Elsewhere Today 463
Aljazeera:
Pakistani lawyers battle police
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 05, 2007
16:39 MECCA TIME, 13:39 GMT
Pakistani police have used batons and tear gas against thousands of lawyers and political activists protesting against the emergency rule imposed by the country's president.
About 1,500 people have been detained in a crackdown on opposition to Pervez Musharraf's decision to suspend the constitution, police sources said on Monday.
Around 2,000 lawyers gathered in the eastern city of Lahore despite police warning them not to violate a ban on rallies across the country.
Hundreds of police entered the city's high court and fired tear gas as they attacked lawyers inside the building.
Several lawyers were wounded when police launched a baton charge, witnesses said.
"Police lobbed more than a dozen tear gas shells at lawyers who had gathered in the high court and then beat them with batons," Sheikh Faisal, a lawyer at the court, told the reporters by telephone.
Elsewhere, in Rawalpindi riot police sealed off courts and made arrests, with witnesses saying that they saw police beat a photographer and snatch his camera.
Lawyers beaten
In Karachi, protesting 100 lawyers were beaten with batons and arrested after police and paramilitary soldiers sealed off the high court and barred journalists and lawyers from entering.
One police officer said: "We have been ordered to remain on duty here, we cannot comment on arrests."
Witnesses said Karachi police also cordoned off the house of Sabihuddin Ahmed, the Sindh high court's former chief justice, who had been removed under the emergency rules, and arrested his son during the protests.
Clashes were also reported in Multan.
Al Jazeera's Nadim Baba, reporting from the capital Islamabad, said lawyers had cancelled planned protests because they were prevented by the police from approaching the supreme court.
House arrest
A senior judge said that most of Pakistan's judges, including Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, the dismissed chief justice, had been placed under virtual house arrest after refusing to take an oath under the provisional constitutional order issued on Saturday.
"There is a heavy security deployment and our houses are locked. We cannot go out and no one can come in," Rana Bhagwandas, the country's only Hindu supreme judge, said.
"We are confined to our rooms. We wanted to go the Supreme Court but they locked our houses from outside and have deployed heavy security."
Hundreds of opposition supporters are also among those being held by security forces.
Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, told Al Jazeera that he was told he had been arrested because he was "a threat to law and order".
"General Musharraf is an unconstitutional and unlawful ruler, and he has suspended the constitution which is high treason ... he must be arrested and tried for high treason," he said.
Musharraf denial
Earlier on Monday, Tariq Azim, the deputy information information minister, had to deny rumours that had spread across Pakistan suggesting that Musharraf had also been put under house arrest.
Azim said that the president had "laughed off" the reports saying that the vice-chief of the army had ordered him detained.
Musharraf's move continued to provoke international condemnation on Monday.
Condoleezza Rice, US secretary of state, said the president should leave his military post and that the country should move towards elections under the constitution.
"We believe that the best path for Pakistan is to quickly return to a constitutional path and then to hold elections," she told a news conference during a visit to the Palestinian territories.
"President Musharraf has said that he will take off his uniform. That would be an important step."
Shaukat Aziz, the prime minister, said on Monday that elections planned for next year would go ahead.
"Our thinking about the election is that it will be held according to schedule," he told a news conference.
On Sunday, he had noted that under the terms of an emergency, parliament's term, due to expire this month, could be extended for a year.
Britain has also urged Pakistan's government to restore normal democratic and constitutional processes, while the Netherlands suspended aid to the country.
Pakistan's security situation has deteriorated since July, when armed fighters stormed the Red Mosque in Islamabad to crush a Taliban-style movement.
Since then nearly 800 people have been killed in violence, which has included more than 23 suicide attacks.
Source: Al Jazeera and agencies
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/76A12A96-39F2-49F7-8558-50021B3002F1.htm
AllAfrica:
World Bank Lists Country As 'Fragile State'
By Omoh Gabriel
Vanguard (Lagos) NEWS
4 November 2007
THREE years after the World Bank characterised and listed Nigeria as a fragile state, the country remains so listed in a 2007 study report alongside Burundi, Cambodia, Comoros, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea-Bissau, Kosovo (territory) and Lao PDR.
Other countries on the list are Papua New Guinea, Sao Tome and Principe, Tajikistan Timor-Lest, Togo, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Angola, Central African Republic, Haiti, Liberia, Myanmar, Solomon Islands, Somalia, Sudan and Zimbabwe.
With revenue receipts for 2008 fiscal year, anchored on $53.8 per barrel of crude oil, the Federal Government has proposed a capital expenditure profile of N600 billion in the 2008. The budget is expected to be presented to the National Assembly this week.
In its recent report on engaging fragile states by its study group, the bank said: "As defined by the World Bank, all fragile states are characterised by weak policies, institutions, and governance."
Fragile states, the report said, are: "Home to almost 500 million people, roughly half of whom earn less than a dollar a day, fragile states, until recently known in the World Bank as low-income countries under stress (LICUS), have attracted increasing attention.
"Concern is growing about the ability of these countries to reach development goals as well as about the adverse economic effects they have on neighboring countries and the global spillovers that may follow.
"With their multiplicity of chronic problems, these countries pose some of the toughest development challenges.
Poor governance and extended internal conflicts are common among these countries, which all face similar hurdles: weak security, fractured societal relations, corruption, breakdown in the rule of law, and lack of mechanisms for generating legitimate power and authority.
As low-income countries, LICUS also have a huge backlog of investment needs and limited government resources to meet them.
"Past international engagement with these countries has failed to yield significant improvements, and donors and others continue to struggle with how best to assist fragile states. LICUS are characterised by weak policies, institutions, and governance.
The bank identified 25 such countries in fiscal year 2005. These 25 countries have a number of similarities: their infant mortality rate is a third higher than that of other low-income countries, life expectancy is 12 years lower, and their maternal mortality rate is about 20 percent higher.
"There are also important differences among LICUS. Some grew at around 4 percent per annum during 1995-2003. Others had negative growth rates of a similar magnitude. Some have abundant natural resources, while others are resource-poor.
These differences are recognised in four business models that the bank developed to work with countries in crisis: deterioration, prolonged crisis or impasse, post-conflict or political transition, and gradual improvement".
According to the bank, plagued by a multitude of chronic problems, fragile states pose some of the toughest development challenges; donors and researchers are grappling with how best to respond to LICUS and have chosen to focus on different aspects of the problem.
Bank lending and administrative budgets to LICUS have increased since the start of the LICUS Initiative and have amounted to about $4.1 billion and $161 million, respectively, during fiscal 2003-05; Post-conflict LICUS absorbed a large share of LICUS lending during fiscal 2003-05.
2008 budget
With revenue receipts for 2008 fiscal year anchored on $53.8 per barrel of crude oil, the Federal Government has proposed a capital expenditure profile of N600 billion in 2008. The budget is expected to be presented to the National Assembly this week.
Minister of State for Finance, Mr. Remi Babalola, who made the disclosure in Abuja, said the budget process for 2009 would begin in February 2008 to enable the government engage all stakeholders in the country in the budgetary process.
He said the 2008 budget process was ongoing with very wide consultation and that right from the onset, the leadership of the National Assembly, civil societies, the private sector, and ministry officials were involved in the process.
It was gathered that all stakeholders are involved in the formulation of the 2008 budget and each of those involved was given the fiscal strategy of the government as a guide.
Babalola said 60 per cent of the capital budget for 2008 would be put into use in the productive sector in order to grow the economy.
The focus of the budget, he said, was on four key areas: power: agriculture and water, education and security of life and property including the issue of Niger Delta.
The minister said government planned to provide a clear, coherent and consistent economic policy framework for the economy.
Babalola said it was the need for consistent policy framework to drive the economic reforms that made the Federal Government to abolish the waivers and concessions granted to individuals.
He said that such concessions granted in the past did not give a level playing field to economic operators, adding that the federal Government plans to give sectoral concessions which every operator in that sector will benefit from and not concession to individuals.
Copyright © 2007 Vanguard. All rights reserved.
http://allafrica.com/stories/200711050006.html
AlterNet: Shocking: 18 Years on and Exxon
Still Won't Pay $2.5 Billion for Valdez Oil Spill
By Riki Ott, AlterNet
Posted on November 5, 2007
The Supreme Court's recent decision to hear ExxonMobil's reasons to void the $2.5 billion punitive award in the Exxon Valdez case hit the town of Cordova, Alaska, hard. This small coastal fishing community - my hometown - along with the Alaska Native villages in Prince William Sound have borne the brunt of the largest crude oil spill in America's waters; a spill that took place more than 18 years ago, but one that continues to hold the region hostage.
The second painful blow was the high court's decision to not even hear our reasons why the award should be restored to the full $5 billion that a jury of peers decided was necessary to punish the corporate giant back in 1994.
While media pundits, lawyers, and scholars play the Supreme Court's decisions back and forth like a ping-pong ball, people in Cordova share a completely different perspective of this story. It's not about whether the Supreme Court should hear the case. To us, it's about justice and reparation - making us whole, a promise Exxon made to the community five days after the spill. A promise that Exxon broke before the trial even started five years after the spill.
To us, it's about more than an oil spill, the world's largest oil corporation, and a small fishing community in Alaska. It's about America's failed legal system that inherently cannot dispense justice in the face of corporate globalization.
U.S. corporations have outgrown America's justice system. The system won't work for any community in America that is traumatized by disaster that triggers class action lawsuits - hurricanes like Katrina, terrorist acts like 9/11, or oil spills like the Exxon Valdez. Yet sociologists warn such disasters will be a hallmark of the 21st century.
People in Cordova wonder how this happened and why our legal system no longer metes out justice. When did "punitive" stop meaning to punish? If the original punitive award of $5 billion was sufficient to change corporate behavior why was Exxon the last corporation to double hull its oil tankers to reduce risk of future spills rather than the first?
Why shouldn't Exxon be expected to pay to clean up its mess, pay penalties for breaking laws, compensate victims for losses, and pay punitive damages? This is what responsible corporations do - and it's certainly what Americans expect.
The spilled oil - somewhere between 11 to 38 million gallons (the figure is elusive because as we learned the hard way, the truth was one of the first casualties of the spill) - created a big mess and broke a lot of federal laws. It shouldn't surprise anyone that Exxon paid $2.5 billion for its cleanup and another $1 billion for penalties. But, it might surprise people who live outside Alaska to learn that taxpayers, not Exxon, paid a majority of that bill. Exxon recouped most of its remaining expense from its insurance companies and from money it paid to settle damages for natural resources - publicly-owned wildlife and lands.
Further, Exxon rewarded its primary cleanup contractor, formerly VECO, with a cost-plus contract that acted like steroids, bulking up this small-time oilfield service contractor into one of the biggest - spending, pro-oil lobbyists in the state - until its fall from grace this year under charges of federal bribery, conspiracy, and more. You may have heard of the ongoing FBI investigation that is sweeping Alaska's politicians - from state legislators to congressional delegates - into its widening net.
While that's another story, it serves to illustrate what our justice system deems "good corporate behavior" worthy of consideration to reduce its punitive award.
We ask all of you who share in the cost of this cleanup and the devastation of this spill: How could Exxon fool seemingly everyone into believing that the Sound is now clean, wildlife recovered, and fishing back to "normal"?
How could they fool everyone? Because the reality goes against the "good corporate behavior" meme Exxon has pushed for now nearly two decades in the courts, in the media, and in Congress.
This is our world, our reality: Three of Cordova's five fish processors (canneries) went bankrupt after the spill. The largest one never recovered, leaving the town with not enough capacity to buy and process large salmon returns like this year. Further, the town lost it's only locally owned and operated processor cooperative, leaving fishermen with fewer resources to leverage high grounds prices for their catch. The town tumbled from its ranking as one of the top ten seaports in the nation, based on harvest value, to 53rd after the delayed, spill-related pink salmon and herring population collapses in 1992 and 1993.
The salmon recovered; the herring did not. The herring fisheries are closed indefinitely. Fishermen who held $300,000 commercial fishing permits for salmon and/or herring fisheries at the time of the spill now own pieces of paper worth around 10 percent their former value - that is, the fishers who did not go bankrupt, lose their permit in foreclosures, take a loss and sell out, die, or commit suicide. Fishermen who buy into the fisheries now pay less for the privilege and expect less in return, while the spill survivors deal with ever mounting debt on permits that the fisheries no longer supports - and in many cases that exceeds their individual share of the punitive award at the full $5 billion.
This is our world, our "normal."
I am a Survivor of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. I owned and fished a salmon drift permit in Prince William Sound until I sold out after the fish run collapses in the early 1990s. I have a stake in the Exxon Valdez litigation. But so, in a sense, does every American. Here's why.
No other country in the world has a legal system that is as adversarial, costly, formal and complex as the United States system. At its core the American legal process is an adversarial system that pits disputing parties against each other before an impartial judge. Justice is "a zero-sum game," meted out through punishment of the guilty to make the injured whole.
If the Exxon Valdez case is a harbinger of litigation to come, it does not bode well for people, civic society, or the environment. In this case, simply put, a giant corporation used its wealth to aggressively drive up legal expenses and to reduce, delay, and eliminate payment of awards to spill victims for more than 18 years and counting. By so doing, the giant corporation denied justice to thousands of people. In this case, the corporation is Exxon Mobil, but other giant corporations that do battle on class action turf wield similar weapons.
The forces of aggression released and sanctioned by the American judicial system are horrific - no one leaves the field unscathed. Psychiatrist Larry Strasburger noted, "Although it may be that we have exchanged swords and cudgels for subpoenas and depositions, an aura of combat continues to hover about the judicial process, and combat produces casualties."
Psychologists found that adversarial litigation emotionally "arrests" disaster-scarred survivors, forcing them to keep the disaster trauma alive and present. This blocks the normal progression of recovery phases from a stress response and holds disaster-litigants hostage until case closure.
Further, litigation generates new trauma, so-called "Litigation Response Syndrome," with symptoms similar to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and General Anxiety Disorder. For disaster-litigants, this amounts to a double helping of stress. It scars even "successful" litigants-those who eventually prevail.
Sociologists Drs. Steve Picou and Duane Gill have studied the evolution of disaster trauma in Cordova since the spill. They report a third of the fisher-claimants in Cordova suffer from clinical depression, nearly 40 percent from PTSD, and 60 percent hold off-season jobs to make ends meet. This is now - 18-plus years after the spill. Further, they found the stress level attributable to litigation in fisher and Alaska Native claimants is nearly as high as the initial level from the spill.
If American class action lawyers were medical doctors, they would be disbarred for violating the Hippocratic oath: "Do no more harm."
The American justice system is predicated on several underlying assumptions, most of which are not valid in adversarial litigation, as we in Cordova discovered.
Equal treatment under the law? Not possible when those with money use it to influence the laws and public perception, or manipulate courts of law to make punishment moot.
Impartial judges? Not possible when judges are human and often former corporate lawyers.
Decisions based on whole truth and facts? Not even close: Jurors receive only selective information from judges or court masters as gatekeepers, and facts are grossly distorted through corporate-sponsored "science."
Further, when cases extend into decades, unanticipated long-term injury to people and ecosystems often becomes evident along with science linking harm to the original disaster, as was the case with the Exxon Valdez spill. The mechanism to understand the delayed fish collapses in Prince William Sound was not proven until six years after the collapse - well after the trial was over. Fishers and Alaska Natives were never compensated for this unanticipated, long-term harm.
Another gross oversight of the American judicial system is that it fails to respond to a very basic human dimension of litigation: process. It turns out the process of dispute resolution is a key determinant in "making people whole."
Studies show that the thing parties want most is a process that allows them to participate, seeks to merit their trust, and treats them with dignity and respect. It should not surprise any person that victims who are humans, too, care a great deal about how they are treated beyond the amount of money they may pay or receive and that accountability is important. Yet in class action litigation, individual litigants often feel violated by the very process they are given to make them whole.
Just as the aftermath of war is not simply peace, so too, the aftermath of a disaster, especially one with toxic exposures, is not simply money. But money is all that the adversarial system can deliver to some-at the expense of justice for all who were injured.
As we learned in Cordova, it is flat impossible to expect the American punitive justice system to "make anyone whole." Perhaps it is time for Americans to question whether the adversarial litigation system is really the best way to ascertain truth, insure fairness, and dispense justice.
If the goal of our justice system is to make people whole, then the process should focus on restoring harmony to injured parties and communities with retribution for harm agreed upon through a non-adversarial mediated process. In other words, we need a restorative justice system rather than a punitive one.
And, we in Cordova offer some suggestions for rebuilding our American justice system.
First, post-disaster disputes could be minimized during preliminary planning and scoping of projects by negotiated, legally-binding agreements - now that we are better informed of the ecological and human costs of disaster.
Second, financial incentives and rules could be created to encourage dispute resolution through non-adversarial negotiated settlements. Such techniques have proven successful even for disasters involving toxic exposure.
Third, incentives could be created to shorten litigation timelines by eliminating mechanisms that reward profits through stalling.
Fourth, if punitive damages are to be effectively applied, then they must be linked with corporate profits rather than compensatory damages and they should be shared not only among victims, but also among the injured communities to rebuild areas devastated by disaster.
In Cordova, we hope that it is just a matter of time before these suggestions or other similar ones are demanded by professionals, activists, and victims fed up with the American "injustice system."
We know that change will have to come from each of us, as there is little hope that the Supreme Court, or any other branch of the current judicial system, will take it upon itself to keep from doing more harm to those it was designed to protect.
This article was adapted from the forthcoming book Not One Drop: Promises, Betrayal, and Courage in the Wake of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill (Chelsea Green, 2008).
Riki Ott, PhD, is a community activist, a former fisherm'am, and has a degree in marine toxicology with a specialty in oil pollution. She is also the author of Sound Truth and Corporate Myth$: The Legacy of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill.
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/66647/
AlterNet: The Future of Cities:
How Sprawl and Racism are Intertwined
By Kevin Danaher and Shannon Biggs and Jason Mark, PoliPoint Press
Posted on October 23, 2007
The following conversation with Van Jones is an excerpt from the new book Building the Green Economy: Success Stories from the Grassroots (PoliPointPress, 2007) by Kevin Danaher, Shannon Biggs, and Jason Mark. You can read more about the book here.
Van Jones is a passionate civil rights and human rights advocate. He combines practical solutions to problems of social inequality and environmental destruction, focusing on green economic opportunities for urban America. Jones grew up in rural Tennessee, graduated from Yale Law School, and works and lives in Oakland, California. He is the Co-Founder and President of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, which seeks to replace the U.S. incarceration industry with community-based solutions.
Q. For the first time in human history, more than 50 percent of people now live in urban areas. Where does the city fit in your conception of environmental sustainability?
VJ: Cities have the capacity to sink or save the planet. The future of all humanity, and most species and systems, will be determined by what we choose to do with cities. The idea that the environment is about critters and creeks is a thing of the past. We have to be thinking about these things in terms of consumption and disposal processes of mega-cities.
Q. Sprawl has a negative impact not only on farmland and open space but on life in urban areas. How did this pattern of sprawl and gentrification develop? Who wins and loses?
VJ: Sprawl is a response to racial fear and anxiety on the part of white elites. The 'burbs were designed as a vehicle to get away from people of color, investing more in the white infrastructure as they moved away from the city, and the neighborhoods where people of color live. The other side of that is the disinvestment for the communities that remain behind; the money follows the new suburban development. Those that remain in the inner city continue to lose in this scenario.
Q. You've talked about cities and land use as issues that interest many groups: the suburbanites, environmentalists, and inner-city residents. If both environmentalists and inner-city residents have an interest in stopping sprawl, what's preventing them from working together?
VJ: Racism. It is the reason that people move away from each other. People don't want to talk about why people call this a "good" neighborhood or that one a "bad" neighborhood, but often it has to do with the race of the people that live there. White people divorce themselves from the bad neighborhoods and move to the suburbs. The black community has a lot of built-up feelings about our history, about the racism we experience. There is some healing that needs to take place there, so these communities have some issues, and don't want to work with each other, necessarily. There are a lot of feelings there.
Q. Many environmentalists genuinely want to work with other communities to address these issues of common interest. What is thwarting those efforts?
VJ: Those folks often speak about working together through "outreach" - outreach in the sense of "outreaching to" these people or those people. Outreaching to the black community: "Well, we outreached to them so 'they' could hear our agenda and get onboard with what we are saying." This, as opposed to saying "let's go make some friends," building relationships, creating relationships. Figuring things out from a place where everyone's views are included. Relationships are give and take, mutual aid and help. Outreaching is the white thing, it's about bringing folks into what you are doing, and does not necessarily convey understanding.
Q. What is the effect of the prison industrial complex (especially juvenile prisons) on communities, particularly communities of color, and how does that system impede progress toward a green city revolution?
VJ: The incarceration industry is the new Jim Crow; you don't have to call him the "N word" if you just call him a felon. There are the same amount of drug problems in the 'burbs that there are in the inner city, but in the 'burbs the white kids get counseling, they don't go to prison. Generally speaking, they only call the police in the 'hood. The system has responded with compassion to white kids.
Again, the new Jim Crow is incarceration. This is the barrier that separates people from the lives they want to live. You go to the back of the line as a felon. You lose your voting rights, can't get a good job, you're denied student loans. It is devastating. We spend less money on public schools than on locking people up; it's far easier to go to prison than to get a scholarship.
This distorts economic development. The current economic strategy is to take poor black kids, put them in jail in rural areas, and give poor white kids jobs as guards in that prison. That is the economic strategy. Rural towns can't compete with industry, farms are all going away, so prison is an economic boon for rural communities. Come on, we can't come up with a better strategy than that? In California, for example, nearly 10 percent of the state budget goes to the prison system, and that could grow to 15 percent or even higher. When you lock up a state budget like that, where is the money to retrofit buildings for energy efficiency?
California is supposed to be a leader in terms of being clean and energy efficient. So now, put these two together. If you take guards and prisoners and send them all home, then give them green city jobs instead. We could be retrofitting urban America instead of lives laying to waste. Send them home with good work, with a mission, and real job skills, and provide them with opportunity.
We can have a Gulag or a green economy. But we can't have both. If we train former prisoners and guards to put up solar panels, they are already on their way to becoming electrical engineers. If we train them to double pane glass, they are on their way to be a glazer: a good union job and green path out of poverty. Bamboo, it's so different than timber, you can cut it and it grows back quickly. If we can train folks to do the green thing, they can then walk to the front of the line in an economy based on green jobs instead of an economy from pollution-based jobs. That is where these issues connect. What we need is a green wave that can lift all boats, that can lift folks out of poverty.
Q. How important is it to nurture efforts at grassroots democracy? How can larger groups - national groups - help without taking over?
VJ: It's all got to come together, but it's not easy. The national groups don't mean to take over and the local groups can sometimes be schizophrenic: They want and need the help from the big players, but can also resent it. The national groups can find that having the grassroots connections gives their work legitimacy-it's sexy these days to have the grassroots contacts, sexy and cool-but they also have some contempt for the grassroots groups at the same time. Everyone just has to figure it out, make it work. Case by case.
Q. You have said that "We are the heroes we've been waiting for." Can you discuss what "going local" means in terms of creating big change?
VJ: I believe it's a both/and. I believe in both "bottom up" and "top down." Focusing on the local is great, but you need federal government on your side to make the big changes; we learned that in the civil rights movement. The federal government has got to be provoked into action. The local economy can't solve the problems by itself, and some problems are too big to solve by local action alone.
Change is bottom up and top down. The grassroots have to push, and the top needs to push. It's sort of an inside-outside strategy. Everybody is going to have to do some work. There is no magic answer, no silver bullet. It's going to be a group effort, cross-organizational. We need to share and play well with others; be flexible and learn from each other. The big change is going to take 20, 30, 40 years. Hopefully, in terms of ecological collapse, we'll get it together enough in the next 10 years to buy us the time we need to do the work that will take longer. But we're going to have to do it together.
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/65404/
Asia Times:
Musharraf plays his last ace
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
Nov 6, 2007
KARACHI - President General Pervez Musharraf's second coup was his ace card to extend his stay in power. Washington's tacit approval for the implementation of "extraordinary powers" was conditional on increased endeavors against militancy in Pakistan in support of the US-led "war on terror". But with Musharraf having played his last card, anything could happen.
Musharraf's declaration of an emergency on Saturday, which, according to Pakistani Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Sher Afghan, is a blend of emergency and martial law, is primarily aimed at preventing the Supreme Court from invalidating Musharraf's October 6 victory in presidential polls.
Following the declaration, troops entered the Supreme Court building in Islamabad and "escorted" Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry out, his services "terminated". Chaudhry, who, along with six other judges had declared the emergency null and void, announced he would continue his struggle. The president of the Pakistan Supreme Court Bar Association Aitzaz Ahsan and other members of the lawyers' body were also arrested. Scores of lawyers were arrested in Karachi on Monday during a protest rally outside the High Court.
However, Musharraf, playing to audiences in the West, has done his best to paint the emergency as a declaration of war against Islamic militancy, especially in the tribal areas, where the army is already fully engaged. For instance, speaking on national television on Sunday, Musharraf "appealed" to the West to understand the necessity for imposing the emergency.
The crisis in Pakistan coincides with a fresh Taliban offensive in southwest and northwest Afghanistan, in addition to the main battle in the southeast. The Western command in Afghanistan sees Pakistan's North Waziristan and South Waziristan on the border with Afghanistan as the epicenter of these major Taliban maneuvers.
As a result, Washington had little choice but to give Musharraf the green light for his emergency as it desperately needs his help.
Musharraf has placed scores of judges under house arrest, implying that they had sided with the militancy in releasing over 60 "dangerous terrorists", besides reopening the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) in Islamabad. The hardline mosque had been closed since troops stormed it in July to flush out militants.
Many political opponents and human-rights activists have been arrested, while a list of journalists to be detained was due to be finalized on Monday. The electronic media have also been disrupted.
More than 50 defiant judges are likely to become the flagbearers of a new struggle against the authorities, despite their house arrest.
Cricketer-turn-politician Imran Khan, who emerged as the most prominent voice of civil society in earlier struggles of the judiciary, has apparently escaped house arrest. He is underground at present and is negotiating with the bar councils for a powerful joint struggle to mobilize the masses on the streets.
Musharraf is likely to announce a schedule for national elections by Thursday - they were due to take place in January. Former premier Benazir Bhutto, earmarked in a US-initiated plan for a powersharing deal with Musharraf, has returned from a trip to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, where she had previously lived in exile. She traveled there last Thursday and apparently returned at the instigation of the US to support Musharraf in a transition of power. The thorny issue of Musharraf, the army's chief of staff, giving up his uniform has been put on the back burner.
Back on the border
In the bigger picture, on Sunday fresh troops (all non-Pashtun) were mobilized for a new operation in North-West Frontier Province. At the same time, militants in South Waziristan released 211 soldiers they had been holding captive for several weeks after receiving assurances of a staggered army withdrawal from the area. Tribal elders are the guarantors of the deal.
This deal places the decision-makers in military headquarters in Rawalpindi in a bind as Musharraf, having received Washington's "blessing" for now, should be waging war, not making deals with militants.
Whether Musharraf survives this new storm is one issue, but what is really at stake is the future of the "war on terror" in the region.
Should militants and the political opposition - temporarily after the same goal - force out Musharraf, fighting the US war in Pakistan would be very heavy baggage for his successors.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com
Copyright 2007 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/IK06Df01.html
Guardian: Pakistani police use
emergency powers to detain protesters
Declan Walsh in Islamabad and James Sturcke
Monday November 5, 2007
Pakistani police launched a harsh crackdown today on the first street protests since General Pervez Musharraf assumed sweeping emergency powers last Saturday.
Police fired teargas and baton-charged a crowd of 2,000 lawyers at the largest protest in the southern city of Lahore.
Up to 1,800 people have been detained nationwide since the weekend, an interior ministry official said.
The prime minister Shaukat Aziz, responded to concern from overseas - including Britain - and insisted that elections scheduled for January would take place as planned.
"Our thinking about the election is that it will be held according to schedule," Mr Aziz told a news conference. The country's national assembly will be dissolved on November 15, and elections held within 60 days, the attorney general said, according to Reuters.
The US called for Gen Musharraf to cut his ties to the military and reinstate the constitution.
At a news conference, the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice urged Gen Musharraf to follow through on past promises to "take off his uniform".
"I want to be very clear. We believe that the best path for Pakistan is to quickly return to a constitutional path and then to hold elections," she said. "The more quickly and the more urgently that the Pakistani leadership and President Musharraf act on their stated desire to get back to a constitutional path, it will be for the better of everyone."
The lawyers in Lahore tried to repel police with stones and tree branches, as at least 250 were detained from the protest alone, some bundled into vans bleeding from the head.
Clashes between police and lawyers were also reported in Karachi, Peshawar, Multan and Rawalpindi, where police sealed court buildings.
The British government today called for reassurance that elections planned for January would go ahead. The United Nations became the latest organisation to condemn the imposition of martial law and call for the release of those detained.
"A state of emergency should only be used to deal with a dire security threat to the nation, not to undermine the integrity and independence of the judiciary," Louise Arbour, the UN's chief rights official, said in a statement. Asma Jahangir, a UN-appointed expert on religious freedom and chairman of the independent human rights commission of Pakistan, is among those detained.
A spokesman for the opposition leader, Ms Benazir Bhutto, said so far 67 members of her party had been arrested.
Aitzaz Ahsan, president of the influential supreme court bar association, remains in Adiala Jail near Rawalpindi; another lawyer called the Guardian from a plane about to leave for Kabul, saying she was fleeing possible arrest.
The former chief justice Muhammad Iftikhar Chaudhry, who led massive protests against Gen Musharraf earlier this year and was sacked on Saturday, remained under house arrest in Islamabad.
Since Saturday, Gen Musharraf has banned public meetings and suspended fundamental rights, closed down television broadcasts and rounded up hundreds of opposition supporters, lawyers and human rights activists.
Independent TV news networks remained off the air, although some could be viewed by satellite or the internet. Police raided and sealed a printing press in Karachi belonging to Pakistan's largest media group, blocking publication of its Urdu-language evening newspaper, Awam (People), the Jang Group editor, Mahmood Sham, said.
Troops manned sandbagged positions around government buildings in the capital. Although some businesses opened, streets were generally quiet.
Rumours of a counter-coup against Gen Musharraf circulated widely among journalists and lawyers. "It is a joke of the highest order," Gen Musharraf told Reuters from the presidency building in Islamabad, where he met over 80 foreign diplomats to explain his decision. He said he was due to play tennis later in the day.
Opponents admitted the rumours were probably a product of the restricted media environment, or just wishful thinking. "The nation is in a state of shock. There is no source of information, that's why the rumours are rife," said lawyer MS Mughal.
"He seems to be pretty much in control at the moment," said one diplomat, who said his country's main concern was to find out how long the emergency would last. Concerns about growing instability caused the main Karachi stock exchange to fall over 4%.
Although Gen Musharraf says the emergency is needed to fight growing Islamist militancy including a spate of suicide bombings, a senior Musharraf aide told the Guardian the crisis was actually triggered by fears the supreme court was about to deem his re-election illegal.
Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, president of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Q party, said a friendly supreme court judge leaked the information to the government last Wednesday.
"He said the verdict may be unanimous, so we had no choice," said Mr Hussain. "The debate was whether to impose emergency before or after [the court ruling]."
Mr Aziz, who had previously assured the public that Gen Musharraf would "always respect the constitution", admitted on Sunday that the government had initially detained between 400 and 500 people as a "preventative measure". An editorial in Dawn newspaper said that future denials from Mr Aziz or Gen Musharraf would be a "waste of newspaper space".
Britain and the US have promised to review their assistance to Pakistan in the light of the unfolding crisis. The US has given $11bn (£5.2bn) in mostly military aid since 2001.
Britain is a much smaller contributor. Western diplomats in Islamabad refused to say what leverage they might use against Gen Musharraf at this stage. But Gen Musharraf remains a key ally to the US and Britain in the fight against al-Qaida militancy. Neither will want to jeopardise future security cooperation.
"Some of the aid that goes to Pakistan is directly related to the counter-terrorism mission," US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice said during a trip the Middle East. "We just have to review the situation."
The next move of opposition leader Ms Bhutto will be crucial. She is due to arrive in Islamabad later today, where she is expected to meet with the national security adviser, Tariq Aziz.
Ms Bhutto's movements have become secretive since an assassination attempt after her return from exile on October 18.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/pakistan/Story/0,,2205486,00.html
Jeune Afrique: A 90 ans, la députée anti-apartheid
Helen Suzman appelle à la résistance
AFRIQUE DU SUD - 5 novembre 2007 - par AFP
L'ancienne élue progressiste sud-africaine Helen Suzman, qui dénonça pendant des années le régime d'apartheid depuis la chambre des députés, appelle aujourd'hui au renforcement de l'opposition dans une démocratie encore en construction.
La vieille dame, qui fête mercredi ses 90 ans, est "ravie d'être débarrassée de l'apartheid". Mais "ce qui l'a remplacé n'est pas très satisfaisant", estime dans un entretien avec l'AFP celle qui fut la première députée à rendre visite à Nelson Mandela dans sa cellule de Robben Island.
Treize ans après l'avènement de la démocratie multi-raciale, elle se souvient "des quarante stupides années" du régime ségrégationniste et de "ses lois horribles". Elle reste "en rogne" contre l'interdiction des mariages interraciaux, les évictions forcées, les emplois réservés aux blancs...
Mais elle n'est "pas satisfaite" pour autant de la situation actuelle et dresse la liste de ses griefs: "les hôpitaux sont une honte", "le système éducatif est choquant", "la criminalité trop élevée" avec 50 homicides par jour, le chômage, qui affecte un tiers de la population, "inacceptable"...
Ses griffes égratignent au passage le président Thabo Mbeki. Elle évoque ses errements dans la lutte contre le sida, qui frappe durement l'Afrique du Sud avec 5,5 de personnes séropositives sur 48 millions d'habitants, et qualifie d'"inutile" sa diplomatie silencieuse envers le Zimbabwe, dont l'économie est en ruine et les droits de l'Homme en berne.
Mais Helen Suzman réserve ses coups les plus durs à ce qu'elle connaît le mieux: le fonctionnement du Parlement, où elle a siégé de 1953 à 1989.
"A un moment j'étais la seule députée progressiste", rappelle-t-elle en référence aux années 1961-74, quand tous les autres élus soutenaient le régime ségrégationniste. Mais, dit-elle, "j'ai toujours eu la possibilité d'exprimer mes opinions".
Ses attaques répétées lui avaient valu d'être surnommée "le petit chat vicieux" par l'ancien Premier ministre PW Botha, ce qu'elle avait trouvé "très pertinent".
"Aujourd'hui, c'est beaucoup plus difficile, le rôle de l'opposition n'est pas reconnu", regrette-t-elle. "Les questions restent sans réponse, elles sont déclarées invalides..."
Ses positions ne lui valent pas que des amis. L'an dernier, elle a été prise à partie par Ronald Suresh Roberts, auteur d'une hagiographie de Thabo Mbeki.
"Comme elle s'est battue pour les mêmes objectifs, à savoir la libération du pays, la liberté de choix et le droit de vote, peut-être que ses propos sont perçus comme une trahison au sein de l'ANC", avance Raenette Taljaard, présidente de la fondation Helen Suzman.
Selon elle, de nombreux membres du Congrès national africain (ANC), au pouvoir depuis 1994, se demandent "comment elle peut se monter critique aujourd'hui, alors qu'elle s'est battue pour la même cause."
"Je m'en fiche. Ce que je dis est la vérité", tranche Helen Suzman. "Je ne m'intéresse pas à ceux qui me critiquent, je m'intéresse à ce qui se passe" dans le pays.
D'autant que, selon elle, les critiques émanent de ceux qui "minimisent volontairement le rôle des libéraux blancs", peu à peu "effacés des livres d'Histoire".
Le leader zoulou du Parti de la Liberté Inkhata (IFP), Mangosuthu Buthelezi, autre vétéran de la lutte anti-apartheid, lui donne raison. "Comme tant d'autres, elle n'a pas reçu la reconnaissance qu'elle mérite", écrit-il dans un message d'anniversaire.
"Mme Suzman a manifesté un grand courage pour amoindrir certains des pires excès du gouvernement d'apartheid", poursuit-il. "Ce serait travestir l'Histoire que de ne pas reconnaître son rôle dans la narration de notre combat."
http://www.jeuneafrique.com/jeune_afrique/article_
depeche.asp?art_cle=AFP65237aanslecnats0
Mail & Guardian:
For a woman ANC president
Thenjiwe Mtintso: POLOKWANE BRIEFING
04 Nov 2007
The characteristics and qualities needed for leadership in the ANC have been much discussed by many inside and outside the party, including in forums such as the Mail & Guardian. Never before has an organisation received such wide-ranging advice. So, in a biblical sense, Kugqityiwe (it is finished). Fortunately for us the best of these qualities are to be found among many ANC women and men. This is because most ANC members and leaders, irrespective of their gender, class, educational background or religion, have attended the same university: the school of life in apartheid South Africa. They have been steeled and tempered in the liberation struggle. Yet sadly (though understandably) in its 95 years:
* The ANC has been led only by male presidents (I should add that they have done a sterling job);
* No woman has ever been nominated by any official ANC structure for any responsibility other than deputy secretary general - and only since 1994. Interestingly, since then, only women have been nominated, accepted and elected for this responsibility;
* Since 1994 (and never before) there has been only one woman official (the deputy secretary general) out of the six ANC officials;
* Only since 1997 have women constituted at least 30% of the ANC national working committee; and
* The ANC Women’s League - the voice of ANC women, and a champion of the broader struggle for women’s emancipation and gender equality - has never nominated a woman for any position other that of deputy secretary general.
Many reasons exist for this tradition of male leadership and anomaly. The fundamental problem in the ANC and in our society has been and continues to be patriarchy - and its intersection with other forms of oppression and discrimination, based on class and race. Patriarchy - the ideology and system underpinning the organisation of society based on the “superiority” of men and “inferiority” of women - is deeply embedded in all spheres of our lives. It starts in the private sphere - the family - and spreads out through the entirety of the public sphere. It is so pervasive, and so rooted in history, that it is taken as natural and normal. Patriarchy, like racism, has not scuttled away in the face of democracy. On the contrary, like a chameleon, it has taken on the colours of and adapted to democracy and the current capitalism. Even as the ANC prepares to select its leadership, as a result of patriarchy - which sometimes seems to have a mind of its own, independent of even the highly political minds of ANC cadres - the names likely to emerge for ANC president will be those of men. Happily, the ANC policy conference earlier this year adopted a resolution stating that there should be a 50:50 balance between women and men in leadership and all other responsibilities. Currently the ANC constitution sets the threshold at 30%. ANC provinces have to be proactive and ensure that at least 50% of their delegations, nominations and (ultimately) elected leaders are women. The numbers are important steps towards gender equality. It is understood that women are not a universal entity whose interests can be represented by their presence in decision-making structures such as the ANC national executive committee. It is also obvious that the presence of substantial numbers of women in ANC leadership structures does not mean that unequal gender relations are a thing of the past. But theory and practice both internationally and in South Africa show there is an interrelationship between participation of a critical mass of women in decision-making and the resolution of patriarchal power relations. Because attitudes tend to lag far behind everything else, quantitative changes play a critical role in achieving qualitative changes. For example, the entry of women into the Cabinet, Parliament and the ANC national executive committee - all traditionally male domains - has not only changed the “face” of these institutions; it has also fostered, in many different ways, gender consciousness and tentative movement towards the resolution of patriarchal contradictions. These women have contributed to putting women and gender-related matters at the centre of the political agenda and our national discourse, strengthening the struggle for emancipation and gender equality. Some of these women have grabbed the instruments of power and used them to change society, while simultaneously changing the very instruments, male definitions and uses of power. As former United States congresswoman Bella Abzug put it: “It’s not about simply mainstreaming women. It’s not about women joining the polluted stream. It’s about cleaning the stream, changing stagnant pools into fresh, flowing waters.” Transformation of gender relations is not the responsibility of women alone and women’s roles should not be reduced to this. However, in patriarchal societies women are crucial to bringing about that transformation. Getting the numbers right, as the policy conference recommended, is but one step in the transformation agenda. The most important step is placing them where it matters most - right at the political centre, as the president of the ANC. President Thabo Mbeki has broken from the patriarchal tradition of confining women to the periphery and has propelled them into the centre by appointing women ministers, deputy ministers, directors general, heads of diplomatic missions and so on. The president even shook the social psyche and set a new tone by appointing a woman deputy president of the republic when he had the opportunity to do so - unfortunate as the opportunity was. As Mbuyiselo Botha (“Women’s rights: Mbeki’s the man”, September 4) aptly put it: “Greater love has no man for women than one who blows open the doors that lead to equality, self-determination and equal opportunity.” The president has provided leadership by correctly pronouncing, at home and abroad, on South Africa’s readiness to have a woman president. Many agree. And the country’s woman president can only come from the ANC. The ANC leads. If the country is ready for a woman president, so is the ANC. If the ANC is really committed to changing stereotypes about women and transformation; if it is to continue as the trailblazer of democracy; if it accepts that we are all equal and capable ANC cadres; and above all, if we are to bring in a breath of fresh air to the pinnacle of authority, leadership and power in our organisation - then we have to elect a woman president. Some are talking about 50% women in the presidency. While that is commendable, the national conference does not elect the presidency or the secretary general’s office: delegates elect the president and secretary general of the ANC and their deputies. Different permutations of gender balance in the ANC leadership structures are continuously emerging. Good as these permutations are, the best one is the one with at least 50% of the “officials”, along with half the national working committee and half the national executive committee, being women - and with a woman as the president. The “current conjuncture” demands of us to settle for no less. All that is left is for the ANC Women’s League to play its leadership role in this respect and nominate a woman for president. This can be done by any ANC province or the Youth League, but the Women’s League cannot shirk one of its direct responsibilities. All that such a nominated ANC woman can do is accept her responsibility, confident that she is inferior to no one and, like her predecessors, would be leading the ANC, relying on and supported by an able collective leadership and disciplined cadres. All that the ANC members have to do is discharge their political duty and elect a woman president. Now is the time. Let us break the chain of patriarchal tradition. Thenjiwe Mtintso, a member of the ANC national executive committee, the ANC Women’s League and the SACP, writes in her personal capacity
http://www.mg.co.za/articledirect.aspx?articleid=
323805&area=%2finsight%2finsight__comment_and_analysis%2f
New Statesman:
Hot wheels
The art of mammy-lorry painting offers keen insights into the politics of ordinary Africans
Wole Soyinka
Published 01 November 2007
Let us visit the realm of a specialised art form that some might refer to as "naive art". It is certainly not the kind of artistic production that attracts much criticism, deriving from the stress and strain of proletarian existence. It is an art that is familiar to the African continent, west, east, or central, and a genre that I have always considered more profoundly political than much of the art that is born of western middle-class radicalism. While post-colonial ideologues argue over what is committed or uncommitted in art, these artists appear never to have been in any doubt.
I often describe this genre as "mobile murals", or travelling illuminated manuscripts - to borrow from the work of those medieval monks of Europe who spent their lives decorating divine manuscripts for the edification of the faithful and seduction of unbelievers or sceptics. Most Africans have certainly seen them; several more have even travelled in them. I assume that you have never been knocked down by one of them or you would not be here reading this today. They exist also in Latin America. Often brash, crude, exhibiting an untutored draughtsmanship and flaunting bizarre colour sensibilities, they are nonetheless statements of great political astuteness, pithy comments on day-to-day realities as well as aspirations.
I am not the first to have remarked upon the trenchant politics of these popular art forms. The Ghanaian novelist Ayi Kwei Armah constructed his scatological narrative, including his choice of a title, around one such inscription in his famous novel The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born. Those who have read that novel, or have simply travelled on West African roads, will certainly have deduced from that final clue the kind of mobile mural I have in mind. Ayi Kwei Armah's title was taken from an inscription on one of the locally built transport lorries that are variously known in Ghana as "trotros", or in Nigeria as "mammy-wagons", "bolekajas" or "danfos".
Their inscriptions have formed the subject of quite a few monographs on culture and social mores, as well as coffee-table publications. The inscriptions on these trucks are often taken from proverbs, expressions of traditional wisdoms, soundbites from the most unlikely sources, wrenched from their original contexts - which may vary from Shakespeare (one favourite is Julius Caesar) to the Bible or the Quran, not omitting Indian, western or kung fu films, or even a commercial jingle heard on television. The Quranic inscriptions sometimes appear in Arabic, the Arabic script being a favourite not only for what it actually says, but for the attraction of its calligraphy. But it does not matter in what language it is written - Ewe, Twi, Yoruba, Igbo or Hausa; the calligraphy is, literally, a blinding piece of art. The more complex pieces have accompanying illustrations which help the illiterate to understand immediately what social comment is being made.
A favourite and eloquent image is of David routing Goliath in single combat with a reinforcing inscription: "Ewe nla ko ni ru wewe", which translates as "The big leaf shall not crush the small". We shall return to that saying in a moment, though not much comment is necessary to grasp its political message: the championship of the "little man", the powerless citizen, with whom the painter clearly identifies. The idioms of action in some of these paintings are as fascinating as they are unpredictable; these are artists of the modern world. Don't think David armed with a slingshot - no, you are more likely to encounter our diminutive champion directing a Bruce Lee flying karate kick at the neck of Goliath, with that unfortunate giant buckling at the knees and staggering backwards.
I have always considered these murals as instructional, open-air panels on sociopolitical ethics. I have proposed in the past that African leaders should be compelled to ride the length and breadth of the country over which they exercise power in one of those mammy-wagons, with a booklet of the inscriptions, preferably changing conveyance every twenty kilometres or so. Not only would they acquire a very real lesson in "how the other side lives", they might begin to understand that these crude inscriptions express the world-views of their companions in the rickety, tumultuous, and often fatal, contraptions. They would experience the environment over which they preside as "the other side" does, with all the bumps, corrugations, filth, edge-of-survival commerce, raucousness, uncertainties, real-time tragedies and petty triumphs, but, above all, a resilience that is often the sole surviving element as society itself collapses. In short, they would experience not only "how the other side lives", but how it dies.
Sample a few of these inscriptions: "No Telephone Line to Heaven"; "Chop [eat] small, no quench [die]" - or its variant "Chop small, quench small; Chop big, quench big". There is the fervent prayer to the responsibility of elders (this might have a special resonance for European and American Green campaigners for clean air and pro tection of the ozone layer): "The young shall grow." This is a direct admonition to those with political and economic power to remember that there are generations after them who also deserve a place in the sun.
I wish to pause over the saying "Ewe nla ko ni ru wewe" - "The big leaf shall not crush the small". You have to concede to the anonymous originator of that saying a gift of observation and the political wit to transfer the lessons of nature to the social arena. It is utterly graphic and trenchant. The phenomenon of creativity, we know, is closely related to the ability to yoke together separate, and even seemingly incompatible, matrices. This is the essence of satori, the moment of illumination when a mundane event unveils profound truths of the nature of things.
Here is my own fictional reconstruction of the political satori that led to the extended poetic image in that Yoruba saying, "Ewe nla ko ni ru wewe". I picture a farmer, taking his rest under a banyan-type tree. A broad, fleshy leaf detaches from its moorings and zigzags gently down. Unlike Newton's apple, it does not smash against his head but, indeed, settles down on a smaller leaf without so much as dislodging or bruising the latter. Cut to some power tussle in the community, perhaps his feudal chief using his position, influence and resources to smother the aspirations or appropriate the entitlements of another peasant, perhaps of that very observer. His thoughts are: "Look at that leaf. Yes, it is larger, heavier than the other, higher up in the hierarchy of leaves, but look at the way it simply occupies the same space, settles on the smaller one gently, protectively."
In that moment, he espies the ideal in governance, the responsibility of the more powerful towards the weaker: to protect it. The immediate yoking of two matrices, nature and politics, offers us a good example of the creative tension that is the true nature of art. It may extend into other creative modes, as it is appropriated by the urban transport worker as the motto of his own existence, painted on his rickety truck - which is how you and I, travelling along the coast of West Africa, first encounter it.
Easy to understand why it remains my favourite, maybe a neck-and-neck rival of that other inscription, "No condition is permanent." These two vie for primacy in my political reckoning. Some African leaders actually dare to suggest that democracy is a concept alien to traditional African society. This is one of the most impudent political blasphemies I can think of. You can debate, analyse, reify or mystify that ideal called democracy as elaborately as you wish. But, simply place your average citizen in a Nigerian motor park with public transportation vehicles decorated with dozens of these inscriptions, and ask that worker or peasant to point out a single item that accurately defines democracy for him. The odds are he will point at that lorry bearing the inscription: "No condition is permanent." No condition is permanent. The unparalleled Shakespeare played numerous dramatic variations on that theme, yet even he did not quite transmit its essence to us in those memorable words. But then, there were no trotro lorries in the Elizabethan age.
© Wole Soyinka
Wole Soyinka will be participating in the Freedom and Culture International Creative Forum at Queen Elizabeth Hall, London SE1, on 10 November, as part of the "Passage of Music" season marking the bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act. For more information, log on to: www.passageofmusic.org.uk
http://www.newstatesman.com/200711010032
New Statesman:
What did the Saudis know about 7/7?
King Abdullah says Britain's security services ignored Saudi warnings, but what exactly did those warnings disclose?
Martin Bright
Published 01 November 2007
When I saw that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia was berating the British government for failing to heed warnings about the 7/7 bombings on London in advance of his state visit to Britain, I had a sense of déjà vu.
In August 2005, just a month after the terrorist attacks had left 56 dead, I was put in contact with an official at the Saudi embassy who said he had some important information concerning the attacks. Like King Abdullah two years later, he told me that the plot could have been dismantled had the British security services reacted to Saudi warnings of an imminent threat.
The information he provided me with was detailed, including the names of senior al-Qaeda members allegedly involved in the plot. The Saudis claimed they had intercepted calls from Kareem al-Majati, a prominent leader of al-Qaeda in the Gulf, and were investigating the possibility that he had been in direct contact with the leader of the British terror cell, Mohammad Sidique Khan.
Majati was originally from Morocco and at the time was thought to have masterminded the May 2003 attacks on Casablanca and helped organise the March 2004 Madrid bombing. He was killed in a shootout with Saudi police in April 2005. The Saudi official said calls from a second al-Qaeda operative, Younes al-Hayari, had also been traced to Britain.
The Saudi ambassador at the time, Prince Turki al-Faisal, even issued a statement: "There was certainly close liaison between the Saudi Arabian intelligence authorities and the British intelligence authorities some months ago, when information was passed to Britain about a heightened terrorist threat to London."
In the maelstrom of speculation around the 7/7 bombings, the story briefly fizzled and then died. Until this week, that is, when King Abdullah, in a piece of spectacular diplomatic discourtesy, decided to return to the subject.
The Saudi state visit has been a miserable experience for the British government and it is to the immense credit of the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, that he put the adoption of his second child before meeting the leader of the most morally repugnant regime on earth. Much has been made - and quite rightly - of the human rights abuses carried out in the name of a cruelly perverted version of Islam. One beneficial outcome of the visit is that it has allowed campaigners to highlight the state-sanctioned torture, beheadings and religious persecution carried out by the Saudi government.
But King Abdullah's crass intervention has also revealed a great- er truth about the relationship between Britain and Saudi Arabia, often described in a lazy piece of diplomatic shorthand as a "partner in the war on terror". If these two governments failed to co-operate in the months running up to 7 July 2005, then what exactly is the point of this relationship? The answer, of course, is that Britain's close ties with Saudi Arabia are predicated not on the battle against al-Qaeda, but on a series of highly lucrative arms deals, the first of which was signed by Margaret Thatcher in 1985. The latest of these, signed in August of last year, sold 72 Eurofighter Typhoons to the Saudis. It is estimated that the deals have brought over £40bn to the UK economy, mainly through the defence contractor BAE Systems and its predecessor British Aerospace.
This is just the latest example of the British government peddling the mendacious propaganda about "shared interests" with Saudi Arabia in the war against terror, despite scant evidence of a working relationship.
Last December, when the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, announced that a Serious Fraud Office investigation into allegations of bribery surrounding the BAE systems arms deals was being dropped, the then prime minister again invoked security issues. "Our relationship with Saudi Arabia is vitally important for our country in terms of counter-terrorism, in terms of the broader Middle East, in terms of helping in respect of Israel and Palestine," he said. "That strategic interest comes first."
The level of self-delusion contained in Tony Blair's statement was staggering. Now King Abdullah himself has blown a hole in the argument that British-Saudi relations are bolstered by the close links of our countries' security services.
I do not know the truth of the Saudi claims I first reported over two years ago. There is no way of telling. However, it is interesting that the line taken by Whitehall sources quoted in the press has now shifted. In 2005 I was told the British security apparatus "did not recognise" the intelligence referred to by the Saudis. Yet the response now, to Abdullah's comments, is that the information was too vague to act on, which is a quite different matter.
Those who know more than I about the true nature of the Saudi regime have pointed to the gross hypocrisy contained in the comments. As the academic Malise Ruthven, author of Islam in the World, wrote in the Independent on 30 October: "King Abdullah's complaint that British authorities ignored Saudi warnings of an imminent attack on the UK before the atrocities of 7 July 2005 might be more convincing if they came from the ruler of a country less sympathetic to the Islamist agenda." This is why the new report into Islamist hate literature in Britain's mosques is so vital. Published by the centre-right think tank Policy Exchange, The Highjacking of British Islam has discovered books advocating the stoning of adulterers, the burning of homosexuals and the beheading of "apostates" who turn away from Islam. Much of the material was traced to agencies of the Saudi government.
This is the reality of Britain's "shared interests" with Saudi Arabia: we give them weapons to bolster their vicious regime and in return we get the literature of intolerance designed to encourage another generation to wage jihad.
http://www.newstatesman.com/200711010013
Página/12:
Las catacumbas de la Armada
INSPECCION EN LA BASE NAVAL DE PUERTO BELGRANO
Por primera vez en democracia, sobrevivientes del campo ilegal de detenciones que funcionó en la mayor base naval del país recorrieron el predio como inicio de un proceso judicial. El próximo paso serán las indagatorias a los marinos involucrados en la represión.
Por Diego Martínez
Lunes, 05 de Noviembre de 2007
“Abran esa puerta”, ordenó el fiscal Hugo Cañón. Pasaron cinco minutos. La llave no aparecía. “Abran”, insistió. Al jefe de la Base Naval de Puerto Belgrano se le diluyó la sonrisa. El capitán de navío Néstor Omar Costa se quitó sus Ray-Ban oscuros de marco dorado, pidió que las cámaras no filmaran y acató, hacha en mano, la orden de la Justicia. Del otro lado sólo había papeles inútiles, pero para los sobrevivientes del campo de torturas y exterminio que funcionó en la mayor base naval del país, protagonistas por primera vez en 23 años de democracia de una inspección ocular a las catacumbas donde transcurrieron sus cautiverios, la imagen simboliza el comienzo de un proceso de justicia que lentamente avanza también en la inconmovible Bahía Blanca.
La medida fue ordenada por el juez federal ad hoc Eduardo Tentoni, que instruye la causa desde febrero, tras un año de excusaciones y recusaciones, en algunos casos por identificación con la dictadura. Acompañaron a los sobrevivientes representantes de las querellas: H.I.J.O.S. Capital y la Asamblea Permanente por los Derechos Humanos local. En nombre de la Armada encabezó el contingente el comandante de operaciones navales, contraalmirante Luis Oscar Manino, secundado por Costa y el jefe de Baterías, capitán de navío Gustavo Eladio Ardusso. Gracias a un oportuno asueto por el “Día de la Madre” (sic), que benefició al personal con más de un cuarto de siglo en la Armada, los interlocutores de los visitantes a lo largo del trayecto fueron jóvenes sin protagonismo en los años ‘70.
La inspección comenzó por el Puesto 1, cerca de la entrada principal. En los días posteriores al golpe allí fueron interrogados, entre otros, los dirigentes peronistas Edgardo Carracedo, Jorge Izarra, Néstor y Hugo Giorno, que relataron ante el juez sus padecimientos. Los tres últimos fueron luego intendentes de Punta Alta. Durante tres semanas estuvieron encerrados en camarotes del crucero 9 de Julio, reciclado para la ocasión. Pese a los ojos de buey sellados, lograron ver los muelles de la dársena de Puerto Belgrano, donde hoy descansan los hierros chamuscados que catapultaron al estrellato al capitán Guillermo Tarapow.
Luego fue el turno de las baterías históricas, fortalezas de piedra con paredes de un metro de ancho levantadas a fines del siglo XIX para custodiar el puerto militar. A juzgar por pisos, paredes externas, eucaliptos, vías de trocha angosta y playas cercanas, coincidentes con los relatos de sobrevivientes, los detenidos-desaparecidos locales resistieron en alguna de esas casamatas. Es improbable que sin la confesión de algún marino la Justicia confirme con certeza cuál de las seis baterías funcionó como centro de detención. La inspección incluyó sólo dos, la sexta y la tercera, ambas abandonadas, actuales “villas cariño”. El silencio de los victimarios no permite descartar que el CCD haya funcionado en la cuarta, actual sede de un museo histórico.
Tentoni ya declaró nulas las leyes de impunidad y los indultos que beneficiaban a los oficiales imputados en los ’80. El próximo paso serán las indagatorias no sólo de marinos detenidos en otras causas como Julio Torti, Antonio Vañek, Juan Carlos Malugani o Juan José Lombardo, sino también de quienes continúan impunes y libres, como el contraalmirante Raúl Alberto Marino, el capitán de navío Edmundo Núñez, los miembros de las patotas operativas, sus capellanes y sus subordinados de Prefectura.
© 2000-2007 www.pagina12.com.ar|Todos los Derechos Reservados
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elpais/1-94127-2007-11-05.html
Página/12: “La memoria democrática
no es un deber, es un derecho”
DEBATE EN BARCELONA SOBRE POLITICAS PUBLICAS DE MEMORIA; EL FRANQUISMO Y LA DICTADURA
La semana pasada, pocos días antes de que en España se promulgara la Ley de la Memoria Histórica que reconoce a las víctimas del franquismo, se efectuó en Barcelona un coloquio que retomó las experiencias en Chile y Argentina para discutir el proceso de impunidad que vivió España tras la Guerra Civil.
Por Lila Pastoriza
Lunes, 05 de Noviembre de 2007
Entre el 17 y el 20 de octubre pasado, en la ciudad de Barcelona, España, el Memorial Democrático catalán efectuó su primer Coloquio Internacional centrado en Políticas Públicas de Memoria, en un clima signado por la inminente aprobación de dos leyes sobre la memoria histórica. Los temas abordados, y el nivel y rigor con que se los trató, lo convirtieron en el inicio de un debate imprescindible para países como la Argentina.
Las fraguas de la memoria otra vez relumbran en España. Después de casi 40 años de la dictadura que a sangre, hostias y garrote vil instaurara Francisco Franco, y de los más de treinta transcurridos desde que el Caudillo exhalara su último suspiro, la conmemoración del pasado comienza a resquebrajar la losa de silencio y olvido que durante siete décadas sepultó crímenes y luchas. En menos de ocho días, entre el 24 y el 31 de octubre, vieron la luz dos leyes poco imaginables tiempo atrás –la que creó el Memorial Democrático de Cataluña y la denominada Ley de la Memoria Histórica, aprobada siete días después por el Congreso de los Diputados de España– que, más allá de limitaciones y polémicas, incorporan el reconocimiento a las víctimas de la dictadura franquista, la ilegitimidad de los tribunales y sentencias de excepción y el compromiso de desarrollar políticas públicas de memoria.
El Memorial Democrático catalán es en España la primera institución del Estado dedicada específicamente a la restitución de la memoria democrática y también la que hizo punta en la inclusión explícita de la condena a la dictadura franquista. Surgió como producto del compromiso adoptado hace tres años por la coalición de centroizquierda gobernante en Cataluña de instituir una política pública de memoria que reconociera a los luchadores por la democracia durante la Guerra Civil y la dictadura. Era una deuda pendiente: ya el nuevo Estatuto establecía la necesidad de resguardar la memoria democrática, un reclamo cada vez más potente.
Pensado como sitio de rememoración, conservación e investigación y como centro de difusión y recursos; concebido no como museo o centro documental sino como un ágora que deje fuera las narraciones únicas y posibilite la inclusión y contrastación de cualquier versión democrática, el Memorial estará abierto tanto a quienes desde hace años se dedican a la memoria antifranquista como a grupos nuevos cuyas iniciativas apuntan a las experiencias democráticas de los actuales movimientos sociales.
El Primer Coloquio Internacional Políticas Públicas de Memoria, celebrado en Barcelona entre el 17 y el 20 del pasado mes de octubre, supuso un fuerte respaldo al Memorial, a pocos días de que el Parlamento Catalán considerara su creación por ley. Inaugurado por José Montilla, presidente de la Generalitat de Cataluña, y por Marius Rubiralta, rector de la Universidad de Barcelona, el Coloquio contó con la presencia de figuras como Isabel Allende Bussi y Elizabeth Lira, de Chile, el respetadísimo jurista español Carlos Jiménez Villarejo y el periodista de Página/12 y director del CELS, Horacio Verbitsky, entre muchas otras personalidades relevantes en los temas abordados.
Organizado por la Dirección General de la Memoria Democrática, que comanda con firmeza María Jesús Bono, el Coloquio constituyó un rico espacio de exposición y debate para medio centenar de participantes procedentes de once países ante una concurrencia heterogénea profesional y generacionalmente, de cerca de más de 400 personas. No sólo se trataron cuestiones conceptuales. También fueron abordadas las experiencias de memoriales en diferentes partes del mundo. Entre ellas, la recuperación de la Villa Grimaldi y las acciones desarrolladas en Colectivo Londres 38, en Chile, y las que, en Argentina, donde a partir del 2004 memoria, verdad y justicia son políticas de Estado, llevan adelante el Archivo Nacional de la Memoria y el Instituto Espacio de la Memoria en la ESMA y ex Centros Clandestinos de Detención, la Red Federal de Sitios de Memoria y la Comisión Provincial de la Memoria de la Provincia de Buenos Aires. Una experiencia pionera, iniciada en la ciudad de Buenos Aires en 1997 –la Comisión Pro Monumento a las Víctimas del Terrorismo de Estado– fue la que por primera vez reunió en un mismo espacio a representantes de organismos de Derechos Humanos, legisladores y miembros del Poder Ejecutivo local, sobreviviendo a cambios de gobierno y crisis como la del 2001. Frente al Río de la Plata, el Monumento, con los nombres grabados de los desaparecidos y asesinados, será inaugurado el próximo 7 de noviembre. El Coloquio, efectuado en el marco generado por las polémicas sobre las leyes de memoria, aportó elementos valiosos tanto en información como en elaboraciones conceptuales y generación de interrogantes para el debate en curso –y en buena medida pendiente– que comenzó a darse en Argentina. El evento incrementó con fuerza la necesidad de intercambios y discusiones fecundas. Faltó tiempo en Barcelona para llevarlas adelante y ya se plantea un espacio informático que anticipe la red de memoriales que fue apareciendo como imprescindible.
Mientras tanto, creado ya por ley y fortalecido en su presencia pública, el Memorial Democrático catalán busca su espacio físico. “Se requiere ahora una entidad, una sede, un programa de actividades, una oferta permanente de servicios, un presupuesto”, señaló el urbanista Jordi Borja. Las palabras pronunciadas en el cierre del Coloquio por Joan Saura, consejero de Interior, Relaciones Institucionales y Participación, permiten alentar cierto optimismo. “Es irreversible la política iniciada en Cataluña”, dijo, ante un lleno total de sábado a la tarde tras tres días de sesiones.
Presente y pasado (1)
Como siempre ocurre, y como ha señalado Pilar Calveiro, “es el presente o más bien son los peligros de nuestra sociedades actuales los que convocan la memoria. En este sentido se podría decir que ella arranca de esta realidad nuestra y se lanza al pasado para traerlo, como iluminación fugaz, al instante de peligro actual”. Y así se expresó nítidamente en el Coloquio.
Ricard Vinyes, catedrático de la Universidad de Barcelona y coordinador de la comisión redactora del Memorial Democrático, abrió las sesiones con una elaborada intervención que ubica al particular modelo español de impunidad (que no equivale a la ausencia de juzgamiento a los responsables de la represión y crímenes franquistas sino a la negativa del Estado a destruir política y jurídicamente la vigencia legal de Consejos de Guerra y sentencias dictadas por los tribunales especiales) como generador de “un reclamo imbuido de un fuerte y conflictivo contenido ético y político” y de que “recuperar la memoria histórica sea una metáfora social que expresa un desacuerdo moral, una insurrección ética a este modelo de impunidad”. Vinyes sostuvo que “este desacuerdo ha hecho crecer el interés social por el pasado reciente y que, a la vez, va demostrando que el conflicto pasa por la trasmisión de la memoria y su constante resignificación”.
Desde otro lugar, decía hace dos años a Página/12 Jordi Borja al comentar las grandes movilizaciones montadas por la derecha política y la Iglesia Católica que se registraban entonces en España: “Hemos tenido una democracia cobarde, devaluada por la impunidad. Al pactar con la injusticia, los valores e intereses de la dictadura quedaban a salvo y han reaparecido”, enfatizando la necesidad urgente de dar la batalla cultural. Frente a una democracia española devenida “frígida, frágil, economicista... debemos apropiarnos de nuestro pasado, hay que ‘resimbolizar’ la vida política democrática para enriquecerla, para que la sociedad vuelva a sentirse implicada en proyectos colectivos”.
Afrontar este presente es hoy el desafío de la política pública de memoria que, según Vinyes, no es sino la combinación entre un objetivo (“asumir como patrimonio de la Nación los esfuerzos, conflictos, luchas y memorias que han hecho posible el mantenimiento de los valores éticos de la sociedad que nos hemos dado”, es decir los valores democráticos constitutivos del antifranquismo), un programa (“las actuaciones para preservar y difundir ese patrimonio material e inmaterial”) y un instrumento (el Memorial Democrático). Se requiere, señala, dirigirse a toda la sociedad transversalmente (y no sólo a los colectivos de afectados) para implementar acciones de trasmisión de ese patrimonio.
Pero, ¿cuál es el núcleo de la memoria a trasmitir? Vinyes subrayó su rechazo a la tríada “imperativo de la memoria-discurso único-centralidad del dolor” como constitutiva de un difundido guión canónico que “convierte al pasado fecundo, utilizable, en una memoria seca y acabada”. Y apostó a sustituir el dolor (que no es sino una experiencia) por la transgresión (que es un valor): “Aunque hasta ahora casi siempre el capital ha sido el dolor –explica Vinyes–, yo estoy cada vez más convencido de que el núcleo de la resistencia, de las luchas democráticas, de la oposición, es la transgresión, es decir esa vulneración de las leyes y reglas que se da a partir de tomar conciencia de la existencia de una situación opresiva, de la injusticia... Además, en un caso como el nuestro, en que la dictadura duró tantos años y afectó a todos los aspectos de la vida impidiendo que la mayoría de los ciudadanos realizara sus proyectos, ya no se trataba sólo de la transgresión política clásica de militar en un partido sino de la transgresión que echó raíces en la agenda cotidiana, plagada de prohibiciones y de proyectos de vida frustrados. Por eso creo que el núcleo de la memoria trasmisible pasa por la transgresión y porque en tanto es sublevación ante la injusticia, une el pasado con el presente”.
Memoria: ¿deber o derecho?
El Memorial Democrático sostiene la existencia de un derecho civil a acceder y a reinterpretar al patrimonio ético que conforman las luchas y sus memorias. Y de lo que se trata, afirma, es de que el Estado garantice el ejercicio de este derecho a través de las políticas públicas de Memoria. Vinyes lo fundamenta en el rechazo al deber de recordar.
“La memoria democrática no es un imperativo, es un derecho civil que forma parte constituyente del estado de bienestar como el resto de derechos civiles, conseguidos o no. Nosotros entendemos que el deber de memoria no existe. No es otra cosa que un postulado moral que, entre otras consecuencias, ha llevado a la creación de un dilema falso y engañoso –¿es preciso olvidar o es preciso recordar?– cuyas respuestas afirmativas a uno u otro extremo paralizan cualquier decisión y acción. Pero lo más grave es que se plantea como una decisión estrictamente individual que, por consiguiente, exime a la Administración estatal de cualquier responsabilidad... De ahí que sostengamos que el deber de memoria nunca puede fundamentar una política pública. Y, en cambio, que el conocimiento de los esfuerzos para alcanzar relaciones sociales equitativas y democráticas, de los valores éticos que han animado esas luchas, de las experiencias y proyectos de quienes las protagonizaron, del terror de Estado en contra de ellos, que el conocimiento de todo ello constituye un derecho civil, que eso sí funda y basa la responsabilidad de la Administración pública, porque es ella quien debe garantizar a los ciudadanos el ejercicio de ese derecho, poniendo los medios que posibiliten hacerlo.”
Presente y pasado y (2)
El Memorial no se define como una institución sobre el conocimiento histórico de cualquier pasado, sino como una institución sobre la responsabilidad civil y ética de la ciudadanía.
“Se trata –dice Vinyes– de una institución absolutamente transversal que usa el conocimiento histórico como un medio, pero también otros saberes y expresiones de reflexión. No se trata exactamente de ‘explicar’, sino de provocar la reflexión que conduce a la conciencia: la cuestión no es ¿qué sabía antes de entrar y qué sé ahora? Más bien es otra: ¿qué pensaba antes de entrar? ¿Qué pensaré a partir de ahora? La actuación del Memorial, su programa, debería orientarse a mantener esa pregunta.”
Vinyes deslinda “comunidad de víctimas” y “responsabilidad ciudadana”. “Los relatos del antifranquismo –dice– son tan sólo –que no es poco– pretextos para provocar la conciencia democrática en la ciudadanía. En caso contrario tan solo habrá comunidad de víctimas, pero no conciencia ciudadana de los valores democráticos de los que eran portadores aquellos que fueron sometidos a represión por la dictadura.”
Otra vez, la memoria trae desde el presente al pasado. “En definitiva –afirma Vinyes–, hemos propuesto una Institución para convertir la memoria del antifranquismo, la memoria democrática, en nuestro recuerdo productivo, en nuestro pasado utilizable. Un instrumento de socialización que contribuya a construir ciudadanos en nuestro pequeño y frágil país.”
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http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/dialogos/21-94129-2007-11-05.html
Página/12:
El Circo más Grande del Mundo
Por Leonardo Moledo
Lunes, 05 de Noviembre de 2007
El Circo Más Grande del Mundo se instaló en un extremo de la Villa, pegado al puerto, donde nacía también la calle principal plagada de negocios de pulóveres y toda la gama de objetos provisorios (y en general pequeños), que produce el verano.
Un poco porque sí, y un poco porque el verano transforma todo en una curiosidad, Gabriel fue a la primera función del Circo Más Grande del Mundo. Era un verano algo aburrido, como todos, y entonces ¿por qué no?
El circo estaba cubierto con carteles de neón, con esos colores que nunca son luz del todo, poco apropiados para las playas, donde se supone que todo tiene un significado profundo: el mar, la arena, o las rocas desmenuzadas por el viento y el agua a través de las eras geológicas. Es lo que habitualmente se considera efecto sedativo de las vacaciones: la multitud, con sus radios portátiles, apiñada entre las escolleras frente a la unicidad teológica del mar. Gabriel no soportaba las radios portátiles; en general, nadie las soportaba pero en conjunto, todo el mundo las encendía.
La carpa era flamante pero los carros parecían viejos y rotos, aunque había un Gol estacionado junto a la boletería. La cola estaba llena de familias en vacaciones, con chicos zumbando impacientes y delante de Gabriel, un tipo atlético, con pinta de guardavidas, que protestaba, hasta que de repente, abrieron la ventanilla de la boletería y una enana empezó a vender las entradas. Era increíblemente diminuta y fea. El tipo con pinta de guardavidas sacudió la cabeza con furia: “vienen de otro mundo”, dijo. Lo decía por la enana de la boletería, pero era evidente que se refería a los enanos en general. Gabriel pensó que, efectivamente, la enana era horrible, pero no entendía por qué el tipo con pinta de guardavidas se enojaba. A Gabriel más bien le daba lástima. Trató de imaginarse qué se siente al ser un enano.
La función fue bastante convencional: empezó con un par de payasos, enseguida vinieron una écuyère y una mujer que tiraba cuchillos sobre un tablón; y después un grupo de equilibristas que se colgaron de varios trapecios. Lo de siempre. El número final era una prueba de malabarismo, y resultó que la malabarista era la misma enana que vendía las entradas. Apenas apareció, Gabriel buscó entre el público al tipo con pinta de guardavidas y vio que se movía inquieto en su asiento, como si quisiera levantarse y gritar algo. La enana arrojaba al aire unas naranjas. Empezó con dos y llegó hasta diez y las hacía flotar en el aire, formando un arco, al mismo tiempo que daba vueltas carnero, sin que se les cayeran. Si se lo pensaba, era increíble, cómo podía hacer eso. Pero el tipo con pinta de guardavidas estaba cada vez más furioso. El público no prestaba mucha atención. Al fin de cuentas, era el número final y ya todos pensaban en la salida, en la noche, en que el mar es profundo y esas cosas. El tipo con pinta de guardavidas, en cambio, cerraba los puños, impotente. Gabriel pensaba en la enana malabarista. ¿Viviría en uno de esos carromatos rotos? ¿Habría nacido en El Circo Más Grande del Mundo?
Cuando salió, la enana ya estaba en su puesto, vendiendo las entradas: El Circo Más Grande del Mundo ahorraba personal.
Gabriel se fue a un boliche. Se sentó a una mesa donde estaba una chica que se llamaba Alicia y fue una suerte porque Alicia era un nombre que le gustaba y al fin y al cabo, el nombre es lo único que importa. Todo lo demás forma parte del mecanismo del verano. Y para conversar, siempre está el mar, que es grande, infinito, inconmensurable y todo eso.
Al día siguiente, fue con Alicia a la playa. Mientras cruzaban la calle principal, vieron pasar en el Gol a los artistas del Circo Más Grande del Mundo. A Gabriel nunca se le hubiera ocurrido que la gente del circo existiera también de día. La enana iba en el asiento de atrás, mirando por la ventanilla, como un niño, o como si fuera un bulto de los que habitualmente se llevan a la playa, un bulto alicaído, lleno de ropas, de termos o de comida. Así miraba la enana por la ventanilla. A Alicia le quedaba muy poco tiempo en la Villa. Pero no importaba la cantidad de tiempo. Lo único que importaba era la intensidad de las vivencias. Por eso miraba mucho el mar, para marcar esa intensidad salvadora.
Fueron a la playa del casino. El guardavidas era el mismo tipo que había estado delante de Gabriel en la cola del circo y que había dicho lo que había dicho sobre los enanos. Estaba recostado contra su casilla, leyendo una revista. Los artistas del Circo Más Grande del Mundo estaban en un extremo de la playa, del lado del Hotel Viejo. Era muy raro, pero parecían gente exactamente igual a la otra gente, salvo la enana. Aun de día, aun en la playa, seguía perteneciendo al circo. A Gabriel le pareció que trataban a la enana como si fuera una niña entre un grupo de adultos. El guardavidas, cada tanto, miraba a los artistas con furor. Estaba nervioso, agitado. Se notaba que, si hubiera podido, habría echado a la enana de su playa.
Después, fueron al departamento. Gabriel pensó en la gente del Circo Más Grande del Mundo, que en ese momento estarían en plena función, pero los distintos números se le mezclaban. Gabriel entró en el dormitorio y vio que la chica estaba desvistiéndose, sin pensar siquiera en la cena, porque lo importante era la rapidez, la intensidad de las vivencias. Lo abrazó. Gabriel pensó que la malabarista, al fin de cuentas, no había entrado al agua. ¿Sería capaz de nadar? ¿Esas piernas y brazos minúsculos podrían sostener una cabeza tan grande, en el agua? ¿O se bañaría en la orilla, como los niños más pequeños? En algún lugar había leído que los enanos no pueden nadar.
Al día siguiente, a la playa vino la enana con uno de los payasos. Como el mar, ella era también un objeto único. El guardavidas también la miraba. El tenía su teoría según la cual los enanos venían de otro mundo. Pues bien, entonces que se queden en ese otro mundo. Pero la cosa es que no se animaba a echarla. La chica estaba feliz. Nunca había vivido nada tan intensamente.
¿Pero por qué no entraba al agua la malabarista? Mientras la chica lo acariciaba, Gabriel se adormeció, pensando que no había nada da mejor en el mundo que estar así, con Alicia y la enana.
Alguien que corría tropezó con él y lo despertó bruscamente. La gente se amontonaba en el extremo de la playa señalando al mar, los artistas hacían gestos desesperados, y enseguida entendió: la malabarista finalmente había entrado al mar y estaba ahogándose; esas extremidades minúsculas le habían fallado y no podía volver. Corrió hasta la casilla del guardavidas y golpeó la puerta gritando que corriera, pero el guardavidas ni se movió. Si los enanos se meten en el agua, es cosa de ellos. Que los salven otros enanos. Ya bastante con haberlos tolerado en su playa. Gabriel se dio cuenta de que el guardavidas, pasara lo que pasara, iba a dejar que la enana se ahogase. Lo había decidido desde el principio, desde el momento en que la vio asomar en la ventanilla de la boletería. Los enanos no provenían del verano, sino de otro lado. Que se ahoguen, entonces. Nadie va a lamentarlo. La chica estaba excitadísima con lo que estaba ocurriendo: las manecitas de la enana hundiéndose, y la gente contemplando cómo la enana se ahogaba en el mar sin remedio.
Esa noche no habría función en El Circo Más Grande del Mundo. La chica temblaba, temblaba de emoción. No importaba cuánto faltara para que se terminara el verano. Aunque sólo fueran unas horas. Porque lo importante era la intensidad, la intensidad de las vivencias. Y todo era estrictamente maravilloso.
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http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/contratapa/13-94132-2007-11-05.html
The Independent:
Inside the mind of Van Gogh
The artist was a prolific letter writer who mused on subjects ranging from love and sex to depression and religion. Now, after painstaking translation, his correspondence is to go on display at the Royal Academy
Arifa Akbar reports
Published: 05 November 2007
When Vincent van Gogh abandoned his work as a Christian missionary in 1880 to take up the study of painting in earnest, he spoke of his desire to discover how artists of all mediums tried to communicate universal truths and, ultimately, in their own way, reach the divine. "To try to understand the real significance of what the great artists, the serious masters, tell us in their masterpieces – that leads to God," he said. "One man wrote or told it in a book; another in a picture."
As a master of post-Impressionism whose work influenced some of the greatest artists of the 20th century, it was not just through his painting that Van Gogh conveyed his genius; it was also through his writing. A keen, candid and remarkably expressive correspondent who regaled acquaintances with his views on love, religion and sex, he put pen to paper with the same creative vigour as he put paintbrush to canvas.
By the time he walked into a field in the town of Auvers-sur-Oise and shot himself in the chest, the 37-year-old Van Gogh had left behind a rich literary legacy that would, like his painting, outlive his short and tortured life.
Now, in the first exhibition of its nature and size to be staged in the country, the Royal Academy is planning to showcase dozens of his letters, some of which were previously unseen, in an attempt to convey some of the artist's most distinctive thoughts and preoccupations.
The exhibition, to be held in 2010, will be the culmination of years of research undertaken by three Dutch scholars who have translated more than 900 letters from French and Dutch into English and have made vital discoveries that shed new light on Van Gogh's psyche, his relationships, his pantheistic view of religion, his daily frustrations and the full extent of his mind-devouring depression.
Featuring a collection of correspondence between Van Gogh and those nearest and dearest to him, including his parents, sister Willemina, friends Paul Gauguin, Emile Bernard and Anthon van Rappard, and his beloved brother Theo, the show will exhibit about 40 letters alongside dozens of paintings and drawings. From the delirious highs he experienced while engrossed in artistic creation, to the tidal waves of loneliness and depression that would eventually engulf him, the missives capture the emotional rollercoaster of Van Gogh's life, as well as revealing his favourite artistic methods and colour theories.
It will be the first show since 1968 to bring Van Gogh's letters to Britain in any significant quantity, and the first in this country of such scale. Hans Luijten, a specialist at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, who is co-editing the new translated letters, The Complete Correspondence of Van Gogh, said the volume would be published in 2009 in the original language alongside a parallel English translation based on a radical re-examination of the original manuscripts.
One of the most marked features of the older English translation, said Dr Luijten, was the "smoothing over" of some of the cruder elements of Van Gogh's writing. While he was a highly eloquent writer, said Dr Luijten, Van Gogh occasionally peppered his friends' correspondence with rather more base sexual vocabulary that was edited out of the older translations by the use of dots or gaps in an attempt to avoid offending readers' sensibilities. This new, rough, almost bawdy side to the man who painted the sky at night over Arles and the Provençal countryside with such unique sensitivity, has been reinstated for all to see in the latest edition.
In a letter written to Ms Bernard on 5 August, 1888, in which he divulged his theory of art and its relationship to sex, he wrote that the reason their contemporary Degas was able to excel at painting was that he was not as sexually driven and did not experience "hard-ons" .
"We assume from what he says that he thought if writers went to too many brothels, they would not be as productive as painters," said Dr Luijten.
Jennifer Jonkovich, curator at the Morgan Library, in New York, which owns 22 of Van Gogh's letters written to Ms Bernard, some of which are likely to be loaned to the RA show, said this translation revealed Van Gogh to be, at times, very in touch with the earthy aspects of human existence.
In the same letter in which Van Gogh referred to Degas, he also called Rubens a "fucker", referring to the connection between Rubens' famed virility and his role as an artist, said Ms Jonkovich. "Rubens, ah, there you have it, he was a handsome man and a good fucker," he wrote. "Courbet too, there health allowed them to drink, eat, fuck."
In another letter dated 20 November 1889, written when Van Gogh had admitted himself to a mental asylum at Saint Remy, near Arles, he described his depression to Ms Bernard in painterly terms. Having produced several drawings in the asylum's garden, he wrote that his choice of dark colours in recent works had been deliberate, stemming from "the feeling of anxiety from which some of my companions in misfortune often suffer, and which is called 'seeing red'." In earlier translations, the words had been wrongly interpreted as 'black and red' ("noir rouge") instead of 'seeing red' ("voir rouge").
Discoveries have also been made of previously unknown letters written by the painter during his youth. One such correspondence is a letter of condolence which Van Gogh wrote to a family friend while in Amsterdam where he was undertaking the study of theology at the age of 24. "We can see from this letter how Van Gogh thought at this time, how he knew what to say to console a grieving father but also that he was deeply involved with all kinds of religious texts at the time," said Dr Luijten.
Research also revealed the worries of Van Gogh's parents over his lack of a proper career and how "angrily" he responded to their concern. " We get lots of insights by looking at 100 family correspondences, by his parents and sisters. What his parents thought of him gives us a different perspective on how his family worked, how his parents were concerned about him getting a good profession and they tried their utmost to help him but he interpreted it very differently, like an angry young man," added Dr Luijten.
Some of the other letters reveal Van Gogh to have been influenced by the literature he was reading, including English writers such as Charles Dickens and George Eliot, as well as the French novelist Emile Zola. Dr Luijten said one of the most fascinating discoveries was how influential the written word was to Van Gogh's artistic vision.
"He was very much influenced by some literature. He read the biography of the French painter Jean Francois Millet written by Alfred Sensier, and in that, he finds confirmation on what kind of artist he wants to be," said Dr Luijten.
Van Gogh, ever the insecure and obsessive perfectionist, was also eaten up by a self-doubt that would at times explode on to the page with a force that shocked his readers. Discussing his own work's shortcomings in immense detail in letters to Theo and Bernard, he was his own worst critic. In one letter, he sketched a couple heading towards a drawbridge – an illustration of a painting he was working on at the time. But the artist later attacked it with a knife in a fit of rage, partly destroying it and leaving only a remnant of the work behind.
Dr Luijten said that, contrary to the popular belief that Van Gogh was a romantic artist who worked primarily with his emotions, the letters revealed how he was "well aware of every step, that he spent a long time refining things, and giving a drawing a conclusion which he would sometimes write in the margins or at the bottom of a letter as an idea."
"A lot of people thought he just threw it all on the canvas but if you look at the manuscripts of his letters, you see him adding things and giving a painting a conclusion. He was well aware of his artistic ambition and what he wanted to achieve," he added.
Two years before his suicide on 27 July 1890, Van Gogh not only produced some of the most significant paintings of his career, often at a rapid, feverish rate, but also began writing compulsively to Theo, penning eloquent, sometimes twice daily missives in which he described his increasingly fractured state of mind.
In the final letter he is believed to have written to Theo, around 10 July 1890, he described three paintings he was working on, the last he ever undertook. In the correspondence, he wrote about his psychological fragmentation, as if to forewarn them of his own death. "I still felt very sad and continued to feel the storm which threatens you weighing on me too. What was to be done – you see, I generally try to be fairly cheerful but my life is also threatened at the very root and my steps are also wavering."
But later on in the letter, his tone switches to one of hopefulness when he begins to talk of the restorative force of nature captured in his paintings. "There – once back here I set to work again – though the brush almost slipped from my fingers but knowing exactly what I wanted, I have painted three more big canvases since.
"They are vast fields of wheat under troubled skies, and I did not need to go out of my way to try to express sadness and extreme loneliness.
"I hope you will see them soon – for I hope to bring them to you in Paris as soon as possible, since I almost think that these canvases will tell you what I cannot say in words, the health and restorative forces that I see in the country."
Just 19 days later, Van Gogh lay dying in his little room at the Ravoux Inn with Theo by his side. The darkness which had threatened his sanity for so long, and which had fed his work with an unparalleled intensity throughout his career, had finally conquered him. But his spirit, as captured in both his painting and his letters, lives on.
Letters from a troubled mind
On sex
"What do you say that Degas has trouble getting a hard-on? Degas lives like a little lawyer, and he doesn't like women, knowing that if he liked them and fucked them a lot, he would become cerebrally ill and hopeless at painting. Degas' painting is virile and impersonal precisely because he has resigned himself to being personally no more than a little lawyer, with a horror of riotous living." – to French painter Emile Bernard, 5 August 1888
On depression
"You'll understand that this combination of red ochre, of green saddened with grey, of black lines that define the outlines, this gives rise a little to the feeling of anxiety from which some of my companions in misfortune often suffer, and which is called 'seeing red'." – to Bernard, 20 November 1889
On sadness
"I still felt very sad and continued to feel the storm which threatens you weighing on me too. What was to be done – you see, I generally try to be fairly cheerful, but my life is also threatened at the very root, and my steps are also wavering." – to Theo, 10 June 1890
On imagination
"I sometimes regret that I can't decide to work more at home and from the imagination. Certainly, imagination is a capacity that must be developed and that enables us to create a more exalting and consoling nature than what just a glance at reality (which we perceive changing, passing quickly like lightning) allows us to perceive. – to Bernard, 12 April 1888
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article3129660.ece
ZNet | Human Rights:
The Global Debate on the Death Penalty
by Sandra Babcock;
Human Rights / American Bar Association; November 04, 2007
The debate over capital punishment in the United States-be it in the courts, in state legislatures, or on nationally televised talk shows-is always fraught with emotion. The themes have changed little over the last two or three hundred years. Does it deter crime? If not, is it necessary to satisfy society's desire for retribution against those who commit unspeakably violent crimes? Is it worth the cost? Are murderers capable of redemption? Should states take the lives of their own citizens? Are current methods of execution humane? Is there too great a risk of executing the innocent?
We are not alone in this debate. Others around the world-judges, legislators, and ordinary citizens-have struggled to reconcile calls for retribution with evidence that the death penalty does not deter crime. They have argued about whether the death penalty is a cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment. They have weighed its costs against the need for an effective police force, schools, and social services for the indigent. National leaders have engaged in these discussions while facing rising crime rates and popular support for capital punishment. Yet, while the United States has thus far rejected appeals to abolish the death penalty or adopt a moratorium, other nations have-increasingly and seemingly inexorably-decided to do away with capital punishment.
Indeed, the gap between the United States and the rest of the world on this issue is growing year by year. In June 2007, Rwanda abolished the death penalty, becoming the one hundredth country to do so as a legal matter (although eleven of these countries retain legislation authorizing the death penalty in exceptional circumstances, most have not executed anyone in decades). An additional twenty-nine countries are deemed to be abolitionist in practice since they have either announced their intention to abolish the death penalty or have refrained from carrying out executions for at least ten years. As a result, there are now at least 129 nations that are either de facto or de jure abolitionist.
According to Amnesty International, there are sixty- eight countries that retain the death penalty and carry out executions. But even this number is misleading. In reality, the vast majority of the world's executions are carried out by seven nations: China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United States, Pakistan, Yemen, and Vietnam. Many Americans know that the nations comprising Europe (except Belarus) and South America are abolitionist. But how many are aware that of the fifty-three nations in Africa only four ( Uganda, Libya, Somalia, and Sudan) carried out executions in 2005? Even in Asia, where many nations have long insisted that the death penalty is an appropriate and necessary sanction, there are signs of change. The Philippines abolished the death penalty in 2006, and the national bar associations of Malaysia and Japan have called for a moratorium on executions.
The international trend toward abolition reflects a shift in the death penalty paradigm. Whereas the death penalty was once viewed as a matter of domestic penal policy, now it is seen as a human rights issue. There are now three regional human rights treaties concerning the abolition of the death penalty: Protocols 6 and 13 to the European Convention on Human Rights, and the Additional Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, ratified by 160 nations (including the United States), restricts the manner in which the death penalty may be imposed and promotes abolition. Many human rights organizations and intergovernmental organizations, such as the European Union, see the death penalty as one of the most pressing human rights issues of our time and accordingly have taken an active role in persuading countries to halt executions.
The Supreme Court's View of International Law
As the international chorus of abolitionist voices swells, domestic courts and policy makers have engaged in a heated debate over the role of international law in U.S. death penalty cases. The debate came to a head in mid-2005 after the Supreme Court held in Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005), that the execution of juvenile offenders violated the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy observed that although international law did not control the Court's analysis, it was both "instructive" and "significant" in interpreting the contours of the Eighth Amendment.
The Roper Court noted that only seven countries had executed juvenile offenders since 1990: Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and China. But even those countries had disavowed the practice in recent years, leaving the United States as "the only country in the world that continues to give official sanction to the juvenile death penalty." Id. at 575. The Court looked to treaties that prohibit the execution of juvenile offenders, such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which has been ratified by every country in the world apart from the United States and Somalia. After examining these sources and reviewing international practice, the Court concluded that the "overwhelming weight of international opinion" was opposed to the juvenile death penalty.
The Court's majority opinion prompted a scathing dissent by Justice Antonin Scalia. After noting that the Court's abortion jurisprudence was hardly consistent with the more restrictive practices of most foreign nations, he commented: "I do not believe that approval by `other nations and peoples' should buttress our commitment to American principles any more than . . . disapproval by `other nations and peoples' should weaken that commitment." Id. at 628. Conservative commentators and legislators likewise attacked the Court's citation of foreign law.
What many critics of Roper failed to recognize, however, is that the Court has long looked to the practices of the international community in evaluating whether a punishment is cruel and unusual. In Wilkerson v. Utah, 99 U.S. 130 (1879), the Court cited the practices of other countries in upholding executions by firing squad. And in its oft-cited opinion in Trop v. Dulles, 356 U.S. 86 (1958), the Court declared that banishment was a punishment "universally deplored in the international community of democracies." Since then, the Court has frequently referred to international law in a series of death penalty cases interpreting the meaning of the Eighth Amendment.
The Court's attention to international practice in death penalty cases is undoubtedly related to the flexible and evolving character of the Court's Eighth Amendment jurisprudence. In Weems v. United States, 217 U.S. 349 (1910), the Court held that the "cruel and unusual punishments" clause "is not fastened to the obsolete, but may acquire meaning as public opinion becomes enlightened by a humane justice." Id. at 378. In Trop, the Court reaffirmed that the clause "must draw its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society." 356 U.S. at 100. The Eighth Amendment involves nothing more, and nothing less, than evaluating whether a punishment violates human dignity.
Courts around the world have wrestled with these same questions. When South Africa's Constitutional Court decided that the death penalty was an unconstitutionally cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment, it surveyed the decisions of several foreign courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court. Like that Court, the South African court did not consider foreign sources to be controlling. Nevertheless, it observed that "international and foreign authorities are of value because they analyse [sic] arguments for and against the death sentence and show how courts of other jurisdictions have dealt with this vexed issue. For that reason alone they require our attention." State v. Makwanyane, Constitutional Court of the Republic of South Africa, 1995, Case No. CCT/3/94, 34, [1995] 1 LRC 269. The high courts of India, Lithuania, Albania, the Ukraine, and many others have likewise cited international precedent in seminal decisions relating to the administration of the death penalty.
In light of this history, the practice of citing international precedent hardly seems to warrant the storm of controversy surrounding it. But whether one agrees or disagrees with the Court's approach, a majority of the current justices favors consideration of international law. In the next few years, a number of capital cases will once again offer the Court an opportunity to look beyond U.S. borders and survey international law and the practices of foreign states.
Execution of Persons Who Did Not Kill
Article 6(2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) provides that the death penalty may only be imposed for the "most serious crimes." T he United Nations (UN) Human Rights Committee, which interprets the ICCPR's provisions, has observed that this provision must be "read restrictively to mean that the death penalty should be a quite exceptional measure." Human Rights Committee, General Comment 6, Art. 6 (Sixteenth session, 1982) 7; Compilation of General Comments and General Recommendations Adopted by Human Rights Treaty Bodies, U.N. Doc. HRIGEN1Rev.1 at 6 (1994). In a death penalty case from Zambia, where the prisoner received a death sentence for participating in an armed robbery, the committee held that the sentence was not compatible with Article 6(2) because the petitioner's use of firearms did not cause death or injury to any person.
The UN Safeguards Guaranteeing Protection of the Rights of Those Facing the Death Penalty, adopted by the UN Economic and Social Council in 1984, defines " most serious crimes" as "intentional crimes with lethal or other extremely grave consequences." Referring to those safeguards, the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary and Arbitrary Executions has concluded that the term "intentional" should be "equated to premeditation and should be understood as deliberate intention to kill." United Nations, Report of the Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions, U.N. Doc. CCPR/C/79/Add.85, 19 Nov. 1997, 13.
Yet in the United States, several states authorize the death penalty for persons who are "major participants" in a felony, such as burglary or robbery, even if they never killed, intended to kill, or even contemplated that someone would be killed while committing the crime. In California and Georgia, persons may be sentenced to death for accidental killings during a felony or attempted felony.
Moreover, Texas, South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and North Carolina allow for the imposition of a death sentence in some cases for the rape of a minor, even if the victim did not die. These laws will be subject to strong legal challenges in coming years, although this will not be an easy battle, as demonstrated by the recent Louisiana supreme court decision upholding a death sentence against an offender who was convicted of raping a child. Louisiana v. Kennedy, No. 05-KA-1981 ( La. May 22, 2007).
Available data indicate that prosecutors rarely seek the death penalty against "non-triggermen," and executions of these persons are few and far between. These two factors alone indicate that the imposition of the death penalty on persons who have committed nonlethal crimes may be ripe for challenge. In the event that the Supreme Court examines the issue, it is highly likely it will consider international practice. In Enmund v. Florida, 458 U.S. 782 (1982), a case involving a defendant sentenced to death under the felony-murder rule, the Court noted that international norms were "not irrelevant" to its analysis, observing that the doctrine of felony murder had been abolished in England and India, severely restricted in Canada and a number of other Commonwealth of Nations countries, and was unknown in continental Europe.
Execution of the Severely Mentally Ill
Although the Supreme Court has held that the Eighth Amendment prohibits the execution of the mentally incompetent, state and federal courts have routinely concluded that severely mentally ill prisoners are sufficiently competent that they may lawfully be executed. Consequently, dozens of prisoners suffering from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and other incapacitating mental illnesses have been executed in the United States during the last ten years. In June 2007, however, the Court overturned a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, holding that the court had used an overly restrictive definition of incompetence. Panetti v. Quarterman, 127 S. Ct. 2842 (2007). This decision may encourage state and federal courts to take greater care in evaluating the mental status of those facing imminent execution, but it does not prohibit courts from sentencing severely mentally ill prisoners to death, nor does it guarantee that severely mentally ill prisoners will not be executed in the future.
In Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002), in which the Court struck down the execution of the mentally retarded, the Court cited an amicus curiae brief submitted by the European Union (EU) as evidence that "within the world community, the imposition of the death penalty for crimes committed by mentally retarded offenders is overwhelmingly disapproved." Id. at 316 (citing in n.21 Brief for European Union as Amicus Curiae at 4). The current Court likely would be open to considering similar amicus briefs in a future case challenging the execution of the severely mentally ill.
A substantial body of international precedent exists regarding the execution of the severely mentally ill. The UN Safeguards Guaranteeing Protection of the Rights of Those Facing the Death Penalty prohibit imposing the death penalty "on persons who have become insane." In 1989, the UN Economic and Social Council expanded this protection to cover "persons suffering from . . . extremely limited mental competence, whether at the stage of sentence or execution." United Nations Economic & Social Council, Implementation of the Safeguards Guaranteeing Protection of Rights of those Facing the Death Penalty, E.S.C. Res. 1989/64, U.N. Doc. E/1989/91 (1989), at 51, 1(d).The UN Commission on Human Rights has urged countries not to impose the death penalty on persons suffering from any form of mental disabilities. And the EU has consistently asserted that executions of persons suffering from severe mental disorders "are contrary to internationally recognized human rights norms and neglect the dignity and worth of the human person." EU Memorandum on the Death Penalty (Feb. 25, 2000), at 4, www.eurunion.org/legislat/deathpenalty/eumemorandum.htm.
Racial and Geographic Disparities
Arbitrariness in capital sentencing was one of the factors that led the Supreme Court to strike down existing state death penalty laws in Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972). Four years later, in Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153 (1976), the Court's decision to uphold the newly revised laws was based on its determination that the statutes minimized the risk of arbitrary sentencing by channeling the discretion of capital juries. But thirty years later, factors such as race and geography continue to lead to great disparities in capital sentencing. These disparities have led to a different sort of arbitrariness, one that may not be consistent with international norms.
Studies have repeatedly shown that race matters when determining who is sentenced to death. It has been said that, as a statistical matter, race is more likely to affect death sentencing than smoking affects the likelihood of dying from heart disease. In Philadelphia, the odds that an offender will receive a death sentence are nearly four times higher when the defendant is black. A 2006 study confirmed that defendants' skin color and facial features play a critical role in capital sentencing. And over the last twenty years, social scientists have repeatedly observed that capital defendants are much more likely to be sentenced to death for homicides involving white victims.
Enormous geographical disparities arise as well. This derives, in part, from the lack of uniform standards to guide the discretion of state prosecutors in seeking the death penalty. Prosecutors are almost always elected officials, and their support or opposition to the death penalty in a given case is often influenced by the level of popular support for capital punishment within a given community. In San Francisco, for example, the local prosecutor never seeks the death penalty because she is morally opposed to it. In Tulare County, located in California's conservative Central Valley, the chief prosecutor is a zealous advocate of capital punishment. As a result, two persons who commit the same crime, and who are ostensibly prosecuted under the same penal code, may be subject to two radically different punishments.
Article 6(1) of the ICCPR provides that nations may not "arbitrarily" take life. The term is not defined in the text of the treaty, nor has the UN Human Rights Committee had an opportunity to elaborate on its meaning in the context of an otherwise lawfully imposed capital sentence. In evaluating "arbitrary arrest and detention," however, that committee concluded that arbitrariness encompasses elements of inappropriateness, injustice, and lack of predictability. The Inter- American Commission on Human Rights, a human rights body of the Organization of American States, has found that geographic disparities in the application of the death penalty in the United States can result in a "pattern of legislative arbitrariness" whereby an offender's death sentence depends not on the crime committed but on the location where it was committed. In Roach and Pinkerton v. United States, Case 9647, Annual Report of the IAHCR 1986-87, the Inter-American Commission concluded that such geographic disparities constituted an arbitrary deprivation of the right to life and subjected the petitioners to unequal treatment before the law in contravention of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man.
These sources are generally considered to be nonbinding. But that does not mean that they are not persuasive. Five justices of the Supreme Court-like many judges throughout the world-find it a worthwhile endeavor to consider international norms in evaluating whether the application of the death penalty comports with basic human dignity, whether it constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, and whether it is consistent with contemporary standards of decency. As the community of nations continues to debate the pros and cons of capital punishment, the United States should take a seat at the table, listen, and learn.
Sandra L. Babcock is an associate clinical professor and clinical director of the Center for International Human Rights at Northwestern University Law School in Chicago.
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=80&ItemID=14200
posted by attilav at 18:34
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