[mobglob-discuss] December in Review

[Harsha Walia]

December in Review
Halted deportations, Lakota secession, and social tension in Latin America
by Stuart Neatby

The Dominion - http://www.dominionpaper.ca

In Vancouver, 1500 demonstrators effectively paralysed the Vancouver
International Airport and halted the planned deportation of 48-year old
paralysed Punjabi refugee Laibar Singh on December 10-- international
Human Rights Day. The vast majority of the supporters were members of
Vancouver’s Sikh community, who had been mobilizing and campaigning
against Singh’s impending deportation to India for months, while he lived
in sanctuary within a Sikh temple. On January 9, a second attempt by the
Canadian Border Services Agency to deport Singh was thwarted after
officials showed up at the Nanak Sikh Temple in Surrey at 4AM to find 300
of Singh’s supporters blocking the entrance to the temple. Singh’s
supporters have argued that he should remain in Canada on Humanitarian and
Compassionate grounds due to his medical needs.

Laibar Singh, surrounded by supporters after an attempt to deport him was
turned away. Photo: NOII

The Canadian Supreme Court ruled that the Safe Third Country Agreement--
legislation that has cut refugees' eligibility to remain in Canada-- was
illegal. The STCA, enacted by the Martin government, prohibits political
refugees from remaining in Canada if they have landed first in the US. The
ruling declared that the United States could not be deemed a “safe”
country for refugees due to its violations of the UN Convention Against
Torture and the Refugee Convention.

The Lakota Sioux nation made steps to legally secede from the United
States on December 20 in Washington after Lakota representatives withdrew
from all treaties signed with the US. Following years of discussions
amongst treaty representatives within the various Lakota communities
throughout Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana, the notice of
withdrawal from the 1851 and 1868 Fort Laramie Treaties was hand-delivered
by a four-member Lakota delegation to Daniel Turner, Deputy Director of
Public Liaison at the US State Department. According to delegation
members, the legal basis for this withdrawa stands with the continuous
violation of the 1851 and 1868 treaties by the United States, as well as
the conditions of extreme poverty that exist within the Lakota
communities.

Environmentalists have perhaps won a partial victory after the United
States and Canada both backed down from their obstructionist positions at
the UN Climate Change Summit in Bali. After the summit was extended an
extra day, Canadian Environment Minister John Baird, who had been dogged
by a delegation of Canadian youth activists throughout the week, reversed
his original position against a binding target of 25 to 40 per cent
reductions of carbon emissions from wealthy countries by the year 2020.
The United States also agreed in the end to endorse the “Bali roadmap,”
although only after the section requiring binding targets for all nations
to collectively reduce carbon emissions was removed. Some
environmentalists have argued that the summit’s key failing was the
“single-minded focus on getting Washington on board,” to the detriment of
actually achieving firm carbon-reduction targets.

In Haiti, grassroots leader Rene Civil was released after spending 20
months in prison. Civil was a member of the Lavalas party of former
Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide and was also a leader of the
Popular Power Youth (JPP), a grassroots organization of youth from poor
communities. Civil was arrested in August 2006, shortly after organizing a
demonstration calling for the release of political prisoners and the
return to the country of Aristide. However, another grassroots activist,
Wilson Mesilien, acting director of the September 30th foundation, a human
rights organization, was recently forced into hiding after receiving death
threats. Mesilien’s predecessor, Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine, remains at large
after he was kidnapped by unknown figures last August. The US and Canadian
governments took part in the military overthrow of Aristide in 2004, and
Canadian RCMP officials currently head the UN training program for the
Haitian National Police, which is accused by Haitians and international
observers of human rights abuses including mass murder, sex trafficking
and rape.

In Pakistan, in the midst of political turmoil in the week following the
assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the United States government announced it
would approve the nearly five-hundred million dollar sale of eighteen
Lockheed Martin fighter jets to the regime of Pervez Musharraf. Although
no definitive investigation has been carried out of Bhutto’s murder (the
Pakistani President has refused to allow a UN investigation of the
killing), many of Bhutto’s supporters, as well as Democratic candidate
Hillary Clinton, have expressed belief that elements of Pakistan’s
military may have been behind the assassination, and have criticized the
continued sale of arms to the regime.

A new report issued by the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and
International Trade has found that Canadian arms sales reached $700
million, the highest levels ever recorded, in 2003. This figure did not
include sales made to the US which, if counted, would have brought the
total sales of Canadian arms to over $2 billion. According to Ken Epps, an
arms control researcher with Project Ploughshares, many of these sales
were made to countries with dubious human rights records, such as
Colombia, China, and Saudi Arabia. Epps also noted that the Pakistani
military purchased $250 million worth of helicopters from Canada between
2004 and 2005.

The Bush administration’s case for war with Iran was dealt a severe blow
after sixteen different US intelligence agencies concluded that the
country had ended its nuclear weapons more than four years ago. Despite
this, George W. Bush, claimed publicly that he still believed Iran to be a
threat to the United States. The completion of the report by the National
Intelligence Agency had reportedly been held up and postponed by
vice-President Dick Cheney for two months.

In Toronto, a new report by the provincial government has found that,
despite crackdowns, 31,000 people currently receive a "special diet"
supplement designed for welfare recipients with medical dietary needs. The
supplement, valued at $250 extra dollars for food per month, is an obscure
and often overlooked government program. The Ontario Coalition Against
Poverty (OCAP) has publicly set up special diet clinics throughout the
city and province in recent years, arguing that individuals on welfare
live in conditions of state-sponsored poverty, which limits their dietary
health. Over the last two years, this campaign effectively redirected over
$30 million of provincial revenue into the hands of the province's poorest
residents.

Recent reports from human rights organizations in Chiapas, Mexico indicate
that the Mexican government is ramping up its military presence in regions
under heavy influence of the indigenous Zapatista Liberation Army.
According to the Centre for Political Analysis and Social and Economic
Research, a human rights NGO based in Chiapas, there has been a marked
increase in the presence of military and paramilitary deployments within
this Southern Mexican state which, coupled with an increase in
expropriations of land occupied by indigenous Mayan sympathizers of the
Zapatistas, has prompted IPS News to dub this escalation “the worst
onslaught by state forces in the last 10 years.” Since the 1994 uprising
by the Zapatistas, indigenous self-rule has been quietly built within the
region, as the Zapatistas have established their own health, education and
development programmes, while forming their own governing “caracoles,” or
good-government councils.

In Bolivia, clashes continued between middle- to upper-class supporters of
the the Democratic and Social Power (PODEMOS) political party and the
social movements and indigenous communities united under the Movement
Towards Socialism (MAS) of current president Evo Morales. Partisans of the
right-leaning PODEMOS, which include the governors of four eastern
departments, have been staging blockades, strikes, and demonstrations for
months against the proposed constitutional changes championed by Morales
and the social forces united under the MAS, largely movements of the
country’s majority poor and indigenous peoples. The constitution would
grant the central government greater control over the country’s rich
natural resources, but would also guarantee expanded autonomy for
departmental governments and indigenous communities. The opposition
disagrees with the limitations on land ownership established in the
document, as well as the redirection of departmental gas revenues to a new
National Pension Fund for all citizens of the country over the age of
sixty. Late last month, the opposition has declared autonomy from the
central government for the city of Santa Cruz, establishing a new police
force, television station and special ID cards.

The Ontario government finally announced that the province will be
returning the Ipperwash Provincial Park lands to the Chippewas of Kettle
and Stony Point First Nations. This announcement follows the conclusion of
the Ipperwash inquiry into the 1995 Ontario Provincial Police killing of
Dudley George last May. The land was originally expropriated from the
Stony Point band in 1942 to allow the federal government to build a
military base.

First Nations survivors of the Canadian residential school system received
their first cheques as part of a $2 billion compensation settlement for
the collective experience of mass sexual and physical abuse suffered by
indigenous children at Catholic-run schools between the 1950s and 1980s.
Eighty thousands First Nations people are eligible for this compensation,
which is paid in lump sums, and which amount to an average of $28,000.
This amount, however, only accounts for the federal government’s portion
of the settlement; The Catholic church is also responsible for paying 30%
of the settlement. Although viewed by residential school survivors as an
important milestone in the process of achieving justice, the size of the
settlement pales when compared to a similar settlement given to Australian
aboriginals of the “Stolen Generation,” whose treatment at the hands of
their government throughout the twentieth century bears many striking
similarities to that of the Canadian aboriginal experience.

In New Orleans, police attacked, tazered and pepper-sprayed public housing
residents who had arrived at city hall to take part in a “public hearing”
about the proposed demolition of 5000 public housing units in the city. In
the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, there remains a homeless population of
12,000 within New Orleans. City Hall and private developers have
nonetheless intensified efforts to demolish public housing in order to
make way for commercial property and high-priced condominiums. Police had
initially erected a metal gate around city hall, prohibiting public
housing residents from entering the building. Fifteen were arrested in
total as the council passed the motion in favour of the demolitions.
Residents have pledged to continue fighting, and have called for
supporters to travel to the region and take part in a campaign of direct
actions against these home demolitions.

Officials in India have conceded that the construction of the World
Bank-backed Narmada Dam is illegal. Shri Afroz Ahmad of the Narmada
Control Authority admitted that the construction of the dam to the height
of 121.9 metres has led to the illegal submergence of houses and farms,
particularly those of the Bhil tribal people, many of whom have been
struggling against the construction of this mega-dam for more than twenty
years. Critics of the dam have demanded that its size be reduced in order
to avoid flooding still further indigenous communities, and continue to
fight for land for those who have been displaced by the dam’s
construction.

Hundreds of trade union demonstrators gathered in Toronto to protest the
proposed Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement, while approximately 30-40
activists with the Canadian Union of Public Employees picketed the office
of former Foreign Affairs Minister Peter Mackay in New Glasgow, Nova
Scotia. Critics from trade unions, human rights organizations, and
ecumenical organizations in Canada have argued that this trade deal has
been negotiated in complete secrecy, after a dramatically similar trade
deal between the US and Colombia met with overwhelming opposition within
Congress due to human rights concerns. Colombia currently has the worst
human rights record of any country in the Western Hemisphere, and more
trade unionists are killed in the region than in the rest of the world
combined. Little has been made public about this trade agreement, nor of
the timeline for its implementation, but public officials have speculated
that the trade pact could be completed within the next few weeks. Many
Colombian activists have argued that this trade agreement encourages
para-military political violence against indigenous peoples, trade
unionists, afro-Colombian communities, and poor people within
resource-rich territories, and also provides the framework to “legalize
and legitimize” this economic and political terrorism. Meanwhile, reports
of increased military and para-military attacks upon indigenous protests
against land expropriation have emerged from the Southwest Cauca in recent
weeks.

African political leaders have rejected a neo-liberal trade agreement with
the European Union, which would have forced punitive duties upon imported
goods from the continent, such as sugar, meat and bananas, which would
have competed with European producers. The “Economic Partnership
Agreements” have been the subject of protests by trade unions and social
movements throughout the continent, and were voted down during an
EU-Africa summit in Lisbon. The increased amount of investment from China
in Africa has likely provided the subcontinent with a greater amount of
breathing room in negotiating such trade deals in recent years.