People Before Profit blog

Kidnapping of FARC leader provokes turmoil

Fri, 21 Jan 2005 06:09:00 +0000

News Analysis

A major storm is brewing between two of South America’s most important countries, and the Bush administration seems to be exploring how to use it for its own ends.

On Dec. 13, rogue elements of the Venezuelan police and National Guard kidnapped Rodrigo Granda, the chief of foreign relations for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), in downtown Caracas, and spirited him across the border into Colombia where he is under arrest.

The FARC is the larger of the two main left-wing guerilla movements in Colombia, and has been battling the Colombian government and right-wing paramilitaries for decades. While the U.S. and Colombian governments regard the FARC as a terrorist group, many people in South America see it as a legitimate popular guerrilla force fighting to reverse the vast inequalities and injustices that characterize life in modern Colombia.

Despite its preoccupation with terrorism, the Bush administration has turned a blind eye to the Colombian government’s de facto alliance with right-wing paramilitaries, who constitute one of the most brutal armed forces in the world and who are responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians, not to mention massive drug dealing.

At first, spokespeople for right-wing Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, Bush’s closest ally in Latin America, claimed that they actually had captured Granda on the Colombian side of the border, but ultimately they admitted to bribing Venezuelan security officials to make the grab.

Leftist Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez reacted cautiously at first. Although Chavez won a popular mandate last summer for his program of radical social reforms, he has no reason to want to quarrel openly with Colombia, with which Venezuela has extensive trade.

He has other reasons to be cautious. Chavez is extremely unpopular with the Bush regime because he befriended socialist Cuba, opposed the so-called Free Trade Area of the Americas, and proposed closer economic cooperation among the countries of Latin America as a way to combat dependency on the U.S. and on the major international lending institutions (IMF and World Bank).

In 2002, the CIA helped organize and promote a military coup against Chavez, which failed because most of the population and important elements of the Venezuelan armed forces refused to go along with it. More recently, the U.S. helped finance a recall referendum against Chavez, which also failed miserably.

The U.S. gets a considerable proportion of its petroleum from Venezuela, and thus is motivated to intervene to establish a pro-U.S. administration in Caracas. Part of the U.S. war of nerves against Venezuela is to accuse Chavez of being a supporter of the Colombian guerrillas.

Moreover, in spite of having won his referendum, Chavez faces dangerous internal opposition, including major elements of the security forces and a large proportion of the media, which work 24-7 to undermine his government.

However, public opinion in Venezuela was aroused when it became clear that a foreign power had carried out such a blatant violation of Venezuela’s independence. The Venezuelan Communist Party and other groups normally supportive of Chavez issued strongly worded demands that the government act in defense of Venezuelan national sovereignty.

On Jan. 14, Chavez withdrew Venezuela’s ambassador from Bogota and announced the suspension of a number of economic cooperation activities between the two countries, while demanding an apology from Colombia.

President Uribe refused to apologize and denounced Granda’s presence in Venezuela, calling him a terrorist with whom no country should have dealings or host. On Jan. 15, the U.S. ambassador to Colombia, William Wood, expressed “100 percent support” for Colombia’s position, claiming that the FARC had said that the Venezuelan government had authorized Granda’s presence in Caracas.

Chavez then accused the U.S. of trying to exploit the situation for “divide and conquer” purposes, specifically to throw a monkey wrench into efforts to create a Latin American trading bloc as a substitute for the FTAA. The Venezuelan president said, “It would be just too much that a government comes out and supports the crime [of kidnapping Granda], assuming a conduct very similar to that of the United States, which bombards and invades peoples without respecting anybody’s sovereignty.”

At press time, the door was left open by both sides to president-to-president talks to resolve the dispute.

Peace deal in Sudan ends 21-year civil war

Fri, 21 Jan 2005 06:06:00 +0000

The recent peace agreement between the Sudanese government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), headed by rebel leader John Garang, has effectively ended a 21-year-old civil war that claimed more than 1.5 million lives, most of them in the southern part of the country.

Signed Jan. 9 in Nairobi, Kenya, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement concerns the north-south conflict. However, the settlement does not directly address the crisis afflicting the western region of the country, particularly in Darfur.

The north-south agreement involves a power-sharing arrangement where the revenue from the nation’s oil production will be split 50-50 between the Islamic-oriented government and the SPLM/A, which represents the predominately non-Islamic south. Under the new plan, Garang is to assume the vice presidency on Feb. 20.

Sudan, which occupies territory roughly equivalent to one-quarter of the continental U.S., is located in northeastern Africa, between Egypt and Ethiopia. It has a population of 39 million. Although most of its people face conditions of extreme poverty, Sudan’s natural resources include an estimated 2 billion barrels of oil. The country also has considerable reserves of natural gas, gold, copper, iron and other minerals.

The SPLM/A says one of its highest priorities is the voluntary repatriation of refugees whose numbers, according to UN estimates, approach 4 million. Meeting their humanitarian needs is essential to avert a general crisis of enormous proportions, observers say.

Other provisions of the agreement involve the formation of an army comprising both government and rebel soldiers, and the holding of a referendum in the South to determine whether the region’s people want independence.

The agreement stipulates that Islamic Sharia law will still apply in the northern part of Sudan. Islamic law was imposed by the Khartoum government on the entire nation in 1983, including on the predominantly non-Islamic south. Laws prevailing in the nation’s capital should be neutral, according to the SPLM/A.

During the signing ceremony, Garang said, “In our view the attempt by various Khartoum-based regimes to build a monolithic Arab-Islamic state to the exclusion of other parameters of the Sudanese diversity constitutes the fundamental problem of the Sudan and defines the Sudanese conflict. … This provoked resistance by the excluded.”

The goal of the SPLM/A is the “all-inclusive Sudanese state” with a high priority placed on the “equality of opportunity for all Sudanese citizens,” he said.

The Khartoum Center for Human Rights and Environmental Development and the Amel Center for Treatment and Rehabilitation for Victims of Torture greeted the agreement, saying that it opens up prospects for greater freedom, peace, and respect for diversity. Noting that the north-south conflict has included massive displacement of populations, the deprivation of civil rights, abductions and torture, the two groups said they welcomed the agreement and “all the parties who participated in the negotiations and discussions, and we call for widening the cooperation and implementation of these protocols on a national basis in all parts of Sudan.”

In the wake of the Jan. 9 ceremony, and despite the continuing conflict in Darfur, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell signaled a willingness to relax sanctions against Sudan. One consequence of such a relaxation will be to give U.S. companies greater access to the country’s oil fields.

ronphillyjr@comcast.net

Peace groups assail Gonzales on torture

Fri, 21 Jan 2005 05:37:00 +0000

WASHINGTON — With the slogan, “Torture is not an American value,” peace groups conducted a “call-in” to senators’ offices Jan. 18, urging them to reject Alberto R. Gonzales as unfit for the post of U.S. attorney general.

Kevin Martin, executive director of Peace Action, pointed out that Gonzales, as White House legal counsel, was the architect of George W. Bush’s torture policies that resulted in rampant torture, abuse, and even murder of detainees at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and other U.S. military prisons around the world.

“A man who would rationalize torture, even during war, would rationalize anything,” Martin said. “Such a man is not fit to be attorney general.”

Joining in the “call-in” were Win Without War and Church Folks for a Better America.

Peace Action spokesperson Scott Lynch told the World the Bush administration is spinning the torture story as the isolated misdeeds of a handful of “rogue soldiers” such as Army Specialist Charles Graner, sentenced to 10 years in prison last week during a trial at Fort Hood, Texas, for his role in the torture of Iraqi detainees. The overwhelming majority of the detainees were innocent civilians caught up in U.S military dragnet sweeps.

It is not just a few soldiers who are “rogues,” Lynch said. “This entire war is a rogue operation. It brings out the worst in us. If it had not been for the war, Graner would have been back home in Pennsylvania.”

He accused the White House of a double standard. “Bush’s torture policy was written by Gonzales and he is promoted while the soldiers on the ground take the blame. I don’t think any reasonable person would consider what happened at Abu Ghraib to be anything less than torture. These were clearly violations of the Geneva Conventions.”

He urged messages to Democratic as well as Republican senators since many Democratic lawmakers are pulling their punches on Gonzales. The issue has domestic implications, too, Lynch said, noting, “ It’s an easy step to say that if torture is acceptable abroad, it is acceptable here in the U.S. as well.”

In one of many forms of protest taking place during the week of Bush’s inauguration, more than 4,000 people signed an online petition, “Not in Our Name,” which denounced Bush’s $40 million inaugural orgy as a corporate, right-wing “coronation.” The petition reads, in part, “No election, whether fair or fraudulent, can legitimize criminal wars on foreign countries, torture, the wholesale violation of human rights. ... We cannot, we will not wait until 2008. The fight against the second Bush regime has to start now.” (The petition can be signed at www.nion.us/).

Graner’s sentencing brought charges that he is a scapegoat for Bush, Gonzales, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld who ordered the torture. Harvey Volzer, an attorney who represented another soldier implicated in the torture, told The New York Times he is skeptical that any top officials will ever be prosecuted. “The higher up they go, the more problems they have with people leading to the Pentagon,” he said. “[Col. Thomas] Pappas gives them [Gen.] Sanchez. … Sanchez can give them Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld can lead to President Bush and Gonzales.”

A Pentagon report by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba released last August implicated 29 other Army Intelligence personnel in at least 44 instances of abuse of detainees. The scandal erupted after hundreds of photos were released of naked Iraqis being tortured by U.S. soldiers, who posed grinning over the detainees.

In his testimony to a Senate Armed Services hearing, Taguba charged the U.S. soldiers with committing “egregious acts of violence against detainees and other civilians outside the bounds of international law and the Geneva Conventions.”

Later, the Pentagon set up a room in the Capitol where lawmakers could see photos and camcorder videos of soldiers committing even more hideous acts of torture. It included, reportedly, the rape of an Iraqi woman and abuse of Iraqi children. But the Pentagon excluded the media and the general public, and the lawmakers have fallen remarkably silent on these atrocities.

Neither senators nor representatives have linked these war crimes to Gonzales’ infamous memos justifying torture. And no lawmaker has asked about an FBI e-mail memo sent by “On Scene Commander, Baghdad,” that refers to an Executive Order signed by Bush authorizing torture.

greenerpastures21212@yahoo.com

Panamanians rally on anniversary of U.S. invasion

Fri, 14 Jan 2005 06:40:00 +0000

PANAMA CITY, Panama — Hundreds of Panamanians rallied here on Dec. 20 to observe the 15th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of their country and to express their growing concern about the Pentagon’s increased activity in the region. They also protested government plans to privatize their social security system.

A number of groups, led by the Alternativa Patriotica Popular coalition, gathered downtown at Parque Porras, near El Chorrillo, an impoverished neighborhood that was one of the hardest hit during the bombing campaign that began the invasion by some 26,000 U.S. troops in 1989. Up to 4,000 Panamanians were killed in the attack.

Pentagon officials have said that its Panama operation, which included a massive bombing campaign followed by a ground invasion to oust then-military dictator and former CIA agent Manuel Noriega from power, served as a model for its recent invasion of Iraq.

Father Conrado Sanjur, a leading Panamanian liberation theologian and human rights activist with the National Liberation Movement-29, led the ceremony, as hundreds of students joined rural laborers from the interior, the Professors’ Association, and SUNTRACS, the nation’s leading construction workers union.

Other Panamanians took their annual pilgrimage to the cemeteries and sites of mass burials where their relatives lay among the thousands killed during the invasion.

“In the years after the invasion, we had hundreds of thousands of people at these protests, but since then [the U.S. troop pullout in 2000], people have begun to forget,” said Henry Rodriguez, a student leader with Pensamiento y Accion Transformadora (Action Transforming Thought).

At the same time, a growing number of Panamanians are perturbed at what they see as the buildup of U.S. military presence in the region. The U.S. plans to send 3,000 troops to Panama by February. Nine hundred Panamanian police are being trained at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (formerly School of the Americas) in Ft. Benning, Ga. Further, in 2004 the U.S. doubled its troop presence in nearby Colombia to 800, and the number of mercenaries from the U.S. substantially increased there.

“After having seen U.S. war in our homeland for so long, and witnessing the ruthless actions in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, we condemn the reintroduction of U.S. military personnel to our shores,” said Arturo de Leon of the Popular University Bloc, a Marxist student group that was well represented at the protests. Polls indicate some 95 percent of Panamanians opposed the invasion of Iraq.

Another sore spot here has been the evident refusal of the U.S. to fulfill its 1977 treaty obligations to clean up all unexploded bombs and chemical weapons of mass destruction in the former Canal Zone and on Panama’s island of San Juan. Some two dozen people have been killed by this residual ordnance, a legacy of the 150-year-long occupation of the country by the U.S. that formally ended only five years ago. Panama’s government has become increasingly impatient with U.S. Ambassador Linda Watts and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on this issue.

Panamanians are also alarmed by the coercive austerity measures being imposed on them, particularly attempts by the government, under the auspices of the International Monetary Fund, to privatize social security.

The government’s actions have provoked a strong reaction, bringing hundreds of thousands of people into the streets in late 2003, and leading to two attempted general strikes. A week before the anniversary of the invasion, workers and students once again marched in defense of social security and fought pitched street battles with police. The issue was again center stage at the Dec. 20 action.

urbanguerrilla@journalist.com

Abbas elected head of Palestinian Authority

Fri, 14 Jan 2005 05:58:00 +0000

As had been widely expected, Mahmoud Abbas won the election for the presidency of the Palestinian Authority on Jan. 9, filling the vacancy left by Yasser Arafat’s death in early November.

“We offer this victory to the soul of the brother martyr Yasser Arafat and to our people, to our martyrs and to 11,000 prisoners” in Israeli jails, Abbas told his jubilant supporters in the West Bank city of Ramallah on election night.

Abbas won 62.3 percent of the vote, according to the Palestinian Central Elections Commission. His closest challenger was Mustafa Barghouti, who received 19.8 percent of the 775,000 total votes cast.

Voter turnout was relatively low. Some election officials estimated turnout at 70 percent, while other analysts cited figures showing that slightly less than half of all eligible voters turned out. Some Palestinians were prevented from voting by Israeli roadblocks and harassment, and many others, including those in exile, were excluded from the vote.

President Bush immediately hailed the election results as “a historic day for the Palestinian people,” and invited Abbas for a White House visit. Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, also congratulated Abbas on his victory and signaled his readiness for prompt dialogue.

By contrast, Sharon and Bush had boycotted meetings with Yasser Arafat since 2003, claiming he was “not a partner for peace.”

Abbas, 69, also known as Abu Mazen, is often described as a pragmatist or moderate. A longtime official of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, which he currently heads, and a former prime minister under Arafat, Abbas has called for an end to the Palestinian intifada, or uprising, against the Israeli occupation.

He was a key architect of the 1993 Oslo agreement and is a vocal supporter of the so-called Road Map, backed by the U.S., Russia, the European Union and the UN, as the path to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He ran as the candidate of the PLO’s dominant faction, Fatah.

Majida Nabahan, 40, who voted for Abbas, told a Chicago Tribune reporter that she did so because Abbas appears to offer the best prospect for change. “Abu Mazen is the person who can get us out of this hellhole we’re in,” she said. “He’s favored by the Americans, so we have to side with him so we can go forward.”

Mustafa Barghouti, 50, a doctor and the director of the Democracy and Workers’ Rights Center, ran for the presidency as an independent. Not to be confused with his distant cousin Marwan Barghouti, who also briefly entered the race for president from his prison cell in Israel, Mustafa Barghouti emphasized the need for greater internal democracy in the Palestinian Authority during his campaign.

Barghouti has led many demonstrations against the apartheid-like wall, or “security fence,” erected by Israel along the West Bank.

Bassam Salhi, 44, ran as the candidate of the Palestinian People’s Party, a descendent of the former Communist Party, and received 2.6 percent of the vote. Salhi, the PPP’s general secretary, was a student leader in the 1970s and an organizer of the first intifada in occupied Gaza. During that time he was arrested and tortured by the Israeli authorities, and he spent three years in Israeli jails.

Salhi, too, has been an outspoken critic of the apartheid wall. His campaign stressed the urgency of strengthening grassroots democracy and addressing the acute problems of unemployment and poverty among Palestinians.

Tayseer Khalid, 65, the candidate of the left-oriented Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, got 3.5 percent of the votes cast.

Three other candidates ran for president as independents, some with a strong Islamist orientation. They received vote percentages in the single digits. Hamas and Islamic Jihad called for a boycott of the elections. Hamas said it would work with the newly elected Abbas, however.

The elections took place in the context of Israel’s continuing settlement activities and routine raids on Palestinian villages and towns. Just days before the election, on Jan. 4, the Israeli army killed seven Palestinian children in Gaza, who were literally blown to pieces by a tank shell.

Observers say it remains to be seen what the impact of the election will have on the continuing conflict.

malmberg@pww.org