Brazil: landless workers protest across country

Members of the Landless Workers’ Movement march in Brazil in June, 2001.

Brasilia, Brazil, Sept. 4— Thousands of poor rural workers held protests across Brazil on Tuesday demanding the government deliver land and funding the workers said they had been promised.

Starting at the presidential palace, about 1,000 protesters from the radical Landless Movement, or MST, marched past government buildings in Brasilia, while members of the group held similar peaceful protests in 23 Brazilian states.

The group has set up makeshift camps on the large government esplanade in Brasilia where they will remain for 40 days, said Joao Paulo Rodrigues, an MST leader.

The MST, one of Brazil’s few strong social groups, advocates illegal occupation of unused farmland for poor rural workers in this country where a handful of the rich own the vast majority of arable land needed to make a living.

“We have 85,000 families camped out and waiting for land, while families that were already settled have no credits (funding) to cultivate anything,” Rodrigues said. ”There is an explosive situation in the countryside.”

Rodrigues said leaders of the movement had met with Agrarian Reform Minister Raul Jungmann in recent days but he ‘’did not meet our requests, so we decided to protest.’’

According to a statement from the group, the government has not freed up funds for settling the landless because of new commitments to meet strict fiscal targets agreed with the International Monetary Fund.

The MST said the government has cut the budget for land reform to $520 million last year from $1.12 billion in 1997.

Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s government strongly defends its record on land reform, saying it is the government that has given most land to the poor since Brazil returned to democracy in 1985 after 20 years of dictatorship.

The government said it gave land to 482,206 families between 1995 and 2000.

Protests by Brazil’s landless have periodically led to violent confrontations with the police. In the most violent in recent times, 19 rural workers were killed by military police during a land occupation in the Amazon in 1995.

Source: Reuters

Monsanto “bullying its way” in northern Philippines

Sept. 2-- Amid news militant farmers uprooted Monsanto’s Bt-Corn in Mindanao, Ilagan Bishop Sergio Utleg has accused the giant agrochemical firm of bullying its way into a northern Philippine province of Isabela.

In a Sept. 2 pastoral statement read before 35 parishes in Isabela, Utleg said Monsanto has started with its open-field experiment in the province “in spite of our opposition.”

“Here is a multinational company by the name of Monsanto bullying its way in the Province of Isabela, ‘wining and dining’ (government) officials and God knows whom else so that they will accede to its agenda,” said the Roman Catholic clergy.

Monsanto, through its seed division Agroseed, is currently conducting a multi-location open-field testing of Bt-Corn in 10 different villages in five provinces in the northern and southern parts of the country.

The government-approved test sites in Isabela are located in VillaLuna, Cauayan City; Carulay, Echague and either San Felipe, Ilagan or Alangigan II, Ilagan.

Monsanto, the second largest seed company in the world, has started testing Bt-Corn in the villages of Villaluna and Carulay.

Utleg expressed fears that a proposed provincial ordinance, authored by Hon. Nicasio Bautista Jr., banning the field trial may not be passed with a variety of wooing techniques employed by Monsanto to local government officials.

Views of the Roman Catholic Church are held with high regard in this predominantly Catholic South East Asian country.

Residents complain no public hearing was conducted by Monsanto despite constitutional provisions asking for consultation where public safety is concerned.

Masipag scientists believe the open-field testing could contaminate local corn varieties with the genetically engineered variety whose safety could still not be established conclusively.

Bt-Corn is genetically engineered to contain gene from the soil bacterium Baccilus thuringiensis, enabling this crop to fight corn borer.

Unlike the first field test in General Santos City in late 1999, detasseling, which prevents corn plants from cross-pollinating, is not a part of the current biosafety measures in the multi-location testing.

“The pollen of the Bt-Corn will be carried by the wind and fertilize the surrounding corn plants and thus, even without wanting it, all other corn plants will be contaminated by the Bt-Corn,” said Utleg.

Masipag scientists say that corn sheds its pollen starting 6:00am to 11:00am. Long distance pollen travel could occur on a windy day.

“It puts in unnecessary risk our already endangered genetic resources by allowing an irreversible contamination of our corn varieties by a variety that remains uncertain and still a subject of intense scientific debates worldwide,” said Abigail Verdillo, an agronomist of Masipag.

“And what about the people’s health?” she asked. “Monsanto is simply testing for the efficacy of Bt-Corn against corn borer and safety tests for humans and the environment is not part of the test protocol.”

The multi-location tests simply aim to confirm the resistance of C-818 and C-838 Yieldgard against Asiatic corn borer, evaluate the corn’s economic value and compare grain quality.

Scientists say a GMO crop could cause unintended side-effects ranging from a mere allergy to death.

Isabela province is the second largest corn-growing area in the Philippines next to Mindanao. Corn is a staple cereal to many native Isabelan.

“On account of the impending dangers resulting from the field testing of Bt-Corn, we call on our Provincial Officials to abort the field testing of Bt-Corn that was already ventured upon by Monsanto and to ban any further field-testing of Bt-Corn thereupon,” said Utleg.

“May the God who created all things enlighten the minds of persons who set their sights on profit and wealth rather than the safety and integrity of creation,” he said.

On Aug. 29, about 800 farmers, consumers, environmentalists, church people and students uprooted Bt-Corn crops in an experimental field of Monsanto in Tampakan town, South Cotabato.

Source: Masipag News & Views

Indigenous activists protest at racism conference

Sept. 5— As organizers of the World Conference Against Racism struggled to get the meeting back on track after the departure of the United States and Israel, indigenous activists and leaders on Tuesday held their own walkout in Durban, South Africa.

But unlike the two countries, representatives from tribes and indigenous groups throughout the world aren’t leaving the international gathering. They instead held a protest to call attention to their struggle, which has been largely overshadowed by the conflict over language condemning Israel for treatment of Arabs.

American Indian activists attending the conference in particular said the exit of the United States was telling of the battles indigenous people face at home and at the gathering. During a call-in session on the nationally broadcast radio program Native America Calling, they criticized their own government for walking out on them.

“Our country shows up late, leaves early and doesn’t take any stands for us,” said Pamela Kingfisher, director of Indigenous Women’s Network. “This is a real step backward for indigenous peoples.”

Beyond the walkout, however, the activists said negotiations on the conference’s declaration, or statement, on racism were daunting. While the US and Israeli delegations found Zionism language “hateful” and “offensive,” the activists said indigenous rights are being excluded altogether.

“There is a superpower negotiation going on” over the language, said Juana Majel, a member of the executive committee of the National Congress of American Indians. “We are the step-child that’s been invited to dinner.”

Drafts of the declaration do not recognize the collective rights of indigenous people under international law, they said. And when indigenous rights are mentioned, they are qualified as existing under domestic law — which, in the case of the United States, is troubling for Native peoples, they said.

“We have rights under international laws that they are trying to undermine constantly,” said Kingfisher of the world powers negotiating the declaration.

The White House yesterday defended the departure of the mid-level delegation from the talks. Press secretary Ari Fleischer said the United States and Israel “had no choice but to leave the conference.”

“This has been a lost opportunity for America and for people throughout the world who are concerned about racism,” he said.

As the gathering heads into its final days, Mary Robinson, the United Nations human rights chief and secretary general of the conference, has appealed to the remaining nations to come to an agreement. Language condemning Israel has been removed, at least temporarily, from a draft of the declaration.

Source: www.Indianz.com

Report: Kissinger involved in Chilean coup plot

Santiago, Chile, Sept. 9— The United States and Henry Kissinger were more deeply involved than was previously reported in a 1970 plot to prevent a left-wing politician from becoming Chile’s president, CBS television news reported Sunday.

The program “60 Minutes” quotes an independent researcher as saying that the CIA sent a cable to its office in Chile instructing agents there to continue fomenting a military takeover. The cable came following a conversation with Kissinger, who at the time was President Nixon’s national security adviser and later became secretary of state.

According to researcher Peter Kornbluh, the order also came a day after Kissinger has said he cut off any attempt to undermine Chile’s democratic government.

The plot did not prevent the Marxist Salvador Allende, who had won a September 1970 presidential election, from taking office the next month. But the right-wing plotters killed Chilean Gen. Rene Schneider, described as an opponent of the Chilean military’s involvement in politics.

Three years later, Allende allegedly committed suicide while his palace was being bombed by the Chilean military, and Gen. Augusto Pinochet took over as the country’s military dictator.

Kissinger declined to appear on the “60 Minutes” program, CBS said. Kissinger’s office late Sunday returned a message from The Associated Press but was unable to reach him immediately for comment.

However, the program aired Kissinger’s testimony during a 1975 Senate investigation saying he ordered all contacts with the coup plotters to be cut off on Oct. 15, 1970.

Kornbluh told the program: “The very next day, the CIA sent a cable to the station in the Chilean capital of Santiago, based on its conversation with Kissinger, which is referred to in the very first line. This cable was absolutely explicit: It is the continuing policy of the US government to foment a coup in Chile.”

Kornbluh is a senior analyst at the National Security Archive, an independent research institute which works at getting secret US documents declassified, according to CBS.

The 1975 Senate investigation had already determined Nixon had wanted to incite a military takeover, but Kissinger’s testimony indicated the United States had stopped any such attempt before Schneider’s slaying.

Kornbluh also said newly revealed documents show that the US intelligence community believed a coup could not be carried out in Chile in 1970.

Edward Korry, then the US ambassador to Chile, said on “60 Minutes” that he also advised Kissinger that a coup would fail and boomerang against Nixon just as the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba had put the United States in a bad light a decade earlier. Korry said he had already ordered all contacts cut off with the coup plotters in the Chilean military, but CBS cited what it said were minutes of an Oct. 7 meeting of a covert action committee in which Kissinger allegedly said that Korry’s orders “should be rescinded forthwith.”

Also appearing in the program was retired Col. Paul Wimert, a former military attaché in Chile who CBS said was assigned the task of promoting a coup in Chile to block Allende.

Wimert told the program that he delivered weapons to the CIA to use in a plot to kidnap Schneider and send him to neighboring Argentina. The move was supposed to incite a military takeover of the government and prevent Allende from taking office, he said. However, Schneider was shot during the kidnapping attempt on Oct. 22, 1970, and died two days later.

Schneider’s son, also named Rene, said on “60 Minutes” that his family is planning to file a suit against Kissinger in the United States.

On Sunday, police in Santiago used tear gas and water cannons to scatter demonstrators marking the 28th anniversary of the start of Pinochet’s dictatorship.

Police said some 7,000 people joined the march organized by human rights organizations, leftist groups and relatives of victims of repression during Pinochet’s 1973-90 rule.

There were no reports of injuries or arrests.

Source: Associated Press

African indigenous request compensation for displacement

Nairobi, Sept. 7— Forest dwellers from seven African countries this week appealed for compensation for livelihoods compromised by government activities, and for vindication of their human rights, AFP news agency reported. Meeting in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, from 3-6 September, representatives of the Twa of Rwanda, the DRC and Uganda; the Ogieks of Kenya; the Maasai of Tanzania; the Bushmen of South Africa; and the Baka Bagyeli of Cameroon, paid particular attention to the plight of indigenous peoples living in, or displaced from, protected areas in their countries.

“We were chased, without control and with no sort of compensation, from the forest of Ngorongoro [west of Arusha in Northern Uganda],” said Margaret Kaisoe, a representative of the Tanzanian Maasai.

The Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA), which covers 8,000 square kilometers on the southeastern margins of the Serengeti National Park, has a particularly high concentration of wildlife and is a major tourist attraction in northern Tanzania. Pastoralism has been practiced in Ngorongoro for at least 7,000 years and the Maasai have lived there for two centuries. Today, there are over 40,000 residents with 150,000 cattle, sheep and goats, which move between dry and wet season grazing areas.

In addition to the Maasai, small populations of Tatoga pastoralists and Hadza hunter-gatherers live east of Lake Eyasi in the south of the NCA.

“The state could promote tourism without hurting us,” Kaisoe said in Kigali, adding that the Maasai demanded compensation with interest for their displacement from the crater.

“Since 1991, we have no longer had the right to set foot in our natural surroundings, Bwindi Impenetrable National Park [in southwestern Uganda] where we used to hunt for wild meats and fruit, and where we used to hold rites to worship our ancestors,” said Penninhah Zaninka, a delegate for the Ugandan Twa people (or pygmies).

“Even if our children go to school these days, no member of our community has a paid job and most of us live in poverty,” said Zaninka.

The Kigali conference -- organized to coincide with the World Conference Against Racism in South Africa, taking place this week -- was co-sponsored by the Community of Rwandan Aborigines and a British NGO, the Forest Peoples Program (FPP) ,established to promote and protect the rights of forest people in their struggle to survive.

Source: IRIN

US chemical bombs found in Panama

Sept. 6— The Panamanian government formally asked the US government to remove four large unexploded chemical bombs discovered on San Jose island, which the US used for live target practice between 1925 and 1946. The government has ordered the island, now privately owned, to be quarantined until the bombs are cleared away.

“Three of these weapons are 1,000-pound bombs and one [is a] 500-pound bomb [...], intact with their detonators,” explained Panamanian foreign relations minister Jose Miguel Aleman at a press conference. “This is the largest caliber chemical weapon that the US produced,” he added.

Aleman said the bombs violate the 1993 Convention on Prohibition of the Development, Production, Storage and Use of Chemical Weapons, ratified by both the US and Panama. He called on Washington to determine what other chemical weapons might be abandoned in Panamanian territory and warned that under the terms of the convention, the US has 180 days to clean up all of its military munitions.

For the past four years, Panama has been pressing the US to decontaminate three firing ranges used in Panama over a period of 75 years to test conventional weapons. The firing ranges were returned to Panama when the US military presence there officially ended on Dec. 31, 1999.

Aleman said that on Sept. 3 he met with Defense Department officials in Washington to hand over a report from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPAQ), which confirmed the discovery of the bombs. In their visit to San Jose island, OPAQ’s experts also discovered some 100 other munitions, primarily chemical cylinders, which are “probably chemical weapons,” said Aleman. OPAQ prepared the report in response to a request from Panama in May of this year. The foreign minister said the US had certified before the OPAQ that “Panama was free of chemical weapons.”

According to a July 1998 report by the US-based Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) Task Force on Latin America and the Caribbean, the US Army did chemical weapons testing on San Jose island during the 1940s using Sarin, VX and mustard gas.

Source: Weekly News Update on the Americas wnu@igc.org

Britain to challenge death row cases in US

By Robert Verkaik

Sept. 10— The British Government is preparing to launch a legal challenge against America over its use of the death penalty.

In an unprecedented move the Foreign Office will instruct lawyers to intervene in an attempt to halt the executions of two men with dual British and US nationality currently on Death Row. One is scheduled to die in the electric chair before the end of the year. Britain is also considering taking a case to the International Court of Justice in The Hague to challenge America over its death penalty policy.

Ministers are known to have serious concerns about the trials of both men and the quality of the evidence used to convict them.

Tracy Housel, 42, who was born a British subject in Bermuda, was convicted of beating and strangling to death a woman in Georgia. He was sentenced to die in 1985.

Last week his lawyers applied to the US Supreme Court in an 11th-hour effort to save his life. They argued that he was suffering from a mental illness at the time of the crime and may have been badly advised by his lawyers about his guilty plea.

The second man, Jackie Elliott, 41, was born at the former Bentwaters air force base in Suffolk, England, to American parents. He denied but was convicted of the rape and murder of an 18-year-old woman 15 years ago. His American lawyers believe another man, who gave evidence against him at the trial, was responsible for the murder.

The Washington government is understood to be angry that the Foreign Office should choose to act on two Death Row cases involving American citizens who acquired British nationality only by an accident of birth.

But a spokeswoman for the Foreign Office said yesterday that the former foreign secretary Robin Cook had made clear earlier this year that government policy was to express Britain’s “strong opposition to the death penalty and its imposition on British nationals”. She said people either had the right to British nationality or they did not ­ there was no halfway position.

While the Housel case will be the first to test the Government’s new policy, more embarrassment will be caused by the case of Elliott, who is on Death Row in Texas, where George Bush was governor before he became President.

Although Bush was not Texas governor at the time Elliott’s death sentence was imposed, he was responsible for rubber-stamping 139 executions, more than any other American governor, during his six-year tenure.

Lawyers acting for Housel say the tougher stance adopted by the British Government represents an important step forward. Until now the Foreign Office has refused to intervene in American death penalty cases until all judicial avenues have been exhausted.

Housel’s lawyers, Hugh Southey, a barrister at Michael Mansfield’s chambers in London, and Yasmine Waldje, a solicitor at the city law firm Lovells, have had urgent meetings with Foreign Office officials to try to get the Government to take unprecedented steps to save their client’s life.

The lawyers and the Foreign Office have been working closely with the US-based British barrister Clive Stafford-Smith -­ a renowned champion of human rights, particularly in death penalty cases -­ and Reprieve, a Death Row prisoner support group. They intend to offer British legal representation to Elliott, who until now has not been officially recognized as a British subject.

Yesterday, the Foreign Office said that before its lawyers formally intervened in the cases it would continue to use diplomatic channels to help to secure a reprieve for both men. “We are to make diplomatic representations on behalf of Housel and are considering the best way forward in the case of Elliott,” the spokeswoman said.

Andie Lambe, UK director of Reprieve, described the Government’s involvement as “a historic step forward” that not only granted UK recognition to British-American Death Row inmates but also gave diplomatic force to the campaign to keep the men alive.

Source: The Independent (UK)