RIGHTS-LIBERIA: ‘We Will Use Our Children as Shields’

Global Intelligence News / IPS

By Rebecca Murray

Children play at the Harbel marketplace.

HARBEL, Liberia, Dec 9 (IPS) – “We are not just going to let a bulldozer come in and demolish our land. If possible we will use our children as shields. We will have to do that,” exclaims Eric Lavella, a middle-aged Firestone factory worker living in the heart of Liberia’s largest rubber plantation, 60 kilometres south of the capital Monrovia.

Lavella’s neighbourhood of Firestone contractors, retirees, marketers and squatters — estimated by community leader, Reverend Johnson Flumo, to be around 3,000 — is crowded into breezeblock and corrugated metal shacks haphazardly built in the town of Harbel’s marketplace.

But after more than two decades of selling food, clothing and plastic Chinese goods, the market dwellers’ days are numbered. Firestone intends to shift the vendors to a newly constructed market next month and tear down the old commercial lot. The new location will have over 1000 stalls, but no housing. Both sites are on land Firestone says is theirs until their lease runs out in 2041.
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Popularity: 86% [?]

INDIA/PAKISTAN: Hoax Call Hyped by Media – Get Hostilities to Brink

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Beena Sarwar

KARACHI, Dec 7 (IPS) – A hoax phone call from India to Pakistan’s President threatening military reprisals in the aftermath of the terrorist attack on Mumbai city, hyped up by media, brought the nuclear-armed neighbours close to conflict.

However, analysts believe that the hostilities arising from the attack and the media hype can still be contained.

The three-day standoff in Mumbai was barely over on Nov. 28 when the late-evening phone call was made, supposedly from India’s External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, to Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari. Because of the heightened tensions, his staff bypassed routine procedures and transferred the call to Zardari.

The imposter ”directly threatened to take military action if Islamabad failed to immediately act against the supposed perpetrators of the Mumbai killings” according to a report in the daily Dawn, Pakistan of Dec. 6, which reveals that the call was a hoax that sent Pakistan into a state of ‘high alert’ last weekend, ”eyeing India for possible signs of military aggression”.
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US-IRAQ: Immunity Recedes for Private Contractors

Global Intelligence News / IPS

William Fisher

NEW YORK, Dec 5 (IPS) – The virtually total impunity from prosecution accorded to private contractors in Iraq may be coming to an end.

Under the new Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) approved by the Iraqi government last week, U.S. contractors will be subject to Iraqi law for the first time. Moreover, some observers believe that Iraq may be able to hold them legally accountable for offences allegedly committed even before the SOFA was approved.

And, at the other end of the U.S-Iraq equation, after months of seeming inactivity — marked by continuing doubts about whether the U.S. even has legal jurisdiction over the contractors — the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) may soon bring charges against three to six contractor-employed security guards for their involvement in the shooting of 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad in September 2007.
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U.S.: Mumbai Massacre Seen as Major Blow to Regional Strategy

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Jim Lobe*

WASHINGTON, Dec 4 (IPS) – A week after the massacre of more than 170 people by armed militants in Mumbai, U.S. officials are scrambling to prevent the incident from blowing up into a full-fledged confrontation between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan.

While Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spent Wednesday in meetings with Indian leaders in New Delhi warning them that any retaliation could result in ”unintended consequences or difficulties”, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. Armed Forces, Adm. Michael Mullen, was in Islamabad pressing top Pakistani civilian and military officials to fully cooperate with any investigation.

He also urged them to crack down hard against any groups — almost certainly the officially banned Lashka-e-Taiba (LeT), according to government and independent analysts here — found to be responsible.
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Popularity: 32% [?]

ENVIRONMENT: Modified Habitats Pose Threat of Zoonotic Diseases

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Diego Cevallos

MÉRIDA, Mexico, Dec 3 (IPS) – A breakout of yellow fever among monkeys caught authorities in Argentina and Brazil, and the Pan-American Health Organisation (PAHO), off-guard in October.

As in dozens of cases that occur every year, the outbreak was the result of growing interaction between wild animals and humans and changes in habitats, which is generating new diseases and reviving old ones.

Ebola, encephalitis, avian influenza, pulmonary hemorrhagic syndrome, viral hepatitis, leptospirosis and HIV, the AIDS virus, are just a few of the diseases that according to scientists emerged from the relationship between animals and humans, and that claim thousands or even millions of lives a year while generating huge economic losses around the world.

”Climatic factors and human activity that is increasingly destructive and close to wild animals trigger diseases that in the past we could not even imagine, or that we believed had disappeared,” Silvia Alonso, a researcher with the Royal Veterinary College at the University of London, told IPS.
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Popularity: 26% [?]

RIGHTS-MAURITANIA: ‘Chains Are Jewellery For Men’

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Ebrimah Sillah

DAKAR, Dec 3 (IPS) – Mauritania’s security forces are again accused of routine and systematic torture of political opponents and Islamists accused of links with international terrorist groups. A report released by Amnesty International today details cruel violations of human rights, poor prison conditions and a judicial system that offers little protection.

One detainee — accused of membership of a terrorist organisation — told a visiting Amnesty International delegation in February this year how security officers tortured him into coma.

”They forced me to bend double, got hold of my hands and legs, and joined them under the knees at the height of the shin. They tied them together with handcuffs, then placed an iron bar under my knees and suspended me from the ceiling. They then hit me with sticks and truncheons. I regularly lost consciousness in this position.”
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RIGHTS-PAKISTAN: Enlarged Capital Crimes List Belies Promises – Activists

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Zofeen Ebrahim

KARACHI, Dec 2 (IPS) – The decision to add ”cyber terrorism” to Pakistan’s long list of capital crimes has raised questions on whether the new government has the resolve to carry through its promise to commute the death sentences of 7,000 prisoners.

Last month, President Asif Ali Zardari issued a decree making internet crime punishable by execution or life imprisonment — if ”the death of any person” has resulted.

The new offence brings to 28 the number of crimes that carry the death sentence in Pakistan.

News of the new punishment, which took effect retrospectively on Sep. 29, was immediately denounced by human rights activists.

”We have criticised the government for enlarging the number of offences for which death is awarded,” I.A. Rehman, director of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), told IPS.
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Popularity: 26% [?]

HEALTH-AFRICA: Breaking the Cycle of HIV Transmission

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Zahira Kharsany interviews DAVID ALNWICK, UNICEF HIV Advisor

JOHANNESBURG, Dec 1 (IPS) – According to the United Nations Children’s Fund, early diagnosis and treatment greatly increase survival rates for HIV-positive newborns. but fewer than one in ten infants born to HIV-positive mothers in 2007 was tested for HIV within two months of birth.

”Children and Aids: Third Stocktaking Report 2008”, released by the United Nations Children’s Fund on World AIDS Day, warns that without the right treatment, half of children with HIV will die before their second birthday.

The UNICEF report focuses on what is known as the four ”Ps”. These are the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV, providing pediatric treatment and care, preventing infection among adolescents and young people, and protection and care of children affected by AIDS.

UNICEF Regional HIV Advisor for east and southern Africa, David Alnwick, discussed the findings of the report in these key areas with IPS reporter Zahira Kharsany.

IPS: What has the outcome been?

David Alnwick: Progress! Progress has been slow with implementing key priorities, particularly preventing infants born to mothers with HIV from becoming infected themselves. But many countries have done really well in last year or so on this.

In East and Southern Africa — about 30 percent of all pregnant women get an HIV test — and if positive, most get some help to prevent transmission. About half of all health centres provide routine HIV tests to pregnant women. This is far from good enough — but it does represent real progress, a doubling over the last few years, and hopefully it will double again in the next year.

Also there have been new scientific breakthroughs on children who are infected, in spite of efforts to prevent and many countries despite big obstacles are now rolling out ‘early infant diagnosis’, testing kids for the virus at six weeks of age, and putting them on treatment immediately if infected. These are good beginnings, but needs a lot more support.

IPS: What needs to be done?

DA: We need to break the cycle of transmission. We’ve been concentrating on aid prevention in general but especially prevention in women and girls. The report takes stock of countries and we at UNICEF are optimistic that good progress is being made.

But still only one third of all women are tested for HIV. This is not good but it is a lot better then before. It means that countries and governments are taking it seriously. There are optimistic signs that there is progress.

UNICEF has good hopes that effective services for mums already infected will be rapidly scaled up and that children will be protected to maximum extent possible, and where not possible, helped with treatment.

IPS: What concerns are there?

DA: UNICEF is very concerned in East and Southern Africa about the lack of progress with primary prevention of HIV infection, particularly in young women around the time that they become pregnant. This needs much more emphasis, much more radical approaches, much more government support at highest level. We are seeing these signs but much more can be done to prevent HIV infection in girls and women in southern Africa.

Our biggest concern is that even though there has been an increase in prevention from mother-to-child the tap is not being turned off. The infection in women and girls is not lowering. We hope that things will become better with improved medical technologies and government assistant. But we’ve got to do more. It’s not only the job of UNICEF, but all non-governmental organisations, civil society and governments to do more.

IPS: There’s a new emphasis amongst AIDS campaigners on ”knowing your epidemic”, that is to say analysing the local situation in terms of who is infected and what factors are driving the epidemic, and then acting on this information. How does UNICEF view this approach?

DA: Yes – we fully support ‘need to know the epidemic’. The days for generalised approaches are over.

The intriguing thing in southern Africa is that the evidence is clear that it is not just poor or un-educated girls who are infected. In fact women in southern Africa are — according to the World Economic Forum — among the most empowered women on the continent. We need to ask ourselves is, what is happening that young women in Southern Africa have used this relative empowerment, this relative freedom, wealth, mobility, to practice sex lives that are now becoming as risky as men’s sex lives have been for many years, that is several different sex partners at same time for example.

It is not the lack of empowerment that these women and girls are infected. Statistics show that those that are infected are now the educated ones with disposable incomes. The old story of it being those who are poor and live in poverty and have to sell themselves to make some money is not true. It is those who are educated that are becoming infected. I for one believe that we need to look at the process. The most empowered are the ones most at risk. We must ask ourselves why this is so.
All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Popularity: 19% [?]

AUSTRALIA: Do More Regionally to Stop HIV/AIDS Gov’t Told

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Stephen de Tarczynski

MELBOURNE, Nov 28 (IPS) – While HIV infection rates remain relatively low in Australia, the peak non-governmental organisation representing the country’s community-based response to HIV/AIDS wants the government to do more to fund prevention measures here and in the region to counter rising infection rates.

”We made such massive, excellent inroads early on into the HIV epidemic in Australia and our real concern is that we’re actually starting to see all that investment go to waste as infection rates start to climb,” says Graham Brown, president of the Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations (AFAO), the nation’s peak HIV-response body.

A report released in September by the University of New South Wales’ National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research (NCHECR) shows that the number of new human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) diagnoses in Australia has increased each year since 1999, when 718 people were reported to have been infected with the virus. In 2007, there were 1,051 newly-diagnosed cases of HIV, representing close to a 50 percent increase on the late 1990s.
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TRADE-WEST AFRICA: Swollen Shoot Disease Devastating Cocoa Trees

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Francis Kokutse

ACCRA, Nov 27 (IPS) – On a hot November afternoon, Opanin Owusu Adu showed me around his farm on the outskirts of Suhum, a town in the Eastern Region in Ghana.

He pointed out what has happened to the cocoa trees that he had hoped to make a living from. With a sad voice he said, ‘‘my son, that is what the people say swollen shoot disease does to the cocoa trees”.

What should have been golden pods, have become blackened, dried up and withered. ‘‘You cannot cultivate these ones. It means no money.”

Swollen shoot disease is a problem across the West African region. Farmers in Ghana, Ivory Coast, Togo and Nigeria have not been spared the devastation.

Worried by its long-term effect, Ghana’s President John Kufuor early this year called on the regional grouping the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to take steps to fight the disease.
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Popularity: 30% [?]

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