tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38094797640670261262024-02-18T19:00:48.962-08:00sepratistmovements-humanrightseconomichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18157243082371228984noreply@blogger.comBlogger89125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3809479764067026126.post-58276487596608223062012-06-15T00:33:00.002-07:002012-06-15T00:33:30.724-07:00India: Mining Industry Out Of Control, Says HRW<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
By: <a href="http://www.eurasiareview.com/author/admin/" rel="author" title="Posts by Eurasia Review">Eurasia Review</a><br />
June 15, 2012<br />
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<a href="http://www.eurasiareview.com/15062012-india-mining-industry-out-of-control-says-hrw/">http://www.eurasiareview.com/15062012-india-mining-industry-out-of-control-says-hrw/</a><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>India’s government has failed to enforce key human rights and environmental safeguards in the country’s mining industry, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.</strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>The 70-page report, “Out of Control: Mining, Regulatory Failure and Human Rights in India,” finds that deep-rooted shortcomings in the design and implementation of key policies have effectively left mine operators to supervise themselves. This has fueled pervasive lawlessness in India’s scandal-ridden mining industry and threatens serious harm to mining-affected communities. Human Rights Watch documented allegations that irresponsible mining operations have damaged the health, water, environment, and livelihoods of these communities.</strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Mining operations often cause immense destruction when government doesn’t exercise proper oversight,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “India has laws on the books to protect mining-affected communities from harm, but their enforcement has essentially collapsed.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">India’s government has systemically failed to ensure that the country’s 2,600 authorized mining operations adhere to key human rights and environmental protections under Indian law, Human Rights Watch found. These problems are related to and have facilitated a series of high-profile corruption allegations in the mining industry that have rocked India in recent years. Illegality in the mining sector has deprived state governments of badly needed revenues, threatened the industry with costly and unpredictable shutdowns, and generated political chaos that helped bring down two state governments in 2011 and 2012.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The Human Rights Watch report is based in part on interviews with more than 80 people in Goa and Karnataka states, as well as in New Delhi, including residents in affected communities, activists, and mining company and government officials.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Farmers in Goa and Karnataka told Human Rights Watch that mining operations have destroyed or polluted vital springs and groundwater supplies. Overladen ore trucks throw off clouds of iron-rich dust as they pass through rural communities, destroying crops and potentially damaging the health of nearby families. In some cases, people who speak out about these problems have been threatened, harassed, or physically attacked, while government authorities failed to address their grievances.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">These and other human rights problems in the mining industry are linked to deep-rooted government failures of oversight and regulation, Human Rights Watch said. Some key regulatory safeguards are virtually set up to fail because of poor design. But in many cases, the problem is that implementation is so shoddy that it renders relatively good laws ineffective, Human Rights Watch found.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Mining scandals may grab headlines, but the root causes of India’s mining problems are more basic,” Ganguly said. “The government has encouraged lawlessness by failing to enforce the law or even monitor whether mine operators are complying with it.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Indian law, like that of many other countries, situates core human rights protections somewhat awkwardly within regulatory frameworks designed primarily to mitigate the environmental impacts of mining operations. This places much of the responsibility for monitoring and enforcement with India’s Ministry of Environment and Forests.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The government has sufficient authority to correct the serious flaws in the existing regulatory framework, Human Rights Watch said. For instance, the government relies on mining companies to commission and produce the “independent” Environmental Impact Assessments that are used to gauge a proposed mining project’s likely environmental, social, and human rights impacts. This creates an unnecessary conflict of interest that could be solved by giving regulators the central role in commissioning those studies. The assessments also tend to give short shrift to human rights issues, focusing overwhelmingly on purely environmental concerns.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Enforcement is an even bigger problem, Human Rights Watch found. Regulatory institutions are hopelessly overstretched. A few dozen central government officials are tasked with overseeing the environmental and human rights impacts of every mine in India – and many other industries as well. This makes in-field monitoring a practical impossibility, forcing the government to rely almost exclusively on information provided by mine operators themselves. Many state government oversight bodies have even less capacity to implement their challenging mandates. As a result, government regulators have no idea how many mining firms are complying with the law or how many communities have been harmed by illegal practices.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Similar problems pervade the process for approving new mining operations. Regulators often rely exclusively on the Environmental Impact Assessments commissioned by mining firms to determine whether to allow a project to go forward. Field visits are rare and projects are considered and approved at such a rapid pace that there is no time for serious scrutiny of the conclusions of the environmental impact reports.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Yet the evidence shows that those reports are often rife with incorrect or deliberately misleading information. Under this framework, approval for new mining and other industrial projects is almost never denied. Many currently operational mines may have been given approval to proceed on the basis of false information about potential harm to neighboring communities.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The central government has taken some tentative steps toward improving oversight – like requiring companies to choose from a list of accredited firms to carry out Environmental Impact Assessments. But the reforms have not gone nearly far enough. Human Rights Watch urged the government to adopt a number of pragmatic policy recommendations to narrow some of the most important regulatory gaps.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Mining is an important part of India’s economy, but that does not mean the industry should be allowed to write its own rules,” Ganguly said. “The government can and should empower regulators to do their jobs more effectively than they can today.”</span></div>
</div>economichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18157243082371228984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3809479764067026126.post-4883938866376360342012-06-15T00:24:00.004-07:002012-06-15T00:24:53.108-07:00Poll Claims India Worst Place To Be A Woman, Canada Best<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="http://www.eurasiareview.com/14062012-poll-claims-india-worst-place-to-be-a-woman-canada-best/">http://www.eurasiareview.com/14062012-poll-claims-india-worst-place-to-be-a-woman-canada-best/</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><strong>By: </strong></span><a href="http://www.eurasiareview.com/author/admin/" rel="author" title="Posts by Eurasia Review"><strong><span style="font-size: small;">Eurasia Review</span></strong></a></h3>
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<span style="font-size: small;"> June 14, 2012</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>India is the worst place to be a woman among the world’s biggest economies, according to a global poll of experts released by Trust Law, a Thomson Reuters Foundation service, on Wednesday.</strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">According to the same poll, Canada is the best place to be a woman, while even Indonesia, South Africa, Mexico and Turkey fared better than India. “Infanticide, child marriage and slavery make India the worst”, the poll concluded.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>“In India, women and girls continue to be sold as chattels, married off as young as 10, burned alive as a result of dowry-related disputes and young girls exploited and abused as domestic slave labour,” one of those polled was quoted as saying.</strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The Gender Inequality Index has also reportedly ranked India among the worst places for women.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>India ranked at 141 among 165 countries analyzed by Newsweek magazine in the treatment of women, which was published in September.</strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada (USA) today, argued that India was on track to become a global power, but her new power and prosperity had remained evasive for many, especially women. Despite the economic growth, women in India continued to face inequalities in opportunities which blocked them from fully participating in the growth process. It was blight on a country, which prided herself on having joined the league of hottest growth economies.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Zed, who is President of Universal Society of Hinduism, stressed: We needed to empower our women in India; provide them better treatment under the law, better access to health-education-politics, and more opportunities for workplace participation; and open up more economic potentials for them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Quoting scriptures, Rajan Zed pointed out that ancient Manusmriti said: “Where women are revered, there the gods are pleased; where they are not, no rite will yield any fruit.” Number of Rig-Veda (oldest existing scripture of Hinduism) hymns were said to be composed by women, and Aditi, who was sometimes referred as “mother of the gods”, found mention in Rig-Veda as a goddess.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">TrustLaw reportedly asked aid professionals, academics, health workers, policymakers, journalists and development specialists with expertise in gender issues to rank the 19 countries of the G20 in terms of the overall best and worst to be a woman.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">TrustLaw is a core program of Thomson Reuters Foundation, a registered charity in the United States and United Kingdom established in 1982. David W. Binet and Monique Villa are Trustees Chairman and CEO respectively of the London headquartered Foundation.</span></div>
</div>economichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18157243082371228984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3809479764067026126.post-16190347989664344552012-06-15T00:19:00.002-07:002012-06-15T00:19:32.710-07:00India: Dark ages not yet over for women<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="http://www.thenews.com.pk/article-54285-India:-Dark-ages-not-yet-over-for-women">http://www.thenews.com.pk/article-54285-India:-Dark-ages-not-yet-over-for-women</a><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">NEW DELHI: The birth of a girl, so goes a popular Hindu saying, is akin to the arrival of Lakshmi - the four-armed goddess of wealth, often depicted holding lotus flowers and an overflowing pot of gold.</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">That should assure pride of place for women in Indian society, especially now the country is growing both in global influence and affluence.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>In reality, India’s women are discriminated against, abused and even killed on a scale unparalleled in the top 19 economies of the world, according to a new poll by the Thomson Reuters Foundation</strong>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The survey, polling 370 gender specialists, found Canada to be the best place to be a woman amongst G20 nations, excluding the European Union economic grouping. Saudi Arabia was the second worst, after India.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>“It’s a miracle a woman survives in India. Even before she is born, she is at risk of being aborted due to our obsession for sons,”</strong> said Shemeer Padinzjharedil, who runs Maps4aid.com, a website which maps and documents crimes against women.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>“As a child, she faces abuse, rape and early marriage and even when she marries, she is killed for dowry. If she survives all of this, as a widow she is discriminated against and given no rights over inheritance or property.”</strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Many of the crimes against women are in India’s heavily populated northern plains, where, in parts, there is a deep-rooted mindset that women are inferior and must be restricted to being homemakers and child bearers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In addition, age-old customs such as payment of hefty dowries at the time of marriage and beliefs linking a female’s sexual behaviour to family honour have made girls seem a burden.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The poll results - based on parameters such as quality of health services, threat of physical and sexual violence, level of political voice, and access to property and land rights - jars with the modern-day image of India.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">India had a female prime minister, or head of government, as long ago as 1966. Well-dressed women in Western attire driving scooters or cars to work is now an everyday sight in cities. Women doctors, lawyers, police officers and bureaucrats are common.</span></div>
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</div>economichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18157243082371228984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3809479764067026126.post-67637118449682817862012-05-30T05:01:00.001-07:002012-05-30T05:01:49.677-07:00Let's stop pretending there's no racism in India<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span class="author">Yengkhom Jilangamba</span><br />
<span class="author">May 29, 2012</span><br />
<span class="author"><a href="http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/article3466554.ece">http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/article3466554.ece</a></span><br />
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<span class="author"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>The mysterious death of Loitam Richard in Bangalore, the murder of Ramchanphy Hongray in New Delhi, the suicide by Dana Sangma and other such incidents serve as reminders of the insecure conditions under which people, particularly the young, from the north-east of India have to live with in the metros of this country. What these deaths have in common is that the three individuals were all from a certain part of the country, had a “particular” physical appearance, and were seen as outsiders in the places they died. These incidents have been read as a symptom of the pervasive racial discrimination that people from the region face in metropolitan India.</strong></span></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><u>An institutionalised form</u></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Quite expectedly, such an assertion about the existence of racism in India will not be taken seriously; the response will be to either remain silent and refuse to acknowledge this form of racism or, fiercely, to reject it. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>Ironically, most Indians see racism as a phenomenon that exists in other countries, particularly in the West, and without fail, see themselves as victims. They do not see themselves harbouring (potentially) racist attitudes and behaviour towards others whom they see as inferior.</strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But time and again, various groups of people, particularly from the north-east have experienced forms of racial discrimination and highlighted the practice of racism in India. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In fact, institutionalised racism has been as much on the rise as cases of everyday racism in society.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">In a case of racial profiling, the University of Hyderabad chose to launch its 2011 “initiative” to curb drinking and drug use on campus by working with students from the north-east. In 2007, the Delhi Police decided to solve the problems of security faced by the north-easterners in Delhi, particularly women, by coming up with a booklet entitled <i>Security Tips for North East Students </i>asking north-eastern women not to wear “revealing dresses” and gave kitchen tips on preparing bamboo shoot, <i>akhuni</i>, and “other smelly dishes” without “creating ruckus in neighbourhood</span>.”</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><u>BRICS summit</u></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Very recently, in the run-up to the BRICS summit in New Delhi, the Delhi Police's motto of “citizens first” was on full display, when they arrested or put under preventive detention the non-citizens — the Tibetan refugees. But the real problem for the security personnel cropped up when they had to identity Tibetans on the streets of Delhi. This problem for the state forces was compounded by the fact that Delhi now has a substantial migrant population from the north-east whose physical features could be quite similar to those of Tibetans. So, the forces went about raiding random places in Delhi, questioning and detaining people from the region. North-eastern individuals travelling in vehicles, public transport, others at their workplaces, and so on all became suspects. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Many were asked to produce their passports or other documents to prove that, indeed, they were Indian citizens and not refugee Tibetans. In some cases, “authentic” Indians had to intervene in order to endorse and become guarantors of the authenticity of the nationality of these north-easterners. The situation became farcical and caught the attention of the judiciary reportedly after two lawyers from the region were interrogated and harassed. The Delhi High Court directed the Delhi police not to harass people from the north-east and Ladakh. How much easier it would have been for the Delhi Police, if only citizenship and physiognomy matched perfectly.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But should one expect otherwise from these state and public institutions, given the fact that racism is rampant at the level of societal everyday experiences? For north-easterners who look in a particular manner, everyday living in Indian cities can be a gruelling experience. Be it the mundane overcharging of fares by autoricksaw-<i>wallahs</i>, shopkeepers and landlords, the verbal abuse on the streets and the snide remarks of colleagues, friends, teachers, or the more extreme experiences of physical and sexual assaults. It is often a never-ending nightmare, a chronicle of repetitive experience.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">One also wonders if racial attitudes, if not outright racism, influence many more aspects of life than one imagines. For instance, whether there is any racial profiling of employment opportunities, given the concentration of jobs for north-easterners mostly in the hospitality sector, young women in beauty salons, restaurants and as shop assistants.</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Visible and unseen</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Of course, racism is difficult to prove — whether in the death of Richard or in the case of harassment of a woman from the north-east. And it should not surprise us if racism cannot be clearly established in either of these cases because that's how racism works — both the visible, explicit manifestations as well as the insidious, unseen machinations. Quite often, one can't even recount exactly what was wrong about the way in which a co-passenger behaved, difficult to articulate a sneer, a tone of voice that threatened or taunted, the cultural connotations that can infuriate.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">How does one prove that when an autorickshaw driver asks a north-easterner on the streets of Delhi if he or she is going to Majnu ka Tila, a Tibetan refugee colony, that the former is reproducing a common practice of racial profiling? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">This remark could be doubly interpreted if made to a woman from the region — both racial and gendered. How do I prove racism when a young co-passenger on the Delhi Metro plays “Chinese” sounding music on his mobile, telling his friend that he is providing, “background music,” sneering and laughing in my direction? And what one cannot retell in the language of evidence, becomes difficult to prove. Racism is most often felt, perceived, like an invisible wound, difficult to articulate or recall in the language of the law or evidence. In that sense, everyday forms of racism are more experiential rather than an objectively identifiable situation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Of course, every once in a while, there will be an incident of extreme, outrageous violence that is transparently racial in nature and we will rally around and voice our anger but it is these insidious, everyday forms of racial discrimination that bruise the body and the mind, build up anger and frustration. Fighting these everyday humiliations exhausts our attempts at expression.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">If one is serious about fighting racial discrimination, this is where rules must change — by proving to us that in Richard's death there was no element of racism. Given the pervasiveness of racism in everyday life, why should we listen when we are told that those who fought with him over a </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">TV remote were immune to it?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">To recognise that racism exists in this country and that many unintended actions might emanate from racism can be a good place to start fighting the problem. To be oblivious of these issues or to deny its existence is to be complicit in the discriminatory regime. Also, the reason for fighting against racism is not because it is practised against “our” own citizens but because it is wrong regardless of whether the victims of racism are citizens of the country or not. One way to be critical of racism is to recognise and make visible the presence of racism rather than merely resorting to legalistic means to curb this discrimination.</span></div>
</div>economichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18157243082371228984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3809479764067026126.post-85268772737386112722012-05-26T04:44:00.002-07:002012-05-26T04:44:26.774-07:00Full Text of Human Rights Record of the United States in 2011 - 6<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2012-05/25/c_131611554_8.htm">http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2012-05/25/c_131611554_8.htm</a><br />
<br />
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<strong><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">VI. On U.S. Violations of Human Rights against Other Nations</span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The United States has been pursuing hegemony in the world, grossly trampling upon the sovereignty of other countries and capriciously violating human rights against other nations. It "appears more and more to be contributing to international disorder" ("After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order," by Emmanuel Todd).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The revelation of the history of human experiments conducted in the United States is yet another scandal sparking public outcry around the world after the prisoner abuse scandal. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>The British newspaper The Telegraph reported on August 30, 2011, that from 1946-1948, a U.S. government-paid medical experiment program had made nearly 5,500 people in Guatemala subjected to diagnostic testing, and the researchers deliberately exposed more than 1,300 people, including soldiers, prostitutes, prisoners and mental patients, to syphilis and other venereal diseases. Seven women with epilepsy were injected with syphilis below the back of the skull, and a female syphilis patient with a terminal illness was infected with gonorrhea in her eyes and elsewhere. </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>These experiments had caused over 80 deaths</strong>. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">An article on a U.S.-based journalistic website said that "these revelations are only the latest in an ongoing series of scandals regarding government illegal and unethical experimentation" and that "there are plenty of other underreported and important stories out there on the terrible scandal that has been U.S. illegal experimentation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> "The article said that the list of such illegal experiments is quite long, including government radiation experiments, human mind control (also known as MKULTRA) experiments and the CIA and DoD (Department of Defense) experiments on "enemy combatants" in the "war on terror" (Pubrecord.org). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Newspaper The Hindu reported on August 30, 2011, that in 1932, the U.S. public health service agency started a study of untreated syphilis in the human body in Alabama. The researchers told the subjects that they were being treated for some ailments, and nearly 400 African-American men were infected with syphilis without informed consent. In fact, the men infected did not receive proper treatment needed. The study lasted until 1972 after media disclosures. Austrian national TV commented that this was a disgraceful event in the U.S. history and a dark period in U.S. medical ethics. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>The U.S.-led wars, albeit alleged to be "humanitarian intervention" efforts and for "the rise of a new democratic nation," created humanitarian disasters instead. For Iraqis, the death toll in the U.S.-initiated Iraq war stands at 655,000 (Tribune Business News, December 15, 2011). </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>According to figures released by the Iraq Body Count, at least 103,536 civilians were killed in the Iraq war (Reuters, December 18, 2011). </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>In 2011, there were an average of 6.5 deaths per day from suicide attacks and vehicle bombs (</strong><a href="http://www.iraqbodycount.org/"><strong>www.iraqbodycount.org</strong></a><strong>). </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>It is estimated that civilian casualties in the military campaign in Afghanistan could exceed 31,000 (Tribune Business News, October 17, 2011). </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">According to a news report, on May 28, 2011, a U.S.-led NATO airstrike killed 14 civilians and wounded six others in the southern region of Afghanistan (The New York Times, May 29, 2011). </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Separately, on May 25, a total of 18 Afghan civilians and 20 police were killed in a NATO airstrike in the province of Nuristan (BBC News, May 29, 2011). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The British newspaper The Guardian reported on March 11, 2012, that an American soldier stationed in Afghanistan burst into three civilian homes in two villages in the small hours of March 11, shot dead 16 sleeping Afghan villagers, injured five others, and burned the dead bodies. The victims included nine children and three women. According to a Reuters report, witness accounts said there were several U.S. soldiers involved (Reuters, March 11, 2012). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Another dpa (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) report quoted a member of the Afghan parliamentary investigative team as saying that there were 15 to 20 soldiers who had conducted the night raid operation in several areas in the village. The source also told dpa that some of the Afghan women who were killed were sexually assaulted, according to the findings (dpa, March 18, 2012). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Such "American-style massacre" against innocent civilians has once again pierced the veil of the United States proclaiming itself "a country under the rule of law" and "a human rights defender." </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>Incomplete statistics revealed that the United States has launched more than 60 drone attacks in Pakistan in 2011, killing at least 378 people (USA Today, January 11, 2012; Newamerica.net</strong>). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The number of civilian deaths in Afghanistan increased 15 percent in the first half of 2011 over the same period of 2010 (The New York Times, August 6, 2011). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">According to media reports, on the night of February 20, 2012, some American soldiers of the NATO troops at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan transported copies of Koran and other religious books to a rubbish pit and burnt them (BBC News, February 23, 2012).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> The acts of desecration of Koran have sparked strong protests and large-scale demonstration activities among the people across Afghanistan as well as in countries of Pakistan and Bengal (www.pakistantoday.com.pk; <a href="http://www.firstpost.com/">www.firstpost.com</a>).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The United States does not support the right to development, which is a concern of most of the developing countries. In September 2011, the 18th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted a resolution on "the right to development." Except an abstention vote from the United States, all the HRC members voted for the resolution.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The United States continues its conducts that seriously violate the right of subsistence and right of development of Cuban people. On October 26, 2011, the 66th session of the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly adopted a resolution titled "Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba," the 20th such resolution in a row. A total of 186 countries voted in favor of the resolution, three countries abstained, and only the United States and Israel voted against the resolution. The resolution urged the United States to repeal or invalid the almost 50-year-long economic, commercial and financial embargo against Cuba as soon as possible (<a href="http://www.un.org/">www.un.org</a>). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The United States, however, continues to defy the resolution. The blockade imposed by the United States against Cuba qualifies as an act of genocide under Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which was adopted in 1948.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The above-mentioned facts are but a small yet illustrative enough fraction of the United States' dismal record on its human rights situation. The United States' own tarnished human rights record has made it in no condition, on moral, political or legal basis, to act as the world's "human rights justice," to place itself above other countries and release the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices year after year to accuse and blame other countries. We hereby advise the U.S. government once again to look squarely at its own grave human rights problems, to stop the unpopular practices of taking human rights as a political instrument for interference in other countries' internal affairs, smearing other nations'images and seeking its own strategic interests, and to cease using double standards on human rights and pursuing hegemony under the pretext of human rights. </span></div>
</div>economichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18157243082371228984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3809479764067026126.post-77863879684567871052012-05-26T04:34:00.003-07:002012-05-26T04:34:59.267-07:00Full Text of Human Rights Record of the United States in 2011 - 5<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2012-05/25/c_131611554_7.htm">http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2012-05/25/c_131611554_7.htm</a><br />
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<strong><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">V. On the rights of women and children</span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">To date, the United States has ratified neither the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, nor the Convention on the Rights of the Child. As the United States neglects the rights of women and children, their situation deteriorates.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: large;"></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>Gender discrimination against women widely exists in the United States. According to statistics, women are not fully represented in governments at all levels in the United States, as women hold only 17 percent of the seats in Congress (</strong><a href="http://www.wcffoundation.org/"><strong>www.wcffoundation.org</strong></a><strong>).</strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong> Women doing the same work as men often get less payment in the United States, and the wage gap has narrowed by only 18 cents in the past half century (</strong><a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/"><strong>www.thedailybeast.com</strong></a><strong>).</strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong> According to a report released by the American Civil Liberties Union, in 2009, women working full-time, year-round were paid 77 cents on average for every dollar paid to men (</strong><a href="http://www.aclu.org/"><strong>www.aclu.org</strong></a><strong>). </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong></strong></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Women in the United States widely suffer discrimination in terms of employment, promotion and work. A new study confirms that American tech companies are woefully behind in including women among their board members and highest-paid executives. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>On average, fewer than one in 28 of the highest-paid tech executives is woman. </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>At California's biggest public companies, only about 10 percent of the board members and top executives are women (The New York Times, December 9, 2011).</strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Poverty rate among American women reached new record high. According to data from the United States Census Bureau, </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> over 17 million women lived in poverty in 2010, including more than 7.5 million in extreme poverty and </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> 4.7 million single mothers in poverty. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> The poverty rate among women climbed to 14.5 percent in 2010 from 13.9 percent in 2009, the highest in 17 years; </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> the extreme poverty rate among women climbed to 6.3 percent in 2010 from 5.9 percent in 2009, the highest rate ever recorded (<a href="http://www.merchantcircle.com/">www.merchantcircle.com</a>). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">According to a report of the Associated Press on April 12, 2011, a single mother named Lashanda Armstrong drove her four kids in a minivan into the Hudson river in Newburgh, New York due to the unbearable burden of raising the kids. Only her 10-year-old boy survived.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Women in the United States often experience discrimination, violence and sexual assault. Ethnic minority women face discrimination during pregnancy.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong> According to a report provided by the LAMB (The Los Angeles Mommy and Baby Project), 32.4 percent of Asian-American mothers felt discriminated against during pregnancy, second only to African-American mothers among whom the ratio amounts to 47.9 percent, while the ratio among Latin American mothers is 31.1 percent (The China Press, June 1, 2011).</strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong> According to statistics from the website of the Los Angeles Police Department, more than 2 million American women are victims of domestic violence annually.</strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong> The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey shows nearly one in five women has been raped in her lifetime, and one in four has experienced serious physical violence from an intimate partner at some point in her life (Los Angeles Times, December 14, 2011). </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>Throughout the military, sexual assault affects about 19 percent of female troops but most of them choose to keep silent, according to a survey of sexual assault conducted by the US military (</strong><a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/"><strong>www.csmonitor.com</strong></a><strong>). </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">From March to October in 2011, a string of 20 sexual assaults happened in Bay Ridge, Sunset Park and Park Slope and the victims were all young women (The New York Times, October 19, 2011). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>Reports say many of the 1 million women in prison in the United States experienced harsh treatment and even had their arms and legs chained when they were giving birth (<a href="http://www.globalissues.org/">www.globalissues.org</a>).</strong></span></div>
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<strong><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: large;"></span></strong> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>Poverty rate for children in the United States reached record high. According to the report released by the US Census Bureau, more than 1 million children were added to the poverty population between 2009 and 2010, making the total number of children living below the poverty line reach more than 15 million, the greatest since 2001. </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The poverty rate for children in 2010 climbed to 21.6 percent in 2010 from 20 percent in 2009, with 653 counties seeing a significant increase in poverty rate for children aging 5 to 17 and about one third of counties having school-age poverty rates above the national poverty rate (<a href="http://www.census.gov/">www.census.gov</a>). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>The Daily Mail reported on August 17, 2011, that child poverty increased in 38 states from 2000 to 2009 and Mississippi is the state with the highest level of 31 percent. </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The U.S. Census Bureau said that children living in poverty, especially small children, are more likely to develop cognitive and behavioral difficulties and may have a shorter education time and a longer time being unemployed when they grow up (The China Press, November 21, 2011).</span></div>
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</div>
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<strong>The number of homeless children has surged. In 2010, 1.6 million children in the United States were living on the street, in homeless shelters or motels, up 33 percent from that in 2007, according to the National Center on Family </strong></div>
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</div>
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<strong>Homelessness (USA Today, December 15, 2011). According to the Education Department of New York, there are 53,503 homeless students and children of 3 to 21 years old in New York, and the Homeless Service Department's count also shows an average of 6,902 children of 6 to 17 years old a month are homeless in the city (The New York Times, November 14, 2011). </strong></div>
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</div>
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Nearly 17,000 children slept in the municipal shelters in New York on the Halloween night in 2011. From May 2011 to November 2011, children in shelters rose 10 percent (The Wall Street Journal, November 9, 2011).</div>
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</div>
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<strong>Children are severely exposed to violence and pornography. BBC reported on October 17, 2011, that over the past 10 years, more than 20,000 American children were believed to have been killed by their family members. More than 1 million children are confirmed each year as victims of child abuse (www.preventchildabuse.org), and one of every two families in the U. S. is involved in domestic violence at some time (www. reverepolice.org). </strong></div>
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</div>
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<strong>The Wall Street Journal reported on November 14, 2011, that roughly 120,000 calls were made to the state hot line for child abuse calls administrated by the state Department of Public Welfare in Pennsylvania, but only about 24,000 cases were investigated. </strong></div>
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</div>
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A 13-year-old boy named Christian Choate was allegedly beaten to death in 2009 by his father. The report said prosecutors had alleged that the boy endured beating daily and was kept locked in a 3-foot-high dog cage, where he had little to eat and often soiled himself (Chicago Tribune, June 24, 2011). </div>
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</div>
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Campus violence and cyber bullying are growing more malicious in the U. S. According to a report of the US News & World Report on June 3, 2011, at least 40 percent of high school students have been bullied by cyber bullies (<a href="http://www.usnews.com/">www.usnews.com</a>). </div>
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</div>
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<strong>The Women's Enews reported on May 23 last year, the sex-trafficking problem is acute in the state of Georgia, with an estimated 250 to 300 underage teens and girls being sexually exploited each month there (womensenews. org). </strong></div>
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</div>
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According to a report published by the Stanford University, the number of reports of sexual assaults received in its campus in 2010 rose by 75 percent over that in 2009 (CBS, September 30, 2011).</div>
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Infant mortality rate remains high in the United States. According to a report of The New York Times on October 15, 2011, the infant mortality rate in the United States is 6.7 deaths per 1,000 live births. The rate among the African-Americans is 13.3 deaths per thousand, while the rates among the whites, Hispanics and Asian-Americans are respectively 5.6, 5.5 and 4.8 per thousand. In Pittsburgh, the infant mortality rate for black residents of Allegheny County was 20.7 per thousand in 2009, while the rate among whites in the county was only 4 per thousand in the same period. Nationally, black babies are more than twice as likely as white babies to die before the age of 1. </div>
</span></div>economichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18157243082371228984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3809479764067026126.post-55131945010444725162012-05-26T00:58:00.001-07:002012-05-26T00:58:20.424-07:00Full Text of Human Rights Record of the United States in 2011 - 4<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<strong><a href="http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2012-05/25/c_131611554_6.htm">http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2012-05/25/c_131611554_6.htm</a></strong><br />
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<strong><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">IV. On Racial Discrimination</span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Ethnic minorities in the United States have long been suffering systemic, widespread and institutional discrimination. And racial discrimination has become an indelible characteristic and symbol of American values.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>Ethnic minorities have low political, economic and social positions due to discrimination. The number of ethnic people in civil service is not proportional to their population. </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>New York Times reported on June 23, 2011, that the number of Asian Americans in New York City has topped one million, nearly 1 in 8 New Yorkers, but only one Asian-American serves in the State Legislature, two on the City Council and one in a citywide post of the New York City.</strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong> According to the annual report released by the National Urban League of the U.S., African-Americans' 2011 Equality Index is currently 71.5 percent, compared to 2010's 72.1 percent, among which the economic equality index declined from 57.9 percent to 56.9 percent, and the health index, from 76.6 percent to 75 percent, and the index in the area of social justice, from 57.9 percent to 56.9 percent.</strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>Ethnic Americans are badly discriminated against when it comes to employment. It was reported that the unemployment rate of Hispanics rose to 11 percent in 2010 from 5.7 percent in 2007 (The New York Times, September 28, 2011). </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>The unemployment rate of African Americans was 16.2 percent. For black males, it's at 17.5 percent; and for black youth, it's nearly 41 percent, 4.5 times the national average unemployment rate (CBS News, June 19, 2011)</strong>. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>Nationally, black joblessness stands at 21 percent, rising to as high as 40 percent in major urban centers like Detroit (The Wall Street Journal, August 31, 2011).</strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong> In Ziebach County of South Dakota, a community mainly composed of native-Americans, more than 60 percent of the residents live at or below the poverty line, and unemployment rate hits 90 percent in the winter (The Daily Mail, February 15, 2011). </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>A study shows that of the seven occupations with the highest salaries, six are overrepresented by whites (Washington Post, October 21, 2011).</strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The poverty rate of African Americans doubles that of whites, and the ethnic minority groups suffer severe social inequalities. According to a report by the Pew Research Center released in June 2011, the median wealth of white households is 20 times that of black households and 18 times that of Hispanic households (pewresearch.org). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>In 2010, poverty among blacks rose to 27.4 percent, and poverty among Hispanics increased to 26.6 percent, much higher than the 9.9-percent poverty rate among whites (</strong><a href="http://www.census.gov/"><strong>www.census.gov</strong></a><strong>). </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">A Pew Research Center report says the lopsided wealth ratios among whites, Hispanics and African-Americans in 2009 were the largest in the past 25 years (pewresearch.org).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong> According to an investigation done by the Washington-based Bread for the World, "black children are suffering from poverty at a rate of nearly 40 percent, and over a quarter of Blacks reported going hungry in 2010." "The figures are both startling and very telling," said the Rev. Derrick Boykin (</strong><a href="http://www.amsterdam.com/"><strong>www.amsterdam.com</strong></a><strong>).</strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Ethnic minorities are denied equal education opportunities, and ethnic minority kids are discriminated against and bullied at schools. According to a report by the U.S. Census Bureau on June 8, 2011, in 2008, among 18-to 24-year-olds, 22 percent were not enrolled in high schools for Hispanics, 13 percent for African-Americans, whereas only 6 percent for whites (<a href="http://www.census.gov/">www.census.gov</a>). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said on October 28, 2011, one third of American students are bullied at schools, and Asian American children bear the brunt. The teases and insults they get in cyber space are three times more compared to kids from other ethnic groups. A research finds 54 percent of Asian-American students have been bullied at schools, 38.4 percent for African-Americans and 34.3 percent for Hispanics (World Journal October 29, 2011).</strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Ethnic minorities and non-Christians are also badly discriminated against in the fields like law enforcement, justice and religion, rendering the so-claimed ethnic equality and religious freedom nothing but self-glorifying forged labels. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>A New York Times story (December 17, 2011) says the New York Police Department recorded more than 600,000 stops in 2010 and 84 percent of those stopped were blacks or Latinos. It was reported that black non-Hispanic males are incarcerated at a rate more than six times that of white non-Hispanic males (World Report 2011: United States, </strong><a href="http://www.hrw.org/"><strong>www.hrw.org</strong></a><strong>). </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">On December 1, 2011, the American Civil Liberties Union said that "the FBI is using its extensive community outreach to Muslims and other groups to secretly gather intelligence in violation of federal law." (Washington Post, December 2, 2011) </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>A survey by Pew Research Center finds that 52 percent of Muslim-Americans surveyed said their group is under government's surveillance, about 28 percent said they had been treated or viewed with suspicion and 21 percent said they were singled out by airport security (articles.boston.com). </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">More than half of Muslim-Americans in a new poll said government anti-terrorism policies single them out for increased surveillance and monitoring, and many reported increased cases of name-calling, threats and harassment by airport security, law enforcement officers and others (Washington Times, August 30, 2011).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Illegal immigrants also live under legal and systematic discrimination. It was reported that after Arizona passed its anti-illegal immigration bill, the State of Alabama began implementing its immigration law on September 28, 2011. The Alabama immigration law provides differentiated treatments to illegal immigrants in each of its term, rendering their daily lives rather difficult. Critics argued that the law runs counter to the U.S. Constitution and to certain terms in relevant international human rights law regarding granting equal protections to illegal immigrants (<a href="http://www.hrw.org/">www.hrw.org</a>).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> The New York Times reported on May 13, 2011, that the State of Georgia passed an anti-illegal immigration law which outlaws illegal immigrants working in the state and empowers local police officers to question certain suspects about their immigration status. Illegal immigrants suffer ferocious maltreatments. Internal reports from the Office of Detention Oversight of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) revealed grave problems in many U.S. detention facilities for immigrants, including lack of medical care, the use of excessive force and "abusive treatment" of detainees (The Houston Chronicle, October 10, 2011). A report released on September 21, 2011, by an Arizona-based non-profit organization revealed that thousands of illegal immigrants detained across the border between Mexico and Arizona are generally maltreated by U.S. border police, being denied enough food, water , medical care and sleep, even beaten up and confined in extreme coldness or heat, suffering both psychological abuse and threats of death (The World Journal, September 24, 2011). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Native Americans are denied their due rights. From January to February 2011, UN Special Rapporteur James Anaya lodged two accusations against the United States, including accusing the Arizona State government of approving the use of recycled wastewater for commercial ski operations on the San Francisco Peaks, a site considered sacred by several Native American tribes (www.forgottennavajopeople.org), as well as the case of imprisoned indigenous activist Leonard Peltier. Peltier was sentenced to life in prison in 1977 for alleged murder of two FBI agents. However Peltier has been claiming he is innocent and persecuted by the U.S. government for participating in the American Indian Movement (<a href="http://www.ohchr.org/">www.ohchr.org</a>). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">On April 26, 2011, Ms. Farida Shaheed, independent expert in the field of cultural rights, Mr. Heiner Bielefeldt, special rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, and Mr. James Anaya, special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, of the UN Human Rights Council, jointly lodged accusations against the U.S, claiming that the city of Vallejo, California, is planning to level and pave over the Sogorea Te, held sacred to indigenous people in northern California, in order to construct a parking lot and public restrooms (<a href="http://www.treatycouncil.org/">www.treatycouncil.org</a>).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>Race-motivated hate crimes occur frequently. According to an FBI report, 6,628 hate crime incidents were reported in 2010, 2,201 of which were against African Americans, 534 against Hispanics, and 575 against whites. And 47.3 percent of all were motivated by racial bias, 20 percent by religion, and 12.8 percent by an ethnicity/national origin bias (ww.fbi.gov).</strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong> According to a report released by the Center for American Progress in August 2011, seven American charitable groups, over the past decade, had spent 42.6 million U.S. dollars on inciting hatred against Islam communities (The New York Times, November 13, 2011). </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">There are three active white supremacy groups in the city of San Francisco, which focus on attacking ethnic minorities and immigrants (www.abclocal.go.com). On November 10, 2010, two Mexican Nationals were beaten by a group of whites who were members of these organizations (www.sfappeal.com). According to investigation, black men aged 15 to 29 years old were most likely to be victims of murders. In New York City, they make up less than 3 percent of the city's population but in 2010 represented 33 percent of all homicide victims (The Wall Street Journal, March 9, 2011).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The sufferings of civil rights activists who oppose racial discriminations arouse attention. The Huffington Post reported on May 31, 2011, Catrina Wallace, a civil rights activist in Jena, Louisiana, was sentenced to 15 years in prison by authorities only based on a drug dealer's accusation. Previously, Wallace had taken part in organizing a 50,000-people protest against racial discrimination that won freedom for six Black high school students. The article deemed the sentence was revenge taken by authorities on Wallace's human rights activism. "I am a freedom fighter," she says. "I fight for people's rights."</span> </div>
</div>economichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18157243082371228984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3809479764067026126.post-15314777286198150132012-05-26T00:46:00.001-07:002012-05-26T00:46:44.948-07:00Full Text of Human Rights Record of the United States in 2011 - 3<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<strong><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><a href="http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2012-05/25/c_131611554_4.htm">http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2012-05/25/c_131611554_4.htm</a></span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">III. On Economic, Social and Cultural Rights</span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The United States is the world's richest country, but quite a lot of Americans still lack guarantee for their economic, social and cultural rights that are necessary for personal dignity and self-development.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>The United States has not done enough to protect its citizens from unemployment. At no time in the last 60 years had the country's long-term unemployment been so high for so long as it was in 2011.</strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> It has been one of the Western developed countries that provide the poorest protection over laborer's rights. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>It has not yet approved any international labor organization convention in the last 10 years. </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Moreover, the United States lacks effective arbitration system to deal with enterprises that refuse to make compromise with the employees. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>The New York Times reported on December 12, 2011, that at last count, 13.3 million people were officially unemployed and that 5.7 million of them had been out of work for more than six months (The New York Times, December 12, 2011). </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>The unemployment rate was 8.9 percent for 2011 (www.bls.gov), and the unemployment rate for American youth between 25 and 34 stood at 26 percent in October of that year (The World Journal, November 18, 2011), with more underemployed. </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>A total of 84 metropolitan areas reported jobless rates of at least 10.0 percent, and El Centro, California, recorded the highest unemployment rate of 29.6 percent in September of 2011 (</strong><a href="http://www.bls.gov/"><strong>www.bls.gov</strong></a><strong>). </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The unemployed people suffered from not only financial pressures but also mental pressures including anxiety and depression.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">There is a widening of the gap between the extreme top and bottom (The USA Today, September 13, 2011), showing apparent unfair wealth distribution. The United States claims to have a large population of middle class, making up 80 percent of its total population, while there is only very few impoverished and extremely rich people (The China Press, October 13, 2011). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>However, this is not the truth. According to the report issued by the U.S. Congressional Budget Office (CBO) on October 25, 2011, the richest one percent of American families have the fastest growth of family revenue from 1979 to 2007 with an increase of 275 percent for after-tax income, while the after-tax income of the poorest 20 percent grew by only 18 percent (The World Journal, October 26, 2011). </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>Cable News Network reported on February 16, 2011, that in the last 20 years, incomes for 90 percent of Americans have been stuck in neutral, while the richest 1 percent of Americans have seen their incomes grow by 33 percent. Economic Policy Institute published a paper on October 26, 2011, saying that in 2009 the ratio of wealth owned by the wealthiest one percent to the wealth owned by median household was 225 to 1 (</strong><a href="http://www.epi.org/"><strong>www.epi.org</strong></a><strong>). </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Besides, in the United States, the best-off 10 percent made on average 15 times the incomes of the poorest 10 percent (Reuters, December 9, 2011). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>The wealthiest 400 Americans have 1.5 trillion U.S. dollars' worth of assets (The China Press, October 13, 2011), or the same combined wealth as the poorest half of Americans -- over 150 million people (</strong><a href="http://www.currydemocrats.org/"><strong>www.currydemocrats.org</strong></a><strong>). </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>The annual incomes of the richest 10 chief executive officers (CEO) were enough to pay the salary of 18,330 employees (The World Journal, October 16, 2011). </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Roughly 11 percent of Congress members had net worth of more than 9 million U.S. dollars, and 249 members were millionaires. The median net worth: 891,506 U.S. dollars, was almost nine times the typical household (The USA Today, November 16, 2011). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">A commentary by the Spiegel said that the U.S. has developed into an economic entity of "winners take all." American politician Larry Bartels said that fundamental shifts in wealth allocation was caused by political decisions rather than the consequences of market forces or financial crisis (The Spiegel, October 24, 2011).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>Contrary to the wealthiest 10 percent, the number of Americans living in poverty as well as poverty rate continued to hit record high, which is a great irony in the affluent America. </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>A report published by the Census Bureau on September 13, 2011, showed that 46.2 million people lived below the official poverty line in 2010, 2.6 million more than 2009, hitting the highest record since 1959. </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The report also said that the percentage of American who lived below the poverty line in 2010 was 15.1 percent, the highest level since 1993. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">An analysis done by the Brookings Institution estimated that at the current rate, the recession would have added nearly 10 million people to the ranks of the poor by the middle of the decade. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>According to the analysis, 22 percent of children were in poverty (The New York Times, September 13, 2011). Another survey showed that 12 states of the U.S had poverty rates above 17 percent, with Mississippi's poverty rate standing at 22.4 percent (The Huffington Post, October 21, 2011)</strong>. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The U.S. has grown into a country dependent on food stamps (Reuters, August 22, 2011). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>The percentage of Americans who did not have enough money to buy food grew from 9 percent in 2008 to 19 percent in 2011 (The World Journal, October 15, 2011)</strong>. In 2010, 17.2 million households, or 14.5 percent, were food insecure (www. Worldhunger. org). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>In 2011, 46 million Americans lived on food stamps, about 15 percent of the total population, up 74 percent from 2007 (Reuters, August 22, 2011). </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>Millions of homeless people wandered around streets. Reports said that about 2.3 million to 3.5 million Americans did not have a place that they call home to sleep in the night (</strong><a href="http://www.homelessnessinamerica.com/"><strong>www.homelessnessinamerica.com</strong></a><strong>). </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>Between 2007 and 2010, the number of homeless families grew by 20 percent (The Huffington Post, August 26, 2011). </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>Over the past five years, the percentage of singles arriving at shelters after living with family or elsewhere in the community has jumped from 39 percent to 66 percent (The USA Today, December 9, 2011). </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>There was an all-time record of more than 41,000 homeless people in New York City, including 17,000 homeless children (</strong><a href="http://www.coalitionforthehomeless.org/"><strong>www.coalitionforthehomeless.org</strong></a><strong>). </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">On any given night in Santa Clara County, California State, 7,045 people were homeless according to a 2011 Santa Clara County Homeless Census and Survey (<a href="http://www.santaclaraweekly.com/">www.santaclaraweekly.com</a>). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And advocates estimated that Chicago had up to 3,000 homeless youths in need of shelter on any given night (<a href="http://www.chicagonewscoop.org/">www.chicagonewscoop.org</a>).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The U.S. declared it has the best health care service in the world, but quite a lot of Americans could not enjoy due medication and health care. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>The Cable News Network reported on September 13, 2011, that the number of people who lacked health insurance in 2010 climbed to 49.9 million (Cable News Network, September 13, 2011). </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>Bloomberg reported on March 16, 2011, that 9 million Americans have lost health insurance during the past two years. </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>An additional 73 million adults had difficulties paying for health care and 75 million deferred treatment because they could not afford it (Bloomberg, March 16, 2011).</strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>Death and infection risks caused by AIDS grew. Since the first American patient was diagnosed with AIDS in 1981, 600,000 people have died from the disease in the U.S. By the end of 2008, 1,178,350 Americans had been infected with AIDS (The China Press, June 3, 2011). </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">AFP reported that nearly three quarters of Americans with HIV do not have their infection under control and one in five people with human immunodeficiency virus are unaware that they have the disease. Among people who know their HIV status is positive, only 51 percent get ongoing medical treatment (AFP, November 29, 2011). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Statistics given by the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention showed that, in the last 10 years, death caused by prescription drugs in America had doubled and that one would die from taking prescription drug every 14 minutes. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>Prescription drug overdose caused 37,485 deaths in 2009, exceeding traffic fatalities (The China Press, September 19, 2011).</strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The U.S. government has significantly cut the expense on education, reduced teaching staff, and shortened school hours with tuition fees soaring. The guarantee for teenagers' rights to education is weakening. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>The New York Times reported on October 3, 2011, that since 2007, school budgets in New York city have been cut by 13.7 percent every year on average. </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>Since 2008, 294,000 posts in the American education industry, including schools of higher education, have been cut (The China Press, October 25, 2011). </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Four-day per week classes have been practiced in 292 school districts, which was only put into use during the financial crisis in the 1930s and the oil crisis in the 1970s (The World Journal, October 30, 2011). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>A report by College Board showed that the average tuition fee of American four-year public universities in the school year of 2011 through 2012 was 8,244 U.S. dollars, 631 U.S. dollars more than the last school year, up 8.3 percent (The China Press, October 27, 2011). </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">About 3,000 people gathered on Sproul Plaza to protest tuition increases at Berkeley on November 9, 2011 (The New York Times, November 13, 2011). Reuters reported that two-thirds of undergraduate students would graduate with student loans about 25,000 U.S. dollars on average owing to the expensive college tuition (Reuters, February 1, 2011).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The Indian culture in the United States has long been suppressed. The country assimilated the Indian culture through legislation and mainstream culture. At the end of the 19th century, the United States carried out "white man's education" and implemented compulsory English-only education. Most of the people who now speak Indian languages are the seniors living in reservations. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>It is estimated that only five percent of Indians will speak their own languages 50 years later if there are no measures from the U.S. government.</strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The financial crisis was far from being the sole reason for the inadequate guarantee of Americans' economic, social and cultural rights. So far, the U.S. has not approved the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The above problems concerning human rights are the reflection of the U.S. ideology and political system that ignore people's economic, social and cultural rights.</span> </div>
</div>economichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18157243082371228984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3809479764067026126.post-56756599024011963952012-05-25T14:11:00.002-07:002012-05-25T14:21:44.716-07:00Full Text of Human Rights Record of the United States in 2011 - 2<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="http://www.xinhuanet.com/english2010/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #666666;">English.news.cn</span></a> 2012-05-25 20:03:53<br />
<a href="http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2012-05/25/c_131611554_2.htm">http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2012-05/25/c_131611554_2.htm</a><br />
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<strong><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">II. On Civil and Political Rights</span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In the United States, the violation of citizens' civil and political rights is severe. It is lying to itself when the United States calls itself the land of the free (The Washington Post, January 14, 2012).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Claiming to defend 99 percent of the U.S. population against the wealthiest, the Occupy Wall Street protest movement tested the U.S. political, economic and social systems. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>Ignited by severe social and economic inequality, uneven distribution of wealth and high unemployment, the movement expanded to sweep the United States after its inception in September 2011. </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>Whatever the deep reasons for the movement are, the single fact that thousands of protesters were treated in a rude and violent way, with many of them being arrested -- the act of willfully trampling on people' s freedom of assembly, demonstration and speech -- could provide a glimpse to the truth of the so-called U.S. freedom and democracy.</strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>Almost 1,000 people were reportedly arrested in first two weeks of the movement, according to British and Australian media (The Guardian, October 2, 2011). </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The New York police arrested more than 700 protesters for alleged blocking traffic over Brooklyn Bridge on October 1, and some of them were handcuffed to the bridge before being shipped by police vehicles (uschinapress.com, October 3, 2011). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">On October 9, 92 people were arrested in New York (The New York Times, October 15, 2011). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The Occupy Wall Street movement was forced out of its encampment at Zuccotti Park and more than 200 people were arrested on November 15 (The Guardian, November 25, 2011). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Chicago police arrested around 300 members of the Occupy Chicago protest in two weeks (The Herald Sun, October 24, 2011). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">At least 85 people were arrested when police used teargas and baton rounds to break up an Occupy Wall Street camp in Oakland, California on October 25. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">An Iraq war veteran had a fractured skull and brain swelling after being allegedly hit in the head by a police projectile (The Guardian, October 26, 2011).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> A couple of hundred people were arrested when demonstrations were staged in different U.S. cities to mark the Occupy Wall Street movement' s two-month anniversary on November 17 (USA Today, November 18, 2011). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Among them, at least 276 were arrested in New York only. Some protesters were bloodied as they were hauled away. Many protesters accused the police of treating them in a brutal way (The Wall Street Journal, November 18, 2011). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">As a U.S. opinion article put it, the United States could be considered, at least in part, authoritarian. (The Washington Post, January 14, 2012).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>While advocating press freedom, the United States in fact imposes fairly strict censoring and control over the press and "press freedom" is just a political tool used to beautify itself and attack other nations. </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>The U.S. Congress failed to pass laws on protecting rights of reporters' news sources, according to media reports. An increasing number of American reporters lost jobs for "improper remarks on politics." </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>U.S. reporter Helen Thomas resigned for critical remarks about Israel in June 2010 ( "Report: On the situation with human rights in a host of world states," the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Russia, December 28, 2011). </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>While forcibly evacuating the Zuccotti Park, the original Occupy Wall Street encampment, the New York police blocked journalists from covering the police actions. They set cordon lines to prevent reporters from getting close to the park and closed airspace to make aerial photography impossible. </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>In addition to using pepper spray against reporters, the police also arrested around 200 journalists, including reporters from NPR and the New York Times (uschinapress.com, November 15, 2011). </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">By trampling on press freedom and public interests, these actions by the U.S. authorities caused a global uproar. U.S. mainstream media' s response to the Occupy Wall Street movement revealed the hypocrisy in handling issues of freedom and democracy. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>Poll by Pew Research Center indicated that in the second week of the movement, reports on the movement only accounted for 1.68 percent of the total media reports by nationwide media organizations. </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>On October 15, 2011, when the Occupy Wall Street movement evolved to be a global action, CNN and Fox News gave no live reports on it, in a sharp contrast to the square protest in Cairo, for which both CNN and Fox News broadcast live 24 hours.</strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The U.S. imposes fairly strict restriction on the Internet, and its approach "remains full of problems and contradictions." (The website of the Foreign Policy magazine, February 17, 2011) "Internet freedom" is just an excuse for the United States to impose diplomatic pressure and seek hegemony.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>The U.S. Patriot Act and Homeland Security Act both have clauses about monitoring the Internet, giving the government or law enforcement organizations power to monitor and block any Internet content "harmful to national security." Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010 stipulates that the federal government has "absolute power" to shut down the Internet under a declared national emergency.</strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> According to a report by British newspaper the Guardian dated March 17, 2011, the U.S. military is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media sites by using fake online personas, and will allow the U.S. military to create a false consensus in online conversations, crowd out unwelcome opinions and smother commentaries or reports that do not correspond with its own objectives. The project aims to control and restrict free speech on the Internet (The Guardian, March 17, 2011). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">According to a commentary by the Voice of Russia on February 2, 2012, a subsidiary under the U.S. government' s security agency employed several hundred analysts, who were tasked with monitoring private archives of foreign Internet users in a secret way, and were able to censor as many as five million microblogging posts.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> The U.S. Department of Homeland Security routinely searched key words like "illegal immigrants," "virus," "death," and "burst out" on Twitter with fake accounts and then secretly traced the Internet users who forwarded related content. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>According to a report by the Globe and Mail on January 30, 2012, Leigh Van Bryan, a British, prior to his flight to the U.S., wrote in a Twitter post, "Free this week, for quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy America?" As a result, Bryan along with a friend were handcuffed and put in lockdown with suspected drug smugglers for 12 hours by armed guards after landing in Los Angeles International Airport, just like "terrorists" . </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>Among many angered by the incident in Britain, an Internet user posted a comment, "What' s worse, being arrested for an innocent tweet, or the fact that the American Secret Service monitors every electronic message in the world?" (The Daily Mail, January 31, 2012).</strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The U.S. democracy is increasingly being influenced by capitalization and becoming a system for "master of money." </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>Data issued by the U.S. Center for Responsive Politics in November 2011 show that 46 percent of the U.S. federal senators and members of the House of Representatives have personal assets of more than a million dollars</strong>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> <strong>That well explains why U.S. administration' s plans to impose higher tax on the rich who earn more than one million dollars annually have been blocked in the Congress </strong>(<a href="http://www.finance-ol.com/">www.finance-ol.com</a>). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">As a commentary put it, money has emerged as the electoral trump card in the U.S. political system, and corporations have a Supreme Court-recognized right to use their considerable financial muscle to promote candidates and policies favorable to their business operations and to resist policies and shut out candidates deemed inimical to their business interests (Online edition of Time, January 20, 2011). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>According to a media report, nearly two thirds of all the contributions that the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee received during the 2010 election cycle came from industries regulated by his committee. </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>A ranking Democrat Representative on the Agriculture Committee, who served as chairman between 2007 and 2010, saw a 711 percent increase in contributions from groups regulated by his committee and a 274 percent increase in contributions over all, in the same period (The New York Times, November 16, 2011). </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>According to a Washington Post report on August 10, 2011, nearly eight in 10 of Americans polled were dissatisfied with the way the political system is working, with 45 percent saying they are very dissatisfied (The Washington Post, August 10, 2011).</strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The U.S. continued to violate the freedom of its citizens in the name of boosting security levels (The Washington Post, January 14, 2012). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The Electronic Frontier Foundation in 2011 released a report, "Patterns of Misconduct: FBI intelligence violations from 2001-2008," which reveals that domestic political intelligence apparatus spearheaded by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, continues to systematically violate the rights of American citizens and legal residents. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>The report shows that the actual number of violations that may have occurred from 2001 to 2008 could approach 40,000 possible violations of law, Executive Order, or other regulations governing intelligence investigations. </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>The FBI issued some 200,000 requests and that almost 60 percent were for investigations of U.S. citizens and legal residents (</strong><a href="http://www.pacificfreepress.com/"><strong>www.pacificfreepress.com</strong></a><strong>). </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The New York Times reported on October 20, 2011, that the FBI has collected information about religious, ethnic and national-origin characteristics of American communities (The New York Times, October 20, 2011). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">According to a Washington Post commentary dated January 14, 2012, the U.S. government can use "national security letters" to demand, without probable cause, that organizations turn over information on citizens' finances, communications and associations, and order searches of everything from business documents to library records. The U.S. government can use GPS devices to monitor every move of targeted citizens without securing any court order or review (The Washington Post, January 14, 2012).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Abuse of power, brutal enforcement of law and overuse of force by U.S. police have resulted in harassment and hurt to a large number of innocent citizens and have caused loss of freedom of some people or even deaths. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>According to a report carried by the World Journal on June 10, 2011, the past decade saw increasing stop-and-frisks by the New York police, which recorded an annual of 600,000 cases in 2010, almost double of that in 2004. </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>In the first three months of 2011, some 180,000 people experienced stop-and-frisks, 88 percent of whom were innocent people (World Journal, June 10, 2011). </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In early July of 2011, two police officers beat a mentally ill homeless man to death in Orange County, Southern California (FoxNews.com, September 21, 2011). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In August 2011, North Miami police shot and killed a man carrying realistic toy gun (The NY Daily News, September 1, 2011). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">On Jan. 8, 2011, a Central California man was shot and killed by the police, who thought of him as a gang member only because the jacket he was wearing was red, "the chosen color of a local street gang." (www.kolotv.com, January 19, 2011) </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In May 2011, Arizona' s police officers raided the home of Jose Guerena and shot him dead in what was described as an investigation into alleged marijuana trafficking. However, the police later found nothing illegal in his home (The Huffington Post, May 25, 2011). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Misjudged and wrongly-handled cases continued to occur. According to media reports, Anthony Graves, a Texas man, was imprisoned for 18 years for crimes he did not commit (CBS News, June 22, 2011). Forty-six-year-old Thomas Haynesworth spent 27 years in prison after being arrested at the age of 18 for crimes he didn' t commit (Union Press International, December 7, 2011). Eric Caine, who was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment after being tortured by police into confessing to two murders, spent nearly 25 years behind bars.(Chicago Tribune, June 13, 2011).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>The U.S. lacks basic due lawsuit process protections, and its government continues to claim the right to strip citizens of legal protections based on its sole discretion (The Washington Post, January 14, 2012). </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>The National Defense Authorization Act, signed December 31, 2011, allows for the indefinite detention of citizens (The Washington Post, January 14, 2012). </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The Act will place domestic terror investigations and interrogations into the hands of the military and which would open the door for trial-free, indefinite detention of anyone, including American citizens, so long as the government calls them terrorists (www.forbes.com, December 5, 2011). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>The U.S. remains the country with the largest "prison population" and the highest per capita level of imprisonment in the world, and the detention centers' conditions are terrible. </strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the number of prisoners amounted to 2.3 million in 2009 and one in every 132 American citizens is behind bars. </strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>Meanwhile, more than 140,000 are serving life sentences </strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>("Report: On the situation with human rights in a host of world states," the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Russia, December 28, 2011). </strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>According to a Los Angeles Times report on May 24, 2011, in a California prison, as many as 54 inmates may share a single toilet and as many as 200 prisoners may live in a gymnasium (Los Angeles Times, May 24, 2011). </strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>According to data issued by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the estimated number of prison and jail inmates experiencing sexual victimization totaled 88,500 in the U.S. between October 2008 and December 2009 (</strong><a href="http://www.bjs.gov/"><strong>www.bjs.gov</strong></a><strong>). </strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>Since April 2011, officials stopped serving lunch on the weekend in some U.S. prisons as a way to cut food-service costs. </strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>About 23,000 inmates in 36 prisons are eating two meals a day on Saturdays and Sundays instead of three (The New York Times, October 20, 2011).</strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> Harsh conditions and treatment in prisons have caused recurring protests and suicides of inmates. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>There were two major hunger strikes in California prisons staged by a total of more than 6,000 and 12,000 prisoners in July and October 2011, respectively, to protest against what they call harsh treatment and detention conditions (CNN, October 4, 2011; The New York Times, July 7, 2011). </strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>According to a Chicago Tribune report on July 20, 2011, since 2000, at least 175 youths have attempted to kill themselves inside Department of Juvenile Justice lockup facilities in Chicago and seven youths committed suicide. </strong></span><br />
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<strong><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture in a 2011 report noted that in the Untied States an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 individuals are being held in isolation, and the U.S. government in 2011 for two times turned down the Special Rapporteur's request for a private and unmonitored meeting with detainees held in isolation.</span> </strong></div>
</div>economichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18157243082371228984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3809479764067026126.post-88536670163986345682012-05-25T14:03:00.000-07:002012-05-26T05:07:23.150-07:00Full Text of Human Rights Record of the United States in 2011 -1<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://www.xinhuanet.com/english2010/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #666666;">English.news.cn</span></a> 2012-05-25 20:03:53</div>
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<a href="http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2012-05/25/c_131611554.htm">http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2012-05/25/c_131611554.htm</a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">BEIJING, May 25 (Xinhua) -- The State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China published a report titled "The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2011" here Friday. Following is the full text:</span></div>
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<strong><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Human Rights Record of the United States in 2011</span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">May 25, 2012</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The State Department of the United States released its Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2011 on May 24, 2012. As in previous years, the reports are full of over-critical remarks on the human rights situation in nearly 200 countries and regions as well as distortions and accusations concerning the human rights cause in China. However, the United States turned a blind eye to its own woeful human rights situation and kept silent about it. The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2011 is hereby prepared to reveal the true human rights situation of the United States to people across the world and urge the United States to face up to its own doings.</span></div>
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<strong><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I. On Life, Property and Personal Security</span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The United States has mighty strength in human, financial and material resources to exert effective control over violent crimes. However, its society is chronically suffering from violent crimes, and its citizens' lives, properties and personal security are in lack of proper protection.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">A report published by the U.S. Department of Justice on September 15, 2011, revealed that in 2010 the </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>U.S. residents aged 12 and above experienced 3.8 million violent victimizations, </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>1.4 million serious violent victimizations, </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>14.8 million property victimizations and </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>138,000 personal thefts</strong>. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>The violent victimization rate was 15 victimizations per 1,000 residents (</strong><a href="http://www.bjs.gov/"><strong>www.bjs.gov</strong></a><strong>). </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The crime rate surged in many cities and regions in the United States. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In the southern region of the United States, there were 452 violent crimes and 3,438.8 property crimes per 100,000 inhabitants (in 2010) on average (The Wall Street Journal, September 20, 2011). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Just four weeks into 2011, San Francisco saw eight homicides -- compared with five during the same time of the previous year, with Oakland racking up 11, when the previous year in the same period it had four (The San Francisco Chronicle, January 29, 2011). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Grand larcenies in the subway in New York City increased from 852 in 2010 to 1,075 cases in the first nine months of 2011, a 25 percent jump (The China Press, September 24, 2011). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Homicide cases in Detroit in 2011 saw a 13.5 percent rise over 2010 (<a href="http://www.buzzle.com/">www.buzzle.com</a>). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>Between January and October 2011, a total of 123,924 serious crime cases took place in Chicago (portal.chicagopolice.org)</strong>. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>An anti-bullying public service announcement declared in January 2011 that more than six million schoolchildren experienced bullying in the previous six months (CNN, March 10, 2011).</strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong> According to statistics from the Family First Aid, almost 30 percent of teenagers in the United States are estimated to be involved in school bullying (</strong><a href="http://www.familyfirstaid.org/"><strong>www.familyfirstaid.org</strong></a><strong>).</strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The United States prioritizes the right to keep and bear arms over the protection of citizens' lives and personal security and exercises lax firearm possession control, causing rampant gun ownership. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>The U.S. people hold between 35 percent and 50 percent of the world' s civilian-owned guns, with every 100 people having 90 guns (Online edition of the Foreign Policy, January 9, 2011)</strong>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>According to a Gallup poll in October 2011, 47 percent of American adults reported that they had a gun. That was an increase of six percentage points from a year ago and the highest Gallup had recorded since 1993.</strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>Fifty-two percent of middle-aged adults, aged between 35 and 54, reported to own guns, and the adults' gun ownership in the south region was 54 percent (The China Press, October 28, 2011).</strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The New York Times reported on November 14, 2011, that since 1995, more than 3,300 felons and people convicted of domestic violence misdemeanors had regained their gun rights in the state of Washington and of that number, more than 400 had subsequently committed new crimes, including shooting and other felonies (The New York Times, November 14, 2011).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>The United States is the leader among the world's developed countries in gun violence and gun deaths. </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>According to a report of the Foreign Policy on January 9, 2011, over 30,000 Americans die every year from gun violence and another 200,000 Americans are estimated to be injured each year due to guns (Online edition of the Foreign Policy, January 9, 2011)</strong>. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>According to statistics released by the U.S. Department of Justice, among the 480,760 robbery cases and 188,380 rape and sexual assault cases in 2010, the rates of victimization involving firearms were 29 percent and 7 percent, respectively (</strong><a href="http://www.bjs.gov/"><strong>www.bjs.gov</strong></a><strong>). </strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">On June 2, 2011, a shooting rampage in Arizona left six people dead and one injured (The China Press, June 3, 2011). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In Chicago, more than 10 overnight shooting incidents took place just between the evening of June 3 and the morning of June 4 (Chicago Tribune, June 4, 2011).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Another five overnight shootings occurred between August 12 evening and August 13 morning in Chicago. These incidents have caused a number of deaths and injuries (Chicago Tribune, August 13, 2011). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Shooting spree cases involving one gunman shooting dead over five people also happened in the states of Michigan, Texas, Ohio, Nevada and Southern California (The New York Times, October 13, 2011; CNN, July 8, 2011; CBS, July 23, 2011;USA Today, August 9, 2011). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">High incidence of gun-related crimes has long ignited complaints of the U.S. people and they stage multiple protests every year, demanding the government strictly control the private possession of arms. The U.S. government, however, fails to pay due attention to this issue. </span></div>
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</div>economichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18157243082371228984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3809479764067026126.post-19051462422616689662012-05-23T07:51:00.000-07:002012-05-23T07:51:13.469-07:0088,000 racism incidents reported in UK schools in 2007-11<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://www.indianexpress.com/news/88-000-racism-incidents-reported-in-uk-schools-in-200711/952913/"><span style="color: blue;">http://www.indianexpress.com/news/88-000-racism-incidents-reported-in-uk-schools-in-200711/952913/</span></a></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #4b4b4b; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><a href="http://www.indianexpress.com/columnist/agencies/"><span style="color: blue;">Agencies</span></a>
: <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city></st1:place>, Wed
May 23 2012, 15:26 hrs<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt;">Almost 88,000 racist incidents
have been reported in schools in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Britain</st1:place></st1:country-region> between 2007 and 2011,
according to figures</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt;">. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt;">The data obtained under the
Freedom of Information from 90 areas have revealed that almost 87,915 cases of
racist bullying, including physical abuse, have been reported in the country. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt;">Birmingham reported the highest
number of racist incidents with 5,752, followed by Leeds at 4,690, The BBC
reports</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt;">. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt;">However, Camarthenshire had the
lowest number of cases with just five reported. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt;">Between 2007 and 2010, racist
incidents in schools in <st1:country-region w:st="on">England</st1:country-region>,
<st1:country-region w:st="on">Scotland</st1:country-region> and <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Wales</st1:place></st1:country-region> rose from
22,285 to 23,971</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt;">. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt;">Sarah Soyei, of the anti-racism
educational charity, Show Racism the Red Card (SRRC), said: "Racism is a
very real issue in many classrooms around the country, but cases of racist
bullying are notoriously underreported". <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt;">"Often teachers may not be
aware of racism in their classrooms because victims are scared of reporting
them out of fear of making the situation worse," she added. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt;">Teaching unions have said that
the key to tackle the problem in schools is through education for both teachers
and students. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt;">Charities have started giving
anti-racism lessons in schools across the country in an attempt to educate
young people against racism. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt;">A spokesman for the Department
for Education said: "Racism needs to be rooted out wherever it occurs, and
particularly in schools, where every child has the right to learn in an
environment free from prejudice". <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt;">"It is teachers and parents,
not central government, that know what is happening in their schools, and they
are best placed to deal with racist behaviour when it happens, the spokesman
added. </span></div>
</div>economichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18157243082371228984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3809479764067026126.post-27391181245347749422012-05-18T04:32:00.002-07:002012-05-18T04:32:53.797-07:001 lakh cases of SC/ST atrocities pending: Govt<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><a href="http://www.indianexpress.com/columnist/agencies/"><span style="color: blue; font-size: small;">Agencies</span></a><span style="font-size: small;"> : <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">New Delhi</st1:place></st1:city> , Thu May 17
2012, 13:25 hrs<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><a href="http://www.indianexpress.com/news/1-lakh-cases-of-sc-st-atrocities-pending-govt/950507/"><span style="color: blue;">http://www.indianexpress.com/news/1-lakh-cases-of-sc-st-atrocities-pending-govt/950507/</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt;">With over
one lakh cases of atrocities against SCs and STs pending, the government is
considering amendments in the existing law to fast-track trial, the Rajya Sabha
was informed today. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt;">Social
Justice and Empowerment Minister Mukul Wasnik said during Question Hour that a
concept note was sent to state governments for comments on amending the
Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989.
<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt;">He said that out of over one lakh cases of
atrocities pending at the end of 2010, the highest number of 19,939 cases were
pending in Uttar Pradesh, followed by 13,590 cases in Madhya Pradesh. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt;">Rajasthan had 11,524 cases pending at the end
of 2010, Gujarat - 9,437, Odisha - 8,826, <st1:place w:st="on">Bihar</st1:place>
- 7,776 and Karnataka - 6,044, he said. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt;">Wasnik, who did not specify the proposed
amendments, said six states had not yet given their opinion. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt;">He said states were being impressed upon to
set up special courts to try cases of atrocities on SCs and STs in places where
conviction rate is low, pendency is high or registration of cases are high. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt;">He also said public prosecutors would be
denotified if they did not perform their job well.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>economichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18157243082371228984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3809479764067026126.post-18359637445431147232012-05-06T07:47:00.001-07:002012-05-06T07:47:28.402-07:00Number of Palestinians on hunger strike hits 1,550<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 9pt;">Thursday,
May 03, 2012<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 9pt;"><a href="http://images.thenews.com.pk/03-05-2012/ethenews/e-106354.htm"><span style="color: blue;">http://images.thenews.com.pk/03-05-2012/ethenews/e-106354.htm</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt;">OCCUPIED-AL-QUDS:
At least 1,550 Palestinians in Israeli jails are now taking part in a mass
hunger strike, <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Israel</st1:country-region></st1:place>'s
Prison Service said on Wednesday, with two of them marking their 64th day
without food. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt;"><br />
IPS spokeswoman Sivan Weizman told AFP that another 100 prisoners had begun
refusing food in the last two days, swelling the number of those on hunger
strike to 1,550 -- or more than a third of the total Palestinian prison
population of 4,700. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt;"><br />
Two of them, Bilal Diab and Thaer Halahla, have been on hunger strike for 64
days, with Physicians for Human Rights-Israel warning that both were in danger
of dying.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
On Thursday morning, the Israeli Supreme Court was to hear an appeal against
their being held in administrative detention, a procedure under which suspects
can be held without charge for renewable periods of up to six months at a time.<br />
Diab was on Tuesday moved from Ramle prison infirmary to the nearby Assaf
HaRofeh hospital, a day after PHR warned that he was in "immediate mortal
danger" and not receiving adequate medical attention. <br />
"Bilal is in a stable condition after being transferred to the
gastroenterology department of Assaf HaRofeh hospital," his lawyer Jamil
Khatib told AFP. Jawad Boulos, legal advisor to the Palestinian Prisoners'
Club, who visited Diab on Wednesday, said he was shacked to his hospital bed
and watched over by four security guards. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt;"><br />
Diab was refusing to deal with the doctors until they removed his shackles and
he told the guards: "The more cruel you become, the more insistent I
become on my position and belief that my freedom is the most precious thing in
life," Boulos said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
A PHR doctor who examined Diab on Monday found he was suffering from stomach
pains, with indications he could be suffering from internal bleeding. She also
said Halahla was in urgent need of a CAT scan. <br />
Khatib, who is also representing Halahla, tried to visit him at Ramle prison
infirmary on Wednesday but was refused permission, he told AFP.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
The vast majority of prisoners began refusing food on April 17 in a demand for
improved conditions, including increased access to lawyers and family visits,
an end to solitary confinement and an end to administrative detention.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN;"><br />
Weizman said a prison commission was examining the issue of prison conditions,
but gave no date for when its recommendations would be submitted. She said the
commission had begun its work before the start of the mass hunger strike</span></div>
</div>economichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18157243082371228984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3809479764067026126.post-88678359889158060002012-04-27T04:21:00.003-07:002012-04-27T04:21:29.593-07:00UN chief urged to take up India's rights violations 'central part' of his Delhi talks<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="author">By: <a href="http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/Reporter/special-correspondent">Special Correspondent</a> | </span> April 26, 2012, 11:36 am</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/international/26-Apr-2012/un-chief-urged-to-take-up-indias-rights-violations-central-part-of-his-delhi-talks">http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/international/26-Apr-2012/un-chief-urged-to-take-up-indias-rights-violations-central-part-of-his-delhi-talks</a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">NEW YORK - <strong>Human Rights Watch, an international watchdog body, has asked UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who is in New Delhi, to raise the large-scale violations of human rights in India and in occupied-Kashmir during his talks with Indian leaders</strong>.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The secretary-general flew to New Delhi on Wednesday for a three-day visit, saying he would discuss regional and global issues with Indian officials and leaders.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“India has a dynamic democracy, but UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon should not gloss over the serious domestic violations and routine impunity that affect millions of Indians, and hold back the country’s development,” Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at the New York-based Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Ban would do a great disservice to the Indian people if he were to only talk about regional and global issues,” she said.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Human Rights Watch urged the UN chief to press the Indian government to address serious human rights violations, such as extrajudicial killings, abuses in conflict areas, and widespread torture. The Indian government has failed to hold soldiers and police officers who are responsible for abuses to account, it said.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Ban should also raise India's excessive restrictions on civil society and the need to take strong steps to protect the rights of women, Dalits, indigenous people, and other vulnerable groups. Widespread impunity for these abuses, as well as a lack of access to justice or adequate compensation, are commonplace in India, Human Rights Watch said.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The secretary-general should in particular press the Indian government to repeal the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, Human Rights Watch said. The law provides effective immunity to soldiers responsible for serious human rights violations and has led to widespread abuses in Jammu and Kashmir, and in the northeastern states where it remains in force. Ban should also call for the repeal of archaic sedition laws that have been used to silence peaceful dissent.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“As India develops a foreign policy to match its emerging global status, Ban should caution Indian leaders against allowing sovereignty concerns to blind them to serious human rights abuses in other countries,” Ms. Ganguly said. “With growing power comes growing responsibility, not only to foreign governments, but also to the people they often </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">oppress.”</span></div>
</div>economichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18157243082371228984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3809479764067026126.post-22723001863584736862012-04-24T07:06:00.003-07:002012-04-24T07:06:36.067-07:003,500 Palestinian prisoners in Israel on hunger strike<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Published: <span class="grey">17 April, 2012, 16:15</span> <o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><a href="http://rt.com/news/palestinian-prisoners-hunger-strike-271/"><span style="color: blue;">http://rt.com/news/palestinian-prisoners-hunger-strike-271/</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><o:p> </o:p></span><b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">The majority of the 4,699 Palestinians being currently held in Israeli
prisons refused their meals on Prisoners’ Day, while 1,200 of them promise to
hunger strike indefinitely to protest against unfair conditions</span></b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">The other 2,300 have refused to eat any food for the whole of Tuesday</span></b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Later on Tuesday <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region>
is to release Palestinian prisoner Khader Adnan, 33, who attracted worldwide
media attention after spending 66 days on hunger strike – the longest in
Palestinian history</span></b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">In Palestinian authority practically every person has a relative or
acquaintance that has spent or is spending time in Israeli prison</span></b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">. Palestinians consider those jailed as freedom fighters, whichever setup
they belong to, be it Hamas, Islamic Jihad or any other Palestinian
organization.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Israel has 17 detention facilities across the country and the West Bank.
According to Israeli data, 3,864 of the total number of prisoners are from the
occupied West Bank, 475 are from Gaza and 360 are Arab Israelis or from
Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem</span></b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">The Palestinian data says that 534 prisoners – more than one in
10 – are serving a life sentence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Israeli rights group B'Tselem also gives figure of 203 jailed Palestinian
minors, 31 of whom are under 16 years old.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 15pt 0cm 0pt; mso-line-height-alt: 13.5pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Israeli also use an “administrative detention” legislative that dates back
to British protectorate of the region. This procedure allows <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region> to
detain suspects indefinitely without charges being brought against them, simply
by repeating the implied maximum six-month periods of detention time after
time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">At the moment there are 319 persons under “administrative detention” in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Last year the number of Palestinians in Israeli jails considerably reduced
after the release of 1,027 prisoners in exchange for captive Israeli soldier
Gilad Shalit, a swap deal between <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Palestine</st1:place></st1:city>’s
Hamas and official Tel-Aviv after years of negotiations.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">All in all, since 1967, when <st1:country-region w:st="on">Israel</st1:country-region>
occupied East Jerusalem as a result of Six-Day War, the West Bank and the <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Gaza</st1:place></st1:city> Strip, some 700,000
Palestinians have seen the daylight from behind the bars of Israeli prisons.
This is equivalent to 20 per cent of the total population of the Palestinian
Authority</span></b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 18pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>economichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18157243082371228984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3809479764067026126.post-69604844755527213882012-04-24T07:05:00.001-07:002012-04-24T07:05:32.832-07:00Israel punishes Palestinian hunger strikers by removing rights<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Published: <span class="grey">24 April, 2012, 05:35</span> <o:p></o:p></span>
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><a href="http://rt.com/news/israel-palestinian-hunger-rights-808/"><span style="color: blue;">http://rt.com/news/israel-palestinian-hunger-rights-808/</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Israeli authorities are trying new methods to end hunger strikes among
Palestinian prisoners. The measures include canceling prisoners' rights to
family visits and confiscating of their possessions</span></b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">"<em><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Privileges such as
family visits have been revoked and items such as electronics have been
confiscated,</span></em>" Sivan Weizman, a spokesperson for the Israeli
Prisons Authority said Monday as quoted by Reuters.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">Amani Sarahna of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, an advocacy group for
Palestinians jailed in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region>,
says prison authorities conducted extensive searches of the hunger strikers'
jail cells. "<em><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">All the
prisoners' belongings were confiscated except their towels and their shoes,</span></em>"
Saranha explained. She says even salt was taken away from the prisoners –
the only calorie-free nutrient they ingest.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">The measures taken by <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region>
are aimed at the 1,200 Palestinian prisoners currently on hunger strike to
protest against extended detention without trial and to demand better prison
conditions</span></b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">Also on Monday, an Israeli military court also rejected the appeals of two
Palestinian prisoners who have been refusing food for 55 days, according to
their lawyer and a Palestinian rights NGO. The judge ruled that the two men
were "<em><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">responsible for
their own state of health,</span></em>" which was described by a prison
hospital as "<em><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">rapidly
deteriorating.</span></em>" <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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</span><br />
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<b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><a href="http://rt.com/news/palestinian-prisoners-hunger-strike-271/"><span style="color: blue; font-size: large;">Last
Tuesday </span></a><span style="font-size: large;">3,500 Palestinian prisoners out of a total of 4,699 currently
detained in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region>
went on a collective hunger strike. Over a thousand have been on strike ever
since</span></span></b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">The action was sparked by the hunger strikes of two other Palestinian
prisoners, Khader Adnan and Hanaa Shalab. <b>Adnan went 66 days without food
and was able to get <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region>
to agree not to extend his detention beyond the original order. Shalab got
released after spending 43 days on hunger strike on condition that she is
exiled to <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Gaza</st1:place></st1:city>
in the next three years</b>. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on"><b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Israel</span></b></st1:place></st1:country-region><b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"> continues to use so-called "administrative detention"
legislation that dates back to the British protectorate of the region</span></b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">. The law allows <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region>
to hold suspects under arrest indefinitely without charges being brought
against them, simply by renewing the implied maximum six-month period of
detention time after time. <b>There are currently 319 persons under
"administrative detention" in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Israel</st1:place></st1:country-region></b>. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Israel has 17 detention facilities across the country and the West Bank.
According to Israeli data, 3,864 of the total number of inmates are from the
occupied West Bank, 475 are from Gaza and 360 are Arab Israelis or from the Israeli-annexed
East Jerusalem</span></b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">Palestinian data indicates that 534 prisoners – over one in ten –
are serving a life sentence. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">
<b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN;">The number of Palestinians behind bars went down
significantly last year <a href="http://rt.com/news/israel-palestine-shalit-release-061/"><span style="color: blue;">after Israel
released 1,027 inmates in exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit</span></a>, held
captive by Hamas for several years</span></b><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN;">.</span></span></div>economichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18157243082371228984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3809479764067026126.post-33059498070680933312012-04-20T10:45:00.001-07:002012-04-20T10:45:43.524-07:00The Invisible Army<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span class="ccs"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">by <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/bios/sarah_stillman/search?contributorName=sarah%20stillman"><span style="color: blue;">Sarah
Stillman</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/06/06/110606fa_fact_stillman?printable=true"><span style="color: blue;">http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/06/06/110606fa_fact_stillman?printable=true</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">It was lunchtime in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Suva</st1:city>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Fiji</st1:country-region></st1:place>,
a slow day at the end of the tourist season in September of 2007, <b>when four
men appeared in the doorway of the Rever Beauty Salon, where Vinnie Tuivaga
worked as a hair stylist. The men wore polished shoes and bright Hawaiian
shirts, and they told Vinnie about a job that sounded, she recalls, like “the
fruits of my submission to the Lord all these years.” How would she like to
make five times her current salary at a luxury hotel in Dubai, a place known as
the City of Gold</b>? How would she like to have wealthy Arab customers, women
who paid ridiculous fees for trendy cut-and-color jobs? </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">“I’ll talk it over with my husband,” she replied, coolly,
but her pulse was racing. Vinnie, who was forty-five, had never worked abroad,
but she often dreamed of it while hearing missionaries’ lectures at her local
church. Nearly six feet tall and two hundred and thirty pounds, Vinnie moved
with an arthritic gait. But she took care with her appearance. She wore shiny
slacks, with a gold pageboy cap on her perfectly coiffed frosted black hair,
and carried a bright-red faux-leather purse, stuffed with silver eyeshadow. She
could see herself working in one of the great cosmopolitan capitals. The offer
seemed like her big break, the chance to send her teen-age daughter to
hospitality college and to pay her youngest son’s fees for secondary school.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">Later that week, at a salon around the corner, Lydia
Qeraniu, thirty-two, heard a similar offer. A quick-witted woman with a
coquettish smile and a figure that prompted Fijian men to call out “<i>uro,
uro!</i>”—slang for “yummy”—<st1:country-region w:st="on">Lydia</st1:country-region>
was thrilled by the prospect of a career in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Dubai</st1:place></st1:city>. So were many other women in beauty
shops and beachside hotels across <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Fiji</st1:place></st1:country-region>. A Korean Air flight to <st1:city w:st="on">Dubai</st1:city> would be leaving from <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Nadi</st1:placename> <st1:placename w:st="on">International</st1:placename>
<st1:placetype w:st="on">Airport</st1:placetype></st1:place> in a few days.
The women just had to deliver their résumés, hand over their passports, submit
to medical tests, and pay a commission of five hundred dollars to a local
recruitment firm called Meridian Services Agency. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Soon, more than fifty women were lined up outside <st1:city w:st="on">Meridian</st1:city>’s office to compete for positions that would pay
as much as thirty-eight hundred dollars a month—more than ten times <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Fiji</st1:place></st1:country-region>’s annual
per-capita income. Ten women were chosen, Vinnie and <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lydia</st1:place></st1:country-region> among them. Vinnie lifted her
arms in the air and sang her favorite gospel song: </span></b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">“We’re gonna make it, we’re gonna make it. With Jesus on
our side, things will work out fine.” <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lydia</st1:place></st1:country-region> raced home to tell her
husband and explain things to her five-year-old son. “Mommy’s going to be
O.K.,” she recalls telling him. “<st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Dubai</st1:place></st1:city>,
it’s a rich country. Only good things can happen.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">On the morning of October 10, 2007, the beauticians
boarded their flight to the Emirates. They carried duffelbags full of cosmetics,
family photographs, Bibles, floral sarongs, and chambas, traditional silky
Fijian tops worn with patterned skirts. More than half of the women left
husbands and children behind. </span><b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">In the rush
to depart, none of them examined the fine print on their travel documents:
their visas to the Emirates weren’t employment permits but thirty-day travel
passes that forbade all work, “paid or unpaid”; their occupations were listed
as “Sales Coördinator.” And <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Dubai</st1:place></st1:city>
was just a stopping-off point. They were bound for <st1:country-region w:st="on">U.S.</st1:country-region>
military bases in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>.<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Lydia and Vinnie were unwitting recruits for the
Pentagon’s invisible army: more than seventy thousand cooks, cleaners,
construction workers, fast-food clerks, electricians, and beauticians from the
world’s poorest countries who service <st1:country-region w:st="on">U.S.</st1:country-region>
military logistics contracts in <st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region>
and <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Afghanistan</st1:place></st1:country-region></span></b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">. </span><b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Filipinos
launder soldiers’ uniforms, Kenyans truck frozen steaks and inflatable tents,
Bosnians repair electrical grids, and Indians provide iced mocha lattes. The
Army and Air Force Exchange Service (<span class="smallcaps1"><span style="mso-ansi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">AAFES)</span></span>
is behind most of the commercial “tastes of home” that can be found on major
U.S. bases, which include jewelry stores, souvenir shops filled with carved
camels and Taliban chess sets, beauty salons where soldiers can receive
massages and pedicures, and fast-food courts featuring Taco Bell, Subway, Pizza
Hut, and Cinnabon. (<span class="smallcaps1"><span style="mso-ansi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">AAFES</span></span>’s motto: “We go where you
go.”)<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">The expansion of private-security contractors in <st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region> and <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Afghanistan</st1:place></st1:country-region> is well known. </span></b><b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">But armed security personnel account for only about
sixteen per cent of the over-all contracting force</span></b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">. </span><b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">The vast
majority—more than sixty per cent of the total in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>—aren’t hired guns but hired
hands</span></b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">. These workers, primarily from South Asia
and Africa, often live in barbed-wire compounds on <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region> bases, eat at meagre chow
halls, and host dance parties featuring Nepalese romance ballads and Ugandan
church songs. </span><b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">A large number are employed by fly-by-night
subcontractors who are financed by the American taxpayer but who often operate
outside the law</span></b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">The wars’ foreign workers are known, in military
parlance, as “third-country nationals,” or T.C.N.s. </span><b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Many of them recount having been robbed of wages, injured
without compensation, subjected to sexual assault, and held in conditions
resembling indentured servitude by their subcontractor bosses</span></b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">. Previously unreleased contractor memos, hundreds of
interviews, and government documents I obtained during a yearlong investigation
confirm many of these claims and reveal other grounds for concern. Widespread
mistreatment even led to a series of food riots in Pentagon subcontractor
camps, some involving more than a thousand workers.</span></span><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><o:p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Amid the slow withdrawal of <st1:country-region w:st="on">U.S.</st1:country-region>
forces from <st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region> and <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Afghanistan</st1:place></st1:country-region>,
T.C.N.s have become an integral part of the Obama Administration’s long-term
strategy, as a way of replacing American boots on the ground. </span><b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">But top <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region>
military officials are seeing the drawbacks to this outsourcing bonanza. Some
argue, as retired General Stanley McChrystal did before his ouster from <st1:country-region w:st="on">Afghanistan</st1:country-region>, last summer, that the unregulated
rise of the Pentagon’s <st1:place w:st="on">Third World</st1:place> logistics
army is undermining American military objectives</span></b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">. Others worry that mistreatment of foreign workers has
become, as the former U.S. Representative Christopher Shays, who co-chairs the
bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting, describes it, “</span><b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">a human-rights abuse that cannot be tolerated.”</span></b></span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">The extensive outsourcing of wartime
logistics—first put to the test during the <st1:city w:st="on">Clinton</st1:city>
Administration, in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Somalia</st1:place></st1:country-region>
and the Balkans—was designed to reduce costs while allowing military personnel
to focus on combat. In practice, though, military privatization has produced
convoluted chains of foreign subcontracts that often lead to cost overruns and
fraud.</span></b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"> The Commission on Wartime Contracting
recently warned of the dangers associated with “poorly conceived, poorly
structured, poorly conducted, and poorly monitored subcontracting,”
particularly noting the military’s “heavy reliance on foreign subcontractors
who may not be accountable to any American governmental authority.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">The process of outsourcing begins at major government
entities, notably the Pentagon, which awarded its most recent prime logistics
contract (worth as much as fifteen billion dollars a year) to three U.S.-based
private military behemoths: K.B.R. (the former Halliburton subsidiary), DynCorp
International, and Fluor</span></b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">. </span></span><b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><o:p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">These “prime venders” then shop out the bulk of their
contracts to hundreds of global subcontractors, many based in Middle Eastern
countries that are on the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region>
State Department’s human-trafficking noncompliance list. Finally, these firms
call upon thousands of Third World “manpower agencies”—small recruiting
operations like <st1:place w:st="on">Meridian</st1:place> Services</span></b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">A common recruiting story involves a tempting ad for
Middle East “Salad Men” torn out of a newspaper, or an online job posting that
promises “openings for cooks/chefs/master chefs for one of the best . . .
middle east jobs.” Given the desperate circumstances of many applicants, few
questions are asked, and some subcontractors sneak workers to <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region> bases
without security clearances, seeking to bypass basic wage and welfare
regulations. </span><b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">“No one plays straight here,” a foreign
concession manager with six years of experience in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region> told me</span></b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">. </span><b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">He
introduced me to three young Nepali and Bangladeshi workers in a nearby
Popeye’s and Cinnabon, each of whom had paid a smuggler between three hundred
and four hundred dollars to bring them onto the base with a fake letter of
authorization</span></b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">. That’s in addition to the money—an average
of three thousand dollars—they had paid a recruiter in their home country to
get the job. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">Such sums are hardly unusual. A typical manpower agency
charges applicants between two thousand and four thousand dollars, a small
fortune in the countries where subcontractors recruit. To raise the money,
workers may pawn heirlooms, sell their wedding rings or land or livestock, and
take out high-interest loans. <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region>
military guidelines prohibit such “excessive” fees. But, in hundreds of
interviews with T.C.N.s, I seldom met a worker who had paid less than a
thousand dollars for his or her job, and I never learned of a case in which
anyone was penalized for charging these fees.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">It’s equally uncommon to meet a worker who receives the
salary he or she was promised</span></b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">. A
twenty-five-year-old Taco Bell employee on a major <st1:country-region w:st="on">U.S.</st1:country-region>
base in <st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region> told me that he
had paid a recruiting agency in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Nepal</st1:place></st1:country-region>
four thousand dollars. “You’ll make the money back so quick in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>!” he was
assured. </span><b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">When he arrived in <st1:city w:st="on">Baghdad</st1:city>,
in May, 2009, he was housed in a shipping container behind the <st1:country-region w:st="on">U.S.</st1:country-region> Embassy, in the Green Zone, where he slept
on soiled mattresses with twenty-five other migrants from <st1:country-region w:st="on">Nepal</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">India</st1:country-region>,
and <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Bangladesh</st1:place></st1:country-region></span></b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">. Many learned that they were to earn as little as two
hundred and seventy-five dollars a month as cooks and servers for U.S.
soldiers—a fraction of what they’d been promised, and a tiny sliver of what
U.S. taxpayers are billed for their labor.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
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<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">So he paid another agent three hundred dollars to drive
him in a taxi to a <st1:country-region w:st="on">U.S.</st1:country-region> base
in northern <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>.
There, an Indian smuggler charged an additional three hundred dollars to help
him get a five-hundred-dollar-a-month job making burritos. “I am safe now,” he
said, tearfully, from the food-delivery window. “That is past, yeah? The Army
is my father and my mother.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">For those familiar with the service economies of the <st1:state w:st="on">Gulf states</st1:state>, this labor pipeline is simply the latest
extension of a transnational system that for decades has supplied <st1:country-region w:st="on">Kuwait</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Saudi
Arabia</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Jordan</st1:country-region>,
and the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">United Arab Emirates</st1:place></st1:country-region>
with low-wage workers. It’s just that these employees face mortar fire, rocket
attacks, improvised explosive devices, and other risks of war—and that they are
working, albeit through intermediaries, for the United States government.</span></span></div>
<div class="descender1" style="background: white; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="descender1" style="background: white; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><st1:city w:st="on"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Vinnie</span></st1:city><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Lydia</st1:country-region>,
and the other Fijian beauticians landed in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Dubai</st1:city></st1:place> just before dawn in October, 2007</span><b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">. At the airport, they say, they were met by someone
associated with Kulak Construction Company, a Turkish firm with millions of
dollars in Pentagon subcontracts to do everything from building bowling alleys
for troops to maintaining facilities on bases.</span></b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"> The women were driven to a private hospital in the heart
of the city. “It was very quiet there, because it was Ramadan,” Vinnie recalls.
In a small examination room, nurses gave them a series of blood tests and
vaccinations. Vinnie asked what all the poking and prodding was for. “You’ll
need these for <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>,”
one of the nurses explained. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Oh, we went crazy when we heard that,” the youngest of
the Fijian women, a petite twenty-two-year-old former resort hostess named
Melanie Gonebale, told me later. We spoke in her flimsy living quarters on
Forward Operating Base Sykes, near Tal Afar, in northern <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>. A Kevlar
helmet and bulletproof vest sat at the foot of her bed. “We’d watched on TV
every day about <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>—the
bombs, people dying.” That night, the women contemplated running away. But a
number of them had taken out loans to cover their recruiting fees, and <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Meridian</st1:place></st1:city> had reportedly
threatened some with more than a thousand dollars in early-termination fines if
they left.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">A couple of nights later, a few of the women slipped out
to a pay phone to call their families. “You take a big breath, honey,” Vinnie
told her husband, holding back tears. “I’m not working here in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Dubai</st1:place></st1:city>. A bus is going to take us to the
airport, and we’re going to go straight to <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>.” After Kie Puafomau, another
of the Fijians, reached her husband, he went to the Fijian police, the Ministry
of Labor, and the national press. The <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Fiji</st1:place></st1:country-region> <i>Times</i> ran a story
exposing Meridian Services Agency’s recruiting fraud. But, even as the police
pledged to investigate, they could do little to help the beauticians some nine
thousand miles away. </span></span><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><o:p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">The next morning, <st1:city w:st="on">Vinnie</st1:city>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Lydia</st1:country-region>, and the other women flew to <st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region> and found themselves on a convoy bound for
Balad, forty miles north of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Baghdad</st1:city></st1:place>.
There, on a <st1:country-region w:st="on">U.S.</st1:country-region> base called
<st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">Camp</st1:placetype> <st1:placename w:st="on">Anaconda</st1:placename></st1:place>—and known to soldiers as
Mortaritaville, for its constant barrage of incoming mortar fire—they got more
bad news. Instead of earning between fifteen hundred and thirty-eight hundred
dollars a month, as they had been promised, the women were told that they would
make only seven hundred dollars a month, a sum that was later reduced, under
another subcontractor, to three hundred and fifty.</span></b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"> “We were just all dumbstruck,” Chanel Joy, who had earned
several times as much working as a certified beauty therapist at a Fijian
resort, recalled. “It was ridiculous, really, slave labor, absolutely
ridiculous out here in a war zone.” In the contract they signed in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>, their
working hours were specified as “Twelve (12) hours per day and seven (7) days a
week.” Their “vacation” was a “Return ticket after the completion of the
service.” Appended to the contract was a legal waiver: “I am willingly and of
my own free will have decided to go and work in <st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region>,
and I declare that no one in <st1:country-region w:st="on">Fiji</st1:country-region>
or out of <st1:country-region w:st="on">Fiji</st1:country-region> has approach
me to work in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>.
. . . I am contented with my job. . . . I want to complete my contract, till
then, I will not go back home.” (<b>A lawyer for Kulak Construction denied that
the company had ever employed any women from <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Fiji</st1:place></st1:country-region>, although the company’s name
appears on the women’s contracts. He added, “Kulak has a good reputation for
sixty years.”</b>)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">For nearly two weeks, the ten women refused to do any
work. “We decided we had to stick together,” Chanel, a dignified older woman
with a mane of auburn curls, recounted. “Desert Sisters—that’s what we called
each other.” </span><b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Eventually, they agreed to a revised deal
offering them eight hundred dollars a month. It was better than being stranded
with no pay. The next morning, the beauticians were separated, and sent to
different military camps. Two stayed at Camp Anaconda; three were flown to
Tikrit; two went to Camp Diamondback, in Mosul; and three—Vinnie, Lydia, and
Melanie—ended up in Tal Afar, after stints in Tikrit and Mosul</span></b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">. Before boarding their flights, the women received body
armor and a tutorial on rocket attacks: how to duck and dive, then sprint to
the nearest bunker until the “all clear” sirens sounded.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">Only then, Vinnie told me, did her situation truly sink
in. Climbing into a military helicopter in her weighty new gear, she decided
that she would have to pray each night that the Lord would send her home alive.
“Am I going to get hurt?” she wondered, as the Black Hawk took off. “Am I going
to get killed? Who’s going to take care of my family, my children? Please, God,
give me protection.” </span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="descender1" style="background: white; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Not every third-country national makes it
home safely. Since 2001, more than two thousand contractor fatalities and more
than fifty-one thousand injuries have been reported in <st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region> and <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Afghanistan</st1:country-region></st1:place></span></b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">. </span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="descender1" style="background: white; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">For the first time in American history,
private-contractor losses are now on a par with those of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">U.S.</st1:country-region></st1:place> troops in both war zones,
amounting to fifty-three per cent of reported fatalities in the first six
months of 2010</span></b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="descender1" style="background: white; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">Since many T.C.N. deaths and injuries are
never tallied—contractors are expected to self-report, with spotty
compliance—the actual numbers are presumed to be higher.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">Constantine Rodriguez, a soft-spoken
thirty-eight-year-old from the former Portuguese colony of Goa, was working at
a Pizza Hut at <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Camp Taji</st1:city>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region></st1:place>, when an insurgent’s rocket
struck. Two of his Bangladeshi co-workers died, according to a former boss, and
Rodriguez lost an eye and a leg. Disabled, he was sent back to southern <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">India</st1:place></st1:country-region>, where he
had a young wife and a baby to support. Although employees who are injured on <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region> bases are
usually entitled to medical care and disability compensation, few foreign
workers are aware of their rights, and fewer still are able to navigate the
byzantine process required to receive payment.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">If most Americans know nothing about this foreign
workforce on <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region>
bases, Al Qaeda and other extremist groups have taken notice. As early as 2004,
Sunni militants launched a campaign to kill T.C.N.s. Their goal was to disrupt
American supply chains by blowing up truckers, and to punish <st1:place w:st="on">Third
World</st1:place> Muslims who collaborated with “the infidels” and pressure
governments to prevent their citizens from going abroad to work for Coalition
troops</span></b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">. Over the summer and the early fall of 2004,
the list of those kidnapped by insurgents included Turks, Pakistanis,
Indonesians, Indians, Egyptians, Macedonians, Bulgarians, and Kenyans. </span><b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">In one particularly bloody incident, a caravan of
Nepalese workers bound for a major <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region> airbase was taken captive.
Eleven were shot dead, and one man was beheaded</span></b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">Despite these risks and harsh conditions, many T.C.N.s
are grateful for their jobs. In my travels through <st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region>
and <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Afghanistan</st1:place></st1:country-region>,
I met dozens of workers like Paz Dizon, a Filipina cleaning woman employed by
G3 Logistics at the hospital on Kandahar Airfield. (“Paz?” I repeated when she
introduced herself, to which she replied, cheerfully, “Yes, like ‘Pass away!’
”) She feels that she’s contributing something important to the war effort
while earning a wage that far exceeds what she could make back home. At night,
she snacks on Twinkies with the other Filipinas in her barracks; after rocket
attacks, they sing eighties pop songs on a dust-covered karaoke machine. “We
keep on teasing that the G3 ladies will die happy, singing and dancing,” her
colleague Rey Villa Cacas told me with a giggle, describing how their boss
belted out the lyrics to “Soldier of Fortune” during the previous night’s
mortar shelling.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">At first, <st1:city w:st="on">Vinnie</st1:city>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Lydia</st1:country-region>, and Melanie got along well in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>, too.
After several months, the three were flown northwest to Forward Operating Base
Sykes, where I first met them. They were working for another Turkish
subcontractor, and were put under the supervision of a chain-smoking Turkish
man in his twenties. They lived in air-conditioned shipping containers, played
pool in the “morale, welfare, and recreation” hall, sang in Sunday church
services, and ate meals in the main dining facility, which included a
hot-sandwich bar, a wings-and-burgers grill, a “healthy choice” line, and an
assortment of Baskin-Robbins ice cream. <b>The <span class="smallcaps1"><span style="mso-ansi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">AAFES</span></span>
beauty salon turned out to be pleasant, filled with soldiers in vinyl chairs,
M-16 rifles at their feet, flipping through copies of <i>Maxim</i> as they
awaited seven-dollar pedicures or five-dollar straight-razor shaves</b>. Dated
fashion posters hung on the walls, with eighties-style Madonna look-alikes
(hoop earrings, feathered bangs) and inspirational words, like “Simplicity Is
the Essence of Beauty” and “We’re Here for You!”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">The three women had a knack for setting customers at
ease. Vinnie would joke with soldiers about “putting the ‘man’ in manicure” or
show off snapshots of her twelve-year-old son, Samuel, who liked to eat trays
of her stir-fried chicken with cashew nuts. <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lydia</st1:place></st1:country-region>, as she worked, asked
soldiers about their lives in the States: any girlfriends, kids, Harleys?
Melanie, the shyest of the three, ended her pedicure sessions by inquiring,
like a peppy travel agent, “Have you thought about taking your holiday in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Fiji</st1:place></st1:country-region>? You should
come. It’s a beautiful place, like paradise, really. You can have your
honeymoon there someday.” (She regularly extolled the virtues of Fiji-brand
artesian bottled water, to the point that she came to be known around the base
as “the Fiji Water lady.”)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">Some customers would tease back, asking, “Why’d you
choose to leave a nice place like <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Fiji</st1:place></st1:country-region> for a shit-hole like this?” If
the boss was out for a smoke and the man in the lavender swivel chair seemed
trustworthy, the women would tell him. One sympathetic customer, an American
private contractor, got in touch with associates in <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">New York</st1:place></st1:state>; a letter was sent to the Defense
Department, requesting an official investigation into whether the women’s
recruitment and working conditions were “exploitative.” Soon thereafter, the <span class="smallcaps1"><span style="mso-ansi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">AAFES</span></span> Inspector General dispatched a business manager to
interview the beauticians. But the manager determined that, because the three
had their passports and had known their ultimate destination after arriving in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Dubai</st1:place></st1:city>, <span class="smallcaps1"><span style="mso-ansi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">AAFES</span></span> was not in violation of anti-trafficking
regulations. (The organization did note that, in general, “better safeguards
and improvements were necessary to protect contract workers.”)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">Late one night in early April, 2008, I knocked on the
door of <st1:country-region w:st="on">Lydia</st1:country-region> and Vinnie’s
shipping container to find <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lydia</st1:place></st1:country-region>
curled up on the floor, knees to chest, chin to knees, crying. Vinnie told me,
after some hesitation, that a supervisor had “had his way with” <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lydia</st1:place></st1:country-region>.
According to the two women’s tearful account, non-consensual sex had become a
regular feature of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lydia</st1:place></st1:country-region>’s
life. They said the man would taunt <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lydia</st1:place></st1:country-region>, calling her a “fucking
bitch” and describing the various acts he would like to see her perform. <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lydia</st1:place></st1:country-region> trembled,
her normally confident figure crumpled inward. “If he comes tonight, you have
to scream,” Vinnie told <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lydia</st1:place></st1:country-region>,
tapping her fist against the aluminum siding of the shipping container. “Bang
on this wall here and scream!” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">The next day, I dialled the U.S. Army’s emergency
sexual-assault hot line, printed on a pamphlet distributed across the base that
read, “Stand Up Against Sexual Assault . . . Make a Difference.” Nobody
answered. Despite several calls over several days, the number simply rang and
rang. (A U.S. Central Command spokesman, when later reached for comment, noted,
“We do track and investigate any report of criminal activity that occurs on our
military bases.”)</span></span><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><o:p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="descender1" style="background: white; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">Abuses like these weren’t supposed to be
happening. In early 2006, after reports of human trafficking, the Department of
Defense launched an investigation into subcontractors’ working conditions.
Government inspectors listed “widespread” abuses, including the illegal
confiscation of workers’ passports, “deceptive hiring practices,” “excessive
recruiting fees,” and “substandard worker living conditions.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">That April, George W. Casey, then the commanding general
for <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>,
issued an order to private contractors and subcontractors there, seeking to
establish guidelines for humane treatment. For the first time, T.C.N.s were
entitled to “measurable, enforceable standards for living conditions (e.g.
sanitation, health, safety, etc.),” including “50 feet as the minimum
acceptable square footage of personal living space per worker.”</span></b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"> All <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region>
troops would receive training to help them recognize human trafficking and
abuse, and major contractors were ordered to design a mandatory
anti-trafficking awareness session for their employees. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">But the Pentagon’s “zero tolerance” policy for violators
proved largely toothless. In one incident, in December, 2008, <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region> military
personnel discovered that a warehouse operated off the base by a K.B.R.
subcontractor, Najlaa International Catering, was filled with more than a
thousand workers who appeared to be human-trafficking victims. Many of the men
were sent home, but Najlaa retained its service contracts and won a new
multimillion-dollar deal for operating a U.S.A.I.D. dining facility in the
Green Zone</span></b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">A representative of Najlaa’s associate firm in <st1:city w:st="on">Amman</st1:city>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Jordan</st1:country-region>,
told me that the workers’ mistreatment had been due to a temporary “cash money
problem,” and a K.B.R. spokesman said that the company “fully disclosed the
incident to our <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region>
government clients including all remedial actions taken by both K.B.R. and
Najlaa.” What’s more, a K.B.R. spokesman said that “we actively encourage our
employees to raise issues of concern through the proper channels and processes
the company has in place.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">However, in some cases managers have clearly been
dissuaded by their superiors from taking an interest in such matters. Soon
after Mike Land, an American who was a K.B.R. foreman, complained about the
living conditions of his Filipino and Indian men, he received an official
reprimand: “You are expected to refrain from further involvement regarding the
working and living conditions of the sub-contract workers as that is not your
responsibility. . . . Any future interference with [the subcontractor’s]
operations will result in additional action up to and including termination.”
In <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Afghanistan</st1:place></st1:country-region>,
one high-ranking contracting officer told me that labor law “doesn’t exist here,”
and that enforcement would be hard to prioritize if it did: the job “is to get
the war fighters what they need.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">Still, the Obama Administration has made a point of
talking about contractor accountability. Not long after taking office, in 2009,
President Obama pledged to make good on his campaign promise to end the “lack
of planning, oversight, and management of these contractors,” which “has
repeatedly undermined our troops’ efforts in the field.” When General
McChrystal assumed command of <st1:country-region w:st="on">U.S.</st1:country-region>
and <span class="smallcaps1"><span style="mso-ansi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">NATO</span></span> forces in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Afghanistan</st1:place></st1:country-region>, in June, 2009, he set
out to reduce the role of T.C.N.s. He pushed a policy of “Afghanization,”
bringing in local Afghan workers to replace third-country nationals whenever
possible. Conventional wisdom held that allowing Afghans—or, in <st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region>, Iraqis—to work on <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region> bases
posed a grave security threat to troops. But the military’s new
counter-insurgency doctrine turned this logic on its head. What if bringing in
workers from <st1:country-region w:st="on">Sierra Leone</st1:country-region>
and <st1:country-region w:st="on">Bangladesh</st1:country-region> rendered <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region> bases less
safe, by alienating locals and occupying jobs they could perform? McChrystal
saw an opportunity to make inroads with <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Afghanistan</st1:place></st1:country-region>’s unemployed masses.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">“Afghanization” turned out to be a tall order. Corruption
meant that <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region>
tax dollars were soon funnelling into the hands of Taliban insurgents. Even the
process of getting Afghans on and off the bases proved exhausting, slowing down
vital construction projects. By March, 2010, at the height of the Afghan First
initiative, the number of third-country nationals counted by the Department of
Defense in Afghanistan had actually increased by nearly fifty per cent from the
previous June, reaching seventeen thousand five hundred and twelve</span></b><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">The “drawdown” of operations in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>, on the
other hand, has created new difficulties for T.C.N.s there. Last summer,
Colonel Richard E. Nolan, of the military’s contracting office, expressed
concern that T.C.N.s were being abandoned on U.S. bases when their companies
lost contracts or were ordered to shed numbers. I met several such workers, one
of whom, a Popeye’s employee, had been told by a sympathetic boss to pack his
bags, carry them to the office of a <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region> commander, and fall to his
knees weeping, in the hope of being granted a ticket home. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">At Kandahar Airfield, in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Afghanistan</st1:place></st1:country-region>, I talked to Joel
Centeno, a Filipino who sat with his head buried in his hands on a picnic bench
behind a T.G.I. Friday’s. A Pentagon subcontractor had laid him off but refused
to provide him with a return ticket. (“Thank you and appreciated your contribution
to the team,” his termination letter read.) Centeno was among the war’s new
breed of workers: adrift on <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region>
bases, searching for work, unable to afford the ticket home, and fearful of
loan sharks who await them there. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="descender1" style="background: white; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">In early April, 2008, Vinnie and <st1:country-region w:st="on">Lydia</st1:country-region> were told that they would be flying back
to <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Fiji</st1:place></st1:country-region>.
(Not long after I began conducting interviews with the women, <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region> military
personnel complained that they were “making trouble” on the base.) For them,
the prospect of returning home was a godsend. “We’re just counting the days,” <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lydia</st1:place></st1:country-region> told
customers. “Fresh fruit and beaches and our families.” After boarding a <st1:country-region w:st="on">U.S.</st1:country-region> military aircraft, they flew to <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Mosul</st1:place></st1:city> to await
processing. They said that they were held there for more than a month, and that
their passports and identification badges were confiscated by their Turkish
subcontractor. This meant they had no right of mobility; without an I.D., the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region> military
could detain them simply for going to the latrine or walking to the A.T.&T.
phone booth to call their families. Even so, <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lydia</st1:place></st1:country-region> managed to get in touch with
her husband and son on occasion. “Don’t worry, Mommy’s doing all right, I’ll be
home soon,” she told them, to which her five-year-old responded, “Will you buy
me a big gun?” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">Finally, in the first week of May, they boarded a
homebound flight. They carried a few souvenirs: their <span class="smallcaps1"><span style="mso-ansi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">AAFES</span></span>
nametags, snapshots in front of a sandbagged bunker, perfume from an Iraqi
contractor, and an oversized black T-shirt for <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lydia</st1:place></st1:country-region>’s son that read, in both
English and Arabic, “Caution Stay 100 Meters Back or You Will Be Shot.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">When Vinnie arrived home, she found her whole family
waiting up by a lantern on a big ceremonial <i>kuta</i> mat on the living-room
floor—all but her youngest, Samuel, who hid under a blanket in a nearby room,
ashamed that he’d grown chubbier in her absence, and frightened that his mother
wouldn’t recognize him. “It’s your mama,” Vinnie coaxed him. “Come out from
under there!” When he finally emerged, Vinnie held him in her arms.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">Vinnie passed several weeks with her children and her
husband, cooking big meals and singing gospel tunes. Eventually, she went back
to work styling hair at the Rever Beauty Salon. <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lydia</st1:place></st1:country-region> and her husband had a baby
girl. “It took me, like, four months to get away from my own head,” she
recalls. “I was sleeping in the day and waking up in the night, so many
negative stories. . . . I just wanted to take my son to school and pick him
up.” Melanie arrived home a few months later, equally relieved. She busied
herself with wedding plans and got a job at the Pure Fiji Spa, where customers
are instructed to “step lightly over running waters . . . leaving behind cares
and the outside world as if on a far distant shore.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">Then one afternoon in the fall of 2009, Vinnie heard on
the radio that the police were calling for people who had been defrauded by
Meridian Services Agency to come forward with their stories. She learned that
the company had reportedly conned more than twenty thousand Fijian workers into
paying large fees for fraudulent “<st1:place w:st="on">Middle East</st1:place>
jobs.” <st1:city w:st="on">Meridian</st1:city>’s director, a portly local named
Timoci Lolohea, had, according to the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Fiji</st1:place></st1:country-region> <i>Times</i>, extracted more
than $1.6 million from his victims over the previous five years; they included
not only poor workers but also church congregations, tribal elders, and village
community centers seeking overseas employment for their constituents. In the
lush farming region of Waimaro, one village spokesman produced receipts to show
that Lolohea had collected the equivalent of as much as twenty-seven thousand
dollars—a Fijian windfall—from thirteen impoverished villages in exchange for
jobs in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Kuwait</st1:place></st1:country-region>
which never materialized. The devastation from Lolohea’s recruiting scheme was
so widespread that the deputy director of the Fijian police created a special
task force to investigate it. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">When several human-rights litigators in <st1:city w:st="on">Washington</st1:city>,
<st1:state w:st="on">D.C.</st1:state>, learned, through my investigation, of
the beauticians’ experiences, they flew Vinnie to the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region> to hear
the details of her case. I sat in on several days of interviews with labor
experts. Her trip culminated in a meeting with State Department officials, at
which Vinnie spoke with purpose about her false recruitment and subsequent
mistreatment. She spoke, too, of her children, and the months she’d spent away
from them while serving <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region>
soldiers in the salon. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">After the meeting, Ambassador at Large Luis CdeBaca, the
director of the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in
Persons, notified officials at <span class="smallcaps1"><span style="mso-ansi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">AAFES</span></span> and the Office of the
Secretary of Defense about the allegations, and urged them to investigate.
“We’re going to make sure that Secretary Clinton is aware of these
allegations,” he wrote in a February, 2010, e-mail to Defense Department
officials, first obtained by the Project on Government Oversight. Soon
thereafter, the women’s story began to circulate among Army officials in a
classified PowerPoint presentation, distributed by the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">U.S. Army Inspector General</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">School</st1:placetype></st1:place>.
“Army policy opposes any and all activities associated with human trafficking,”
the briefing notes, adding, in red ink, “No leader will turn a blind eye to
this issue!”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">Yet, when reporters asked the U.S. Army’s Criminal
Investigation Command (C.I.D.) for details last summer, they were told that
allegations of the women’s mistreatment had been investigated earlier and were
“not substantiated.” (According to an internal <span class="smallcaps1"><span style="mso-ansi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">AAFES </span></span>report,
“allegations of rape never surfaced” in the organization’s prior investigation
of the women’s recruitment.) C.I.D. officials declined to say whether any
victims had been interviewed, and, when reached recently, a C.I.D. spokesman
apologized for being unable to locate any record of the case. According to the
spokesman, “C.I.D. takes allegations of sexual assault very seriously and fully
investigates allegations where there is credible information that a crime may
have occurred involving Army personnel or others accompanying the force.” <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lydia</st1:place></st1:country-region> and
Vinnie both say that no one from the military or <span class="smallcaps1"><span style="mso-ansi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">AAFES</span></span>
spoke with them about the sexual-assault claims. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="descender1" style="background: white; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">In the three years since Vinnie and <st1:country-region w:st="on">Lydia</st1:country-region> returned from <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>, thousands of third-country
nationals have tried to make their grievances known, sometimes spectacularly.
Previously unreported worker riots have erupted on <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region> bases over issues such as lack
of food and unpaid wages. On May 1, 2010, in a labor camp run by Prime Projects
International (P.P.I.) on the largest military base in Baghdad, more than a
thousand subcontractors—primarily Indians and Nepalis—rampaged, using as
weapons fists, stones, wooden bats, and, as one U.S. military policeman put it,
“anything they could find.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">The riot started as a protest over a lack of food,
according to a whippet-thin worker in the camp named Subramanian. A
forty-five-year-old former rice farmer from the Indian state of Tamil Nadu,
Subramanian worked twelve-hour days cleaning the military’s fast-food court.
Around seven o’clock on the evening of the riot, Subramanian returned to the
P.P.I. compound and lined up for dinner with several thousand other workers.
But the cooks ran out of food, with at least five hundred left to feed. This
wasn’t the first time; empty plates had become common in the camp during the
past year. Several of the men stormed over to the management’s office,
demanding more rice. When management refused, he recalls, dozens more entered
the fray, then hundreds, and ultimately more than a thousand. Employees started
to throw gravel at the managers. Four-foot pieces of plywood crashed through
glass windows. Workers broke down the door to the food cellar and made off with
as much as they could carry.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">The riot spread through the vast camp. At one point, as
many as fourteen hundred men were smashing office windows, hurling stones,
destroying computers, raiding company files, and battering the entrance to the
camp where a large blue-and-white sign reads “Treat others how you want to be
treated. . . . No damaging P.P.I. property that has been built for your
comfort.” (According to an investigation conducted by K.B.R., “P.P.I. employees
. . . became agitated after being told they’d experience a delay while
additional food was prepared.” “Upon full assessment of the incident,” a
company spokesperson relayed in a written statement, “K.B.R. notified P.P.I.
management of the need for changes to prevent any recurrence and worked with
the subcontractor to implement those corrective actions.”) <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">Only when <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region>
military police arrived—followed by Ugandan security guards—did the camp fall
quiet. Some workers attempted to hide, though there wasn’t anywhere to go—just
a sea of gravel dotted by an archipelago of dismal white shipping containers,
in which workers slept in tightly packed rows of creaky bunks with colorful
towels draped between them for privacy. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Almost every window in the camp was destroyed, food
everywhere,” Sergeant Jonathan Trivett, one of the first <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region> military
policemen to the scene, recalls. “They pretty well destroyed the entire camp. .
. . It was shocking.” Trivett, a handsome twenty-five-year-old with an
aw-shucks <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Indiana</st1:place></st1:state>
smile, later gave me a tour of the camp, which M.P.s now patrol twice daily to
insure that nothing “out of the ordinary” is taking place. (“Lotta love,
buddy,” he greets the guards at the gate.) His police team did its best to
investigate the rioters’ motives, but most workers, including Subramanian, were
too terrified to talk, and the majority spoke little or no English. Three
military policemen under Sergeant Trivett’s supervision that night later
received Army Achievement Medals for their role in quelling the rampage. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">Several weeks after the riot, the defiant mood spread to
other parts of the base. Workers in the neighboring camp of Gulf Catering
Company (G.C.C.), another subcontractor, staged a copycat riot, pelting their
bosses with stones and accusing the company of failing to pay them their proper
wages. That same week, more G.C.C. employees en route from a base in Balad set
fire to their barracks to protest unpaid wages. Several buildings burned to the
ground. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">This was not unprecedented. In 2008, in another nearby
labor compound, a rumpled Iraqi businessman named Alaa Noori Habeb faced a
similar horde of rioting workers. At the time, he ran a <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Baghdad</st1:place></st1:city> warehouse for a company called Elite
Home Group, which sheltered and fed hundreds of foreign K.B.R. subcontractors
in conditions that were, he admitted, foul. As Habeb flipped through photos of
the incident, he told me how Nepalis in his compound erupted in rage—ripping up
mattresses, tearing out electrical boxes, and destroying company computers. A
manager at yet another K.B.R. subcontractor camp in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Baghdad</st1:place></st1:city>, Ziad Al Karawi, described how a
thousand Indian and Sri Lankan men under his supervision slept on crowded
floors: “rats and flies attacked us. . . . We had no beds to sleep at or tables
to eat at. . . . No communication, no TV, no soap to wash or bathe, no visits
from anyone from the company or K.B.R. . . . The workers had no choice except
going out in a protest.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">In the wake of various uprisings, workers have been
reprimanded and sent home. K.B.R. insists that its “business ethics and values”
require that employees and subcontractors are treated with “dignity and
respect,” that it adheres to U.S. government guidelines for the treatment of
workers, and that it “follows rigorous policies, procedures, and training,” to
protect the welfare of foreign-national workers. But, even after investigations
by K.B.R. and the military, little seems to change. A spokesman for U.S.
Central Command acknowledged that it “does not play a formal role in the
monitoring of living conditions on <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region> bases,” although each base has
a military chain of command responsible for “working with the entities involved
to insure minimum standards are met.” Government officials rarely learn of
these riots, most of which take place in compounds watched over by private
guards. Nor do major media outlets. “We thought the journalists would come,”
Imtiyas Sheriff, a thirty-eight-year-old G.C.C. bus driver and father from <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Sri Lanka</st1:place></st1:country-region>, told
me. “They call this Operation Iraqi Freedom, but where is our freedom?” Still,
many of the workers have faith that the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region> military wants to do right by
them. In fact, the majority view American soldiers and marines as their sole
protectors. “The American people are a good people,” the round-faced Sheriff
said to me more than once, as we crouched in a sweltering bunker. “They will
help us, if they know what is happening.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="descender1" style="background: white; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">Back in <st1:country-region w:st="on">Fiji</st1:country-region>,
Vinnie and <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lydia</st1:place></st1:country-region>’s
quest for accountability has proved fruitless. Spotting one of her “lying
bastard” recruiters on the street not long ago, Vinnie ran up to him, scolding,
“How can you show your face around here?” <st1:country-region w:st="on">Lydia</st1:country-region>
and several of the other women stormed the offices of Meridian Services,
demanding that the men answer for their actions and take down a photograph
they’d posted, from a Fijian social-networking Web site, of <st1:country-region w:st="on">Lydia</st1:country-region>, Vinnie, and three other beauticians on a <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region> base
emblazoned with the words “Salsa Nite! <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Mosul</st1:city>,
<st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region></st1:place>. No wonder
I haven’t been seeing them in town. Lovely hairdressers . . . Take care
ladies!” Before she left, <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lydia</st1:place></st1:country-region>
warned the men that it’s a small world. “Next time,” she told them, “don’t you
take all these ladies and fool them.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Fijian press has denounced Timoci Lolohea, <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Meridian</st1:place></st1:city>’s director, as a
“fraudster” and “con artist.” But some Fijian officials seemed to have condoned
such activities, in the hope of bringing remittances from <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region> military
operations. “The government knows that more men are leaving for <st1:country-region w:st="on">Kuwait</st1:country-region> and <st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region>
and it is a good thing, because it is providing employment for the unemployed,”
<st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Fiji</st1:place></st1:country-region>’s
Minister for Labor, Kenneth Zinck, said back in 2005. Zinck was initially
assigned to lead the government investigation into <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Meridian</st1:place></st1:city>’s practices. In July of 2010,
Lolohea (who did not respond to requests for comment) pleaded not guilty to
charges of unlawful recruiting.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 18.75pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-size: large;">Through it all, Lolohea’s employment empire has remained.
Recently, he put up a placard outside his house, advertising jobs in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Dubai</st1:place></st1:city>. He also opened a
new office in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Suva</st1:place></st1:city>,
where, each morning, throngs of workers have been lining up outside his gate.
They bring their passports and pockets stuffed with borrowed cash. They are
undeterred by the large white sign at the entrance, which the police have
ordered Lolohea to post, reading, “NO Recruitment Until Further Notice.” Most
have heard the rumors about Lolohea’s shady past, and they know that he was
long denounced in the local newspapers as one of “<st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Fiji</st1:place></st1:country-region>’s most wanted men.” But
they’ve also heard that he’s offering a starting salary of six thousand dollars
a month to prospective security guards and military logistics workers for his
new company, Phoenix Logistics Corporation Limited. And so the crowds keep
flocking to his illicit office in the midst of the rainy season—most of them
eager young men in baggy jeans and baseball caps, or in traditional <i>sulu</i>
skirts, but also the occasional woman, her head filled with dreams of a life in
the City of <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Gold</st1:place></st1:city>.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span></div>economichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18157243082371228984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3809479764067026126.post-61244620718889674542012-04-20T10:39:00.000-07:002012-04-20T10:39:29.060-07:00Remote Indian state struggles for identity<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 9pt;">Tuesday,
April 17, 2012<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; font-size: 9pt;"><a href="http://images.thenews.com.pk/17-04-2012/ethenews/e-103488.htm"><span style="color: blue;">http://images.thenews.com.pk/17-04-2012/ethenews/e-103488.htm</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 16pt;">Promoted
in official tourist brochures as the "jewel of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">India</st1:place></st1:country-region>," the tiny state of
Manipur seems closer to an ignored family heirloom than a proudly coveted gem. <br />
Backwards, marginalised, isolated, insurgency-wracked: the adjectives that most
frequently precede any mention of Manipur -- for all its stunning natural
beauty -- are overwhelmingly negative</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 16pt;">And for
many Manipuris, the concept of being of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">India</st1:place></st1:country-region> in any meaningful sense is
one they find difficult to entertain. "Why should I care about <st1:country-region w:st="on">India</st1:country-region> when <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">India</st1:place></st1:country-region> does not care about me,"
says Jiangam Kamei, a 22-year-old history student in the state capital Imphal</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt;">. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 16pt;">Such
expressions of alienation are common in a number of the "Seven
Sisters" -- the group of north-eastern states encircled by five other
countries and connected to the rest of <st1:country-region w:st="on">India</st1:country-region>
by a sliver of land that arches over <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Bangladesh</st1:place></st1:country-region>. Their relative
isolation is not just geographical, but also ethnic, linguistic, economic and
political</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt;">.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt;"><br />
<b>"We look so different to start with," said Kshetrimayum Onil, who
works for a local human rights group in Manipur and also runs a youth network
called ReachOut. "We are often mistaken for Chinese or Koreans because of
our Mongol roots</b>,"<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Onil said. One of <st1:country-region w:st="on">India</st1:country-region>'s
smallest states with a population of just 2.7 million inhabitants, Manipur
borders <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Myanmar</st1:place></st1:country-region>
and its people have always tended to look eastwards in their search for
cultural links. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt;"><br />
"We are virtually cut off from mainland <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">India</st1:place></st1:country-region>," said Shyam Singh, a
history professor in Imphal. "Culturally and socially, we identify
ourselves more with the countries of <st1:place w:st="on">South-east Asia</st1:place>
as they are closer to home." <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 16pt;">One
striking example is the massive popularity in Manipur of Korean movies, soap
operas and pop music, which have filled the vacuum caused by a separatist-led
boycott of Bollywood films</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 16pt;">Separatist
violence has been part of daily life in Manipur for decades, as it has been in
most of the north-eastern states that have spawned more than 100 militant
groups whose demands range from autonomy to secession</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt;">. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt;"><br />
Manipur was incorporated into the Indian Union on October 15, 1949, two years
after the country won independence from British rule.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
According to political analyst Sharat Chandra, the enormous problems <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">India</st1:place></st1:country-region> faced
after partition meant its leaders neglected remote states like Manipur which
were never properly integrated into the socio-political mainstream.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt;"><br />
The central government's "step-motherly treatment" fuelled separatist
sentiment from the outset and rebel outfits sprang up each vying for political
supremacy and promising secession from <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">India</st1:place></st1:country-region> to its people, Chandra said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
The perception of <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">New Delhi</st1:place></st1:city>
as a quasi-colonial power was reinforced by the huge deployment of security
forces armed with sweeping anti-insurgency powers to counter the separatist
violence that peaked in the 1980s and 1990s.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt;"><br />
"The government exists only in name here," said Inder Laishram, who
runs a shop in Imphal's main Burma Bazaar, where heavily armed commandos are a
constant presence. "The real power is in the hands of the army and the
underground outfits. Both run the show with the power of the gun. We have
nowhere to turn to," the 35-year-old said. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt;"><br />
The situation is further complicated by the fact that the myriad rebel groups
are largely formed on tribal or ethnic lines with rival agendas that regularly
erupt into bloody internecine disputes. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 16pt;">Manipur
has a strong ethnic mix, and the state's Meitei, Naga, Kuki and Pangal
communities are all deeply committed to preserving their own cultural autonomy</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt;">. Laishram
belongs to the Hindu Meiteis who dominate the Manipuri plains, and it is that
community which provides his primary identity, as he makes clear when asked
whether he voted in recent elections. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 16pt;">"Why
should I? We are Meiteis. We are not Indians," he said. The disconnect
with the rest of the country extends to sport. In the streets of the bazaar,
young boys play a game of sepak takraw, or kick volleyball, a sport native to
the Malay-Thai Peninsula, as opposed to cricket. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt;"><br />
Many goods come through the border town of <st1:city w:st="on">Moreh</st1:city>
from <st1:country-region w:st="on">China</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Thailand</st1:country-region> and <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Myanmar</st1:country-region></st1:place>. Moreh boomed after it was
declared a Free Trade Zone by the Indian government in 1995, but plans for it
to become a key transit point on the future Trans-Asia Railway have been
stymied by the threat from rebels. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt;"><br />
The charge that Manipur has been neglected and marginalised by the Indian
government has found a powerful symbol in the person of Irom Sharmila -- a
40-year-old activist who has been labelled the world's longest hunger striker.
For more than 11 years, Sharmila has refused food and water to back her demand
for the withdrawal of the special powers wielded by -- and according to critics
widely abused by -- the security forces. "I have no other option but to
continue my protest as long as rights of innocent people continue to be
violated," said Sharmila who began her fast in 2000 after the killing of
10 people by the army at a bus stop near her home. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt;"><br />
She was arrested shortly after beginning her protest -- on charges of attempted
suicide -- and was sent to a prison hospital where she is force-fed via a nasal
drip several times a day. "I don't want to be glorified. I just want that
the government should accept my only demand instead of spending huge amounts of
money for keeping me alive," said the frail and extremely pale
40-year-old.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>economichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18157243082371228984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3809479764067026126.post-87970981094809058392012-04-15T06:13:00.000-07:002012-04-15T06:13:03.694-07:00General VK Singh visits Maoist heartland<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Sunday, April 15, 2012</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://zeenews.india.com/news/chhattisgarh/general-vk-singh-visits-maoist-heartland_770043.html">http://zeenews.india.com/news/chhattisgarh/general-vk-singh-visits-maoist-heartland_770043.html</a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Raipur: <strong>Army chief General VK Singh travelled to leftist insurgency-hit Chhattisgarh's Bastar region Saturday where the Army has a training camp in a jungle stretch, official sources said</strong>.<br /><br />General Singh spent a few hours at Kondagaon area, some 220 km of from capital Raipur, and held discussions with jawans regarding the training facilities available to them in the region that has witnessed a string of deadly attacks by Maoists mainly since 2005.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>Officials said that in his maiden visit as Army chief to the sprawling 40,000 sq km Bastar region where army has been conducting training since May-June last year, Singh expressed satisfaction over a series of civic training programmes that were being undertaken by the army in the region to establish direct rapport with the local population</strong>.<br /><br /><strong>The army has made it clear repeatedly that it has stepped into Maoist (Naxal) territory in Chhattisgarh only for "jungle warfare training, not for anti-Maoist operation".</strong></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">General Singh also paid a courtesy visit to Chief Minister Raman Singh here during his daylong visit to the state and held a detailed discussion on several issues, including the Leftist insurgency issue.<br /><br />Sources at the chief minister's office said that Raman Singh briefed the army chief about the history of Maoist insurgency in Bastar region and also gave him details about the steps the state government had taken in recent years to restore peace in the troubled region.<br /><br />General Singh also called on Governor Shekhar Dutt.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"></span></div>economichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18157243082371228984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3809479764067026126.post-72891912614159106832012-04-15T06:12:00.002-07:002012-04-15T06:12:38.881-07:00Slight rise in US mly sex assault cases<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<h3 style="background: white; line-height: 20.25pt; margin: 1em 0cm 6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 9pt;">Sunday,
April 15, 2012<o:p></o:p></span></h3>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Tahoma","sans-serif"; font-size: 9pt;"><a href="http://images.thenews.com.pk/15-04-2012/ethenews/e-103185.htm">http://images.thenews.com.pk/15-04-2012/ethenews/e-103185.htm</a><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<h3 style="background: white; line-height: 20.25pt; margin: 1em 0cm 6pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-weight: normal;">WASHINGTON: The number of
sexual assault cases reported to US military authorities edged up last year,
with most involving a member of the armed forces attacking another, the
Pentagon said in an annual report released on Friday. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">The 3,192 cases in
2011 amounted to a 1 percent increase over the 3,158 reported in 2010. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<h3 style="background: white; line-height: 20.25pt; margin: 1em 0cm 6pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">Some 56 percent of the cases involved one
service member attacking another, 26 percent a member of the military attacking
a civilian, 6 percent a civilian attacking a service member and12 percent an
unidentified person attacking a service member, the report said</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-weight: normal;">.<o:p></o:p></span></span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<h3 style="background: white; line-height: 20.25pt; margin: 1em 0cm 6pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">Despite an increased
effort by authorities to address the problem and highlight the issue with the
annual report, figures on sexual assaults in the military have remained largely
unchanged. <o:p></o:p></span></span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<h3 style="background: white; line-height: 20.25pt; margin: 1em 0cm 6pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">US Representative Jackie
Speier, an outspoken critic of the military's handling of sexual assault cases,
said the report showed "regrettably, more of the same," with cases up
and prosecutions and punishments down.<o:p></o:p></span></span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<h3 style="background: white; line-height: 20.25pt; margin: 1em 0cm 6pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">"All of the important
numbers are going in the wrong direction," said Speier, who advocates
taking sexual assault cases out of the hands of the military's chain of command
and putting them under the jurisdiction of a special office made up of military
and civilian experts. <o:p></o:p></span></span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<h3 style="background: white; line-height: 20.25pt; margin: 1em 0cm 6pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">"This report shows
that prevention classes and sensitivity training are not enough to solve the
problem of rape and sexual assault in the military," she said.</span></span></h3>
<h3 style="background: white; line-height: 20.25pt; margin: 1em 0cm 6pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="font-size: large;">
Reporting of sexual assaults in the military is divided into two groups:
restricted cases, which remain confidential and about which little information
is available, and unrestricted cases, which are investigated and prosecuted
through normal military channels.</span></span></h3>
<h3 style="background: white; line-height: 20.25pt; margin: 1em 0cm 6pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><span style="font-size: large;">Of
the 2,439 unrestricted reports of sexual assault, 31 per cent were charges of
rape, 30 per cent charges of aggravated sexual assault and 25 per cent
allegations of wrongful sexual contact. The remaining allegations involved a
range of other sexual crimes.</span></span></h3>
</div>economichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18157243082371228984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3809479764067026126.post-1166107975266084232012-04-14T07:48:00.002-07:002012-04-14T07:48:39.446-07:00The war on terror is corrupting all it touches<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">April 14, 2012</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="author"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Simon Jenkins</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="author"><a href="http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/article3311975.ece?homepage=true"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/article3311975.ece?homepage=true</span></a></span></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">On Monday (April 9, 2012), the BBC Panorama programme substantiated an extraordinary allegation that suggested how far the war on terror has descended into a legal abyss. <strong>The claim was that MI6, the U.K. Secret Intelligence Service, rolled the pitch for Tony Blair's bizarre 2004 hug-in with Libya's Colonel Qadhafi by apparently arranging for the CIA to kidnap Qadhafi's opponent in exile, Abdel Hakim Belhaj. He was seized in Bangkok, where he and his wife were en route to Britain. It's been suggested they were “rendered” via the British colony of Diego Garcia to Tajoura jail in Tripoli</strong>. Belhaj spent six years, and his wife four-and-a-half months, at the tender mercies of Qadhafi's security boss, Moussa Koussa. Belhaj's pregnant wife was taped like a mummy on a stretcher, and he was systematically tortured. Koussa himself denies any involvement in torture.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="body" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>With this gift came a covering letter from MI6's Mark Allen, offering Koussa congratulations on the “safe arrival” of the “air cargo [Belhaj].</strong> <strong>This was the least we could do for you and for Libya to demonstrate the remarkable relationship we have built over the years.” Within two weeks, Qadhafi was welcoming a fawning Blair in his famous desert tent, and announcing that he would abjure terrorism and set aside his “planned” weapons of mass destruction.</strong> The plans were spurious, but the deal allowed Blair to walk tall in Washington at a time when the Iraq invasion was turning sour.</span></div>
<div class="body" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="body" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Less spurious were other elements in the strange relationship. <strong>It was claimed Britain would not just deliver Belhaj but lift sanctions</strong>. <strong>Qadhafi would greet British Petroleum's Lord Browne, accompanied by Allen, who switched with full ministerial approval from being an MI6 officer to a £200,000 special adviser to BP. When, three years later, the £15-billion deal with BP seemed to falter, it's claimed Allen pressed his old boss, Jack Straw, the former Home Affairs and Justice Minister, to release Libya's Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. Allen was a senior adviser to Monitor consultancy, which helped boost Qadhafi's world image, and assisted the London School of Economics (LSE), on whose advisory board Allen sat and where Qadhafi's son Saif was receiving a much-heralded PhD. The new chairman of BP was none other than Sir Peter Sutherland, also chairman of the LSE</strong>.</span></div>
<div class="body" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="body" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">When, in 2011, Qadhafi's regime was visibly tottering, Britain coolly deserted him. <strong>Sanctions were re-imposed, but no one thought to tell Nato special forces, present at the fall of Tripoli, to find and secure the building in which the incriminating documents lay. Presumably to the horror of MI6, Human Rights Watch got there first and found Allen's letter, which was handed to journalists. To make things worse, Belhaj was now out of jail and head of Tripoli's military council. Worse still, his old nemesis, Koussa, had shrewdly defected as Qadhafi crumbled and was able to confirm Belhaj's suspicions of British complicity in his fate</strong>.</span></div>
<div class="body" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="body" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Belhaj is not a man to hide a grievance and is now suing Allen and the British government for “complicity in torture” and “misfeasance in public office”. <strong>He has reportedly been offered and refused £1 million from the British government to shut up. It is a tale of panic and cock-up</strong>.</span></div>
<div class="body" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="body" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">MI6 puts out the usual line that it only follows “ministerially authorised government policy”. The relevant Ministers at the time were Straw and Blair, who should have been fully briefed in 2004 on Qadhafi's apparent u-turn and the reasons behind it. <strong>Both men have denied knowledge of Belhaj's rendition and torture, or the suggestion that it and Megrahi's release were a quid pro quo for oil</strong>. Both have plaintively remarked that Ministers may be responsible, yet, cannot know everything.</span></div>
<div class="body" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="body" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In Allen's defence, it can be said that he was doing exactly what his masters so badly wanted. Blair in 2004 was craven to Washington, desperate to win a spur in George Bush's crusade against militant Islamism. At the time, CIA rendition flights were criss-crossing the world with Muslims bolted to the floor. A couple more as a gift to a kindly dictator seemed small beer. As for whether Allen mentioned it to Straw, known to be supporting his bid to head MI6, neither he nor Straw is telling.</span></div>
<div class="body" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="body" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">On Monday, Foreign Minister William Hague grasped at the straw of Belhaj's lawsuit in declining to comment. He said, with a broad smile, that the whole matter was “sub judice”. The implication, that his remarks might prejudice a trial, was that this would be held in public. But these are precisely the cases that the Cabinet now wants to ensure are conducted in secret.</span></div>
<div class="body" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="body" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The morass now thickens. On 22 February, the court of appeal in London showed itself equally mesmerised by the “war on terror”. It upheld the conviction of a London university student, Mohammed Gul, for disseminating “terrorism” over the internet. Not content with imprisoning the pathetic and repentant Gul for five years, their lordships felt an urge to political theory. They declared that the war on terror embraced not just Gul but “acts by insurgents against the armed forces of a state anywhere in the world which sought to influence a government and were made for political purposes”. <strong>Under legislation, terrorism included not just acts of violence but any threat made for “the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause</strong>”. These threats might include nothing more than a “serious risk to public health and safety” or “seriously to disrupt an electronic system”. </span></div>
<div class="body" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="body" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">From this catch-all lexicography, dissidents and insurgents under any regime were not excluded. Their lordships noted that it seemed there was nothing that would exempt those engaged in attacks on the military during the course of insurgency from the definition of terrorism. It was hard luck for all Kurds, Kosovans, Benghazians, Tibetans and Iranian exiles — and today's Syrian rebels. They are all terrorists. </span></div>
<div class="body" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="body" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is ridiculous. Gul's Bin Laden fantasies were not remotely in the same boat as Belhaj's opposition to Qadhafi. Yet, both were seized as terrorists and imprisoned by agents of British government. They are joined in judicial calumny with millions round the world who are struggling against dictatorial regimes and willing harm to their “armed forces”. Every student agitator is a terrorist, every internet hacker, cafeteria dissident, freedom fighter and insurgent leader. The war on terror is corrupting all it touches, while parliament meekly passes each twist of the ratchet of repression. <b>— © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2012</b></span></span></div>
</div>economichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18157243082371228984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3809479764067026126.post-22047719748447339592012-04-08T02:55:00.001-07:002012-04-08T02:55:32.794-07:00Domestic Violence Statistics<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="http://domesticviolencestatistics.org/domestic-violence-statistics/">http://domesticviolencestatistics.org/domestic-violence-statistics/</a><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<ul>
<li><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><span style="font-size: large;">Every 9 seconds in the US a woman is assaulted or beaten</span></strong>.</span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Around the world, at least one in every three women has been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused during her lifetime. Most often, the abuser is a member of her own family.</span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women—more than car accidents, muggings, and rapes combined.</span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Studies suggest that up to 10 million children witness some form of domestic violence annually.</span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nearly 1 in 5 teenage girls who have been in a relationship said a boyfriend threatened violence or self-harm if presented with a breakup.</span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>Everyday in the US, more than three women are murdered by their husbands or boyfriends.</strong></span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ninety-two percent of women surveyed listed reducing domestic violence and sexual assault as their top concern.</span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>Domestic violence victims lose nearly 8 million days of paid work per year in the US alone—the equivalent of 32,000 full-time jobs.</strong></span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Based on reports from 10 countries, between 55 percent and 95 percent of women who had been physically abused by their partners had never contacted non-governmental organizations, shelters, or the police for help.</span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>The costs of intimate partner violence in the US alone exceed $5.8 billion per year: $4.1 billion are for direct medical and health care services, while productivity losses account for nearly $1.8 billion.</strong></span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Men who as children witnessed their parents’ domestic violence were twice as likely to abuse their own wives than sons of nonviolent parents</span></div>
</li>
</ul>
</div>economichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18157243082371228984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3809479764067026126.post-22416230102004525452012-04-07T01:51:00.000-07:002012-04-07T01:51:17.874-07:00Civilian deaths in US wars<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="http://english.news.cn/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #666666;">English.news.cn</span></a> 2012-03-22 09:42:34<br />
<a href="http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/indepth/2012-03/22/c_131481529.htm">http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/indepth/2012-03/22/c_131481529.htm</a><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">BEIJING, March 22 (Xinhuanet) -- <strong><span style="font-size: large;">The mounting civilian death toll in Afghanistan and Iraq is a stigma on the way the United States has waged war in the two countries</span></strong>.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>The vulnerability of civilians was brutally demonstrated on the morning of March 11, when 16 civilians, including women and children, were murdered in their homes in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar</strong>.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A lone US soldier, Sergeant Robert Bales, has been accused of the lethal rampage, which has understandably infuriated Afghan people and strained the already tense Afghan-US relations.</span></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Washington owes the Afghan people an honest explanation of how their homes became killing zones.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As Washington is poised to gradually withdraw its troops in Afghanistan, there is no guarantee that the transition period leading up to the withdrawal will be a smooth one.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There is also no guarantee that the US will not leave Afghanistan in as big a mess as it did Iraq. The US pulled its troops out of Iraq in December, leaving the Gulf country in a quagmire of political instability and sectarian strife.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Tensions among political rivals have been on the rise, while bombings and killings happen on a daily basis. <strong>On March 20, which marked the ninth anniversary of the Iraq war, a torrent of violence and bombings ravaged 13 Iraqi cities and killed 44 people.</strong></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The US has unshirkable responsibilities to protect civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq, and it should be held accountable for the loss of civilian life in the two countries, as those who have lost their lives are victims of the US strategy in the two countries.</span></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The soaring civilian death count in Afghanistan and in Iraq has aroused widespread concern among the international community over US strategy in Central Asia and the Middle East.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>Conservative estimates put the number of civilians who have lost their lives in Iraq at more than 100,000 since the US invasion in 2003. There is no single figure for the overall number of civilians killed by the 10-year-old war in Afghanistan, but according to the latest report from the United Nations, 12,793 had been killed in the past six years.</strong></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Certainly people around the world are sickened by the ever-growing number of civilians who have been killed since the US launched its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the name of anti-terrorism.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><strong>One cannot help asking when will it end?</strong></span></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(Source: China Daily)</span></div>
</div>economichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18157243082371228984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3809479764067026126.post-88300301369818430332012-04-07T01:41:00.004-07:002012-04-07T01:41:52.528-07:00Atrocities committed by U.S. soldiers in recent years - 5<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<td width="48%"><span class="style5"><a class="style4" href="http://www.chinaview.cn/"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: x-small;">www.chinaview.cn</span></a></span><span class="hui12"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="color: #333333;"> <span class="lanx121"><img height="5" src="http://imgs.xinhuanet.com/icon/2006english/2007korea/space.gif" width="13" /></span> </span><b><span style="color: black;">2008-02-12 21:33:19</span></b><span style="color: black;"></span></span></span></span></td></tr>
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<a href="http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-02/12/content_7594123.htm">http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-02/12/content_7594123.htm</a><br />
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<strong><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">U.S. Marine's raping of Okinawan girl arouses anger among local people</span></strong><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">TOKYO, Feb. 12 (Xinhua) -- <strong><span style="font-size: large;">A U.S. Marine's alleged raping of an Okinawan minor
girl on Sunday aroused anger and condemnation of local residents in the southern
Japanese island in the past two days.</span></strong>
</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The assembly of Naha, the capital of Okinawa Prefecture, unanimously
passed a resolution of protest on Tuesday, demanding that U.S. army officials,
U.S. ambassador to Japan and Japanese prime minister find out the fact,
apologize to the victim and her family members, and take action to prevent U.S.
soldiers from committing crimes.
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The assembly also called on the Japanese government to rethink its
relationship with the United States and cut down the number of U.S. bases and
servicemen on the island.
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Okinawa city Mayor Mitsuko Tomon and other officials handed in person a
letter of protest to the U.S. consulate general in Okinawa, demanding that the
U.S. army enhance its moral education and reinforce its discipline.
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>The letter asked the U.S. side to publish as early as possible its
measures to prevent a recurrence of such crime.
</strong></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">According to Japanese media, a women's group of Okinawa sent an open
letter to U.S. President George W. Bush, demanding the evacuation U.S. forces
from Okinawa.
</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A peace movement group waged a demonstration in front of a U.S. military
base in Okinawa city, calling on the U.S. forces to launch a full-scale probe
into the case.
</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Tyrone Hadnott, a 38-year-old staff sergeant belonging to the Camp
Courtney base, was arrested Monday on suspicion of raping a 14-year-old local
girl on Sunday night.
</strong></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hadnott was sent to prosecutors earlier Tuesday. He said he only touched
the girl's body, denying the charge of raping.
</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Okinawa hosts about 75 percent of U.S. forces in Japan in terms of land
occupied. In the past more than ten years, about 100 U.S. soldiers in Okinawa
were sued on suspicion of raping local women. Such incidents strained the
relationship between the U.S. army and local residents, and often led to
anti-U.S. rallies. </strong></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span></div>economichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18157243082371228984noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3809479764067026126.post-39976283372658928002012-04-07T01:34:00.001-07:002012-04-07T01:34:42.530-07:00Atrocities committed by U.S. soldiers in recent years - 4<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://www.xinhuanet.com/english2010/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #666666;">English.news.cn</span></a> 2012-03-12 15:52:55<br />
<a href="http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2012-03/12/c_131462184.htm">http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2012-03/12/c_131462184.htm</a><br />
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<strong><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Recent atrocities should prompt U.S. to rethink Afghan strategy</span></strong><br />
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by Yu Zhixiao<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">BEIJING, March 12 (Xinhua) -- <strong>A series of atrocities committed by U.S. soldiers, including the recent slaughter of 16 Afghan civilians, have drastically strained bilateral ties, and shows that the United States must urgently review its strategy and policies in the volatile Central Asian country</strong>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><span style="font-size: large;">The world's biggest power has fought an expensive war in Afghanistan for over a decade, which has cost it 500 billion U.S. dollars and 2,000 lives. Many say it is fighting a losing battle due to vehement Taliban resurgence</span></strong>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To add insult to injury, the U.S. military is increasingly losing whatever moral support it has previously enjoyed among the Afghans, as U.S. soldiers have repeatedly committed severe offenses or violence against the civilians.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>In the early hours of Sunday, a U.S. sergeant left a military base in the southern Kandahar province and went on a killing spree in a nearby village. He murdered 16 Afghan civilians, including nine children, in cold blood.</strong></span></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Afghan President Hamid Karzai called it an "unforgivable action" and demanded an "explanation" from Washington, while his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama expressed his "shock and sadness" over the deed and promised to bring the perpetrator to justice.</span></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>The incident came at the heels of U.S. soldiers' burning of the Quran at a military base in Afghanistan in February, which sparked violent Afghan protests and the killing of six U.S. soldiers as revenge by Afghans.</strong></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>In January, a video surfaced showing four U.S. marines urinating on the bodies of dead Taliban fighters. The deed was regarded as blasphemy by Afghans and triggered outrage in the country.</strong></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The incidents show that some U.S. servicemen harbor resentment against the Afghan people, are insensitive to Afghans' religious beliefs, culture and customs, and lack basic respect toward their human dignity.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Clearly, the condescension and cold-bloodedness shown by some U.S. soldiers toward Afghans are detrimental to the U.S. anti-terrorist efforts in the country.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Obviously, the U.S. military has failed to impart a code of conduct to its soldiers in this regard and to discipline them for violation</strong>. Only if U.S. soldiers are taught to respect Afghans can they hope to secure their support.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">U.S. authorities have vowed to bring stability and prosperity to the unrest-torn country and have invested a tremendous amount of funds and personnel for that end, but acts such as the recent killing of Afghan civilians will greatly undermine U.S. efforts and only lead to distrust and outrage toward Americans.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The incidents should also serve as a chance for the United States to seriously reflect upon its overall strategy and policies regarding Afghanistan.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Although 130,000 NATO troops, including 90,000 Americans, are deployed in Afghanistan, the Taliban movement, which was almost wiped out on Afghan soil in the U.S.-led war in late 2001, has made a strong comeback in recent years.</strong></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>It seems that the Taliban fighters are poised to launch a major campaign after 2014, the deadline of NATO troops' withdrawal from Afghanistan.</strong></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Some Taliban militants have vowed that they have time on their side and will rise to power again one day.</strong></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>This has cast a huge shadow on the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, and raised doubts among many Americans about whether it is worthwhile to fight such a costly war.</strong></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">U.S. Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich said Sunday that "there's something profoundly wrong with the way we're approaching the whole region, and I think it's going to get substantially worse, not better. And I think that we're risking the lives of young men and women in a mission that may frankly not be doable."</span></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>A Washington Post-ABC News poll released Sunday said 55 percent of U.S. respondents said they think most Afghans oppose what the United States is trying to do there, and 60 percent said the war in Afghanistan has been "not worth fighting."</strong></span></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Apparently, the U.S. government and military are between a rock and a hard place in Afghanistan.</span></div>
</div>economichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18157243082371228984noreply@blogger.com0