Doctor hits out at govt drug policies
Annie Guest
08 Dec 2006 6:45 pm
MARK COLVIN: And as you heard, there's a link between the violence in emergency rooms, and drugs. And if there is a "war on drugs", as politicians often say there is, then its frontline is in the emergency wards of Australia's hospitals.
Now a senior emergency doctor has taken direct aim at the politicians.
Royal Adelaide Hospital's Dr David Caldicott says Federal and State Government drug policies are largely populist, and don't work.
He's told a Parliamentary Group for Drug Law Reform that there's no scientific evidence to support the war on drugs.
Afterwards, Annie Guest asked Dr Caldicott why he thought politicians approached the drug issue in the way they did.
DAVID CALDICOTT: I think they're turning to populist knee-jerk type policies, rather than looking at real issues that cause a reduction in the drug use, the drug harm and the number of deaths caused by drugs.
ANNIE GUEST: Well, if we take Federal Government policies, the Federal Government says its "tough on drugs policy" is working and it stands by strategies of policing and interdiction, saying that they've been highly successful in relation to, in particular, cannabis and heroin.
DAVID CALDICOTT: Well, you have to ask the question of course, whether or not the reduction in heroin use in Australia is in fact to do with policing or whether it's in fact to do with the reduction in supply in Australia.
If there was such a tremendous success in policing the heroin problem, why aren't we seeing similar decreases in, say, for example, the ecstasy problem.
We aren't, in fact we see the steady march of ecstasy in consumption, all around Australia.
Judge weighs torture claim vs. Rumsfeld
MATT APUZZO
08 Dec 2006 6:02 pm
A federal judge on Friday appeared reluctant to give Donald H. Rumsfeld immunity from torture allegations, yet said it would be unprecedented to let the departing defense secretary face a civil trial.
"What you're asking for has never been done before," U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan told lawyers for the
American Civil Liberties Union.
The group is suing on behalf of nine former prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan. The lawsuit contends the men were beaten, suspended upside down from the ceiling by chains, urinated on, shocked, sexually humiliated, burned, locked inside boxes and subjected to mock executions.
If the suit were to go forward, it could force Rumsfeld and the Pentagon to disclose what officials knew about abuses at prisons such as Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and what was done to stop it.
Rumsfeld, who leaves the Defense Department on Dec. 18, told Pentagon employees and reporters Friday that the day he learned about abuses at Abu Ghraib was his worst day in office.
"I remember being stunned by the news of the abuse at Abu Ghraib," Rumsfeld said. "And then watching so many determined people spend so many months trying to figure out exactly how in the world something like that could have happened, and how to make it right."
Lawyers for the ACLU and Human Rights First, however, argue that Rumsfeld and top military officials disregarded warnings about the abuse and authorized the use of illegal interrogation tactics that violated the constitutional rights of prisoners.
Foreigners outside the United States are not normally afforded the same protections as U.S. citizens, and Hogan said he was wary about extending the Constitution across the globe.
3 dead, 80 at large after Cancun prison riot
Associated Press
08 Dec 2006 1:43 pm
About 1,000 prisoners rioted in a state penitentiary early Friday, overpowering guards with knives and bats. Guards fired their weapons, killing three inmates, said Red Cross official Ricardo Portugal, who received the bodies.
Hundreds of state and federal police and soldiers rushed to the prison and had most of the facility under control later Friday morning, but gangs of prisoners still roamed free in some areas.
Groups of prisoners stood on the penitentiary roof holding bats and stones and carrying banners with slogans such as "No more deaths."
Prison director Juvenal Reyes said authorities had sent a negotiator, but prisoners had refused to talk with him.
The prisoners began fighting the guards to stop a transfer of 40 inmates, including alleged prison gang leader Marcos Gallegos, to a penitentiary in the city of Chetumal, 380 kilometers (235 miles) south, Reyes said. Gallegos is serving 17 years for the rape of minors, he said.
More than 150 prisoners escaped during the clashes, but about 70 were recaptured later Friday morning, Reyes said. Police were searching residential houses near the prison to find those still at large.
Several guards and prisoners were injured in the clashes.
Experts: How US 'gag rule' is killing women
Stephen Leahy
08 Dec 2006 1:47 am
While world attention has focused on the HIV/Aids pandemic, public health experts say that United States political interference and declining financial support for family planning, abortion and prevention of other sexually transmitted infections has contributed to shockingly high death and disability rates in developing countries.
Approximately 500,000 women die each year of causes related to pregnancy, abortion and childbirth, 99% of them in developing countries, according to the World Health Organisation.
"These deaths would not be tolerated in other circumstances," says Dorothy Shaw, senior associate dean of the faculty of medicine at the University of British Columbia in Canada.
Countries are failing in their responsibilities and promises to fund sexual and reproductive health programmes, including supporting universal access to contraception, Shaw says. Contraception alone would dramatically reduce abortion rates, she says.
"More than 68,000 women die every year from back-alley or self-induced abortions," notes Janie Benson, vice-president of research and evaluation at Ipas, an NGO focused on increasing women's ability to exercise their sexual and reproductive rights and preventing unsafe abortions worldwide.
"We need governments to decide that women's lives are worth saving," Benson says.
Changes in US policy could make a substantial contribution to improving the sexual and reproductive lives of people worldwide, according to a series of six reports coordinated by the World Health Organisation and being published in the British medical journal Lancet this week.
Medical Use of Marijuana Divides Italy
Francesca Colombo
08 Dec 2006 12:00 am
In Italy just 10 ill people have authorisation to use marijuana as therapy against pain. But that number could grow in the coming months if parliament approves a law for using this usually illegal plant for medical purposes.
Federico Fantoni, 58, is a doctor -- and a quadriplegic. For the past eight years he has used a wheelchair and suffers pain in his arms due to muscle contraction caused by his illness. To fight the pain he tried all possible medications, including opium patches, but he couldn't stand the side effects.
After learning more about the therapeutic use of marijuana (Cannabis sativa), he decided to try it. "In five hours I didn't feel any discomfort," he said in testimony for the Italian Association for Therapeutic Cannabis.
That group is part of the International Association for Cannabis as Medicine, whose objective is to improve the legal framework around the world for utilising marijuana and its pharmacological components in therapeutic applications.
The bill in Italy to legalise medical use of marijuana, presented in October by the Council of Ministers, prompted reactions in favour and against among politicians, experts and citizens.
Those opposed to medical marijuana doubt its therapeutic effects, warn about a potential increase in general use of the drug, and are calling for lawmakers to vote against the bill.
According to official figures, there are three million marijuana users in Italy, who are allowed to possess one gram for personal use. Because of the drug's psychotropic properties, and because some see its use as a gateway to more dangerous drugs, consumption of marijuana is banned in most countries.
But alternative medical clinics and patients with incurable diseases defend its use, pointing to its properties for alleviating pain.
"Doctors don't know much about the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes. It has never been included in pharmacology. Italy is one of the countries lagging farthest behind in Europe when it comes to alternative cures, but we already have cases of ill people who discovered it and assure that they live better," Pietro Moretti, a consultant for the Association for the Rights of Users and Consumers, told Tierramérica.
French police faulted in youths' deaths
VERENA VON DERSCHAU
07 Dec 2006 3:44 pm
An internal police review of the 2005 electrocutions of two teenagers that triggered weeks of rioting in poor French neighborhoods faulted police officers for their handling of the case, a lawyer for the victims' families said Thursday.
Lawyer Jean-Pierre Mignard said the report confirmed officers had indeed been chasing the teens before they were killed — which the Interior Ministry and police had initially denied.
Zyed Benna, 17, and Bouna Traore, 15, were electrocuted while hiding in a power station in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois on Oct. 27, 2005. A third teen, Muhittin Altun, was also hiding in the power station and survived with severe burns.
The report found the officers were "surprisingly distracted" and had acted with a "lack of thought," Mignard said. Excerpts also appeared in Le Monde newspaper.
The report said officers should immediately have notified French energy company EDF that the youths were hiding in the power station.
If the company had been alerted when one of the officers "realized the two youths could possibly enter the power station, EDF technicians would have intervened 15 minutes before the accident," the report said, adding that such steps would not necessarily have prevented the electrocutions.
The nationwide riots in fall 2005 raged through housing projects in troubled neighborhoods with large minority populations. Although they stemmed from the teens' deaths, they were fueled by problems including discrimination and unemployment.
Exclusive: Child Soldiers Recall Learning Lessons of War Instead of the Classroom
JERIKA RICHARDSON and LARA SETRAKIAN
07 Dec 2006 12:00 am
This holiday season, children across America will unwrap presents of virtual combat -- best-selling video games that simulate battle, with names like "Gears of War" and "Far Cry Vengeance."
But elsewhere, other children will play real war games.
Across Asia, Africa and Latin America, children as young as 6 years old are being forced into life as child soldiers.
Children you'd expect to see in a classroom are carrying AK-47s instead of books. Adult instructors are teaching their tiny pupils how to shoot to kill, instead of arithmetic.
The film "Blood Diamond," which stars Leonardo DiCaprio and will open nationwide in theaters Friday, follows the story of a Sierra Leone man who loses his young son to war funded by the sale of diamonds.
In reality, life as a child soldier is just as horrifying and perhaps more brutal than the story depicted in the DiCaprio film, as illustrated in footage of real child soldiers shown exclusively to ABC News.
"They'd whip us as punishment. If you made a mistake, they'd whip you up to 70 or even 120 times," said one child soldier in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
"They captured us as we were fleeing. If you refused [to join the soldiers,] they'd shoot you dead," said another child in the Congo who was interviewed by Amnesty International.
Under international law, the recruitment and use of soldiers younger than 18 years old is prohibited.
The recruitment and use of children younger than 15 is considered a war crime.
Yet in several countries -- particularly Sri Lanka, the Congo, the Ivory Coast, Colombia and Afghanistan -- the use of child soldiers is widespread.
According to the U.N. Children's Fund, roughly 300,000 child soldiers worldwide are participating in 30 armed conflicts.
While the problem of child soldiers has no easy solution, there are ways an individual American can have impact.
So what can you do to help?
You can also contact your elected officials to voice your opinion on the issue.
Purchasing jewelry made with non-conflict-related diamonds also can help by cutting off financing for wars that employ child soldiers.
Ask your jewelry store whether the merchandise it sells uses nonconflict diamonds. Follow this link http://www.blooddiamondaction.org to learn more information about how you can take action.
U.S. military prepares Haditha murder case charges
Reuters
06 Dec 2006 9:43 am
The U.S. military is expected to charge at least five U.S. Marines in the killing of 24 civilians in Haditha, Iraq, and the charges could include murder, defense officials said on Wednesday.
It was not known when the charges would come down but a Marine Corps official said it would not happen on Wednesday.
A Marine Corps general will brief members of the U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee behind closed doors on Wednesday morning about the military's months-long investigation of the case.
U.S. Marines have been accused of killing unarmed Iraqis in Haditha in November 2005. It is one of a series of cases in which U.S. troops have been suspected, and some convicted, of being involved in the murder of Iraqi civilians.
THE IDEAL POISON - Where Polonium Comes From
Manfred Dworschak
05 Dec 2006 12:00 am
Polonium is an extremely dangerous element that is mainly produced in Russian nuclear reactors. For a murderer, it is also an ideal poison. The radioactive metal sends out such strong alpha-rays that in the dark it glows a faint blue. But the deadly rays don't travel much more than five centimeters.
You can even hold polonium in your hand, since it is unable to penetrate skin. In fact, its destructive powers are only fully unleashed when the substance is swallowed -- even a miniscule amount can be fatal. In Alexander Litvinenko's case a milligram would have been sufficient.
Experts agree, though, that even such a small amount would have been very difficult to procure. "To produce the amounts required you would need to use a nuclear reactor," British toxicologist Nick Priest of the University of Middlesex told the BBC.
Extremely low levels of polonium are actually naturally present in the atmosphere and the ground. The shiny silvery metal is created in several stages as uranium decays, and it also decays extremely rapidly. As a result, a ton of uranium ore contains only one ten thousandth of a gram of the deadly substance.
Patient assassins with plenty of time could use a chemical process to produce polonium from uranium. "There is even a book that explains how it can be done," notes Herwig Paretzke of the GSF National Research Center for Environment and Health in Neuherberg near Munich.
But this method only creates insignificant quantities of the element. Nuclear reactors, on the other hand, can be used to artificially generate larger amounts of the highly valuable substance. Russia exports about eight grams per month to the US, its sole buyer, with a single gram selling for about $2 million.
Polonium was discovered by Marie Curie in 1898. She won the Nobel Prize for her efforts and named the element after her home country, Poland.
Scientists have found a wide range of applications for the element since that time.
More radiation checks in spy probe
CNN
04 Dec 2006 2:41 pm
British investigators were checking two more locations, including a London hotel, for possible radiation contamination in their probe of the fatal polonium-210 poisoning of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko.
Britain's Health Protection Agency said Monday it was monitoring the Parkes Hotel in Chelsea and 1 Cavendish Place in central London after being informed by the Metropolitan Police that those addresses had become part of their investigation.
Radiation testing at the Best Western Hotel on London's Shaftesbury Avenue found no reason for health concerns, according to the Health Protection Agency.
The latest development came as a team of nine Scotland Yard detectives arrived in Moscow to continue their inquiries into the ex-KGB agent's death.
As Russia's foreign minister warned that the continued furore over the Litvinenko case risked damaging relations between the two countries, lawyers for another former security officer, Mikhail Trepashkin, who is now in prison in central Russia, appealed to the British officers to collect testimony as soon as possible.
They said he possessed key evidence in the case, but that his life was in danger.
Litvinenko, 43, died on November 23 in London after ingesting radioactive polonium-210. In a deathbed accusation, he blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin for the poisoning. The Kremlin has vehemently denied the accusations.
In a letter from prison in the Urals, Trepashkin, who is serving a four-year sentence for revealing state secrets, has said he had warned Litvinenko several years ago about a government-sponsored death squad that intended to kill him and other Kremlin opponents.
His supporters demanded Monday that Trepashkin be given an opportunity to testify to the British police officers, saying he was not receiving adequate treatment for asthma in prison.
Manila court finds U.S. Marine guilty of rape
Manny Mogato
04 Dec 2006 10:49 am
A Philippine court found one of four U.S. Marines guilty of raping a Filipino woman inside a van at a former U.S. navy base last year, sentencing the 21-year-old sailor to life in prison for "bestial acts."
The three other Marines were acquitted on Monday after a seven-month trial, which had prompted small protests against U.S.-Philippine military ties and intense local media interest.
The Philippine government hailed the result but said the verdict would do nothing to harm close relations with the United States, which provides funding, equipment and training to Filipino troops fighting Muslim and communist rebel groups.
"The court is morally convinced that Lance Corporal Daniel Smith committed the crime charged," a clerk said, reading the decision of Judge Benjamin Pozon to a hushed, packed courtroom.
The verdict, which included an order for Smith to pay 100,000 pesos ($2,000) in damages to the victim and her family, will automatically go to a higher court for review.
Children cross U.S. border solo as security rises
Tim Gaynor
04 Dec 2006 8:34 am
Slipping into the United States, eight-year-old Adrian Ramirez began a three-day trek across the cactus-studded wastes with just a small bag of tortillas and one large hope keeping him going.
"I wanted to spend Christmas with my father in New York, but they caught us," he said, perching on a chair at a center for child migrants in this bustling city on the Arizona border.
Picked up and swiftly repatriated by the U.S. Border Patrol, the Triqui Indian from Mexico's poor Oaxaca state is one of a growing number of children trying to cross the border into the United States without their parents.
Since January, Mexican authorities say some 6,800 youngsters have been repatriated to northern Sonora state after crossing into southern Arizona, a rise of 20 percent over the same period last year.
They say most are seeking to join moms and dads who already live stateside but who are increasingly reluctant to head back to Mexico to pick up their children because of tighter security along the 2,000-mile (3,200-km) line.
"The parents know that they can't come back because of increased security," said Humberto Valdes, of Mexico's family welfare agency in the northern state of Sonora.
"Now they are sending for their children to come and join them ... and they obviously don't know the risks they are exposing them to."
The majority are taken north by professional guides or "coyotes," in a booming child smuggling trade where parents pay hefty fees of $3,000 to $5,000 to be reunited with their children -- twice the amount charged for adults -- welfare workers say.
"They treat them like merchandise, and it's very profitable," Valdes told Reuters.
For the children, many of whom have a limited sense of the world they are moving through, the journey to U.S. cities sometimes thousands of miles away, is a frightening and bewildering experience.
Welfare workers in Nogales say youngsters also face other dangers while in the hands of coyotes, including sexual abuse.
One recent case involved a 14-year-old girl told by a smuggler that sex was all part of the package for taking her north to join her parents.
But with border security on the rise as ever more technology, fencing and agents are deployed to the international line, authorities fear the situation is here to stay.
"It's lamentable," said Valdes. "But every indication is that the phenomenon is growing."
Spy's death brings radioactive and political fallout
Ian Cobain, Jeevan Vasagar
26 Nov 2006 12:00 am
THE mysterious death of a former Russian spy living in exile in London has become an unprecedented public health scare following the revelation that he was deliberately poisoned with a major dose of radioactive material.
Further traces of the substance were found at a sushi restaurant, at a central London hotel where Alexander Litvinenko met a number of people before falling ill, and at his home in the city.
He was killed by polonium 210, a rare radioactive isotope that is so toxic that there may never be a postmortem examination of Mr Litvinenko's body, for fear of causing further deaths.
Police and security sources said they had never encountered such an extraordinary death. "Nothing like this has ever happened before," said one government source. "It is unprecedented, we are in uncharted territory." One priority last night was to establish who has access to polonium 210 anywhere in the world.
Government ministers, meanwhile, are said to be "dreading" the possible repercussions of a public inquest into Mr Litvinenko's death, at which they expect his associates to make damning accusations against the Russian Government.
Health officials were yesterday contacting up to 100 people, including doctors, nurses, hospital staff and relatives, who came into contact with the former spy during the three weeks he spent at two London hospitals, so that each can be screened for signs of contamination.
The Health Protection Agency stressed that the risk to hospital staff was extremely low, as alpha radiation from the former agent's body would need to be breathed in, swallowed, or enter an open wound before causing harm. Normal hospital practices should prevent this. Nor would anybody be at risk just because they had been close to Mr. Litvinenko.
However, the agency said it could not assess the level of risk to members of the public who had visited locations contaminated with the substance. Professor Roger Cox, director of the agency's centre for radiological, chemical and environmental hazards, said there was insufficient information to make such an assessment. Last night police were refusing to say how much of the substance was found at the hotel and restaurant, or at Mr. Litvinenko's house in Muswell Hill, north London.
N.Irish paramilitary charged with Adams murder bid
Anne Cadwallader
25 Nov 2006 8:15 am
Northern Irish paramilitary Michael Stone was charged on Saturday with the attempted murder of Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams after he stormed into Belfast's parliament building with a bag of homemade explosives.
Stone, a supporter of British rule, lobbed a smoking and fizzing package into the entrance of Belfast's Stormont parliament buildings on Friday as pro-Irish and pro-British political parties were debating self-rule for the province.
Stormont was evacuated and Stone arrested. The army later defused between six and eight devices, which police Chief Constable Hugh Orde described as "amateurish in design."
Sinn Fein, political ally of the IRA, ultimately wants to unite the province with Ireland but is in talks on sharing power with pro-British opponents in a devolved local government.
Friday's incident disrupted fraught discussions on that assembly, which would unite in government parties with starkly opposing political and religious views after decades of sectarian conflict in which some 3,600 people died.
The debate had to be suspended just 40 minutes in and without a clear indication from pro-British hardliners, the Democratic Unionist party, as to who they would nominate to leade a power-sharing assembly.
But London and Dublin still plan to push on with a timetable agreed last month that envisages assembly elections in March.
Stone was jailed for life following his 1988 cemetery attack, in which three people died and scores were injured, but was released six years ago under Northern Ireland's Good Friday peace agreement. He vowed then his days as a gunman were over.
Payback fears against Maoists as search for children begins
Connie Levett
25 Nov 2006 12:00 am
The biggest challenge to peace in Nepal will come in the villages rather than the camps where former Maoist fighters are to be confined.
That is the opinion of Ian Martin, the United Nations envoy who will monitor the lockdown of arms by both sides.
Concerns have been raised about reprisals in remote villages against the Maoists when they give up their guns because of the way they ruled the communities — extorting "donations", confiscating scarce food supplies and kidnapping children for indoctrination and military service.
"The crucial issue is how far the climate of reconciliation in Kathmandu will move down to the districts and villages. I am sure it won't be easy," Mr Martin said in a phone interview.
He was speaking after the first day of negotiations with government leaders and the Maoists to thrash out details of how the arms handover and lockdown in camps will work.
"The atmosphere was very good," he said.
The Maoists have long been criticised for using children in the armed struggle. This week there were fresh reports of child conscriptions into the People's Liberation Army and a sign that villagers were no longer willing to accept this.
In Palpa, in central Nepal, villagers blocked roads and searched buses filled with Maoist cadres for missing children.
Under the peace accord, no soldiers under 18 will be in the camps, Mr Martin said.
"It's not that they (the children) won't be allowed into the camps but they will be immediately demobilised," he said.
"There are two different issues, one of new recruits of children, this is not acceptable. But if they turn out to be under 18 but have been in the PLA, we will move rapidly to get them out. UNICEF is preparing programs to deal with this."
Mr Martin will return to New York this weekend to brief UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. The Security Council must approve the mission and a further assessment mission will be needed before monitors arrive.
From child slave to author
Nitika Mansingh
24 Nov 2006 12:00 am
She was sold by a grandmother into sexual bondage at age 14, entered a psychiatric hospital at 16 and become a prostitute in Japan at 19 but Barbara Biggs has no regrets.
"I am what I am today because of what happened," says the author, aspiring politician and campaigner for child protection and sexual health.
Speaking at her stall at Melbourne Sexpo promoting her books In Moral Danger, The Road Home, The Accidental Renovator: A Paris Story and the most recent Sex and Money: How To Get More, Ms Biggs says she was treated like a sex toy by the 42-year-old barrister to whom she was sold, an experience that caused her to suppress her "true feelings" and behave in a manner that can only be described as non-self-respecting for the next 20 years. It is no surprise to hear her talk of "those years of hyper-dysfunction" as an addiction and although she has found a way to financial freedom and a deeply satisfying sex life, the past continues to haunt her.
"Every time I think I'm over it, something happens to bury me once again in that same dark pit I've been trying to escape all my life," she says.
Ms Biggs considers herself "very lucky" in a country where the flesh trade generates more than $50 million a year, according to a report by the Australian Institute of Criminology.
The United Nations has pegged the annual human trafficking figure at about 900,000 women and children across international borders, many of whom end up as indentured slaves in the sex industry. An estimated 1000 of these women, mostly from Asia, are sold into Australian brothels.
Chatting about developing countries, unlike Australia, where she would never have had the likelihood of promoting herself as a former sex worker, Ms Biggs is under no misconception that she is a product of a developed and a post-feminist world.
Ms Biggs is campaigning about People Power party's child protection and sexual health policies and is that party's upper house candidate for the Northern Metropolitan Region.
"Imagine a future where even one generation of children are ... raised without the long-term damage caused by abuse," she says and although it might be an impossible dream, she doesn't flinch from the endeavour.
The Melbourne 2006 Sexpo is on until November 26.
No jail for teacher in sex assault
SAM PAZZANO
23 Nov 2006 12:00 am
A former Upper Canada College teacher convicted of sexually assaulting male students while they prepared for a science project was spared jail time yesterday.
Lorne Cook was instead sentenced to house arrest for abusing his "significant power in a way that violated the sexual integrity" of a 12- and 13-year-old boy by touching their genitals in 1991 and 1993.
The assaults occurred in Grade 7 science class while preparing for "mock kidney transplants," the same project that garnered him a Prime Minister's Award for teaching excellence in 1993. He retired in 1994.
"He didn't do so for sexual gratification ... but was in furtherance of his desire to increase the authenticity of the mock operation, a misguided initiative insofar as it included the use of catheters," Justice Brian Trafford said in sentencing Cook, 67, to a one-year conditional sentence. The first 30 days are to be served under virtual house arrest.
Trafford said having Cook serve his sentence in the community would not endanger the public.
However Trafford prohibited Cook from seeking teaching work -- paid or volunteer -- with anyone under 14 unless accompanied by another adult.
Russian Federation: Torture and forced "confessions" in detention
Amnesty International
22 Nov 2006 12:00 am
In May 2002, the UN Committee against Torture (CAT) examined the Russian Federation’s third periodic report of its implementation of obligations under the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (Convention against Torture). While noting some positive steps, the CAT stated that it was deeply concerned over, among other things, "numerous and consistent allegations of widespread torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment of detainees committed by law enforcement personnel, commonly with a view to obtaining confessions".
This month, the CAT has been examining the fourth periodic report and what progress the Russian Federation has made since May 2002, towards eliminating torture and other ill-treatment, including during police custody and pre-trial detention.
Amnesty International continues to be seriously concerned at the incidence of torture and ill-treatment in police custody and pre-trial detention, and the inadequate state response to tackle the violations. Amnesty International regularly receives reports of torture or other ill-treatment across the Russian Federation.
Pakistan to amend rape laws
Associated Press
15 Nov 2006 7:44 pm
Pakistan lawmakers passed amendments to the country's contentious rape laws, making it easier for victims to prosecute their attackers, and dropping the death penalty and flogging as punishments for extramarital sex.
Islamist fundamentalists, however, were furious and stormed out of parliament in protest at Wednesday's vote.
President Gen. Pervez Musharraf applauded the lawmakers and said it was necessary to amend the "unjust rape laws" in order to protect women.
The changes, which must still be approved by the Senate, give judges discretion to try rape cases in a criminal rather than Islamic court, where women have to present at least four witnesses for a conviction. Musharraf urged the Senate to pass the Protection of Women Bill within days.
The new legislation comes amid Musharraf's efforts to soften the country's hard-line Islamic image.
The amendments won cautious support from human rights activists, but they urged the government to take bolder steps and scrap the law, known as the Hudood Ordinance.
Pro-Islamic lawmakers, however, threatened to block the bill's passage in the Senate.
Sex offender freed to kill
15 Nov 2006 12:00 am
A CONVICTED sex predator will be sentenced today for abducting and murdering his neighbour while out on early parole against prison advice.
Paul Anthony Vaughan – jailed for five years in May 2000 after kidnapping and attempting to rape a teenage girl – was released on parole for that crime after serving only two years.
On August 30, 2004 – two years after leaving jail – he abducted Nina Lewis, 26, from her home in Leichardt, Queensland. Vaughan killed her five months short of his full time release date.
In 2002, prison authorities opposed Vaughan's release when he applied to the Queensland West Moreton Regional Community Board for parole. He was released on May 13, 2002.
Vaughan's low intellect meant he could not complete the sex offender treatment program and his assessment unit report said there was no way to predict if he would re-offend.
"It also stated that there was no other way to assess Vaughan's risk of recidivism or if he had adequately addressed his offending behaviour," a Corrective Services spokesman said.
The department also confirmed a home assessment conducted as part of Vaughan's parole application had deemed his plan to move back in with his wife as unsuitable because she had been convicted as a co-offender in an unrelated crime in 1999.
However, the spokesman said the parole board interviewed his wife and overruled the department, agreeing to the placement in the couple's Aspinall St home.
Vaughan now faces life in jail after pleading guilty to Ms Lewis's murder in a pre-trial hearing at the Brisbane Supreme Court on Monday.
Demonstrators flood Oaxaca
Associated press
04 Nov 2006 4:54 pm
Rickety buses and cars carrying leftists from across Mexico rolled into Oaxaca's university Saturday to join protesters preparing for a massive march to confront police.
Demonstrators plan to march Sunday from the university to police encampments in the center of the city as part of their five-month protest to oust the state's governor.
At least nine people have died since August in the unrest, which has rattled outgoing President Vicente Fox's administration. The planned march has sparked fears of more violence in the colonial city that was once one of the country's main tourist attractions.
Protest leader Flavio Sosa, who is wanted by state police on conspiracy and riot charges, said the marchers will not look for a fight Sunday, but he fears police may provoke one.
Mexico's largest leftist group, the Democratic Revolution Party, has said it would join the protesters who want to form human chains around federal police detachments that enter the city.
The public university of 30,000 students in this southern city has been transformed into a stronghold for protesters since Fox sent in thousands of federal police last weekend to drive protesters from the city center which they had seized. The demonstrators poured onto the campus after the police pushed them out of the main plaza, where they had camped out for months.
Masked men armed with bats and gasoline bombs patrolled the university's gates Saturday, while the student radio station blared pleas to fight police. The lawns were filled with barbed wire and booby traps.
There have been no classes at the school this week, just talk of revolution, the building of makeshift weapons and drawn-out fights with police.
"The university has always been a center of progressive thinking, so it's natural that it has become the center of our revolt," Sosa said.
Federal police, who tried but failed Thursday to clear barricades on a street just outside the university, are not allowed to enter the campus under a law designed to protect academic freedom.
Gems in a Graveyard
Rod Nordland
03 Nov 2006 8:39 pm
Asked what he hopes to do in life, the Congolese youngster doesn’t hesitate. “I’m going to be a medical doctor,” declares Kamwala Bijicka, 13. He’s interrupted by a tug on the rope he’s holding. His 15-year-old brother, Marcel, is signaling from the bottom of the 40-foot hole in the ground: the next load is ready to go. Kamwala and his other brother, Kalombo, 14, begin hoisting yet another 50-pound sack of earth and rocks to the surface. The boys would be in school, but they can’t go back until their fees are paid. For now they’re hauling bag after 50-pound bag of dirt out of the pit. Their mother, Marie, meticulously screens every sackful in hope of discovering a few tiny diamonds. With luck, she’ll find enough to buy food for the family. They haven’t had a meal for a couple of days. They wish for a stone big enough to give them a real future. “I want to become a doctor because there are so many people suffering, and I’d like to help them,” Kamwala says.
His dreams, along with those of Congo’s 63 million other inhabitants, depend largely on whether the country’s civil war has finally ended with the United Nations-sponsored presidential election on Oct. 29. The merciless fighting killed an estimated 4 million people and practically destroyed every chance of economic development in a nation that could be among the richest in Africa. Congo has rich deposits of not only diamonds but of everything from uranium and gold to cobalt and tin—not to mention coltan, a crucial mineral in manufacturing cell phones. “They say every element in the periodic table is here,” says Jean Tobie Okala, a spokesman for the U.N. mission to the Congo. “Illegals are doing a good job of getting the stuff out of here one way or another.” Such a good job, in fact, that neighboring Uganda, which has no gold of its own, has become a major exporter of it, and Rwanda, with no coltan deposits, has markets in the capital where the rare substance is bought and sold.
Desperation brought millions of people to the diamond fields of Mbuji Mayi. Most have found nothing but the same grinding poverty that afflicts Kamwala and his family. The city was built around Congo’s richest gem deposits, in the remote Kasai Oriental region, but it’s one of the poorest parts of a desperately poor country. With a population conservatively estimated at 3.3 million (the mayor claims it’s 4.3 million), Mbuji Mayi may well be the largest city on earth without running water or citywide electricity. The country’s only major mining company, Société Miniere de Bakwanga (MIBA), state-run but 20 percent privately owned, holds concessions to huge tracts of diamond-rich land around the city. Even so, Congolese authorities have been unable to stop hordes of wildcat miners from digging for diamonds by hand.
They barely survive.
Beijing Hosts Africa's Leaders: Just Don't Mention Darfur
SIMON ELEGANT
03 Nov 2006 12:00 am
The depth of Beijing's investment in its growing relationship with Africa was evident in the arrangements for the China-Africa summit that opened here on Friday. The government has banned nearly half a million of its own officials from using their cars during the summit and taken other measures to keep Beijing's usually clogged streets clear, ordered schools to close early on two critical days, and deployed some 800,000 security personnel to maintain order. The summit is expected to draw some 1,500 African politicians, businessmen and journalists (including 48 heads of state) in a gala climax to years of work by Beijing in nurturing its ties with Africa.
In the last year alone, three top Chinese leaders, including President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao, have made extended trips to the continent. Nor is the relationship simply one of political solidarity among developing nations: China's trade with Africa has quintupled since 2000 and its annual total is expected to hit $50 billion in 2006, and then to double again by 2010. China now imports about a quarter of its crude oil from Africa.
Chinese officials are at pains to emphasize that the country's intentions in Africa are altruistic as well as commercial. A prickly commentary by the state news agency Xinhua recently noted that China has waived about $1.4 billion of debt owed by 31 heavily indebted African countries. The article defended Beijing against the charge that it was engaging in "neo-colonialism" in Africa, outlining its long history of support for independence movements and newly independent governments in Africa. Criticism of Beijing's role in Africa, it argued, came from those who were "fearful of China's fast growth."
Still, the volume of criticism has risen sharply with the summit approaching. Last week, World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz blasted Chinese banks for ignoring human rights and environmental issues in their lending in Africa. In an interview with the Paris-based Les Echos daily, Wolfowitz also said there was a danger that indiscriminate lending could plunge countries that had benefited from debt relief back into the red. But the harshest criticism has been over China's role in Sudan, where it owns some 40% of the country's oil production facilities. Critics charge that Beijing has failed international efforts to stop what U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan has called the genocide currently under way in the country's Darfur region — and that China has even impeded the efforts of others to do so at the U.N.
