Voor het eerst sinds 1972 is een Cubaanse politieke gevangene na een hongerstaking overleden en dit heeft op internet geleid tot een combinatie van sprakeloosheid en woede.

Dit wordt op treffende wijze uitgedrukt door de serie geheel zwarte afbeeldingen die Orlando Luis Pardo [en] van Boring Home Utopics [en] één voor één, in plaats van tekst, publiceert. Yoani Sanchez heeft een video gepubliceerd [es] waarin te zien is hoe de moeder van de gevangene buiten het ziekenhuis staat te wachten waar haar zoon is overleden. In de video noemt Reina Luisa Tamayo de dood van haar zoon “moord met voorbedachten rade”. Deze mening wordt gedeeld door anderen [es]. “De broers Castro maken zich weer schuldig aan moord!!!!” aldus de titel van een artikel op El Tono De Voz [es] dat door veel mensen op Twitter is genoemd.

Orlando Zapato Tamayo begon zijn 86 dagen durende hongerstaking op 3 december 2009, nadat een gevangenbewaarder in de oostelijke provincie Holguin hem zo beestachtig had afgeranseld dat hij geopereerd moest worden aan de bloeduitstorting op zijn hoofd. Aanvankelijk weigerde de directeur van die gevangenis hem 18 dagen lang water, en dit leidde tot nierfalen. Toen hij opnieuw werd overgeplaatst, liep hij een longontsteking op. Hij werd uiteindelijk overgebracht naar de zwaar bewaakte gevangenis van Havana, waar hij overleed.

Along the Malecon [en] schrijft: in 2003 “sloot hij zich aan bij dissidenten die in hongerstaking waren gegaan om zo druk uit te oefenen op de socialistische regering om gevangenen vrij te laten. Maar veel van deze hongerstakers kwamen uiteindelijk zelf in de gevangenis terecht”.

Een jaar later werd Zapato Tamayo tot 3 jaar gevangenisstraf veroordeeld wegens minachting, publieke ordeverstoring en ongehoorzaamheid. Toen hij in de gevangenis zat, werd zijn straf verlengd tot 36 jaar wegens “ongehoorzaam gedrag”.

Voormalig gewetensgevangene Jorge Luis García Pérez [en] zei volgens Radio y Television Martí [es] dat deze gebeurtenis “tot enorme verbijstering heeft geleid in het hele land, niet alleen bij de oppositie maar onder de hele bevolking”.

Het lijkt erop dat sommige bloggers eraan hopen bij te dragen dat de voorspelling van García Pérez uitkomt. Uncommon Sense [en] schrijft: ”dit is niet het moment om te rouwen, maar om actie te ondernemen, om het voorbeeld van Zapata te volgen en de strijd tegen zijn moordenaars en voor de Cubaanse vrijheid voort te zetten”. Een lezer van Diario de Cuba [es] schrijft in zijn reactie:

“Atencion estamos convocando una marcha mundial para el 13 de marzo del 2010 en favor de la libertad de todos los presos politicos cubanos, asi como la condena por la muerte de Orlando Zapata Tamayo.”

Op Twitter [es] wordt het laatste nieuws over deze actie gepubliceerd. Blogger Yoani Sanchez heeft voorgesteld [es] om op de ochtend van de begrafenis van Zapata Tamayo een (vermoedelijk virtuele) gebedswake te houden.

Het naar officiële berichtgeving neigende Cuba Debate [es] (ook actief op Twitter [es]) nam een artikel over van La Isla Desconocida [es]:

Tienen razón al decir que fue un asesinato, pero los medios esconden al verdadero asesino: los grupúsculos cubanos y sus mentores trasnacionales. Zapata fue asesinado por la contrarrevolución.

Ook de mening van de partij is dus op internet terug te vinden.

Volgens Daniel Vottio [es], verslaggever van de Spaanse editie van CNN, staan er bewakers rond het huis van Tamayo waar de wake wordt gehouden. Sanchez twittert dat dissidenten hun huizen niet mogen verlaten; het lijkt erop dat zij en anderen in hun bewegingsvrijheid worden beperkt.

Twee andere Cubaanse gewetensgevangenen, Ariel Sigler Amaya en Normando Hernández González [es], zitten ook in de gevangenis en hebben ook problemen met hun gezondheid. Het zal nog moeten blijken wat dit alles voor hen, en voor de Cubaanse burgermaatschappij, gaat betekenen.

I. Executive Summary

In July 2006, Fidel Castro handed control of the Cuban government over to his brother Raúl Castro. As the new head of state, Raúl Castro inherited a system of abusive laws and institutions, as well as responsibility for hundreds of political prisoners arrested during his brother’s rule. Rather than dismantle this repressive machinery, Raúl Castro has kept it firmly in place and fully active. Scores of political prisoners arrested under Fidel Castro continue to languish in Cuba’s prisons. And Raúl Castro’s government has used draconian laws and sham trials to incarcerate scores more who have dared to exercise their fundamental freedoms.

Raúl Castro’s government has relied in particular on a provision of the Cuban Criminal Code that allows the state to imprison individuals before they have committed a crime, on the suspicion that they might commit an offense in the future. This “dangerousness” provision is overtly political, defining as “dangerous” any behavior that contradicts socialist norms. The most Orwellian of Cuba’s laws, it captures the essence of the Cuban government’s repressive mindset, which views anyone who acts out of step with the government as a potential threat and thus worthy of punishment.

Despite significant obstacles to research, Human Rights Watch documented more than 40 cases in which Cuba has imprisoned individuals for “dangerousness” under Raúl Castro because they tried to exercise their fundamental rights. We believe there are many more. The “dangerous” activities in these cases have included handing out copies of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, staging peaceful marches, writing news articles critical of the government, and attempting to organize independent unions.

The Raúl Castro government has applied the “dangerousness” law not only to dissenters and critics of the government, but to a broad range of people who choose not to cooperate with the state. We found that failing to attend pro-government rallies, not belonging to official party organizations, and being unemployed are all considered signs of “antisocial” behavior, and may lead to “official warnings” and even incarceration in Raúl Castro’s Cuba. In a January 2009 campaign called “Operation Victory,” dozens of individuals in eastern Cuba—most of them youth—were charged with “dangerousness” for being unemployed. So was a man from Sancti Spíritus who could not work because of health problems, and was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment in August 2008 for being unemployed.

In addition to “dangerousness,” Cuba has a wide range of other laws that criminalize the exercise of fundamental freedoms, including laws penalizing contempt, insubordination, and acts against the independence of the state. Indeed, article 62 of the Cuban constitution prohibits the exercise of any basic right that runs contrary to “the ends of the socialist state.” Together with a judicial system that lacks independence and systematically violates due process rights, Raúl Castro’s government has employed such laws to imprison scores of peaceful dissidents.

Imprisonment is only one of the many tactics the Cuban government uses to repress fundamental freedoms. Dissidents who try to express their views are often beaten, arbitrarily arrested, and subjected to public acts of repudiation. The government monitors, intimidates, and threatens those it perceives as its enemies. It isolates them from their friends and neighbors and discriminates against their families.

Cuba attempts to justify this repression as a legitimate response to a US policy aimed at toppling the Castro government. It is true that the United States has a long history of intervention on the island, and its current policy explicitly aims to support a change in Cuba’s government. However, in the scores of cases Human Rights Watch examined for this report, this argument falls flat.

The reason that human rights advocate Ramón Velásquez Toranzo set out on a peaceful march across Cuba and journalist Raymundo Perdigón Brito wrote articles critical of the Castro government was not because they were agents of the US government, but rather because they saw problems with their own. Yet because these dissidents expressed their opinions openly, both were imprisoned by Raúl Castro’s government, like scores of others. Rather than being a legitimate defense against a threat to national security, these and other cases reveal a state that uses repression to enforce conformity with its political agenda.

It is important to note that the term “dissidents” in the Cuban context does not refer to a homogenous group of people who share a single ideology, affiliation, or common objective. Rather, it refers to anyone who—like Velásquez and Perdigón—engages in activities the government deems contrary to its political agenda. Some dissidents may advocate for democratic change or reform of the socialist system from within; while others may be apolitical, focusing instead on a single issue such as the right to practice their religion or organize a trade union.

Dissidents are a small and significantly isolated segment of the population. However, their marginalization is evidence not of the lack of dissent in Cuba, but rather of the state’s ruthless efficiency in suppressing it. Fear permeates all aspects of dissidents’ lives. Some stop voicing their opinions and abandon their activities altogether; others continue to exercise their rights, but live in constant dread of being punished. Many more never express dissent to avoid reprisals. As human rights defender Rodolfo Bartelemí Coba told Human Rights Watch in March 2009, “We live 24 hours a day ready to be detained.” Ten days after making that statement, Bartelemí was arrested and taken to prison without trial, where he remains today.

While this report documents a systematic pattern of repression, it does not intend to suggest that there are no outlets for dissent whatsoever in Cuba. The last three years have, for example, witnessed the emergence of an independent Cuban blogosphere, critical lyrics by musicians, and most recently a series of government-organized public meetings to reflect on Cuban socialism.

Upon closer examination, however, these examples show just how circumscribed spaces of dissent are and, as a result, how incredibly limited their impact is on society on the whole. While some bloggers speak to problems in Cuba, they must publish their work through back channels—saving documents on memory sticks and uploading entries through illegal connections. Because an hour of internet use costs one-third of Cubans’ monthly wages and is available exclusively in a few government-run centers, only a tiny fraction of Cubans have the chance to read such blogs—including, ironically, bloggers themselves. Some bands perform lyrics that criticize the government, but their songs are banned from the airwaves, their performances shut down, and their members harassed and arbitrarily detained. And while it is true that Raúl Castro’s government organized meetings recently to reflect on Cuban socialism, the agenda for these discussions explicitly prohibited any talk of reforming the single-party system.

Cuba has made important advances in the progressive realization of some economic, social, and cultural rights such as education and healthcare. For example, UNESCO has concluded that there is near-universal literacy on the island and UNICEF has projected that the country is on track to achieve most of the Millennium Development Goals. However, the stark reality is that this progress has not been matched in respect for civil and political rights.

The Raúl Castro government has at times signaled a willingness to reconsider its long-standing disregard for human rights norms. In February 2008, Cuba signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), and commuted the death sentences of all prisoners except for three individuals charged with terrorism. Yet the Castro government has yet to ratify the ICCPR and ICESCR, and continues to flout many of the treaties’ core principles. And Cuban law still allows individuals who undermine the independence of the state to be sentenced to death.

The Cuban government has for years refused to recognize the legitimacy of independent human rights monitoring and has adamantly refused to allow international monitors, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross and international nongovernmental organizations like Human Rights Watch, to visit the island and investigate human rights conditions. In researching this report, Human Rights Watch made repeated written requests to the Raúl Castro government for meetings with authorities and formal authorization to conduct a fact-finding mission to the island. As in the past, the Cuban government did not respond to any of our requests.

As a result, Human Rights Watch decided to conduct a fact-finding mission to Cuba without official permission in June and July 2009. During this trip, Human Rights Watch researchers conducted extensive interviews in seven of the island’s fourteen provinces. We also conducted numerous interviews via telephone from New York City. In total, we carried out more than 60 in-depth interviews with human rights defenders, journalists, former political prisoners, family members of current political prisoners, members of the clergy, trade unionists, and other Cuban citizens.

Those interviews, together with extensive research from January to November 2009, are the basis of the following findings:

The Legal Foundation of Repression in Cuba

Cuba’s laws empower the state to criminalize virtually all forms of dissent. Article 62 of the Cuban constitution explicitly prohibits Cubans from exercising their basic rights against the “ends of the socialist state.” Cubans who dare to criticize the government are subject to draconian criminal and “pre-criminal” charges, such as “dangerousness.” They are exempted from due process guarantees. They are denied meaningful judicial protection. And they are left without recourse to international human rights mechanisms.

A person is considered to be in a state of dangerousness due to antisocial behavior if the person... lives, like a social parasite, off the work of others.

—Article 73 of the Criminal Code, on one kind of “antisocial behavior” that constitutes “dangerousness.”

Political Prisoners

Raúl Castro’s government has imprisoned scores of political prisoners using laws criminalizing dissent. In particular, Cuba has relied on a “dangerousness” provision that allows authorities to imprison individuals for exercising their fundamental freedoms, on the grounds that their activities contradict “socialist morality.” The provision has more broadly been applied to non-dissident Cubans who choose not to work for the government, and are thus viewed as a threat. Meanwhile, Raúl Castro continues to imprison scores of dissidents unjustly sentenced for exercising their fundamental freedoms under Fidel Castro, including 53 human rights defenders, journalists, civil society leaders, and other dissenters arrested in a massive 2003 crackdown.

The authorities were always threatening me, saying that if I did not distance myself from ‘the opposition’—if I did not change my behavior—I was going to be arrested. I told them, “You have to prove I committed a crime, but I haven’t done anything.”

—William Reyes Mir, who belonged to an unofficial political group in Banes. Reyes was arrested in September 2007 and sentenced to two years of forced labor for “dangerousness.”

Due Process Violations

Cuba systematically violates the due process rights of dissenters from the moment they are arrested through their sham trials. Political detainees are routinely denied access to legal counsel and family visits, held in inhumane and dangerous conditions, and subjected to forced interrogations. Neither detainees nor their families are adequately informed about the charges against them, and political detainees may be held for months or years without ever being formally tried for a crime. Nearly all trials of political detainees are closed hearings lasting less than one hour, during which dissidents are subjected to politically motivated rulings and even falsification of evidence by security officials and prosecutors. Human Rights Watch was unable to document a single case under the Raúl Castro government where a court acquitted a political detainee.

[The police] picked me up at 5:50 am while I was at home sleeping, and by 8:30 that morning they were already reading me my sentence... They detained me on July 5 but the ruling they gave me had been written on July 3. They didn’t allow me to have a lawyer, and the hearing was conducted behind closed doors, without my family. The trial lasted 15 or 20 minutes.

—Alexander Santos Hernández, a political activist from Gibara, on his July 2006 arrest and summary trial. Santos was sentenced to four years for “dangerousness.”

Inhumane Prisons

Cuba’s prison officials, like the Cuban government as a whole, punish dissent. Conditions for political prisoners and common prisoners alike are overcrowded, unhygienic, and unhealthy, leading to extensive malnutrition and illness. Political prisoners who criticize the government, refuse to participate in ideological “re-education,” or engage in hunger strikes or other forms of protest are routinely subjected to extended solitary confinement, beatings, restrictions of visits, and the denial of medical care. Prisoners have no effective complaint mechanism to seek redress, granting prison authorities total impunity. Taken together, these forms of cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment may rise to the level of torture.

The cells are one meter or one-and-a-half meters wide by two meters long. You sleep during the day on a concrete platform and at night you get a mattress, which is removed at daybreak. You are not allowed to have any belongings, and the food is terrible... Some cells have a little window, others none. Some cells have light, others don’t.

—Víctor Yunier Fernández Martínez describes the conditions in solitary confinement, where he was sent repeatedly during his imprisonment for “dangerousness” from 2006 to 2009. Fernández, a political activist, was incarcerated in the prisons of Canaleta and 1580.

Everyday Forms of Repression

Dissenters are punished daily in nearly every aspect of their lives. The Cuban government routinely uses short-term arrests to harass dissidents or prevent them from participating in groups or activities considered “counterrevolutionary.” Dissidents are beaten, publicly humiliated, and threatened by security officers and groups of civilians tied to the state. They are denied work, fired from jobs, and fined, placing significant financial strain on their families. They are prevented from exercising their right to travel within and outside of the island. And they are subjected to invasive surveillance, which violates their privacy and gathers information that can later be used to imprison them. These tactics of repression are consistently visited on the families of dissenters as well.

The rapid response brigade was waiting for us, carrying wooden bats and metal rods, as though they were ready to beat us. They insulted us, saying we were worms, the scum of society. They called my mother and me whores and sluts.

—Rufina Velásquez González describing one of the groups that harassed her and her parents when they set out on a peaceful march across Cuba in December 2006 calling for the release of all political prisoners.

State of Fear

Cuba’s systematic repression has created a pervasive climate of fear among dissidents and, when it comes to expression of political views, in Cuban society as a whole. This climate hinders the exercise of basic rights, pressuring Cubans to show their allegiance to the state, while discouraging any form of criticism. Dissidents feel as though they are constantly being watched—a sense that fosters distrust among peers and self-censorship. They fear they will be arrested at any moment, and have no confidence in the willingness of the government to protect their rights or give them a fair trial. This climate of fear has led to the near-complete isolation of dissidents from their communities, friends, and sometimes even families, which together with other forms of repression has had profound emotional consequences, including depression and signs of trauma.

No one is allowed to talk to me. People who come to my house are immediately called by state security and reprimanded. Then these people—for fear of losing their jobs, for fear that [the authorities] will take it out on someone in their family—simply stop talking to me.

—Former political prisoner Eduardo Pacheco Ortíz, who was imprisoned for “dangerousness” in January 2008, describes his treatment by neighbors in Matanzas since his release.

Recommendations

Given the effectiveness of Cuba’s repressive machinery and the Castro government’s firm grip on power, the pressure needed to bring progress on human rights cannot come solely from within Cuba. In order to succeed, it must be supported by effective pressure on the part of the international community. Currently, this effective pressure—whether from Latin American countries, the United States, Canada, or Europe—is lacking.

Efforts by the US government to press for change by imposing a sweeping economic embargo have proven to be a costly and misguided failure. The embargo imposes indiscriminate hardship on the Cuban population as a whole, and has done nothing to improve the situation of human rights in Cuba. Rather than isolating Cuba, the policy has isolated the United States, enabling the Castro government to garner sympathy abroad while simultaneously alienating Washington’s potential allies.

There is no question: the Cuban government bears full and exclusive responsibility for the abuses it commits. However, so long as the embargo remains in place, the Castro government will continue to manipulate US policy to cast itself as a Latin American David standing up to the US Goliath, a role it exploits skillfully.

Just as the US embargo policy has proved counterproductive, so have the policies of the European Union and Canada failed to exert effective pressure on Cuba. The EU’s Common Position sets clear human rights benchmarks for economic cooperation with Cuba, but the cost of noncompliance has been insufficient to compel change by the Castro government. Canada lacks such benchmarks, promoting significant investment in the island at the same time as it decries the Cuban government’s abuses.

Worse still, Latin American governments across the political spectrum have been reluctant to criticize Cuba, and in some cases have openly embraced the Castro government, despite its dismal human rights record. Countries like Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador hold Cuba up as a model, while others quietly admit its abuses even as they enthusiastically push for Cuba’s reintegration into regional bodies such as the Organization of American States (OAS). The silence of the Latin governments condones Cuba’s abusive behavior, and perpetuates a climate of impunity that allows repression to continue. This is particularly troubling coming from a region in which many countries have learned firsthand the high cost of international indifference to state-sponsored repression.

Not only have all of these policies—US, European, Canadian, and Latin American—failed individually to improve human rights in Cuba, but their divided and even contradictory nature has allowed the Cuban government to evade effective pressure and deflect criticism of its practices.

To remedy this continuing failure, the US must end its failed embargo policy. It should shift the goal of its Cuba strategy away from regime change and toward promoting human rights. In particular, it should replace its sweeping bans on travel and trade with Cuba with more effective forms of pressure.

This move would fundamentally shift the balance in the Cuban government’s relationship with its own people and the international community. No longer would Cuba be able to manipulate the embargo as a pretext for repressing its own people. Nor would other countries be able to blame the US policy for their own failures to hold Cuba accountable for its abuses.

However, ending the current embargo policy by itself will not bring an end to Cuba’s repression. Only a multilateral approach will have the political power and moral authority to press the Cuban government to end its repressive practices. Therefore, before changing its policy, the US should work to secure commitments from the EU, Canada, and Latin American allies that they will join together to pressure Cuba to meet a single, concrete demand: the immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners.

In order to enforce this demand, the multilateral coalition should establish a clear definition of who constitutes a political prisoner—one that includes all Cubans imprisoned for exercising their fundamental rights, including those incarcerated for the pre-criminal offense of “dangerousness” and the 53 dissidents still in prison from the 2003 crackdown. It should also set a firm deadline for compliance, granting the Raúl Castro government six months to meet this demand.

Most important, the members of the coalition should commit themselves to holding the Cuban government accountable should it fail to release its political prisoners. The penalties should be significant enough that they bear real consequences for the Cuban government. And they should be focused enough to target the Cuban leadership, rather than the Cuban population on the whole. Options include adopting targeted sanctions on the government officials, such as travel bans and asset freezes; and withholding any new forms of foreign investment until Cuba meets the demand.

During the six-month period, Latin American countries, Canada, the EU, and the US should be able to choose individually whether or not to impose their own restrictions on Cuba. Some may enact targeted sanctions on Cuba’s leadership immediately, while others may put no restrictions on Cuba during that time.

Regardless, if the Castro government is still holding political prisoners at the end of six months, Cuba must be held accountable. All of the countries must honor their agreement and impose joint punitive measures on Cuba that will effectively pressure the Castro government to release its political prisoners.

On the other hand, if the Cuban government releases all political prisoners—whether before or after the six month period is complete—these punitive measures should be lifted. Then, the multilateral coalition should devise a sustained, incremental strategy to push the Raúl Castro government to improve its human rights record. This strategy should focus on pressuring Cuba to reform its laws criminalizing dissent, dismantle the repressive institutions that enforce them, and end abuses of basic rights. And the impact of the strategy should be monitored regularly to ensure it is not creating more repression than it curbs.

27-02-2010 om 23:37 geschreven door Vorser-Raadgever  

Beste leden, sympathisanten, vrienden, kennissen,

u zal al wel vernomen hebben dat het momenteel niet zo goed gaat met de Liga voor Mensenrechten. Geen gebrek aan enthousiasme, geen gebrek aan werk, geen gebrek aan ideeën voor actie, maar wel een acuut financieel probleem. De Minister van Cultuur Joke Schauvlieghe schrapt de subsidies voor de Liga voor Mensenrechten in Vlaanderen. Deze subsidies zijn essentieel voor het voortbestaan van de Liga.

Vlaanderen heeft nood aan een mensenrechtenbeweging, aan een Liga die ook hier te lande de schendingen van mensenrechten aanklaagt en bekampt, anders dreigen wij onze vrijheden - die ons welzijn en welvaart hebben opgeleverd - prijs te geven aan een ongenuanceerd veiligheidsdenken dat drijft op angst.

Door internationale organisaties wordt er gehamerd op de nood aan méér controle op naleving van mensenrechten op nationaal niveau.

Nu het antwoord van de Minister duidelijk is, hebben wij geen andere keus dan een Red de Liga-actie op het getouw te zetten, om aan te tonen dat er voor de beslissing tot schrapping van de subsidies geen draagvlak is, maar dat er in tegendeel wel een breed draagvlak is voor een Liga voor Mensenrechten.

De Liga kreeg al een hoop steunbetuigingen, waarvoor dank.
Wellicht hebben velen van jullie ook concrete ideeën die kunnen bijdragen aan het voortbestaan van de Liga.
Indien je mensen kent of zelf geïnteresseerd bent om mee te denken hoe we actie kunnen voeren nodigen we je graag uit:

Red de Liga - actiebijeenkomst

woensdag 10 maart 2010
19u30 in het Trefpunt, Bij Sint-Jacobs 18, 9000 Gent

Agenda:
- verwelkoming door de voorzitter
- korte situatieschets
- mogelijke steuninitiatieven… aan u het woord

We hopen van harte op uw opkomst en actieve steun!

Graag horen we in een mailtje of telefoontje of je komt: info@mensenrechten.be of 09/223.07.38

En o ja… spread the word !

Je kan de Liga nu al steunen door lid te worden. Klik HIER.

Of word lid van onze facebookgroup, gratis en niet voor niks.

tot woensdag 10 maart,
het bestuur en de staf van de Liga

Vlaanderen dreigt haar mensenrechtenorganisatie te verliezen!

De Liga voor Mensenrechten verliest haar werkingsmiddelen. Hiermee wordt niet alleen het voortbestaan van de organisatie bedreigd maar verdwijnt ook haar waardevolle maatschappelijke functie: opkomen voor mensenrechten in Vlaanderen.

De Liga voor Mensenrechten werd in 2005 erkend als sociaal-culturele beweging. Hierdoor ontving ze voor 6 jaar het minimumbedrag aan subsidie van het ministerie van Cultuur. Minister van Cultuur Joke Schauvliege besliste dat de Liga voor de volgende beleidsperiode (2011-2015) geen aanspraak meer maakt op deze subsidie. Hierbij negeert ze een positief advies van de Beroepscommissie. De Liga verliest niet alleen al haar werkingsmiddelen, maar ook de loonsubsidies die enkel aan gesubsidieerde verenigingen toegekend worden. Het voortbestaan van de Liga voor Mensenrechten komt in het gedrang.

De Liga voor Mensenrechten is de enige organisatie in Vlaanderen die opkomt voor mensenrechten in eigen land. De Liga analyseert wetgeving en vecht regelgeving die mensenrechten schendt, aan. Zo zorgde de organisatie onder meer voor aanpassing van de wet op de bijzondere onderzoeksmethoden, de jeugdbeschermingswet en de anti-terrorismewet. Ze bekwam de vernietiging van het Antwerpse straatverbod en de veroordeling van het Vlaams Blok wegens racisme. De Liga geeft twee tijdschriften uit, TvMR - Tijdschrift voor Mensenrechten en FATIK - Tijdschrift voor Strafbeleid en Gevangeniswezen. Ze maakt publicaties over mensenrechtelijke problemen in België en organiseert acties en activiteiten.
De administratie Cultuur looft de expertise die aanwezig is binnen de Liga, maar besliste negatief over de subsidies omdat de Liga te weinig sensibiliseert en 'te klassieke methoden hanteert om haar publiek aan te spreken'.

De Liga voor Mensenrechten vraagt een onderhoud met de minister van Cultuur om de situatie te bespreken. Zo hoopt zij alsnog een financiële mogelijkheid te vinden om haar bestaan te vrijwaren.
Daarnaast stapt de Liga ook naar de Raad van State om de beslissing van de minister aan te vechten.

De maatschappelijke functie van de Liga is duidelijk: zij waakt over het respect voor mensenrechten en klaagt schendingen aan. Zonder financiële middelen kan zij deze rol maar moeilijk vervullen. Kan Vlaanderen zich permitteren om een organisatie die de mensenrechten promoot te laten verdwijnen in tijden waar meer en meer beslissingen worden genomen die de privacy aantasten, waar de rechten van gedetineerden nog steeds in de marge staan en waar de controle op de burger verscherpt wordt? De Liga voor Mensenrechten werd opgericht om als autonome organisatie de mensenrechten te promoten in een Vlaamse context, naast haar Franstalige zusterorganisatie de Ligue des Droits de l'Homme. Is er dan geen (financiële) ruimte meer voor mensenrechten in Vlaanderen?

Word lid van onze facebookgroup.
Of discussieer mee op ons forum.
Of beter nog, word lid van de Liga als signaal dat de Liga moet blijven bestaan...

27-02-2010 om 00:39 geschreven door Vorser-Raadgever  

25-02-2010 om 22:10 geschreven door Vorser-Raadgever  

La Grèce en grève générale contre l’austérité

Les Grecs protestent contre le gel des salaires et la hausse des impôts décidés par le gouvernement. La grève paralyse le pays, alors que des représentants de l’Union européenne sont sur place pour évaluer les mesures annoncées

La Grèce était presque totalement paralysée mercredi par une grève générale organisée par les grandes centrales syndicales contre la cure de rigueur décidée par le gouvernement socialiste pour sortir le pays d’une crise financière et budgétaire sans précédent.

Depuis minuit, les transports aériens et maritimes sont à l’arrêt, tandis que les dessertes ferroviaires sont pratiquement toutes interrompues. Les bus et une ligne de métro fonctionnaient cependant à Athènes pour permettre aux grévistes de se rendre aux manifestations prévues par les syndicats dans le centre de la capitale à la mi-journée et les taxis ne s’étaient pas joints à la grève.

D’autres manifestations devaient se dérouler dans les grandes villes de Grèce, notamment à Salonique (nord), la deuxième ville du pays.

Le front syndical du parti communiste ultra orthodoxe, le Pame, a appelé à des manifestations séparées des autres organisations syndicales.

La grève devait entraîner la fermeture des écoles, administrations et tribunaux, tandis que les banques, hôpitaux et grandes entreprises du secteur public fonctionnaient au ralenti.

Publicité

Pas d’information, pas d’école, pas de transport

Le pays est également privé de toute information des radios et télévisions en raison du ralliement du syndicat des journalistes, qui sanctionne ses membres s’ils ne participent pas à la grève. Les journaux ne devaient pas paraître jeudi.

Ecoles, hôpitaux, ministères et perceptions seront fermés dans le cadre de ce mouvement, qui coïncide avec une visite de responsables de l’Union européenne venus évaluer si Athènes avait pris les bonnes mesures pour réduire son déficit budgétaire, supérieur à 10% du PIB.

Les syndicats des secteurs public et privé, représentant la moitié des salariés, ont appelé à un arrêt de travail de 24 heures afin de rejeter le plan d’austérité, qui affectera surtout, selon eux, les classes défavorisées.

«Nous demandons au gouvernement de ne pas céder aux désirs des marchés, de faire des besoins de la population sa priorité et de privilégier un panachage de mesures économiques et sociales qui ne conduisent pas à la récession mais à une relance de l’emploi», a déclaré Yannis Panagopoulos, qui dirige un syndicat du secteur privé, GSEE.

ADEDY, syndicat de la fonction publique, compte d’ores et déjà organiser de nouvelles manifestations après la journée d’action de mercredi - la première à laquelle participent à la fois le public et le privé contre la politique du gouvernement socialiste de Georges Papandréou.

24-02-2010 om 22:44 geschreven door Vorser-Raadgever  

How NGOs are Profiting Off a Grave Situation

Haiti and the Aid Racket

By ASHLEY SMITH

It's now more than a month since the earthquake that laid waste to Port-au-Prince, killing more than 200,000 people and thrusting millions of people into the most desperate conditions.

But according to the U.S. government, Haitians have a lot to be thankful for.

On February 12, the U.S. Ambassador to Haiti Ken Merten boasted, "In terms of humanitarian aid delivery...frankly, it's working really well, and I believe that this will be something that people will be able to look back on in the future as a model for how we've been able to sort ourselves out as donors on the ground and responding to an earthquake."

Bill Quigley, the legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights, had a simple response to Merten's claim: "What? Haiti is a model of how the international government and donor community should respond to an earthquake? The ambassador must be overworked and need some R&R. Look at the facts."

What are the facts? The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reports that "more than 3 million people--one in every three Haitians--were severely affected by the earthquake, of whom 2 million need regular food aid. Over 1.1 million people are homeless, many of them still living under sheets and cardboard in makeshift camps. The government of Haiti estimates that at least 300,000 people were injured during the quake."

So far, the relief effort has only managed to provide 270,000 people with basic shelters like tents. More than 1 million people still have little access to food and water and have to scrape by to find sustenance. Even worse, because the relief operation is so inefficient, Haitians report that some of the food spends so long at the airport that it is rotten by the time it gets to the hungry.

On February 7, thousands of Haitians marched in the Petionville suburb of Port-au-Prince to protest their desperate circumstances and the failure of aid delivery.

Those conditions will only worsen as the rainy season approaches. Médicins sans Frontières (MSF) summed up the grave situation:

It's hard to believe that four weeks after the quakes, so many people still live under bedsheets in camps and on the street...One can only wonder how there could be such a huge gap between the promise of a massive financial influx into the country and the slow pace of distribution. MSF is concerned that with the onset of the rainy season, we'll be facing new medical emergencies, when people who are living without shelter come to us with diarrhea or respiratory infections.

* * *

THE U.S. ambassador couldn't be more wrong about the relief operation in Haiti.

While some NGOs like Partners in Health have done and are doing amazing work to provide services for quake victims, overall, the catastrophe in Haiti revealed the worst aspects of the U.S. government and the NGO aid industry.

As many analysts have noted, the U.S. in fact used its "relief" operation to disguise a military occupation of Haiti, intended to prevent a flood of refugees reaching the U.S., impose even greater sweatshop development on Haiti, and signal to the rest of Latin America, the Caribbean and the world's most powerful governments that U.S. aims to reassert its power in the region.

As a result, relief aid from the U.S. has played second fiddle to its imperial ambitions--and the NGO-centered aspect of its response is an important part of its strategy.

Instead of aiding the Haitian state and building up its capacity to handle the crisis, the U.S. is funneling $379 million in aid through its own agencies and then through NGOs. According to the Associated Press:

Each American dollar roughly breaks down like this: 42 cents for disaster assistance, 33 cents for U.S. military aid, nine cents for food, nine cents to transport the food, five cents for paying Haitian survivors for recovery efforts, just less than one cent to the Haitian government, and about half a cent to the Dominican Republic.

Most of the privately raised funds have been funneled to NGOs that have a checkered history in Haiti, not ones with a real commitment to invigorating Haitian self-organization. As Bill Quigley writes:

Donations for Haiti to private organizations have exceeded $644 million. Over $200 million has gone to the Red Cross, which had 15 people working on health projects in Haiti before the earthquake. About $40 million has gone to Partners in Health, which had 5,000 people working on health in Haiti before the quake.

The big NGOs, which are getting the bulk of the money, see the crisis as an enormous opportunity to raise funds and their profile. Thus, instead of a centralized and logical relief effort, something only a sovereign state could provide, the NGOs are competing with one another, literally branding areas they serve with their logos. As a result of this competition, they provide spotty and chaotic relief provision. According to the British medical journal The Lancet, the NGOs are:

jostling for position, each claiming that they are doing the most for earthquake survivors. Some agencies even claim that they are "spearheading" the relief effort. In fact, as we only too clearly see, the situation in Haiti is chaotic, devastating and anything but coordinated.

Polluted by the internal power politics and the unsavory characteristics seen in many big corporations, large aid agencies can be obsessed with raising money through their own appeal efforts. Media coverage as an end in itself is too often an aim of their activities. Marketing and branding have too high a profile. Perhaps worst of all, relief efforts in the field are sometimes competitive, with little collaboration between agencies, including smaller, grassroots charities that may have better networks in affected counties, and so are well placed to immediately implement emergency relief.

Even worse, the NGOs, because of their close collaboration with the U.S. military, have adopted a paranoid obsession with security to the detriment of providing actual help. According to Sasha Kramer, a co-founder of the non-profit Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods who was in Haiti at the time of the earthquake and remains there today:

One friend showed me the map used by all of the larger NGOs, where Port-au-Prince is divided into security zones: yellow, orange, red. Red zones are restricted; in the orange zones, all of the car windows must be rolled up, and they cannot be visited past certain times of the day; even in the yellow zone, aid workers are often not permitted to walk through the streets, and spend much of their time riding through the city from one office to another in organizational vehicles.

The creation of these security zones has been like the building of a wall, a wall reinforced by language barriers and fear, rather than iron rods--a wall that, unlike many of the buildings in Port-au-Prince, did not crumble during the earthquake.

Fear, much like violence, is self-perpetuating. When aid workers enter communities radiating fear, it is offensive, the perceived disinterest in communicating with the poor majority is offensive, driving through impoverished communities with windows rolled up and armed security guards is offensive...

Despite the good intentions of the many aid workers swarming around the UN base, much of the aid coming through the larger organizations is still blocked in storage, waiting for the required UN and U.S. military escorts that are seen as essential for distribution. Meanwhile, people in the camps are suffering, and their tolerance is waning.

* * *

THE U.S. policy of bypassing the Haitian state to fund NGOs is nothing new--this has been U.S. practice in the Third World since the turn to neoliberalism in the 1970s.

The U.S. has used IMF and World Bank structural adjustment programs to force Third World governments to privatize government industry, cut wages and government programs, lower trade barriers, and open economies to U.S. trade and investment. At the same time, the U.S. and corporate donors started funding NGOs to address the social crisis created by neoliberal policies.

As David Harvey argues in his book A Short History of Neoliberalism:

The rise of advocacy groups and NGOs has...accompanied the neoliberal turn and increased spectacularly since 1980 or so. The NGOs have in many instances stepped into the vacuum in social provision left by the withdrawal of the state from such activities. This amounts to privatization by NGO. In some instances, this has helped accelerate further state withdrawal from social provision. NGOs thereby function as "Trojan horses for neoliberal globalization."

The NGOs are, in fact, businesses in their own right. They sport well-paid bureaucrats that raise money off of the disastrous impact of neoliberalism around the world. They are not accountable to the local populations they supposedly serve, but instead to the international donors that fund them--most often, corporate-backed formations like George Soros's Open Society Institute and capitalist governments.

Moreover, given that NGOs can pay local leaders more than either the government or social movements, they often recruit people who would traditionally lead leftist movements. As Mike Davis in The Planet of Slums:

Third World NGOs have proven brilliant at co-opting local leadership as well as hegemonizing the social space traditionally occupied by the Left. Even if there are some celebrated exceptions--such as the militant NGOs so instrumental in creating the World Social Forums--the broad impact of the NGO/"civil society revolution"...has been to bureaucratize and deradicalize urban social movements.

Davis argues that NGOs are, in fact, a form of "soft imperialism." They play a role very similar to the one that missionary religious institutions played in the earlier history of empire. They provide moral cover--a civilizing mission of helping the hapless heathens--for the powers that are plundering the society. And just as religious institutions justified imperial war, many NGOs, abandoning their traditional standpoint of neutrality in conflicts, have become advocates of military intervention.

Nowhere is this pattern more clear than in Haiti. The U.S. convinced the dictator Baby Doc Duvalier in the 1980s to implement a neoliberal development plan which Haitians call "the plan of death," which dropped tariffs on American agriculture, encouraged sweatshop development in Port-au-Prince and opened tourist resorts for the international elite.

Predictably, the plan produced a social catastrophe; it increased absolute poverty by 60 percent. But the Haitian poor, workers and peasants rose up to build a mass movement, Lavalas, that eventually elected Jean-Bertrand Aristide president in 1990 on a platform of anti-neoliberal reform.

The U.S. saw Aristide's mild reformism as a threat, backed a coup in 1991 and used the coup regime's reign of terror to crush the Lavalas social movement. It also convinced Aristide to implement the "plan of death" as the condition of his restoration in 1994. Under threat from the U.S., Aristide and his successor, René Préval implemented much of the plan.

The U.S. used yet another coup against Aristide in 2004 and another coup regime to force through the rest of the plan. Now, Haiti has the most neoliberal economy in Latin American and the Caribbean.

Thus, as noted Haitian academic Robert Fatton argues, "The emasculation of the state is no accident...It is partly the consequence of the neoliberal regime implanted in the country by the major international financial institutions. By advocating the withdrawal of the state from its social and regulating obligations, and by promoting the supremacy of the market, this regime has contributed to an economic, political and social disaster."

At the very same time, the U.S., other powers and the international donors started funding the NGOs. Soon, the World Bank reported that there were 10,000 NGOs in the country, doing everything from trash collection to health care and food provision in a chaotic patchwork of services that have replaced the incapacitated state.

These NGOs are non-governmental only in name. Peter Hallward documents inDamming the Flood that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and other similar government bureaucracies from other countries provide 70 percent of the funding for NGOs. The other 30 percent comes from corporate formations and individual contributors.

Unsurprisingly, as Hallward argues, "the bulk of USAID money that goes to Haiti and to other countries in the region is explicitly designed to pursue interests--the promotion of a secure investment climate, the nurturing of links with local business elites, the preservation of a docile and low-wage labor force, and so on."

Haitians now commonly refer to their own country as the "Republic of NGOs." But that is a misnomer, since Haitians have no democratic control over the NGOs. In reality, Haiti has been ruled by an American NGO Raj.

* * *

WHILE SOME NGOs like Partners in Health have been set up to develop Haitian grassroots self-organization and control, most major NGOs have been accomplices in the neoliberal catastrophe the U.S. wrought in Haiti.

First of all, the NGOs have reproduced and exacerbated class inequality in Haiti. Since the NGOs can pay much better than anyone else, including the Haitian state, they have swept up middle class professionals into their ranks. Haitian actually now call them the "NGO class." As anthropologist Mark Schuller writes:

In addition to higher salaries, NGO employees have access to many privileges: clean drinking water, electricity to charge cell hones, e-mail and the ever-prized U.S. visa. These privileges in turn plug individuals into the global economy. People's first visits to the U.S. solidified neoliberal ideologies. This artificial, dependent middle class--the "NGO class"--thus directly support a form of economic globalization, accomplishes ideological work and further stratifies the Haitian population, selecting a chosen few for privileges denied Haiti's poor majority.

The NGOs themselves are in the business of poverty, not its eradication, and they have proliferated in lockstep with the collapse in the Haitian standard of living. This has led many Haitians to rightly see them as profiting off their crisis.

As Sove Lavi told Schuller, the NGOs "take the illness [of AIDS] and turn it into a business. They let people die...Thanks to this illness, many people have become gran neg [bigwigs], many people have become rich. Many people drive fancy cars, fancy motorcycles. Many people are achte [making a lot of] money on the backs of people who are living with the illness. Many people living with the illness, we continue to die."

These NGOs have left in their wake a litany of projects that, far from improving the condition of impoverished Haitians, has in fact worsened it.

Anthropologist Timothy Schwartz documents the disastrous impact of the NGOs in his book Travesty in Haiti. In particular, he shows how CARE International--which claimed its mission in Haiti was to provide food aid to the "poorest of the poor"--not only failed in its mission, but also actually exacerbated the food crisis.

When the U.S. implemented its "plan of death" in Haiti, which undercut peasant agriculture and flooded the market with subsidized U.S. products, it caused a food crisis. Peasants were no longer able to find a market for their produce, and were therefore thrust into poverty, often unable to meet their own food needs because of their collapsed standard of living. They then became dependent on food aid.

USAID, in turn, funded CARE International to feed the impoverished peasants. The NGO began to distribute U.S. crops as food aid, during both bad and good harvests, further undermining Haitian peasants ability to compete for the market. Often, the food aid was taken by local elites and sold on the market, with the CARE brand still affixed to the packaging. CARE seemed to care so little that it never really followed up on the consequences of its food aid program.

Meanwhile, it put on conferences in fancy hotels inside and outside Haiti for its U.S. government and corporate backers. Schwartz writes that this amounted to "a perversion of American charitable ideals, with its false claims to be aiding 'the poorest of the poor' when what it was really doing was throwing exquisite banquets at plush hotels, while carrying out U.S. political policy in the interests of international venture capitalist and industrialists."

In another example, Schwartz tells the story of NGO-sponsored orphanages that degenerated into a cover for trafficking in children.

NGOs like World Vision, Compassion International and Christian Aid Missions collectively sponsor tens of thousands of children in orphanages. On the surface, this sounds like a benevolent plan. But as Schwartz shows, the middle-class operators of the orphanages took the money from the NGOs and ran a scam.

In some cases, these operators housed not actual orphans, but children of the local elite. In other cases, they offered money to impoverished Haitians for their children, with the promise that they would be cared for, educated and given a chance at a better life. The bulk of actual orphans--impoverished street kids--didn't get places. The orphanages were filled up with middle-class kids or children bought from their parents--that is, fake orphans.

Schwartz writes that he "had zero doubt that orphanages for Haitians and for many Americans who were helping them procure funds were businesses." He calls it "false charity. I believe it is tantamount to robbing from impoverished children themselves. The money is theirs, and they are not, in the overwhelming majority of cases I encountered, getting it."

Even worse, the most cynical of the people trading in children sell the poorest of the children into slavery or the sex trade. Often, these children are marketed abroad. UNICEF reports a conservative estimate that each year, 2,000 Haitian kids are sold into the Dominican Republic alone.

Schwartz also shows how the disastrous impact of both U.S. neoliberal economic policies and the failure or complicity of the NGOs has left people so desperate that they turned to narco-trafficking as a source of income. Of course, the U.S. then uses this as a further justification for its military occupation and imposition of yet another sweatshop development plan.

Schwartz conclusions are absolutely correct:

The world's largest multinational charities--CARE, CRS, World Vision and ADRA--executed the political will of institutions, governments and lobbyists that had identified Haiti's comparative advantage as low wages--i.e. poverty--and in doing so, these charitable organization dedicated to helping the poorest of the poor wound up working to make the people of Haiti even poorer.

* * *

WHILE THE U.S. used the NGOs to help impose neoliberalism in Haiti, they also manipulated them to build political opposition to any reform movement. The U.S. stepped up funding for the NGO racket in the run-up to its second coup against Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004. At the very same time that it enforced an embargo on Aristide's government for alleged electoral manipulations, it escalated the funding of NGOs that were in opposition to Aristide.

As Hallward writes, they made "use of tried-and-tested tactics of democracy promotion. In Haiti as elsewhere, the main vehicles for delivering the policy were USAID, the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, and the International Republican Institute. Altogether, from 1994 to 2002, Washington would contribute some $70 million--a staggering sum by Haitian standards--to 'train' an appropriate political opposition to Aristide."

Many, if not most, of the NGOs that ended up organized in the elite opposition's political front, the Group of 184, and that supported the coup were on the U.S. payroll.

Such NGO collaboration with the coup completes a vicious circle--the NGOs aided and abetted the "plan of death"; exacerbated through failure, mismanagement and corruption the impact of neoliberalism on Haiti; and then supported the coup against the democratically elected government.

In so doing, they undercut the sovereignty of Haitian people, all under the gloss of helping people overcome their poverty--poverty that they, in fact, helped create.

The Marine Gen. Smedley Butler from the early decades of the 20th century said he served as a "racketeer for capitalism." The same could just as easily be applied to the NGOs and humanitarian aid today--it is a racket for empire.

24-02-2010 om 21:33 geschreven door Vorser-Raadgever  

23-02-2010 om 23:00 geschreven door Vorser-Raadgever  

Driemaal links is ook rechts

Politiek links in Vlaanderen smelt weg. Klopt het hart van de Vlamingen inderdaad rechts, zoals de recente publicatie, Rechts Vlaanderen van Henk de Smaele, beweert? Of is het eerder zo dat de kiezers zich niet meer herkennen in wat 'linkse partijen' hen te bieden hebben? De Gravensteengroep, bestaande uit leden met verschillende politieke en ideologische achtergronden, neigt naar het tweede antwoord.

Ten eerste stelt links geen structurele hervormingen meer voor, maar beperkt het zich tot een sociaal beleid. Links voert geen economische strijd meer. Ten tweede kiest links na de sterke opkomst van rechts in Vlaanderen voor de moraliserende reactie. Het morele oordeel vervangt analyse en onderzoek. Links hypothekeert hiermee zelf de mogelijkheid tot efficiënte politieke acties. Ten derde: ter compensatie van zijn slinkende kracht in Vlaanderen, teert links op de macht van de linkse partijen in Franstalig België.
Precies de weerstand van de Franstalige partijen tegen een democratische staatshervorming verhindert echter de efficiënte organisatie van een sociaal beleid. Dit beleid omvat de belangrijkste hefbomen voor een herverdeling van de welvaart, zoals fiscaliteit, sociale zekerheid en arbeidsmarktbeleid. 'Solidariteit' in België lijkt steeds meer op liefdadigheid, omdat de federale overheid geld verdeelt zonder structurele aansporing tot economische aanpassingen of tot politieke verantwoordelijkheid (onder meer door de Bijzondere Financieringswet 1989). Vlaams links biedt geen verzet, want het denkt in termen van de Belgische machtsstructuren. Zo gaat het echter voorbij aan de culturele en sociale strijd van zijn eigen verleden. De Rode Leeuwen zijn tricolore muizen geworden.

De linkse leegte

Linkse politici hebben de opmars van de (neo)-liberale politiek niet tegengehouden, integendeel: sinds het einde van de jaren 1980 hebben ze mee overheidsbedrijven geprivatiseerd, de pensioenen naar de beurs verplaatst, regelgeving en controle op de financiële markten afgebouwd (Schröder in Duitsland, Jospin in Frankrijk, het duo Blair-Brown in Groot-Brittannië, Clinton in de VS). In België tolereert links een onrechtvaardige fiscale politiek.

In deze context vormt 'solidariteit' niet langer de inzet voor een politiek-economische strijd ter verdediging van de zwakkeren. Die solidariteit garandeert zelfs geen billijke herverdeling meer. Links legitimeert de eigen inertie door te stellen dat het (neo)-liberalisme de enig overblijvende ideologie is waartegen het, ook op Europees vlak, bitter weinig vermag. Het bewijst lippendienst aan een slecht omschreven 'solidariteit', maar staat sprakeloos tegenover het onbeperkte streven naar winstmaximalisatie.
Het potentiële linkse electoraat haakt af, omdat deze voorgestelde 'solidariteit' hoofdzakelijk inspanningen vraagt van de traditioneel belangrijkste component van dat electoraat, namelijk de werkende bevolking. Opdat zij zonder morren zou bijdragen aan banken in crisis, aan schatkisten zonder bodem, en aan nieuwkomers in nood.
Links spitst zich intussen toe op het sociaal beleid. Daardoor verschuift zijn doelpubliek van de werknemers naar de sociaal hulpbehoevenden. Als deze laatste groep vandaag een linkse stem uitbrengt, dan doet ze dat om iets te behouden, niet om iets te veranderen. Tegenwoordig is er dan ook geen strijdend electoraat meer dat zich in een politieke partij verenigt. Er zijn slechts politieke partijen op zoek naar een electoraat.

Elke linkse beweging heeft een verankering in de bevolking nodig. Maar een eigen volksbeweging klinkt wel meteen verdacht voor links in Vlaanderen. Links houdt dan ook weinig rekening met de verzuchtingen van zijn traditionele electoraat uit angst voor de associatie met rechtse partijen. Met het kiezersvolk dat naar populistische partijen overloopt wil dit links niets te maken hebben. Wie van links identificeert zich immers nog met de arbeidsklasse? Niemand die in politieke zin macht heeft. Maar links denkt wel te kunnen overleven dankzij België... Zo draait de spiraal neerwaarts. Het klassieke electoraat van links kiest nu voor rechts. Wie overblijft op links kijkt naar België voor steun. België, schijnbaar de enige garantie dat rechts niet het hele politieke spectrum overneemt.

In werkelijkheid is het precies de Belgische constructie die haaks staat op een progressief project. Ondertussen lijkt Vlaams links enkel nog betekenisvol voor wie meegaat in de illusie dat België een soort non-identiteit biedt waarbinnen een louter sentimenteel voorgestelde 'solidariteit' mogelijk is. De rechtse partijen in Vlaanderen worden groter, want met zijn elitaire opstelling heeft dit links zichzelf de pas afgesneden om een volwaardige beweging te kunnen worden.
De linkse politieke actie wordt dan vervangen door het morele (voor)oordeel. Zo'n houding laat niet langer toe dat er nog kritische vragen worden gesteld bij de organisatie van de (federale) staat. Zelfs niet als die staat minder democratisch wordt en de ontwikkeling van de solidariteit steeds meer beperkt.

Vragen bij de Belgische organisatie van de "solidariteit"

Solidariteit op lange termijn verzekeren veronderstelt ingrijpende veranderingen aan de huidige status quo. Een systeem wordt pas solidair, geloofwaardig en aanvaardbaar wanneer het efficiënt, doorzichtig en met politieke verantwoordelijkheid wordt georganiseerd, wanneer het dus anders verloopt dan in België het geval is. Dit veronderstelt een duidelijke reorganisatie van de solidariteit tussen regio's, zonder de federale overheid als mistgordijn.
Geeft men met deze positie toe aan rechts in Vlaanderen? Neen, want een staatshervorming dient niet om de solidariteit af te schaffen, maar om haar mogelijk te maken als iets dat de liefdadigheid overstijgt. Een open pleidooi voor meer autonomie zou de linkse partijen in Vlaanderen juist kunnen versterken.
Zal een hervorming van de solidariteit de verarming van de bevolking in het zuiden van het land met zich meebrengen? Niet noodzakelijk. De duidelijkste verliezer van een structurele hervorming is de huidige Franstalige politieke elite, die aan invloed verliest naarmate ze verantwoordelijk wordt gesteld voor het door haar gevoerde beleid. Hoe kan dat een slechte zaak zijn voor de gewone burger?

De Belgische natiestaat verliest in elk geval op twee niveaus aan belang. Het politieke zwaartepunt verschuift naar de regio's en de economische markt kent steeds meer een Europese of zelfs globale integratie. Links heeft er dus alle belang bij de organisatie van deze veranderingen goed te begeleiden en op de evolutie te anticiperen. Indien links elk streven naar een staatshervorming, ook uit progressieve hoek, probeert te herleiden tot een voorbijgestreefd en 'egoïstisch' romantisch nationalisme, vervreemdt het verder van zijn bestaande en potentiële kiezersvolk, dat zich terecht vragen stelt bij de Belgische constructie. Belgisch links slaagt er niet in om het sociale en fiscale beleid transparant, efficiënt en met politieke verantwoordelijkheid te organiseren. Ondertussen strijdt links evenmin tegen het systeem dat de economische crisis veroorzaakte. De 'solidariteit' wordt gegijzeld door het partijpolitieke machtsspel. Ze leidt niet tot gelijkwaardigheid. Vlaams links implodeert dan ook door zijn voorkeur voor de oude Belgische machtsstructuren. Wie zich in Vlaanderen links voelt, blijft verweesd achter.

22-02-2010 om 22:28 geschreven door Vorser-Raadgever  

Burgerdoden bij NAVO-luchtaanval in Uruzgan

© AFP

Minstens 27 Afghaanse burgers zijn zondag om het leven gekomen bij een luchtaanval van de NAVO op een konvooi voertuigen in de Zuid-Afghaanse provincie Uruzgan.

Dit heeft de Afghaanse regering maandag bekendgemaakt. De raad van ministers veroordeelde de aanval in felle bewoordingen en zei dat deze 'niet te rechtvaardigen' valt.

De NAVO erkende dat inderdaad een konvooi minibussen is gebombardeerd. De NAVO dacht met een konvooi van de Taliban van doen te hebben, maar ontdekte naderhand dat er vrouwen en kinderen in de minibussen zaten.

Het konvooi bestond uit drie minibussen met alleen burgers. Naast de 27 doden, onder wie vier vrouwen en een kind, vielen er twaalf gewonden. De burgers waren onderweg naar Kandahar, zei een regeringswoordvoerder.

"Het tragische verlies van onschuldige levens doet ons bijzonder veel verdriet", zei NAVO-commandant generaal Stanley McChrystal. "Ik heb onze strijdkrachten duidelijk gemaakt dat we hier zijn om het Afghaanse volk te beschermen en dat het vertrouwen van de bevolking in onze missie wordt ondermijnd als er per ongeluk burgers worden gedood of verwond. We zullen dubbel ons best doen om dat vertrouwen te herwinnen."

McChrystal heeft zondag aan president Hamid Karzai zijn verontschuldigingen aangeboden, zei de NAVO.

Het ministerie van Defensie liet maandag weten dat er bij het NAVO-bombardement op Uruzgan geen Nederlandse militairen betrokken waren. Wel helpen de Nederlanders mee gewonden op te vangen.

© Trouw 2010,

22-02-2010 om 21:46 geschreven door Vorser-Raadgever  

Hizmetinizde – Voor al uw verkiezingsposters

21-02-2010 om 19:21 geschreven door Vorser-Raadgever  

les Islandais n’ont pas dit leur dernier mot…

19 février par Jérome Duval, Olivier Bonfond

Après avoir plongé dans la misère les peuples du Sud en endettant leurs Etats, le FMI (Fond Monétaire International) s’attaque maintenant aux peuples européens, frappés de plein fouet par la crise capitaliste internationale. Les Agences de notations, outils au service de l’oligarchie financière, jouent quant à elles pleinement leur rôle dans la course à la rentabilité sur le marché de la dette, en n’hésitant pas à sanctionner financièrement les moindres faux-pas des pays affaiblis par la crise. Mais les islandais, en imposant un referendum sur une loi irresponsable et dangereuse, ne comptent pas se soumettre aussi facilement. Le combat est certes déséquilibré, mais il n’est pas fini …

Un modèle néolibéral qui s’écroule

Comme beaucoup de pays dits «riches», l’Islande a joué et a perdu au grand jeu du néolibéralisme. Considéré comme l’un des plus riches pays de l’OCDE, l’Islande a vu son taux de chômage passer de 2% avant l’effondrement du secteur financier en octobre 2008 à 8,2% de la population active en décembre 2009. Aujourd’hui, ce petit pays de 320.000 habitants sans armée, subit de plein fouet la crise financière, avec notamment une dette qui a explosé à près de 320 % du PIB en 2009 |1| .

Après les avoir privatisé en 2003, les trois principales banques (Kaupthing, Landbanski et Glitnir) ont dû être renationalisées de toute urgence en octobre 2008 à la suite de l’implosion du système bancaire. Les échanges sur les marchés d’actions ont même été suspendus plusieurs jours à la Bourse de Reykjavik. L’Etat, qui a déboursé des millions d’euros pour la reprise en main de ces banque |2|, est au bord de la faillite et prévient qu’il ne pourra garantir que les dépôts réalisés en Islande. Pris de panique, les épargnants étrangers réclament leur argent placé dans les succursales à Londres, Berlin, La Haye ou Bruxelles. Après avoir réglé le cas des 34.000 investisseurs allemands auprès de Kaupthing Bank, la plus importante banque du pays, Londres et La Haye indemnisent leurs ressortissants lésés par la faillite de la banque en ligne Icesave, filiale de Landsbanki. Ainsi, quelques 320.000 épargnants néerlandais et britanniques récupèrent en partie leurs placements grâce à la contribution de leur Etat. Quelle belle opération pour le secteur privé : d’une part les responsabilités des banquiers islandais et de leurs succursales à l’étranger s’évaporent via la nationalisation de leurs dettes, c’est-à-dire la reprise de celles-ci par les contribuables islandais, et, d’autre part, les spéculateurs britanniques et hollandais voient leurs placements risqués garantis par leurs Etats respectifs…

Manifestation devant Althingi, le Parlement Islandais à Reykjavík

Une question se pose : comment l’Etat Islandais, vu l’état de son endettement, peut-il rembourser la Grande-Bretagne et les Pays-Bas sans mettre en péril sa population ? C’est pourtant ce que réclament avec insistance l’Union Européenne, le FMI et les pays concernés : l’Islande doit rembourser quel qu’en soit le coût humain. Le Royaume-Uni et les Pays-Bas qui insistent pour être prioritaires par rapport à d’autres créanciers, refusent tout compromis au sujet du montant à recouvrer.

Une loi imposée en catimini et qui fait insulte au peuple islandais

Austérité budgétaire, chômage en explosion, attitude agressive du FMI et de l’UE, … ces éléments provoquent une sorte d’électrochoc chez les citoyens islandais. Pendant plusieurs mois, des manifestations comme on en avait plus vu depuis plus de cinquante ans dans ce pays s’enchaînent. Tout comme celui de nombreux mouvements sociaux qui font face à la crise dans le monde, le message des islandais est relativement clair : « la crise, qu’ils la payent eux », « eux » ce sont bien entendu les responsables.

À vendre - Vendu au FMI

C’est suite à cette pression populaire que le Premier Ministre, Geir Haarde, déclarait fin 2008 qu’« il y a beaucoup d’arguments légaux qui justifient de ne pas payer». Dans le même temps, le Parlement adoptait une résolution annonçant que le remboursement serait conditionné aux «capacités de paiement» |3| du pays. De quoi préoccuper, pour ne pas dire angoisser, les bailleurs de fonds, dont le FMI. Ceux-ci agissent alors de tout leur poids en coulisse et renversent rapidement et subrepticement la situation : une loi d’indemnisation, dite loi Icesave |4|, a été approuvée dans la nuit du 30 au 31 décembre 2009 à une très courte majorité (33 voix pour et 30 contre) par le Parlement en pleine fête de fin d’année. Suivant les conseils du FMI, cette loi prévoit l’ouverture aux aides internationales, le rapprochement avec l’Union Européenne en vue d’une future adhésion et la restitution par l’Etat des 3,8 milliards d’euros d’argent public aux gouvernements néerlandais et britanniques (1,3 milliard d’euros aux Pays-Bas et 2,5 milliards d’euros au Royaume-Uni). Le fait que l’Islande puisse, par cette loi, rembourser une dette représentant près de 12.000 euros par citoyen, soit l’équivalent de près de 40% du Produit intérieur brut de l’île en 2009, rassure aussitôt les marchés et l’agence de notation Standard & Poor’s s’empresse de relever la perspective de la note de l’Islande de négative à stable. |5| Rappelons que les agences de notation exercent un vrai pouvoir discrétionnaire sur les finances des gouvernements en influant directement sur les primes de risque et taux d’intérêt : les plus «riches» et les plus solvables se voient récompensés par de bonnes notes (AAA, par exemple), agissant à la baisse sur les taux et donc sur la somme à rembourser. A contrario, les pays dit «pauvres», présentant un risque élevé d’insolvabilité, reçoivent de mauvaises notes et doivent rembourser plus d’intérêt en contrepartie d’un placement jugé «risqué».

Le peuple exige un referendum

Le président Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, après avoir reporté la signature de cette loi en soutenant avoir besoin de temps pour la promulguer, a reçu le 2 janvier 2010 une pétition de plus de 56.000 signatures, soit près du quart des électeurs du pays, demandant de rejeter cette loi et de la soumettre à un référendum. Magnus Arni Skulason, responsable du mouvement de contestation, explique lors de la remise des signatures : “c’est ainsi qu’on lui a remis cette pétition, pour lui demander de rejeter le projet de loi Icesave. Rien que le taux d’intérêt lié au remboursement permettrait de faire tourner notre système de santé pendant six mois.” |6|. Il semble que la pression populaire ait porté ses fruits puisque mardi 5 janvier 2010, le président annonce : "J’ai décidé, sur la base de l’article 26 de la Constitution, de soumettre la nouvelle loi à la nation". Ainsi, comme le prévoit la Constitution en cas de refus du président de promulguer une loi, celle-ci sera soumise à une consultation populaire. Consultation qui aura lieu le 6 mars 2010.

Les sanctions sont immédiates

Il s’agirait de laisser les citoyens décider de leur sort, alors qu’il y a de grande chance pour que cette loi injuste soit refusée ? Les marchés financiers, toujours aux aguets, réagissent au quart de tour et Standard & Poor’s menace, cette fois-ci, de rabaisser la note du pays, tandis que Fitch, l’une des trois autres grandes agences de notation, la dégrade (de BBB- à BB+) avec les conséquences que l’on sait : augmentation des sommes à rembourser pour un pays en difficulté de paiement, incitation à faire de nouveaux emprunts pour rembourser les anciens, pour, in fine, provoquer une accélération de «l’effet boule de neige» de l’endettement.
De la même manière qu’il impose ses ajustements structurels aux pays du Sud depuis la crise de la dette de 1982, le FMI dicte maintenant ses conditions ou «mesures d’austérité» aux gouvernements européens, afin de rendre prioritaire le remboursement aux créanciers quitte à amputer les budgets sociaux destinés à l’éducation, la santé, aux subventions aux produits de première nécessité, etc.

FMI et Union Européenne, même combat

Face à la situation périlleuse de l’Islande, le FMI et l’Union Européenne jouent de tout leur poids. Le FMI du « socialiste » Dominique Strauss Kahn, qui n’a jamais eu autant à sa disposition pour prêter aux pays en difficulté, attend d’être assuré du remboursement pour débloquer une tranche de prêt faisant partie d’un plan de sauvetage de 5 milliards de dollars monté en octobre 2009. Déjà bien avant l’adoption de la loi par le parlement, l’ultra libérale Union Européenne prévient qu’elle n’ouvrira ses portes de plus en plus hermétiques qu’en cas de soumission via le remboursement aux créanciers. «La Commission européenne a clairement pris fait et cause pour le Royaume-Uni, puisque son Président a indiqué dès le mois de novembre [2009] qu’il n’y aurait pas d’aide européenne tant que le cas Icesave ne serait pas résolu» (…) «l’Europe et le FMI s’apprêtent donc à accomplir un véritable exploit : ravaler un pays dont l’IDH (Indice de développement humain) s’était hissé en quelques décennies au plus haut niveau mondial au rang de pays pauvre… Conséquence : les Islandais, pour la plupart hautement qualifiés et polyglottes et travaillant beaucoup avec les pays nordiques, où ils sont très facilement assimilables, commencent déjà à émigrer (8.000 d’entre eux sont d’ors et déjà partis, ce qui est loin d’être négligeable)» |7|. L’Islande qui avait déposé en juillet 2009, une demande de candidature à l’UE, voit son processus d’adhésion compromis. Début janvier, le ministre espagnol des Affaires étrangères, Miguel Angel Moratinos, dont le pays vient de prendre la présidence tournante de l’U.E, martèle : "J’espère que les Islandais voient dans l’UE leur projet futur." |8|

La poursuite d’une ligne de crédit du FMI et l’adhésion à l’ultralibérale Union Européenne dépendent donc du remboursement d’une dette impayable pour la population, dette qui, une fois de plus, ne la concerne pas puisqu’il s’agit d’une dette privée devenue publique à la suite d’une faillite bancaire. Comme toujours, socialisation des pertes et privatisations des bénéfices est un leitmotiv du capitalisme. On remarquera d’ailleurs qu’il n’y a jamais autant eu de nationalisation totale ou partielle dans le secteur bancaire mondial depuis que celles-ci sont en difficulté…

La manipulation médiatique se met en marche

Dans un tel contexte de crise, on se doute de l’issue d’un référendum populaire : les islandais dont le quart des électeurs a déjà dit qu’il refusait le paiement d’une dette immorale et injuste rejetteront probablement le texte. Pour les dissuader, la machine médiatique s’est enclenchée : l’éloignement du FMI ou la non-adhésion à l’UE est impensable, un danger que le quotidien « de référence » français Le Monde écarte, « Car Reykjavik veut rembourser» et «le plan de sauvetage du FMI est crucial. Il reconstituerait les réserves de devises et fournirait les liquidités nécessaires au service de la dette envers l’étranger. Par ailleurs, l’adhésion à l’UE permettrait d’obtenir de meilleures conditions d’emprunt». S’il était besoin de rassurer le lecteur libéral en cas «de victoire du non», le quotidien ajoute : «De toute façon, l’Islande devra respecter les engagements approuvés en août 2009, tant par le Parlement que par la présidence : le remboursement débutera en 2017…» |9|

Les islandais n’ont pas dit leur dernier mot

Les islandais sauront-ils faire face à la déferlante médiatique qui s’annonce et rejeter comme lors du Traité Constitutionnel Européen en Irlande ou en France un projet néolibéral néfaste pour les peuples concernés ? Le FMI et l’U.E reviendront-ils à la charge malgré tout ? Quoi qu’il en soit, une chose est sûre : les citoyens sont en droit d’exiger un audit de la dette et de refuser de payer. L’Islande peut et doit refuser les conditionnalités imposées par le FMI qui s’empoche au passage les intérêts d’une dette illégale. L’intégration à une Union européenne qui est tout sauf au service des peuples, ne doit pas être une condition de plus à la négociation en cours ; elle doit être soumise à référendum. Nous soutenons le peuple islandais dans la répudiation de cette dette et insistons pour la mise en place d’autres mesures, telles que la saisie des bonus et autres avantages fiscaux de la classe capitaliste, pour rembourser les petits investisseurs. Ces derniers ont été trompés par des banquiers qui proposaient d’alléchants taux d’intérêts dans des montages financiers risqués. Pour les autres, spéculateurs en tout genre, ils doivent tout simplement assumer. Ils ont joué et perdu aux jeux hasardeux des marchés, et leurs pertes ne doivent en aucun cas être portées par les contribuables islandais. L’impôt des contribuables islandais doit au contraire servir des politiques visant la justice sociale et le respect de la nature. Par ailleurs, Gordon Brown doit sortir l’Islande de la liste des pays terroristes à laquelle il l’a inclus en octobre 2008 et présenter ses excuses au peuple d’Islande. |10|

Les Islandais n’ont pas dit leur dernier mot…

20-02-2010 om 22:54 geschreven door Vorser-Raadgever  

18-02-2010 om 23:21 geschreven door Vorser-Raadgever  

De Nederlandse Wereldomroep, maagdenvlies en een ontslagen Egyptische blogger

17-02-2010 om 00:00 geschreven door Vorser-Raadgever  

The internet in the Arab world has a snowball effect; now that the snowball is rolling, it can no longer be stopped. Getting bigger and stronger, it is bound to crush down all obstacles.
In addition, to the stress caused by the Arab bloggers, a new forum was opened for Aran activists; Facebook. Arab activists have been using Facebook in the utmost creative way to support the democracy movement in the region, a region that has one of the highest rates of repression in the world. Unlike other regions where oppressive countries (like China, Iran and Burma) represent the exception, oppression can be found everywhere in the Arab world.
The number of Arab internet users interested in political affairs does not exceed a few thousands, mainly represented by internet activists and bloggers, out of 58 million internet users in the Arab world. As few as they are, they have succeeded in shedding some light on the corruption and repression of the Arab governments and dictatorships. The Arab governments have tried numerous ways to silence those activists with no success. So, now these governments stand helplessly in front of the power of these activists and the support they have gained from the public.

Getting Back at Journalists and Bloggers
Arab governments and their security agencies have been censoring and cracking down on traditional mass media such as newspapers (TV stations and satellite channels) seizing newspapers’ issues and stopping the emissions of TV channels. However, it’s hard to have the same control over the internet. The Arab governments can only ban or block a website after its content has been published, usually through RSS feature. Even if the website is bloc, governments cannot block its information; it can be found on other websites or blogs. For these frustrated governments, the only way to stop bloggers or activists is to punish and prosecute them. In fact, the number of the prosecuted and assaulted bloggers and internet activists largely outnumbered journalists, who also face the government’s repression. The difference between these two forms of repression is that journalists are penalized prior to publishing or airing their material, by simply seizing publications or not airing TV show, while bloggers and internet activists face repression after posting their work on the internet. Internet activists represent the largest number of prisoners of conscience in many countries, like Egypt, Syria and Tunisia.

Substantial Profits and Development Losses
It is very rare to find an Arab government without a ministry for communications and information. There is always a ministry that monitors this sector that includes internet and telephone services, both landlines and mobiles. This sector represents to the Arab governments a profitable business and whatever side affects it has, the citizens using to express their opinions and protest politically, it can be dealt with by the security agencies. The security agencies filter web content, block websites, tap phone lines and punish any rebels to the rule of the government.
Regardless of the statements issues or the conferences organized by the ministries of communications, Arab governments do not have a genuine interest in using this new technological revolution to create and develop a diversified, documented and reliable Arab content on the internet.
For example, Telecom Egypt’s revenue for the first nine months of 2009, ending in 30/9/2009, is 7742 million Egyptian pounds achieving a 3 % increase from the same period last year. The gross profit was 4175 million Egyptian pounds making a net profit of 2576 million Egyptian pounds in only nine months . At the same time, the Ministry of Communications threatened to take penal measures against mobile phone companies trying to offer cheaper service for its clients . In addition, there were around 100 cases of abduction and torture, and rape against internet activists in 2008. Therefore, Arab states don’t develop or participate in making technology but rather consume it.
In a study issued by one of the leading centers in political and strategic research in the United States, RAND Institute, it was stated that "the information revolution is real, and there is a small chance that this revolution would reach non-democratic communities. In these communities, this technology faces dictatorship that either abandons information technology and communication in their countries lagging behind, or allows this technology putting their regimes at the risk of withering away. In fact, the autocratic regimes have no choice but to give in and make way for the technology wave” .
A few Arab governments are striving to catch up with this technological revolution and become associated with it, such as the UAE and Kuwait. However, the aspiration of these governments is to increase the number of websites or increase their content. They miss that the technological revolution is measured by the change induced in society at cultural, and political, social and economic level. Nevertheless, this objective was achieved successfully by Arab internet activists.
This was stated in RAND Institute study: "The information revolution is not a game where you can pick and choose. All countries, nations, cults and cultures should be able to gain the fruits of this revolution. The fundamental part of the information revolution, the indispensable part, is freedom of expression, exchange of information and a universal access to information.”
Of course, the greatest hypocrite would not claim that the Arab governments respect or support freedom of expression or the right to access and circulate information. Consequently,
the gap between Arab governments and internet activist s is widening day after day. Governments are satisfied by taking the role of a policeman after these activists, while the activists are striving, through the use of the internet, for a democratic life.

een voorbeeld van akties van en door Egyptische bloggers naar aanleiding van het sectarische geweld dat een paar dagen geleden het leven kostte aan een aantal Koptische Christenen ....

Zoals de aandachtige lezertjes al hebben opgemerkt is ook Amira Al Tahawi bij de gevangenen. Amira Al Tahawi heeft reeds in 2008 een artikel over het sluimerend conflict tussen Koptische Christelijke en Islamitische Egyptenaren gepubliceerd op een Koptische blog:

Egyptian weekly accused of 'inciting sectarian war'

EGY 001 / 0110 / OBS 009
Incommunicado detention / Release / Ill-treatments

Egypt

January 20, 2010

The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, a joint programme of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), requests your urgent intervention in the following situation in Egypt.

Brief description of the situation:

The Observatory has been informed by reliable sources of the arbitrary detention and subsequent release of Messrs. Wael Abbas, Mostapha Al-Nagar, Ms. Israa Abdel Fatah and Ms. Marianne Nagy Hanna, journalists, Messrs. Sameer Awad Bassem, representative of Al Ghad party, Fathy Mohammed Bassem, representative of the Egyptian Democratic Institute, Sharif Abdel Aziz Mahmoud, Mahmoud Mohammed Khalid, known as "Mac", and Ms. Shahinaz Abdelsalam, bloggers, Mr. Nasser Abdel Hamid and Ms. Salma Akal, members of the Democratic Front Party, Mr. Roaa Ibrahim, student, Mr. Ahmed Badawy Abdel Meguid, a member of the “Sixth April Youth”, Messrs. Ahmed Abu Zekry, Talaat Al-Sawy, Ahmed Mahmoud Mustafa, Ismail Sayyid Omar, Ahmed Fathy Mohamed, Hossam Saber Ali, Hanan Ismail, Hamada Abdel Fatah, Gamal Fareed, Mohamed Khalaf Mohamed, Al- Hosseiny Sayed Ahmed, Mohamed Hamdy Hassan, Mohamed Abdallah Mohamed, Heshmat Abdallah Mohamed, Ismail Eleskandarani and Tareq Sabry Abdallah, Ms. Nadia Al-Zeiny Barouni, Ms. Amira Al-Tahawi, Ms. Baula Abdo Ameen and Ms. Mona Fouad Ahmed in the Governorate of Qena.

According to the information received, on January 15, 2010, the thirty-three above-mentioned human rights defenders were arrested upon their arrival to the Egyptian Governorate of Qena, where they had travelled to express support with the families of the victims of the shooting that occurred on Coptic Christmas, between January 6 and 7, 2010, which left seven persons dead and incited tense sectarian protests in Egypt and to denounce sectarian violence and the human rights violations committed by the authorities allegedly to combat it.

The group of human rights defenders was told by the police that an arrest warrant had been issued against them on January 15, 2010, but none was shown to them. The group was detained incommunicado in the Qena Security Directorate, their lawyers being denied access to the Qena Security Directorate and told that their clients were not being held there.

On January 16, 2010, the group was released. According to the information received, no charges have been brought against them to date. But during detention, the group was threatened of prosecution for “violating the Constitution” and “constituting a group of more than five people inciting demonstrations” pursuant to the Emergency Law[1].

The detainees reported that Ms. Israa Abdel Fatah and Mr. Ahmed Badawy were subjected to ill-treatments during their arrest. Ms. Abdel Fatah was roughly grabbed by her arm and Mr. Badawy violently pushed. Additionally, the group was held in inhumane conditions, its members being given one single meal during their detention, and given neither bed nor blankets. While in custody, Mr. Tareq Sabry Abdallah suffered severe health conditions and had to be transferred to the hospital on three occasions.

Actions requested:

Please write to the authorities of Egypt, urging them to:

1. Guarantee in all circumstances the physical and psychological integrity of the thirty-three above-mentioned human rights defenders as well as of all human rights defenders in Egypt;
2. Carry out a prompt, effective, thorough, independent and impartial investigation into above-mentioned acts of ill-treatment faced by above-mentioned defenders during their arrest and detention, the result of which must be made public, in order to bring all those responsible before a competent, independent and impartial tribunal and apply penal, civil and/or administrative sanctions as provided by law;
3. Put an end to any kind of harassment - including at the judicial level - against the thirty-three above-mentioned human rights defenders as well as of all human rights defenders in Egypt;
4. Comply with the provisions of the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 9, 1998, especially its Article 1, which states that “everyone has the right, individually and in association with others, to promote and to strive for the protection and realisation of human rights and fundamental freedoms at the national and international levels”, and Article 12.2, which provides that “the State shall take all necessary measures to ensure the protection by the competent authorities of everyone, individually and in association with others, against any violence, threats, retaliation, de facto or de jure adverse discrimination, pressure or any other arbitrary action as a consequence of his or her legitimate exercise of the rights referred to in the present Declaration”;
5. More generally, ensure in all circumstances the respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and with international and regional human rights instruments ratified by Egypt.

Addresses

• President of the Arab Republic of Egypt, His Excellency Mohammad Hosni Mubarak, Abedine Palace, Cairo, Egypt, E-mail: webmaster@presidency.gov.eg, Fax: +202 390 1998
• Prime Minister Mr. Ahmed Mahmoud Mohamed Nazif, Magles El Shaab Street, Kasr El Aini Street, Cairo, Egypt. Fax: + 202 735 6449 / 7958016. Email: primemin@idsc.gov.eg
• Minister of the Interior, General Habib Ibrahim Habib El Adly, Ministry of the Interior, El-Sheikh Rihan Street, Bab al-Louk, Cairo, Egypt, E-mail: moi1@idsc.gov.eg, Fax: +202 579 2031 / 794 5529
• Minister of Justice, Mr. Mamdoh Mohie E-din Marie, Ministry of Justice, Magles El Saeb Street, Wezaret Al Adl, Cairo, Egypt, E-mail: mojeb@idsc.gov.eg, Fax: +202 795 8103
• Public Prosecutor, Counsellor Maher Abd al-Wahid, Dar al-Qadha al-Ali, Ramses Street, Cairo, Egypt, Fax: +202 577 4716
• National Council For Human Rights, Fax: + 202 5747497 / 5747670
• Permanent Mission of Egypt to the United Nations in Geneva, 49 avenue Blanc, 1202 Genève, Switzerland, Email: mission.egypt@ties.itu.int, Fax: +41 22 738 44 15
• Embassy of Egypt in Brussels, 19 avenue de l’Uruguay, 1000 Brussels, Belgium, Fax: + 32 2 675.58.88; Email: embassy.egypt@skynet.be

Please also write to the diplomatic missions or embassies of Egypt in your respective country.

Paris-Geneva, January 20, 2010

Kindly inform us of any action undertaken quoting the code of this appeal in your reply.

The Observatory, a FIDH and OMCT venture, is dedicated to the protection of Human Rights Defenders and aims to offer them concrete support in their time of need. The Observatory was the winner of the 1998 Human Rights Prize of the French Republic.

To contact the Observatory, call the emergency line:

• E-mail: Appeals@fidh-omct.org
Tel and fax FIDH: +33 (0) 1 43 55 25 18 / 01 43 55 18 80
Tel and fax OMCT + 41 22 809 49 39 / + 41 22 809 49 29



en hieronder de officiële website van "the Muslim Brotherhood":

16-02-2010 om 23:06 geschreven door Vorser-Raadgever  

Arabic Blogs

Overview

It never occurred to the Arab regimes , being as repressive as could be, that their ambitious plans to modernize the communications infrastructure to attract and increase investments in information technology and increase the number of internet users, will back fire. Those plans have resulted in a generation of bloggers and internet activists that bitterly criticize those regimes and stand against various violations and corruption and push forward for change.

Blogging started in 1999, it began to spread and have impact since spring 2003 with the American invasion of Iraq. Arabic blogs emerged in 2004. Starting in 2005, they were widely spread with the start of a political movement in the region and calls for change and reform, in which bloggers have played a prominent role and took part in advocating for change and raising political awareness, especially in Egypt, Tunisia and Syria.
Egyptian bloggers took the initiative, and were able to stretch the margin of freedom of expression in defiance to the Egyptian regime, by discussing political and social issues were considered previously as taboos. They managed to break the fear among a large segment of internet users, mostly young people and encourage them to positive political participation.

Blogging in the Arab world
The number of Arabic blogs, according to the report of the Information Decision Support Center of the Egyptian cabinet, is about 490,000 until mid-2008
Arabic blogs are hosted on different websites most important of which is www.blogger.com, which is owned by Google. In addition, to websites like www.wordpress.com, the website www.maktoobblog.com, an Arabic website that hosted in mid-2009 more than 91,000 blog from all Arab countries . As well as, some other websites that provide blogging service, such as Elaph, Jeeran , Katib, the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information and the blogs of the famous couple, Manal and Alaa.
According to estimates of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, which specializes in freedom of expression in the media and the internet, there are about 600,000 Arabic blogs. However, the active blogs are actually no more than 25%.
Arabic blogs can be classified quantitatively and per country. Egypt has the largest number of blogs that make up one third of the Arabic blogs, followed by Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Morocco.
The blogging space is divided between the community of Egyptian secular bloggers and reformists and another that represents a gathering of writers supportive of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is defined as "illegal" and banned by the Egyptian regime. Yet, it can be found repeatedly on the internet through young bloggers who declare their membership of the group and express their ideas spread through blogs and launch campaigns to defend Muslim Brotherhood detainees. In addition to other blogs that belongs to the Brotherhood that varies between literary and social blogs.
The Egyptian bloggers aim to break the political constraints through their blogs, which are renowned for its bitter criticism of the government in spite of the government's repression on them. In Saudi Arabia, blogging is focusing on personal rather than political matters. In Kuwait, the majority of blogs are in English. The Syrian blogs are quite similar to Saudi Arabia when it comes to the topic. The Moroccan blogs use a mix of the Arabic and French language. However, some bloggers who discussed political issues and revealed corruption cases served prison terms in Syria, Tunisia and Saudi Arabia.
Arab bloggers use Web 2.0 and they link their blogs in various websites such as YouTube , Wikipedia and news websites such as Aljazeera.net and the BBC, followed by Al-Arabiya, and most recently the social networking website Facebook.
The age group that most widely uses blogs is between 25 -35 years amounting 45% of the Arab population. The Arab bloggers over 35 years are 9%, while females represent 34% of Arab bloggers.The highest ratio for female bloggers compared to male bloggers is in Egypt in the age group from 18 to 24 years, amounting 47% and the proportion of female bloggers in Saudi Arabia is 46% of Saudi bloggers . 83% of the Arab bloggers live in their homeland and often use aliases, especially among female bloggers.
In general, Arab bloggers write about local political issues and criticize the ruling regimes. They also discuss personal and religious issues which are among the main issues discussed and debated on Arab blogs. Human rights issues are also one of the most common issues discussed on blogs. An issue that all Arabic blogs and all Arab bloggers are all against is siege of Gaza, and the Israeli attack on Gaza, in December 2008 -January 2009.
Arabic Blogs: Voice Of The Voiceless

• Blogging helped the various religious groups to emerge and represent their case to the Arab public opinion. For example, the Baha'is have used blogging to display their case and the defend their religious freedoms. The most famous Baha'i blog is An Egyptian Baha'i, http://egyptianbahai.wordpress.com, owned by an Egyptian young man in his thirties born in a Baha'i family. In his blog he discussed the problems facing him particularly obtaining official papers as well as lack of tolerance and resentment he feels when he declares that he is Baha'i.
  The blogger, Randa El Hoassani, her blog:
  http://rands1957.spaces.live.com/blog, is an Egyptian Baha'i activist. She was born in Port Said in a Baha’i family of the fourth-generation. In 1972, She was imprisoned when she was 14 years, for a month, with other Baha'is for contempt of religions
  Blogging has also helped the emergence of a number of codes for homosexuals since 2006, which allowed gays to express themselves and their point of view and confirm their presence in the Arab and Muslim communities in a realistic way rather than the stereotypical image that novels and films have been feeding the public over the years, prior to internet.The most famous of such blogs are:
  http://gayweekly.blogspot.com/ : a Kuwaiti blog
  http://saudigayboy.blogspot.com/ : a Saudi blog
  The blog Kareem Diary http://kareemazmy.blogspot.com
  Diaries of a lesbian woman.
• Cases disclosed by bloggers
  Arab bloggers managed to play a key role in the political field pressuring the authority to act on several issues, such as torture in Egypt which became an attitude during the reign of Hosni Mubarak. It is practiced by police officers against citizens as punishment or to extract confessions or just as a show of power.
  Bloggers revealed incidents of torture and posted videos that show police officers torturing people in police stations. The most famous scene is the torturing of Emad AlKabir, a driver, who was tortured and raped with a stick by the police officer, Islam Nabih. The scene was recorded with a cell phone to humiliate Emad between his friends and neighbors. The scene propagated till it was posted on several blogs at the end of 2006. Among those blogs was that of Wael Abbass, www.misrdigital.com. Satellite media and the printed press were forced to discuss this incident , which turned to a public opinion case. The case ended with an unprecedented verdict; the officer Islam Nabih and Reda Fathi, the secretary of police, were sentenced to 3 years in prison .
  Other issues that bloggers have recorded and also turned to cases of public opinion:
  The issue of sexual harassment in Egypt; the blogs of Wael Abbas and Malek Mustafa , http://malek-x.net posted videos of sexual harassment, that occurred in downtown Cairo during Al Fitr feast in 2006, displaying of groups of girls being harassed.
  The videos stirred a lot of debate on satellite channels and newspapers, and resulted in highlighting the failure of police in protecting victims of harassment despite their presence in large numbers downtown at the same time of the incident. The Egyptian Ministry of Interior tried to deny those incidents even existed but a number of eyewitnesses and bloggers brought undeniable evidence that made the ministry take preventive measures .
  In Morocco, the blogger, Targuist Sniper, managed to disclose corruption of Moroccan police and the Moroccan Royal Gendarmerie in 2007, where he recorded a number of bribes - receiving scenes and posted them on YouTube , after which they spread on blogs and were debated on international media. Unfortunately, this blogger was targeted by the police in Morocco.
  The success of the Algerian blogger, Rahalia whose job is sorting newspaper articles and delivering them to the Algerian Parliament Media Commission. As simple as it may seem, his job allowed him to access the archive of officials' announcements, decisions and related articles leading him to arrive at contradictions, manipulations and lies of official statements. He started writing articles on a limited scale on the internet uncovering those lies. Those articles, were all over the Algerian cyberspace and were successful to bring about change. Rahalia addressed the president himself, through his highly credible articles and documented writings, demanding him to freeze "the hydrocarbon law”, a project to privatize the state oil companies. The president announced before the cabinet that he was sure that this law was full of irregularities
  Other countries also witnessed a significant role for blogs in highlighting events and important political crises, such as Darfur crisis. The blog, Shabab Darfur, is one of the main sources that displayed the real situation in Darfur.
  Marahin blog , http://saltowayyah.katib.org/, in Oman, and Mowaten Emarati , http://emarati.katib.org/, in the UAE, as well as the famous blog of Mahmoud Youssef in Bahrain (http:/ / mahmood.tv /) as well as Moroccan blog; Ahjiouj.

Examples of violations against Arab bloggers
The Arab world is of the worst regions in the world in internet monitoring. Arab bloggers and activists are detained, prosecuted and even tortured. Arab countries are always on the list of internet enemies prepared by Reporters Without Borders. In its report of 2009, which included 12 countries in the world defined as “internet enemies”, 4 Arab countries were listed: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Syria.
There are dozens if not hundreds of bloggers who have been arrested and detained under the emergency laws, and even abducted and tortured, including:

• The Egyptian blogger Ahmed Mohsen, 26 years, owner of the blog: Fatth Eineik , http://eyestillopen.blogspot.com, who was arrested in May 2009 and charged with “abusing the democratic atmosphere to overthrow the government" . ANHRI described this charge as a black comedy.
• The Moroccan blogger; Mohammed Al Raji, was convicted and sentenced to prison because of an article he wrote that criticized royal behavior which he considers encouraging people to be reliant and passive.
• Karim Arabji, from Syria, he wrote an article criticizing the Syrian authorities. Consequently, on 13/9/2009, Karim was sentenced to three years in prison for "spreading false news that weakens the sentiment of the nation”.
• The Saudi, Fouad AlFarhan, is one of the famous bloggers. His blog is entitled Dean of Saudi Bloggers. He is known for his elegant writings and serious advocacy for reform in his blog , http://www.alfarhan.org. His slogan is "in search for freedom, dignity, justice, equality, Shura , and all Islamic lost values for Raghad and Khattab". He was detained by Saudi authorities for five months without charges and was never put on trial. Afterwards, he was released without giving any reasons for his arrest or release.
• Rafat AlGhanem, a Syrian blogger living in Saudi Arabia, was arrested in July 2009 by Saudi security, without justification, and is still detained.

And many more:

• The Egyptian Mossad Abu Fajr, owner of the blog, http://wednane3ish.katib.org/, is one of the main callers to stop discrimination against the Egyptian Bedouins of Sinai. Several charges have been fabricated against him by security. After investigations, the general prosecutor released him. Yet, security services arrested him again under the emergency law and he is still detained till this date in spite of more than 15 release orders that have been issued
• Abdel Moneim Mahmoud, a blogger and journalist, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, was arrested, tortured several times and banned from travel. He was arrested allegedly for “disrupting public security”. The Arabic Network believes that the most important cause for detaining Moneim Mahmoud is to smear the good image of any member of Muslim Brotherhood group not what the government is claiming. In his blog, Moneim displays a different profile than the one provided by the government. He defends secularism and different ideologies, reveals torture crimes and participates in campaigns to support freedom of expression. Such an image is one which the Egyptian government is not willing to reveal .

Some Egyptian bloggers are still detained , the most famous case is the blogger Kareem Amer, who was arrested in November 2006 and sentenced in February 2007 for 4 years; 3 years for insulting the Islamic religion and 1 year for insulting the President. Kareem should be released in November 2010. He is serving his sentence at Borg Al Arab prison in Alexandria. Kareem Amer has been tortured in prison and is still subjected to harassment. He was deprived of visits several times in 2009.

In 2007, an Egyptian judge filed a case for blocking 51 blogs and websites on the internet, claiming they were terrorist websites and detrimental to the state, the police and the President. This law suit is an attempt to block all blogs and websites that revealed the judge’s theft of ANHRI report on the freedom to use Internet in the Arab world in 2006. The case has been refused in December 2007 .
In Tunisia, in August 2008, the Tunisian blogger; Zied El Heni, filed a lawsuit against the Tunisian Internet Agency for blocking Facebook until the website was unblocked on 2/9/2008.

Under the spotlight: Sami Ben Gharbia
Quiet a character, an intense blogger, and a strong defender of democracy. He managed to turn the internet into a tool to resist the autocratic regime in Tunisia. A lot of Arab bloggers followed him and non Arabs learned from him. He is inspiration to many since he is so creative in using the internet to expose oppression and corruption of the Tunisian dictatorship. His story started by escaping from Tunisia through Libya, Niger, Chad, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran in order to finally reach Netherlands, where he received political asylum .
This is Sami Ben Gharbia , the Tunisian blogger, creator of the map of Tunisian prisons , in which are used many Internet techniques in which he excels in order to show the cruel penal policy, which rendered Tunisia among the top states in the number of prisoners per population. The Tunisian government denied all punitive practices. However, the truth that Ghariba uncovered show that there are two version of Tunisia; the first Tunisia is the green one where tourists enjoys, provided that they shut up completely and have money, the other one is the a big prison for all opponents and human rights activist or even those concerned with the country. Second Tunisia raises some questions, where an answer will not be found, but rather silencing the mouth that uttered the question.
Sami Ben Gharbia uses the Internet creatively to expose corruption and the dark side of Tunisia. He introduced a film that traces the Tunisian presidential plane and its suspicious use in things not related to state affairs.

No wonder, Ben Gharbia has become a target for campaigns of slander and for fierce attack from the Tunisian government officials, agents, informants in overseas embassies.
By launching such campaigns they convey the message to their masters in Tunisia, they are doing their homework, no matter how these campaigns would lack sincerity or credibility. Some official told Gamal Eid, executive director of the Arabic Network for Human Rights, "Sami Ben Gharbia is a sincere young man who loves his country. He does not create or fabricate any of these scandals, he only reveals them" .
Ben Gharbia also revealed that, Ezz Al Din Hammadi, director of the tourist office at the Tunisian Embassy in Washington, reserved the domain name of presidential campaign of 2009 for the candidate Zein El Abidine Ben Ali since 2004, precisely 25 days only after the "victory" of Ben Ali in the presidential elections held on 24/102004.
As well as logging more than 80 domain names mostly all related to media, political and tourist structures in Tunisia! Ben Gharbia considered this the first semi-formal appeal to President Ben Ali to get nominate .

Egypt

All This Hostility!

"Yes, we allow security agencies to tap the citizens’ personal calls, whether through mobile phones or landlines, this is case all over the world".
Tarek Kamel, Egyptian Minister of Communications, naturally .

Overview

For twenty eight years, Egypt has been ruled by Mubarak. Twenty years of an emergency state, torture and unfair trails. Democracy is declared by all the pro-government newspapers and only a small minority denies its existence. A minority that includes lawyers, judges, journalists, students, workers, farmers, doctors, university professors, engineers, clerks and Egypt’s poor. Apart from those, all other Egyptians are quite happy with such democracy and are truly thankful to God for it. Those happy Egyptians have nothing to do with Kefaya movement, the 6th of April strike, labor strikes, farmers’ uprisings or pensioners’ protests.

No one complains of poverty or hunger. This is evident in the overly populated prisons, which Egyptians go to it voluntarily, without being forced by the State Security Services. The State Security Services is loved by Egyptians. They feel its presence, whether they’re awake or sleeping.
The opening quotation of this report, by the Ministry of Communication, shows clearly that the Ministry of Communications’ role, like the Ministry of Interior, aims to serve the public.
The Ministry of Interior has been serving the people for many years by putting them in prisons to be takes care of and to vote for them in any elections. The Ministry of Communications taps their calls, to know their thoughts and dreams, and make them come true!

The Telecommunications Sector and the Internet
By the end of August 2009, the number of mobile phone users in Egypt reached 51.5 million users. These users are divided on three companies: Mobinil: 23.8 million users, Vodafone: 21.5 million users, and the most recent, Etisalat: 6.2 million users. By the end of 2009, the number is expected to exceed 55 million users.
The number of landlines is 9.6 million monopolized by the state-owned company, Telecom Egypt. Telecom Egypt owns the most important ISP, TE Data, which has more than half the ADSL market share. The number of internet users tripled from 5 million users, in 2006, to 15 million users in 2009 .
The increasing number of internet users and their skillful use of the internet, especially young bloggers, have contributed to the democracy struggle in Egypt. This development prompted the Egyptian government to take new measures to limit the number of internet users, while, increasing its profits. The Ministry of Communications proposed The Fair Download policy. The policy aimed to limit monthly downloads to 2 GB for the ADSL speed of 264 Kb under the pretext of fighting illegal connections . The Ministry retreated from this policy in summer 2007; however, it proposed the same policy again in 2009. Internet users fiercely campaigned against this new attempt. The media called it the “the internet users revolution”; many internet users called through forums and social networking websites called for boycotting the web on 10/8/2009 protested the free download policy proposed by the government and the ISPs.
The strong opposition led the Minister of Communications to admit that "illegal internet connections are not the problem, rather it is the increasing the internet usage” . This declaration prompted the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, INHRI, to call on the ministry of communications to abandon the policy of greed when dealing with internet users .

Internet Cafés
In February 2009, the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics in Egypt stated that the number of internet cafés reached 4597 cafés and the total number of clients per week for these cafés is 804,270 clients with an average of 175 clients per café per week. While, the number of IT clubs was around 1776 clubs offering internet service to about 190,016 users per week .
ANHRI states that these figures include only the cafés that are registered. The total number internet cafés exceeds these figures. A lot of internet café’ owners avoid registration to evade bureaucratic complications and police encroachments upon internet cafés owners, especially in heavily populated districts. In addition, the middle class cafés offers wireless network, Wi-Fi, but those were not included in the study either.
On 9/8/2008, ANHRI uncovered that these cafés owners cooperate with the Ministry of Interior in violating the privacy of their clients. In these cafés, customers have fill out a form with their names, e-mails and phone number in order to access the internet. This information is given to the Ministry of Information enabling it to control the personal data of internet users violating their privacy.
As a result of ANHRI’s statement, tensions started to appear between the Ministry of Interior and the owners of these cafés. The Ministry stated that the cafés offered this information voluntary! On the other hand, the owners of those cafés admitted that they could not disregard security instructions. Consequently, the Ministry decided to back down from this illegal procedure. However, there are still a number of abuses, especially in poor areas. The police fabricate charges to close down a café or to force its workers to become informants to the police.

Blocking and Control
Egypt abandoned the policy of blocking websites which practiced by most Arab countries. However, the Egyptian government oppresses and intimidates internet activist in every possible way. This includes wiretapping, abduction, detention and torture of these activists.

Wiretapping and Privacy Violation:
In Egypt, where the police control all bodies and agencies, the telecommunications and internet sector is not an exception. However, controlling these sectors requires the cooperation of companies and staff in this field!
Indeed, three main service providers in Egypt are known to be cooperating with security. They violate the privacy of users’ and the sanctity of correspondence and calls, particularly of Egyptian political activists and reformers.
The three companies are, the state-owned Telecom Egypt that monopolizes landline service and is a major shareholder in the prime internet service provider TE Data. The minister of communications declared his vision on monitoring and wiretapping saying "we allow tapping as is part of the state’s role ”. He added that "wiretapping is not a simple matter; it is governed by rules and special technological capabilities. Although, the Ministry allows for some security agencies to tap calls, the state does not have the capacity to tap the calls of 40 million mobile phone subscribers ".
Since, the state does not have the capacity to spy on millions of mobile phone users, the second company, Vodafone, regularly hands over the data of customers who organize demonstrations against the government, like the bread riots .
Furthermore, Mobinil and Link, both owned by the same person, cards that are purchased at touristic cafés in order to access the internet violates the privacy of the customers of these cafés. Clients have to fill in their names, phone numbers and e-mail addresses. The destination of this information is well known .

• 1. Torture and Physical Assault
  Internet activists in Egypt are not excluded from the systematic and wide ranged torture of security services. Dozens of bloggers and activists of the 6th April movement had suffered torture and ill-treatment as a result of their intense work to expose corruption and repression. Examples of those tortures activists:
  Ahmed Maher, founder of the 6th April group on FaceBook.
  Diaa Gad owner of the blog Sout El Ghadeb; http://soutgadeb.blogspot.com,
  Mohamed Adel , owner of the blog Meit; http://43arb.info/meit,
  Ahmed Duma , owner of the blog Shaeer Ikwan;http://ikhwan-poet.maktoobblog.com
  Kareem Beheiri, owner of the blog Egyworkers; http://egyworkers.blogspot.com,
  The blogger, Kareem Amer, was tortured in prison , like many others who were tortured because of what they wrote on the internet.

2. Arresting Bloggers and Internet Activists
The Egyptian government tries to convince the West that the emergency law is used only against terrorists and drug dealers. However, this is far from the truth. Mossad Abu Fajr , Hani Nazeer, Diaa Gad, Abdul Aziz Hijazi, Shawky Ragab, Hani Abdul Rahman and Mohammed Refaat were arrested just for blogging and advocating for democracy.

3. Libel And Defamation
Many bloggers were charged of libel and defamation because of something they wrote on the internet. For example, the blogger Tamer Mabrouk, from Port Said city, owner of the blog Al Hakika El Masriya, http://elhakika.blogspot.com, was accused of libel and defamation for writing about a chemical discharging chemicals in the lake of Manzala lake causing deadly pollution. The famous bloggers, Manal and Alaa, owners of the blog Manal and Alaa, www.manalaa.net, were also accused of libel and defamation. Furthermore, Journalist, Ahmed Seif El-Nasr of Fayoum window, http://www.fayoumwindow.net, was accused of a fabricated insult and libel charge.
While, the number of fabricated libel cases against bloggers and internet activists is increasing, some of the bloggers are exposed to defamation and libel campaigns from some officials who just remain at large with no punishment. The blogger, Wael Abbas, has been subjected to an unfair smear campaign by a senior officer, General Ahmed Diaa Aldin, who instead of being punished for his unjust accusations against Abbas and for insulting and defaming him on TV programs, the Egyptian government rewarded him by appointing him governor of Minya .

4. Seizing Computers
Every police raid, whether legal or illegal (the latter is the most common), against internet activists, must result in seizing their computers that often disappear and never recovered. The Ministry of Interior does not try to find the place of those belongings which increases the corruption in the Ministry. Examples of bloggers whose computers have been seized are: Mohamed Adel, AbdAlAziz Mujahid, Wael Abbas, Mohammed Yakut, Reda AbdAlRahman, Khalifa Obaid and Mohammed Refaat. It is claimed that the Ministry of Interior started a secret investigation about the computers that were seized from the homes of those activists or in airports, like Wael Abbas, but, ANHRI cannot affirm such information yet.

Site blocking Lawsuits:

During the past three years, Egypt has witnessed two important cases which have had significant impact on the freedom of internet use in the country:

1. Judge Abdel Fattah Murad and the case of blocking 49 websites:
In December 2006, ANHRI issued its second report on the freedom of internet use in the Arab world under the title An Unyielding Opponent: The Internet and the Arab governments. The report was printed, distributed and posted on ANHRI’s website .
In February 2007, while searching the market for legal references that may help in Kareem Amer’s case, ANHRI’s lawyers purchased a book for the judge Murad entitled Scientific and Legal Principles of Blogs on the Internet. It was a surprise to find that dozens of pages were an exact replica of ANHRI’s report published in December 2006. The lawyers tried to persuade Judge Murad to apologize for such dishonest reproduction, an intellectual property crime, a charge so degrading for a judge and a PhD holder. However, The judge refused and began fabricating cases against ANHRI at first and then against several bloggers and human rights organizations who have expressed solidarity with ANHRI and supported its right to punish the judge for violating intellectual property. ,
The judge fabricated a new important case. He requested the blocking of 21 websites including e-papers, blogs, and local and international human rights organizations sites. Those websites published the intellectual property crime committed by Murad and a copy of ANHRI’s report. Murad claimed in his case against the Ministry of Communication that those websites should be blocked as they “support terrorism” and “smear the state’s reputation”
As a result, bloggers and activists launched a counter campaign uncovering Murad’s crime. So, he decided to increase the number of websites to be blocked to 49. However, the decision of the Administrative Court was a strong blow to the judge and to internet police that supported him. The case was rejected and the court upheld the freedom of expression in Egypt .
The Supreme Administrative Court is still reviewing the appeal submitted by Murad who tried to cover his intellectual property crime by another crime against freedom of expression on the Internet.

2. Blocking Adult Websites
On 12/5/2009, the Administrative Court issued a decision, in regards to a case filed by an Islamist attorney, demanding the Ministry of Communications to block adult websites on the internet in Egypt without defining adult websites or the body responsible for blocking these websites. Defining pornography will be left to clerks in the Ministry. This may lead to the blocking of historical, literary and artistic websites. A site may be blocked because of an image, a word or a verse from a poem.
Although, the minister of communications declared that blocking all these websites is difficult, conservatives, extremists and the enemies of the internet have started to put pressure on the Egyptian government to implementing the court’s decision even before the Supreme Administrative Court has reviewed the submitted appeal.

15-02-2010 om 23:13 geschreven door Vorser-Raadgever  

Egypt: Blogger loses job for uncovering fake virginity story

While bleeding on the wedding night is still the proof of the bride's honor in Egypt and Middle Eastern countries, Radio Netherlands broadcast an Arabic translation of the Chinese advertisement of the Artificial Virginity Hymen kit. Youm7 newspaper announced that the product will be available on the Egyptian market for LE 83. And as if Egyptian women were all waiting for the miracle hymen to embark on pre-marital sex, conservative parliament members want the product banned and any importer exiled or beheaded. Egyptians began wondering if Egypt will start importing Chinese Hymens and Amira Al Tahawi, who used to work with Radio Netherlands at the time, got fired for blowing the whistle over the fabricated Chinese hymen story.

On her blog Amira Al Tahawi wrote:

Many bloggers found the decision to fire her ridiculous and unjustified; Nawara Negm wondered:

Eman Hashim is lamenting the integrity of journalism; she wrote:

Dr. Mostafa El Nagaar wrote in Amira's defense saying:

Mostafa Fathi also posted a note on Facebook and Karim El Beheiry published a post on his blog in solidarity with Amira.

14-02-2010 om 22:36 geschreven door Vorser-Raadgever  

E-mail:aphra@aphra.org

Holland : I was fired because of an essay !!

14-02-2010 om 21:55 geschreven door Vorser-Raadgever  

dmbedreigde dieren

Pangasius: de waarheid over de wondervis uit het vriesvak

Misschien hebt u hem al gezien en zelfs gekocht uit het vriesvak van uw supermarkt of vishandel: de exotische pangasius. Het lijkt op het eerste gezicht een goeie keuze. Want op grote schaal gekweekt in Azië, ergo een ethisch verantwoord alternatief voor het eten van gevangen, bedreigde soorten. Zo simpel is het echter niet.

Waterkwaliteit is niet echt een punt en je kan heel veel vissen in heel weinig water kweken. De norm is zowat 150 stuks in een drijvende kooi van een kubieke meter, en een stuk of tachtig per vierkante meter in een kunstmatige vijver.

De Mekong is één van de zwaarst vervuilde rivieren ter wereld. De hoeveelheid arseen in de stroom ligt tot acht keer hoger dan wat de Wereldgezonheidsorganisatie als veilig acht. In het grondwater is de concentratie zelfs twintig keer hoger dan veilig. Het gif komt onder meer van een quasi ongecontroleerd gebruik van pesticiden.

Vrouwelijke pangasius groeit opmerkelijk sneller en legt sneller en meer eieren wanneer ingespoten met een hormonenextract dat een Chinese firma produceert uit gedehydrateerde urine van zwangere vrouwen.

Er is ook een soort feodaal systeem ontstaan langs de oevers van de Mekong, waarbij een arme viskweker het vissenvoer "in bruikleen" geleverd wordt. De leverancier van het voer neemt na 180 dagen de vissen af tegen een vergoeding die per persoon neerkomt op ongeveer de armoedegrens.

Een keer verwerkt, krijgt de pangasiusfilet een injectie met een pentanatriumtrifosfaatoplossing. Die bedraagt tussen 10 en 20 procent van het gewicht van de filet. De filet wordt daardoor zwaarder (en brengt meer op) plus zorgt dat hij langer bewaard kan worden.

De kweek van pangasius heeft sterk bijgedragen tot het verdwijnen van de populatie van irrawaddydolfijnen (orcaella brevirostris) in de Mekong. Er zouden er nog hooguit een vijftigtal zijn.

Pangasius is een Vietnamees succesverhaal. 90 procent van alle pangasius wordt gekweekt in de Mekong-rivierdelta. Het gaat eigenlijk om twee soorten katvis: tra (pangasianodon hypophthalmus) en basa (pangasius bocourti). In 1995 bedroeg de 'oogst' 10.000 ton, in 2008 was het al meer dan 1,1 miljoen ton. Die groei is marktgedreven

Pangasius wordt nu uitgevoerd naar 130 landen, bijna allemaal in de vorm van witte filets. 80 procent van de export ging naar de VS, maar dat is de jongste jaren veranderd, en nu is Europa met 35 procent de grootste afnemer, en hangen de States aan het staartje met amper 4 procent.

Waterkwaliteit is niet zo'n punt
Het succes van pangasius heeft de vis onder meer te danken aan een fysiologisch kenmerk. Door z'n unieke zwemblaas kan de soort direct zuurstof halen uit de lucht. Dat betekent dat kwekers niet te veel moeten wakker liggen van het zuurstofgehalte van het water. Lees: waterkwaliteit is niet echt een punt en je kan heel veel vissen in heel weinig water kweken. De norm is zowat 150 stuks in een drijvende kooi van een kubieke meter, en een stuk of tachtig per vierkante meter in een kunstmatige vijver.

Poisson poison
De Mekong is één van de zwaarst vervuilde rivieren ter wereld. De hoeveelheid arseen in de stroom ligt tot acht keer hoger dan wat de Wereldgezonheidsorganisatie als veilig acht. In het grondwater is de concentratie zelfs twintig keer hoger dan veilig. Het gif komt onder meer van een quasi ongecontroleerd gebruik van pesticiden. De impact is nog niet duidelijk: de effecten van chronische arseenvergiftiging zijn vaak pas na tien jaar te zien. Daarnaast munt de Mekong uit door de prominente aanwezigheid van kankerverwekkende PCB's, DDT's, CHL's, HCH's en HCB's.

De vis-apotheker
Uw pangasiusfilet leeft niet alleen in dat water; het wordt ook gebruikt om hem in te vriezen. Dat is niet alles. De sjiekste zelfstandigen in de regio zijn de handelsreizigers die met een koffer vol geneesmiddelen tegen parasieten in de vis, pre- en antibiotica en nog van dat fraais aankloppen bij de viskweker.

In het assortiment ook steevast trifluralin, dat met recht en rede in Europa verboden is. Het pesticide excelleert in zowat alles wat u niet in de buurt van vis voor consumptie wil: persistent in de bodem en niet gemakkelijk biologisch afbreekbaar en een hoog potentieel voor bioaccumulatie, met name in waterorganismen. De viskwekers vinden het echter een doeltreffend middel tegen ongewilde plantengroei in hun vijvers.

Urine van zwangere vrouwen
Een ander middeltje dat gretig wordt afgenomen: vrouwelijke pangasius groeit opmerkelijk sneller en legt sneller en meer eieren wanneer ingespoten met een hormonenextract dat een Chinese firma produceert uit gedehydrateerde urine van zwangere vrouwen.

De kip en de vis
De pangasius krijgt korrel als eten. Daarin onder meer vismeel (dat komt uit Zuid-Amerika, waar 90 procent van de ansjovisvangst verwerkt wordt tot beestenvoeder, maar dat is een ander verhaal), eiwitten van plantaardige oorsprong zoals soya, maar ook eiwitten van dierlijke oorsprong en nogal wat pluimen van kippen en andere bijproducten van gevogelte. Dat laatste kan het risico met zich meebrengen dat het in die regio gangbare vogelgriepvirus ook in de vissector terecht komt.

Pentanatriumtrifosfaat
Een keer verwerkt, krijgt de pangasiusfilet een injectie met een pentanatriumtrifosfaatoplossing. Die bedraagt tussen 10 en 20 procent van het gewicht van de filet. De filet wordt daardoor zwaarder (en brengt meer op) plus zorgt dat hij langer bewaard kan worden.

Feodaal systeem
Niet dat het de viskwekers echt rijk maakt allemaal. Een maximum maandinkomen van 50 Amerikaanse dollar is gewoon. Er is ook een soort feodaal systeem ontstaan langs de oevers van de Mekong, waarbij een arme viskweker het vissenvoer "in bruikleen" geleverd wordt. De leverancier van het voer neemt na 180 dagen de vissen af tegen een vergoeding die per persoon neerkomt op ongeveer de armoedegrens.

Katvis vermoordt dolfijn
De kweek van pangasius heeft sterk bijgedragen tot het verdwijnen van de populatie van irrawaddydolfijnen (orcaella brevirostris) in de Mekong. Er zouden er nog hooguit een vijftigtal zijn. De dolfijnen zijn bijna allemaal gestorven als gevolg van een bacteriële infectie, waarschijnlijk afkomstig door aanraking met kweekkooien. Die ziekte is op zich niet dodelijk, behalve wanneer het immuunstelsel van de dieren is aangetast. Bij de autopsie troffen onderzoekers toxische niveaus van pesticiden (vooral DDT) en PCB's aan.

Zwarte markt
Vorig jaar werd in de VS een lading pangasius onderschept van 4.545 ton. Op de verpakkingen stonden de namen van duurdere vissen zoals tongfilet, kabeljauw en zeebaars: alles behalve pangasius. Het kopstuk achter de zwendel werd gepakt en kreeg 63 maanden cel. Maar het zou naïef zijn om te denken dat deze vangst niet meer dan het topje van de ijsberg was.

En dan is er de strontmond
Tilapia is oorspronkelijk Afrikaans, maar nu wordt hij voornamelijk in Zuid-China, Indonesië en Bangladesh gekweekt. De export gaat grotendeels richting Amerika, maar ook in Europese supermarkten duikt de vis op. Het grootse probleem met tilapia zijn hormonen. Alleen de mannetjes van de soort zijn bruikbaar om verwerkt te worden. Dus worden van de vrouwtjes op jonge leeftijd mannetjes gemaakt. Dat kan door het toedienen van grote dosissen testosteron. Te veel testosteron kan onder meer leiden tot borstkanker.

Tilapia wordt ook wel "strontmond" genoemd door z'n kwekers. De vis is de kampioen in het eten van zijn eigen uitwerspelen; hij consumeert tot zes keer meer uitwerpselen dan dat hij er zelf produceert. (mvl)

Deze maand neemt Planet Watch u mee op een ontluisterende trip door de oceanen van de wereld. De reeks 'Naar het einde van de zee' gaat over de belabberde toestand van onze zeeën en het effect daarvan op ons en onze toekomst. De jongste vijftig jaar is 90 procent van wat door de mens als eetbaar visbestand wordt aangezien gewoonweg verdwenen. Als we doorgaan op het huidige elan met vissen en vervuilen, dan zijn binnen dertig jaar alle oceanen dood.

13/02/10 05u00

Catfish campaign against Vietnamese fish

November 14, 2001 - VN/US relations No sooner was the Bilateral Vietnam-US Trade Agreement (BTA) signed by US President George W Bush, the world witnessed opposing moves by a group of US business people in a campaign against the import of Vietnam's Tra and Basa catfish into this market. The campaign, which began late last year, occasionally eased for a few months before it culminated into a full-flown campaign. The campaign is so loud and harsh that some Americans term it the 'Catfish war' or 'A new war against Vietnam.' What is catfish and who is the CFA? 'Catfish' is an English name for any of numerous teleost fishes having whisker-like barbels around the mouth including Mudfish, Hemibagrus, tre catfish, tra catfish and basa catfish, all belonging to the group of Siluriformes, including between 2,500 and 3,000 different species, living in fresh, salty and brackish water all over the world. These fish species are classified into different classes including the US Ictaluridae and Asian Pangasiida. The US catfish (Ictalurus punctatus) are exclusive to the US waters while the tra catfish (Pangasius hypophthalmus) and the basa catfish (Pangasius bocourti) are numerous in the Mekong river delta and belong to the Asian catfish. The noisiest voice in the current catfish war is the Association of Catfish Farmers of America (CFA). The association represents affluent farmers in Mississippi State and some other southern states in the US. Raising catfish is an important cash earner in these states because catfish farmers make big profits from using the vast waste land areas to turn catfish from a popular dish for poor black people into a much sought after foodstuff in the US, ranking fifth among the most popular maritime products. That is why these farmers are embittered at the influx in the US market of similar, imported products, which are of higher quality, and at lower prices. And more than 20 years after their failure during the Vietnam war, they opt to launch a new war, as they declare, not to fight communism, but to combat Vietnamese tra and basa catfish. Developments of the 'war' over catfish During 1999 and 2000, the volume of Vietnamese tra and basa catfish imported to the US market increased considerably, which angered American catfish farmers. That why, right from the end of last year, they used the US media to provide misinformation to distort the image of Vietnamese tra and basa catfish. Despite their noisy reaction, Vietnamese catfish imports into the US continue to rise. In order to gain an insight into the core of the matter, in November 2000, a delegation of nearly 20 members including professors from the Auburn University and American catfish raising and processing companies, headed by Mr Gvillo Curtis, president of the Catfish Association of Alabama State, made a fact-finding tour of Vietnam. They made thorough surveys of the actual conditions of feeding and processing tra and basa catfish in rafts and ponds, the catfish processing plants in An Giang and Can Tho. They praised the technology and equipment for feeding, processing and food safety and hygiene conditions. Following this fact-finding tour, the war over catfish seemed to ease a little. But CFA did not promptly recognise what the American scientists saw with their own eyes. In February 2001, when catfish supply was scarce in the US and imports of Vietnamese catfish rose, the war picked up again. A nine-month promotion campaign was launched by TCI and funded with 5.2 million dollars by CFA to oppose the import of Vietnamese tra and basa catfish. Posters and placards printed in commercial magazines and food ads are filled with xenophobic titles against foreign catfish products. Domestically, they launched campaigns calling on American people to eat American catfish and coined the label 'Catfish raised in USA' in opposition to Vietnamese products. The CFA President sent a letter to the US President George W Bush on June 28, 2001 to propose that the US administration negotiate a separate agreement on catfish with Vietnam. In the following months, the CFA hired law firm Nathan Associates to collect information and launch a publicity campaign to smear Vietnamese catfish, stressing that imports of Vietnamese catfish caused a 10% drop in prices of US catfish. CFA plotted a campaign to lobby and pressure Congressmen of the states that raise catfish and drummed up support from legislature and law enforcement agencies to back up their retaliation against imports of Vietnamese catfish. American Congressmen begin their involvement Upon CFA pressure, many American Congressmen were forced to take part in the war. On February 9, 2001, all 12 Congressmen including eight from the senate and four from the House Representatives, from catfish raising States, signed a letter addressed to Mr Robert Zoellick, US trade representative to complain about the import of Vietnamese tra and basa catfish which caused losses to the US catfish production sector and requested the government take measures. On July 11, Mississippi State Senators Ronnie Shows and Bennie Thompson, and Arkansas Senator Marion Barrym rallied forces and called on the Congress to adopt the H.R.2439 bill on labelling the origin of imported fish for retail, openly smearing Vietnamese products. However, this bill was not submitted for approval because the Senate had turned down a similar bill on agricultural products. On August, 15, US Senator Mike Ross, one of the major sponsors for the H.R. 2439 bill sent a letter asking for information about Vietnam's measures to control the labelling of fish products imported into the US. On August 17, Deputy Minister of Fisheries Nguyen Thi Hong Minh sent a reply letter, making clear the measures being taken by Vietnam. In late September 2001, some Senators representing US Southern States plotted to use catfish as a matter to prevent the US Congressional adoption of the BTA. But their scheme failed. On September 27, the US Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) sent a letter asking for samples of Vietnamese catfish being imported to the US market. Vietnam sent an immediate response. But the US continues to press on with the issue. In a recent article run by the Washington Post, Senator Marion Barry even dared say that that the catfish being raised in the Mekong river might contain the residue from the Agent Orange which had been sprayed by the US during the war in Vietnam. On October 5, 2001, the US House of Representatives suddenly adopted the H.R.2964 bill, which allowed the use of the name 'catfish' only for Ictaluridae species, which, in essence, aimed at the American catfish type Ictalurus punctatus. The fact that the US reserves itself the right to monopolise on a common name representing more than 2,500 different types of fish worldwide is an unprecedented, unacceptable move. Furthermore, in the small hours of October 25, the Senate made a verbal vote to adopt 35 amended articles to the H.R.2330 bill on allocating agricultural budget for fiscal 2002 in which SA 2000 amendment article stipulated that FDA shall not be allowed to use budget allocation to clear procedures for licensing imports of a certain kind of fish called 'catfish' except those belonging to the Ictaluridae family. They used the trick of controlling the purse string of CFA to take an upperhanded attitute towards authoritative scientific bodies that have so far persisted in the stance that all types of fish belonging to the Siluriformes class be called 'catfish.' What does the CFA criticise? CFA focuses on three major arguments to oppose imports of Vietnamese tra and basa catfish into the US markets: First, they describe the influx of Vietnamese catfish into the US as causing the fall in prices of American catfish. Second, they say Vietnamese catfish is raised in polluted water conditions which cannot guarantee quality and food hygiene and safety for consumers. And third, they request Vietnamese tra, basa and similar types not be called 'catfish' because this name has been marked by the credibility of US catfish which has cost the country several years and much money to build. We should scrutinise such criticism from official US documents, according to the latest overview of the situation of aqua-culture, made public by the US Agricultural Department�s Economic Research Service on October 10, 2001, and the findings of a study on existing trends on the US catfish markets, publicised by the famous US law firm Consulting Trends International on October 26th 2001. What are the findings of these studies? Does Vietnamese catfish reduce prices of American catfish? Before 1997, catfish was imported into the US mainly from Brazil at a record volume of 8.2 million pounds (lb) in 1986, which was equal to the imported volume for 2000. Since 1997, Vietnamese catfish accounts for a major share of the US market with its major product of frozen fillet. In 2001, the US has imported an estimated volume of 14-16 million pounds. Despite its increased volume, Vietnamese catfish imports in 2001 are still much lower than the market share for import of catfish from Brazil in 1986 by 6.7%. Since 1990, the price of raised catfish has dropped considerably, much earlier than the import of Vietnamese catfish began to rise in 2000 and 2001. In 1991, each pound costs an average 65 cents which was 13 cents lower than that in 1990. Meanwhile imports increased from four million pounds to 5.2 million pounds. In 2001, a pound cost 65 cents which was a drop of 10 cents from 2000. In the meantime, imports rose from 8.2 million lb to 16 million lb. The fluctuations on prices and volume of imported catfish in the 1991-2000 also followed the same pattern. Meanwhile, the average price in 2001 when imports increased accounted for only 5.2% of the market share, or 2 cents/lb lower than the average price in 1986 (67 cents/lb) while imported catfish accounted for 6.7%. After analysing data collected from 1986, the reports of the US Administration and private research institutes concluded on the major causes of the drop in prices of catfish raised in the US. First, feed accounts for the highest cost of raising catfish, but the prices of corn flour and soya powder as two major components for feed production, have dropped much in recent years, which also brought down the price of material. Second, the supply of parent fish has increased due to the expansion of feeding grounds from 147,100 acres (1995) to 185,700 acres currently, which are located largely in the four southern states of Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana (accounting for 90% of the total volume of US catfish). Third, the volume of unharvested commercial catfish in July 2001 was 370,000 or a 30% increase from the same period of 2000. The volume of fries and parent fish consist of about 2.6 billion, up by 1%. Fourth, the prices for direct competitive products of catfish being chicken, have declined fast due to a drop in feed and increase in output. The average price in 2001 of this product is 33 cents/lb which is 6 cents/lb lower than the average prices for the 1993-1998 period and dropped by 1% from the average price in the first months of this year. According to analysis of the Economic Research Service (ERS), the market share for imported catfish in 1986 was much higher than that of 2001, but the prices of raised catfish at that time was still higher than at present. The volume of imports began to drop as from June 2001 but in fact the prices of material and prices of finished products had begun to go down in August 2000 and the decline continued after June 2001. Besides, the volume of imports from 1997 to 2000 increased by 7.3 million lb, but the volume of sales of catfish in the reviewed period also rose by 35.4 million lb! The total imported volume in 2001 will increase by eight million lb from 2000 (double) but the sales of raised catfish only dropped 2.7 million lb. Besides, it is necessary to take into account the situations of major world economies such as the US, Japan and EU which are experiencing a downturn, especially following the September 11 event that brought a sharp decline in both purchasing power and sales. So it can be concluded that the import of Vietnamese catfish is not the cause of the drop in prices of sales of the US locally raised catfish. This decrease only reflects a normal economic phenomenon in its development cycle caused by the production and consumption in the US markets. What is the truth about the quality and food safety and hygiene of Vietnamese tra and basa catfish? Feeding environment: The water of the Mekong river cannot be as polluted as that of the Mississippi River in the USA. The water in the Mekong lower reaches has been strictly controlled by a national and international inspection network based on the commitment between the Mekong sub-regional countries and prestigious international organisations. Added to this, since 1999, the American Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) has been regularly sent findings of such inspection reports on the quality of the water in Vietnam�s aqua-culture areas and the findings on the control of toxic residue in basa and tra catfish raised in Vietnam provided by the Centre for Fish Quality control and Maritime hygiene (NAFIQACEN). These reports show that the indicators on residue of heavy metals and fertiliser collected from 30 stations in the Mekong lower reaches are much lower than the international permissible level. Understandably, this region is still under developed and harmful fertilisers have long been banned by Vietnam�s Ministry of Agriculture. The argument that the Mekong river is heavy polluted and contains residue of the Agent Orange are products of their imagination because when they are pressed with questions from American journalists, they failed to provide any scientific proof to back up their assumptions. Vietnamese farmers still drink the water of the Mekong River. Dare Americans drink water from the Mississippi? Something else should be pointed out that few American consumers know. The raising of catfish in the US is conducted in ponds which use underground waters. As a result, the bottom of such catfish raising ponds are left with a layer of mud as thick as 1.5 to two metres, which absorb the leftover of feed and fish waste during a cycle of eight years before the bottom is cleared up. As the pond water always stinks, American catfish farmers must use a chemical 'diuron,' which is listed as a prohibited substance of the US Environment Agency, to apply in their fish ponds. This measure is used to protect their catfish from certain organisms in unsiphoned water conditions and from the stinking mud. To make this practice legal, American catfish farmers every year negotiate with the Environment Agency to extend the right to use the 'diuron' chemical. But unlike American farmers, Vietnamese people never poison their aqua-culture areas and Vietnamese tra and basa catfish are not raised in stinking mud. The process of catfish raising and their quality In October 1998, a group of American fisheries officials of more than 20 members, headed by NMFS Director Rolland Schmitten and a delegation of maritime product business people led by Richard Gutting, now president of the NFI, toured the raft fish raising grounds in An Giang. They examined the situation of raising, processing and managing product quality and had fine impressions of catfish raising, acknowledging the strict control of water quality during feeding and quality during processing. A group of representatives from enterprises engaged in raising and processing American catfish and scientists from Alabama State, who made an inspection tour of tra and basa catfish raising areas in November 2000, came to similar conclusions. Following their tour of several production and processing establishments of Vietnam, from choice of fries to feeding, making feed, processing and quality control following HACCP, GMP and SSOP models, the delegates commented that the Mekong river water is suitable for raising fish in rafts. They praised the modern raising and processing technology and equipment which might be better than those of some US processors. An American agricultural embassy attache Henry Schmick said following his visit to An Giang that Vietnam�s export processing plants of maritime products all ensure food safety and hygiene, strictly abiding by HACCP standards. HACCP and FDA inspectors on food safety and hygiene, headed by Mr Brett Koonse, director of the Maritime Office, inspected Vietnamese enterprises on several occasions and concluded that they meet all HACCP requirements on food hygiene and safety. In fact, under the HACCP management programme, samples of every consignment of Vietnamese catfish have been sent to FDA. Since its presence in the US market in 1995, none of Vietnamese tra and basa catfish consignments have been rejected for food safety and hygiene reasons. In fact, this product of Vietnam receives praise from American consumers for its taste and quality. CFA once rented NMFS laboratories to inspect the quality of Vietnamese basa catfish for "human health and safety" but, understandably, they never produced any inspection findings. The use of the name 'catfish' for Vietnamese fish Vietnam�s use of the word 'catfish' plus an accompanying adjective to identify different types of catfish totally conforms to international commercial regulations and norms. Vietnamese basa catfish farmers, processors and exporters never want to be dragged into a war, even in the market place. It is obvious that once aqua-culture develops on the global scale, it will affect the traditional markets, triggering conflict between farmers and fishermen, between farmers themselves, buyers and sellers, and between countries. These fluctuations will be common practices and will motivate economic development and benefit widespread consumers. However, unhealthy and unequal competition, that pays no heed to international regulations and conventions and their domestic consumers� interest is unacceptable. The US war over catfish makes people believe that American catfish farmers taking actions in such a war. Vietnam does not want a catfish war which is being staged unilaterally by American catfish farmers and their supporters. This war is contradictory to the spirit of trade liberalisation and fair competition of the American business circles and will not benefit the warmongers. The American and global markets are large enough for all those who want to update technology and improve management to obtain low production cost and high competitive edge. Richard Gutting, the incumbent President of NFI, which gathers American maritime producers and traders observes that catfish is being raised in many countries with available technologies and markets. Maybe, after spending heaps of dollars preventing imports of Vietnamese catfish, American catfish farmers will benefit nothing because it is likely that the whole world may embark on raising catfish. By Professor Dr NGUYEN HUU DUNG Secretary General Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Processors (VASEP)

DOETINCHEM - Arseen en lood trof IJsbrand Velzeboer van Scienta Novaaan in water en grond bij kwekerijen van pangasius in Vietnam. Om monsters te kunnen verzamelen ging hij undercover.

Naast arseen en lood werd in een monster van visvoer een schimmelwerende cocktail gedetecteerd. 'Daarin herkende het lab dat de monsters onderzocht camouflagegedrag; die stoffen versterken elkaars fungicide werking, maar worden in een goedkoop lab niet gedetecteerd', aldus Velzeboer in Elsevier Voedingsmiddelen Industrie van 19 juni.

Sector ondersteunen
De voedingsmiddelentechnoloog overhandigt binnenkort een rapport met zijn bevindingen aan minister Verburg van LNV. Hij wil dat de Vietnamese aquacultuur ondersteuning krijgt om de economische imstandigheden en de voedselveiligheid, volgens hem met elkaar verweven, te verbeteren.

Bovendien moet de Nederlandse overheid haar verantwoordelijkheid nemen door ervoor te zorgen dat buitenlands geproduceerd voedsel net zo veilig is als wat in Nederland geproduceerd wordt, zo stelt hij.

14-02-2010 om 00:12 geschreven door Vorser-Raadgever