'No Go' in Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe Negotiations Break Down
originally published: 29th July 2008

Negotiations between Robert Mugabe's party and the Zimbabwe opposition to end the political crisis have ended in deadlock.

The opposition MDC has said that the only offer forthcoming from Mugabe's Zanu-PF was that Morgan Tsvangirai should be made vice-president - with no executive powers. An MDC official told the Reuters news agency: "The talks have reached a deadlock and cannot be moved forward. "Apparently, the Zanu-PF negotiators were only mandated to negotiate around the vice presidency and nothing else."

Senior negotiators from the two parties started the talks last Thursday, with the objective of finding a solution to Zimbabwe's political and economic crisis, including the possibility of forming a unity government.

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Poli-Tricks and Just-Ice

Zimbabwe Vote Rigging
originally published: 4th July 2008
all credits: Sky News

Secret footage showing how Robert Mugabe's supporters rigged Zimbawe's elections has been uncovered.

A prison guard working in Harare central jail used a hidden camera to capture images of people being forced to fill in their ballot papers in front of Zanu-PF officials. Having passed the video to The Guardian newspaper, Shepherd Yuda, 36, then fled the country with his wife and children.

He hoped the footage would help draw further attention to the violence and corruption in Zimbabwe - to which he lost his uncle, who was an opposition supporter, two months ago. Using a hidden camera, Yuda filmed the days running up to the run-off election in which Mugabe claimed victory with 90% of the vote.

Morgan Tsvangirai, the Movement of Democratic Change (MDC) leader, had earlier said his party would not be participating in the run-off because of intimidation. "I had never seen that kind of violence before," said Yuda, of the run-up to the election. "How can a government that claimed to be democratically elected kill its people, murder its people, torture its people?" Yuda filmed prison officers having to fill out of their forms in front of Zanu-PF supporters. He also shot rallies where voters were told they should pretend to be illiterate so that an official could fill in their ballot for them on behalf of Mugabe. He was able to film the MDC's general secretary, Tendai Biti, in leg irons in jail.

Biti, now on bail, faces treason charges which carry the death penalty. He said of leaving the country: "I don't regret doing this, although it is a painful decision I have taken. "We can live without the memories of seeing dead bodies in the prison, dead bodies in the street, dead bodies in my family. "I've lost my uncle. My father was also beaten by Zanu-PF. I am praying to God: please God deal with Zanu-PF ruthlessly."

Read other items from this source >

Free Zimbabwe on Global Pulse >
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Investigator Blasts U.S. Justice System
30th June 2003

After a two-week fact-finding tour of U.S. prison and detention facilities, a U.N. human rights investigator has blasted the administration of President George W. Bush for a rash of shortcomings in the country's flawed justice system and continued violations of the rule of law.

Unleashing a stinging barrage of attacks, Professor Philip Alston, the U.N. special rapporteur on extra-judicial, summary and arbitrary executions, singles out the existence of racism in the application of the death penalty in the United States, and the lack of transparency in the deaths of prisoners in the Guantanamo Bay detention facility housing suspected terrorists.

Full Report >
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Rise Festival 'Down-graded'

Mayor of London cuts anti-racism from Rise festival
received: 19th May 2008
all credits: NAAR

The National Assembly Against Racism (NAAR) has been informed by the Greater London Authority that anti-racism will no longer be a central element of the annual 'Rise: London united against racism festival' due to take place in July. A free anti-racist music festival has been held in London by the trade unions since 1996. Since 2001 this was supported by the Mayor of London, the trade unions and the National Assembly Against Racism - Britain's broadest anti-racist coalition. It was Europe's largest anti-racist music festival.

The festival has consistently attracted major international and homegrown talent to perform for fees far less than the would commercially command because of the anti racist message. In 2005, the festival, with artists including artists Lemar , Billy Bragg and Suggs , was part of a series of events helping celebrate London's unity in the aftermath of the terrorist bombings of 7 July that year.

This year the central anti-racist message of the festival has been dropped by Boris Johnson's administration. Initial publicity for the festival confirms this dropping the message 'London united against racism' - indeed not mentioning racism at all.

A spokesperson for NAAR said:

"We were contacted by the Greater London Authority last week and told anti-racism will no longer be the central message of the Rise festival. This is confirmed by initial publicity which drops the message "London united against racism" and all reference to opposing racism."

"Support for the festival from performers and communities has always been based on this anti-racist message so the change is sure to be highly controversial. The sincerity of Boris Johnson's claimed commitment to opposing racism in his election campaign is shown to be false by the fact that one of his first decisions is to abandon Europe's biggest anti-racist festival."

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Tsvangirai Returns Home

Tsvangirai arrives home
24th May 2008
all credits: ITN News

Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has returned to Zimbabwe despite his party's fears he might be assassinated by government agents. Mr Tsvangirai arrived at Harare airport aboard a regular South African Airways flight after cancelling his homecoming a week ago after his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said it had learnt he was the target of a military intelligence assassination plot.

The government dismissed the plot as a propaganda stunt.

A small party of MDC officials and Western diplomats, including US ambassador James McGee, was at Harare airport to welcome Mr Tsvangirai. At a news conference soon after his return, Mr Tsvangirai said President Robert Mugabe wanted to decimate opposition structures before a presidential run-off election on June 27

Mr Tsvangirai has been travelling abroad since April 8 on a diplomatic drive to pressure Mr Mugabe to surrender power following a March 29 presidential poll, which he says he won outright. But Zimbabwe's electoral commission says he did not get enough votes for a straight victory and must face Mugabe in the run-off.


Related Report:

Zimbabwe in context
19th May 2008
Arguing that Mugabe has been "talking left" while "walking right" Grace Kwinjeh analyses Zimbabwe through regional, African and global capitalism.

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Obama Race Fever

Racist Incidents Make Some Obama Campaigners Pause
First published: 14^th May 2008
All credits: Washington Post

Danielle Ross was alone in an empty room at the Obama campaign headquarters in Kokomo, Ind., a cellphone in one hand, a voter call list in the other. She was stretched out on the carpeted floor wearing laceless sky-blue Converses, stories from the trail on her mind. It was the day before Indiana's primary, and she had just been chased by dogs while canvassing in a Kokomo suburb. But that was not the worst thing to occur since she postponed her sophomore year at Middle Tennessee State University, in part to hopscotch America stumping for Barack Obama.

Here's the worst: In Muncie, a factory town in the east-central part of Indiana, Ross and her cohorts were soliciting support for Obama at malls, on street corners and in a Wal-Mart parking lot, and they ran into "a horrible response," as Ross put it, a level of anti-black sentiment that none of them had anticipated.

"The first person I encountered was like, 'I'll never vote for a black person,' " recalled Ross, who is white and just turned 20. "People just weren't receptive."

For all the hope and excitement Obama's candidacy is generating, some of his field workers, phone-bank volunteers and campaign surrogates are encountering a raw racism and hostility that have gone largely unnoticed -- and unreported -- this election season. Doors have been slammed in their faces. They've been called racially derogatory names (including the white volunteers). And they've endured malicious rants and ugly stereotyping from people who can't fathom that the senator from Illinois could become the first African American president.

The contrast between the large, adoring crowds Obama draws at public events and the gritty street-level work to win votes is stark. The candidate is largely insulated from the mean-spiritedness that some of his foot soldiers deal with away from the media spotlight.

Victoria Switzer, a retired social studies teacher, was on phone-bank duty one night during the Pennsylvania primary campaign. One night was all she could take: "It wasn't pretty." She made 60 calls to prospective voters in Susquehanna County, her home county, which is 98 percent white. The responses were dispiriting. One caller, Switzer remembers, said he couldn't possibly vote for Obama and concluded: "Hang that darky from a tree!"

Documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy, the daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy, said she, too, came across "a lot of racism" when campaigning for Obama in Pennsylvania. One Pittsburgh union organizer told her he would not vote for Obama because he is black, and a white voter, she said, offered this frank reason for not backing Obama: "White people look out for white people, and black people look out for black people."

Obama campaign officials say such incidents are isolated, that the experience of most volunteers and staffers has been overwhelmingly positive.

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The My Lai Sager

Forty years on, and "My Lai" is synonymous with "massacre"
Published 15th March 2008
All credits: BBC News

Forty years on, and “My Lai” is synonymous with “massacre”. The killing of Iraqi civilians at Haditha has often been referred to as a modern-day My Lai. The name is shorthand for slaughter of the defenceless, the benchmark of American wartime atrocity.

The murders of 504 men, women, children and babies happened in a northerly province of South Vietnam on 16 March 1968. It proved to be a turning point for public opinion about the Vietnam War. Yet, most of what we know about the event comes from a single, widely publicised court martial in 1970-71. A young Lieutenant - William Calley - in Charlie Company was tried and convicted of murdering 22 “oriental human beings” in My Lai on that sunny morning in 1968.

Forgotten tapes

Media attention on Lt Calley’s trial was extensive and the glare of publicity so bright it hid the wider, more awful truth. Before that trial got under way, the United States army had, behind closed doors, completed an investigation of its own into the events at My Lai, and specifically into the possibility that those in authority had deliberately covered up a massacre.

Convened on 1st December 1969 in the basement of the Pentagon, The Department of the Army Review of the Preliminary Investigations into The My Lai Incident, known in abbreviated form as The Peers Inquiry, was chaired by Lt Gen William ‘Ray’ Peers. In just 14 weeks, the Peers Inquiry conducted a comprehensive and wide-ranging investigation into the events of 16 March.

Read full article >

The My Lai Tapes (BBC)
Part One >
Part Two >




Other reports:

1968: The My Lai Tapes
Saturday 15th March 2008 (Radio 4 FM)

Survivors reflect 40 years after My Lai
By Ben Stocking Associated Press Writer
16th March 2008

'Blood and fire' of My Lai remembered 30 years later
CNN News
16th March 1998

News Digest (World)

Afghanistan's refugee crisis 'ignored'
13th February 2008

A growing humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan is being overlooked as an unknown number of people are fleeing their homes, caught between security forces and the Taliban, Red Cross officials have told the Guardian.

They say they have less access now to displaced people than at any time over the past 27 years. "The conflict has not only intensified but it has also spread over the last few years. Prolonged human suffering is causing real concern in ever larger areas," said Reto Stocker, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross delegation in Kabul. "There is little capacity to address it. We've never had so little access."

Read full article >
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Australia's new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has delivered a historic apology to the country's Aboriginal community
12th February 2008

In the first act of parliament today, he apologised to the Stolen Generations - young Aboriginal children taken from their parents in a policy of assimilation which lasted from the 19th century to the late 1960s. One of those, Ruby Hunter, was eight when she was taken from her parents.

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What can an apology achieve for Aborigines?
12th February 2008

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said sorry for the past mistreatment of indigenous people by successive parliaments and governments. In particular, he apologised for the long-running policy which saw the forcible removal of thousands of aboriginal children from their families; a practice that persisted in Australia until the 1970s.

Australians hope the apology will help repair the breach between the country's white and black citizens. How significant do you think is this move by Mr Rudd? Can it bring reconciliation to the Australian society? Do you think the action has come too late? What can other countries learn from Australia? Are you an Aborigine or a white Australian? .

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News Digest (Society)

US police 'dumped paralysed man'
13th February 2008

Four US sheriff's deputies have been suspended after deliberately dumping a quadriplegic man out of his wheelchair to search him, officials have said.
Brian Sterner was tipped onto the floor of the Florida police station after being arrested over a driving offence.

Unable to walk since a 1994 accident, he has only partial use of his arms and no feeling below the sternum. The incident in January was caught on a CCTV camera in the jail in Hillsborough County, which incorporates Tampa.

Charlette Marshall-Jones, the deputy who actually forced the man from the chair, has been suspended without pay.

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Get prisoners into open jails, governors told as cells fill up
12th February 2008

Prison governors have been told to move as many inmates as possible to open jails as an emergency response to the latest surge in prisoner numbers, which have reached a new record of 81,681 in England and Wales.

The Prison Service has had to declare the system "house full" for the first time since last June in the face of a population rise of more than 400 since the start of this month as a result of a sudden increase in short-sentence and remand prisoners.

Prison Service managers last week crowded 375 prisoners into emergency police cells, with dozens more held overnight in court cells pressed into service in London and Mansfield for three nights. Conditions in the west London court cells have been criticised by Anne Owers, the chief inspector of prisons.

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Police anti-terrorism chief Andy Hayman quits as rumours and allegations grow

Britain's most senior anti-terrorist officer resigned from the Metropolitan Police yesterday with an angry blast at “unfounded accusations” that had abruptly ended his 30-year career.

Assistant Commissioner Andy Hayman has been dogged by the threat of disciplinary action over the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, allegations that he was cavalier with his expenses and a growing rift with Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner.

He is believed to have tendered his resignation to Sir Ian shortly after receiving a series of written questions from Channel 4 News, asking about alleged improper contact with a female member of staff at the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC). Channel 4 said that Mr Hayman did not reply to its questions before his resignation was announced.

Mr Hayman, 48, is understood to be furious at the drip feed of allegations against him and concerned that his family and colleagues he respected were being hurt. “He feels that enough is enough,” a friend said.

Read full report >

Other reports
Did Met have inside source in Menezes investigation?
Policeman who challenged Met chief on De Menezes killing quits force early

Nelson Mandela Statue for London

all credits - View London

Honouring the first democratically elected President of South Africa and his contribution to combating all forms of racism in the modern world, this is the second specially commissioned Nelson Mandela statue London has had.

A nine foot bronze statute of the former President will be unveiled facing the Houses of Parliament, honouring Nelson Mandela as one of the greatest fighters for freedom in the 20th century. Capturing the spirit of the indomitable man who spent 27 years in prison and became one of the most widely recognised faces of the struggle for equality in South Africa, the Nelson Mandela statue London sitting in Parliament Square is intended to be a permanent statement of London's anti Apartheid stance and its determination to wipe out racism of all forms.

The statue itself was made by Ian Walters who created the other famous Mandela statue that sits on the South bank outside the Royal Festival Hall. The former bust was created by Walters in 1985 to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the ANC.

Having taken a nine hour sitting to create the initial Nelson Mandela statue, London will be keen to see the final results at the unveiling. Begun in 2001 the sitting from the statesmen helped Walters to create the sculpture in clay. Evidently pleased with the 3D portrait, Mandela informed the sculptor that he had never sat for any other artists for such a lengthy period of time. Completed just before his death in 2006, Ian Walters chose Nigel Boonham to supervise the casting of the statue in bronze.

The idea for a statue of the man made so famous by the brutal regime of Apartheid in South Africa came from Donald Woods, who was a journalist and anti Apartheid activist in the country. His widow, along with the Mayor of London and members of the Mandela Statue Fund, including Sir Richard Attenborough will be present in Parliament Square for the unveiling.

Part of a seven year long campaign for sitting the statue in London, many are looking forward to the unveiling of the Nelson Mandela statue. London has long been a supporter of the famous statesman and his statue in Parliament Square will be a great moment for every Londoner in the fight for freedom and against racism.

See April 2007 report from the BBC >>

Nigerian bloggers mount campaign

As Umaru Yar'Adua is ushered in as president of Nigeria, the BBC News website looks at a campaign mounted by Nigerian bloggers to express their disappointment at recent political events and the April elections.

Solomonsydelle on Nigerian Curiosity called on the Nigerian blogosphere to make a statement about Yar'Adua's inauguration.

"My people, let us join together to show our rulers and leaders that we are watching, that they are accountable to the people and that we will not let them forget."

She drafted "The Nigerian Proclamation" to reflect Nigerians' "disappointment over the recent polls and expressing expectations in the future" and urged bloggers to post it on their blogs on the day of Mr Yar'Adua's inauguration.

Solomonsydelle went on to say that while the proclamation might not achieve immediate change "it gives us all an opportunity to 'do something' and not just watch from the sidelines".

Read More >

We will never abolish child poverty

However his reign ends, whatever his legacy may be, one moment will always stand out as a monument to Tony Blair. It was that remarkable, utterly unexpected pledge back in 1999 that Labour would abolish child poverty by 2020.

That sunny morning he sprung it on an astounded assembly of economists and poverty experts. The hall rippled with people turning to one another to ask if they had perhaps misheard? Did he really mean it? And if so, did he fully understand how radical it was?

The answer was yes, he meant it, even if he is seized with spasmodic regret. It is one of his more admirable traits to nail himself to targets that matter, and work out afterwards how to do things that seem near impossible. (Abolishing hospital waiting lists by next year is another example.) But his poverty promise is by far the toughest social pledge any British politician has ever made, harder even than the founding of the NHS. And yes, he probably well understood the Herculean scale of the task.

Certainly the chancellor did and he has pursued it as a highest priority, through thick and thin. It has needed his fierce protection from ministers, and sometimes from his neighbour, clamouring to spend money on more popular vote-winners: the poor don't vote, they show no gratitude and the well-off don't know or don't care. The first quarter-way target was missed as 700,000, and not a million children, were lifted out of poverty. Instead of celebrating success, the headlines called it "failure", so why stick to an impossible target?

Because this is emblematic, the unshakable moral underpinning of this government (which Labour defectors would do well to remember). It stands as a constant rebuke to the Tories that they doubled child poverty during their 18 years, leaving appalling social wreckage. It is such an effective moral back-stop that David Cameron has been obliged to sign up to it too. That is how seismic New Labour's effect has been on the political landscape, marking 1997 as just as decisive a shift in political geography as 1979 or even 1945. Those who say there's no difference should look at how the Tories are being hauled from the blue to the red side, with poverty a prime marker in the ideological tug of war.
Read the full article >>

South Africa marks Uprising

all credits - USA Today

President Thabo Mbeki led hundreds of South Africans through the streets of this black township on Friday, retracing the steps of student protesters who galvanized the anti-apartheid struggle 30 years ago.

The marchers paused at 9 a.m. for a moment of silence to remember Hector Pieterson, a 13-year-old killed by police who shot at the unarmed demonstrators. His death has come to symbolize the sacrifices of young people in the fight for South Africa's democracy and freedom.

More than 500 young people were estimated killed in the Soweto Uprising and its bloody aftermath. Thousands of others disappeared into detention or fled the country to join the guerrilla fight, forever changing the face of the anti-apartheid struggle.

The uprising started as a student protest against being taught in Afrikaans, the language of white oppressors, which few among the black majority could understand. Police responded with brutal force, and news of the killings and the riots they unleashed across the country awakened the world to the government's violence.

"Hector would be 42 now - he died for the nation, and today he is part of history."

Dorothy Molefi lost her son 30 years ago. He was Hector Peterson, shot by a police bullet on 16 June 1976, becoming the first victim of the student uprising against apartheid. On Friday morning, Mrs Molefi joined President Thabo Mbeki and other officials in laying wreaths at the monument in Orlando West, Soweto, to her son and others who died in the uprising.

"I'm so glad about what's happening today, 30 years later," she told the BBC News website. She reflected on the changes that have come about since the start of democracy in South Africa: "Single mothers are given houses - our children are mixed with whites in the schools."

'Celebrate'

For the younger people who gathered around the monument, part of the excitement of the moment was having a public holiday - Youth Day, as 16 June now is - all of their own. Nonkululeku Mnikati, 23, said she was there "to celebrate freedom - to celebrate being recognised as the youth of South Africa."

On the generation of 1976 she said: "We look up to them, what they did was great. But sometimes it's like looking at a movie, it's hard to believe what happened was real. "So it's good to see Hector Peterson's mother here, because that helps us to know it was real."

The day's events had begun in a frosty dawn several kilometres away, outside the Morris Isaacson High School, from where the first group of teenage demonstrators had set out 30 years ago, led by a student called Tsietsi Mashinini.
After the march, Tsietsi went into hiding and later died in mysterious circumstances in Guinea. His mother, Nomkitha, was there in a wheelchair to help unveil a monument in the middle of a newly created memorial park opposite the school.

"We thought it would just be a few months of struggle - unfortunately it didn't work out like that," she reflected.

Peanuts

At the monument, another veteran of '76 who had joined the ANC's liberation army explained its significance to a group of younger people. "I wanted to be a doctor, but I ended up carrying an AK-47 and now I work for the police. The struggle changed me." Gilo Maguma, 40, was also involved in the protests, and is now unemployed.
"We are not liberated yet - we are still confined to 13% of the country," he said in reference to the fact that white people still own most of South Africa's land. Black people earn peanuts."
Read the full article >>

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Other Articles:

Student heroes separated by time
(16th June 2006)

Audio slideshow: Soweto remembered

(15th June 2006)

In Retrospect: A Look at the 1976 Soweto Uprising
(1st January 2004)

Hector: the famous child whose face is unknown
(14th June 2002)