JustPeace#39

Hot News

• 
  It’s Still a Sign of the Times
  
  was Keith Locke’s reaction to Wellington City Council plans to remove the capital’s peace sign from the route to Wellington airport.

  The council has indicated it wants to replace “Welcome to Wellington, a nuclear-free city” with what it terms a “more appropriate” sign.
  
  Read
  
  Keith’s release
  
  .

Hot Action

• 
  Listen
  
  to Sunday Supplement, National Radio, 10:45 a.m., this Sunday, October 5 to hear Lois Griffiths speaking about the visit of
  
  West Papuan human rights activist John Rumbiak
  
  and the situation in West Papua.
• 
  Afghanistan – two years on
  
  – what has changed and what can we do? is the subject of a meeting in
  
  Christchurch, Tuesday, October 7, 7:30 p.m
  
  ., Wea, 59 Gloucester St. Speakers from the Muslim Association of Canterbury and Christian World Service will brief the meeting on what is happening in Afghanistan, followed by discussion.
• 
  Power Play
  
  . The war of the rich against the poor and the natural environment is conducted on many fronts, and privatising and de-regulating energy supplies is currently a key battle zone. An expert on the subject, Dr Sharon Beder, will be speaking in
  
  Auckland on October 8 and Wellington on October 10
  
  . For full details of when, where and what go to
  
  PMA’s Power Play page
  
  .

Hot Analysis

• 
  Russia’s ‘War on Terrorism’ is also Fake
  
  . Russia will hold elections in Chechnya this weekend, in a simalucrum of real democacy, but it is essentially a captured and terrorised state. Nearly a quarter of a million ‘displaced persons’ are fleeing from violence, much of it perpetrated by the Russian military, which is currently forcing refugees out of camps near the Chechen border and back to further terror at home. Russia and the US have forged an unholy agreement to turn a blind eye to each others’ abuses in the war of terrrorism. Below are brief extracts from two recent articles on the situation, for background on the human rights situation you copuld try
  
  Human Rights Watch Chechnya page
  
• 
  
  Putin’s War
  
  
  . Matt Bivens
  
  The Nation 25 September 2003

  “Of the conflict’s 220,000 displaced persons, about 11,000 sit conveniently concentrated in tent camps just east of Chechnya. The Kremlin has for years pursued an on-again, off-again policy of trying to herd these refugees “home.” It’s about sweeping dirt under the rug: Putin insists there’s sufficient calm and order in “pacified” Chechnya to hold a presidential election in two weeks. Tent camps filled with refugees shrieking that they won’t go back because there’s a war under way don’t agree with that pretty picture, so the refugees and tent camps must go.

  Or something like that.”

• 
  
  Bush’s Sellout on Chechnya
  
  
  . Matt Bivens
  
  The Moscow Times October 3 2003

  “In the three years since the obscurities Putin and Bush rose to world prominence, things have only gotten worse in Chechnya. Long-time observers of the region in fact are predicting a “Third Chechen War” — all-out civil war, to erupt sometime after this Sunday, when the Kremlin’s hand-picked puppet regime will hold, and win, an “election.”

  (Hmm: Self-styled superpower invades Muslim lands to “liberate” them, is shocked to find self pinned down in viciously bloody guerrilla war with ingrates; grits teeth, declares this is a key front in the war on terror; throws away billions on “reconstruction” efforts in which federal cash fattens war profiteers; doggedly, against all evidence, insists the looming Lebanonesque civil war can be averted and democracy cemented by drafting a “constitution” and holding “elections.” Eerily familiar, yes?)”

• 
  War, Terrorism and Drugs – The Colombian Connection
  
  . While the world’s attention is focussed on Iraq, America’s ‘secret war’ in Colombia, which is claiming an average of 19 civilian lives a day, continues to escalate. While oil is the ‘dirty secret’ of the Iraq war, drugs are the dirty secret of the Colombian war, as the article excerpted below shows.

  
  
  Colombia Quagmire: Time for U.S. Policy Overhaul
  
  
  
  By Virginia M. Bouvier

  A three-year long peace process initiated by Colombia’s former President Andrés Pastrana failed last year, and a war-weary public elected Alvaro Uribe in August 2002 with a mandate to address Colombia’s grave security concerns. Despite the sunny portrait projected by some U.S. media, however, storm clouds are looming. After Uribe’s first year in office, violence continues unabated in Colombia, and security has deteriorated for much of thecivilian population. Political space for legitimate dissent and the defense of basic human rights is being undermined, dire human needs continue to go unaddressed, and the “democratic security” policies of the Uribe government are intensifying an already severe humanitarian crisis. More than two million of Colombia’s 44 million people have been internally displaced by the conflict. The U.S. Department of State reported that the number of internally displaced persons grew by more than 400,000 in 2002 alone, as selective assassinations, massacres, and armed confrontations drove entire communities off their lands.

  Recent signs indicate that violence is becoming increasingly entrenched in Colombia. The conflict now claims the lives of some 19 civilians each day–up from 12 lives per day in 2000. The government and the largest guerrilla organization, the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC, by its Spanish initials), are at a standoff, following the February 2002 breakdown of three years of negotiations.

  The war has expanded to virtually all areas of the country. Paramilitary units have increased their presence in areas previously controlled by the FARC, such as Putumayo, while they have also consolidated their control in major urban areas such as Medell