From Time Magazine, excerpts:
Iran’s Opposition Down, But Not Out
“This is a turning point,” says Nader Hashemi, author of Islam, Secularism and Liberal Democracy: Toward a Democratic Theory for Muslim Societies. “The Islamic republic is facing a deep crisis of legitimacy at this moment. There is a very politicized and very discontented society that is pushing for greater change and accountability within Iran’s political system.”
…The reform movement’s resilience resides in the fact that it expresses a demand for change in Iran that runs long and deep. The remarkable June protests were merely the continuation of a popular movement that began to emerge 12 years ago with the surprise landslide presidential victory of moderate cleric Mohammed Khatami. In the 1997 presidential election, Khatami upset the conservative front runner thanks to a massive turnout by young people and women seeking greater political and personal freedom and harmony with the outside world. In the ensuing years, hard-liners beat back Khatami’s reform agenda, while security forces crushed periodic student demonstrations. But the June protests proved that the demand for change by millions of Iranians is irrepressible.
And the reform coalition is even broader this time, including a broad array of mullahs, politicians and cultural figures who had been at the forefront of the 1979 Islamic revolution but who believe that the revolution’s promise has been systematically undermined by the authoritarian elements at the core of the regime. In fact, Mousavi’s “green wave” is less a revolution against the Islamic republic than a struggle by reformists within the system against an undemocratic faction intent on amassing power.
“We don’t know how all this is going to play out,” explains Hashemi. “But the ruling élite has suffered a huge blow to their credibility. Looking at the high level of popular mobilization and discontent, it will be very difficult to forever crush the opposition and go back to the way things were. There is now an opposition leadership that is willing to stand up to authority in Iran, not be cowed and force a debate over the status quo.” That suggests that the real question is how, not whether, the Green Revolution will continue.
Human Rights Group Says 29 Civilians Were Killed by Israeli Air Attacks in Gaza
From the NY Times, excerpts:
Twenty-nine civilians, including eight children, were killed in what appeared to be six missile strikes by Israeli drones in Gaza in December and January, according to a report released Tuesday by Human Rights Watch. The group questioned whether Israeli forces had taken “all feasible precautions” to avoid civilian casualties.
Israel’s military has never acknowledged using the remotely piloted planes to fire missiles. In a statement released Tuesday, it said that it had used an assortment of weapons and technologies to minimize the risk to Palestinian civilians…
The report, based on interviews with witnesses to the attacks and an examination of the missile debris, represented the latest in a series of accusations about Israel’s conduct of the Gaza war. And it raised broader concerns about how carefully drones were being used, much like the complaints that the Central Intelligence Agency has encountered in its use of drones to attack suspected members of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Pakistan…
The report said one missile had hit a group of university students waiting for a bus in the center of Gaza City, while another struck a truck hauling oxygen tanks and a third smashed into a school sheltering people who had lost or left their homes.
In three other attacks, the report said, the victims were six children, ages 10 to 15, who had been playing on residential rooftops. Muhammad al-Habbash, the father of one of the girls who was killed, told Human Rights Watch that some of the children had been feeding chickens that the family kept on the roof when the missile struck.
At another house, Nahla Allaw said her son’s legs had been crushed and blood poured from small holes in his chest as he died…
Displaced women staying with family in Mardan. The refugees’ numbers have swollen the populations of cities like Mardan, multiplying burdens on already sagging roads, schools, sewers, and water supplies, and not least, on their host families.
From the NY Times photo slideshow entitled Pakistan’s Invisible Refugees
Fury at Rwanda sterilisation bill
From the BBC, in its entirety:
Rwanda is being urged to drop a draft law which would forcibly sterilise people who are mentally disabled.
US-based campaign group Human Rights Watch said the proposed law was deeply flawed and violated the government’s obligation to uphold human rights.
It also requires people to have an HIV test before getting married.
“Provisions in the current bill that increase stigma, rely on coercion and deny… reproductive rights should be removed,” HRW’s Joe Amon said.
Forced sterilisation is regarded as a crime against humanity by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
Rwanda has successfully managed to lower the spread of Aids in recent years thanks to its HIV campaign.
Figures from the World Bank in 2007 put the prevalence of Aids in the country at about 3%, down from 11% in 2000.
“While Rwanda has made notable progress in fighting stigma and responding to the Aids epidemic, and has pledged to advance the rights of persons with disability, forced sterilisation and mandatory HIV testing do not contribute to those goals,” said Mr Amon, the health and human rights director at Human Rights Watch.
“These elements of the bill undermine reproductive health goals and undo decades of work to ensure respect for reproductive rights.”
Arab Activists Watch Iran And Wonder: 'Why Not Us?'
Egyptian activists envy the Iranian opposition movement. From The Washington Post, an excerpt:
When the Iranian protests erupted, Ahmed Abd el-Fatah wrote on his blog, “We Egyptians are like youth watching pornography because they can’t practice sex. Congratulations to Iran for its democracy.”
“I was very happy about what was happening. But I was also very sad. I know I can never do this here,” the thin, 22-year-old activist said. “You need a far greater movement than in Iran to achieve any change in Egypt.”
For years, Egypt’s democracy movement has used Internet technology, banners and slogans to galvanize its supporters, rallying often against U.S. policies and taking the lead in championing core Arab causes such as the plight of Palestinians or opposition to war in Iraq. Today, the movement is facing a crisis of leadership and vision and is torn by internal disputes, activists said…
Guantanamo man left in Chad limbo
From the BBC, in its entirety:
A Saudi-born man held at Guantanamo for seven years has told the BBC he has been left in Chad with no papers since his release earlier this month.
Mohamed el-Gharani, whose parents are Chadian, said he had never visited Chad before and cannot speak the language, but described himself as happy.
“Walking around with no guards, with no shackles, it’s beautiful,” he said.
Mr Gharani was the youngest detainee at Guantanamo. He was detained in Pakistan in 2001, when he was 14 years old.
US authorities had accused him of fighting in Afghanistan and being a member of al-Qaeda as far back as 1998, according to his lawyer.
But a US court ruled in January there was no evidence to prove he was an “enemy combatant” and ordered his release.
Nationality dispute
He told the BBC’s Network Africa programme that he had initially been welcomed at the airport in Chad, but had then been detained.
“I went to the police station and they kept me there for eight days - I didn’t know why,” he said.
“I was asking every day ‘Why am I here?’ and they were telling me: ‘You’re going to see your family but we have to do paperwork.’”
He said he had been trying to get an ID card since he arrived, but so far had had no luck.
“One guy working for the government said: ‘We don’t know whether you’re Chadian or not,’” he said.
“I said: ‘Well you guys brought me here, took me from the Americans.’
“He had no answer.”
But despite these difficulties, Mr Gharani said anywhere in the world was better than Guantanamo.
“If you’ve been in shackles for seven years every day, you will go to Chad, you will go anywhere,” he said.
From The Washington Post, excerpt:
Preventing Another Iraq— Key in Afghanistan: Economy, Not Military
CAMP LEATHERNECK, Afghanistan — National security adviser James L. Jones told U.S. military commanders here last week that the Obama administration wants to hold troop levels here flat for now, and focus instead on carrying out the previously approved strategy of increased economic development, improved governance and participation by the Afghan military and civilians in the conflict.
The message seems designed to cap expectations that more troops might be coming, though the administration has not ruled out additional deployments in the future. Jones was carrying out directions from President Obama, who said recently, “My strong view is that we are not going to succeed simply by piling on more and more troops.”
“This will not be won by the military alone,” Jones said in an interview during his trip. “We tried that for six years.” He also said: “The piece of the strategy that has to work in the next year is economic development. If that is not done right, there are not enough troops in the world to succeed.”
Crisis in Darfur Expands
An interactive site from the Washington Post with video clips and panoramic photos of Darfuri refugees in Chad. Go check it out!
Iran holding reformist in need of serious medical attention.
From The Huffington Post:
9:55 AM ET — Human Rights Watch: Iran holding reformist in need of serious medical attention.
Harsh interrogation conditions and inadequate medical care are threatening the life of the detained prominent Iranian reformist Saeed Hajjarian, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch urged the Iranian authorities to immediately transfer Hajjarian, who has been severely disabled and ill since a 2000 assassination attempt, to a competent medical facility for the specialized care he needs, or to release him into the care of his family.“It’s bad enough that the authorities would detain a man as ill as Saeed Hajjarian in their crackdown in the protests,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “But the conditions, harsh treatment, and intense pressure to make a false confession are putting his life at risk.”
Hajjarian, 55, was detained without charge on June 15, 2009, one of scores of prominent reformist politicians, intellectuals, journalists, clerics, student leaders, and others whom the authorities have arrested in a coordinated and continuing effort to stamp out nationwide protests against the disputed results of the June 12 elections in Iran. He requires constant medical care, and his wife, a physician, said after a visit that his condition is seriously deteriorating.
Iran to prosecute doctor who tried to save Neda
From The Huffington Post:
8:29 AM ET — Iran to prosecute doctor who tried to save Neda.
Fars News Agency in Persian on 1 July 2009 reports that the commander of the Law Enforcement Force said: Arash Hejazi who as the witness of the murder of Neda Aqa-Soltan has created uproar is being prosecuted by the International Police (Interpol).Speaking to a gathering of reporters, General Esma’il Ahmadi-Moqaddam added: Arash Hejazi is being prosecuted by the Ministry of Intelligence and Interpol forces.
He stressed: The murder of Neda Aqa-Soltan is a scenario which has no links to Tehran’s riots.
Arash Hejazi, the doctor who was present at Neda Aqa-Soltan’s murder scene, has held certain sensational interviews with foreign media on this murder case after departing the country.
Hejazi fled to London shortly after Neda’s murder. He conducted a lengthy interview with the BBC last week, acknowledging he would probably never be able to return to Iran.
In curbing climate change, US outranks Canada
Suck it, Canada!
ROME, July 1 (Reuters) - With only five months to go until a new global pact on climate change, none of the Group of Eight nations is doing enough to curb global warming, with Canada and the United States ranking bottom, a study said on Wednesday.
The “G8 Climate Scorecards”, compiled by environmental group WWF, said even the greenest members of the rich nations’ club — Germany, Britain and France — were not on track to meet a “danger threshold” of limiting temperature rises to below two degrees Celsius. G8 leaders gather in Italy next week to discuss the world financial crisis and climate change, hoping to make progress toward a new pact on global warming due to be signed in Copenhagen in December to replace the 1997 Kyoto deal. They will be joined by members of U.S. President Barack Obama’s Major Economies Forum in a bid to forge broad consensus. “While there might be a bailout possibility for the financial system, no amounts of money will save the planet once climate change crosses the danger threshold,” WWF head James Leape wrote in the foreword to the report. Wednesday’s annual G8 scorecard singled out Canada, saying Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s conservative government had not implemented a plan to curb emissions, already among the highest in the world per capita and steadily increasing. Canada was not even close to meeting its Kyoto agreements, the WWF said. The report praised U.S. President Obama for prioritising clean energy in his economic recovery package and promoting green legislation, but said U.S. per capita emissions were among the highest in the world and were projected to rise. “There has been more action in the U.S. in the last four months than in the last three decades — a trend that will hopefully continue,” the report said.
Happy Canada Day!
Gulandam, first on left holding her son, could be the billionth hungry person in the world.
(Copyright: WFP/Susannah Nicol)
From The World Food Programme:
KABUL — Gulandam didn’t use to need food assistance in order to feed her family. Her husband, earns about 100 Afs (US$2) a day, working as a porter in Kabul City, and this was enough to get by. It isn’t any more.
Gulandam and her family are among the many millions of people who have been pushed into hunger recently. She’s actually one of the luckier ones in that she’s receiving WFP food regularly.
The number of hungry people on the planet will this year reach a historic high of 1.02 billion. Announcing this new figure recently, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization put the blame for the latest increases on the global economic slowdown and stubbornly high food prices in many countries.
Receiving assistance for first time
Both of these are factors in Gulandam’s predicament. “I started to get food assistance from WFP four months ago – for the first time ever,” she said, as she waited with her 5-month-old boy for her bag of WFP wheat. “Before that, even though we couldn’t afford luxuries such as meat, we had just about enough when my husband managed to get work.”
When food prices peaked in 2008, the money earned by Gulandam’s husband only bought a bit of bread and unsweetened tea. And if he didn’t get work, the family of eight went hungry and the children often cried themselves to sleep. These days, amid a global economic slowdown, her husband’s lucky if he manages to get three days work a week.
Ashamed
The family has sold possessions such as their rugs and a sewing machine to buy food. Gulandam said sometimes she had no choice but to beg at local bakeries, although she covered her face as she was ashamed.
Although prices in Afghanistan have come down since last year, wheat remains over fifty percent higher than in 2007. “We rely on this food assistance”, says Gulandam.
When the work comes, at least they can spend their money on vegetable oil, sugar and sometimes potatoes, she adds.
Reject Apathy with the ONE Campaign, and sign up to win FREE STUFF
Who doesn’t like free stuff?
RELEVANT Magazine and the ONE Campaign are teaming up for a new initiative called Reject Apathy. Their goal is to get as many people involved in fighting hunger and global poverty as possible, so go sign up!
From The ONE Campaign:
Roger Thurow has been a Wall Street Journal foreign correspondent for twenty years and has reported from more than sixty countries, including two dozen in Africa. His new book Enough: Why the World’s Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty, co- authored with Scott Kilman, hit bookshelves this week.
When it comes to world hunger, it’s time to say, “Enough is enough!”
Several weeks ago I had the honor and great pleasure of addressing the ONE leadership retreat and presenting a preview of my book ENOUGH: WHY THE WORLD’S POOREST STARVE IN AN AGE OF PLENTY. This week ENOUGH hit the sturdy shelves of the bookstores and the virtual shelves at amazon.com.
In the days in between, the United Nations’ food agencies confirmed what we all feared: global hunger is getting worse. The number of chronically hungry people is soaring past 1 billion – the highest number since before the Green Revolution in the 1970s and an increase of more than 11% from just last year. And for the first time in nearly 40 years, the prevalence of hunger is climbing; 15% of the world’s population is now hungry, up from 13% in the middle of this decade.
So ENOUGH, which I wrote with my Wall Street Journal colleague Scott Kilman, is more timely than ever. During the writing, we held fast to an abiding mantra: outrage and inspire, outrage and inspire. We hope that is indeed what our book does:
Outrage, that we have brought hunger with us into the 21st century in ever-increasing numbers.
Inspire, that hunger can be conquered. A mighty grassroots movement founded on a new will to end hunger is rising.
ONE is a vital leader of that movement. We hope that ENOUGH will fuel the outrage and the inspiration to continuing shouting loudly, “Enough is enough.”
-Roger Thurow
SMART Aid boosts commerce with US through African Trade Hubs
One example of how the ONE Campaign’s SMART Aid initiative is reducing global poverty.
Trade, fuelled by economic growth and investment, is an essential tool for poverty reduction. One challenge for many African businesses is navigating the complex rules and regulations involved in exporting to lucrative developed country markets. The USAID “Trade Hub” programs are designed to help African businesses take advantage of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) - an American preference program that permits the export of certain African goods to the United States duty- and quota-free. Four Trade Hubs - in Botswana, Senegal, Ghana and Kenya - are helping African entrepreneurs navigate US customs laws, identify export financing, find buyers, and get assistance with pricing and marketing. The hubs have been successful in helping businesses introduce products such as clothing, fresh flowers, and fruit juice to the United States. In total, since 2005, the four African Trade Hubs have generated an additional $60 million in exports to the US alone. The West African Trade Hub has been particularly successful in boosting the shea butter and cashew industries.
Helping Africa Save Itself
Witney W. Schneidman was the US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs during the Clinton Administration. In this article from Newsweek, he discusses the benefits of foreign aid, as well as the need for African leaders to initiate independence in order to ensure development progress in Africa.
Excerpt:
…Moyo argues that countries that have voluntarily abandoned outside assistance in recent years, such as South Africa and Botswana, are thriving. But again, this oversimplifies things. While it’s true that these two states lowered the amount of aid they receive as a percentage of national revenue, they have continued to benefit from donor largesse; for example, South Africa has received $2 billion in support for housing and health care from the United States since its transition to democracy in 1994, and Botswana still gets hundreds of millions of dollars annually to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS and strengthen its health sector. In fact, the success of South Africa and Botswana demonstrates that foreign aid and progress can coexist in Africa when there’s proper oversight and good governance, and there are many other instances…
…Recent experience shows that international finance can act as a powerful resource—for example, when Ghana issued a $750 million bond in 2007, it was ultimately oversubscribed by $5 billion of unmet investor demand, far more than the estimated $2 billion Ghana needs to meet its Millennium Development Goals for the next five years. Then there are remittances, the money sent home by the 33 million Africans living outside the continent, which reached $20 billion in 2006. If even a portion of money were invested in, say, Ugandan Treasury bills that pay 10 percent interest, it would build serious cash fast. Indeed, such measures have the best odds of ensuring that someday soon a phone call like the one Moyo envisages gets made. But it would be better still if it’s an African leader who makes the call, with a simple message: “Thanks, but no thanks; we’ve learned to finance development on our own.”
Julia Thetane’s son was killed by a mob this year.
From the NY Times, excerpt:
Constant Fear and Mob Rule in South Africa Slum
DIEPSLOOT, South Africa — The two robbery suspects had already been viciously beaten, their swollen faces stained with rivulets of red. One of them could no longer sit up, and only the need to moan seemed to revive him into consciousness. The other, Moses Tjiwa, occasionally stared into the taunting crowd and muttered, “I didn’t do anything.”
The suspects were awaiting the final cathartic wrath of the mob, the torment of being burned alive, wrapped in the fatal shawl of a gasoline-soaked blanket. Then suddenly they were saved from that hideous death by the brave intervention of a local politician. “Let the police handle this,” he implored.
As usual, the police arrived late on that recent evening, and many in the mob angrily objected to their being there at all. Finally, one police inspector shouted: “Get back or I’m leaving this place and never helping you people again. I hate Diepsloot!”
Crime in South Africa is commonly portrayed as an onslaught against the wealthy, but it is the poor who are most vulnerable: poor people conveniently accessible to poor criminals. Diepsloot, an impoverished settlement on the northern edge of Johannesburg, has an estimated population of 150,000, and the closest police station is 10 miles away.
To spend time in Diepsloot over three weeks is to observe the unrelenting fear so common among the urban poor. Experts point to the particularly brutal nature of crime in this country: the unusually high number of rapes, hijackings and armed robberies. The murder rate, while declining, is about eight times higher than in the United States…
Iranian Opposition Candidates Deem New Government Illegitimate
From The Washington Post, excerpt:
TEHRAN, July 1 — The two main opposition candidates in Iran’s disputed June 12 election refused Wednesday to accept the formally proclaimed victory of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and branded his government as illegitimate, defying warnings from Iran’s leaders that no further protests would be tolerated following official certification of the results.
Mir Hossein Mousavi, who has led the opposition in demanding annulment of the election on grounds of massive fraud, asked Iranians to continue their protests “in a creative way,” according to a statement published on one of his campaign Web sites. He also called for election reforms and press freedom.
“From now on, we will have a government which from the point of view of ties with the public is in the weakest of positions,” he said. “A majority of society, of which I personally am a member, do not accept the legitimacy of this government.”
Another opposition presidential candidate, Mehdi Karroubi, said on his newspaper’s Web site Wednesday that he also considers Ahmadinejad’s new government illegitimate. Ahmadinejad is scheduled to be sworn in before parliament for a second four-year term between July 26 and Aug. 19.
Karroubi dismissed what he described as an official show of accepting complaints of irregularities and conducting a partial recount, saying that these and other events indicated that the election should have been annulled.
“Based on this, I consider the government emerging from this election as devoid of legitimacy,” he said.
A leading moderate party formed by reformers close to former president Mohammad Khatami, the Iran Participation Front Party, denounced the election as a “coup d’etat” and called the result “unacceptable.”
Poverty, corruption play into power struggle in Honduras
From WorldFocus.org, by Peter Eisner. In its entirety:
While governments around the hemisphere (including Cuba and the United States) support the return of Honduras’ ousted president, José Manuel Zelaya, we have an opportunity to focus on a country rarely mentioned in the news.
In the 1980s, the United States was deeply involved in Honduran military and political affairs — the Reagan administration saw the country as the frontline in fighting a supposed communist march through Central America that would end up at the Texas border.
While the United States mounted counterinsurgencies against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, and looked the other way when death squads marauded in El Salvador, Honduras was an American base camp.
There are those who mistakenly claim that the United States — billions of dollars spent, tens of thousands of deaths later — somehow helped “win” the Central American wars. In fact, the nations settled their differences themselves after the United States backed off.
The United States backed far off in fact, and Honduras was left poor as ever — one of the poorest of the poor in Latin America. A majority of the country’s seven million people live on far less than $100 a month; illiteracy, hunger and disease are endemic. A report by the World Bank in 2006 said that despite economic growth, a majority of Hondurans received no benefit.
My then-colleague at the Washington Post, Marcela Sanchez, reported two years ago that corruption was a major factor:
According to a U.S.-funded public opinion poll, the percentage of Hondurans who believe the government is combating corruption declined from 40 percent in 2004 to 26.6 percent in 2006.
Juan Ferrera, coordinator for Honduras’ National Anti-Corruption Council, said in an interview from Tegucigalpa that corruption is creating such public disenchantment that Hondurans may even “put aside democratic options.”In a cauldron like that, are elections enough? A Honduran friend of mine said this week that left-wing or right-wing, it hasn’t seemed to matter. After years of right-wing dictatorship and conservative leaders, it hasn’t seemed to matter. “They kind of just keep themselves in power and steal some more!”
