the real world
exposing how greed, corruption, and imperialism impacts the world
and exposes the leaders who benefit
august 19, 2018
Man becomes great exactly in the degree in which he works for the welfare of his fellow-men
Mahatma Gandhi
articles
*How Guatemala is sliding into chaos in the fight for land and water
(excerpt BELOW)
*Australian politicians condemn call for a ‘final solution’ to ban Muslim migration
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*IF IRELAND CAN GET OUT OF FOSSIL FUELS, YOUR TOWN CAN TOO
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*U.N. says it has credible reports that China holds million Uighurs in secret camps
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*CHINA AND RUSSIA DEFEND IRAN AGAINST U.S., SAY THEY WILL KEEP DOING BUSINESS
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*RUSSIA HAS BULLDOZED 26 TONS OF WESTERN FOOD AND CHEESE BECAUSE OF KREMLIN BAN
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Battle for Water Rights Heats Up in El Salvador
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Uproar after Italian minister wants to end anti-racism law
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Mothers of Mexico’s Disappeared Young Men Blame the Police
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Migrant children forced to sell sex to make Italy-France journey, says charity
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Thousands of Canadian mothers were forced to give up their babies. Some were told to ‘get a puppy’ instead. (ARTICLE BELOW)
funnies(at the end)
raping guatemala for profit!!!
How Guatemala is sliding into chaos in the fight for land and water
John Vidal in Camotán
the guardian
Sun 19 Aug 2018 04.00 EDT
At 9am on 9 May, Luis Arturo Marroquín walked out of a shop in the main square of the small town of San Luis Jilotepéque in central Guatemala. Eyewitnesses say a black Toyota Hilux pick-up then drove up and, in full view of passersby, two men wearing hoods shot Marroquín repeatedly in the back.
The vehicle sped off but was identified and, within hours, police had stopped and reportedly questioned the men and found the weapons. But since then, no arrests have been made or charges levelled and the investigation has stalled.
Marroquín was a Q’eqchi’ Mayan, and a leader of Codeca, a group of indigenous farmers now gaining political ground by defending people from evictions, land grabs and pollution resulting from mines, hydro dams,logging, and huge palm oil and sugar cane developments.
He is one of 18 human rights and indigenous “defenders” to have been murdered so far this year in a wave of rural violence. Of these, 13 were involved in land conflicts and nine were Codeca leaders. Two were journalists investigating disputes and of the seven people killed in the month following Marroquín’s death, one died in a church, another was rammed by a truck and a third was murdered while doing the shopping. Others were stabbed or hacked to death. Few people have been arrested, let alone convicted.
“Everyone knows who the killers are,” said Maria Perez, Marroquín’s widow, in the modest house near Carrizal in Jalapa state that she and Luis built on a steep hillside 30 years ago. “I was warned that he would be killed but I did not take it seriously. All the authorities knew it was going to happen but I didn’t believe it. He had talked about the danger of his work and how if he was going to die it would be for his community,” she said.
But a high-level, UN-backed mission to Guatemala, which included the Observer, will suggest in a report to be published this week that although the men may have been killed by local hitmen, the killings have probably been orchestrated by more powerful political and financial interests, with links to the drug trade and the military.
They fear that if action is not taken, Guatemala could descend into the sort of violence and political chaos seen in neighbouring Honduras and nearby Nicaragua.
The killings are just the tip of a pyramid of abuses faced by people defending their land and environment, says Mike Taylor, director of the International Land Coalition (ILC), the global alliance of UN agencies and 278 civil society and farmers’ groups that spent a week hearing evidence from four communities, as well as judicial and government bodies.
“There is a culture of impunity. Leaders are being identified, arrested, detained and criminalised. People are being evicted illegally, even if they have title to land. Hundreds have been threatened with death and many thrown into prison without evidence on charges of murder and terrorism.
“Anyone who opposes mines, evictions, palm oil plantations or who even takes part in roundtables to find solutions to the rising tide of violence against land rights defenders is likely to be targeted,” Taylor said.
“We have seen evidence of criminality, prosecution, false imprisonment and killings. These are not random acts of violence but the systematic persecution of people who have been standing up to defend their land.
“At the base of the violence against defenders is the decision by the state to use land, water and natural resources not for the benefit of the many but the very few.”
James Loughran of Dublin-based Front Line Defenders, a member of the mission – which also took evidence from the UN and people held in prison – said: “People feel abandoned. No one is listening to them. They have no confidence in the justice system. Their leaders are being victimised and attacked, their voices silenced.”
Last year saw 197 killings of environmental activists worldwide, according to human rights group Global Witness. Brazil, with 57 people killed, and the Philippines, with 48, were the two deadliest countries. Guatemala has now become one of the most dangerous.
According to the NGO Udefegua, which monitors official records, there were 483 serious acts of aggression against people fighting for their lands in 2017. More than 300 evictions have been registered in 2018.
---
A history of conflict
Guatemala’s largely indigenous population say their rights have been violated since the Spanish arrived in the 16th century, dispossessing their communities and driving them into the less fertile highlands.
Guatemala gained independence in 1821 and there followed a century of struggle between liberals and US-backed conservatives. In 1954 the CIA deposed leftwing president Jacobo Árbenz to protect the interests of America’s United Fruit Co, whose presence had led to the country being seen as a “banana republic”.
Rebellion followed and in 1960 a brutal 36-year civil war began. This saw about 200,000 largely indigenous people killed by the military, and hundreds of thousands of people migrating to the US.
A peace agreement in 1996 should have led to land redistribution, but a handful of powerful families still dominates the economy, and Guatemala remains one of the world’s least equal and most violent countries, with the largest 2.5% of farms occupying more than 65% of the land.
Economic integration forced on Guatemala by the US and global bodies have further opened the country to foreign-backed mining, hydro and other extractive industries, forcing more evictions of indigenous peoples and leading to more violence and inequality.
The vehicle sped off but was identified and, within hours, police had stopped and reportedly questioned the men and found the weapons. But since then, no arrests have been made or charges levelled and the investigation has stalled.
Marroquín was a Q’eqchi’ Mayan, and a leader of Codeca, a group of indigenous farmers now gaining political ground by defending people from evictions, land grabs and pollution resulting from mines, hydro dams,logging, and huge palm oil and sugar cane developments.
He is one of 18 human rights and indigenous “defenders” to have been murdered so far this year in a wave of rural violence. Of these, 13 were involved in land conflicts and nine were Codeca leaders. Two were journalists investigating disputes and of the seven people killed in the month following Marroquín’s death, one died in a church, another was rammed by a truck and a third was murdered while doing the shopping. Others were stabbed or hacked to death. Few people have been arrested, let alone convicted.
“Everyone knows who the killers are,” said Maria Perez, Marroquín’s widow, in the modest house near Carrizal in Jalapa state that she and Luis built on a steep hillside 30 years ago. “I was warned that he would be killed but I did not take it seriously. All the authorities knew it was going to happen but I didn’t believe it. He had talked about the danger of his work and how if he was going to die it would be for his community,” she said.
But a high-level, UN-backed mission to Guatemala, which included the Observer, will suggest in a report to be published this week that although the men may have been killed by local hitmen, the killings have probably been orchestrated by more powerful political and financial interests, with links to the drug trade and the military.
They fear that if action is not taken, Guatemala could descend into the sort of violence and political chaos seen in neighbouring Honduras and nearby Nicaragua.
The killings are just the tip of a pyramid of abuses faced by people defending their land and environment, says Mike Taylor, director of the International Land Coalition (ILC), the global alliance of UN agencies and 278 civil society and farmers’ groups that spent a week hearing evidence from four communities, as well as judicial and government bodies.
“There is a culture of impunity. Leaders are being identified, arrested, detained and criminalised. People are being evicted illegally, even if they have title to land. Hundreds have been threatened with death and many thrown into prison without evidence on charges of murder and terrorism.
“Anyone who opposes mines, evictions, palm oil plantations or who even takes part in roundtables to find solutions to the rising tide of violence against land rights defenders is likely to be targeted,” Taylor said.
“We have seen evidence of criminality, prosecution, false imprisonment and killings. These are not random acts of violence but the systematic persecution of people who have been standing up to defend their land.
“At the base of the violence against defenders is the decision by the state to use land, water and natural resources not for the benefit of the many but the very few.”
James Loughran of Dublin-based Front Line Defenders, a member of the mission – which also took evidence from the UN and people held in prison – said: “People feel abandoned. No one is listening to them. They have no confidence in the justice system. Their leaders are being victimised and attacked, their voices silenced.”
Last year saw 197 killings of environmental activists worldwide, according to human rights group Global Witness. Brazil, with 57 people killed, and the Philippines, with 48, were the two deadliest countries. Guatemala has now become one of the most dangerous.
According to the NGO Udefegua, which monitors official records, there were 483 serious acts of aggression against people fighting for their lands in 2017. More than 300 evictions have been registered in 2018.
---
A history of conflict
Guatemala’s largely indigenous population say their rights have been violated since the Spanish arrived in the 16th century, dispossessing their communities and driving them into the less fertile highlands.
Guatemala gained independence in 1821 and there followed a century of struggle between liberals and US-backed conservatives. In 1954 the CIA deposed leftwing president Jacobo Árbenz to protect the interests of America’s United Fruit Co, whose presence had led to the country being seen as a “banana republic”.
Rebellion followed and in 1960 a brutal 36-year civil war began. This saw about 200,000 largely indigenous people killed by the military, and hundreds of thousands of people migrating to the US.
A peace agreement in 1996 should have led to land redistribution, but a handful of powerful families still dominates the economy, and Guatemala remains one of the world’s least equal and most violent countries, with the largest 2.5% of farms occupying more than 65% of the land.
Economic integration forced on Guatemala by the US and global bodies have further opened the country to foreign-backed mining, hydro and other extractive industries, forcing more evictions of indigenous peoples and leading to more violence and inequality.
racism everywhere!!!
Australian politicians condemn call for a ‘final solution’ to ban Muslim migration
Reuters - raw story
15 AUG 2018 AT 06:43 ET
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and all major political parties on Wednesday condemned a speech by a minor senator who used the term “final solution” in calling for a revival of a “White Australia” restrictive immigration policy.
In one of the most divisive speeches seen in parliament since 1996 when far-right politician Pauline Hanson declared incorrectly that Australia was being swamped by Asians, Senator Fraser Anning on Tuesday called for a national vote on whether to ban Muslim migration.
Anning said Muslims were responsible for acts of terror and crime and were dependant on welfare. Muslims account for less than three percent of Australia’s population, census data shows.
Amid national outrage Turnbull, who will head to the polls within nine months, quickly condemned Anning.
“We reject, we condemn racism in any form, and the remarks by Senator Anning are justly condemned and rejected by us all,” Turnbull told Australia’s parliament.
Opposition Labor party leader Bill Shorten told parliament on Wednesday: “You have to be pretty outrageous to be condemned by everybody in the Australian parliament, but Senator Anning has managed to do just this”.
Australians will return to the polls by May 2019, and recent polls show the majority of the electorate back multiculturalism, but far-right politicians are expected to pose a challenge to the mainstream parties.
“Turnbull can and must bat this away,” said Haydon Manning, a political science professor at Flinders University in South Australia.
Anning, who has been in parliament for less than a year has entered into a lose alliance with several conservative independent lawmakers that has boosted his otherwise inconsequential role in Australia’s upper house.
Anning split from Hanson’s One Nation party shortly after being sworn in, though his speech had many of the hallmarks of his former leader who has called for cuts to Asian and Muslim immigration.
“The final solution to the immigration problem, of course, is a popular vote,” Anning told parliament in his maiden speech.
The Final Solution or the Final Solution to the Jewish Question was a Nazi plan for the genocide or extermination of the Jews during World War Two. Anning has since said he did not know the history of the phrase.
Hanson joined the condemnation, telling the Senate she was appalled by Anning’s speech.
“We are a multi-racial society and I have always advocated you do not have to be white to be Australian,” she said.
Under what was commonly called a “White Australia” policy Australia restricted non-European immigration from 1901 until the late 1960s using various laws.
In one of the most divisive speeches seen in parliament since 1996 when far-right politician Pauline Hanson declared incorrectly that Australia was being swamped by Asians, Senator Fraser Anning on Tuesday called for a national vote on whether to ban Muslim migration.
Anning said Muslims were responsible for acts of terror and crime and were dependant on welfare. Muslims account for less than three percent of Australia’s population, census data shows.
Amid national outrage Turnbull, who will head to the polls within nine months, quickly condemned Anning.
“We reject, we condemn racism in any form, and the remarks by Senator Anning are justly condemned and rejected by us all,” Turnbull told Australia’s parliament.
Opposition Labor party leader Bill Shorten told parliament on Wednesday: “You have to be pretty outrageous to be condemned by everybody in the Australian parliament, but Senator Anning has managed to do just this”.
Australians will return to the polls by May 2019, and recent polls show the majority of the electorate back multiculturalism, but far-right politicians are expected to pose a challenge to the mainstream parties.
“Turnbull can and must bat this away,” said Haydon Manning, a political science professor at Flinders University in South Australia.
Anning, who has been in parliament for less than a year has entered into a lose alliance with several conservative independent lawmakers that has boosted his otherwise inconsequential role in Australia’s upper house.
Anning split from Hanson’s One Nation party shortly after being sworn in, though his speech had many of the hallmarks of his former leader who has called for cuts to Asian and Muslim immigration.
“The final solution to the immigration problem, of course, is a popular vote,” Anning told parliament in his maiden speech.
The Final Solution or the Final Solution to the Jewish Question was a Nazi plan for the genocide or extermination of the Jews during World War Two. Anning has since said he did not know the history of the phrase.
Hanson joined the condemnation, telling the Senate she was appalled by Anning’s speech.
“We are a multi-racial society and I have always advocated you do not have to be white to be Australian,” she said.
Under what was commonly called a “White Australia” policy Australia restricted non-European immigration from 1901 until the late 1960s using various laws.
IF IRELAND CAN GET OUT OF FOSSIL FUELS, YOUR TOWN CAN TOO
Almost 900 cities, universities, and governments have divested over $6 trillion from the fossil fuel industry. Why not yours?
By Celia Bottger | other words
August 14, 2018
On Thursday, July 12th, a small, rainy island in the North Atlantic proved it was on the right side of history.
The Republic of Ireland passed a bill to divest its $370 million worth of investments in around 150 fossil fuel companies within five years. Should the bill pass the Irish Senate in September, which it is expected to do, Ireland will become the first country to fully divest from fossil fuels.
This action marks a huge step forward.
For years now, neighborhood climate activists have pressured cities, universities, and governments to divest their holdings in fossil fuel companies. The idea is to defund and denounce the industry that contributes the most to climate change, funds climate denial, and prevents climate action.
With its divestment bill, Ireland will join a group of almost 900 cities, universities, and governments that have collectively divested over $6 trillion from the extractive fossil fuel economy.
As a leader of a fossil fuel divestment campaign on my college campus in Massachusetts, Ireland’s leadership offers a fun bit of leverage: If an entire country can fully divest from fossil fuels and not crumble into financial despair (in fact, fossil fuels have been a losing investment for years), my university can surely divest its endowment from this destructive industry without harming its revenues.
Ireland’s leadership can also inspire local governments to divest their pension funds from fossil fuels. While it’s quite unlikely that our current federal government will follow in Ireland’s footsteps, American cities and towns can take a stand against the fossil fuel industry one pension fund at a time.
New York City’s pledge to divest its $189 billion pension fund from fossil fuels is perhaps the most ambitious of these commitments. Not only is the city divesting — it’s also suing five fossil fuel firms for their contributions to climate change.
Equally compelling, however, are the numerous smaller American cities that have committed to full divestment from fossil fuels.
The city of Richmond, California, one of the poorest communities in the Bay Area, similarly pledged to divest and to sue fossil fuel companies. Surrounded on all three sides by water, and populated by many low-income people of color, the city and its population are disproportionately impacted by climate change.
Richmond’s main employer is a Chevron refinery, which for decades has employed residents while simultaneously polluting their environment, jeopardizing their health, and contributing to sea level rise, which threatens to displace the very population that it employs.
Other local governments that have taken the plunged include Amherst, Massachusetts; Ann Arbor, Michigan; Dane County, Wisconsin; and Multnomah County, Oregon, which have all committed to full divestment from oil, gas, and coal companies.
Whether you’re a student, worker, or resident, you can pressure your school, company, or local government to stand for the planet by divesting from fossil fuels. If Ireland, a country known for its religious and political conservatism, can make this commitment to climate justice, anyone can.
The Republic of Ireland passed a bill to divest its $370 million worth of investments in around 150 fossil fuel companies within five years. Should the bill pass the Irish Senate in September, which it is expected to do, Ireland will become the first country to fully divest from fossil fuels.
This action marks a huge step forward.
For years now, neighborhood climate activists have pressured cities, universities, and governments to divest their holdings in fossil fuel companies. The idea is to defund and denounce the industry that contributes the most to climate change, funds climate denial, and prevents climate action.
With its divestment bill, Ireland will join a group of almost 900 cities, universities, and governments that have collectively divested over $6 trillion from the extractive fossil fuel economy.
As a leader of a fossil fuel divestment campaign on my college campus in Massachusetts, Ireland’s leadership offers a fun bit of leverage: If an entire country can fully divest from fossil fuels and not crumble into financial despair (in fact, fossil fuels have been a losing investment for years), my university can surely divest its endowment from this destructive industry without harming its revenues.
Ireland’s leadership can also inspire local governments to divest their pension funds from fossil fuels. While it’s quite unlikely that our current federal government will follow in Ireland’s footsteps, American cities and towns can take a stand against the fossil fuel industry one pension fund at a time.
New York City’s pledge to divest its $189 billion pension fund from fossil fuels is perhaps the most ambitious of these commitments. Not only is the city divesting — it’s also suing five fossil fuel firms for their contributions to climate change.
Equally compelling, however, are the numerous smaller American cities that have committed to full divestment from fossil fuels.
The city of Richmond, California, one of the poorest communities in the Bay Area, similarly pledged to divest and to sue fossil fuel companies. Surrounded on all three sides by water, and populated by many low-income people of color, the city and its population are disproportionately impacted by climate change.
Richmond’s main employer is a Chevron refinery, which for decades has employed residents while simultaneously polluting their environment, jeopardizing their health, and contributing to sea level rise, which threatens to displace the very population that it employs.
Other local governments that have taken the plunged include Amherst, Massachusetts; Ann Arbor, Michigan; Dane County, Wisconsin; and Multnomah County, Oregon, which have all committed to full divestment from oil, gas, and coal companies.
Whether you’re a student, worker, or resident, you can pressure your school, company, or local government to stand for the planet by divesting from fossil fuels. If Ireland, a country known for its religious and political conservatism, can make this commitment to climate justice, anyone can.
U.N. says it has credible reports that China holds million Uighurs in secret camps
Stephanie Nebehay - reuters
AUGUST 10, 2018 / 8:14 AM
GENEVA (Reuters) - A U.N. human rights panel said on Friday that it had received many credible reports that 1 million ethnic Uighurs in China are held in what resembles a “massive internment camp that is shrouded in secrecy”.
Gay McDougall, a member of the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, cited estimates that 2 million Uighurs and Muslim minorities were forced into “political camps for indoctrination” in the western Xinjiang autonomous region.
“We are deeply concerned at the many numerous and credible reports that we have received that in the name of combating religious extremism and maintaining social stability (China) has changed the Uighur autonomous region into something that resembles a massive internship camp that is shrouded in secrecy, a sort of ‘no rights zone’,” she told the start of a two-day regular review of China’s record, including Hong Kong and Macao.
China says Xinjiang faces a serious threat from Islamist militants and separatists who plot attacks and stir up tensions between the mostly Muslim Uighur minority who call the region home and the ethnic Han Chinese majority.
A Chinese delegation of some 50 officials made no comment on her remarks at the Geneva session that continues on Monday.
The allegations came from multiple sources, including activist group Chinese Human Rights Defenders, which said in a report last month that 21 percent of all arrests recorded in China in 2017 were in Xinjiang.
Earlier, Yu Jianhua, China’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, said it was working towards equality and solidarity among all ethnic groups.
But McDougall said that members of the Uighur community and others Muslims were being treated as “enemies of the state” solely on the basis of their ethno-religious identity.
More than 100 Uighur students who returned to China from countries including Egypt and Turkey had been detained, with some dying in custody, she said.
Fatima-Binta Dah, a panel member, referred to “arbitrary and mass detention of almost 1 million Uighurs” and asked the Chinese delegation:
“What is the level of religious freedom available now to Uighurs in China, what legal protection exists for them to practice their religion?”
Panelists also raised reports of mistreatment of Tibetans in the autonomous region, including inadequate use of the Tibetan language in the classroom and at court proceedings.
“The U.N. body maintained its integrity, the government got a very clear message,” Golok Jigme, a Tibetan monk and former prisoner living in exile, told Reuters at the meeting.
Gay McDougall, a member of the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, cited estimates that 2 million Uighurs and Muslim minorities were forced into “political camps for indoctrination” in the western Xinjiang autonomous region.
“We are deeply concerned at the many numerous and credible reports that we have received that in the name of combating religious extremism and maintaining social stability (China) has changed the Uighur autonomous region into something that resembles a massive internship camp that is shrouded in secrecy, a sort of ‘no rights zone’,” she told the start of a two-day regular review of China’s record, including Hong Kong and Macao.
China says Xinjiang faces a serious threat from Islamist militants and separatists who plot attacks and stir up tensions between the mostly Muslim Uighur minority who call the region home and the ethnic Han Chinese majority.
A Chinese delegation of some 50 officials made no comment on her remarks at the Geneva session that continues on Monday.
The allegations came from multiple sources, including activist group Chinese Human Rights Defenders, which said in a report last month that 21 percent of all arrests recorded in China in 2017 were in Xinjiang.
Earlier, Yu Jianhua, China’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, said it was working towards equality and solidarity among all ethnic groups.
But McDougall said that members of the Uighur community and others Muslims were being treated as “enemies of the state” solely on the basis of their ethno-religious identity.
More than 100 Uighur students who returned to China from countries including Egypt and Turkey had been detained, with some dying in custody, she said.
Fatima-Binta Dah, a panel member, referred to “arbitrary and mass detention of almost 1 million Uighurs” and asked the Chinese delegation:
“What is the level of religious freedom available now to Uighurs in China, what legal protection exists for them to practice their religion?”
Panelists also raised reports of mistreatment of Tibetans in the autonomous region, including inadequate use of the Tibetan language in the classroom and at court proceedings.
“The U.N. body maintained its integrity, the government got a very clear message,” Golok Jigme, a Tibetan monk and former prisoner living in exile, told Reuters at the meeting.
fuck trump!!!
CHINA AND RUSSIA DEFEND IRAN AGAINST U.S., SAY THEY WILL KEEP DOING BUSINESS
BY TOM O'CONNOR - newsweek
ON 8/8/18 AT 3:14 PM
China and Russia have condemned the U.S. decision to impose sanctions on countries trading with Iran, with whom they both have ties they were unwilling to forfeit.
President Donald Trump's withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran has drawn major criticism from the agreement's other signatories—including European allies France, Germany and the U.K. as well as top rivals China and Russia. As the leading customer of Iranian oil, China has been particularly vocal about its desire to continue to keep doing business with Iran, even as the first round of U.S. sanctions came into effect Monday.
"China has consistently opposed unilateral sanctions and long-armed jurisdiction," the Chinese Foreign Ministry said Wednesday in a statement faxed to Reuters, responding to questions about Washington's sanctions and threats.
"China’s commercial cooperation with Iran is open and transparent, reasonable, fair and lawful, not violating any United Nations Security Council resolutions," it added. "China’s lawful rights should be protected."
China buys some 650,000 barrels of Iranian oil per day, making the revolutionary Shiite Muslim power a vital pipeline for the world's largest population's rapidly growing energy demand. Beijing has invested heavily in oil infrastructure and has been slated to take over Iran's end of the world's largest gas field—the South Pars field—which is shared with Sunni Muslim monarchy Qatar. French oil giant Total, the current majority stakeholder, has said it would be forced to abandon its multibillion-dollar contract to develop the field if it could not get a U.S. waiver from sanctions.
As the first batch of non-oil-related U.S. sanctions kicked in Monday, Trump tweeted: "Anyone doing business with Iran will NOT be doing business with the United States." The president has pledged to bring Iran's oil trade to zero and sanctions regarding the country's energy sector were set to come into effect November 4. Joining fellow nuclear-accord parties in opposing this decision, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Tuesday it was "deeply disappointed" in the U.S. for going through with the punitive economic measures against Iran and reaffirmed its commitment to the deal, known officially as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
"This is a graphic example of Washington’s continued violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231 and trampling upon the norms of international law," the ministry said. "We denounce any unilateral sanctions in circumvention of the U.N. Security Council’s decisions, all the more so if they have exterritorial applications and affect the interests of third countries, as is the case with the current U.S. restrictions against Iran.
"The international community must prevent these significant achievements of multilateral diplomacy from being sacrificed to U.S. aspirations to square political accounts with Iran on issues that have nothing to do with the JCPOA. As long-term experience shows, it will be impossible to secure concessions from Iran using pressure tactics," it added.
Russia has massive oil reserves of its own, so its concerns about the sanctions against Iran have been largely based not on geopolitics but on economics. Moscow has sought to counter U.S. dominance in the Middle East by building ties with Washington's friends and foes alike, and Iran has proved a particularly strategic partner as it helps their mutual ally Syria overcome an uprising fueled by the West, Turkey and Sunni Muslim monarchies.
While rifts have emerged over Russia and Iran's vision for Syria as anti-government elements are defeated nationwide, Moscow still saw Tehran as a vital counterweight to Washington's foreign interests. These were a driving factor in Trump's decision to exit the Iran deal as he accused Tehran of using sanctions relief money to fund militant groups. The Russian Foreign Ministry asserted Tuesday that it would "do everything possible in the interests of preserving and effectively implementing the JCPOA in full measure," including by "implementing the relevant measures to protect trade and economic cooperation with Iran at [the] national level."
China and Russia were joined by the EU and a tripartite of its member states that signed the Iran deal in taking measures to mitigate Trump's initiative, potentially diminishing U.S. influence over the global financial system. Natalie Tocci, an aide to EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, told The Hill Tuesday, "If EU companies abide by U.S. secondary sanctions they will, in turn, be sanctioned by the EU," and the EU has warned it would "forbid" EU nations from adhering to Trump's sanctions on Iran. China, Russia and the EU have also all taken on the U.S. in the World Trade Organization over Trump's steel and aluminum tariffs.
Responding to Trump's moves and the global reaction, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told reporters after a cabinet meeting Wednesday that "the world has taken a stance against U.S. sanctions," according to the semiofficial Mehr News Agency. "The European Union has announced that it will not comply with U.S. sanctions, and it will also support those countries that wish to side with the EU on this position. In a sense, an international consensus has been formed against the U.S. measure.
"Just as much as Trump’s claim for talks can be disregarded, the U.S. claims on exerting pressure on Iran can also be dismissed," he added.
President Donald Trump's withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran has drawn major criticism from the agreement's other signatories—including European allies France, Germany and the U.K. as well as top rivals China and Russia. As the leading customer of Iranian oil, China has been particularly vocal about its desire to continue to keep doing business with Iran, even as the first round of U.S. sanctions came into effect Monday.
"China has consistently opposed unilateral sanctions and long-armed jurisdiction," the Chinese Foreign Ministry said Wednesday in a statement faxed to Reuters, responding to questions about Washington's sanctions and threats.
"China’s commercial cooperation with Iran is open and transparent, reasonable, fair and lawful, not violating any United Nations Security Council resolutions," it added. "China’s lawful rights should be protected."
China buys some 650,000 barrels of Iranian oil per day, making the revolutionary Shiite Muslim power a vital pipeline for the world's largest population's rapidly growing energy demand. Beijing has invested heavily in oil infrastructure and has been slated to take over Iran's end of the world's largest gas field—the South Pars field—which is shared with Sunni Muslim monarchy Qatar. French oil giant Total, the current majority stakeholder, has said it would be forced to abandon its multibillion-dollar contract to develop the field if it could not get a U.S. waiver from sanctions.
As the first batch of non-oil-related U.S. sanctions kicked in Monday, Trump tweeted: "Anyone doing business with Iran will NOT be doing business with the United States." The president has pledged to bring Iran's oil trade to zero and sanctions regarding the country's energy sector were set to come into effect November 4. Joining fellow nuclear-accord parties in opposing this decision, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Tuesday it was "deeply disappointed" in the U.S. for going through with the punitive economic measures against Iran and reaffirmed its commitment to the deal, known officially as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
"This is a graphic example of Washington’s continued violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231 and trampling upon the norms of international law," the ministry said. "We denounce any unilateral sanctions in circumvention of the U.N. Security Council’s decisions, all the more so if they have exterritorial applications and affect the interests of third countries, as is the case with the current U.S. restrictions against Iran.
"The international community must prevent these significant achievements of multilateral diplomacy from being sacrificed to U.S. aspirations to square political accounts with Iran on issues that have nothing to do with the JCPOA. As long-term experience shows, it will be impossible to secure concessions from Iran using pressure tactics," it added.
Russia has massive oil reserves of its own, so its concerns about the sanctions against Iran have been largely based not on geopolitics but on economics. Moscow has sought to counter U.S. dominance in the Middle East by building ties with Washington's friends and foes alike, and Iran has proved a particularly strategic partner as it helps their mutual ally Syria overcome an uprising fueled by the West, Turkey and Sunni Muslim monarchies.
While rifts have emerged over Russia and Iran's vision for Syria as anti-government elements are defeated nationwide, Moscow still saw Tehran as a vital counterweight to Washington's foreign interests. These were a driving factor in Trump's decision to exit the Iran deal as he accused Tehran of using sanctions relief money to fund militant groups. The Russian Foreign Ministry asserted Tuesday that it would "do everything possible in the interests of preserving and effectively implementing the JCPOA in full measure," including by "implementing the relevant measures to protect trade and economic cooperation with Iran at [the] national level."
China and Russia were joined by the EU and a tripartite of its member states that signed the Iran deal in taking measures to mitigate Trump's initiative, potentially diminishing U.S. influence over the global financial system. Natalie Tocci, an aide to EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, told The Hill Tuesday, "If EU companies abide by U.S. secondary sanctions they will, in turn, be sanctioned by the EU," and the EU has warned it would "forbid" EU nations from adhering to Trump's sanctions on Iran. China, Russia and the EU have also all taken on the U.S. in the World Trade Organization over Trump's steel and aluminum tariffs.
Responding to Trump's moves and the global reaction, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told reporters after a cabinet meeting Wednesday that "the world has taken a stance against U.S. sanctions," according to the semiofficial Mehr News Agency. "The European Union has announced that it will not comply with U.S. sanctions, and it will also support those countries that wish to side with the EU on this position. In a sense, an international consensus has been formed against the U.S. measure.
"Just as much as Trump’s claim for talks can be disregarded, the U.S. claims on exerting pressure on Iran can also be dismissed," he added.
RUSSIA HAS BULLDOZED 26 TONS OF WESTERN FOOD AND CHEESE BECAUSE OF KREMLIN BAN
BY DAMIEN SHARKOV - newsweek
ON 8/7/18 AT 7:58 AM
Russia has destroyed thousands of tons of foreign food and goods over the past three years, following a controversial decision by the Kremlin to ban numerous Western imports.
Western governments moved to punish Russian President Vladimir Putin for his annexation of Crimea in 2014 by placing powerful officials close to him under sanctions. Moscow hit back by banning imports of many consumer goods from the European Union and the U.S. The move has given Russian produce, fish, other meat and dairy a boost but has also increased prices and resulted in a surplus of banned goods, sitting under the lock and key of health authorities.
Russia has been destroying the imported goods by the crate load, seizing 27,000 tons and bulldozing more than 26,000 tons of imported goods since 2015, agriculture watchdog Rosselkhoznadzor announced on Monday. Over the past year, Rosselkhoznadzor estimates it has destroyed 350 tons of animal products under the import sanctions and 7,500 plant products, in compliance with Putin's orders.
“From the ‘sanctioned’ plant products, 24,900 tons have been destroyed,” a statement from the watchdog said. “The biggest part constitutes fruits, in particular apples of Polish origin, but also a considerable amount of tomatoes of Turkish origin.”
Poland's apples were a considerable part of its billion-dollar fruit and vegetable exports to Russia. After Moscow announced a ban on the import, however, many Poles rallied behind their country's products, pledging to eat more apples to spite the Kremlin.
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev then took the unusual step of defending the ban as necessary for health reasons, saying that “these apples that get exported are drowned in chemicals by the Poles, but then they eat the good ones themselves.” His Polish counterpart at the time, Ewa Kopacz, dismissed Medvedev’s comments, saying Poland’s produce adheres to EU hygiene rules and farmers can be “proud” of their work.
Although Turkey is not part of the EU, its own food exports to Russia came under sanctions after a public stand-off following the downing of a Russian jet in 2015.
Besides fruit and vegetables, Russian authorities have also confiscated animal products that fall under the European import embargo, destroying some 862 tons. “The most prevalent cargo group is dairy products,” the watchdog said.
Following the first mass destruction of imported goods in 2015, the Russian government faced a major backlash, triggering both mockery online and a petition to reverse the policy, which currently has over half a million signatories. The current decree signed by Putin will expire at the end of next year, state news agency RIA Novosti reported, when the Kremlin will decide whether or not to renew it.
Western governments moved to punish Russian President Vladimir Putin for his annexation of Crimea in 2014 by placing powerful officials close to him under sanctions. Moscow hit back by banning imports of many consumer goods from the European Union and the U.S. The move has given Russian produce, fish, other meat and dairy a boost but has also increased prices and resulted in a surplus of banned goods, sitting under the lock and key of health authorities.
Russia has been destroying the imported goods by the crate load, seizing 27,000 tons and bulldozing more than 26,000 tons of imported goods since 2015, agriculture watchdog Rosselkhoznadzor announced on Monday. Over the past year, Rosselkhoznadzor estimates it has destroyed 350 tons of animal products under the import sanctions and 7,500 plant products, in compliance with Putin's orders.
“From the ‘sanctioned’ plant products, 24,900 tons have been destroyed,” a statement from the watchdog said. “The biggest part constitutes fruits, in particular apples of Polish origin, but also a considerable amount of tomatoes of Turkish origin.”
Poland's apples were a considerable part of its billion-dollar fruit and vegetable exports to Russia. After Moscow announced a ban on the import, however, many Poles rallied behind their country's products, pledging to eat more apples to spite the Kremlin.
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev then took the unusual step of defending the ban as necessary for health reasons, saying that “these apples that get exported are drowned in chemicals by the Poles, but then they eat the good ones themselves.” His Polish counterpart at the time, Ewa Kopacz, dismissed Medvedev’s comments, saying Poland’s produce adheres to EU hygiene rules and farmers can be “proud” of their work.
Although Turkey is not part of the EU, its own food exports to Russia came under sanctions after a public stand-off following the downing of a Russian jet in 2015.
Besides fruit and vegetables, Russian authorities have also confiscated animal products that fall under the European import embargo, destroying some 862 tons. “The most prevalent cargo group is dairy products,” the watchdog said.
Following the first mass destruction of imported goods in 2015, the Russian government faced a major backlash, triggering both mockery online and a petition to reverse the policy, which currently has over half a million signatories. The current decree signed by Putin will expire at the end of next year, state news agency RIA Novosti reported, when the Kremlin will decide whether or not to renew it.
Battle for Water Rights Heats Up in El Salvador
BY Heather Gies Truthout
PUBLISHED
August 5, 2018
Activists from the University of El Salvador (UES) march for water rights in San Salvador. The sign reads: “Don’t privatize water! UES, present!”
HEATHER GIES
...On the heels of weeks of amplified debate and several protests over water rights in El Salvador, demonstrators had decided to march yet again as dry taps parched about one-sixth of the Central American country’s population. Since then, activists have continued organizing actions in San Salvador and around the country, including a national day of marches against water privatization.
A day before the July 5 march, as water trucks rumbled through the capital selling emergency water supplies after damages cut service to more than 1 million people, the conservative presidential hopeful for the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) unexpectedly spurred on a stalled proposal to protect the right to water in the country’s constitution.
Critics argue the amendment, long blocked by the conservative politicians who now appear to support it, is window dressing on right-wing plans for de facto water privatization. ARENA, backed by El Salvador’s largest corporations, has proposed a bill that would hand regulatory power over water to private entities.
For years, social movements have demanded regulations to shield the country’s plentiful but contaminated water resources from overexploitation by corporations for agriculture, bottling, mining and other industries.
“We don’t want the abuse of water to be legalized,” said Oscar Ruiz, a representative of the United Community Association for Water and Agriculture (ACUA). Together with affected residents, Ruiz recently filed a complaint in an environmental court over a dried-up lagoon in an agricultural community where water-intensive sugar cane plantations guzzle resources. “Communities are practically being left without water.”
Water Wars
Water legislation supported by social movements has languished for years in El Salvador’s Legislative Assembly, despite a 2016 call from a United Nations expert to approve it. Introduced in 2006 and backed by the governing Farabundo Martí National Front (FMLN), the General Water Law faced steep resistance from the largest bloc, led by ARENA.
Now, after serving a strong defeat to the FMLN in the recent legislative elections, ARENA is pushing a counter-proposal.
ARENA’s Comprehensive Water Law, drafted with direction from the country’s largest business lobby, the National Association of Private Enterprise (ANEP), was first introduced last year but revived in June. If approved, the law would establish a five-member board to regulate water. One of the seats would be selected by El Salvador’s president, two by ANEP and two by the Corporation of Municipalities (COMURES).
Many assume COMURES, a non-governmental body currently dominated by ARENA, would select one representative from each of the major parties, the FMLN and ARENA. Critics argue that in practice, the seat for ARENA would secure an additional business-friendly vote, tilting the board in favor of private interests.
The FMLN’s General Water Law, on the other hand, maintains that water should be regulated as a public good. The bill’s proposed regulatory body would be made up of public institutions, including the Ministry of the Environment, the national water distribution agency, the consumer protection authority and other entities.
“If there’s no water for the poor, there won’t be peace for the rich!” chanted demonstrators at the July 5 march in San Salvador. ARENA’s proposal has sparked widespread outcry and galvanized social pressure across a broad cross-section of sectors. Labor unions, churches, universities and other groups have urged lawmakers to shelve the so-called privatization bill and restart discussion on the FMLN-sponsored bill.
“In El Salvador, for years after the [1992] peace accords, we have not had unity of all social movements,” said Hector Berríos, a social leader from San Isidro, Cabañas. “Today, the water issue has enabled us to bring everyone together.”
Over the course of two decades in executive power up until 2009, ARENA championed business-friendly policies, including privatizing electricity distribution after the end of the 12-year civil war between the US-backed government and the FMLN, then a leftist rebel insurgency.
Water escaped the privatization push, but the resource has remained weakly regulated. A patchwork of 2,325 self-governing community water boards now fills gaps in services provided by the national public water distributor, the National Administration of Aqueducts and Sewers (ANDA). Inadequate regulation hinders quality and service guarantees, especially in rural areas, and makes water resources susceptible to overexploitation. Effective regulation remains urgent as the country is set to be hard hit by climate change.
Student activist Marisa Ramirez put the stakes of the water debate succinctly: “If we allow the right-wing to privatize water, we run the total resounding risk that prices will be put on water consumption at a level that people won’t be able [to afford],” she said.
“Double Discourse”
More than 1 million people in the nation of 6.3 million lacked water for multiple days beginning July 2 after damages to pipes in the water-rich Nejapa region cut service to parts of San Salvador and surrounding areas. Scores of people queued around water trucks in the heat to fill reserves until the taps were back on.
The government water distributor, ANDA, alleged sabotage, but police pointed to technical problems. Some cautioned the water shutoff could foreshadow future shortages.
“If water distribution falls in private hands, these crises may be repeated because there will not be full state sovereignty over water distribution,” said Eduardo Misero of the University of El Salvador Faculty of Medicine. “In any crisis that comes, the most affected will always be the middle and working classes.”
The shutoff forced 300 schools to suspend classes and delayed surgeries in hospitals in affected areas.
Amid the service outage and ongoing backlash over the privatization bill, ARENA’s candidate for the 2019 presidential elections, supermarket chain owner Carlos Calleja, rebooted discussions about adding the right to water to El Salvador’s Constitution. Lawmakers approved the reform in 2012 but never ratified it.
For years, social movements have been fighting for the reform to Article 69 of the Constitution, which outlines the state’s responsibility to control the “quality of food products and environmental conditions that can affect health and well-being,” insisting it should explicitly include the right to water. In 2016, the United Nations special rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation also called on Salvadoran lawmakers to ratify the constitutional reform and pass regulatory legislation.
First the FMLN and now ARENA both have proposed updating Article 69 with language that would establish water as a human right and enshrine the state’s responsibility to create public policy to regulate the resource.
Edwin Oliva, secretary general of the Workers’ Trade Union of the University of El Salvador (SETUES) slammed Calleja’s call to reactivate the constitutional reform as a “farce,” arguing that the right wing’s water regulation plan is fundamentally at odds with the spirit of enshrining the right to water in the Constitution.
“We need to be clear about what the water law entails,” said Oliva. “There should not be private participation in regulating this vital liquid.”
---
Water Emergency
The current debate is the most significant activity over water issues in El Salvador since lawmakers approved a historic ban on metals mining last year, celebrated as a victory to protect the country’s thinning supply of clean water.
El Salvador is already the most water-stressed nation in Central America, a situation expected to worsen with climate change.
A 2017 Ministry of Agriculture study found 68 percent of the country’s surface water sources are contaminated. None of the 117 water sites surveyed were suitable for drinking, and only 10 percent were safe for irrigating agriculture.
According to 2005 data, 68 percent of water extracted in El Salvador went to agriculture, 22 percent to service municipalities and 10 percent to industrial uses.
In 2016, the government declared its first-ever drought “emergency,”sounding the alarm for more crises to come with climate change in the country nestled in Central America’s so-called dry corridor. El Salvador’s severe deforestation and land degradation also are expected to exacerbate drought conditions and accelerate climate impacts, including increased water stress.
Contrary to ARENA and ANEP’s claims, Ramirez, the student activist, fears losing the battle over water could mean people could end up “dying of thirst” in the future.
“They say there is an abundance of water, there’s a surplus of water. It’s true there is a surplus of contaminated water. But we need to defend drinking water — it already doesn’t reach everyone,” she said. “We are not going to allow a vital resource for human beings to be privatized.”
“Systematic Failure of Privatization”
El Salvador’s water debate, stretching back more than a decade, is far from an isolated case in a global tide of privatization.
In 1999 and 2000, Bolivia’s Cochabamba Water Wars laid bare that water privatization schemes promoted by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) as a condition for financing for resource-strapped countries can be starkly at odds with the needs and desires of the poor families who would be affected by the policies.
A 2003 report by Public Citizen assessing case studies in cities from Atlanta, Georgia, to Manila, Philippines, argued that water privatization has amounted to a “global social experiment” resulting in increased water rates, public health risks, weak regulation, environmental pollution, social turmoil and other problems.
In the United States, Food and Water Watch has calculated that privatized water costs, on average per household, 59 percent more than public utilities.
The most extreme cases of the privatization doctrine took hold in Chile and the United Kingdom, where governments sold off the water infrastructure to the private sector.
More common has been a form of privatization couched in the softer rhetoric of public-private partnerships that hand over partial control to corporations through concessions, leases or management power — like El Salvador’s bill proposes.
Though major international institutions still favor injecting private financing as a quick fix for water woes, the privatization consensus also faces growing blowback.
A 2017 report by the Transnational Institute documented 267 cases of cities and communities around the globe that have taken back control of privatized water services, a process researchers call “remunicipalization.”
According to Transnational Institute researcher Satoko Kishimoto, remunicipalization is “challenging the current mainstream policies” on water regulation.
In a phone interview from Japan, Kishimoto said the remunicipalization trend — which has sped up in recent years despite major legal, political and financial challenges involved in the process — could start to “change the tide” in water debates by highlighting the “systematic failure of privatization.”
With global water demand expected to outstrip supply by 40 percent by 2030 and scarcity set to increasingly drive migration and civil conflict, effective water management remains an urgent priority worldwide.
Kishimoto suggested remunicipalization cases could serve as a warning to avoid privatization in the first place. But she also stressed that transparency is key to make public water regulation effective and efficient.
“Democratization of public water — that’s the direction that politicians have to put energy [into] rather than privatization,” she said. “Because privatization is much, much too risky and after all, gets expensive.”
A day before the July 5 march, as water trucks rumbled through the capital selling emergency water supplies after damages cut service to more than 1 million people, the conservative presidential hopeful for the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) unexpectedly spurred on a stalled proposal to protect the right to water in the country’s constitution.
Critics argue the amendment, long blocked by the conservative politicians who now appear to support it, is window dressing on right-wing plans for de facto water privatization. ARENA, backed by El Salvador’s largest corporations, has proposed a bill that would hand regulatory power over water to private entities.
For years, social movements have demanded regulations to shield the country’s plentiful but contaminated water resources from overexploitation by corporations for agriculture, bottling, mining and other industries.
“We don’t want the abuse of water to be legalized,” said Oscar Ruiz, a representative of the United Community Association for Water and Agriculture (ACUA). Together with affected residents, Ruiz recently filed a complaint in an environmental court over a dried-up lagoon in an agricultural community where water-intensive sugar cane plantations guzzle resources. “Communities are practically being left without water.”
Water Wars
Water legislation supported by social movements has languished for years in El Salvador’s Legislative Assembly, despite a 2016 call from a United Nations expert to approve it. Introduced in 2006 and backed by the governing Farabundo Martí National Front (FMLN), the General Water Law faced steep resistance from the largest bloc, led by ARENA.
Now, after serving a strong defeat to the FMLN in the recent legislative elections, ARENA is pushing a counter-proposal.
ARENA’s Comprehensive Water Law, drafted with direction from the country’s largest business lobby, the National Association of Private Enterprise (ANEP), was first introduced last year but revived in June. If approved, the law would establish a five-member board to regulate water. One of the seats would be selected by El Salvador’s president, two by ANEP and two by the Corporation of Municipalities (COMURES).
Many assume COMURES, a non-governmental body currently dominated by ARENA, would select one representative from each of the major parties, the FMLN and ARENA. Critics argue that in practice, the seat for ARENA would secure an additional business-friendly vote, tilting the board in favor of private interests.
The FMLN’s General Water Law, on the other hand, maintains that water should be regulated as a public good. The bill’s proposed regulatory body would be made up of public institutions, including the Ministry of the Environment, the national water distribution agency, the consumer protection authority and other entities.
“If there’s no water for the poor, there won’t be peace for the rich!” chanted demonstrators at the July 5 march in San Salvador. ARENA’s proposal has sparked widespread outcry and galvanized social pressure across a broad cross-section of sectors. Labor unions, churches, universities and other groups have urged lawmakers to shelve the so-called privatization bill and restart discussion on the FMLN-sponsored bill.
“In El Salvador, for years after the [1992] peace accords, we have not had unity of all social movements,” said Hector Berríos, a social leader from San Isidro, Cabañas. “Today, the water issue has enabled us to bring everyone together.”
Over the course of two decades in executive power up until 2009, ARENA championed business-friendly policies, including privatizing electricity distribution after the end of the 12-year civil war between the US-backed government and the FMLN, then a leftist rebel insurgency.
Water escaped the privatization push, but the resource has remained weakly regulated. A patchwork of 2,325 self-governing community water boards now fills gaps in services provided by the national public water distributor, the National Administration of Aqueducts and Sewers (ANDA). Inadequate regulation hinders quality and service guarantees, especially in rural areas, and makes water resources susceptible to overexploitation. Effective regulation remains urgent as the country is set to be hard hit by climate change.
Student activist Marisa Ramirez put the stakes of the water debate succinctly: “If we allow the right-wing to privatize water, we run the total resounding risk that prices will be put on water consumption at a level that people won’t be able [to afford],” she said.
“Double Discourse”
More than 1 million people in the nation of 6.3 million lacked water for multiple days beginning July 2 after damages to pipes in the water-rich Nejapa region cut service to parts of San Salvador and surrounding areas. Scores of people queued around water trucks in the heat to fill reserves until the taps were back on.
The government water distributor, ANDA, alleged sabotage, but police pointed to technical problems. Some cautioned the water shutoff could foreshadow future shortages.
“If water distribution falls in private hands, these crises may be repeated because there will not be full state sovereignty over water distribution,” said Eduardo Misero of the University of El Salvador Faculty of Medicine. “In any crisis that comes, the most affected will always be the middle and working classes.”
The shutoff forced 300 schools to suspend classes and delayed surgeries in hospitals in affected areas.
Amid the service outage and ongoing backlash over the privatization bill, ARENA’s candidate for the 2019 presidential elections, supermarket chain owner Carlos Calleja, rebooted discussions about adding the right to water to El Salvador’s Constitution. Lawmakers approved the reform in 2012 but never ratified it.
For years, social movements have been fighting for the reform to Article 69 of the Constitution, which outlines the state’s responsibility to control the “quality of food products and environmental conditions that can affect health and well-being,” insisting it should explicitly include the right to water. In 2016, the United Nations special rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation also called on Salvadoran lawmakers to ratify the constitutional reform and pass regulatory legislation.
First the FMLN and now ARENA both have proposed updating Article 69 with language that would establish water as a human right and enshrine the state’s responsibility to create public policy to regulate the resource.
Edwin Oliva, secretary general of the Workers’ Trade Union of the University of El Salvador (SETUES) slammed Calleja’s call to reactivate the constitutional reform as a “farce,” arguing that the right wing’s water regulation plan is fundamentally at odds with the spirit of enshrining the right to water in the Constitution.
“We need to be clear about what the water law entails,” said Oliva. “There should not be private participation in regulating this vital liquid.”
---
Water Emergency
The current debate is the most significant activity over water issues in El Salvador since lawmakers approved a historic ban on metals mining last year, celebrated as a victory to protect the country’s thinning supply of clean water.
El Salvador is already the most water-stressed nation in Central America, a situation expected to worsen with climate change.
A 2017 Ministry of Agriculture study found 68 percent of the country’s surface water sources are contaminated. None of the 117 water sites surveyed were suitable for drinking, and only 10 percent were safe for irrigating agriculture.
According to 2005 data, 68 percent of water extracted in El Salvador went to agriculture, 22 percent to service municipalities and 10 percent to industrial uses.
In 2016, the government declared its first-ever drought “emergency,”sounding the alarm for more crises to come with climate change in the country nestled in Central America’s so-called dry corridor. El Salvador’s severe deforestation and land degradation also are expected to exacerbate drought conditions and accelerate climate impacts, including increased water stress.
Contrary to ARENA and ANEP’s claims, Ramirez, the student activist, fears losing the battle over water could mean people could end up “dying of thirst” in the future.
“They say there is an abundance of water, there’s a surplus of water. It’s true there is a surplus of contaminated water. But we need to defend drinking water — it already doesn’t reach everyone,” she said. “We are not going to allow a vital resource for human beings to be privatized.”
“Systematic Failure of Privatization”
El Salvador’s water debate, stretching back more than a decade, is far from an isolated case in a global tide of privatization.
In 1999 and 2000, Bolivia’s Cochabamba Water Wars laid bare that water privatization schemes promoted by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) as a condition for financing for resource-strapped countries can be starkly at odds with the needs and desires of the poor families who would be affected by the policies.
A 2003 report by Public Citizen assessing case studies in cities from Atlanta, Georgia, to Manila, Philippines, argued that water privatization has amounted to a “global social experiment” resulting in increased water rates, public health risks, weak regulation, environmental pollution, social turmoil and other problems.
In the United States, Food and Water Watch has calculated that privatized water costs, on average per household, 59 percent more than public utilities.
The most extreme cases of the privatization doctrine took hold in Chile and the United Kingdom, where governments sold off the water infrastructure to the private sector.
More common has been a form of privatization couched in the softer rhetoric of public-private partnerships that hand over partial control to corporations through concessions, leases or management power — like El Salvador’s bill proposes.
Though major international institutions still favor injecting private financing as a quick fix for water woes, the privatization consensus also faces growing blowback.
A 2017 report by the Transnational Institute documented 267 cases of cities and communities around the globe that have taken back control of privatized water services, a process researchers call “remunicipalization.”
According to Transnational Institute researcher Satoko Kishimoto, remunicipalization is “challenging the current mainstream policies” on water regulation.
In a phone interview from Japan, Kishimoto said the remunicipalization trend — which has sped up in recent years despite major legal, political and financial challenges involved in the process — could start to “change the tide” in water debates by highlighting the “systematic failure of privatization.”
With global water demand expected to outstrip supply by 40 percent by 2030 and scarcity set to increasingly drive migration and civil conflict, effective water management remains an urgent priority worldwide.
Kishimoto suggested remunicipalization cases could serve as a warning to avoid privatization in the first place. But she also stressed that transparency is key to make public water regulation effective and efficient.
“Democratization of public water — that’s the direction that politicians have to put energy [into] rather than privatization,” she said. “Because privatization is much, much too risky and after all, gets expensive.”
another trump!!!
Uproar after Italian minister wants to end anti-racism law
Simone Somekh, Associated Press - chron
Friday, August 3, 2018
ROME (AP) — An Italian minister is facing broad condemnation after calling for the abolition of an anti-racism law, with key members of the government including the prime minister distancing themselves from the statements.
Family Minister Lorenzo Fontana, of the far-right League party, on Friday called for abolishing a 1993 law condemning racist violence, hatred and discrimination, saying "globalists" were using it to "disguise their anti-Italian racism as anti-Fascism."
The president of Italy's Union of Jewish Communities, Noemi Di Segni criticized the minister's words, saying the law should be enforced and defended.
Di Segni told The Associated Press that the Jewish community is concerned with the current "radicalization" of governments and populations not only in Italy, but also in Europe.
"There is a climate of widespread intolerance in many contexts," she said, noting the ongoing intolerance targets minorities and migrants. "If we don't address the change in the climate, we risk of getting there when it's too late."
Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte wrote in a Facebook post that he believes the anti-racism law -- known as "Mancino" law -- is "sacrosanct," while 5-Star leader Luigi Di Maio said that such a move was never in the coalition agreement.
In addition to the several lawmakers, senators and organizations that condemned the statement, a group representing World War II resistors of fascism called for Fontana's immediate dismissal.
But Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, leader of the League, seemed to endorse the abolition in a statement reported by the ANSA news agency, calling it "the right battle at the wrong time."
Since the appointment of its new government, Italy has made headlines for several attacks, some targeting migrants, being investigated as possible acts of racism, spurring a debate about whether the long-standing migrant crisis was bringing out racism in some quarters of the Italian population.
With the rhetoric clearly sharpened since Salvini has refused to allow rescue ships run by aid groups to dock in Italy, a migrant aid group has announced that it has sued Salvini for "spreading ideas based on ethnic and racial hatred." After Italy's Supreme Court last month deemed the phrase "Go away" addressed to migrants an expression of racial discrimination, Salvini defiantly wrote on his social media accounts: "Go away, go away, go away!"
Minister Fontana had already sparked criticism in June, days after his appointment in the new government, when he made comments to Italian media against LGBT families.
Family Minister Lorenzo Fontana, of the far-right League party, on Friday called for abolishing a 1993 law condemning racist violence, hatred and discrimination, saying "globalists" were using it to "disguise their anti-Italian racism as anti-Fascism."
The president of Italy's Union of Jewish Communities, Noemi Di Segni criticized the minister's words, saying the law should be enforced and defended.
Di Segni told The Associated Press that the Jewish community is concerned with the current "radicalization" of governments and populations not only in Italy, but also in Europe.
"There is a climate of widespread intolerance in many contexts," she said, noting the ongoing intolerance targets minorities and migrants. "If we don't address the change in the climate, we risk of getting there when it's too late."
Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte wrote in a Facebook post that he believes the anti-racism law -- known as "Mancino" law -- is "sacrosanct," while 5-Star leader Luigi Di Maio said that such a move was never in the coalition agreement.
In addition to the several lawmakers, senators and organizations that condemned the statement, a group representing World War II resistors of fascism called for Fontana's immediate dismissal.
But Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, leader of the League, seemed to endorse the abolition in a statement reported by the ANSA news agency, calling it "the right battle at the wrong time."
Since the appointment of its new government, Italy has made headlines for several attacks, some targeting migrants, being investigated as possible acts of racism, spurring a debate about whether the long-standing migrant crisis was bringing out racism in some quarters of the Italian population.
With the rhetoric clearly sharpened since Salvini has refused to allow rescue ships run by aid groups to dock in Italy, a migrant aid group has announced that it has sued Salvini for "spreading ideas based on ethnic and racial hatred." After Italy's Supreme Court last month deemed the phrase "Go away" addressed to migrants an expression of racial discrimination, Salvini defiantly wrote on his social media accounts: "Go away, go away, go away!"
Minister Fontana had already sparked criticism in June, days after his appointment in the new government, when he made comments to Italian media against LGBT families.
Mothers of Mexico’s Disappeared Young Men Blame the Police
BY Luke Taylor Truthout
PUBLISHED
August 2, 2018
Mexico’s historic port of Veracruz has long been characterised by conflict: Having fought off the Spanish, the French and the Americans – twice – it has earned itself the title of “Cuatro Veces Heroica” or “Four Times Heroic” for its valiance in battle.
Today’s Veracruz is free from colonial attack, but it has once again become an epicenter of conflict in recent years. More than 5,000 murders were recorded in 2012-2016, and as many as 20,000 individuals were “disappeared” from the region in 2006-2016. For reporters, Veracruz has become the “most dangerous place in the entire Western hemisphere.”
This time, Veracruz residents are under siege not from foreign forces, but from drug cartels, corruption and the state’s very own police force. The ubiquitous 4x4s pickup trucks manned by heavily armed police aside, there are also no obvious signs of destruction or conflict on the city’s expansive coastal roads: Veracruz’s latest war is largely invisible. Unless of course, one experiences it first-hand.
“Why Do Some Appear and Others Not?”
Blanca del Carmen Leyva is now retired and lives with her family in a middle-class neighbourhood a few kilometers off the coast. Her son, Vicente Rodolfo, who dedicated himself to a modest living maintaining electrical appliances, is photographed in a polished gold frame sitting on a glass table in her living room.
Ms. Leyva clearly remembers calling Vicente three years ago and urging him, not for the first time, to replace his run-down work van for a newer model. “I hated that beat-up old thing!” she says, breaking a wry smile. To her delight, Vicente said he had just reached 30 years of service with his company, so he would be trading in his van for a newer model with his loyalty bonus.
But a day later, when Vicente had not arrived for work, family and colleagues began asking for him at his mother’s house. His phone rang straight to voicemail.
When she had checked all local hospitals and realized no one else had heard anything from him, Leyva reported his disappearance to the police.
“I am a somewhat distrustful person, but the cause directed me toward believing in someone, someone that would tell me something about the whereabouts of my son,” Leyva says.
That was three years ago; since then, no one has heard any more of Vicente, his body never appeared, he never did get to replace his van and this was the final conversation Leyva had with her only son. The last thing Leyva knows of his disappearance is that he was waiting for the bus to go home. “We don’t know if it was there [that he disappeared] or when he got off at his house — we have no witnesses at all,” she says.
Later on, bodies of young boys in bin liners began appearing in the neighbourhood, but Vicente was never among them. “My question is: Why do some appear and others not?” Leyva asks. “But I still cannot find an answer.”
Veracruz’s Surge in Kidnappings and CorruptionLeyva is one of hundreds of mothers in Veracruz who continue to search for their disappeared loved ones since the phenomenon began to spike in 2010 with the election of former Governor Javier Duarte.
According to Leyva, and others who have lost family members, the victims are largely young men — some as young as 13 years old — and seemed to have been picked up and “disappeared” in acts of “social cleansing,” in which armed gangs select individuals for being homeless, poor or using drugs. Family members often question why their son was selected, but in some cases, it appears the boys were simply victims of a deadly mix-up.
“In one case, a school child overheard one of the men that took his friend away say, ‘We have the wrong guy,’” Leyva says. “But it was too late. ‘He’s already seen us,’ his accomplice replied, and they took him anyway.”
Despite persistent visits to the police station, in two years, there have been no developments in the investigation into the disappearance of Vicente. Authorities have consistently reiterated their limited resources, but the mothers have long held their doubts whether the authorities were ever interested at all.
“I thought it was going to be a stronger investigation, but in reality, this is a great disappointment I have to carry,” Leyva says. “If you lose a dog, maybe they’ll put a lot of attention into searching for it, but not for humans.”
Following this lack of interest and strange reports they heard from witnesses, many of the mothers began wondering if those who were supposed to protect their children were involved in their disappearance.
“We always knew that the police took the boys,” says Lucía Diaz, leader of the Solecito (Little Sun) Collective, a group of over 250 individuals in Veracruz who have lost family members and now work together to find them. “There are many testimonies, there are many witnesses. The problem is that many people do not want to speak out of fear.”
Lucía’s suspicions — and those of others in the collective — have since been confirmed to have been well-founded. What initially seemed to be a great tragedy has evolved into a scandalous state corruption case and offers a look into some of the most serious political issues Mexico faces today.
This year, it was revealed that some of these boys, aged 16-22, had been selected for alleged associations with drug cartels, picked up, tortured, killed and then hidden. The perpetrators, however, were not armed gangs, but the police authorities themselves, working secretly with the Jalisco Cartel to disappear rival cartel members of Los Zetas.
Police commanders received orders to carry out the secret operation from then-Governor of Veracruz Javier Duarte, who was previously charged for money laundering and links to organized crime. Having extradited Duarte from Guatemala last year, the current governor of Veracruz is now asking for additional charges against Duarte to be added to the list.
The then-attorney general of Veracruz is also implicated in the disappearances scandal for attempting to cover it up. So far, 19 police officers have been charged for their roles in the disappearances, but the full extent of the operation may never be revealed.
“In 99 percent of the cases, the police were responsible,” argues Lidia Lara, another member of the collective who continues to search for her brother. Others whose relatives have disappeared estimate the police to have been linked to up to 80 percent of the disappearances.
Truthout invited Veracruz’s district attorney and the local police force to respond to the allegations, but neither were able to comment on the matter.
The Search Goes On
Despite the uncovering of the corruption scandal and the involvement of international institutions such as the United Nations in the investigations, the majority of family members still have not recovered the bodies of their loved ones, according to members of the collective.
“They [the police ] say they can’t advance because they don’t have the resources, but I think there are resources here in Veracruz because they have the resources for their campaigns and publicity,” says Perla Damián, whose son was one of eight boys to have been taken in one police operation.
Following the police scandal and lack of results from state authorities, family members say their best hope to finding closure is through the efforts of the collective.
Solecito holds raffles and sells used clothes to fund the transport, lunch – and now heavy machinery – on its missions to find and dig up the bodies of the disappeared. Many of its members take part in the excavations themselves and have even begun training on how to identify the corpses.
“If it was not for all this, we would never have found the graves, as the government is not helping us at all,” Damian says.
In March 2017, the group found more than 250 skulls in a single mass grave. The discovery came after two men handed the collective a map marked with crosses during Solecito’s annual Mother’s Day march. To date, Lucía Diaz reports that the collective has discovered a total of 295 bodies — most of them complete and blindfolded in black bin liners.
The number of discoveries in Veracruz by Solecito and other collectives has become so high that Luis Tapia, a lawyer at the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center, which assists the collective in its excavations, says it has created a “structural problem”: The state is incapable of identifying bodies at the same rate at which voluntary organizations can find them. “No human body has been processed from those found in the two operations in which we have participated in both November 2017, and now,” Tapia says.
Such comments paint an unpromising picture, but members of the collective remain hopeful their dedication will bring results in the form of closure for the hundreds of mothers who continue longing for an answer.
“I have faith in finding my son and helping my sisters in the same pain to overcome and comprehend their absence [of their family members],” Leyva says. “These women are very strong, they are very brave.”
A promise to tackle a surge in violence and rampant corruption played a part in the election of Andres Manuel López Obrador, who will take presidential office in December. López Obrador has pledged to get to the bottom of the thousands of “unjust and terrible” disappearances that have taken place across Mexico in recent years by creating a national truth commission.
“In all states there are committees, there are groups of relatives of victims who are asking for help to find their loved ones,” López Obrador stated in June. “Let us act on that demand … to end the war.”
Today’s Veracruz is free from colonial attack, but it has once again become an epicenter of conflict in recent years. More than 5,000 murders were recorded in 2012-2016, and as many as 20,000 individuals were “disappeared” from the region in 2006-2016. For reporters, Veracruz has become the “most dangerous place in the entire Western hemisphere.”
This time, Veracruz residents are under siege not from foreign forces, but from drug cartels, corruption and the state’s very own police force. The ubiquitous 4x4s pickup trucks manned by heavily armed police aside, there are also no obvious signs of destruction or conflict on the city’s expansive coastal roads: Veracruz’s latest war is largely invisible. Unless of course, one experiences it first-hand.
“Why Do Some Appear and Others Not?”
Blanca del Carmen Leyva is now retired and lives with her family in a middle-class neighbourhood a few kilometers off the coast. Her son, Vicente Rodolfo, who dedicated himself to a modest living maintaining electrical appliances, is photographed in a polished gold frame sitting on a glass table in her living room.
Ms. Leyva clearly remembers calling Vicente three years ago and urging him, not for the first time, to replace his run-down work van for a newer model. “I hated that beat-up old thing!” she says, breaking a wry smile. To her delight, Vicente said he had just reached 30 years of service with his company, so he would be trading in his van for a newer model with his loyalty bonus.
But a day later, when Vicente had not arrived for work, family and colleagues began asking for him at his mother’s house. His phone rang straight to voicemail.
When she had checked all local hospitals and realized no one else had heard anything from him, Leyva reported his disappearance to the police.
“I am a somewhat distrustful person, but the cause directed me toward believing in someone, someone that would tell me something about the whereabouts of my son,” Leyva says.
That was three years ago; since then, no one has heard any more of Vicente, his body never appeared, he never did get to replace his van and this was the final conversation Leyva had with her only son. The last thing Leyva knows of his disappearance is that he was waiting for the bus to go home. “We don’t know if it was there [that he disappeared] or when he got off at his house — we have no witnesses at all,” she says.
Later on, bodies of young boys in bin liners began appearing in the neighbourhood, but Vicente was never among them. “My question is: Why do some appear and others not?” Leyva asks. “But I still cannot find an answer.”
Veracruz’s Surge in Kidnappings and CorruptionLeyva is one of hundreds of mothers in Veracruz who continue to search for their disappeared loved ones since the phenomenon began to spike in 2010 with the election of former Governor Javier Duarte.
According to Leyva, and others who have lost family members, the victims are largely young men — some as young as 13 years old — and seemed to have been picked up and “disappeared” in acts of “social cleansing,” in which armed gangs select individuals for being homeless, poor or using drugs. Family members often question why their son was selected, but in some cases, it appears the boys were simply victims of a deadly mix-up.
“In one case, a school child overheard one of the men that took his friend away say, ‘We have the wrong guy,’” Leyva says. “But it was too late. ‘He’s already seen us,’ his accomplice replied, and they took him anyway.”
Despite persistent visits to the police station, in two years, there have been no developments in the investigation into the disappearance of Vicente. Authorities have consistently reiterated their limited resources, but the mothers have long held their doubts whether the authorities were ever interested at all.
“I thought it was going to be a stronger investigation, but in reality, this is a great disappointment I have to carry,” Leyva says. “If you lose a dog, maybe they’ll put a lot of attention into searching for it, but not for humans.”
Following this lack of interest and strange reports they heard from witnesses, many of the mothers began wondering if those who were supposed to protect their children were involved in their disappearance.
“We always knew that the police took the boys,” says Lucía Diaz, leader of the Solecito (Little Sun) Collective, a group of over 250 individuals in Veracruz who have lost family members and now work together to find them. “There are many testimonies, there are many witnesses. The problem is that many people do not want to speak out of fear.”
Lucía’s suspicions — and those of others in the collective — have since been confirmed to have been well-founded. What initially seemed to be a great tragedy has evolved into a scandalous state corruption case and offers a look into some of the most serious political issues Mexico faces today.
This year, it was revealed that some of these boys, aged 16-22, had been selected for alleged associations with drug cartels, picked up, tortured, killed and then hidden. The perpetrators, however, were not armed gangs, but the police authorities themselves, working secretly with the Jalisco Cartel to disappear rival cartel members of Los Zetas.
Police commanders received orders to carry out the secret operation from then-Governor of Veracruz Javier Duarte, who was previously charged for money laundering and links to organized crime. Having extradited Duarte from Guatemala last year, the current governor of Veracruz is now asking for additional charges against Duarte to be added to the list.
The then-attorney general of Veracruz is also implicated in the disappearances scandal for attempting to cover it up. So far, 19 police officers have been charged for their roles in the disappearances, but the full extent of the operation may never be revealed.
“In 99 percent of the cases, the police were responsible,” argues Lidia Lara, another member of the collective who continues to search for her brother. Others whose relatives have disappeared estimate the police to have been linked to up to 80 percent of the disappearances.
Truthout invited Veracruz’s district attorney and the local police force to respond to the allegations, but neither were able to comment on the matter.
The Search Goes On
Despite the uncovering of the corruption scandal and the involvement of international institutions such as the United Nations in the investigations, the majority of family members still have not recovered the bodies of their loved ones, according to members of the collective.
“They [the police ] say they can’t advance because they don’t have the resources, but I think there are resources here in Veracruz because they have the resources for their campaigns and publicity,” says Perla Damián, whose son was one of eight boys to have been taken in one police operation.
Following the police scandal and lack of results from state authorities, family members say their best hope to finding closure is through the efforts of the collective.
Solecito holds raffles and sells used clothes to fund the transport, lunch – and now heavy machinery – on its missions to find and dig up the bodies of the disappeared. Many of its members take part in the excavations themselves and have even begun training on how to identify the corpses.
“If it was not for all this, we would never have found the graves, as the government is not helping us at all,” Damian says.
In March 2017, the group found more than 250 skulls in a single mass grave. The discovery came after two men handed the collective a map marked with crosses during Solecito’s annual Mother’s Day march. To date, Lucía Diaz reports that the collective has discovered a total of 295 bodies — most of them complete and blindfolded in black bin liners.
The number of discoveries in Veracruz by Solecito and other collectives has become so high that Luis Tapia, a lawyer at the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center, which assists the collective in its excavations, says it has created a “structural problem”: The state is incapable of identifying bodies at the same rate at which voluntary organizations can find them. “No human body has been processed from those found in the two operations in which we have participated in both November 2017, and now,” Tapia says.
Such comments paint an unpromising picture, but members of the collective remain hopeful their dedication will bring results in the form of closure for the hundreds of mothers who continue longing for an answer.
“I have faith in finding my son and helping my sisters in the same pain to overcome and comprehend their absence [of their family members],” Leyva says. “These women are very strong, they are very brave.”
A promise to tackle a surge in violence and rampant corruption played a part in the election of Andres Manuel López Obrador, who will take presidential office in December. López Obrador has pledged to get to the bottom of the thousands of “unjust and terrible” disappearances that have taken place across Mexico in recent years by creating a national truth commission.
“In all states there are committees, there are groups of relatives of victims who are asking for help to find their loved ones,” López Obrador stated in June. “Let us act on that demand … to end the war.”
Migrant children forced to sell sex to make Italy-France journey, says charity
Save the Children report says children resorting to desperate measures to pay for lift across border
Angela Giuffrida
the guardian
Sat 28 Jul 2018 04.00 EDT
A demonstration in support of migrants in Ventimiglia. The town is a major transit hub for migrants attempting to cross into France, Photograph: Miguel Medina/AFP/Getty Images
Migrant children are prostituting themselves in order to get a safe passage into France from the Italian border, according to a report from Save the Children Italy. The minors, mostly from sub-Saharan Africa, are selling sex if they cannot afford the €50-€150 asked by drivers in exchange for a lift across the border.
The children are also being offered food or shelter in return for sex. The charity says it has evidence of many cases, particularly since the beginning of this year.
“These are very young, and particularly at-risk girls, who are among the invisible flow of unaccompanied migrant minors in transit at the northern Italian border who, in an attempt to reunite with their relatives or acquaintances in other European countries, are deprived of the opportunity to travel safely and legally,” Raffaela Milano, the director of Italy-Europe programmes at Save the Children, said in the report.
She added that the girls “are strongly exposed to very serious risks of abuse and exploitation” and in many cases find themselves living in conditions “of great degradation”.
The situation in the Italian border town of Ventimiglia, a major transit hub for migrants attempting to cross into France, was aggravated after a makeshift camp by the Roya river was cleared in April. Since then, migrant children had been forced to live on the streets in “degrading, promiscuous and dangerous conditions”, the report said.
The report said migrant children were also being exploited for sex in other parts of Italy, including in Rome and the regions of Veneto, Abruzzo and Marche, as well as the island of Sardinia.
The charity said more than 1,900 girls had been sexually exploited across the areas between January 2017 and March 2018, out of which it was proven that 160 were children. The report said the rest had either recently reached the age of 18 or were pretending to be adults.
“It is unacceptable that in our country children and adolescents end up in the network of unscrupulous exploiters,” added Milano.
The report follows an Oxfam report in Junethat accused French border police of illegally sending migrant children back to Italy. They were also accused of detaining children as young as 12 in cells without food or water, cutting the soles off their shoes so they did not try to attempt the journey again, and stealing Sim cards from their mobile phones.
Oxfam said at least 16,500 migrants, a quarter of them children, had passed through Ventimiglia in the nine months to April.
The children are also being offered food or shelter in return for sex. The charity says it has evidence of many cases, particularly since the beginning of this year.
“These are very young, and particularly at-risk girls, who are among the invisible flow of unaccompanied migrant minors in transit at the northern Italian border who, in an attempt to reunite with their relatives or acquaintances in other European countries, are deprived of the opportunity to travel safely and legally,” Raffaela Milano, the director of Italy-Europe programmes at Save the Children, said in the report.
She added that the girls “are strongly exposed to very serious risks of abuse and exploitation” and in many cases find themselves living in conditions “of great degradation”.
The situation in the Italian border town of Ventimiglia, a major transit hub for migrants attempting to cross into France, was aggravated after a makeshift camp by the Roya river was cleared in April. Since then, migrant children had been forced to live on the streets in “degrading, promiscuous and dangerous conditions”, the report said.
The report said migrant children were also being exploited for sex in other parts of Italy, including in Rome and the regions of Veneto, Abruzzo and Marche, as well as the island of Sardinia.
The charity said more than 1,900 girls had been sexually exploited across the areas between January 2017 and March 2018, out of which it was proven that 160 were children. The report said the rest had either recently reached the age of 18 or were pretending to be adults.
“It is unacceptable that in our country children and adolescents end up in the network of unscrupulous exploiters,” added Milano.
The report follows an Oxfam report in Junethat accused French border police of illegally sending migrant children back to Italy. They were also accused of detaining children as young as 12 in cells without food or water, cutting the soles off their shoes so they did not try to attempt the journey again, and stealing Sim cards from their mobile phones.
Oxfam said at least 16,500 migrants, a quarter of them children, had passed through Ventimiglia in the nine months to April.
Thousands of Canadian mothers were forced to give up their babies. Some were told to ‘get a puppy’ instead.
Amanda Coletta - washington post
7/20/18
TORONTO — Their stories would not seem out of place in an episode of “The Handmaid's Tale”: pregnant women shuttered away, violently restrained during childbirth, banned from looking at their babies — and, finally, coerced by social workers into signing adoption papers.
More than a half-century after unmarried and largely non-consenting Canadian women were sent to maternity homes to give birth in relative secrecy, a report released Thursday by a Senate committee acknowledges a “disturbing chapter” in Canadian history, when the country’s adoption policies led to hundreds of thousands of unwed mothers being forced to give up their babies for adoption.
The report calls on the federal government to issue a formal apology for what it characterizes as a “common practice” from 1945 to the 1970s that has been “shrouded in secrecy.”
“There is another Scoop that needs to be acknowledged,” Art Eggleton, the senator who chaired the committee, told reporters. (He was referring to the “Sixties Scoop,” a 1960s government program that separated thousands of indigenous children from their families and put them up for adoption by non-indigenous parents.)
While adoption policies fell under the jurisdiction of Canada’s provinces and territories, the federal government provided them with social assistance grants, which were often used to address the needs of pregnant women. Those funds “specifically contributed to the maintenance of maternity homes for unmarried mothers, the provision of adoption and counseling services and supporting the casework of social workers.”
The report says that the “unethical” policy was in part rooted in the societal mores of the postwar period, when the social stigma of unwed women having “illegitimate” children and raising them in a nontraditional “nuclear family” was so significant that many women were sent to wait out their pregnancies at maternity homes, often run by religious groups or the Salvation Army. An estimated 95 percent of women who gave birth at maternity homes gave their children up for adoption, according to the report. Data from Statistics Canada shows that approximately 600,000 births from 1945 to 1971 were recorded as “illegitimate.”
According to Origins Canada, a nonprofit that helps people who have been separated from family members by adoption, it was thought that women who gave birth at maternity homes could be “made marriageable” again or “rehabilitated.”
Many of the women who testified before the committee described being subjected to various forms of abuse at maternity homes, having their movements controlled, being forced to assume fictitious surnames and having no contact with the outside world.
Eugenia Powell, who in 1963 was sent to a maternity home at the advice of a priest when she became pregnant at 17, testified that she felt “like a nonentity.”
“Shame and sadness were constant companions,” said Powell, who is the executive director of Origins Canada.
During labor, the report says, doctors would often forcibly strap women to beds or overmedicate them. Many were denied the opportunity to hold, feed or look at their babies, and some were never told whether they had given birth to a boy or a girl.
And then, they were forced — often through misinformation, deceit and violence — into giving up their babies for adoption. None were provided legal counsel or made aware of their legal rights. Others were told that “traditional, white, middle-class couples would provide loving homes without the shame.” And some were lied to, callously told that their babies were stillborn, when in fact they were not.
“I was told that I would eventually get married and forget my baby,” Powell testified. “How does a mother forget her baby?”
Sandra Jarvie, another woman who testified, said she still remembers what a social worker told her after she signed adoption papers: “You will never see your baby again as long as you live. If you search for the baby, you’ll destroy his life and the lives of the adoptive parents.”
Some women, the report notes, were told to “get a puppy” to fill the void of losing child and never to speak of what happened to them. Nearly one-third of the unwed women who were coerced into giving up their babies for adoption were so traumatized that they never had children again, according to the report.
“The treatment of unmarried mothers in postwar Canada may have been a product of the times, but it was cruel, nonetheless, from any perspective,” the report concludes.
“The profound pain and grief of losing my firstborn baby never left and often surfaced,” said Powell, who did get married and have other children. “I have simply never recovered from the trauma of losing my baby. . . . I had lived in what I call a fog because that was the only way I could cope through my life.”
Women and adoptees often faced difficulties trying to reunite. Many encountered bureaucratic red tape and found that their adoption records were fully or partially sealed.
“The journey to find my mother was the most traumatic experience of my life, a complicated mess to untangle,” testified Dianne Poitras, an adoptee.
The report says that the practice of forcing unwed women to give up their babies for adoption was also common in the United Kingdom, the United States, New Zealand and Australia.
Australia’s Senate conducted a study of the practice in its country that resulted in a national apology in 2013 by the then-prime minister.
Aside from a formal government apology from the Canadian government, the report recommends that the federal and provincial governments establish a fund to provide counseling for mothers and adoptees and for the country to implement a universal policy on access to adoption files.
“This unfortunate part of Canada’s history needs to be addressed,” Eggleton said in a press release. “We cannot reverse the harms that have taken place, but we can provide support for those who were wronged.”
More than a half-century after unmarried and largely non-consenting Canadian women were sent to maternity homes to give birth in relative secrecy, a report released Thursday by a Senate committee acknowledges a “disturbing chapter” in Canadian history, when the country’s adoption policies led to hundreds of thousands of unwed mothers being forced to give up their babies for adoption.
The report calls on the federal government to issue a formal apology for what it characterizes as a “common practice” from 1945 to the 1970s that has been “shrouded in secrecy.”
“There is another Scoop that needs to be acknowledged,” Art Eggleton, the senator who chaired the committee, told reporters. (He was referring to the “Sixties Scoop,” a 1960s government program that separated thousands of indigenous children from their families and put them up for adoption by non-indigenous parents.)
While adoption policies fell under the jurisdiction of Canada’s provinces and territories, the federal government provided them with social assistance grants, which were often used to address the needs of pregnant women. Those funds “specifically contributed to the maintenance of maternity homes for unmarried mothers, the provision of adoption and counseling services and supporting the casework of social workers.”
The report says that the “unethical” policy was in part rooted in the societal mores of the postwar period, when the social stigma of unwed women having “illegitimate” children and raising them in a nontraditional “nuclear family” was so significant that many women were sent to wait out their pregnancies at maternity homes, often run by religious groups or the Salvation Army. An estimated 95 percent of women who gave birth at maternity homes gave their children up for adoption, according to the report. Data from Statistics Canada shows that approximately 600,000 births from 1945 to 1971 were recorded as “illegitimate.”
According to Origins Canada, a nonprofit that helps people who have been separated from family members by adoption, it was thought that women who gave birth at maternity homes could be “made marriageable” again or “rehabilitated.”
Many of the women who testified before the committee described being subjected to various forms of abuse at maternity homes, having their movements controlled, being forced to assume fictitious surnames and having no contact with the outside world.
Eugenia Powell, who in 1963 was sent to a maternity home at the advice of a priest when she became pregnant at 17, testified that she felt “like a nonentity.”
“Shame and sadness were constant companions,” said Powell, who is the executive director of Origins Canada.
During labor, the report says, doctors would often forcibly strap women to beds or overmedicate them. Many were denied the opportunity to hold, feed or look at their babies, and some were never told whether they had given birth to a boy or a girl.
And then, they were forced — often through misinformation, deceit and violence — into giving up their babies for adoption. None were provided legal counsel or made aware of their legal rights. Others were told that “traditional, white, middle-class couples would provide loving homes without the shame.” And some were lied to, callously told that their babies were stillborn, when in fact they were not.
“I was told that I would eventually get married and forget my baby,” Powell testified. “How does a mother forget her baby?”
Sandra Jarvie, another woman who testified, said she still remembers what a social worker told her after she signed adoption papers: “You will never see your baby again as long as you live. If you search for the baby, you’ll destroy his life and the lives of the adoptive parents.”
Some women, the report notes, were told to “get a puppy” to fill the void of losing child and never to speak of what happened to them. Nearly one-third of the unwed women who were coerced into giving up their babies for adoption were so traumatized that they never had children again, according to the report.
“The treatment of unmarried mothers in postwar Canada may have been a product of the times, but it was cruel, nonetheless, from any perspective,” the report concludes.
“The profound pain and grief of losing my firstborn baby never left and often surfaced,” said Powell, who did get married and have other children. “I have simply never recovered from the trauma of losing my baby. . . . I had lived in what I call a fog because that was the only way I could cope through my life.”
Women and adoptees often faced difficulties trying to reunite. Many encountered bureaucratic red tape and found that their adoption records were fully or partially sealed.
“The journey to find my mother was the most traumatic experience of my life, a complicated mess to untangle,” testified Dianne Poitras, an adoptee.
The report says that the practice of forcing unwed women to give up their babies for adoption was also common in the United Kingdom, the United States, New Zealand and Australia.
Australia’s Senate conducted a study of the practice in its country that resulted in a national apology in 2013 by the then-prime minister.
Aside from a formal government apology from the Canadian government, the report recommends that the federal and provincial governments establish a fund to provide counseling for mothers and adoptees and for the country to implement a universal policy on access to adoption files.
“This unfortunate part of Canada’s history needs to be addressed,” Eggleton said in a press release. “We cannot reverse the harms that have taken place, but we can provide support for those who were wronged.”
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