RIGHTS: Landmark U.N. Resolution on Equality Stuck on Paper

October 30, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Thursday, October 30, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Nergui Manalsuren

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 29 (IPS) – Civil society groups are urging the U.N. to fully implement a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for greater women’s participation in conflict prevention, resolution and peace-building.

On Wednesday, the 15-member Council opened its eighth open debate on ”Women, Peace, and Security” at U.N. headquarters in New York.

”Eight years since the adoption of Security Council resolution 1325, there has been a great deal more talk about the protection and promotion of women’s human rights in conflict-affected situations,” said the coalition of major human rights organisations, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

”It is necessary now to move from words to action,” said Sarah Taylor, coordinator of the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace, and Security.

Many women’s advocates fear that this year will again see little more than ”lip service” paid toward making 1325 reality.

”I don’t think we feel that the real spirit of 1325 has really got the heart of the Security Council and its efforts. It should be more than an annual anniversary that we celebrate,” said Jessica Neuwirth, the president of Equality Now, a leading group dedicated to promoting women’s rights worldwide.

She expressed disappointment that even though one of the key ideas of the resolution was to bring more women’s voices into the Security Council, the powerful body rarely reaches out to women when debating conflict resolutions.

”There is a once-a-year moment where they pay lip service with this resolution, but that is not what we really would like to see,” Neuwirth told IPS.

”What we’d like to see is, in a very formal way, anytime there is a conflict on the Security Council agenda, they look to women to seek advice and guidance and put them into discussions and elements that promote peace,” she added.

Vivian Stromberg, the executive director of MADRE, an international organisation that has been promoting women’s rights for 25 years, is also not optimistic that Wednesday’s debate will change anything.

However, she believes that the participation of civil society in the discussion on the floor, particularly women’s organisations in this case, is crucially important to raise questions, and to put pressure on those governments which do not comply with their obligations.

”Women’s participation brings to the table everything that affects women. They bring to the table the issues of gender, issues of sexuality, issues of environment, issues of peace and security, issues of war, and economy, the vast number of issues that the whole world is facing now with the level of poverty that we’re seeing now,” Stromberg told IPS.

”I think that women are in the best position to respond to all of those issues, and to relegate women to issues only to which she has a biological relationship is wrong and shortchanges humanity,” she said.

According to the U.N. report on Women, Peace, and Security, there have been gains in the broad areas for action set out in the resolution: awareness of the importance of gender equality, development of national action plans, gender mainstreaming, capacity building and support for greater participation of women in decision-making, including in elections and governance. However, a gap between policies and implementation of the resolution remains, in particular at the national level.

The report says that only 10 member states have developed specific national action plans for implementation of the resolution and five more are in the process of developing such plans.

”We have a long way to go in ensuring women’s equal participation and full involvement in all efforts for the maintenance and promotion of peace and security, particularly in conflict prevention and resolution, equal representation in security institutions and decision-making bodies, as well as ensuring women’s protection from sexual violence and ending impunity,” Rachel Mayanja, the U.N. Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women, told the Security Council.

Regarding sexual violence and impunity, including sexual violence by U.N. peacekeeping forces, the head of MADRE said that the U.N. needs to do what it has promised to do.

”If they have a zero tolerance policy then they are supposed to have zero tolerance… They can’t just talk about it, they have to follow it through, and that means that the home countries need to be held accountable,” Stromberg told IPS.

She expressed her concern that without civil society, there will be a big, empty hole through which governments can slip and hide.

”Since the U.N. as a body doesn’t have the power to bring to justice a peacekeeper from a particular country, it’s that country that has the power to do that and the obligation [of civil society is] to hold their governments accountable,” added Stromberg.

Rachel Mayanja also stressed the importance of civil society groups, noting that they have ”been active in the national implementation process, holding governments accountable and injecting new dynamism into societies.”

However, these NGOs do not enjoy the cooperation of the Security Council on these critical matters, she added.

”We hope that they renew their commitments to implementation of 1325, and we would like it to see as more than an annual event. It should be a daily event. They should bring women in. We would like to see it happen,” Neuwirth told IPS.

Filed Under: Gender, Human Rights, Report

POLITICS-ETHIOPIA: A Career In Dissent

October 29, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Wednesday, October 29, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Michael Chebsi

ADDIS ABABA, Oct 29 (IPS) – Frozen in disbelief on the steps of the courthouse where she presided as a federal judge, Bertukan Mideksa watched as a man she had just ordered released on bail was detained by plain-clothes police with no warrant and no apparent regard for the law.

That was in 2001. She next saw that man when she became a fellow inmate at Kaliti Federal Prison in 2004, charged with crimes serious enough to have her imprisoned for life: treason, outrage against the constitution, inciting, organising or leading armed rebellion, obstruction of the exercise of constitutional powers, impairing the defensive power of the state and attempted genocide.

She claims her only true transgression was dissent.

”I couldn’t stand the lack of human dignity,” said Mideksa, seated behind her desk at her poorly furnished office in central Addis Ababa.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Human Rights, Justice, Politics, Report

EGYPT: Ruling Party in Free Fall

October 29, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Wednesday, October 29, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani

CAIRO, Oct 29 (IPS) – A high-ranking member of Egypt’s ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) is facing trial on charges of arranging the murder of a Lebanese pop singer. The case, along with a host of other public grievances, has badly tarnished the NDP’s reputation ahead of an upcoming party conference.

”On the eve of its annual party congress, popular perceptions of the NDP have never been worse,” Amr Hashem Rabie, expert on Egyptian party politics at the semi-official Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies told IPS.

On Oct. 18, construction magnate Hisham Talaat Moustafa, a member of the NDP’s powerful Policies Committee, pleaded not guilty to accusations that he financed the killing of Lebanese pop singer Suzanne Tamim, found brutally murdered in her Dubai apartment three months ago. Fellow defendant Mohsen Al-Sukkary — a former police officer charged with carrying out the crime in return for a two-million dollar payoff — also pleaded not guilty.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Commentary, Human Rights, Justice, Politics

DEVELOPMENT: Democracy Comes to World Institutions, Slowly

October 27, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Monday, October 27, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Analysis by John Vandaele*

AMSTERDAM, Oct 27 (IPS) – Power and democracy don’t go together well in global governance. The most powerful global institutions are the least democratic, but things are changing. Slowly.

Can a global institution be democratic if countries such as Belgium or the Netherlands with 10 or 16 million inhabitants have more power inside that institution than, say India with 1.1 billion? Can a global institution be democratic if the elected representatives of states are barely able to control what is being said in their name in that institution? These are pivotal questions to determine the legitimacy of international institutions.

My research has shown that the most powerful international institutions tend to have the worst democratic credentials: the power distribution among countries is more unequal, and the transparency, and hence democratic control, is worse.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Development, Human Rights, Politics, Report

ECONOMY: Civil Society Has Something to Say

October 27, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Monday, October 27, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Oct 27 (IPS) – Governments cannot deal with the current financial crisis on their own, and need the support of the people they govern, which is ”best translated by the opinions of the civil society movement,” said Werner H. Schleiffer, executive coordinator of CONGO, the global umbrella of NGOs with consultative status with the United Nations.

The responsibility of striving for solutions lies with governments ”because the market forces have demonstrated that they cannot solve the issues,” said Schleiffer. ”But governments do not have sufficient strength on their own, and must take into account ”the thinking of their own people as translated by civil society movements,” he argued.

CONGO, which is made up of national, regional and international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), is ”a bridge, a two-way stream vis-a-vis civil society and vis-a-vis the U.N.,” he explained.

On Monday and Tuesday, CONGO is debating the global financial meltdown and its effects on the real economy in Geneva at the Civil Society Development Forum (CSDF) 2008. The meeting is also discussing other critical questions facing the international community, like the global food crisis and the questions of food sovereignty and sustainability, as well as the links between human rights and development.

At a previous CSDF, held Jun. 27-29 in New York, CONGO already discussed the incipient financial crisis.

The final statement adopted in New York referred to the ”global financial turmoil and uncertainty,” but only after highlighting the threats posed by the food crisis and environmental risks.

However, in its analysis of the food crisis, the New York CSDF document states that ”We note the pervasive role of international financial institutions in influencing national development strategies. We urge these institutions to redesign their strategies with a view to assisting countries in defining their priorities at home by using home-grown expertise and products of these countries.”

The document also says the World Trade Organisation’s ”role in negotiations on agricultural matters should be re-examined.”

But ”since June, the food crisis, the energy crisis and the financial crisis have taken on such great proportions, that couldn’t be anticipated in June,” Schleiffer told IPS.

The first policy level discussion at the U.N. General Assembly in September also ”indicated very clearly that these topics are very high on the agenda of the General Assembly,” he added.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon himself ”even spoke about an emergency development,” indicating that these topics deserve very careful discussion in the future, said Schleiffer.

”These crises will not go away overnight. But they cannot be attacked without having civil society on board. The U.N. and the member governments cannot handle it on their own,” said the head of CONGO in Geneva. ”They need strong and determined input by civil society.”

To that end, ”our members of the board, in consultation with our organisations, agreed that we should continue these discussions on these topics and come up with further concrete recommendations” at the two-day meeting in Geneva, said Schleiffer.

The questions of the food crisis, food sustainability and sovereignty are being discussed in-depth, he said, adding that the latter issue ”is very important to our member organisations.”

”The other issue, the nexus between human rights and development, will also come up further, especially when we look at the issue of speculative movements that distort market mechanisms and are very much against the people, particularly people living in the (developing) South,” said Schleiffer.

”We are much inclined to see the consequences of these crises on our daily lives in the North, but the ones that really suffer, and suffer enormously, are (the people) of the South. Much more than we do,” he added.

Delegates from key civil society movements from Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Asia were thus invited to participate in the two-day meeting in Geneva, which was made possible by financial support from the Swiss government, he said.

CONGO officials were encouraged by the results of their participation in the High Level Segment, an annual ECOSOC session held alternatively in New York and Geneva that is like a kind of ”parliamentary” session of the U.N. system for dealing with economic and social issues, said Schleiffer.

At that session, ”we had the opportunity to speak more than ever before. It was unprecedented, between our CONGO statements on behalf of civil society and statements by organisationsàunder our umbrella, all together we had something like half an hour of speaking time, which is unique when you think that depending on the sessions, you only have one or two minutes to speak. That was quite an accomplishment.”

Another encouraging factor was the level of approval from the U.N. Secretariat and government representatives received by CONGO’s outcome document, which was circulated to the member governments as an official ECOSOC document, he said.

The declaration that came out of the ECOSOC High Level Segment, which will go into its report to the General Assembly, showed a ”really amazingàcongruence in wording” with the CONGO outcome document, said Schleiffer.

The two-day CSDF meeting was opened Monday by the president of CONGO, Liberato Bautista, of the United States, and will be closed Tuesday by the body’s first vice president, Italian trade unionist Anna Biondi, who represents the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).

Filed Under: Commentary, Development, Human Rights, Politics

RIGHTS-US: New Davis Reprieve Raises Hopes of Retrial

October 27, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Monday, October 27, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Jonathan Springston

ATLANTA, Georgia, Oct 27 (IPS) – A federal appeals court in Atlanta has stayed the execution of Georgia death row inmate Troy Anthony Davis scheduled for Monday — the third time he has been pulled back from the death chamber in just over a year.

Davis had fulfilled the requirements required for ”a provisional stay of execution”, the court ruled on Friday. The stay gives time for Davis’s lawyers to apply for a new appeal.

Two days earlier, Davis’s lawyers had argued that Davis was innocent and his execution would be a violation of the eighth and fourteenth amendments of the U.S. Constitution.

Davis, who was set to die on Monday, Oct. 27 for the 1989 murder of Savannah police officer Mark Allen MacPhail, had appeared to have exhausted all his legal avenues to prevent his execution.

On Oct. 14, the U.S. Supreme Court announced that it would not take up his appeal, three weeks after granting him a stay of execution just two hours before a scheduled execution.

Since Davis’s 1991 conviction, seven of the nine eyewitnesses called by the prosecution have changed or recanted their testimonies in sworn affidavits.

Attorneys for Davis have argued that these recantations, coupled with the fact that the prosecution never produced a murder weapon or physical evidence linking Davis to the crime, left too much doubt to carry out an execution.

Davis has gone through a gruelling series of appeals, trying desperately to get any court to hear new evidence and possibly grant a new hearing or trial.

”It’s a first step toward what we’ve been asking for a decade, which is getting our evidence heard before a judge,” Jason Ewart, lead attorney for Davis, told IPS after the court announcement of the latest stay of execution.

Davis’s attorneys have 15 days to file their legal arguments justifying an appeal. The Georgia attorney general’s office will then have 10 days to file a response. The appeals court will then decide whether to grant Davis permission to pursue more appeals.

The Davis case represents an overall problem about how eyewitness testimony was collected, rights activists said.

”Faulty eyewitness identification is the leading cause of wrongful convictions nationwide, accounting for 75 percent of wrongful convictions in over 200 DNA exonerations,” Sara Totonchi, chair of Georgians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (GFADP), told IPS.

”Eyewitness identification is notoriously unreliable, but it was the basis for the conviction against Troy Davis,” she added.

Stephanie Benfield, a state lawmaker, attempted earlier this year to introduce legislation that would have significantly overhauled eyewitness identification procedures. But the bill never came up for a vote.

Benfield told IPS she was planning to reintroduce such legislation when the Georgia General Assembly reconvenes in January.

The Davis case also represents the problem of getting new evidence before a court.

”As a result of procedural bars, new evidence of innocence in the Troy Davis case has never been given a fair hearing in a court of law,” Totonchi said.

”The witnesses who changed or recanted their testimonies never had their credibility tested and confirmed in a court of law,” she continued. ”Had Mr. Davis been given a hearing, any doubts about the credibility of the affidavits could have been resolved through meaningful adversarial testing of the new evidence.”

Davis’s supporters also allege class bias, racial bias, geographical bias, and prosecutorial misconduct, as well as problems with proper legal representation.

”When people who are poor cannot have adequate legal representation…that is an issue,” said Laura Moye, deputy director of Amnesty International USA’s (AIUSA) southern regional office.

Supporters expressed joy and relief over Friday’s decision.

”It’s like beyond words,” Martina Correia, Davis’s sister, told IPS. ”It was just amazing. All I could do was think of my brother who has faced death three times. It has to be a traumatic experience. I’m ecstatic and I’m praying that this gives us time.”

Amnesty said it is ”heartened” by the news.

”Until this point, the compelling issues in this case have been virtually ignored, leaving Georgia vulnerable to the possibility of killing an innocent man,” Larry Cox, executive director of AIUSA, said in a statement.

Hours before the announcement of the temporary reprieve, supporters turned out in Atlanta in driving rain to participate in a mock funeral procession, marching to the parole board with a casket containing 140,000 petitions asking for clemency for Davis.

The crowd then delivered two letters signed by clergy from across Georgia and around the world to governor Sonny Perdue’s office.

Groups like AIUSA and GFADP have helped bring international attention to the case. Pope Benedict XVI, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Rev Al Sharpton, and former president Jimmy Carter were among the many prominent people who appealed for clemency.

The European Union issued a statement Oct. 22 denouncing the scheduled execution. Correia told IPS she received a phone call on Friday from the French ambassador expressing support for her brother on behalf of the EU.

Filed Under: Human Rights, Justice, Politics, Report, United States

RIGHTS-SRI LANKA: Court Steps in as Governance Falters

October 27, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Monday, October 27, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Oct 27 (IPS) – Finding themselves up against corrupt politicians and indifferent governance Sri Lankans are increasingly turning to the country’s Supreme Court for relief, even for solutions to everyday issues.

A landmark judgment earlier this month against former president Chandrika Kumaratunga in a land acquisition case has been cheered by all quarters, reflecting the increasing trust that the public is placing in the courts. The public’s dependence on the judiciary now threatens a confrontation with the legislature.

The apex court said Kumaratunga, who was president from 1995-2005, had ”grossly abused her power and betrayed the trust of the people” in acquiring land for public purpose and then handing it over to a private developer for a golf course. The 140-acre property, an identified wetland near the country’s parliament, was turned into a golf course fringed by posh apartments and sold to the rich and influential.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Human Rights, Justice, News

RIGHTS-BURMA: No Mercy For Women Political Activists

October 26, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Sunday, October 26, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Oct 26 (IPS) – When it comes to throwing pro-democracy activists in jail, Burma’s military regime does not discriminate between the sexes. The junta treats women and men with equal measure of abuse.

The latest to be condemned to a long term in prison is Win Mya Mya, a woman in her 50s who served as a committee member of the opposition party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), in the central region of Mandalay. She was given a 12-year jail sentence on Friday for her role in the September 2007 anti-government protests led by thousands of Buddhist monks.

Five other leading NLD members from the same area — all men — were punished likewise, with jail terms ranging from eight to 13 years. They were accused of violating the laws 505 (B) and 153 (A), which makes it an offence to write, rumour or report ‘’by words, either spoken or written, or by signs” material that may ‘’cause fear or alarm to the public,” induce acts ‘’against the state or against the public tranquility,” or ”promotes hatred between different classes (of persons).”

‘’Their trials were held in a court inside the Mandalay prison,” says Bo Kyi, a co-founder of the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), a group championing the rights of Burmese political prisoners based along the Thai-Burma border. ‘’The verdicts were also given inside that prison compound.”

It was a secret trial aimed to reduce public scrutiny, he added during a telephone interview. ‘’The families of the accused were not permitted in the court when the verdict was given. The authorities didn’t want the public inside the court.”

The date of this verdict could not have been more revealing. It confirmed how little the junta cares about international pressure against the harsh measures directed at political activists in Burma. Oct. 24 marked 13 years that the country’s pro-democracy leader and head of the NLD, Aung San Suu Kyi, has been detained.

There were multiple calls from governments in Europe and the United States and many regional and international human rights groups for the junta to free Suu Kyi, the country’s most well-known political prisoner. The Nobel Peace laureate’s current stretch of house arrest in the former capital of Rangoon began at the end of May 2003.

‘’As of Oct. 24, 2008, Aung San Suu Kyi has spent a total of 13 years under house arrest. We again call upon the Burmese regime to immediately and unconditionally release her and the more than 2,000 political prisoners it holds,” said the U.S. State Department in a statement.

Suu Kyi and new political prisoners like Win Mya Mya are among the victims a U.N. human rights envoy for Burma had in mind when he told the U.N. General Assembly that the South-east Asian nation has a system in dire need of reforms before the planned 2010 elections.

Tomas Ojea Quintana, an Argentine lawyer, called for changes in the system that has crippled political and civil liberties in Burma for decades. ‘’These include revision of domestic laws to ensure their compliance with human rights; progressive release of all prisoners of conscience and reform of the military and independent judiciary,” reports ‘The Irrawaddy’, a current affairs magazine published by Burmese journalists living in exile in Thailand.

Quintana’s report to the General Assembly on Thursday was shaped by the information he gathered during his first visit to Burma in August. ‘’The government didn’t know me … it was difficult to go into prison,” he is reported as having said according to The Irrawaddy.

But he did succeed in having three hours of ‘’private meetings with detainees,” adds the journal. ‘’The prisoners were very open with me. It gave me a lot of sense of what was going on in the country,” he said.

Burmese jails now hold 178 women prisoners of conscience, a three-fold increase from the 53 imprisoned female political activists in August 2006.

‘’During the [September 2007 anti-government street protests] more than 157 women, including 10 nuns were detained. Nineteen women disappeared,” reveals ALTSEAN, a regional human rights body, in a note released this week. ‘’Daw Ponnami, an 80-year-old nun at Thitsatharaphu Monastery, partially paralysed by a stroke, was arrested and defrocked, accused of ‘causing offence to the Buddhist religion’, and remains incarcerated.”

The other nuns who have been defrocked and jailed in this predominantly Buddhist country include 70-year-old Htay Yi and 64-year-old Pyinyar Theingi. The jails also hold such women as Su Su Nway, a 37-year-old labour rights activist, Nilar Thein, a 35-year-old university student leader, and Ein Khine Oo, a 24-year-old journalist.

Teenagers have not been spared either. In early August, the regime arrested Ni Ni May Myint, a 19-year-old member of the NLD, and had her shackled. She and 50 others had gathered on a street in a town in the Arakan state, in western Burma, to pray for the students who had died during a brutal crackdown of the pro-democracy uprising in August 1988.

‘’I am worried about Ni Ni May Myint. The [prison] authorities will treat her harshly the way they treat other female activists in jail,” says Khin Cho Myint, a 36-year-old former student of Rangoon University and a former political prisoner. ‘’Women face a lot of verbal abuse and mental torture and it can be very frightening.”

‘’There were times when women were kept in isolation and not given things they wanted for their health and sanitary needs,” she added in an interview. ‘’I faced this during the five years and nine months I was in prison. I was penalised for being a student activist.”

But some female prisoners of conscience have faced worse, ALTSEAN reveals. ‘’In August 2006, Nyunt Yin died in Insein Prison at the age of 60. She had served 16 years of a life sentence because of her involvement in the 1988 uprising. She was denied medical treatment for a heart condition.”

Filed Under: Gender, Human Rights, Politics, Report

RIGHTS-PAKISTAN: Condemned Pin Hopes on Amnesty

October 26, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Sunday, October 26, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Beena Sarwar

KARACHI, Oct 26 (IPS) – Zulfiqar Ali, 38, has been snatched from the gallows once again after Pakistan’s president agreed to give his relatives more time to negotiate clemency from the families of two persons shot dead during a violent dispute.

On Oct. 7, just hours before Ali’s scheduled execution, the president granted him a 14-day stay of execution. The stay, meant to allow time for negotiations for a compromise between the families, has now been extended to 60 more days.

Ali’s younger brother, Abdul Qayyum, said they initially needed more time because ”at first we did not even know where they lived”.

”We lost some time because of that. Now we need to proceed slowly. These things do not happen in a hurry. Those families have also suffered a loss and have to be handled delicately. We are hopeful that they will agree to a compromise, but I cannot say at this point what it will involve,” he told IPS.

Negotiations are being carried out through intermediaries.

”I do not want to get into whether my brother is guilty or not. I am only begging forgiveness for him on humanitarian grounds from the affected families, from the government, from God,” said Qayyum.

Ali, a former Pakistan navy physical training instructor, was arrested in 1998 for the death of two passers-by shot when he used his licensed revolver during a quarrel with a bus-driver. A district court sentenced him to death in April 1998. After all the appeals failed, he was issued with a ‘black warrant’ on Sep. 29 this year and his execution date was set for Oct. 8.

So far this year, Pakistan has executed 35 of its over 7,000 death row prisoners, according to I.A. Rehman, director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP).

Two years ago, Ali’s wife died of cancer. His two daughters, 10 and 11, are now cared for by Qayyum, 31, who has four children of his own.

Under the controversial Criminal Law (Amendment) Ordinance 1990, commonly known as the Qisas and Diyat Law, enacted in the name of Islam, families of murder victims may accept compensation (‘diyat’) or insist on retribution (‘qisas’) from a convicted murderer.

Rights activists say this law enables those with resources to ”buy” their way out of punishment. Many, like HRCP co-chair Iqbal Haider, a former law minister, also believe that the law has no divine sanctity.

”It is a man-made law which is inherently unjust as it gives the rich a licence to kill,” said Haider who has lobbied hard behind the scenes with representatives of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) to save Ali’s life on humanitarian grounds.

The Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission has also appealed to the Pakistan government for clemency on the grounds that Ali did not have adequate legal representation.

He was provided state-appointed lawyers at each stage of his trial, fulfilling the legal requirements. But state-appointed lawyers are poorly paid.

They also tend to be ”young and inexperienced or those without briefs — lawyers who should not be representing persons in death penalty cases,” the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a letter on Jun. 17. The letter urged Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani to commute all Pakistan’s death sentences to life imprisonment and abolish capital punishment.

Qayyum said that he had never ever met his brother’s lawyer appointed by the Supreme Court at the penultimate stage of appeal. In the final review stage, he had ”only spoken to the lawyer involved a couple of times on the phone”.

”Basically, they were just fulfilling formalities. He kept telling us that the [next] hearing dates had not been set, and then suddenly we were presented with the black warrant…. When I confronted him, he expressed total ignorance,” Qayyum said. ”I learnt from another lawyer that the Supreme Court had dismissed Zulfiqar’s final petition [against execution] because our lawyer was not present in court.”

Pakistani law provides no redress or remedy on the grounds of incompetent or ineffective legal representation, notes HRW.

Condemned prisoners are now clinging to the hope that Pakistan will issue a general amnesty for all those on death row.

On Jun. 21, Gilani told parliament that the death sentences would be commuted in honour of the memory of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, assassinated during a PPP election rally last December.

But the law ministry has still not finalised the details of the amnesty. Since the June announcement, 15 people have been executed, said Rehman. HRCP’s Iqbal Haider said the delay in carrying through the commutation promise was due to law minister Farooq Naek.

”The government wants it, but the law minister has given an adverse opinion because he is scared of the religious forces,” Haider told IPS. ”He has created complications by saying that death sentences cannot be commuted to life because of the qisas and diyat law.”

The electorate roundly rejected the religious parties in the general elections on Feb. 18. These parties, known for their displays of street power, form the main opposition to a moratorium on executions and the proposal to commute death sentences.

Haider said the powerful law minister could insist that ”Article 45 of the Constitution, which gives the president the power to grant a reprieve or pardon to a condemned prisoner, overrides qisas and diyat which is a man-made law with no divine sanction.”

PPP spokesman and former member of the Senate human rights committee, Farhatullah Babar, said that the death penalty ”should not be carried out in any case as it is irreversible”. He was hopeful that the country’s death sentences would be soon commuted.

Until the government fulfils its promise to commute death sentences to life imprisonment, the only hope for condemned prisoners like Zulfiqar Ali lies in clemency from the families of the deceased — and temporary presidential reprieves to buy them enough time to negotiate these.

Filed Under: Human Rights, Justice, Report

Q&A: ”We Are not Subversives, and We Demand Respect”

October 25, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Saturday, October 25, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Judith Henríquez Acuña interviews indigenous leader DANIEL PIÑACUÉ

VILLA RICA, Colombia, Oct 24 (IPS) – Colombian President Álvaro Uribe admitted that the security forces opened fire on indigenous protesters in the southwestern province of Cauca, but denies that they were responsible for the deaths of three demonstrators, said Daniel Piñacué, a leader of the Nasa community.

Piñacué, head of the governing council of Calderas, an indigenous reservation in the mountains of Cauca, and a prominent member of the powerful Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca (CRIC), was interviewed by IPS in the small town of Villa Rica.

The CRIC organised the ”minga” (a traditional indigenous meeting for the collective good), the name given to the march that set out from the La María Indian reservation, declared a ”territory of peace and co-existence” in the midst of Colombia’s civil war.

The 35,000 indigenous marchers, who belong to a number of different ethnic groups and come from 20 of Colombia’s 32 provinces (known as departments), expect to reach the city of Cali, the capital of the southwestern province of Valle del Cauca, on Saturday.

Piñacué, one of the leading spokespersons for the indigenous protest, told the media that the security forces had used live ammunition against the demonstrators, before the U.S. cable news network CNN broadcast a video this week taped by participants in the march that showed a uniformed man wearing a mask shooting in the direction of the protesters.

On Wednesday, Uribe acknowledged that the police had fired at the demonstrators.

But previously, the rightwing president had publicly called for Piñacué’s arrest.

On Thursday, Uribe gave in to the indigenous demonstrators’ demands for talks, and personally called Piñacué’s cell-phone to announce that he would meet with the leaders of the march on Sunday in Cali.

The protesters are demanding fulfillment of agreements signed with various governments since 1971. ”We want the president to set deadlines and timeframes for compliance with these commitments, and we want national and international observers to be present,” Piñacué told IPS late Thursday in Villa Rica, a small town along the Pan-American highway on the way from the La María reservation to Cali.

IPS: Uribe admitted that firearms were used against the protest. What is the indigenous movement’s view?

DANIEL PIÑACUÉ: The president finally recognised — because of a video, not because he believed it when we publicly told him — that the security forces have used violence against the peaceful indigenous march.

What he should also acknowledge is that three Indians were killed and more than 100 injured in the clashes with the army in La María. The wounded are being treated in hospitals in the towns of Popayán and Santander.

IPS: Uribe also agreed to talks. What will you demand in the dialogue?

DP: In first place, since we have been accused of being criminals and of inciting violence, we want our names cleared. We also don’t want to be treated as second-class citizens, and we want respect for our languages and our ancestral customs.

In addition, we are asking for an expansion of our reservations, legal title to our lands, and enough land to keep our cultures alive, work them, and obtain the products needed for the survival of our communities, in order to keep indigenous people from having to move to the cities, which is leading to the gradual loss of our cultural identity.

We are asking not to be violently pushed off our lands — a phenomenon that is facilitated by the Colombian government so that transnational companies can exploit our land, leaving us without water, and without minerals like iron, nickel and gold.

Furthermore, we are seeking the repeal of a number of laws that were passed without consulting us (as required by the constitution) by the illegitimate Congress elected by the narco-paramilitaries, and which hurt our communities: the laws on forestry, water and land. (The far-right paramilitaries, many of whose leaders have been extradited to the United States on drug trafficking charges, have publicly claimed that they control at least 35 percent of the members of Congress.)

IPS: Have the guerrillas infiltrated the indigenous march?

DP: Whenever a protest or march is held, the political leaders in this country always tell the media that the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) guerrillas are behind it, and that the subversives are manipulating and using the Indians or peasant farmers who are demonstrating for a just cause.

For us that’s an old story. But we have to make it clear to public opinion that we, who are standing up to demand respect for our rights and for the dignity and physical, cultural and political integrity of every one of our indigenous brothers and sisters, as well as the fulfillment of a number of agreements that have been ignored, are the only ‘subversives’ here.

Claiming the guerrillas have infiltrated the demonstration is false, and irresponsibly puts our lives at risk.

IPS: What should the international community know about what Colombia’s indigenous movement is asking for?

DP: They should know what things are really like. That we live in a battleground created by the armed sectors that for years have displaced us from the best lands, and forced us farther and farther up into the mountains.

They should know we are peaceful, hard-working people who are justly demanding our right to our land and the freedom and the right to demand humane, decent conditions to live in peace.

Filed Under: Commentary, Human Rights, Interview, Politics
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