brad brace contemporary culture scrapbook

April 18, 2007

Nicaragua deals blow to drug traffickers

Filed under: global islands,nicaragua — admin @ 5:59 am

Managua, April 17 — The dismantling of a drug trafficking gang headquarters, allegedly belonging to the Mexican Sinaloa cartel, is one of the strongest blows ever dealt to international drug trafficking in Nicaragua.

The operation started over the weekend with the arrest of five Mexicans in a car with Nicaraguan licence plates on the Panamerican road. The men were arrested Friday after a brief shooting and attempted bribe.

As part of a three-month long police-army investigation, raids were carried out in different parts of the country, which resulted in the discovery of a 1,640-yard runway in a ranch, 42 miles north of Managua.

They also found firearms, radio communication equipment, lamps and other means, as well as another Mexican, with a tattoo that reads Sinaloa on his back, said authorities.

At least 22 people have been arrested so far, including an alleged assassin hired by the Sinaloa Cartel to kill Chief of Police Aminta Granera.

Several weeks ago, Granera confirmed having received death threats, which she attributed to a drug traffickers’ response to recent the crackdown on crime in the country.

In 2006 authorities seized over 10 tons of cocaine in Nicaragua, a corridor of South American drug bound for the United States.

April 13, 2007

Sri Lanka: A Dark Paradise – The Genocide of Sri Lankan Tamils

Filed under: global islands,sri lanka — admin @ 7:31 pm

The antagonism between Tamils and Sinhalese is rooted in the country’s history but has been exacerbated into interethnic violence only since 1956. The old file photos of the particularly vicious anti-Tamil riots in 1983, recorded in stark images of gutted buildings and burnt Tamilian bodies, is a poignant reminder of man’s inhumanity to man. The brutality was unbelievable, homes and shops were burnt, cars were doused with gasoline and lit, sometimes with the occupant inside; some people were hacked to death, others burnt alive. Another gruesome eyewitness account of the anti-Tamil pogrom lays bare the brutality of riots: ‘Mobs of Sinhala youth rampaged through the streets, ransacking homes, shops and offices, looting them and setting them ablaze, as they sought out members of the Tamil ethnic minority.’ Some ‘motorists were dragged from their cars to be stoned and beaten with sticks… Others were cut down with knives and axes.’ Conservative estimate place the figure of about 3000 Tamils killed in the riots.

In order to fathom the roots of the conflict between the Sinhalese and Tamils, one has to turn the historical clock back to 1948 when Sri Lanka gained independence from the British. The first act of the independent Sri Lankan government was to strip the Tamil plantation workers of the citizenship rights. These workers were descended from people brought to Sri Lanka from India by the British in the 19th century to work on coffee and tea plantations. As a result, at least a million Tamil workers were deprived of Sri Lankan citizenship. This hostile act did not completely disenfranchise the other Tamils living in the north and east of the island of Sri Lanka for thousands of years. But soon other laws were pressed into service, which adversely affected the prospects of all Tamils living Sri Lanka. The government made Sinhalese the sole official language rendering people speaking Tamil as second-class citizens. The Tamils were excluded from most government jobs and access to education was denied to them.

At first the Tamils began their peaceful protests against the repression by staging demonstrations, sit-ins and by fighting elections. These demonstrations were met with mob attacks of incited by Buddhist monks and politicians. As no progress could be made to roll back the anti-Tamil policies of the government, the youths increasingly took to violent means to make the government. ‘The LTTE was formed in 1972, and carried out its first major armed action in 1978. After the 1983 pogrom, the LTTE gained increased support from the Tamil community and dramatically stepped up its war against the SLA.’

The failure of moderate Tamil political parties to improve the plight of Tamils living in Sri Lanka saw the growth of LTTE as a fighting force. This fact should be borne in mind to understand that LTTE is a product of Tamil Nationalism. ‘The Tamil Tigers (LTTE),’ observes A. J. Wilson, a noted authority on Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism, ‘today appear to hold the key to their people’s future. While they have suffered setbacks, including the loss of the Tamil capital, Jaffna, they remain a potent guerrilla force, able to strike with impunity at both military and civilian targets.’ The Tigers’ grip on the Tamil population seems secure, as does their overseas support and funding from Tamil exiles in Britain, Canada, and Australia.

The inability of the Sri Lankan Army (SLA) to quell Tamil Nationalism led to large-scale repression against civilian Tamil population. This terrible fact could be gleaned from Human Rights reports on SLA atrocities committed on Tamils. A statement by the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) reports: ‘in recent decades, Sri Lanka has had one of the worst records in the world concerning forced disappearances. In 1971, around 10,000 persons disappeared in the south of the country. Between 1987 and 1991, over 30,000 disappeared in the south, and since the early 1980s there have been constant disappearances in the north and east of Sri Lanka. The exact number of such disappearances remains unknown.’ The Tamil militants also unleashed its brand of terror by killing service personnel and indulged in disfiguring the bodies and desecrating corpses.

In 2002 the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (L.T.T.E.), as the rebels call themselves, signed a cease-fire designed to lead to a political agreement. While the rebels want a separate Tamil state in Sri Lanka’s north and east, the government wants to keep the island whole. A federation seemed a possible compromise. But peace talks sputtered and then collapsed (both sides accused the other of being insincere), and since December 2005, Sri Lanka has again been at undeclared war with itself. The latest round of bloodletting is much like previous ones—bombings (including a Tuesday blast that killed 15, mostly women and children, in a bus), shellings, suicide attacks against political leaders, government air raids on rebel-held areas, abductions and disappearances of anyone believed to be aiding the other side. In the past 16 months, more than 4,000 people have been killed, and 220,000 people forced from their homes; a total of half a million Sri Lankans are now displaced in their own country. Nordic peacekeepers who are supposed to be monitoring peace have “gone from reporting single shots as [cease-fire] violations to reporting whole battles,” according to one international observer who did not want his name used.

Government forces have pushed the Tigers out of much of the east, in part because a breakaway faction of Tamil fighters that fell out with the main rebel group has joined with government troops against their old comrades. The Sri Lankan military is now opening up a new front in the northwest. But there are few signs that the military is on the verge of victory. The L.T.T.E. has used tactical withdrawals to regroup following defeats in the past and is still able to spring surprises. In late February a group of foreign diplomats, including the U.S. and Italian ambassadors, had just helicoptered into Batticaloa, an area the government had assured them was safe, when they came under rebel mortar fire. (Both ambassadors were slightly hurt.) Two weeks ago, in one of its most audacious attacks so far, the Tigers used two small planes (the government says it was just one), which the group had smuggled onto the island piece by piece over the past few years, to bomb an airfield adjacent to the country’s international airport outside Colombo. The attack killed three and wounded 16, but officials say government planes weren’t damaged. The air attack was so unexpected that the improvised bombers were able to make it back to rebel territory unharmed. The Tigers sent journalists photographs of its new “air wing,” including close-ups of an airplane fitted with small bombs and a group shot showing Tiger pilots surrounding a beaming Velupillai Prabhakaran, the group’s charismatic but ruthless leader.

Sri Lanka has been in ceaseless turmoil for more than three decades. During the 1970s and ’80s, Marxist radicals in the south engaged in a fierce campaign against the government and were just as brutally put down. The conflict with the L.T.T.E. was sparked in 1975 when the Tigers assassinated the mayor of Jaffna, Sri Lanka’s northernmost city, and intensified after the killing of 13 soldiers in 1983. Fighting has gone on for so long now that it has brutalized an entire society, creating a culture of violence that haunts the country whether there is fighting or not. In his exquisitely written novel Anil’s Ghost, set in an earlier phase of the conflict, Sri Lankan-born Michael Ondaatje describes the unnatural horrors that grip this tropical South Asian island of 21 million people. In Sri Lanka, Ondaatje writes, “the reason for war was war.”

April 11, 2007

Filed under: belize,global islands — admin @ 7:56 am

‘Belizean Fry Chicken’ Owner Deported to U.S. for Drug Crimes

Filed under: belize,global islands — admin @ 7:51 am

He had made quite a name for himself as the proprietor of the popular fast food establishment known as “Belizean Fry Chicken” on Black Orchid Street in the Lake Independence area. But according to U.S. law enforcement, 36-year-old Fred Hornby had quite a name even before he became the biggest Belizean name in fried chicken.

They say he was a drug dealer in the state of Florida, and issued a warrant for his arrest. Belize’s Crimes Intelligence Unit acted on that on Saturday morning when they picked him up at his father’s home on Richard Sidewalk in Belize City.

And even though his family is Belizean, Hornby is an American, so the CIU had no problems in putting him on the next flight out to Florida where he will face trial for charges relating to possession and sales of cocaine, and absconding in violation of bail.

Hornby had been in Belize since 2002.

Filed under: bangladesh,global islands,india,sri lanka — admin @ 7:15 am

April 8, 2007

Muslims to Mark the Birth of Prophet

Filed under: global islands,kenya — admin @ 6:09 am

Fifty thousand Muslim pilgrims are expected in Lamu town for the Maulidi celebrations marking the birth of Prophet Mohammed.

Cultural, sporting and religious activities have been lined up during the celebrations which start on Monday and run up to Friday when the pilgrims will converge at the Riyadha Mosque for a procession to the grave of fete founder Habib Swaleh.

The National Museums of Kenya has lined up a number of events which kick off with lectures at the Lamu Fort to be followed by bao games for men and henna painting and design for women.

Museums official Ahmed Yassin said other events sponsored by Celtel Kenya to the tune of Sh1.1 million included donkey and dhow races, swimming and tug of war.

“This is the first time we have a major sponsor. The cash prizes for will be much bigger,” he said.

Releasing the programme to the media, Dr Yassin confirmed that Heritage minister Suleiman Shakombo would open the Islamic calligraphic exhibition and ethnographic storage at the Lamu Fort.

At the Riyadha Mosque where the religious activities, including recitation of the Holy Quran, event organisers said there would be a free medical camp and traditional dances.

April 7, 2007

Adman dined on foie gras and champagne in Belize

Filed under: belize,global islands — admin @ 5:00 pm

MONTREAL, SAN PEDRO, BELIZE — Former adman Jean Lafleur enjoyed truffles, imported foie gras, champagne and $100 (U.S.) bottles of wine when living the high life in his Central American tropical idyll.

But Mr. Lafleur will be adjusting to prison food for a while. Yesterday, the executive who grew rich during the federal sponsorship program learned he would be spending at least a week behind bars.

A bail hearing for Mr. Lafleur was delayed to allow his lawyer time to pore over the voluminous evidence against his client. That means Mr. Lafleur, who once boasted friends in high places in Ottawa, will spend Easter and several days after in jail.

Mr. Lafleur, 66, has been in custody since flying in from Belize on Thursday to face 35 counts of fraud involving federal contracts. He sat expressionless in a business shirt and dark sweater draped over his shoulders in a Montreal courtroom yesterday as his lawyer, Jean-Claude Hébert, asked to have the case delayed until next Thursday.At that time, a new date will be set for a bail hearing for Mr. Lafleur, who is charged with defrauding the Canadian government in relation to $1.58-million worth of contracts.

Mr. Lafleur’s harsh conditions and regimented schedule in coming days stand to be in stark contrast to his lifestyle in Belize.

There, during his one-year stay on the island of Ambergris Caye, he enjoyed his foie gras sprinkled with Laurent Perrier champagne from Wine de Vine, a local delicatessen that caters to many Canadian retirees and tourists.

Once a week, the former adman drove a golf cart from his secluded house to the nearby town of San Pedro to peruse the selections, the store’s co-owner, Flor Bradley, told The Globe and Mail.

Each week, Mr. Lafleur loaded his golf cart with two cases filled with about 15 bottles of wine and champagne, sometimes charging $500 in U.S. funds to his credit card, Ms. Bradley said. Most of the wines were French, his favourite being Hermitage Guigal 2002, a red priced at the store at $105. He also enjoyed Chardonnays and Burgundy and Côtes du Rhône wines.

He was a man of “good taste,” Ms. Bradley said.

“He said he came here [to Belize] because it was a place where he could forget all his troubles with his business,” Ms. Bradley said. “He just wanted to relax, to be free of all that.”

He shied away from questions about his business, his travels or his future plans. On the few occasions when he left the island, he told Ms. Bradley he was going back home.

Polite and courteous to townspeople, Mr. Lafleur was rarely seen away from his home, about three kilometres northwest of San Pedro, the only town on the island. Apart from driving to Ms. Bradley’s store, he also frequented some of the upscale restaurants on the island, Ms. Flor said.

Clad in a T-shirt, shorts and sandals, he blended in with the crowds of North American tourists, she said.

But Mr. Lafleur rarely spent time in the sun, although his two-bedroom house was only metres from a secluded beach on the island’s north end. He preferred to drink wine and champagne on the veranda, Ms. Bradley said.

He shared the house with Larry Umana, a Costa Rican in his early 30s, according to Keith Newton, the owner of the house and a neighbour.

Over the past few years Mr. Umana and Mr. Lafleur were seen together at some of the upscale restaurants in San Pedro, as well as shopping at Wine de Vine. During the evenings, they would feast on champagne and foie gras together, Ms. Bradley said.

Mr. Lafleur’s favourite bottle of Laurent Perrier champagne costs $64 at Wine de Vine. Each week, Mr. Lafleur also bought about half a pound of foie gras and a half-pound of truffle mousse. He also purchased about 1½ pounds of Genova salami cut in half-inch-thick slices that he grilled on his barbecue, Ms. Bradley said.

Other Belizeans were surprised to hear that the affable man they knew is accused of defrauding the Canadian government.

“It’s hard to believe,” said Maria Munuz, a waiter at Mickey’s Place, a restaurant where Canadians tourists can enjoy waffles with maple syrup for breakfast.

Mr. Lafleur and Mr. Umana left San Pedro in early January, Mr. Newton said. It is believed that Mr. Lafleur spent the next three months in mainland Belize before returning to Canada this week, six days after an arrest warrant was issued for the fraud charges.

During the time of the federal sponsorship program, Mr. Lafleur, then president of Lafleur Communications Marketing Inc., earned more than $65-million in federal contracts and enjoyed a wheeling-and-dealing lifestyle that involved rubbing shoulders with top federal Liberals.

After he returned on a commercial flight from Belize to surrender to police this week, Crown prosecutor Ann-Mary Beauchemin said she considered Mr. Lafleur a flight risk and ordered him detained because he “doesn’t have a lot of links tying him here to Montreal.”

Mr. Hébert, his defence lawyer, told the court yesterday that Mr. Lafleur had four children in the city.

Back in San Pedro, Ms. Bradley said she misses chatting about wine with Mr. Lafleur, whom she described as a connoisseur before recalling the last time she saw him.

“He told me, ‘Thank you, I have always enjoyed coming in here.’ Then he kissed my hand and left,” Ms. Bradley said with a sigh. “I have never seen him since.”

Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd

Filed under: airlines — admin @ 3:31 pm

Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd
Customer Relations Department
5/F, South Tower, Cathay Pacific City,
8 Scenic Road, Hong Kong International Airport,
Lantau Island, Hong Kong

The flight was late into Hong Kong so many passengers missed their connections and were immediately offered new tickets and hotel room. But not me. After a very long wait, I was given someone else’s ticket at first and then repeatedly lied-to (agent’s name: Vanessa W.) about the availability of a hotel room. At first she told me I had to sleep in the lounge, and then that there weren’t any hotel rooms available because there had been a fire — and even later she was uncertain whether a room would be provided! Highly stressful and dishonest treatment of a weary traveller!!! I’m very disappointed by your company. Flight cx839 291106 vancouver to hong kong seat63F alaska ff

no response from cp

April 6, 2007

Nicaragua exports its poor

Filed under: global islands,nicaragua — admin @ 6:39 am

To desperate Nicaraguans, the prosperity of neighbouring Costa Rica makes it seem an accessible El Dorado. They can enter its labour market just by boarding a bus. But Costa Rica can barely cope with the influx.

They waited at the intersection of two alleyways, as they do late every Monday afternoon. The entire population of the village of Santa Rosa del Peñon, in northern Nicaragua — the old, along with women and children — hoped for news from Costa Rica. When the post office truck raced up in a cloud of dust, there was a rush to grab a letter, an envelope containing banknotes, even perhaps a small refrigerator.

Santa Rosa’s émigrés help their families from across the border. The village survives on remesas (remittances), between $10 and $100 a month to buy food, schoolbooks and medicine, or to repay loans. Since Nicaragua cut its public services, the costs of education and health have weighed heavily on a population unable to afford them. Despite a steady inflow of dollars, Santa Rosa just about survives and is grateful to do so.

Although traditionally dependent on agriculture, the region now produces almost nothing. “We grow enough to feed ourselves,” said Julio Antonio Niño, standing at the centre of his weed-infested fields. “What’s the point of doing any more? I can’t afford to build a well or an irrigation system: credit is too expensive at 40% interest and the banks will only lend to major landowners with solid collateral.” Nicaragua’s small farmers all say the same. The crisis that followed the collapse in 2000 of coffee prices on the international market has made the situation worse.

Half the population lives in rural areas, so the previous government’s official line was that it cared about farmers. In practice its economic policies concentrated on opening frontiers, competing internationally on the agricultural export market and attracting foreign investment in the free zones; outgoing president Enrique Bolaños claimed these created thousands of jobs. Niño’s response to this programme was to say: “Sure, some women from the village went off to work in the textile maquilas [factories carrying out subcontracted work]. It’s better than nothing, but the wages are half what you can earn in Costa Rica.”

It is estimated that one in five from Santa Rosa has emigrated to Costa Rica. Half a million Nicaraguans are thought to be living on the other side of the San Juan, the river that marks the frontier, and another 300,000 are scattered elsewhere, in total some 14% of the population. For destitute campesinos (farmers), Costa Rica is the obvious destination, just a few hours away by bus. Until recently no visa at all was required and even now it costs only $10 to enter the country legally.

Many Nicaraguans have abandoned their original trades to work as peons on Costa Rica’s banana, coffee, pineapple, sugar and orange plantations: Costa Rica has been successful in diversifying its labour-intensive agricultural industry. “Starting in January I pick coffee, then I move on to other crops,” explained Niño who, exhausted by the difficulty of working the land at Santa Rosa, crosses the border illegally every year. “Then, like other people around here, I come back to sow frijol (beans). I make at least twice what I could hope to earn in Nicaragua.”

Historically, Nicaraguans have always used their southern neighbour as a refuge during periods of violence, such as the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza or the war of the 1980s. But since the 1990s migration has been driven by the struggle for economic survival. After the fighting ended, demobilisation left thousands of soldiers and counter-revolutionaries on the loose, with no resources or future, in a country whose economy was unable to integrate them. At the time, the Nicaraguan government’s priority was to privatise and reduce public spending. Costa Rica, which has impressive economic growth and a remarkably well-developed welfare state for Central America, seemed an accessible El Dorado.

“Emigration served the government’s interests,” said Martha Cranshaw of RNSCM, an NGO supporting migrants and their families. “It relieves the pressure created by unemployment. But we are beginning to understand its real impact upon our country.” This analysis is not always popular.

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and the United Nations are banking on remittances to relaunch growth; but investigations on the ground in Nicaragua show that the $900m sent home every year by émigrés, which is more than the country exports, mostly serve to make the day-to-day existence of an exhausted population just bearable.

As Cranshaw pointed out, the RNSCM has also noticed another, less immediately quantifiable, story: “We are becoming aware of the thousands of individual tragedies represented by the emigration of a family’s father or mother. Collectively, this phenomenon is having a huge impact upon Nicaraguan society.” Fragmented families, children brought up by sometimes-absent grandparents, missing father and mother figures, children dropping out of school: what sort of society is Nicaragua creating?

In Santa Rosa, a grandfather whose son and daughter-in-law have left but did not take their children said: “My wife and I are bringing our grandchildren up, but there’s often a lot of tension with them and we worry a great deal about our son, who is in Costa Rica illegally. Sometimes I think there has to be another way. It’s too risky, for us and for them.”

It is easy to spot the Nicaraguans in the Costa Rican capital, San José. Their skin and hair seem darker and they always carry a rucksack containing overalls or a change of clothes. The men work in construction or as security guards, the women as domestic servants. Most of the seasonal workers, and many of those who have been here for several years, have no papers. Only half the “Nicas” in Costa Rica are there legally. Almost all have experienced the harsh working conditions on plantations. Most of the 4.3 million “Ticas” (Costa Ricans) regard the Nicas primarily as an unwanted 10% of the population.

“Costa Ricans see Nicaraguans as a negative value,” said Carlos Sandoval, a sociologist at San José university. He argued that Costa Ricans construct their identity around powerful ideas: the paleness of their skin, which is unusual in Central America (and is the result of the fact that there were only a few indigenous inhabitants when the conquistadores arrived); the stability of a democracy that has experienced little violence; and the success of an economy and a welfare state unique in the region. Costa Rica and its neighbours describe it as “the Switzerland of Central America”. Its ecotourist-friendly beaches and jungles, its relaxed way of life attract prosperous foreign tourists in numbers its neighbours can only dream about.

From this perspective, Nicaragua, with its wars and chronic instability, seems an immature country condemned to poverty. In Costa Rica, the dark-skinned immigrants are often described as violent, ignorant and untrustworthy, as thieves and alcoholics. “No seas Nica” (“don’t be an idiot”) is a common insult. This latent xenophobia, and correspondingly strong anti-Costa Rican feelings in Nicaragua, rises to the surface each time the perennial conflict over navigation rights on the San Juan river turns nasty. But the countries manage to get along, or at least they used to.

April 4, 2007

Mayans Protest in the Streets of Belize City

Filed under: belize,global islands — admin @ 8:05 am

A historic action was filed in the Supreme Court this morning: the Mayan communities of Conejo and Santa Cruz in the Toledo District are asking the Supreme Court to force the government of Belize to recognize Maya customary land right. Those customary rights refer to lands for which the Mayans have no formal title, but claim as communal property that they have occupied from a time before land was administered by a title system.

It’s called indigenous ownership and it’s a thorny matter for any modern government, and even more so for one already at odds with Mayan communities over an oil concession granted within their national park.

So today, Greg Choq, the Mayan Leaders Alliance – known as the MLA – and hundreds of Mayans from Toledo descended with numbers on the country’s judicial center in Belize City to demonstrate that this time they are posing a serious challenge to government’s system of land administration. They came by the busload, six to be exact, into the heart of Belize City – blocking traffic in the crush of morning traffic. Most of these folks, families really, had been traveling since two or three on the morning from countless communities in the south namely Conejo and Santa Cruz, Pueblo Viejo, Santa Elena, San Jose, San Antonio, Midway, Sundaywod, Crique Carco, Aguacata, Blue Creek and Santa Ana.

They came here into Belize City into the Battlefield Park before the Supreme Court before the Tony Soberanis Bust to invoke the name of their own heroes like Julian Cho and their own slogans for their own struggle. They stood before the high court as their lawyers were inside, making a filing in their names.

And after taking that stand, they marched unto the streets, heading to the Radisson Fort George for a press conference. About 300 strong, they walked over the Swing Bridge carrying placards of protest, and Belizean flags; some with infants two at a time, some barefooted, and some carrying candles.

An unusual show in the middle of the morning in the heart of the city, but still,by-standers could be heard shouting support. At the front, an elder from Santa Cruz carried a Mayehak – a copal incense burner used for spiritual ceremonies, the smoke and the fire they believe invokes blessings from their Gods. When they reached the Radisson on Cork Street, the Mayehak was left to burn out.

And they crowded into the Radisson Villa Wing up the elevators and trooping up the stairs. They gathered in the Caracol Room – renting a space that carries a name freely appropriated from their own culture. In there it was standing room only.

And while they waited an hour for the press conference to start as lawyers were still filing the constitutional motion, they were entertained by marimba players from Pueblo Viejo. When the press conference did start – the leaders of the villages and the MLA made it clear what they are fighting for and who they are fighting against.

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