehow improve. It seems a deeply far-fetched, not least in a world where that same west is hell-bent on getting out of its Afghan mire as fast as it possibly can.
“I want her to go back to teaching. I want to get treatment and go back to work myself.” Says her husband in one breath. But in the next, he turns to Habiba and shouts:
“Get this place ready – we’ve got guests arriving.”
And Habiba will – must – obey. She must prepare the food and the tea. Tidy the front room to receive the guests. Make sure that everything is in order in the room behind the curtain where, after a little cursory chat and the exchange of a wad of Afghanis given to the husband (not to her) she will be taken by the hand by one of two men come to visit.
Behind that curtain in a room used for the business, she will make more money in a little over eight minutes, than she will in two weeks in the classroom. Except she won’t of course. the cash never was – never will be – given to her.
When the client returns to sit down and take a little more tea, she will follow meekly and sit too, in her own home, with the husband she now says she hates.
Then there will be laughter as the husband, the cliient and his friend pass an enjoyable afternoon. Habiba will offer food. She will offer and pour green tea. She will say nothing. And after twenty minutes or so, warm handshakes from the two visiting men for the pimp. Then a cursory slap of Habiba’s feebly proffered hand, from the punter – a sort of horizontal high-five, without the joy and happiness. And they are gone, out into the snow and another item of this secret business has been transacted.
She will now clear up the food and do the dishes. And only then will she confront her husband, all of it captured on the camera we have left running – with their agreement – in a corner of the room.
“Look at you – you just sit there and don’t say a thing. Say something – for God’s sake!! How can we go on living like this? You should be scared – God is watching you and you should be really scared.”
Her husband – her pimp – just sits there and says nothing it all.
A little later in the day they will go out shopping. They will trudge through the snow to the bazaar close by. He, carrying their daughter. She, dutifully walking a couple of faces behind her man as tradition demands, and clad in the full blue burkha one sees so much in Kabul. Just another Afghan family. Outside they follow the customs, culture, traditions. Indoors in secret, they are all obliterated for money, but at huge cost.
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Towards a More Enabling Environment for HIV/AIDS Responses
Towards a More Enabling Environment for Effective HIV/AIDS Responses
Shobha Shukla | CNS
February 24, 2012
A regional consultation, organized jointly by South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation in Law (SAARCLAW), UNAIDS Technical Support Facility for South Asia (TSF-SA) and Maitri, was held recently in New Delhi. It was part of the UNDP funded project ‘Support to the development of enabling environment by scanning of laws that impede effective HIV and AIDS responses in India,’ which aims to develop a comprehensive study on the issue, informed by engagement with the affected communities and other stakeholders during the consultations.
The meeting focussed on the legal and social environments that support or hinder programmes for populations that are vulnerable to, and affected by HIV and AIDS. The session proved to be highly interactive wherein all the participants shared their experiences on strategies, effective partnerships, and policies that can overcome the legal barriers to treatment, care and prevention efforts with key populations at high risk of HIV in India, and suggested recommendations to be reflected in the final report.
It was unanimously agreed that along with amending regressive laws, it will be in the interest of Key Affected Populations (KAP) to interact with the law enforcers, in order to sensitize them about them the problems faced by the communities. There is documented evidence to show that partnerships between law enforcement authorities and affected communities play a crucial role in increasing access to HIV prevention and reducing stigma.
Some good practice targeted interventions (TI) shared by the participants were:-
(i) A very community friendly and successful targeted intervention (TI) program being run amongst Injecting Drug Users (IDUs) in Kozikhode, Kerala for the last 12 years. The program involves participation of the law enforcers with a community friendly approach. The team leader of this TI, started by NACO, was an advocate, who collaborated with the police and narcotics department, making DIG a contact person. Many IDUs in this area are fishermen who need fresh needles when they return from fishing around 3 am when no TI works. On their suggestion, clean needles and other equipment are kept hidden in some pre-selected spots, from where the fishermen pick them up at their convenience.
(ii) A good practice TI program being run by Bharosa in Lucknow for the MSM community. Bharosa has organized around 5 workshops during the last 3 years, to train/ sensitize more than 900 policemen over MSM and HIV issues. Thus the community and the law enforcers have come together on one platform and made each other understand that homosexuality is neither wrong nor illegal. This unified action and regular interaction with the police has empowered the community, who now are no longer easy targets for police harassment. The havildar may still not know the connection between MSMs and HIV issues. But they at least understand that there are people like MSMs who are normal like anyone else.
(iii) Excellent intervention programs have also been initiated by law enforcers in Kolkata and Asansol amongst IDUs and sex workers. In Andhra Pradesh also there are good practices and the DGP works with the community and.
But such examples are few and far between. Some bad and ineffective practices were also mentioned, like some interventions for MSMs by church led groups in Kerala, where MSM intervention is supported by State AIDS Control Society (SACS) of Kerala. The group would invite gay people to attend church services so that they could be counselled to become straight. When asked if they promoted condom use, they said that condoms were given after the person got married. Similarly Delhi SACS was cited to have engaged a church based organization which distributes bibles to MSMs and tries to change their behaviour asking them to become straight.
There were concerns about the confusion around the meaning of ‘enabling environment’ as, even some of the law professionals are not clear about what this environment is. TIs are a component of enabling environment and National AIDS Control Organization (NACO) should clearly define and spell out the guidelines as to what is meant by enabling environment.
It was felt by all participants that there is a dire need for legal aid cells/clinics in every state. Legal aid delivery systems for PLHIV are not operative in most states, especially in rural areas. It was recommended that all SACS should have selected lawyers on their payroll, who are made members of these cells. They should be sensitized and trained in the basic issues pertaining to PLHIV, like Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender community (LGBT), sex workers, and women. Any community member should be able to avail of their services free of cost to settle any legal dispute. This is already happening in Kerala, (where Kerala SACS has trained and empanelled 70 lawyers from 40 districts) and needs to be replicated in other states. This would go a long way in creating an enabling environment by taking care of legal problems of key affected populations, especially of women who are thrown out of their houses without getting any share in property. As of now, KAP do not know whom to approach for legal advice.
Aditya Bandopadhyaya, an activist, pleaded for targeted interventions to be led by Community Based Organizations (CBOs) and not by NGOs, as is currently happening. He was emphatic that, “effective empowerment of community will happen only when NACO junks its policy of supporting NGOs and favours targeted interventions only through the medium of CBOs. It is high time that NGOs restrict themselves to be technical support agencies and TIs be CBO led without any NGO intervention.”
Many from KAP felt that there should be no line/forced testing for HIV. Currently everyone in the TI has to be tested for HIV twice a year, and get his/her details recorded. This or any other kind of coercive regimen can never lead to any positive steps in the field of HIV. It has perhaps led to 50% fall in attendance, across the country, at Integrated Counselling and Testing Centres during the past one year.
National programs should also address gender inequality so that women have the power to negotiate for condom use and safe sex practices, which are currently male-dominated. Female condoms should be promoted (many women are not even aware that such a thing exists). Also PLHIV should have the right to marriage, and to have/adopt children. NACO should have a special policy/program to address the problems of HIV widows and orphans, whose numbers have increased over the years.
PLHIV should be made to understand that they can only get empowered to fight for their rights if they do not self-discriminate. They should feel comfortable to talk about their sexuality and HIV status. Also, when we talk of stigma we will have to go beyond affected communities. Stigma is there because unaffected populations do not understand the issue. So everyone should be made aware of the issues of HIV and LGBT. Health education must become a compulsory part of school/college curriculum where all information about reproductive and sexual health rights, safe sex practices, HIV/AIDS should be told to students, as there is a near total lack of awareness about all this which often lands youngsters in dire situations.
Sarita from the United Nations Development Programme stressed upon the need for documentation and compilation of all the good/bad practices of NGOs/CBOs, and other HIV related issues, on one platform in the public domain, to be shared with communities of different states in their local language. Interstate/community exchange/dissemination of practical doable strategies and other HIIV/AIDS related information is the need of the hour. Alongside, we can have annual high level intellectual discussions on law with likeminded people, and disseminate the information to community groups, for them to know their rights and responsibilities, and also connect them with policy makers. This knowledge sharing would also make them treatment/prevention literate and dispel several misconceptions, like becoming victims of false promises of cure made by quack doctors. Many such doctors operate not only in villages but even close metro cities.
The final report, will be a comprehensive overview of the laws impeding an effective HIV and AIDS response, reflecting the situation on the ground, the realities of affected communities and the views of key stakeholders working in the field in India, based upon the recommendations from all the regional consultations. It is hope that the report will act as a comprehensive resource document and advocacy tool that stakeholders can use to advocate for an environment that is legally and socially enabling for PLHIV as well as key populations at high risk of HIV/AIDS.
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Shobha Shukla is the Managing Editor of Citizen News Service (CNS). She is a J2J Fellow of National Press Foundation (NPF) USA. She has worked earlier with State Planning Institute, UP and taught physics at India's prestigious Loreto Convent. She also co-authored a book (translated in three languages) "Voices from the field on childhood pneumonia" and a report on Hepatitis C and HIV treatment access issues in 2011.
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IDF raids private Palestinian television station
Troops reportedly seize equipment, files, forcing station off the air; station is owned by NGOs, broadcasts local news.
RAMALLAH - IDF soldiers raided a Palestinian television station in the West Bank on Wednesday and seized broadcast equipment, computers and files, an employee said.
Ahmed Milhem said soldiers gave no reason for the raid on privately-owned Watan TV in Ramallah, which began at 0200 a.m. (1200 GMT) and lasted for three hours.
"They seized computers, broadcast equipment and administrative files," Milhem told Reuters by telephone. "The station is now off the air," he added.
An IDF military spokeswoman said she had no initial information but was checking for details.
The television station is owned by local non-governmental organizations and broadcasts local news and cultural and political programs over the Internet.
Ramallah is the seat of the Palestinian Authority, which Israel has accused of not doing enough to fight incitement against the Jewish state. The Palestinians say Israeli raids undermine their authority over West Bank areas under their civilian control.
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The Most Powerful Weapon of Egypt's Ruling Generals: State TV
The hallways are dark, curving, windowless passages. The ceilings drip with water in some places. People and papers are shuffled about, and control room walls flicker with multiple screens conveying the live feeds of faces, buildings and words. For an outsider, it's nearly impossible to get in; the building's walls are rimmed by fences, soldiers, and coiled stacks of barbed wire. And on the inside, throughout the maze — where it's often impossible to tell day from night or even the cardinal direction — soldiers clutching semi-automatic rifles stand guard at critical junctions, ever protective of the task at hand in this Orwellian fortress that employs some 43,000 people in the heart of Egypt's capital. The precautions might sound extreme for a government ministry that conducts neither security nor justice. But you could say that this is where the magic happens.
Welcome to Egyptian state TV. Once the mouthpiece of ousted President Hosni Mubarak, it's now the tool of the generals who took over after his fall. And there's a reason it looks this way. "It's the SCAF's [the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces] most powerful tool," says Saleh Fekry, a youth activist who ranks dismantlement of the state's media machine as even more pertinent than the reform of its hated police force. "That's why you have heavy loads of officers inside the building to protect it."
(SPECIAL: The Middle East in Revolt)
In the year since Mubarak's fall, the state media has pulled off seemingly contradictory feats: broadcasting the figures of Egypt's plummeting stock market while simultaneously proclaiming the market's strength; convincing viewers that pro-democracy NGOs have sought to undermine Egypt's burgeoning democracy; and obtaining the kind of exclusive footage of protester-police clashes that no private network could ever hope to get — because the film is shot from the Interior Ministry. Throughout it all, the youth activists — who have seen their own public approval ratings drop as the result of a vilification campaign by state TV — have come to understand better than most that the media can be a powerful weapon. And as the country struggles to shed its decades of authoritarianism and transform itself into a free and democratic society, a highly politicized and partisan state TV — in a country where at least 34% of the population is illiterate — may be one of the most significant obstacles in its way.
News talk shows on the Nile News Channel, the state's 24-hour answer to private networks like Al-Jazeera, are rife with discussion of "thugs," warnings of "foreign" interference in Egyptian affairs, rising insecurity, and crime. And youth-led protests against military rule are labeled dangerous and destabilizing events, driven by foreign agents. The regime's use of media comes at a critical time, media experts say, when public views on rights and policies could prove decisive in shaping Egypt's post-Mubarak system. A recent episode of the evening news show, "The Other Dimension" reported on the role of street children and thugs in this month's protests. "They were kids who didn't know what was happening or even the meaning of the revolution, which raises a lot of questions about why they were there, and who was behind them," the reporter said over a montage of violent footage. "A lot of people blame the NDP [the ex-ruling party] for these kids because they are trying to destroy the revolution."
(SPECIAL: TIME's 2011 Person of the Year: The Protester)
There are no official statistics on just how many of Egypt's 85 million watch state TV, or read the state-sponsored newspapers. But public opinion polls seem to echo TV rhetoric, hinting at its wide impact. "Repeated exposure to something over an extended period of time is going to have a powerful effect on how people construct their reality," says Rasha Abdulla, an associate professor of journalism at the American University in Cairo. "If whenever you flip on the channel, you hear someone refer to the people in Tahrir as thugs, then that's how you're going to think of the people in Tahrir." This is especially true for viewers who have no personal connection to the historic and continuing events at the square. "Then that becomes your only way of constructing your reality."
The effect has proven devastating for Egypt's youth protest movement, which has struggled to condemn the military's abuses in the face of a state media that paints them as stability-wrecking thugs. One group of youth activists launched the "Kazeboon" movement — literally, "liars" — to combat media with media, projecting footage of military abuses in central Egyptian squares and neighborhoods. But their competition is stronger. New media like Kazeboon may be flourishing, says Nancy Okail, the Egypt Director of Freedom House, a Washington-based democracy promotion group. "But at the same time, there is the question of: how many people does it reach? It's about influence." (As of Wednesday, Okail was still on trial, along with 42 other NGO workers, as part of a government crackdown on foreign financed non-profits; State TV has fueled official and public outrage against the NGOs.) And whoever wields the most influence plays a decisive role in public opinion. "Public opinion is a very crucial factor in democracy. It affects how people choose their candidates, who they support, what kind of issues and cases they stand by and what they stand against," she says.
(MORE: Disorder in the Court as Egypt's Trial of NGO Activists Begins)
So far, the winning narrative may be the one propagated by state TV. Abdulla says the state networks have created a "culture of fear" that directly serves the military's interests. News reports highlighting thuggery, crime, and a faltering economy, while placing blame squarely on protesters and "foreign" agents, play a fundamental role in hindering Egypt's path to a free and transparent democracy. "It's the oldest trick in the book. You spread fear and then people are willing to relinquish their personal rights," says Abdulla. "And when you know that there's a lack of security everywhere you go, how likely are you to do things [to protest the status quo], and how likely are you to accept impediments to your freedom?"
Activists say that one of the most dangerous examples of state media's impact since the uprising came on Oct. 9th, when the army and Muslim supporters massacred more than two dozen mostly Christian protesters outside the TV building — popularly known as Maspero. Anchor Rasha Magdy, speaking live on Egypt News at the time, did more than objectively cover the protest. "The slogan on our screen and the anchor, for half an hour, was saying that the good Samaritans of Egypt should go down to the streets and protect the military against the Christians," says Abdulla. "My god — there is no way on earth that she could have said that without clear directives." The episode sparked a furious backlash by liberal activists and Christians against state television, but failed to spread to the larger population. Some local news sources reported that Magdy was investigated (when TIME asked to speak to her, state TV employees said she was "on vacation"), but she was later absolved of any wrongdoing. "I tend to think of Maspero now as part of the SCAF entity," says Abdulla. "It's not a matter of taking a few people out of office or even changing the minister of information . . . We need a media revolution."
(MORE: How Democracy Can Work in the Middle East)
Those who work for state media argue that the attacks are overblown. "There are some faults, but I think they're exaggerated," says Makram Mohamed Ahmed, a columnist at the state-run Al-Ahram newspaper. "They accuse the press of being the ghost behind the violence. When they don't have the courage to state the reality, the easiest thing to do is accuse the press."
But crucially, perhaps: the need for reform has not been lost on everyone inside the machine. Nile News' Editor-In-Chief, Ahmed Sharaf, wants to see state TV's employee payroll cut by more than 90%, and its long list of channels cut down to two or three. "Most of them are rubbish," he says with a laugh — and most of the system's 43,000 employees don't even show up to work. The networks are more than 13 million Egyptian pounds (roughly $2.2 million) in debt, he adds. (Nile News doesn't run commercials in between programs — just an endless stream of evocative video montages that pay tribute to the revolution, the military, and the power of parliament). "They should turn state television into a corporation that can produce and sell its productions and generate money," he says. He envisions a future state TV that more closely resembles Britain's BBC. If the whole system is restructured, he argues, "then there wouldn't be any need for a Ministry of Information" because a corporation would be able to operate with independent editorial policy.
But that dream may be a long way from realization. A recent demonstration for change by others within Maspero earned six news staffers an investigation by the general prosecutor; another staffer received a two-week suspension for raising a banner that read "Freedom for Nile News Channel" behind the anchor during the airing of a popular talk show. And the manner in which state media has been constructed over the decades — built almost entirely on a patronage system that begets loyalty, Abdulla says — suggests there is little desire for change from the inside out. Serious reform like the vision articulated by Ahmed Sharaf is unlikely and unrealistic under military rule, she says. But once there's a will, there's a way. "It depends on how fast we achieve political change," she says. Publicly funded media isn't inherently bad, and ultimately, an independent media body could further Egypt's ongoing revolution, rather than hinder it. "You're supposed to have something that really serves the public, not the government."
With reporting by Sharaf al-Hourani/Cairo
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The Egyptian revolution should not be subsidised
The initial clarity of Egypt's revolutionary discourse has been replaced by perplexing discussions involving a range of issues from ‘Islamists vs liberals' to football violence. The latest such issue involves the rift between the US and the Egyptian government over the latter's crackdowns on organisations with questionable sources of funds.
Following the ousting of Egypt's former president Hosni Mubarak last February, a brief period of euphoria ensued. Then shortly after, Egypt once more fell into disarray, if not complete chaos.
This time round, pinpointing the culprits was no simple task. Some blamed the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (Scaf) — accused of championing the same corrupt and violent legacy of Mubarak's. Others spoke of counter-revolutionaries and remnants of the Mubarak era, or a conspiracy involving Islamic political forces — which secured clear majority in the country's parliamentary elections — Scaf, and outside parties.
Scaf on the other hand, eluded to outside forces aiming to weaken Egypt politically. The Islamists blamed the liberals for attempting to circumvent the clear election results, perpetuating the state of anarchy that forced Scaf to reinstate emergency laws.
The episode of finger-pointing hardly ends here. Ultimately the new and confounding narratives replaced the clarity of the revolution's early demands, which were concerned with political freedom, equal distribution of wealth, social and job security, the end of corruption, and so on.
Whether the current upheaval in Egypt is an unfortunate but expected bedlam that will eventually usher in a new democratic era, or is in fact an orchestrated campaign to humiliate this Arab country is too difficult to ascertain.
That said, there are indeed many signs that point to international — western and Arab — clamour to contain the possibility of a truly democratic Egypt. While containment policies are not easily applicable to Egypt, the second best alternative is renewing the dependency relationship that existed before the ousting of Mubarak.
The US has dangled a carrot worth $1.5 billion (Dh5.5 billion) annually before the Egyptian government for the last three decades, benefiting mostly the country's military apparatus.
Some Arab countries also offered politically-motivated financial support that helped keep the Egyptian budget (barely) afloat. International institutions and western governments offered loans and other perks to secure Mubarak's position as a reliable ally for the US, Israel and others.
Although the revolution didn't instantly break away from that decades-long dependency, its political outcomes threatened to destabilise it. Early signs included the transitional government's flat rejection of loans by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Accepting such funding would once more hold Egypt to US-western diktats ranging between ‘structural adjustments' and specifically tailored ‘political reforms'.
The crises that have engulfed Egypt since last year invite legitimate questions about the seemingly hidden parties that attempt to manage the Egyptian revolution. Why the keen interest in maintaining an environment of crisis? And how does this relate to the recent government crackdown on Egypt-based US NGOs, known for their affiliation with the two main political parties in the US?
The crackdown on US-affiliated NGOs has been lumped with the larger issue of Egypt's unwarranted attempts to curtail civil society organisations altogether. Currently there are an estimated 40,000 such organisations (10,000 NGOs reportedly sprung in the last year alone, according to Inter Press Service, February 22). But these are fundamentally different points of contention.
Under pressure
"The ideological and governmental character of the US organisations [subject to the Egyptian government crackdown] is epitomised by the nature of their leadership," wrote independent UN human rights envoy Dr Richard Falk.
"Madeleine Albright, Secretary of State during the Clinton presidency, is chair of the [National Democratic Institute] NDI board, while former Republican presidential candidate and prominent current senator, John McCain, holds the same position at the [International Republican Institute] IRI" (Al Jazeera, Feb 21).
There is little doubt that the US is actively pursuing its own agenda in Egypt. Unfortunately, between the ‘Washington consensus' and the unclear agendas of the NGOs, Egypt is already showing signs of weakening under pressure.
These two headlines, seven months apart, are enough indication of the faltering political will of the ‘new Egypt': Egypt Drops Plans for IMF Loan amid Popular Distrust (BBC, June 25, 2011) and Pressed by Unrest and Money Woes, Egypt Accepts IMF Loan (New York Times, Feb 19, 2012).
One cannot expect Egypt's lenders to wait for long before forcing their demands, exacting political concessions in exchange for money. We know this from previous histories involving Washington-based institutions, and also because Washington is already threatening to cut its aid to Egypt if the latter doesn't modify its behaviour regarding US NGOs.
James Phillips and Helle Dale of the conservative Heritage Foundation have started stating the terms. "The Obama administration should take off the kid gloves and firmly warn Egypt's transitional leaders that they will pay a heavy price for their crackdown on NGOs that support freedom, human rights, and the rule of law in Egypt," they wrote on February 9.
Predictably, they urged further support for Israel and suggested that "the prospective loss of $1.5 billion in annual assistance and American opposition to new loans from international lending institutions may exert a powerful influence in persuading Egypt's new leaders to discontinue their politically motivated prosecutions."
If the new political phase in Egypt doesn't lead to an assertive new set of policies and finalise a workable democratic (by Egyptian standards) transition, Egypt could continue to teeter between internal mayhem and external dependency. This fate would unfortunately be no less terrible than the years of Mubarak and his family.
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Don’t deprive Pakistani prisoners of rights, dignity: Indian SC
LAHORE: The Indian Supreme Court (SC) said on Tuesday that Pakistani nationals languishing in Indian jails long after completing their jail sentences could not be deprived of their dignity and rights, and can no longer be considered prisoners, IANS reported.
Justice RM Lodha and Justice HR Gokhale observed this after the Indian government told the court that 37 Pakistani nationals who had completed their jail sentences in 2007, 2008 and 2009 were still incarcerated because “Pakistani authorities have not so far confirmed their nationality”, according to IANS.
It said the court also ordered treatment of 21 Pakistani nationals who were stated to be mentally challenged.
“The 21 people who are mentally challenged have to be given proper medical and health assistance in suitable government hospital or in the hospitals or clinics run by NGOs,” IANS quoted the court saying in its order.
“It will suffice to say that these 37 people must be released formally from the jails and having regard to national security, may be kept at an appropriate place with movement restricted pending their repatriation/deportation,” the court ordered. Saying that whatever may be the reason for delay in their repatriation, the court said, “We don’t even have a slightest doubt that their continued imprisonment is uncalled for.”
Directing the government to shift these prisoners to some other place or detention centre where they can have some restricted mobility, the court in its order said, “In no way these 37 Pakistanis can be treated as prisoners once they have served their sentences.”
“It is true that until their nationality is confirmed, they can’t be repatriated and have to be asked to remain here. During this time they can’t be deprived of their human rights and human dignity,” IANS quoted Justice Lodha as saying.
The order, according to the news agency, said it was “indeed unfortunate” that these 37 Pakistani prisoners who have completed their sentences and are not required by India under its law are in jail because their nationality has not been confirmed.
The court noted that these prisoners were granted consular access to the Pakistani High Commission just a few months before their actual release, IANS reported.
The court also asked the Indian Gujarat government to make similar arrangements for 11 Pakistani fishermen in its jails against whom no offence has been registered.
The court asked the government to ensure that the exercise for the confirmation of the 37 people’s nationality is completed expeditiously.
It observed, “We have no doubt that Pakistan High Commission will complete the exercise as early as possible.” When it was told that there was one centre in New Delhi and another in Amritsar where these prisoners could be lodged, the court said, “What is important is not the location where these 37 people would be lodged, but we must have basic amenities and adequate provision for their stay.” The court directed the listing of the matter after four weeks, IANS said. daily times monitor
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Rights Group: Iran Crushing Dissent Before Election
Iran is crushing dissent leading up to its March 2 parliamentary elections and has launched a “cyber army” to block Internet and social media communication, according to Amnesty International.
“What we’ve seen is an intensification of patterns of human rights violations” Suzanne Nossel, executive director of Amnesty USA, told VOA’s Persian News Network. She said the Tehran government has cracked down on journalists, NGOs, think tanks and opposition figures.
Nossel said Tehran has put a trained corps of cyber police in Internet cafes to enforce the crackdown, making it very difficult for anyone to document or relate to the world any abuses - as they did in 2009 when massive protests were brutally squashed by the government.
Opposition activists, reformists, and students at the time used Facebook, Twitter, and mobile phone videos to alert the world to the bloody crackdown, a technique also used in uprisings across the Arabic-speaking world in the past year.
“They’ve seen people use their cell phones, their computers, the Internet to connect with one another, to organize and mobilize, and I think this decision to focus so heavily on creating a cyber police force, and putting such intense restrictions on access to the Internet and the ability of people to connect is a direct response to that,” Nossel said.
Iran's protests were a reaction to the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a vote many Iranians said was fraudulent.
Many reformists believed opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi would have been the winner in an accurate count. Tens of thousands took to the streets in what became known as the Green Movement, because demonstrators adopted the color green, a symbol for Mousavi's campaign.
The demonstrations led to clashes with police and pro-government militia. One person who died in the protests was a young woman, Neda Agha-Soltan, whose shooting death was captured on cell phone videos that reverberated around the world.
Khamenei: Questioning election results a crime
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei attends a meeting with Iranian nuclear scientists and managers in Tehran, February 22, 2012
Reuters
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei attends a meeting with Iranian nuclear scientists and managers in Tehran, February 22, 2012
In August of 2009, Mr. Ahmadinejad demanded that opposition leaders be prosecuted for what he said was their role in masterminding the unrest. The protests eventually faded due to the crackdown and in October, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said questioning the results of the election was a crime.
Pro-reform political parties have been banned, and opposition leaders Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi have been under house arrest for the last year. Nossel believes the “repression of political opponents, placing them under house arrest, is just a deliberate effort to shore up the regime.”
Iranian authorities have been urging the security forces to be vigilant against “enemy threats” leading up to this year's vote.
“The enemy's propaganda machines and the media of arrogant circles have begun an extensive effort so that the assembly election is without splendor," Ayatollah Khamenei said recently. "But all should know that the people's participation in the elections will take the country forward... an election full of excitement will be a major blow to the enemy."
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Mercury pact falls short on Minamata
There is growing debate over how best to reflect the lessons learned from Minamata disease in the so-called Mercury Treaty now being discussed with the aim of reducing the use of mercury around the world to prevent environmental damage and harm to humans.
News photo
Long march: Akio Mizoguchi enters the Fukuoka High Court on Monday carrying a photo of his mother, Chie Mizoguchi, who was posthumously recognized by the court as a victim of the Minamata mercury poisoning later the same day. KYODO
The treaty is scheduled to be signed in Japan in late 2013. Former Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama said in a commemorative ceremony for the victims of Minamata disease in 2010 that Japan wanted to host a diplomatic conference to adopt the pact and call it the Minamata Treaty to demonstrate the nation's determination that the grave damage caused by mercury poisoning is not repeated in other countries.
Three rounds of international discussions on the treaty have been held, in Sweden, Japan and Kenya.
There will be two more conferences, including one in Uruguay in late June, and a final session in 2013 in Japan, with the U.N. Environment Program serving as secretariat.
Despite Hatoyama's passionate commitment, the draft treaty in its current form does not refer to "the core elements of the lessons learned from Minamata," according to a Japanese nongovernmental organization that has participated in the negotiations.
When there is mercury contamination, the polluter and administrative authorities must uncover the full scope of the damage through sufficient study and disclose all information, while assuming the responsibility of compensating the affected people and cleaning up the contaminated site, said the NGO, the Citizens Against Chemicals Pollution.
"These are the major lessons learned from Minamata, but the draft does not specifically refer to the responsibility that should be assumed by the polluter and the administration," said Takeshi Yasuma, a CACP official.
"If this goes on, the envisaged treaty will not be useful for contamination victims in seeking compensation and restoration of the polluted site and in demanding sufficient investigation and information disclosure about the disaster," the Tokyo-based group argued in a statement issued jointly with around 500 individuals and NGOs around the world.
The statement was recently submitted to Japan's environment, foreign and industry ministers.
The NGOs and those who have supported Minamata victims also say they have concerns that adopting the pact and naming it the Minamata Treaty may create a misunderstanding that Japan's Minamata problems are settled.
The Minamata disaster was caused by chemical maker Chisso Corp. dumping mercury-laced wastewater into Minamata Bay. It is still unknown how many people have been affected, even 56 years after the health problems were officially recognized, as intensive medical checkups have never been conducted in and around the affected areas in Kumamoto and Kagoshima prefectures.
A similar disease was later confirmed in Niigata Prefecture, this one caused by a Showa Denko K.K. plant dumping wastewater.
The government introduced redress measures for uncertified patients in 2010, featuring a lump sum of ¥2.1 million and monthly medical allowances, for which more than 50,000 people have applied.
Compared with this, the number of officially recognized patients is only around 3,000, of whom three-quarters have died.
It has been pointed out that there are no doubt more potential patients who could develop symptoms as they grow older, but the government has decided to stop accepting applications at the end of July.
Criticizing the decision, Kenji Utsunomiya, president of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations, said in a statement that it is "premature" to set the deadline because it will lead to "deserting potential victims."
It has also not yet been decided how to deal with around 1.5 million cu. meters of dredged sludge that contains methylmercury.
Improving the iron wall holding the sludge, including earthquake-proof reinforcements, is going to be a major problem going forward, according to local authorities, especially because the wall is rated to last only about 50 years.
Yasuma said these issues should be resolved so the envisaged pact will deserve to be called the Minamata Treaty, and he expects Japan, which has dealt with Minamata disease, "to take the initiative in making the treaty suited to the name."
"It is significant to name the pact the Minamata Treaty as it will enable the world to preserve the experiences of Minamata," said Teruyoshi Hayamizu, head of the Environment Ministry's Environmental Health and Safety Division, while indicating that it is on the agenda of how to reflect regional issues in international efforts to tackle mercury-related problems.
As part of the effort to share the experiences of Minamata with the international community, the government compiled a booklet titled "Lessons from Minamata Disease and Mercury Management in Japan" in Japanese and six other languages — Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish — to be distributed at the treaty meetings, according to Hayamizu.
On the expansion of Minamata disease, the booklet notes: "The government's failure to prevent the harmful impact on human health from increasing, due to not taking strict measures against the responsible companies for a long time, still provides valuable lessons today.
"It shows how important it is to take countermeasures quickly, as well as how preventive measures should be taken even when there is scientific uncertainty over the cause of the problem," it says.
Hayamizu also said the government is willing to hold another seminar in Minamata, Kumamoto Prefecture, after the June Uruguay meeting to brief the residents there on how the negotiations are going and to exchange views with them on the treaty.
In Minamata, meanwhile, Yoichi Tani, 63, is keeping an eye on the treaty negotiations.
"The ongoing talks must aim at mediating the differences among the countries before concluding the treaty. Thus, there must be a gap between their realistic decisions and the ideals of the local people (of Minamata)," said Tani, who has supported disease victims for more than 40 years.
"But I expect the international community to share its knowledge about the hazardous nature of mercury, based on the experiences of Minamata, and I hope the conclusion of the Minamata Treaty will not close the curtain on the Minamata issue as the whole picture of this issue remains unexplained," he said.
