brad brace contemporary culture scrapbook

June 7, 2007

Nicaragua authorities launch new anti-drug operation

Filed under: global islands,nicaragua — admin @ 7:56 pm

Nicaragua’s anti-drug forces and navy on Wednesday began an operation seeking the ringleaders of the drug group Millennium Cartel, said the police.

Operation Pacific Storm is a follow-up to the operations on Monday and Tuesday. On Tuesday, six cartel members were arrested on the beach at Salina Grande in Leon Department, some 93 km northeast to the capital.

On Monday, in Operation Tenacious, 11 cartel members, including Guatemalans, Hondurans, Salvadorians and Nicaraguans, were arrested.

All these operations, after months of intelligence work, “have been a success until now,” police spokesman Alonso Sevilla told local media.

He said the police will continue the anti-drug efforts along the Pacific coast as those “traffickers are trying to attack the Pacific coast because we have hit their Atlantic Ocean routes.”

About eight tons of cocaine and 41 kg of heroin had been seized so far this year, said Sevilla, and 50 Mexicans, Salvadorians, Guatemalans, Hondurans and Nicaraguans had been detained in 2007.

The smuggling group takes drugs from Colombia via Mexico to the United States.

June 6, 2007

Massive security preparations for upcoming G8 summit in Germany

Filed under: General,global islands,media — admin @ 10:37 am

In preparation for the G8 summit of world leaders to be held June 6-8 in Germany, the idyllic bathing resort of Heiligendamm is being transformed into a high-security tract resembling the notorious “Green Zone” in Baghdad. The leaders of the seven major industrial nations and Russia will be entrenched behind a wall 12 kilometres long, 2.5 metres high (7.5 miles by 8.2 feet), comprising 4,600 steel panels, mounted with barbed wire, cameras and sensory detectors. An exclusion zone of 11 nautical miles will be established out to sea, complemented by an air exclusion zone extended 50 kilometres into the skies.

The cost of these measures is estimated at €92 million. Additional expenses include the wages and overtime of 16,000 police assembled from across Germany, who will provide around-the-clock protection for the eight world leaders attending the summit.

Even this is not enough, however. To prevent protests against the summit and to intimidate demonstrators, the federal interior minister and police authority are working with their counterparts in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (MWP)—where Heiligendamm is situated—to draw up a range of repressive measures which would warm the hearts of most authoritarian rulers.

These measures began on May 9 with a series of coordinated police raids carried out across the country involving 900 police officers in six northern German states. Police searched 40 offices and dwellings occupied by opponents of the summit and seized computers, hard discs and written documents. The raids were organised by the general federal attorney, Monika Harms, and justified on the basis of Germany’s anti-terror laws. The raids represented the first-ever use of the controversial paragraph 129a—allegedly directed against the danger of terrorism—for the criminalisation of political opponents.

The raids were subsequently condemned by a number of jurists and politicians who declared them to be completely out of proportion to any real danger to the state. They were clearly aimed at intimidating the opponents of the summit and collecting confidential information about planned protests. After the raid, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office declared it was investigating 21 suspects in connection with “terrorist” arson attacks, but no arrest warrants had been issued because, according to a spokeswoman, there was a lack of any real evidence. It is clear, therefore, that the “suspicions” of terrorism were merely a pretext.

Since then, there has been a veritable flood of new measures against the planned protests proposed by the federal interior minister, Wolfgang Schäuble (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) and local police authorities.

According to one of Germany’s main television channels, the state of MWP is “preparing mass prisons for opponents of globalisation.” Potential prisoners include not only demonstrators, guilty of an offence or refusing to obey the dictates of the police, but also potential delinquents, who can be “pre-emptively” imprisoned—a practice disturbingly similar to the notorious protective custody of the Nazis.

Following the threat of preventive detention for potentially violent demonstrators by Interior Minister Schäuble, the spokeswoman for the MWP interior ministry, Marion Schlender, declared that the state would “fully exhaust” its legal capacities for preventive detention of presumed culprits.

MWP’s Security and Order Law (SOG) allows so-called preventive safekeeping of up to 10 days. The law was passed in the last legislative period with the votes of the Left-Party-PDS, which governed in a coalition with the Social Democratic Party (SPD). Following a recent state election, the state is now governed by a grand coalition of the SPD and CDU. While the Left Party is one of the co-organisers of the current protests against the G8 summit, it prefers to keep quiet about the role played by members of its own party in introducing repressive legislation in MWP.

MWP Interior Minister Lorenz Caffier (CDU) has also taken precautions to speed up the prosecution of offending demonstrators, so they can be sentenced immediately after their alleged offence.

Protesters could end up behind bars for simply getting too close to the security fence. For the period May 30 to June 8, the regional police has banned all public meetings within a distance of 200 metres from the security fence and around the local airport where summit leaders will land for their conference.

This means that the ban on demonstrations extends to a distance of 5-10 kilometres from the conference centre. There is no legal basis for this restriction. The organisers of the planned protests have asserted that they will apply for an injunction against the ruling and if necessary take the issue to the German Constitutional Court.

The interior undersecretary of state and former president of the Federal Information Service (BND), August Hanning, cynically justified this flagrant violation of the freedom of assembly with the assertion that Germany wanted to be “a good host.” This evidently means that demonstrations against the summit are permissible only if the summit participants and accompanying journalists are completely unaware of them.

The Federal Prosecutor’s Office has also resorted to obtaining samples of the odours of globalisation opponents, in order to be able to identify them later with the help of sniffer dogs. Up until now, such operational methods were the exclusive domain of the Stasi Stalinist secret police in the former East Germany. At a museum dedicated to the activities of the Stasi, it is still possible to view the odour samples (in glass bottles) obtained by agents of opponents of the GDR regime.

While a number of politicians have raised reservations of this practice—parliamentary Vice-President Wolfgang Thierse (SPD) complained of “police state methods à la GDR”—Interior Minister Schäuble has unreservedly defended the measures. He told Bavarian radio, “In certain cases it is a means to identify possible suspects.” The issue was to ensure the security of the G8 summit, he said, and this would be done by the police using all “appropriate means.”

The external circumstances of the G8 summit mirror the relationship between the heads of states and governments who often describe themselves as the leaders of the “free world” and the mass of the population, which is held at bay by barbed wire fences, troops of police and bans on demonstration: a deep social and political gulf yawns between the two sides.

Kenya: Floods displace hundreds

Filed under: global islands,kenya — admin @ 5:03 am

Hundreds of Kenya’s Lamu residents have left homeless after their houses were submerged by raging floods.

An estimated 1,000 victims the floods, according to the district disaster management committee, are in Bomani in the expansive Mpeketoni settlement scheme.

Several mud-walled huts had been washed away, Lamu acting district commissioner Moses Ivuto said.

“But there are no casualties as people had moved out of flooded areas to higher grounds,” he said after touring the area together with the disaster management team.

The flooding had affected schooling after a small bridge connecting the village with the institution was washed away, he said.

Mr Ivuto said the Red Cross Society had started assisting the displaced families with food and clothing but more assistance was needed.

“We will be holding an emergency meeting to come up with an urgent plan of action to assist the victims,” he told the Nation by telephone.

A resident who has been forced to abandon his home, the rains have been pounding the area for two weeks, according to Mr Joram Njoroge. Mr Njoroge, whose three acre maize plot has been destroyed, said hunger was imminent in the area.

“But the greatest fear now is the strong possibility of hippos coming up to where the people are because of the huge water mass,” he said.

Mr Emmanuel Wanyoike Kimani, a Red Cross official, said immediate measures should be taken to ensure that lives were not lost due to starvation and outbreak of water-borne diseases.

“The situation is critical and more food and other materials like blankets and mosquito nets are needed urgently to supplement what has already been given out,” he said.

June 5, 2007

Political Party Ban

Filed under: global islands,thailand — admin @ 7:00 am

Thailand’s military-backed interim government has lifted a ban on
political party activities. The ban was imposed last September following a
coup that ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. The ban has been
lifted to allow parties to campaign for a general election, expected in
December. The move comes days after a court ordered the dissolution of Mr
Thaksin’s Thai Rak Thai party and banned its leaders, including Thaksin,
from politics for five years.

June 3, 2007

Prisoners ‘packed like sardines’ in Bangladesh jails

Filed under: bangladesh,global islands — admin @ 5:12 am

DHAKA: Top political leaders including former ministers and lawmakers are among a record 86,000 detenues “packed like sardines” in Bangladesh’s jails which have a total capacity to house only 27,000.
Several hundred new prisoners are huddled every day by authorities conducting a nationwide drive against crime, corruption and religious extremism, making the
situation worse.
Sweaty summer and monsoon for which the tropical Deltaic region is known add to the woes of the prisoners.
Even the authorities are appalled. “You will be astonished to see the awful condition of the prisoners,” said the inspector-general of prisons, Brigadier General Zakir Hasan.
“They sleep in shifts, and queue up for hours to use the lavatories and bathrooms,” New Age quoted him as saying yesterday.
There were 71,000 prisoners already when the present government took office January 12, thanks to several weeks of mass agitation by a 14-party opposition alliance led by Awami League chief Sheikh Hasina.
The influx has been even higher since Chief Adviser Fakhruddin Ahmed’s caretaker government launched the drive, nabbing scores of high-profile people, with most of them detained and put on trial, in police or judicial custody.
With the drive continuing, it is showing no sign of a decline. The number is in fact growing, though there is no space left for accommodating “even a single person”, senior prison officials told the newspaper.
The situation has worsened in recent weeks in that the prisoners cannot move about in their cells properly, let alone lie down for sleeping and use toilets and bathrooms when necessary.
Three shifts have been formed so that the prisoners can sleep in phases, and it does not matter whether he or she sleeps in the day or at night.
As per the statistics recorded by the prison authorities, the number of inmates in jails was 68,278 in January, and rose to about 86,000 on May 27. The present capacity of the country’s 66 jails is only 27,254.
The general prisoners are feeling the pinch as the jail authorities had to empty many cells in the country’s prisons to accommodate the VIP prisoners, including former ministers, lawmakers and businessmen who were netted in the drive.
“It’s really tough to stay in the crowded cells in the hot weather. You will not understand the dreadful condition of the general prisoners if you have not been there,” said a prisoner at the jail gate, before rushing away with his parents.

June 2, 2007

Bangladesh snake charmers dance to a new tune

Filed under: bangladesh,global islands — admin @ 6:02 am

PORABARI, Bangladesh – They’ve dodged deadly kisses, orchestrated mesmerizing dances and healing sessions, but Bangladesh’s snake charmers are now a dying breed.

Bangladesh has an estimated 500,000 snake charmers, who rove the country like gypsies or live in riverboats.

Some 5,000 have settled with their families in Porabari village, 32 km (20 miles) from Dhaka, where every household boasts a basket full of snakes, even though few charmers are teaching their children their art.

“This is not because we no longer love snakes or dislike to play them for a living,” said Alamgir Hossain, 45, who holds the title of “sorporaj” or “snake king”, the highest honor in the community.

“I grew up with the snakes, played with cobras, and, maybe you can say, romanced with them,” said the father of six.

“So did most members of the clan. They play snakes to crowds of villagers for money. But those days have changed.”

Now many of Porabari’s charmers have taken other professions with more predictable incomes, like pulling rickshaws or growing rice and vegetables. Most send their children to school.

Urbanization, deforestation and other environmental changes have also decreased Bangladesh’s snake population. Even though the government has banned the killing of snakes, villagers often kill serpents that have bitten or killed others.

Hossain won his title after many years of devotion, practice and training in Bangladesh and India’s Assam state. Today, few have the patience or inclination to do the same.

He said he was one of only six living “sorporaj” in the country — five of his predecessors were killed by snake bites.

In Porabari, children play with snakes without fear, draping them around their necks like garlands.

Female snake charmers often sell talismans and “medical” advice to illiterate villagers. Male charmers are often called upon to cure people who have been bitten by poisonous snakes and are seen as “ujhas” or paramedics.

Hossain said Porabari’s charmers make most of their money from selling snakes to the other charmers who descend on the village for the weekly snake market.

“I try to buy nearly 100 snakes in each consignment, for 400 or 500 taka ($6-7) each, and then sell them for a minimum profit,” Hossain said. “But high quality snakes, like the king cobra, are rarely found and cost nearly 5,000 taka a piece.”

Despite his elevated position in the community, Hossain said he had no intention to allow his children to follow in his “risky” footsteps.

“But we cannot live without snakes,” he said. “We love them like we love our children.”

June 1, 2007

6 dead as mercury soars in Bangladesh

Filed under: bangladesh,global islands,weather — admin @ 6:20 am

Six people have died in Bangladesh from heat-related illness as summer temperatures soar and power cuts plague businesses and homes, reports and officials said Thursday.

Four people died in western Chuadanga district while two more died in eastern Comilla, the English-language Daily Star said in a report.

At one of the country’s premier hospitals, more than 400 people were being treated a day, a daily increase of about 150 since the heatwave began, said Azharul Islam Khan of Dhaka’s International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research.

The country recorded the highest temperature of the year on Wednesday with the mercury topping 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in the northern town of Ishwardi, according to the Meteorological Office.

Temperatures in the capital, Dhaka, reached 37 degrees Celsius (98 degrees Fahrenheit) and were accompanied by widespread power cuts lasting many hours.

The heatwave was likely to continue for at least two more days, Meteorological Office official Bazlur Rashid told AFP.

“The severity of the temperature will remain the same up until June 2-3 and in some places it may rise,” he warned.

Sri Lanka: Food shortages, fear of abductions – Jaffna residents feel the pinch

Filed under: global islands,sri lanka — admin @ 6:02 am

COLOMBO, 31 May 2007 – Last year at this time 16-year-old Jeevun Kumaraswamy, who lives on the isolated Jaffna peninsula in northern Sri Lanka, was on top of the world. His school, Jaffna Central College, was competing against traditional rivals St. John’s College in the centenary game of their annual cricket match. Jaffna was decked-out in flags. The kids were dancing in the streets.
This year there’s anything but dancing for Jeevun and his friends: Since all-out conflict began between government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) the climate has been tense – tense enough that even the big school cricket match had to be cancelled.
The closure of the A-9 highway in August 2006 has also meant most essential supplies, including food, could no longer be delivered from the south in the volumes necessary. Families like Jeevan’s have been feeling the economic and nutritional pinch as only scant supplies can be imported by ship and air.
Fear of abductions
But for Jeevun and his school mates and their families there is a bigger concern. With abductions in the area on the rise, Jeevun’s father, Sinnathambhi Kumaraswamy, told IRIN “I am scared to live here because I have three young boys to look after. I don’t know when they will go missing.” He said: “I have seen many young boys abducted and now I am seeing their parents suffer.”
The worried father says he won’t even allow his sons to leave the house for fear they could be abducted. Eighty people, all males, were abducted in Jaffna between January and April 2007, according to the Human Rights Commission, a semi-autonomous government body.
Young Jeevun says he is particularly fearful because he witnessed the abduction of a close friend just five months ago.
“I will never forget my friend’s last scream,” says Jeevun. “Passers-by just stared at the commotion while he was forced into a white van by four unidentified men. I certainly don’t want myself or my brothers to suffer like that.”
“I love playing cricket with my friends and I had really been looking forward to this year’s big cricket match, but now it seems everything has just died,” Jeevun says. “My brother and I can’t even step out of the house to be with our friends.”
Various groups have been accused of carrying out child abductions in Sri Lanka – including the LTTE and the pro-government Karuna group, which is a breakaway faction of the LTTE. There have even been allegations – denied by the government and the military – of army or government involvement.
Seeking help
Some Jaffna residents who have had family members abducted seek the help of the local branch of the Human Rights Commission. It records their cases and conducts its own investigations. Families of victims have also lodged complaints with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) which is monitoring the situation and is in touch with all parties to resolve complaints.
ICRC Spokesperson, Davide Vignati, told IRIN: “The ICRC, currently, on a weekly basis, is collecting information on missing persons and abductions. The cases have only been increasing in the peninsula.”
Jaffna university
Even academic work at Jaffna university has been affected by fear of abductions and other intimidation. According to the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), which monitors the truce between the government and the LTTE, “the problems at Jaffna University campus have continued.
Students and staff have been receiving death threats aimed at people with LTTE (Tamil Tiger) affiliations which has caused considerable fear and led to the closure of the campus,” the SLMM said in a situation report dated 14-20 May 2007.
The threats and abductions are occurring in a city that over the past year has faced increasing isolation and economic challenges due to the conflict and the A9 road closure. Just two years ago, even though there were breakdowns in talks between the government and the Tamil Tigers, Jaffna was making the most of the tentative ceasefire.
Jaffna residents who had fled the violence more than a decade earlier, like some from the local Muslim population, were returning to their former homes and businesses. Goods were freely available and guest houses were opening up to the increasing number of visitors. Even private airlines and mobile service providers were lining up to get a piece of the action.
A9 road closure
All that has now changed and today, principally because of the A9 closure, Jaffna is now a city marked by shortages of basic commodities and medicine and, most critically, food.
The World Food Programme (WFP), which is currently conducting its food assistance programme in Jaffna, has been able to ship only 20 per cent of its total food allocation for internally displaced peoples (IDPs) and vulnerable people to the peninsula due to the A9 road closure.
“Through the food assistance programme, WFP is required to send 1,000 metric tonnes of food to Jaffna every month. But due to the closure of the A9 road and the lack of space on government vessels, WFP has been able to ship only 200 metric tones of food per month since August,” WFP Country Director Jeff Taft-Dick told IRIN.
Lack of ships
“Our biggest concern is the low number of ships available to transport food,” Taft-Dick says. “With the monsoon expected, we will face more difficulties.”
WFP says it is in consultation with the commissioner general of the Essential Services Commission to increase the number of supply ships as soon as possible. The government did increase the number of ships last year when supplies thinned out in the peninsula.
“Food prices were quite high several months ago,” says Taft-Dick, “but they have come down now. It is a little better now because some private traders are also bringing in food from India,” he said.
“Very soon our children will be starving”
However, some residents feel that economic conditions in Jaffna are so dire that the cost of commodities, including food, are priced beyond their reach.
“Prices keep increasing weekly.” Rosy Theyagarajah told IRIN. “A fixed rate on commodities is not maintained and shops sell goods at whatever price they want,” she complains. “Very soon our children will be starving as we no longer have money to buy food.”
Rosy Theyagarajah has been living in Jaffna for the past 32 years and says the current situation is the worst she has experienced. She says some children are now suffering malnutrition. “Even during the 20-year war between the government and the LTTE, we had food to fill our stomachs,” she says. “But today we have nothing. My husband is out of work and my children only get one meal a day,” she adds.

May 31, 2007

Police: Nicaraguan girl killed American

Filed under: global islands,nicaragua — admin @ 6:02 am

MANAGUA, Nicaragua – A pregnant Nicaraguan teenager allegedly shot her 53-year-old American lover and enlisted her siblings to help dismember the body, police said Tuesday.

The girl said her 14-year-old sister and 19-year-old brother helped her cut up the body to put the pieces in plastic bags. They then drove outside the city and buried the bags in two different places in northern Nicaragua, Herrera said.

Ken Kinzel disappeared in Nicaragua two weeks ago. Details of what exactly happened to him are still coming into focus. But at this point here’s what is known for sure, according to his best friend, his wife and reports from the Nicaraguan newspaper El Nuevo Diario:

Kinzel is dead.

He was 52.

And a 17-year-old pregnant Nicaraguan with whom he was having an affair has confessed to shooting him in the head and throat and then cutting him up with a chain saw.

The girl told her mother and then police she took his body parts to four different rural locations.

“I’m completely overwhelmed, ” Kinzel’s wife, Marty Jo Johnson, said Monday night when reached on her cell phone.

The girl met Kinzel in December and apparently introduced herself as a 21-year-old college student. She is eight months pregnant, according to El Nuevo Diario, which means the child couldn’t have been Kinzel’s, Johnson said Monday.

Kinzel, who grew up on 62nd Terrace S and lived in that house after his mother died in 2002, got involved with Nicaragua as the stateside coordinator of ProNica, a nonprofit Quaker organization with offices in St. Petersburg and Managua, Nicaragua.

He was no longer the coordinator, though, and last year he sold the house on 62nd Terrace S and bought land outside Esteli.

The Death of Media Freedom in Sri Lanka

Filed under: global islands,media,sri lanka — admin @ 5:49 am

Sri Lanka is a country at war. As a direct consequence of the increase in hostilities between the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) and the Liberation of Tamil Tigers Eelam (LTTE), fundamental rights, including the freedom of expression and media freedom, have severely deteriorated over the past year. Despite international condemnation and repeated local protests, the GoSL and LTTE are unable, or unwilling, to put an end to a culture of impunity that has cost some journalists and human rights activists their lives and places other at severe risk. The violence directed against pro-democracy voices in civil society has resulted in a fear psychosis amongst the media community in particular. Hate speech and open threats to even senior journalists are now, perversely, routine by members of the government and highly placed public servants. Abductions, murders and severe erosion of safety for working journalists stunts the growth of investigative reportage and results in a de facto censorship of issues related to justice, the Rule of Law, human rights and democracy.
The situation is already impossible, and unbelievably, getting worse. The Free Media Movement (FMM) considers World Press Freedom Day in 2007 to be a day to mourn, not celebrate, media freedom in Sri Lanka. Facts, which speak for themselves, on the deterioration of media freedom and fundamental rights in Sri Lanka in general, deny us even a cautious optimism on securing and strengthening media freedom in the near future. Calls to clarify the government’s position on hate speech and intimidatory tactics adopted and promoted by members of parliament and senior officials have fallen on deaf ears. Investigations into the deaths of journalists are stalled, unable to continue sans the political will to bring perpetrators of heinous crimes to justice. Journalists have been forced to flee Sri Lanka. Those who remain are in fear of their lives, in a context in which the Rule of Law withers in suspended animation. The threat to media freedom is real and palpable for those working in Sri Lanka and, especially, journalists who advocate the inviolability of human rights and basic norms of democracy even at a time of war. Unfortunately, the timbre of living constantly in fear and repression, and the significant erosion of media freedom and fundamental rights, isn’t always easily communicated to the international community, or can be.
This is our foremost challenge. On the one hand, free media is a vital bulwark against a total erasure of fundamental rights. Media, acting in the interests of the public, have a responsibility to report critically on all actors involved in the on-going conflict, including the Government and the LTTE. To harm the media, to threaten the media or otherwise seek to control free media is inimical to the fundamental tenets of democracy. Regrettably, this is precisely what journalists in Sri Lanka face today. Accordingly, this brief statement by the FMM seeks to a) flag key issues facing the media today and b) propose recommendations to address the significant deterioration of media freedom.
The failure to stop the erosion of media freedom in Sri Lanka is quite simply that the manner in which the State seeks to combat terrorism will itself give birth to a new tyranny and despotism in Sri Lanka. The possibility of deeper cycles of violent conflict that will be the inevitable result thereof is a frightening yet compelling appeal to all democratic stakeholders, local and international, to urge those responsible for the continuation of the on-going violence to desist.
Fundamentally, it is Sri Lanka’s future as a vibrant and viable democracy that is at stake.

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