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