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Girls Determined to Fight Guns With Books

Shazia Begum, one of three girls injured in the attack on the Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai says the Taliban had sought to silence a very influential schoolgirl.

“Malala is a source of inspiration for all of the students in Swat,” Shazia Begum told IPS at the Combined Military Hospital in Peshawar where she is being treated. “She encouraged us to get education when the Taliban banned it.”

Malala, 14, who suffered gunshot injuries to her head in the attack in Swat Oct. 9 is recovering in hospital in Rawalpindi to which she was moved. She remains in serous condition.

“Her articles on the BBC gave us hope and enhanced our love for education. It was because of her that thousands of girls attended schools despite Taliban’s opposition,” Shazia Begum told IPS.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain told IPS that Malala had helped the government bring girls back to school when the Taliban were trying to slam the doors of education on them.

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Activists Brace for Long War Against Nuclear Power

TOKYO, May 17, 2012 (IPS) - For the past two decades Masao Ishiji (59), has been fighting tooth and nail to ban the operation of four nuclear reactors that dot the western coastline of Oi in the Fukui prefecture facing the Japan Sea.

Earlier this week, that desperate battle reached a critical front. When the Oi municipal assembly passed a new resolution Monday to restart Unit 3 and 4 reactors that had been closed for a year for stress tests, anti-nuclear activists knew they had reached a crucial juncture in their fight to eradicate nuclear power from the country.

"The new Oi decision is a blow to the anti-nuclear movement," explained Yuki Sekimoto of Greenpeace, Japan. " It is also a stark reminder of the excruciating position faced by the local residents. They have to chose between their jobs or stopping nuclear power, a very unfair situation."

Indeed, Mayor Shinobu Tokioka, who now faces the difficult task of approving the local assembly decision, told the Japanese media on Monday that his main consideration was the potential damage to the local economy brought on by a prolonged halt of the reactors.

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Native Peoples Aim to End Historic and Current Injustices

UNITED NATIONS, May 8, 2012 (IPS) - Leaders of the world's 370 million indigenous people are urging governments not only to replace laws that violate the natives' rights to protect their lands, resources and culture but also to introduce legislation that protects their rights.

At the 11th session of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, which began here on Monday, these leaders took leading global powers to task for using old but still existing laws as a weapon to justify the exploitation and abuse of indigenous communities.

"(We) have the right to redress for past conquests," said Tonya Frichner, a Native American activist and lawyer who has also been a member of the Permanent Forum. "This is enshrined in the (United Nations) Declaration on the Rights of the Indigenous Peoples."

The Declaration was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in 2007. According to Article 3 of the historic declaration, indigenous peoples have the right to self-determination. Article 28 protects their right to redress for past conquests while Article 37 explains the right to agreements.

Established by the U.N. Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) in 2000, the forum is comprised of 16 independent experts who provide advice and recommendations on indigenous issues to the U.N. system.

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"[We] are trying not only to challenge the conventional model of development, but also to make people understand that if they listen to our point of view on development, they can also change the situation globally and locally."

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Chinese Miners Dig Deep for Death

BEIJING, May 2, 2012 (IPS) - China is notorious for containing some of the world’s deadliest mines - a reputation that has been corroborated in recent months by a series of fatal accidents. China is the world’s largest consumer and producer of coal. But the mining industry is beset by illegal operations, dangerous working conditions, local corruption and cover-ups of fatalities.

Nine coal miners died and 16 were injured in an explosion in Inner Mongolia in the latest disaster Apr. 23. Twenty-one persons were detained for allegedly attempting to cover up the deaths of miners, a crime punishable with a fine and imprisonment.

At least ten workers in an illegal coal mine in China’s northern Shanxi province died in a flood. In a separate accident in central Henan province last month at least five miners were killed in a flood.

Safety conditions at China’s mines have advanced considerably. But they continue to be counted as among the world’s most dangerous. According to official figures last year there were 1,973 fatalities, down from 2,433 in 2010 and 7,000 in 2002. In 2010, estimates saw six die a day in China’s mines - compared with just 48 deaths a year in America.

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Armed Groups in Northern Mali Raping Women

By William Lloyd-George, IPS-Inter Press Service

NIAMEY, Apr 24, 2012 (IPS) - Increasing numbers of Malian women are being raped by Tuareg rebels and armed groups that have swept across the north of Mali since the beginning of year, expelling all government troops from the region.

According to Corinne Dufka, senior West Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch, who is currently on a mission in Mali, there have been reports of rape and sexual violence taking place in towns and villages across the region.

"We're very concerned about what appears to be a drastic increase in the targeting and sexual abuse of women and girls by armed groups in the north," Dufka told IPS.

"Since rebel groups consolidated their control of the northern territory they call the Azawad, Human Rights Watch has documented several cases of rape and many others cases in which girls and women have been abducted from their homes, towns and villages, and very likely sexually abused."

Dufka reports that most of the abuses have been, "perpetrated by rebels from the MNLA and to a lesser extent Arab militias allied to them."

The National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) is an umbrella term given to groups of armed Tuaregs who have come together with the declared goal of administrating an independent state, Azawad.

Since the colonial French left the region in 1960, there have been several Tuareg rebellions against the Malian government. Previous uprisings ended in negotiations and the appointment of rebel leaders to state positions.

However, the rebels say the Malian government has failed to stick to promises made in negotiations, and continue to demand an independent state.

This time, armed with a heavy arsenal of weapons left over from previous rebellions, and additional arms coming from Libya over the last few years, the MNLA have made unprecedented advances. This was made easier by the coup in Bamako and the subsequent withdrawal of state military in the north.

Commenting on the allegations made by Human Rights Watch, MNLA spokesman Moussa ag Assarid, currently in the Malian city of Gao, denied MNLA men were involved in the sexual violence. "These men are not MNLA, but are other men around," says Ag Assarid speaking over the phone from Gao. He admitted, however, that "We cannot control all the people in Azawad."

Although the MNLA declared an independent state on Apr 6, residents in the region say the rebel movement does not really seem to be in control. "One day, one armed group will come into town, then the next day it will be another; we feel very unsafe," one resident in Gao who preferred to remain anonymous told IPS over the phone.

Since the conflict began, several armed Islamist groups have emerged in the region, adding to concerns for the future of women’s rights.

One group, Ansar Dine, led by Iyad Ag Ghali, a prominent leader in previous Tuareg uprisings, has begun attempting to enforce Sharia law in the north. Soon after entering Timbuktu, Ag Ghali announced the group’s beliefs on the radio.

"Misfortune is due to people’s lack of faith in God, and because they have abandoned the practice of Sharia, because we have changed our way of life under the influence of whites," he said.

While Ag Ghali is estimated to only have around 300 men in his ranks, his influence goes far and wide. Many MNLA commanders are still loyal to him from previous rebellions, as are drug smugglers, and other Islamist groups in the region.

Since Ansar Dine announced Sharia law, there have been unconfirmed reports of Ag Gali travelling with leaders from AQIM, the regional Al Qaeda group. It is also believed that Nigeria’s extremist group, Boko Haram, and the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa have been operating in the region.

As residents report foreigners increasingly being spotted in the Islamists ranks, fears grow that Ag Ghali’s goal of creating an Islamic state could be closer to being achieved. Many Malian women, who have enjoyed freedom and relative equality compared to women in other countries in the region, are concerned this freedom could soon be a thing of the past.

"Since these groups have arrived, we hardly go outside, we are terrified what will happen if we forget to do something they have told us to do," a 40-year-old market vendor in Timbuktu, who also wished to remain anonymous, told IPS.

"I have been working in the market all my life, it is how I feed my children, how can I just stop now? Even if they allow me to work, I am not used to sitting in the baking heat all day covered head to toe."

It is reported that Ansar Dine and other Islamist groups have been going door-to-door ordering women to wear veils and respect Islamic law. They have been going to hairdressers and ripping down photos of unveiled women, shutting down brothels and prohibiting the sale of alcoholic drinks.

While there have not been any reports of women being punished by Ansar Dine for failing to adhere to Sharia law, women in the region are growing increasingly fearful of the possibility that they will start being punished if the Islamist group gains more control.

Food, electricity and infrastructure have also been severely affected by the conflict. In many cities food and water are running low, and it has been difficult for civilians to receive humanitarian aid.

"The vulnerability of women in the north is increased by the lack of medical care, non-existent rule of law institutions, and limited humanitarian assistance which could mitigate their suffering and deter further abuse," says Dufka.

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Careless Handling of Benin’s Medical Waste Could Cost Lives

By Ulrich Vital Ahotondji, Inter Press Service

COTONOU, Mar 29, 2012 (IPS) - Fifteen-year-old Aicha is one of the many spice vendors hawking their wares in the Dantokpa market, in Benin's economic capital, Cotonou. But a closer look at her tidy stall reveals a disturbing detail: the powdered spices are packaged in recycled medicine vials.

"My mother often gets bottles from the National University Teaching Hospital (CNHU) or other health centres where we have friends," Aicha told IPS. "We wash them, then refill them with condiments like powdered shrimp, hot pepper, ginger…"

But these vials and small bottles are medical waste that should be properly disposed of. Raymond Da Silva, inspector general at the CNHU, said: "We do what we can to incinerate our waste. But the question of the serum vials is a tough one for all health facilities in Benin."

He warned that these containers, even emptied and cleaned out, are not safe for re-use. "Never accept snacks or spices packed in these vials."

Biomedical waste consists of solid, liquid or laboratory waste of biological origin or generated by medical or paramedical activity. It must be properly managed to protect the general public.

Amina Sylla, the head of biomedical waste services at the non-governmental organisation Bethesda, frowns at the lack of interest by health centres in managing their waste properly. "They don't recognise the need to spend money on waste disposal, yet we manage waste for around 40 hospitals (in and around Cotonou)."

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U.S. Occupy Activists Hit With Stay-Away Orders

OAKLAND, California, Mar 23, 2012 (IPS) - A dozen or so people in the Wednesday night crowd of around 150 at the amphitheatre in the public plaza at Oakland City Hall covered their faces with masks or bandanas.

They wanted to make it difficult for police observing the scene to know if activists slapped with judicial orders barring them from the plaza had violated the orders and were at the rally hosted by Occupy Oakland's Interfaith Committee.

Religious leaders from the Christian, Buddhist, Muslim and Jewish faiths from across the country organised the event, where they called for economic justice and condemned what they said were illegal court orders that banned more than a dozen activists from the physical space that has been the heart of organising for Occupy Oakland since its inception.

"We don't know if any real people with stay-away orders are with us or not," said Rev. Doctor Rita Nakashima-Brock, one of the Interfaith Committee rally organisers. "We're not asking who's behind the masks."

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U.N. Chastises Mexico’s Support for Agribusiness

The United Nations criticised Mexico's food policy, a month and a half after President Felipe Calderón launched to great fanfare an alliance of agribusiness for sustainable development, which was welcomed by giant food corporations.

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Trial Sheds Light on Trafficking of Women in Argentina

By Marcela Valente, Inter Press Service

BUENOS AIRES, Feb 16, 2012 (IPS) - A high profile trial for trafficking of women is giving the public a clearer picture of how sex trafficking rings operate in Argentina, with victims who are even forced, eventually, to become victimisers.

Ten years after 23-year-old María de los Ángeles "Marita" Verón was kidnapped in the northwest province of Tucumán, the trial for her disappearance got underway this month.

Seven men and six women are accused of having had contact with Verón in different brothels, based on the testimony of women rescued from the sex rings.

They are charged with deprivation of liberty and promotion of prostitution.

The question is whether new clues will emerge in court about what ultimately happened to Verón.

The plaintiff is Verón’s mother, Susana Trimarco. In her ceaseless campaign to find her daughter, she discovered how the sex trafficking rings operate, and how they enjoy the apparent protection of members of the police and other public officials.

And along the way, she managed to help rescue 129 victims of forced prostitution.

For her work, Trimarco was granted the International Women of Courage Award by the U.S. State Department in 2007. Shortly afterwards she set up the María de Los Angeles Foundation to Combat Human Trafficking.

The foundation carries out prevention work in schools, community centres and other institutions, to help young people avoid being preyed up on by sex rings. It also provides comprehensive protection and assistance to trafficking victims.

The lawsuit filed by Trimarco helped press Congress to pass a law on prevention and punishment of trafficking in 2008, and boosted the creation of a national programme to prevent and eradicate trafficking and provide support to victims.

"The only thing I want is to find Marita. My terrible suffering started for me when she disappeared," Trimarco testified in court on Wednesday Feb. 15.

Trimarco, who is generally accompanied by her granddaughter – Verón’s daughter, who is now 13 – found out that Marita was sold to a brothel in the northwest province of La Rioja, and went there to try to find her in 2003.

Posing as a former prostitute seeking to recruit young women for a brothel, she visited houses of prostitution in La Rioja and other provinces in the northwest.

Although prostitution itself is legal in this South American country, organised prostitution - brothels, prostitution rings, or pimping – is illegal.

She and her husband Daniel Verón, who died of a heart attack in 2010, helped rescue a number of young women from Argentina and other countries who had been stripped of their legal documents, held against their will, forced into prostitution and cut off from their families.

But she never found her daughter. Some of the young women who were rescued said they had seen Verón, drugged and haggard, holding a baby boy who was apparently fathered by a pimp. They also said they later heard that she was in Spain.

Liliana Azaraf, an activist in the campaign "Ni una mujer más víctima de las redes de prostitución", launched against sex trafficking by a group of feminists fighting to abolish prostitution, spoke to IPS about how the trial is helping to bring visibility to the phenomenon.

"Cases like that of Marita Verón have an impact and give visibility to the problem of trafficking because they are extreme cases involving middle-class women who did not form part of any prostitution ring. But all cases of exploitation must be condemned," she said.

Azaraf said the law against trafficking of persons was passed thanks to well-known cases like this one and the work of mothers like Trimarco.

However, the law has been criticised by women’s organisations, which argue that it is based on misguided assumptions.

"We have had problems with the law from the start because it establishes that, in order for a crime to exist, women over 18 who are in these prostitution networks have to prove that they were recruited by means of deception, and without their consent," she said.

The activist said this is based on the idea that there is "a kind of prostitution that is freely chosen as an employment option, and another kind in which women are kidnapped and forced into the sex trade."

Groups fighting to abolish prostitution reject that distinction.

"Prostitution is always violent, and is based on the inequality of the sexes. It is full of young women pushed to prostitute themselves for survival, who were not recruited by means of force but by the need to make money," she said.

A new bill, which has the approval of the women’s groups, has already made it through the Senate and will be discussed this year in the lower house of Congress. The new draft law eliminates the distinction between under-age minors and adult women.

According to the Red No a la Trata (No to Trafficking in Women Network), an umbrella group of women’s organisations, there are at least 500 missing women who have fallen prey to sex trafficking rings in this country of 41 million.

But Azaraf questions that figure. She explained that there are women who are not missing but are involved in prostitution rings. They are not held captive, but are allowed to go home and raise their children. But they have to return, and continue to be sexually exploited, she said.

In the face of the growing pressure to investigate trafficking cases, the Justice Ministry set up an office to rescue and support victims of trafficking, which has freed 3,000 people since 2008 according to official figures.

The office of the public prosecutor also created a special unit to deal with trafficking cases. In a recent report, the unit said most trafficking victims were recruited in the northern provinces – the poorest part of the country.

According to the study, in 93 legal cases involving trafficking in six northern provinces, 77 percent of the victims were women, 64 percent were sexually exploited, and 70 percent were drawn in with promises of work.

"These numbers clearly reveal the situation of vulnerability in which women in the northern provinces find themselves," says the report. It also emphasised police complicity in some cases.

Two years after Verón was kidnapped, another young woman, 26-year-old Andrea López, went missing in the eastern province of Buenos Aires.

But her case did not receive the same amount of attention.

Her husband, Víctor Purreta, the father of her three-year-old son, spent five years in prison for forcing her into prostitution. But he has consistently denied any knowledge of her whereabouts.

López’s mother, Julia Ferreyra, told IPS that her daughter was beaten by her husband, and that she suspects he had something to do with her disappearance.

Purreta is now out of prison, but he is facing charges in another case, for domestic violence against his new partner, who he also battered and forced into prostitution.

This case, which involves poor women, has not drawn the same attention as Verón’s disappearance, because of the mistaken belief that these women accepted or chose to be prostitutes, according to activists involved in the "Ni una mujer más víctima de las redes de prostitución" campaign against trafficking and prostitution rings.

Azaraf also pointed to the case of sexually exploited women who after a number of years themselves become "madams" in charge of the young women in the brothel – and are then treated as victimisers.

That is happening in the trial for Verón’s disappearance.

A defendant, Daniela Milhein, who is accused of being one of the people who deprived Verón of her liberty, denied knowing the young woman and said she herself had been forced into prostitution at the age of 16.

"For six years I was forced to work for him without receiving a single cent, because he kept all the money," she said, referring to Ruben Ale, the pimp who fathered her daughter. Ale is not one of the accused in the case.

The testimony heard so far has not helped clarify the whereabouts of Verón. But her mother has not given up hope that she is alive: "She has to appear, and I will keep working until that happens," Trimarco told the local media. (END)

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Tibetan Protests Begin to Spread

By Emily-Anne Owen, Inter Press Service

BEIJING, Feb 14, 2012 (IPS) - An escalating number of unprecedented self-immolations and violent protests that have gripped Tibetan regions of Western China over recent weeks show no sign of abating, as the country reels from the worst Tibet crisis since the 2008 riots.

Three Tibetan herders have allegedly set themselves on fire in protest against Chinese repression, the Beijing-based activist and author Tsering Woeser reported in her blog. A teenage nun has also set herself alight while shouting slogans against the government and in the latest immolation to hit the region this week, a teenage monk set himself on fire.

Radio Free Asia reported that the three herders called for freedom and the return of the Dalai Lama to Tibet. However the Chinese government denies that the immolations took place.

If reports are confirmed, then the immolations will be the first by ordinary people, rather than monks or nuns, demonstrating the depth of discontent that has spread beyond the clergy to the wider population.

On Monday a 19-year-old monk, named Lobsang Gyatso, set himself ablaze in Aba county, Sichuan. According to rights groups, police allegedly beat the monk as they extinguished the flames and it is as yet uncertain whether he is still alive.

On Saturday, an 18-year old Tibetan nun called Tenzin Choedron also self-immolated in Sichuan’s Aba prefecture. The state mouthpiece Xinhua News Agency confirmed that the nun, who was a member of the Mamae Nunnery, died on the way to hospital.

Her death follows the self-immolation of a 19-year-old former monk from Kirti monastery, located in Ngaba county, Sichuan province, last week. The total number of Tibetans known to have self-immolated over the last year now stands at 20.

According to Tsering Woeser, the three herders self-immolated in Seda county, Sichuan province, on Friday, Feb. 3. It is believed that of the three, one has died and two remain seriously injured.

Seda county witnessed fatal protests late last month, as police fired into demonstrating crowds. While the number of deaths is unconfirmed, some human rights groups believe two died and others say up to 11 were killed.

Exact numbers are hard to verify as journalists and rights groups have been locked out of the area and authorities have cut off both the Internet and telephone connections in an attempt to contain the unrest. Other protests took place in Luhuo and Rangtang counties, also in Sichuan, Western China.

Xinhua, who blames "overseas forces" for attempting to "fabricate rumours", reported that two protestors were shot dead by officers in an act of self-defence after violent rioters stormed police stations.

Robert Barnett, a Tibetan scholar at Columbia University, believes that growing protests and immolations testify to the spread of unrest.

"Before (protests) used to be just in the main city among the lower middle class groups, but now we are seeing also farmers and nomads in the countryside, and even some student demonstrations. It’s not just monks anymore. And there have been trials of famous leaders from the Tibetan business community too, extremely wealthy Tibetans who stood to gain the most from loyalty to the state," Barnett tells IPS.

"Many more people than before are referring to independence openly or waving the forbidden Tibetan flag - perhaps people are bolder now, or perhaps nationalism has become more widespread," he says.

A drastic step-up of security, combined with the increasing encroachment of police officers into monasteries - which are central to Tibetan communities - has provided a tipping point for many Tibetans.

Kirti monastery, home to the former monk Rinzin Dorje who self-immolated last week, has just celebrated the Great Prayer Festival (Monlam Chenmo in Tibetan), held from Jan. 25 to Feb. 8, in which locals partake in ritual dance, prayer and the unfolding of religious scrolls.

According to a report from the advocacy group International Campaign for Tibet (ICT), far-reaching security was stepped up for the festivities. ICT quotes exiled Kirti monks in Dharamsala, India, who say around 400 police disguised as officials planted themselves in the monastery for the festival.

"Ngaba people were searched, questioned and harassed wherever they went or wherever they stayed. From the early morning of Feb. 8, people were being stopped, searched and questioned one by one as they travelled into Ngaba county town and in the town itself, and the streets were filled with army, police and special police," the source was quoted as saying in the report.

Ahead of the recent Chinese New Year, more than one million Chinese flags and portraits of Communist leaders were distributed by the regional government to Tibetan monasteries, schools and homes.

The government’s preemptive crackdowns, increased surveillance and invasion into everyday life demonstrates a starkly different response to the recent protest in the Chinese village Wukan. When villagers challenged widespread corruption and land-grabs late last year the government orchestrated a peaceful resolution.

"I am very concerned that if current policies continue unchanged, there will be a rise in self-immolations and in the Chinese government’s crackdown. It is even more worrying to think of things getting worse, like a possible massacre. It is clear that Tibetans are set on confrontation and (will not) give in," Kanyag Tsering, an exiled Kirti monk living in Dharamsala, India, tells IPS.

"(Tibetans) must endure the most unbearable injustice and discriminatory cruelty and oppression day after day, month after month and year after year, until in the end they make this choice (to self-immolate and protest). Recently someone from Tibet told me ‘Even if all the Tibetans in Ngaba have to set themselves on fire, or be killed, we will have no regret’," he adds.

"People are asking whether the government is listening, whether it is a deaf system," says Barnett. "The worrying thing is that if the state continues to act aggressively, the situation could become severely polarised, making a solution much less likely in the foreseeable future."

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