People Before Profit blog

Cartoon: Global Cooking

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 12:32:00 +0000

WORLD NOTES

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 11:28:00 +0000

Ireland: Ferry workers protest

A ferry workers’ protest over hiring of lower-paid replacement crews from Eastern Europe has taken on national dimensions, with Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern soundly criticizing the company, and the ferry workers’ union calling for a national day of protest.

The crisis began Nov. 24 when workers barricaded themselves on board two of Irish Ferry’s boats after the company brought replacement workers, accompanied by security personnel, on board one of the ferries.

The prime minister termed Irish Ferry’s approach “a retrograde step … not in line with Irish industrial relations; they are trying to turn back the clock.”

Calling the dispute “a defining moment in the relations between employers and workers in this country,” Services Industrial Professional and Technical Union (SIPTU) General President Jack O’Connor said he would urge the Irish Congress of Trade Unions to call a national day of protest Dec. 2, and call for intensified struggle around job displacement and protection of employment standards.

Haiti: UN complicit in deaths

International human rights organizations led by the National Lawyers Guild and Global Exchange registered a complaint Nov. 16 with the Organization of American States (OAS) Inter-American Human Rights Commission. The organizations accused Brazilian-led UN peacekeeping forces of directly participating in the massacre of civilians or giving important logistical support to massacres, according to the Haitian news agency AHP. Their charges are based on testimony of witnesses and incidents caught on film.

The human rights groups also said UN troops were directly involved in the deaths of civilians in six neighborhoods where they failed to protect civilians targeted by the Haitian National Police. The UN command has denied the accusation.

AHP said confrontations between peacekeeping forces and civilians have increased as UN soldiers have tried to control neighborhoods where residents largely support deposed former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Indonesia: U.S. military aid hit

The East Timor and Indonesia Action Network (ETAN) has strongly condemned the State Department’s waiver of newly legislated curbs on U.S. military aid to Indonesia.

The department said Nov. 22 that it “is in the national security interests of the United States” to waive restrictions on defense exports and military financing for Indonesia which had been enacted by Congress just a week earlier as part of an appropriations act.

“This is a profoundly disappointing and sad day for human rights protections everywhere but especially in Indonesia, Timor-Leste and the U.S.,” ETAN said in a statement. “With the stroke of a pen, Secretary Rice and President Bush betrayed the untold tens of thousands of victims of the Indonesian military’s brutality in Indonesia and Timor-Leste and undermined efforts at democratic reform.”

New Zealand: Starbucks strike

Workers from Starbucks stores across the city of Auckland spontaneously walked off the job on Nov. 23, turning a protest that started at one store into a citywide strike, The World of Labor reported. When workers heard that managers were to cover shifts of protesting workers at the Karangahape store, over 30 workers left 10 different Auckland Starbucks stores to join KFC, Pizza Hut and McDonald’s workers and other supporters there. “What began as an event to highlight the poor conditions of low-wage and minimum-wage workers turned into a show of solidarity and strength between Auckland’s Starbucks workers,” said campaign coordinator Simon Oosterman.

Daniel Gross, co-founder of the New York-based Starbucks’ Workers Union, called the strike an important step toward changing working conditions in the fast-food industry worldwide.

Liberia: Firestone sued

The International Labor Rights Fund (ILRF) has filed suit in a California court, accusing the Bridgestone Firestone consortium and the Liberia-based Firestone Plantations Company — the world’s largest rubber plantation — of imposing virtual slavery conditions on an estimated 14,000 Liberian plantation workers.

The organization’s suit demands “injunctive relief, compensatory and punitive damages, and disgorgement of all profits.”

The suit details very long hours and draconian working conditions coupled with low wages and shocking living conditions in company shantytowns. It also charges that the high output quotas forced many workers to get unpaid help from their underage children, in order to avoid being fired.

The ILRF called the plantation system “a private fiefdom” that started as a criminal occupation of Liberia by Firestone in 1926.

World Notes are compiled by Marilyn Bechtel (mbechtel at pww.org).

New charges of torture, banned weapons in Iraq

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 10:59:00 +0000

The Bush administration and the Iraqi government are once more on the receiving end of international outrage following the discovery of a torture dungeon linked to the U.S.-backed Iraqi government, and the admission that American soldiers used the deadly chemical white phosphorous in its assault on Fallujah nearly a year ago, something the Bush administration had repeatedly denied.

The Nov. 17 discovery of 169 detainees, 166 of whom were Sunni Muslims, in the basement of an Interior Ministry building in Baghdad led many to draw parallels between the current situation and the worst aspects of the Saddam Hussein dictatorship. Some detainees had been beaten, electrically shocked and showed signs of starvation. Some had chunks of their flesh stripped away.

In recent months the number of mass arrests in Iraq has been rising. Prisoners and their families report a denial of due process, and many prisoners languish in jail without any charges. The fact that the prisoners held in the Interior Ministry basement were mainly Sunni threatened to increase sectarian strife between the minority Sunni population and the current government, which is largely controlled by Shiite religious parties.

The day before the revelation about the Interior Ministry torture center, a spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the UN “has repeatedly expressed concern about ongoing human rights violations in Iraq, and specifically the lack of due process for detainees and abuses against them.” UN officials have also worried that while hundreds of detainees had been released, their numbers still continue to grow because of mass arrests and military operations.

After the torture center came to light, and in the wake of a statement by the Iraqi government that it was investigating, Annan’s spokesperson said that the secretary-general was happy to hear about the probe. Later, however, UN officials decided that the government probe was not enough.

Louise Arbour, the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, called Nov. 18 for an international investigation. In a statement, Arbour said, “in light of the apparently systemic nature and magnitude of that problem, and the importance of public confidence in any inquiry, I urge the authorities to consider calling for an international inquiry.” She added that she was also concerned with other reports from across Iraq, saying that large numbers of citizens are incarcerated despite judicial release orders.

On Nov. 29, a UN spokesperson said that the organization’s senior human rights representative in Iraq, Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, has pressed the Iraqi government on the issue of detainees on more than one occasion. The spokesperson said that Qazi had “brought up ... directly to Iraqi officials, including the defense minister and the interior minister, the issues of human rights violations that have been reported to take place in some of the detention centers,” and called for “structural change.”

Meanwhile, in the wake of a broadcast by RAI, Italy’s main television network, of the documentary “Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre,” which claimed that U.S. troops used deadly white phosphorus, the Bush administration flip-flopped on the issue of the chemical’s use. The documentary showed civilians who had been burned to death by the chemical.

Many have found this also to be highly reminiscent of the Hussein days, when chemical weapons were used against the Iraqi population.

White phosphorus, when used in bombs, spreads into the air and ignites, causing severe burns and death.

Originally, the Bush administration claimed the phosphorus had only been used for illumination, not to inflict casualties. However, reports from the military contradicted this, and the administration was forced to reverse its position. It admitted to using the chemicals, and that they “could not rule out the possibility” that civilians were hit. However, the administration denies that they are illegal, saying that white phosphorus does not count as a chemical weapon.

Speaking on the “Democracy Now” radio show, Peter Kaiser, a spokesperson for the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, said, “Chemicals used against humans or animals that cause harm or death through the toxic properties of the chemical are considered chemical weapons.”

dmargolis at pww.org