Burma

The monks and protesters march.

The Junta deploys troops and declares a curfew: at least they can’t play the al-Qaeda card against Buddist monks.

World ‘leaders’ call for restraint.

We watch, wait and hope.

update 26/09/2007: the Junta appears to have begun a bloody crackdown. Burma Digest reports at least one monk beaten to death and some 200 arrested near the Shwedagon Pagoda; one woman shot dead near the Sule Pagoda; tear gas and live amunition used in Mandalay; clashes in Sittwe. The monks and people are still on the streets.

update 27/09/2007: Al-Jazeera has a telephone interview with Uppekha, a representative of the All Burma Buddhist Monks Alliance, in Mandalay who listed their demands:

The first step is to reduce all commodity prices, fuel prices, rice and cooking oil prices immediately.

The second step — release all political prisoners, including Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and all detainees arrested during ongoing demonstrations over the fuel price hike.

The third step — enter a dialogue with pro-democracy forces for national reconciliation immediately, to resolve the crisis and difficulties facing and suffered by the people.

100,000 people joined yesterday’s protests in Yangon (Rangoon). Overnight, hundreds of monks and other activists , including Aung San Suu Kyi’s spokesman, were arrested in raids. Today, troops using ‘minimum force’ killed at least nine people. including a Japanese journalist.

According to the BBC, George Bush  ’has made it clear that we will not stand by as the regime tries to silence the voices of the Burmese people through repression and intimidation’; but in Mandalay, Uppekha says: ‘We don’t understand why the UN aren’t helping us. They are just talking, talking, blowing in the wind.’

update 28/09/2007:  according to the BBC, Australian Ambassador Bob Davis told his country’s media that the death toll might be ’several multiples of the 10 acknowledged by the authorities’.

rendition rumbles on

Some interesting stories brewing:

• The first criminal trial over the CIA’s ‘extraordinary rendition’ of terror suspects has opened in Italy: 26 Americans — mostly alleged to be CIA agents — and 6 Italians are accused of kidnapping Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr (Abu Omar) in Milan and sending him to Egypt, where he was allegedly tortured. Perhaps George Bush could do his bit for US—Italian relations by commenting on extradition when he visits Italy after the G8.
• Council of Europe investigator, Dick Marty, says he now has evidence to prove that secret CIA prisons ‘did exist in Europe from 2003 to 2005, in particular in Poland and Romania’.
• Amnesty International and other Human Rights organisations have published Off the Record, a report listing 39 ‘ghost’ prisoners who may have disappeared. In 3 cases detention by the United States has been officially acknowledged and but the detainees’ fate and whereabouts remain unknown; in a further 18 cases there is ’strong evidence’ of secret detention by the United States but the detainees’ fate and whereabouts remain unknown.

update 09/06/2007: The BBC reports that Greater Manchester Police (GMP) have concluded their investigation into Liberty’s allegations that Britain was used as a staging-post for rendition. A Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) statement says that having ‘examined all the information available relating to this issue and has concluded that there is indeed no evidence to substantiate Liberty’s allegations’ (my emphasis). I think that phrase is the crux of the matter. The British government appears to have been very careful to ensure that no one asked who or what was being carried on CIA flights — ‘turned a blind eye’ (EU Parliament report) — so if a detainee remained on the plane they would have been invisible. So on the basis of the information available, it is totally unsurprising that there is ‘no evidence’, however diligent were the police inquiries.

According to Sky News, Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, has accused ACPO of ’spin’ and questioned whether there has in fact been any investigation; she said the group had received a letter from Chief Constable Mike Todd of GMP on behalf of ACPO on Friday ‘refusing’to investigate. Sky headline their report with a quote that the UK ‘did Not Allow CIA Torture Flights’ but this quote — which is a lot stronger than ‘no evidence’ — is not attributed in their report and I can not validate from either the GMP or ACPO websites.

Whatever, nothing is proved or disproved by this ‘investigation’; the circumstantial evidence (eg flight paths) and the governmement’s lack of co-operation with the Council of Europe and EU Parliament investigations continue to pose unanswered questions.

World Press Freedom Day

Today is World Press Freedom Day, sponsored by the World assocition of Newspapers.

Reporters without Borders maintains a press freedom barometer; the current reading for this year is: 24 journalists and 5 media assistants killed; 125 journalists and 4 media assistants imprisoned; 65 cyber-dissidents imprisoned. Only this week: Selvarajah Rajivarnam, a reporter working for the daily Uthayan, was murdered in Jaffna; Alan Johnston is still being held in Gaza; radio and TV presenter Amal Al-Mudarress is reportedly in a coma after being shot several times as she left her Baghdad home; journalist Dare Folorunso was beaten unconscious by police in Nigeria. Meanwhile in the Western democracies the insidious side-effects of the ‘war on terror’ are severely eroding the capacity, and willingness, of journalists to investigate and report accurately and critically, and thus the ability of the press to inform.

Yes we need more press freedom.

update 04/05/2007: And then, as if to prove the point, a court in Azerbaijan has jailed two journalists, Samir Sadagatoglu and Rafik Tagi, for writing and printing a newspaper article that was critical of Islam. (source: al-Jazeera)

update 15/05/2007: I really should have put a link in here to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) which is an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to the global defense of press freedom.

US ‘will lose the war’

According to a new ABC News/Washington Post poll, for the first time a majority (51%) of Americans now believe the USA will lose the war in Iraq (up from 27% in December 2005), and a new high (66%) now say the war was not worth fighting in the first place.

Moreover, most Americans (57%) now reject Bush’s argument that winning in Iraq is necessary to win the broader war against terrorism. That echoes a change, that appeared in January and continues today, in which most (56%) also favour eventual withdrawal, even if civil order is not restored. But they remain evenly split on the issue of setting a timetable for withdrawal.

Meanwhile, as the insurgency increases in strength and the ‘Surge’ puts more troops in harm’s way, April is on track to be be one of the deadliest months for Coalition forces. And in Baghdad the car bombs continue to explode.

Shock & Awe

At 05:33 local time (approx 02:30 GMT) on 20 March 2003 explosions were heard in Baghdad: the start of the ‘Shock & Awe’ campaign that delivered more than 1,500 bombs and missiles across Iraq in its first 24 hours. George Bush announced that the objectives were ‘to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein’s support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people’; funny, when I listened to him yesterday he simply stated it was to remove Saddam — moving the goalposts just a little.

I guess we’re all a bit shocked and awed by the consequences. However, bad we thought it would be (short of a full scale Middle East War), it’s turned out worse:  there were no WMD nor even a functioning programme to develop WMD; Saddam had no links with al-Qaeda; a civilian death-toll of between 59,326 (Iraq Body Count) and a million; the worse refugee crisis in the Middle East since the Palestinians (including 1.2m in Syria, 800,000 in Jordan, 2m internally displaced & displacement continuing at 50,000 per month according to the UNHCR) made worse by what the UNHCR calls the ‘abject denial’ of the humanitarian impact of invading Iraq; a situation in Iraq where civil war ‘does not adequately capture the complexity of the conflict’ according to the Pentagon; 70% lack adequate water supplies, while 80% do not have effective sanitation, almost a quarter of children are chronically malnourished according to the UNHCR — worse than under Saddam during the UN sanctions; al-Qaeda active and regrouping; it just goes on and on.

So it’s hardly surprising that the USA Today poll reveals just how badly the Coalition has lost the battle for hearts and minds: 78% of all Iraqis (83% of Shiites and 97% of Sunni Arabs) oppose the presence of coalition forces in Iraq — only the Kurds support them; more Iraqis blame the Coalition for the violence than anybody else — almost twice as many as blame al-Qaeda; 51% believe attacks on the Coalition are acceptable  — up from 17% in 2004, and including a staggering 94% of Sunni Arabs; by more than 3 to 1, Iraqis say the presence of US forces is making the security situation worse; by nearly 2 to 1, they believe the ‘Surge’ will make things worse rather than better; only 35% want the troops to leave immediately but almost all want them gone within six months to a year.

And then there’s the collateral damage to America’s (and the UK’s) standing in the world: the damage to relations with European countries, including members of NATO; the blatant bullying of allies; the lies; the abuse at Abu Ghraib; the kidnappings; the torture allegations; the prosecutions of CIA agents and US military even by their allies (and the US’s contempt for the rule of law in response); the whole rendition saga; the findings of unlawful killing against US forces in UK courts (and again a refusal to give evidence at inquests); the obscencity of Guantamamo.

Shock and Awe indeed.

It’s someone’s birthday

It’s someone’s birthday today. Now I wouldn’t expect George W to send him a card. But isn’t it strange how little attention his continuing freedom, in the face of the largest manhunt in history, merits in the US media: no mention above the fold at the New York Times or Washington Post; nothing at ABC News; nothing at FoxNews; latest news link with no image at CNN; only Reuters gives it any prominence (second item with small image). George W is conveniently out of the country and the White House only seems to be talking about Latin America.

This man, who is not news, turns 50 today, alive and free; Michael McConnell, director of national intelligence, tells congress that al Qaeda is regrouping.

If I was in the US media, especially the New York media, I’d have something to say about that — questions to ask.