Peace Day Event Calls for Ending Missile Testing in the Pacific

September 17, 2011 by kyle from DMZhawaii.org

Hawai’i Peace and Justice (formerly the American Friends Service Committee Hawai’i Program) will sponsor a talk by a renowned peace activist to commemorate International Peace Day.

MacGregor Eddy will speak about “Peace In the Pacific: Stop Missile Testing!” Ms. Eddy sits on the board of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power Space <http://www.space4peace.org>, is a member of the International Committee to Save Jeju Island (Korea) <www.savejejuisland.org>, and coordinates peace protests at the Vandenberg Space Command <www.vandenbergwitness.org>.

The event takes place on International Peace Day, September 21, 2011 at 7:00 pm, at the Honolulu Friends Meeting House, 2426 Oahu Avenue, Honolulu. The presentation is free and open to the public.

On what has been declared an International Day of Peace by the United Nations, the United States had scheduled to launch a nuclear-capable Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missile from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California to the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. After an outpouring of international criticism, the launch has been postponed to a later date.

There was much controversy with the selection of this particular date, which was established by the U.N. General Assembly in 2001 to be reserved as “a day of global ceasefire and non-violence, an invitation to all nations and people to honor a cessation of hostilities for the duration of the Day…commemorating and strengthening the ideals of peace both within and among all nations and peoples.”

David Krieger, President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, said, “Missile testing is a provocative act, not a peaceful one, and is particularly inappropriate on the International Day of Peace. Rather than testing one of its nuclear-capable missiles, the US should be taking steps to further the goals of peace and nuclear disarmament on this important day. To build a more peaceful world, US leadership is critical.”

Vandenberg Air Force Base in California routinely tests hydrogen bomb delivery systems, Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMS), over the Pacific to Kwajalein atoll in the Marshall Islands in violation of the U.S. commitment to disarmament under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

The US and its allies use the few, short range launches by North Korea as a pretext for military buildup on Guam, Okinawa, and Jeju Island South Korea. The Pacific Missile Range Facility in Nohili, Kaua’i is key to the testing and tracking of missile launches.

Kyle Kajihiro, coordinator for Hawai‘i Peace and Justice said “On Peace Day we should reflect on the high cost of war and militarism and commit ourselves to ending the disorder of global militarization. Will Hawai‘i truly be a gathering place for peace, or a weapon of global domination? ”

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Coral Reefs 'Will Be Gone by End of the Century

Published on Sunday, September 11, 2011 by the Independent/UK

They will be the first entire ecosystem to be destroyed by human activity, says top UN scientist

by Andrew Marszal

Coral reefs are on course to become the first ecosystem that human activity will eliminate entirely from the Earth, a leading United Nations scientist claims. He says this event will occur before the end of the present century, which means that there are children already born who will live to see a world without coral.

Australia's Great Barrier Reef is the planet's largest reef system and one of the seven natural wonders of the world, but it may not survive the century.The claim is made in a book published tomorrow, which says coral reef ecosystems are very likely to disappear this century in what would be "a new first for mankind – the 'extinction' of an entire ecosystem". Its author, Professor Peter Sale, studied the Great Barrier Reef for 20 years at the University of Sydney. He currently leads a team at the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health.

The predicted decline is mainly down to climate change and ocean acidification, though local activities such as overfishing, pollution and coastal development have also harmed the reefs. The book, Our Dying Planet, published by University of California Press, contains further alarming predictions, such as the prospect that "we risk having no reefs that resemble those of today in as little as 30 or 40 more years".

"We're creating a situation where the organisms that make coral reefs are becoming so compromised by what we're doing that many of them are going to be extinct, and the others are going to be very, very rare," Professor Sale says. "Because of that, they aren't going to be able to do the construction which leads to the phenomenon we call a reef. We've wiped out a lot of species over the years. This will be the first time we've actually eliminated an entire ecosystem."

Coral reefs are important for the immense biodiversity of their ecosystems. They contain a quarter of all marine species, despite covering only 0.1 per cent of the world's oceans by area, and are more diverse even than the rainforests in terms of diversity per acre, or types of different phyla present.

Recent research into coral reefs' highly diverse and unique chemical composition has found many compounds useful to the medical industry, which could be lost if present trends persist. New means of tackling cancer developed from reef ecosystems have been announced in the past few months, including a radical new treatment for leukemia derived from a reef-dwelling sponge. Another possible application of compounds found in coral as a powerful sunblock has also been mooted.

And coral reefs are of considerable economic value to humans, both as abundant fishing resources and – often more lucratively – as tourist destinations. About 850 million people live within 100km of a reef, of which some 275 million are likely to depend on the reef ecosystems for nutrition or livelihood. Fringing reefs can also help to protect low-lying islands and coastal regions from extreme weather, absorbing waves before they reach vulnerable populations.

Carbon emissions generated by human activity, especially our heavy use of fossils fuels, are the biggest cause of the anticipated rapid decline, impacting on coral reefs in two main ways. Climate change increases ocean surface temperatures, which have already risen by 0.67C in the past century. This puts corals under enormous stress and leads to coral bleaching, where the photosynthesising algae on which the reef-building creatures depend for energy disappear. Deprived of these for even a few weeks, the corals die.

On top of this comes ocean acidification. Roughly one-third of the extra carbon dioxide we put into the atmosphere is absorbed through the ocean surface, acidifying shallower waters. A more recently recognized problem in tropical reef systems, the imbalance created makes it harder for reef organisms to retrieve the minerals needed to build their carbonaceous skeletons. "If they can't build their skeletons – or they have to put a lot more energy into building them relative to all the other things they need to do, like reproduce – it has a detrimental effect on the coral reefs," says Paul Johnston of the University of Exeter, and founder of the UK's Greenpeace Research Laboratories.

An important caveat to the book's predictions is that the corals themselves – the tiny organisms largely responsible for creating reefs – may be lucky enough to survive the destruction, if past mass extinction episodes are anything to go by. "Although corals are ancient animals and have been around for hundreds of millions of years, there have been periods of reefs, and periods where there are no reefs," explains Mark Spalding, of the US-based environmental group Nature Conservancy, and the University of Cambridge. "When climatic conditions are right they build these fantastic structures, but when they're not they wait in the wings, in little refuges, as a rather obscure invertebrate."

The gaps between periods in which reefs are present have been long even in geological terms, described in the book as "multimillion-year pauses". And reef disappearance has tended to precede wider mass extinction events, offering an ominous "canary in the environmental coal mine" for the present day, according to the author. "People have been talking about current biodiversity loss as the Holocene mass extinction, meaning that the losses of species that are occurring now are in every way equivalent to the mass extinctions of the past," Professor Sale says. "I think there is every possibility that is what we are seeing."

About 20 per cent of global coral reefs have already been lost in the past few decades. Mass bleaching events leading to widespread coral death are a relatively recent phenomenon; though scientists have been studying coral reefs in earnest since the 1950s, mass bleaching was first observed only in 1983.

Dr Spalding, who witnessed the catastrophic 1998 mass bleaching in the Indian Ocean first-hand, says: "It was a shocking wake-up call for the world of science, and a shocking wake-up for me to be actually there as we watched literally 80 to 90 per cent of all the corals die on the reefs of the Seychelles and other islands in a few weeks." That single event destroyed 16 per cent of the world's coral.

But according to the book's author: "The 1998 bleaching was spectacular because it was so extensive and so conspicuous. But there have been mass bleachings that have been global since then: 2005 was bad; 2010 was bad. The visual appearance is not nearly as severe as it was in 1998, simply because there is less coral around."

These dramatic episodes coincide with unusual weather patterns such as El Niño, but are increasing in severity and frequency due to climate change. As such, tackling global warming is the most urgent solution advocated by the book. "If we can keep CO2 concentrations below 450 parts per million we would be able to save something resembling coral reefs," Professor Sale says. "They wouldn't be the coral reefs of the 1950s or 1960s, but they would be recognizably coral reefs, and they would function as reefs." The current atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is about 390 parts per million, but few experts believe it will remain below 500 for long.

There are signs that local conservation efforts can make a difference. Alex Rogers, professor of conservation biology at Oxford University, says: "We know for certain that corals subject to low levels of stress are much more able to recover. So if you take away pressures like overfishing of coral reefs and pollution, this has profound effects on recovery. But what we're really doing is buying time for many of these ecosystems. If climate change continues at its current rate, they will be done for eventually."

Though not all scientists agree with the precise timescales set out by the book, the crisis is clear. "When you're talking about the destruct-ion of an entire ecosystem within one human generation, there might be some small differences in the details – it is a dramatic image and a dramatic statement," Professor Rogers says. "But the overall message we agree with. People are not taking on board the sheer speed of the changes we're seeing."

'Our Dying Planet' (University of California Press) will be published in North America tomorrow

© 2011 Independent/UK

US Plans Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Test on International Day of Peace

By David Krieger from wagingpeace.org

August 31, 2011

In 1981, the United Nations General Assembly created an annual International Day of Peace to take place on the opening day of the regular sessions of the General Assembly. The purpose of the day is for “commemorating and strengthening the ideals of peace both within and among all nations and peoples.”

Twenty years later, in 2001, the General Assembly, desiring to draw attention to the objectives of the International Day of Peace, gave the day a fixed date on which it would be held each year: September 21st. The General Assembly declared in its Resolution 55/282 that “the International Day of Peace shall henceforth be observed as a day of global ceasefire and non-violence, an invitation to all nations and people to honor a cessation of hostilities for the duration of the Day.”

The Resolution continued by inviting “all Member States, organizations of the United Nations system, regional and non-governmental organizations and individuals to commemorate, in an appropriate manner, the International Day of Peace, including through education and public awareness, and to cooperate with the United Nations in the establishment of the global ceasefire.”

The United States has announced that its next test of a Minuteman III will occur on September 21, 2011. Rather than considering how it might participate and bring awareness to the International Day of Peace, the United States will be testing one of its nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missiles that, 20 years after the end of the Cold War, continue to be kept on high-alert in readiness to be fired on a few moments notice.

Of course, the missile test will have a dummy warhead rather than a live one, but its purpose will be to assure that the delivery system for the Minuteman III nuclear warheads has no hitches. As Air Force Colonel David Bliesner has pointed out, “Minuteman III test launches demonstrate our nation’s ICBM capability in a very visible way, deterring potential adversaries while reassuring allies.”

So, on the 2011 International Day of Peace, the United States has chosen not “to honor a cessation of hostilities,” but rather to implement a very visible, $20 million test of a nuclear-capable missile.

Perhaps US officials believe that US missile tests help keep the peace. If so, they have a very different idea about other countries testing missiles. National Security Spokesman Mike Hammer had this to say about Iranian missile tests in 2009: “At a time when the international community has offered Iran opportunities to begin to build trust and confidence, Iran’s missile tests only undermine Iran’s claims of peaceful intentions.”

In 2008, Condoleezza Rice, then Secretary of State, said, “We face with the Iranians, and so do our allies and friends, a growing missile threat that is getting ever longer and ever deeper – and where the Iranian appetite for nuclear technology is, to this point, still unchecked. And it is hard for me to believe that an American president is not going to want to have the capability to defend our territory and the territory of our allies, whether they are in Europe or whether they are in the Middle East against that kind of missile threat.”

The US approach to nuclear-capable missile testing seems to be “do as I say, not as I do.” This is unlikely to hold up in the long run. Rather than testing its nuclear-capable delivery systems, the US should be leading the way, as President Obama pledged, toward a world free of nuclear weapons. To do so, we suggest that he take three actions for the 2011 International Day of Peace. First, announce the cancellation of the scheduled Minuteman III missile test, and use the $20 million saved as a small down payment on alleviating poverty in the US and abroad. Second, announce that the US will take its nuclear weapons off high-alert status and keep them on low alert, as China has done, in order to lower the possibilities of accidental or unauthorized missile launches. Third, declare a ceasefire for the day in each of the wars in which the US is currently engaged. These three actions on the International Day of Peace would not change the world in a day, but they would be steps in the right direction that could be built upon during the other 364 days of the year.

David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

A Legal Appraisal of Self-Determination

Julian Aguon for Marianas Variety
Monday, June 27, 2011

(Editor's Note: Julian Aguon is an attorney who specializes in international law, and has authored several books and law journal articles on the subjects of self-determination, decolonization, and international human rights law. He teaches International Law at the University of Guam and has lectured extensively on these and other issues on four continents. This is the first of a series on his legal appraisal of Guam’s quest for self-determination.)

THE imprecision let loose on this island is more dangerous now than it has ever been, and writers, like myself, are being called to battle in a way we were not before.

In these high-stakes times – when the chips we are gambling with are children, coral reefs, limestone forests, narratives, whole imaginations – writers are called upon to do more than use our words; we are called to wield them. And in a time when words have been so methodically drained of meaning, it is irresponsible, if not indictable, to be imprecise.

The recent clamor around self-determination has demonstrated the danger of haphazardly flinging words around. The onslaught of opinion about the right of self-determination – namely what it is and who holds it – has reached a deafening roar.

We can hardly hear ourselves think. But in the end, opinions about the law are not the law. And despite the aggressive assertions of some, self-determination, at least as a matter of law, is not entirely up for debate. For instance, self-determination is not principally a race-based issue. Neither is it a purely political (as opposed to legal) one.

The right of self-determination has a certain shape and contour on which nearly the whole world has agreed. Self-determination is well-established in both the legal literature and actual practice of countries, and is an exalted normative domain in the contemporary international legal system. The recent clamor, then, is cruel. It does not help the people of Guam make sense of self-determination. It clouds, not clarifies, the law in this area. The following is a brief legal appraisal of self determination under international law, which is offered in an attempt to erase some of the confusion surrounding the fundamental human right.


What is the right of self-determination?

Upon the founding of the United Nations at the end of World War II and continuing thereafter, the international community increasingly recognized that the plight of colonized peoples, and later of indigenous peoples, must be terminated and their self-determination assured. The UN Charter itself, being both a political compact and an organic document, made but cursory references to this norm.

Its Article 1 calls for the development of “friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples.” Article 55 then states that the United Nations shall promote, among other values, “universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all.”

Article 73, which addresses the rights of peoples in non-self-governing territories (like Guam) who have not yet attained a full measure of self-government, commands states administering them to “recognize the principle that the interests of the inhabitants of these territories are paramount.” These Administering Powers accept as a “sacred trust” the obligation to develop self-government in the territories, taking due account of the political aspirations of the people. Toward this end, subsection (e) of Article 73 commands Administering Powers to submit annual reports to the United Nations on the steps they have taken and the progress they have made to move the territories toward self-government.

The interpretation of these Charter articles has been set out in major declarations adopted by the United Nations General Assembly.

For instance, the 1960 Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, or Resolution 1514, states that “[t]he subjection of peoples to alien subjugation, domination, and exploitation constitutes a denial of fundamental human rights, is contrary to the Charter of the United Nations and is an impediment to the promotion of world peace and co-operation.” Although the general rule is that declarations and resolutions of the General Assembly are not in themselves binding, to the extent that they illuminate and record the position of the international community on any given subject, they may be, and are frequently invoked as, evidence of the practice of states, which is a source of customary international law.

ICJ

Moreover, where General Assembly resolutions concern general norms of international law, their acceptance by a majority vote both constitutes evidence of the opinions of governments on any given subject and provides a basis for the progressive development of the law.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in its 1975 advisory opinion in the Western Sahara case adopted this perspective when it relied heavily on General Assembly resolutions to establish basic legal principles concerning the right of peoples to self-determination.

Major international conventions, or treaties, have lent further meaning and growth to the concept of self-determination. Both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (known collectively as the 1966 Human Rights Covenants) enshrine self-determination as a right. Approved by the General Assembly in 1966, and legally binding as of 1976, these treaties bind those countries that ratify them. The first article in each covenant, identically worded, indicates the fundamental importance of the right of self-determination in international law and sets out its classic wording: “All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.”

Finally, the 1970 Declaration on Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation Among States, also known as Resolution 2625 (XXV), provides that all peoples have the right to determine their political status without external interference, and that every state has the duty to respect this right.

Unlike the 1966 Covenants, which bind only those states that ratify them, Resolution 2625 is considered a datum of customary international law binding on all countries.

UN Investigator: Israel Engaged in Ethnic Cleansing

Published on Monday, March 21, 2011 by Reuters

Israel's expansion of settlements in East Jerusalem and eviction of Palestinians from their homes there is a form of ethnic cleansing, a United Nations investigator said on Monday.

Israel's expansion of settlements in East Jerusalem and eviction of Palestinians from their homes there is a form of ethnic cleansing, a United Nations investigator said on Monday. (Reuters)United States academic Richard Falk was speaking to the UN Human Rights Council as it prepared to pass resolutions condemning settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The "continued pattern of settlement expansion in East Jerusalem combined with the forcible eviction of long-residing Palestinians are creating an intolerable situation" in the part of the city previously controlled by Jordan, he said.

This situation "can only be described in its cumulative impact as a form of ethnic cleansing," Falk declared.

Israel declines to deal with Falk or even allow him into the country, accusing him of being biased.

In a related discussion on Israeli policies towards the lands it seized in the 1967 war, Israeli and Palestinian delegates clashed over the recent killing of members of a Jewish settler family in the West Bank.

Israeli ambassador Aharon Leshno Yaar called on Palestinian leaders to condemn the March 11 murders of three children, including a baby, and their parents "without caveats or hedging" in Arabic to their own people.

Almost as shocking as the killings, "in the days following the massacre many Palestinians took to the streets celebrating the deaths of this family," Leshno Yaar said.

But Palestinian envoy Ibrahim Kraishi said the killings had already been condemned by the Palestinian Authority as "an act of terrorism" that was not part of his people's culture. "Rather, it is the culture of the occupying power," he added.

In his speech, Falk said he would like the Human Rights Council to ask the International Court of Justice to look at Israeli behavior in the occupied territories.

This should focus on whether the prolonged occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem had elements of "colonialism, apartheid and ethnic cleansing inconsistent with international humanitarian law," the investigator declared.

© 2011 Reuters

Thousands of Haitians Face Risk of Forcible Evictions from Temporary Camps

Thousands of Haitians Face Risk of Forcible Evictions from Temporary Camps

from Demoncracynow.org

It’s been over seven months since Haiti’s devastating earthquake left up to 300,000 dead and displaced over 1.5 million. Only a small fraction of the displaced have found new homes, and those who’ve found shelter in temporary camps now face a new round of displacement. According to Haitian community groups, thousands of Haitians are at risk of forcible eviction from some of the 1,300 camps established since the quake. The evictions come at a time when reports show a rising number of rapes and sexual abuse in the aftermath of the quake, especially in the camps for the internally displaced.

Source Video: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/8/17/thousands_of_haitians_face_risk_of

Rush Transcript:

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: It’s been over seven months since Haiti’s devastating earthquake left up to 300,000 dead and displaced over 1.5 million. Only a small fraction of the displaced have found new homes, and those who’ve found shelter in temporary camps now face a new round of displacement. According to Haitian community groups, thousands of Haitians are at risk of forcible eviction from some of the 1,300 camps established since the quake. Last week, dozens of protesters held a sit-in at the remains of the National Palace to call for a moratorium on all forced evictions until alternative shelters are in place.
The threat of evictions comes as the international community is under increased criticism for failing to send aid money pledged at the international donors’ conference in March. According to the UN-sponsored Haiti Reconstruction Fund, only two countries—Brazil and Estonia—have paid the fully pledged amount. The United States, France, Canada and many other countries have failed to send their pledged aid. A recent review by CNN found that just two percent of total pledges have been delivered to Haiti.

AMY GOODMAN: But in addition to aid, calls are now growing for another form of payment to Haiti: reparations. This week, a group of prominent academics and activists published an open letter calling on France to repay an "independence debt" that it imposed nearly 200 years ago, after Haiti successfully won independence from France. Haiti was forced to pay France around 90 million gold francs up until World War II, which after interest and inflation is valued today at up to $40 billion.
For more on Haiti, we’re joined by three guests. Joining us by video stream from Ottawa, Canada, is Jean St.-Vil. He is a Haitian writer and activist.
Also joining us from Canada, down the highway in Montreal, is Vox Sambou. He is a Haitian hip-hop artist.
And joining us here in New York, Mark Schuller, just back from Haiti. He’s an assistant professor of African American studies and anthropology at the City University of New York, co-editor of the book Capitalizing on Catastrophe: Neoliberal Strategies in Disaster Reconstruction, also co-director and producer of the documentary film Poto Mitan: Haitian Women, Pillars of the Global Economy. This summer he’s been studying aid delivery and living conditions in Haiti’s camps for internally displaced.
You’re just back. This crisis of the camps, the makeshift camps, bad as they are, people are being thrown out of them. Can you explain what’s happening?

MARK SCHULLER: Sure. Well, about 65 percent of the camps are owned by private landowners. And, you know, it’s been several months, and the government has no funds, as you know, to do any kind of—you know, to reimburse the landowners, and there’s no public will for such. So, about 20 percent of the camps have been closed between May and July. And I’ve been working with eight student assistants, and they discovered about another eight percent of camps that are either being shut down or under threat of being shut down.
AMY GOODMAN: You visited a hundred camps. You just came back Sunday night?

MARK SCHULLER: Yeah, I came back Sunday night. My students visited a hundred camps. I went and visited about thirty. I did a follow-up visit, so...

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: And can you describe the conditions in the camps—sanitation, water, security?

MARK SCHULLER: Sure. The best—quote-unquote, "best" camps are the ones that are officially managed by NGOs. And even those, you know, the conditions are bad. You know, the tents, as you know, rip. You know, it’s a hundred degrees every day. It’s been—you know, there was this period of seven days in a row where it rained every night. So, you know, at several camps that I visited, about 50 percent of the tents had been ripped. The tents had been ripped. And these are the best-managed camps. Other camps, you know, there’s Place St. Pierre in Delmas 2, where there’s about 6,000 families, and there’s only about fifty tents. The rest are tarps.

I mean, so the condition of security is a big issue, as you know. MADRE released a report about rape and violence against women. And, you know, tents don’t offer any kind of security. They can be easily ripped by, you know, a nail file. But even so, these tents offer even more—just a modicum of security, that you can store your stuff—you know, your driver’s license, your identity card, your birth certificate or money. But if you have a place like in Delmas 2—very, very crowded, there’s no tents at all—you have no place to store your stuff. So there’s absolutely no security at all. Many, many places, 30 percent of camps, don’t have access to toilets. Twenty-seven don’t have access to water. So what people do is they, you know, go into a paper bag or a plastic bag, and they throw it in the ravine. The standard is twenty persons per toilet, and in many cases, you know, we’re talking about a hundred, 150 people per toilet. The conditions are very, very bad.

AMY GOODMAN: For more on the conditions in Haiti’s camps for the internally displaced, we’re going to turn to a recent report that aired on the Al Jazeera English program Fault Lines. Al Jazeera’s Sebastian Walker interviewed residents of one camp near Port-au-Prince.

SEBASTIAN WALKER: While the official camp is home to just over 5,000 refugees, some 40,000 more have fled here from Port-au-Prince after the quake. These squatters have marked out their own plots of land with rocks and sticks and set up makeshift shelters. But they told us that police had come just a couple of days ago, slashed their tarpaulins, and told them to vacate the land.

SQUATTER 1: [translated] You see how they use the machetes. They slashed through from the inside.

SEBASTIAN WALKER: [translated] Can you show us?

SQUATTER 1: [translated] Yes.

SEBASTIAN WALKER: Well, it looks like the roof has also been slashed with machetes, and there’s rain now coming into the shelter.

SQUATTER 2: [translated] They don’t want us to build here. The rich people need the land. They had the land surveyed so they can take over.

SQUATTER 3: [translated] When I got here, they had beaten two people up. They were barely left alive. One was the owner of the house. They threatened us and said they had come to get me. Had I been here, they would have killed me. But they couldn’t find me.

SEBASTIAN WALKER: This is supposed to be one of the few plots of land owned by the Haitian government. But it sounds like local police are enforcing the interests of private land speculators. Land tenure is one of the major issues holding up reconstruction and resettlement.

AMY GOODMAN: And for more on what’s happening in these camps, we’re going to turn to another Al Jazeera English report from Fault Lines, which looks at the rising number of rapes and sexual abuse in the aftermath of the quake, especially in the camps for the internally displaced.
LOUINA ALABRE: [translated] At night, it is hard. I never sleep. I lie down, but I never sleep.

SEBASTIAN WALKER: Louina Alabre lost her husband in the earthquake. Just three days later, her fourteen-year-old daughter Falande was attacked by a group of men.

LOUINA ALABRE: [translated] I saw her coming towards me. She was crying, and her clothes were bloody. I asked her why she was crying and where the blood came from. She said that she couldn’t talk about it. Then she told me that three men pulled guns on her, covered her face, and raped her.

SEBASTIAN WALKER: In May, Louina herself was raped when she went to use the latrines. The attackers were hiding inside.

LOUINA ALABRE: [translated] They put a gun in my ear and told me, if I screamed, they would shoot me.

SEBASTIAN WALKER: While there have been no thorough surveys and no official statistics, those working with rape survivors say that assaults in the camps are on the rise. Here, at a legal office in downtown Port-au-Prince, at least six different Haitian women’s groups meet to work out ways to protect women in the camps and provide support for survivors, many of whom come here for emergency medical and psychological care.

CAMP RESIDENT: [translated] I don’t see any of the NGOs helping to stop violence against women or finding a way to avoid it, or working with the government to reduce it. Every day, the violence multiplies.

SEBASTIAN WALKER: The leaders of at least one of the organizations, FAVILEK, told us they have not received any assistance from international NGOs. The FAVILEK organizers took us to the Savanne Pistache camp, where there have been numerous cases of rape and violent assaults on women in the past six months. Here, they introduced us to fourteen-year-old girl Maudeline Derival. Two months ago, she was sleeping with her mother in their shelter. About 4:00 in the morning, a man broke in with a gun and a machete. He told Maudeline’s mother that if she called for help, he’d kill her daughter. He then took Maudeline to a nearby ruined house, put a gun to her head, and raped her. When her father went to the police, they told him it wasn’t their problem.
A few shelters down, and we heard another story.
They came with machetes?
This woman told us her home had recently been broken into.
The only security this woman had was this tarpaulin stretched over the entrance to her tent.
The man who came in slashed it with a razor. He told her that if she didn’t have sex with him, he’d kill her. She was relatively lucky. She managed to call for help, and the man fled. They’re hoping that these testimonies will eventually make criminal investigations possible, in spite of the apparent indifference of the Haitian police. And while we saw no Haitian police here, we did find the symbols of international protection: the United Nations flag and blue helmets.
Can we speak to the commander?
This base houses some of the UN’s 10,000-strong force.
I’m going to tell them that there are cases of rape that are going on every night in this camp and just ask them what they’re trying to do about it.
We tried putting the women’s concerns to the base’s Sri Lankan commander.
How do they contact you? How—I mean, if there are cases of rape going on at night, and you guys are right here, can you not help?

UN BASE COMMANDER: Gentlemen, don’t take the video here. Understood?

SEBASTIAN WALKER: The commander has told me that neither he nor his soldiers are actually allowed to even speak to the civilian population of this camp without permission from his commanding officer. He’s given me the name of somebody at a UN base some distance from here, but he wouldn’t give out the telephone number, and there’s no way for these residents to even communicate with the soldiers who are living in this base.
It’s the disconnect between the international community in Haiti and the people that are here to help. And we saw it again on a night patrol with UN police.
This is one of the biggest camps in Port-au-Prince. There’s a plentiful supply of flood lights and electricity. That’s not always the case in all of the other camps around the city.
In addition to the lights, the UN is hoping that these officers, members of a newly arrived contingent of 600 female Bangladeshi police, will make it safer here and easier for women to report violence. But like most of the UN police force in Haiti, the Bangladeshis don’t speak the local language, Creole, or even French, making meaningful communication with the camp residents impossible.
A couple of days ago, we were in a camp where women were complaining of rapes going on every single night.

JEAN-FRANCOIS VEZINA, UN Police Spokesperson: Mm-hmm. Rapes? No, that’s not true.

SEBASTIAN WALKER: It was a very big camp. I mean, we spoke to people that are saying there were incidents on a very regular basis.

JEAN-FRANCOIS VEZINA: But actually, we don’t have any information about rapes every night, for sure.

SEBASTIAN WALKER: OK.
But when girls and women are being assaulted under the noses of international peacekeepers and so many thousands languish under the elements in ill-lit IDP camps, it’s no surprise that across the city you meet people who feel angry and abandoned by international NGOs and the United Nations.
There is a lot of hostility on the street towards the presence of NGOs. I mean, it must make things more difficult for you to kind of have—

EDMOND MULET, UN Mission Chief in Haiti: I don’t agree with that term of hostility on the streets against NGOs or international community.

SEBASTIAN WALKER: Well, everywhere you go, you see graffiti saying "Down with the NGOs! NGOs are thieves! And down with the UN!"

EDMOND MULET: Everywhere?

SEBASTIAN WALKER: Pretty much every neighborhood in Port-au-Prince has graffiti which—

EDMOND MULET: Yeah, no, I don’t agree with that assessment. I don’t see that. It’s some groups, maybe some minority groups.

SEBASTIAN WALKER: Have you seen any—

EDMOND MULET: Politically motivated, maybe, at this point, but I don’t think it really reflects the sentiment of the people of Haiti.

SEBASTIAN WALKER: Do you think there’s been a lack of focus on this transitional period? And do you think you may be taking your eye off the ball?

EDMOND MULET: As I said a while ago, I think that we did lose the sense of urgency that was there in the very beginning. And as I said, I think we have to reenergize that, and we’re doing that right now.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s from Al Jazeera English’s Fault Lines, produced by Jeremy Dupin and Andréa Schmidt, hosted by Al Jazeera English reporter Sebastian Walker. The special, "Haiti: Six Months On," is available on full at their website english.aljazeera.net.
When we come back, we’re going to go to Canada. We’ll stay here in New York, and we’ll talk about what’s happening in Haiti seven months later. Stay with us.

Chamorro Delegation Urges United Nations Intervention on Military Build-Up and Human Rights Violations in Guam

Contact: Hope Cristobal 808.327.8289

FOR IMMEDIATE PRESS RELEASE:

Chamorro Delegation Urges United Nations Intervention on Military Build-up and Human Rights Violations in Guam

New York City, June 22, 2010 — A delegation of Chamorus and Rafaluwasch from the territory of Guam and Saipan testified before the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization to insist the international community pay closer attention to Guam’s continued colonial status as the island’s Administering Power, the United States, increases its already large military presence there.

Mr. St. Aimee, Chairman of the Special Committee, recognized during the hearing that the Second Decade of the Eradication of Colonization did not yield the necessary results. Therefore, they resolved to move into the Third Decade of the Eradication of Colonization stating their dedication to passing this resolution. He declared, “With effort we will arrive at an agreement so that the expressed wish of the people can be realized.” Some of the ideas discussed were to have visiting missions to the Territories, and sharing more information between the UN Special Committee of 24 and the Territories.

The Guam delegation represents a second generation of Chamorros who have appealed to the United Nations for the past 20 years regarding Guam’s political status and the United States’ refusal to respect the Chamorro people’s human right to self-determination.

The urgency for action was repeatedly expressed by delegates. The submitted testimony by Senator Vicente Pangelinan, Guam Legislature, affirms that, “This body must advance the self-determination process for the native inhabitants of Guam NOW, for the recent decisions by our administering authority dilutes our Right to Self-Determination…”

Hope Antoinette Cristobal, a Chamorro and Doctor of Psychology, called attention to the effects of colonization on the health of the people of Guam. She proclaimed, “I am here to testify that the indigenous people of Guam continue to suffer social, cultural, and environmental annihilation at the hands of our American oppressors… Robust research suggests that these aggregate problems in our communities are a result of the cultural and social deterioration of our families and neighborhoods. The same families and neighborhoods that had previously sustained our health for generations prior to colonization.”

A representative for We are Guahan emphasized this, “We have repeatedly sought political rights; and the actions in response to those requests over the years have moved at a pace we no longer have the luxury of accommodating.”

Fuetsan Famalao’an, a small non-governmental organization of women on Guam concerned about the US Department of Defense’s plan for increased militarization on Guam implored the Committee to take critical step in this process, namely to send delegates to Guam to further investigate the consequences of militarization. “We urge you to one day conduct a UN C-24 hearing in Guam. You will see with your own eyes, the substandard of living of many of the Chamorros and other residents of Guam who live across the fences, resembling the racial and economic disparity found in the segregated city neighborhoods throughout the globe.”

Rima Ilarishigh Peter Miles, a Refaluwasch Carolinian from the island of Saipan spoke as a member of Women for Genuine Security(WGS). WGS is part of an international network of women who are organizing to put an end to the devastating effects of US militarization and bring about true security based on justice and respect. “We stand here at this urgent moment to call the United Nations to immediate action. Advancements must be made for the protection and fulfillment of the Chamoru Right to Self-Determination. This right is currently being threatened and undermined by the continued avoidance of the issue by the US, as well as recent actions which contradict the terms of the US obligation to the Chamoru people of Guam.”