Category: World

Starvation looms in Zimbabwe

The New York Times recently carried an article stating that Zimbabwe’s “land reform”, confiscating the land of white farmers, was a “success”. Now this report from the United Nations World Food Programme shows the true picture: a country where one in five people receives food hand-outs.

Famine has raised its head in Zimbabwe again, as the numbers of people depending on aid to avoid starvation soared by 60 percent from last year to 1.6 million, according to the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP).

The agency said that one in five of the country’s rural people were in need of famine relief. Grain production in the last year was 1 million tonnes, the worst since 2009, which at 800,000 tonnes was the worst year on record.

Zimbabwe had a reputation as “Africa’s breadbasket” until 2000 when President Robert Mugabe launched his violent seizures of white-owned farms, forcing 1,500 white farmers of their land and displacing a million farm workers and their families.

The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have said that year marked the beginning of the collapse of one of Africa’s most successful economies.

The latest figures were released after a lengthy study by UN agencies, the Zimbabwe government and non-governmental organisations involved in agriculture.

Already, the report said, rural residents of the country were feeling the effects of the food shortages, a pattern marked by empty domestic granaries and farmers selling their cattle to raise money to buy food.

The report blamed erratic rainfall, low supplies of seed and fertilizer, and bad farming practices.

At the height of the last rainy season, farmers unions slammed a supply arrangement set-up by government officials. Political figures in Mugabe’s ZANU(PF) party snapped up cheap fertilizer and seed and sold large quantities of it at inflated prices while peasant farmers waited helplessly.

During the current winter wheat season, promises of cheap supplies from the government also came to nothing, resulting in the lowest wheat crop forecast yet of 5,000 tonnes.

The WFP said it would rely on “regionally procured cereals” to make up the country’s current shortfall.

Commentators have pointed out that the biggest regional producer is Zambia, where scores of white farmers moved and became large-scale producers again after being driven off their land in Zimbabwe in the last decade. – Sapa-DPA

Slumdog Olympics

A celebration of free healthcare, the trade union struggle, the battle for women’s rights and a fleeting lesbian kiss: the Olympics opening ceremony Friday did not shy away from weighty social issues.

Unsurprisingly, the show devised by Oscar-winning British director Danny Boyle drew accusations from the British political right that it had strayed into “leftie” issues.

Aidan Burley, a lawmaker from Prime Minister David Cameron’s ruling Conservative party, tweeted: “The most leftie opening ceremony I have ever seen — more than Beijing, the capital of a communist state! Welfare tribute next?”

He followed that with: “Thank God the athletes have arrived! Now we can move on from leftie multi-cultural crap.”

Several people tweeted their support for his comments.

Alastair Campbell, former British Labour prime minister Tony Blair’s communications chief, retorted on Twitter: “Brilliant that we got a socialist to do the opening ceremony.”

Cameron’s Downing Street office distanced itself from Burley’s comments, tweeting a message from the premier reading: “The opening ceremony has been a great showcase for this country. It’s more proof Britain can deliver.”

Burley was removed from his job as aide to the transport minister last month after attending a Nazi-themed stag party in a French ski resort.

Ahead of the show, Boyle — whose film “Slumdog Millionaire” won eight Oscars in 2009 — denied he was pushing a political agenda.

“The sensibility of the show is very personal,” he said.

“A group of us have created it, but we had no agenda other than… values that we feel are true.

“Not everybody will love that but people will be able to recognise as being honest and truthful really. I felt that very strongly. There is no b(expletive) in it, and there is no point-making either.”

The show bringing the curtain up on the London Olympics began with sections showing idyllic rural Britain being overtaken by the Industrial Revolution, before moving on to a 10-minute sequence celebrating the state-run National Health Service (NHS).

Britain’s first televised lesbian kiss — from a 1993 episode of soap opera “Brookside” — was shown in a fast-moving montage of flim and TV clips.

How far will Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood go in imposing Islamic law?

In decades of furtive meetings in tea houses, mosques and universities, members of Egypt’s underground Muslim Brotherhood spoke ardently of a country governed by Islamic law. Now that their debates take place in parliament and the presidential palace, they must decide how far to go in bringing it about.

Elections held since the fall of Hosni Mubarak have turned the once-banned Brotherhood and its allies into the dominant political force in the Arab world’s most populous country.

That success has left the Brotherhood facing competing pressures – on the one hand, to satisfy the conservative Islamists who supported them at the polling station, while on the other hand to avoid conflict with secular-minded Egyptians and a potent military establishment that opposes radical change.

For now, the outcome appears to be a compromise, satisfying neither side entirely but avoiding major confrontation, with the aim of giving the Brotherhood the leeway to meet the needs of running a modern state.

“Everything is a subject of compromise and negotiation for the Brotherhood,” said Khalil al-Anani, an expert on Islamist movements based at Durham University in England.

“It realizes that limiting personal freedoms will endanger their political gains,” he said. “At the same time, they will have to satisfy conservative sections of society.”

The Brotherhood’s move into public life frightens secular-minded Egyptians, who fear Islamist curbs could lead to dress codes, kill off music and cinema or force men and women to segregate in public. Christians, a tenth of Egyptians, are particularly worried, despite Mursi’s attempts at outreach.

Businesses fear for the impact on a tourism industry that creates one in eight jobs.

A call put out on Facebook for a march in defense of beer – first produced in Egypt in pharaonic times – captured a mood of defiance among some after the Brotherhood’s Mohamed Mursi won the presidency.

While Mursi has promised to protect freedoms, his campaign was also peppered with promises to implement sharia, the Islamic law code.

“The fear is of destroying the civil state in which citizens are equal… The reassurance message is valueless, because we are seeing what they are doing in reality,” said Refaat el-Saeed, head of Tagammu leftist Party.

Some Egyptians worry that even without direction from the state, zealots emboldened by the Islamists’ ballot box success could seek to impose their will in the street. Those fears appeared to be manifested in the days following Mursi’s election, when a group of three men stabbed a young man to death for going out with his fiancée in the city of Suez.

Ahmed Eid was killed by three young men who have been charged with forming an illegal vigilante group to “fight vice and promote virtue”.

The Brotherhood denies that it is behind such attacks and has accused agents loyal to Mubarak’s old order of trying to tar it with the same brush by sending youths masquerading as Brotherhood members to threaten hair salons.

There are limits to how far the Brotherhood can go in transforming Egyptian society.

Founded in 1928 by urban intellectuals and run by engineers, teachers and doctors, the Brotherhood says it does not want a theocracy – something which in any case the military council has signaled it will not allow to come about.

“I don’t think anyone, even if he has a 40-year term rather than a four-year term, will have the ability to change society, such that the sharia is implemented with all its comprehensive aspects,” said Ahmad Ahmad, an associate professor of religious studies at Harvard University in the United States.

JUDGED ON ECONOMY

The Brotherhood is keenly aware that Egyptians will judge it first and foremost by its ability to resolve their deep economic problems and alleviate poverty. That provides a strong incentive to avoid measures that frighten off tourists or hurt commerce.

Rather than emphasize the ancient proscriptions of Islamic law, Brotherhood members describe sharia as a pragmatic moral code that can be used by a modern society to promote reform.

“Wherever you find benefit for society, then that is God’s law,” said Sheikh Abdul Rahman al-Barr, a cleric who sits on the Brotherhood’s executive board.

He said Mursi would be applying sharia by ending corruption and cronyism in government, ending police abuses such as torture and eavesdropping, and enforcing traffic laws.

There would be no imposition of dress codes, he said, pointing to the growth in the numbers of Egyptian women voluntarily wearing headscarves as proof that coercion was unnecessary. Tourists need not fear for their beach wear, as resorts would be treated as places with a “special context”.

The Brotherhood has been similarly pragmatic on the imposition of bank interest, which many scholars say is forbidden in Islam but will not be abolished in Egypt.

Even the more hardline Islamist groups, or Salafi movements, that have moved into public life in the last year have started to strike a similarly pragmatic tone.

Al-Gama’a al-Islamiya, a Salafi group that took up arms against the state as recently as the 1990s, now speaks of a sharia that brings justice, fights corruption and prevents torture and unlawful detention.

“These are the priorities of the sharia as I see them today,” said Tareq El-Zumor, who spent 30 years in jail for involvement in the killing of former president Anwar Sadat.

ISSUES OF “PRIDE”

Kamal Habib, a former al-Gama’a al-Islamiya member and an expert on Islamist groups, said Salafi views had evolved as they moved into mainstream politics during parliamentary elections that began in November last year.

“When the Salafis were campaigning in the election, they spoke of sharia as an immediate step, but as they came closer to power they modified their position as they found a lot of serious complications in society.”

Still, Islamists are trying to make substantial changes, especially in areas that are seen as a matter of pride for their conservative followers.

In the first few months of the parliament’s work, newly-elected Salafi lawmakers pressed for an end to a woman’s right to seek divorce, to adjust custody laws in favor of men and to toughen the punishment for insulting religion.

All of those proposals were raised independently of any party and none made it into law.

Barr, the Brotherhood cleric, forecast legislation that would eventually ban Muslims from trading or producing alcohol, while permitting its production and sale to non-Muslims.

The role of Islamic law in Egypt’s new constitution has become a defining issue.

“I am afraid of leaving the constitution in the hands of people who think in this way,” said Shahata Mohamed Shahata, a lawyer fiercely opposed to Brotherhood rule who filed a lawsuit demanding the dissolution of the body writing the document.

One proposal would add language making God the source of sovereignty. Another would give Al-Azhar, a religious school founded in Cairo more than 1,000 years ago, an official role as the body that would interpret Islamic law.

“It’s a big step – to put Al-Azhar in the constitution that is supposed to last for generations,” said Anani of Durham University. “What if Al-Azhar’s interpretation is regressive and not in favour of democracy?”

But he forecast more compromise ahead by the Brotherhood: “The Brotherhood will do everything for the sake of power. So they might cross the ideological red lines for political gains.” – Reuters

Russia and China again veto Syria resolution

Russia and China again vetoed a Western-backed U.N. resolution Thursday aimed at pressuring President Bashar Assad’s government to end the escalating civil war in Syria, sparking dire warnings of even greater bloodshed and spillover to the wider region.

The 11-2 vote, with two abstentions from South Africa and Pakistan, was the third double veto of a resolution addressing the Syria crisis, now in its 17th month, by Damascus’ most important allies.

The key stumbling block was the West’s insistence that a new resolution include the threat of non-military sanctions to step up pressure against Assad’s regime. The sanctions are under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, which also includes provisions authorizing the use of force, but no force was authorized in the British draft.

Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said the resolution should never have been put to a vote because the sponsors knew it had no chance of adoption.

“We simply cannot accept a document under Chapter 7, one which would open the path for the pressure of sanctions and further to external military involvement in Syrian domestic affairs,” he said.

The defeat leaves in limbo the future of the 300-strong U.N. observer mission in Syria, which was forced to suspend operations because of the intensified fighting. Its mandate, to monitor a cease-fire and implementation of international envoy Kofi Annan’s six-point peace plan, expires Friday.

Britain’s U.N. Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant, who sponsored the Western-backed draft, said he had circulated a new draft resolution that would extend the mission of the unarmed observers one last time, for a final 30 days. A copy of the draft obtained by the AP showed the mission would continue only if the council confirmed that Assad’s government had pulled artillery and heavy weapons back from the cities and sent his troops back to barracks.

Pakistani circulated a rival draft that would extend the mission for 45 days, with the possibility of further renewals.

After closed council consultations late Thursday, Churkin emerged visibly upset and said the British draft was imposing political conditions on the mission’s continuation. He said Russia would oppose that and would support the Pakistani text.

Churkin said he expects the council to vote on both drafts Friday morning.

Lyall Grant said he was “appalled” at the third double veto of a resolution aimed at bringing an end to the violence in Syria and creating conditions for political talks. He called Russia’s argument that the resolution would allow for military intervention “irrational,” saying Article 41 deals only with non-military sanctions “and could not, therefore, be construed as a precursor to military intervention.”

“The consequence of their decision is obvious,” Lyall Grant said. “Further bloodshed, and the likelihood of descent into all-out civil war.”

U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice told reporters history will judge the Russians and Chinese “harshly,” saying their vetoes at a time when the conflict is deteriorating rapidly “threatens to engulf the region in a wider war.”

France’s U.N. Ambassador Gerard Araud said Russia and China must answer for the rise in casualties in Syria – 3,000 at their first veto last October, 7,000 at their second in February, and 17,000 at present. Activists say more than 17,000 people have been killed since the uprising began in March 2011, most of them civilians.

The latest veto was a blow to Annan, the joint U.N.-Arab League envoy to Syria, who had called for “consequences” for non-compliance with his peace plan, which has been flouted by the Assad government.

The vote on the resolution was originally scheduled for Wednesday, but Annan requested a delay and appealed to the council to unite behind a new resolution – but neither side would budge.

Annan expressed disappointment through his spokesman, as did U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Ban also accused the Syrian government of failing to protect its people and pledging that with Annan and the U.N., he will “spare no effort” in the search to end the violence and bring about a peaceful, democratic Syrian-led transition, U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky said.

“The onus is also on the parties, and with the Syrian government in the first place, who must stop the killing and stop the use of heavy weapons against population centers,” Ban’s spokesman said.

The delay in Wednesday’s vote was announced shortly after the deadly bombing of a high-level security meeting in Damascus that has made Assad’s hold on power look increasingly tenuous.

Syrian Ambassador Bashar Ja’afari blamed elements from al-Qaida and Arab and non-Arab jihadist and terrorist groups for the attacks.

He reiterated the Syrian government’s support for Annan’s mission and a Syrian-led national dialogue.

“However, it also requires a sincere international commitment and political will from all – especially those parties that have influence on the armed groups and the armed opposition,” Ja’afari said. “Some countries are still bent on undermining any serious effort that seeks to solve the problem in Syria peacefully.”

Churkin told the council he would not put Moscow’s rival draft resolution to a vote to avoid continuing confrontation in the U.N.’s most powerful body. Moscow’s proposal called for the “immediate implementation” of Annan’s plan and guidelines for a political transition approved at a meeting in Geneva last month and would have extended the observer mission for 90 days but made no mention of sanctions. – AP

UN ‘Human Rights’ Official Attacks Israeli ‘Apartheid’ Policy

Richard Falk says the peace process is a trick, claims Israel’s treatment of PA Arabs in Judea and Samaria is apartheid.

By Elad Benari, Arutz Sheva
Judea and Samaria

The UN’s rapporteur for PA human rights launched a blistering attack on the international community on Monday.

According to an AFP report, Richard Falk accused the world of “conspiring in Israeli settlement policies”. He also branded the peace process a “trick.”

Falk also took aim at the Middle East Quartet’s peace envoy Tony Blair over his efforts in the region.

Speaking to reporters after addressing the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Falk claimed that Palestinian Authority Arabs in the PA-controlled areas of Judea and Samaria were offered no protection in Israeli law and said that their treatment was akin to apartheid.

“I think one has to begin to call the reality by a name,” Falk said, according to AFP. He likened the “discriminatory dualistic legal system” in Judea and Samaria to the former system in South Africa.

In his report to the council, Falk expressed his concern about Israel’s use of administrative detention, the expansion of Jewish communities in the region and violence by local Jewish residents.

“The peace process is a trick rather than a way to find a solution to the problem,” Falk said, adding that envoy Tony Blair “has not much to show for his 86 visits to the Middle East… (it is) an extension of the peace process which I regard as a failure because while time passes the settlement culture continues.”

He added, “The international community is conspiring — maybe unwittingly — in a process that has no way of bringing justice to the people involved in this conflict.”

Falk said that at least 3,500 buildings were under construction in Judea and Samaria in 2011, adding that such building on “Palestinian” land “more or less closes the book on the reality and feasibility” of a two-state solution to the conflict.

“The credibility of the Human Rights Council is very much at stake if there is nothing that is done about the non-cooperation or non-compliance” by Israel with the council’s recommendations, he said.

“The language of censure doesn’t help the Palestinian people if there is no action,” claimed Falk.

He also denounced violence by Jewish residents against Palestinian Authority Arabs, claiming it was “a new feature of the drive to occupy the Palestinian territories.”

“Many people say the Israeli government is an extension of the settlers and I think that is an accurate description,” he said.

Falk has a long record of attacking Israel, including comparing Israelis to Nazis and criticizing Israel for keeping Islamic Jihad terrorist Khader Adnan in custody, even after a video of him pleading for suicide bombers to “carry the next explosive belt” was exposed.

Falk responded by criticizing the Jewish State and condemning the procedure of administrative detention, a procedure that also is used by the United States. He also castigated Israel for lack of compassion for the Islamic Jihad spokesman who launched a hunger strike in order to pressure Israel to release him.

“There was not even the slightest show of respect for the dignity of Mr. Adnan’s long hunger strike or sympathy for the acute suffering that accompanies such a determined foregoing of food for an extended period,” Falk wrote.

He also claimed that “Mr. Adnan’s prior arrests stemmed from militant peaceful demonstrations that landed him in Israeli jails eight times, and induced him to undertake shorter hunger strikes on three previous occasions, one as recently as 2010. From what we can tell, Mr. Adnan is a committed activist who has associated himself with Islamic Jihad, but works on a daily basis as a baker and maintains an admired strong family role.”

Last year, the United States, joined by American Jewish groups, called on the United Nations to sack Falk after he posted an anti-Semitic cartoon on his blog.

When criticized, Falk replaced the cartoon with an apology that claimed he could not detect the anti-Semitic content of the cartoon “until it was pointed out,” although it appeared to equate Jews with animals.

North Korean rocket crashed into the sea

A soldier stands guard in front of the North Korean rocket prior to its launch

(Reuters) – North Korea’s much hyped long-range rocket apparently crashed into the sea a few minutes after launch on Friday, U.S. and South Korean officials said, dealing a blow to the prestige of the reclusive and impoverished state as well as to its new leader.

Pyongyang had defied international pressure from the United States, the United Nations and others to push ahead with the launch timed to celebrate the 100th birthday of Kim Il-sung, the deceased founder of the state.

Even close ally China had warned against the launch and South Korean intelligence officials have said North Korea may be ready to follow it up with a third nuclear test as it did after a rocket launch in 2009.

“South Korean and U.S. intelligence understand that North Korea’s missile launch failed,” a spokesman for the South’s defense ministry told reporters at a briefing.

North Korea said it wanted the Unha-3 rocket to put a weather satellite into orbit, although critics believed it was designed to enhance its capacity to design a ballistic missile to deliver a nuclear warhead capable of hitting the continental United States.

The rocket crashed in a sea that separates the Korean peninsula from China off the west coast of South Korea after flying 120 km (75 miles) from its launch site close to the Chinese border, officials in Seoul, Washington and Tokyo said.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command, NORAD, said the first stage fell into the sea west of South Korea, and the remainder of the satellite-carrying missile was deemed to have failed.

“No debris fell on land,” NORAD said. “At no time were the missile or the resultant debris a threat.

North Korea’s Space Agency said it had no information on the launch, which triggered an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council.

The launch was announced just weeks after a “Leap Year” deal that saw Washington agree to provide food aid. Among the promises made by Pyongyang in return was that it would not launch a long range rocket or undertake nuclear tests.

The United States, South Korea and Japan condemned the launch, with Washington, Seoul’s major backer saying it would remain vigilant after North Korea’s “provocative” action.

PRICE OF FAILURE FOR “SUPREME COMMANDER”

Now led by 20-something Kim Jong-un, the third of his line to hold power, North Korea had planned to make 2012 the year in which it became a “strong and prosperous nation” and the launch was part of a program to burnish its credentials.

It even invited foreign media in to cover the birthday celebrations and showed them the launch site.

“(There is) no question that the failed launch turns speculation toward the ramifications for the leadership in Pyongyang: a fireworks display gone bad on the biggest day of the year,” said Scott Snyder of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Eyes will be on how North Korea handles the failure internally. In order to show that it remains powerful, it could undertake a third nuclear test that would again ratchet up international tensions and damage any prospects of a resumption of denuclearization and aid talks.

This will be North Korea’s second consecutive failure to get a satellite into orbit, although it claimed success with a 2009 launch.

Although North Korea is one of the most tightly controlled states on earth, with no free media and a tight grip on its population, such a high profile failure could trigger a backlash among the country’s elite.

“This is the first crisis for the new leader that has just taken over,” said Lee Jong-won, a professor at Waseda University in Tokyo.

“It is inevitable that they will look to find who is responsible for the failure, and I wonder what the treatment will be for those in the military and the hard-line officers who have pressed for the launch.”

Obama congratulates Macky Sall on Senegalese election win

US President Barack Obama congratulated Macky Sall on Monday for winning Senegal’s presidential poll, praising the west African nation as “a leading example of good governance and democracy at work.”

Obama, who was in South Korea for a nuclear security summit, also paid tribute to outgoing President Abdoulaye Wade “for his leadership and friendship to the United States” during his presidency.

“Senegal has, through this election, reaffirmed its tradition as a leading example of good governance and democracy at work in Africa and remains an example for its neighbors,” Obama said in a statement.

“The government and people of Senegal have once again demonstrated their commitment to political expression through peaceful, democratic elections, making it harder for non-democratic forces near and far to prevail,” he said.

“Today’s results deepen hopes across the continent and around the world that the quest for human dignity cannot be denied and that Africa’s democratic wave must continue.”

He said the United States “looks forward to maintaining its strong partnership and close engagement with the people and government of Senegal to continue to strengthen democracy, peace, and prosperity in the region.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hailed Sall’s victory and congratulated the authorities for organizing “the election process, which international and domestic observers agree was credible, orderly, and transparent.”

The chief US diplomat said the “election was an important step forward for democracy in Africa and for the Senegalese people,” adding Washington hoped to strengthen its partnership with the Senegalese people and government.

Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on African Affairs, congratulated Sall, applauded the Senegalese for “conducting free, fair, and transparent elections,” and praised Wade.

“President Wade’s swift and peaceful concession is also a victory for Senegal and its people, and a critical milestone for its democratic system,” Coons said.

Sall defeated veteran leader Wade in an election lauded around the world as an example for African democracy.

Senegal was jubilant after the poll, which brought Wade’s increasingly controversial rule to a crushing end and disproved fears that political chaos was on the way in a country regarded as a regional beacon of democracy.

Sex trafficking in Uganda

Sitting at a table in a run-down bar on the edge of Ugandan capital Kampala, Stella Kobusingye stares into the distance as she recalls the tangle of lies and deceit that led to her sex-slavery ordeal.

Struggling to support her young son and sickly mother with the income from a small shop, last year Kobusingye heard about a job opportunity earning $800 a month working at a Ugandan-owned boutique in Malaysia.

After double- and then triple-checking that the job seemed genuine, Kobusingye sold her shop, paid for a passport and bought a visa for China, where middlemen told her she needed transit, before being handed a ticket and boarding a plane.

But when she arrived in China, she was met by a Ugandan woman, taken to a hotel where scores of other Ugandan girls were staying and told she now owed $7,000 for the airfare.

“There were no jobs there, they had lied to me — the only thing they had taken me there for was prostitution,” Kobusingye, who asked for her name to be changed, told AFP.

That night, a Nigerian man knocked on the door and said he had paid to have sex with her. Kept prisoner in her hotel room and with her passport taken away, for the next few weeks Kobusingye was forced — sometimes brutally — to sleep with up to five Nigerian men each night.

To scare her into silence, Kobusingye says her captors took her to a Ugandan witchdoctor there who used her fingernails and pubic hair to perform rituals.

Kobusingye’s story is typical of a growing number of young and vulnerable Ugandan women whom officials say are being duped into travelling abroad — particularly to countries in the Far East and Middle East — and then forced into prostitution.

In a country with massive unemployment and few opportunities, posters in shopping malls around Kampala advertise opportunities for well-paying jobs or studies abroad.

It is almost impossible to say how many Ugandan girls have been trafficked abroad but officials estimate in Malaysia alone — a country with visa-free travel for Ugandans and growing economic ties — there are currently about 600 Ugandan women in forced prostitution.

There are no figures available for the number of trafficked women in China.

During a recent visit to Kampala, Hajah Noraihan, a Malaysian working as Uganda’s honorary consul in Kuala Lumpur, flicked through a series of horrifying pictures to show what happens to the girls who refuse — the face of a young woman thrown from a third-floor balcony, the body of another brutally murdered on a bedroom floor.

In the past two years, at least three Ugandan girls have been killed in Malaysia, she said.

Since late last year, Malaysian police have cracked down on the prostitution rings. In a single raid in October, 21 Ugandan women were discovered at just one location and there are around 60 currently being detained by Malaysian authorities.

With the help of the International Organisation for Migration, in the past five months 14 girls have been brought back to Uganda, Noraihan says.

Now Noraihan, a native of Kuala Lumpur, is pressing authorities in Uganda to deal with the problem at its source.

“We really need to see action on this, not just talk, not just reports. We need to see action on it and now,” she says.

That pressure seems to be paying off.

Although several of those suspected of trafficking girls to Malaysia have already been arrested, critics say authorities have been sluggish or too poorly funded and trained to effectively crack down on those behind the rings.

Now though, officials from the immigration department to law enforcement agencies and presidential advisers have started meeting on the issue and a group of lawmakers is pushing to visit Malaysia to investigate further.

But public awareness of the threat remains perilously low and the trafficking rings are highly organised and increasingly sophisticated, said Asan Kasingye, director of the Interpol office in Kampala.

“The criminals, these international rings, they are also working against us. Instead of taking 10 girls, they might take one a week and if you go to the airport and there is a person going to Malaysia she will have documents saying she is going for studies,” Kasingye said.

Uganda is just one of many sub-Saharan countries affected by sex trafficking. Other countries affected include South Africa, Nigeria, Malawi, Cape Verde, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Ghana, Tanzania, Ethiopia, and Zambia.

Trafficking victim Kobusingye may finally be back home but she will never escape the effects of what happened to her.

After attempting to find a way to flee China, Kobusingye’s captors sent her to Malaysia, where they thought it would be easier to keep her.

But at Kuala Lumpur airport, immigration officials stopped Kobusingye. During several months in detention there she had a miscarriage.

Then she was told she had been infected with HIV.

Kobusingye was eventually sent back to Uganda with assistance from the International Organisation for Migration and the Malaysian consul. Now she is trying to rebuild her life and start up a second-hand clothes shop. Antiretroviral drugs are free in Uganda, but the potential stigma of her enslavement weighs heavy on the young woman, who has not even told her own mother about what really happened while she was abroad.

While Kobusingye knows she cannot undo the past, she says she’s praying those responsible are brought to justice.

“I want to get those people and take them to prison at least for the rest of their lives because right now I am sick but I have to take care of my kid, I have to take care of my mum,” she says.

Israeli air strikes kill 12 in Gaza

Palestinian medical officials said early Saturday that a total of 12 people had been killed and 12 injured in a series of Israeli air strikes in the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli raids came as Palestinians fired dozens of rockets and mortar rounds into southern Israel, wounding four people, one seriously, Israeli military sources said.

One Israeli strike, on a car travelling in the Tel El-Hawa neighbourhood west of Gaza City, killed the head of the militant Popular Resistance Committees, Zohair al-Qaisi, and fellow member Mahmud Hanani, the group said.

Both the PRC and the military wing of Hamas threatened to retaliate for Qaisi’s death.

The Al Quds Brigades, the military arm of Islamic Jihad, said that strikes on the east side of the city had killed its members Obeid al-Gharabli, Mohammed Harara, Hazem Qoureqa and Shadi Seqali.

It said that another two of its members, Fayeq Saad and Moatasem Hajaj, were also killed in strikes.

The Israeli attacks came in response to Palestinian mortar and rocket fire which started on Friday morning. The Israeli military said that in the course of the day about 40 rockets and mortar rounds had landed in southern Israel.

The PRC and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas’s Fatah movement, issued statements claiming to have fired rockets into Israel on Friday.

The official Palestinian WAFA news agency quoted a statement by the Fatah-dominated Palestinan Authority condemning the Israeli retaliation, saying it had created a “negative environment” that would “escalate the circle of violence in the region.”

The Israeli military said Qaisi “was among the leaders who planned, funded and directed” a deadly cross-border attack into southern Israel from Egypt’s Sinai last August.

In that incident, gunmen carried out a coordinated series of shooting ambushes on buses and cars on Route 12, which runs along the Egyptian border some 20 kilometres (12 miles) north of the Red Sea resort of Eilat.

The shootings took place over several hours, leaving eight dead and more than 25 wounded.

The military statement said Qaisi was also involved in a 2008 attack on a terminal for pumping fuel from Israel into the Gaza Strip, in which two Israeli civilians were killed.

The statement added that both the dead men were “responsible for planning a combined terror attack that was to take place via Sinai in the coming days.”

It said that other strikes were aimed at men about to fire rockets into Israel.

Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, has maintained a tacit truce with Israel, but other armed Palestinian groups regularly fire rockets and mortars across the border, which can spark air strikes in response.

The relatively small Popular Resistance Committees is one of the most active, and it pledged to avenge its men’s deaths.

“We are not committed to the truce; we will respond very strongly to this (Israeli) crime,” Abu Ataya, a spokesman for the PRC’s military wing, the Al-Nasser Salahadin Brigades, told AFP.

Hamas’s military wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades also warned of retribution.

“Al-Qassam Brigades mourns the martyr leader Zohair Qaisi and martyr Mahmud Hanani and confirms that their blood will not be wasted, the enemy’s crime will be a curse on him,” it said in a statement.

Its political leaders were more restrained.

“The recent Zionist escalation is an unjustified crime, it comes as a part of the destabilization of a stable security situation in the Gaza Strip” the Hamas-run Gaza government’s interior ministry said in a statement.

“We hold the international community fully responsible for the attacks.”

Before Friday’s air strikes, Israeli army radio quoted what it called “senior military sources” as saying the army “does not intend to allow the firing to continue.” – AFP

Zim’s ‘black empowerment minister’ to take platinum mine

by Gillian Gotora

AP – Zimbabwe’s black empowerment minister said Wednesday he will proceed with a takeover of the country’s biggest platinum mine if the South African owners don’t comply with orders to hand over more stakes in the company to blacks.

Minister Saviour Kasukuwere said there is “no compromise” over the eventual handover of 51 percent of the company’s stock as is required by “indigenization” laws.

Last year, Zimplats became the first foreign-owned company to cede 10 percent of its holdings to a local community trust. Zimbabwe has ordered the company to hand over another 30 percent by mid-March. South African-based Implats owns 87 percent of existing shares in Zimplats.

Zimbabwe and South Africa are the world’s largest suppliers of platinum, a corrosion-resistant metal with a wide range of industrial uses that is priced higher than gold.

Kasukuwere told the Associated Press Wednesday that a proposed visit by Implats’ chief executive to discuss the matter would not change the government’s decision.

He said he has no plans to meet with Implats chief David Brown.

“I don’t need to meet them over anything. Why are they coming to see me? I’m not a zoo,” Kasukuwere told The AP. “I have nothing to discuss. They must respect the laws of this country,”

Parliament last year passed a law that calls for all foreign-controlled businesses to take on black partners as majority stockholders.

The former opposition party of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has voiced concerns that the prospect of hasty takeovers scares off much-needed investment. The party has called for accountability and careful implementation of the “indigenization” program that risks collapsing some viable businesses and mines.

President Robert Mugabe’s party – which is in a shaky three-year coalition with Tsvangirai – says China can provide new technical expertise in mining and manufacturing.

Foreign cash inflows have dwindled in recent months amid uncertainty over the security of possible investments.

This month, banks, including major international banks, have reported growing shortages of cash for day-to-day transactions in Zimbabwe. Executives say the liquidity crisis has been fueled by businesses that cannot repay bank loans because not enough money is coming in to service the loans.

Industrial production has remained stagnant after years of economic meltdown with many factories desperate for cash to replace aging equipment and machinery.

Last year, Kasukuwere announced that he had canceled the Zimplats mining license but backed down after Zimbabwe’s mining minister ruled the cancellation void.

Kasukuwere, 42, seen as a younger militant in the top ranks of Mugabe’s party – which is dominated by veteran politicians aged in their 70s and led by Mugabe, 88- is tasked with securing Zimbabwe’s resources for black control.

Critics of new business takeovers point to a possible repetition of land seizures since 2000 that have seen many of the best former white-owned farms allocated to politicians and Mugabe party loyalists who have left them to lie idle.

UN Human Rights Council to put pressure on Syria

by Marie Sanz, AFP

The UN Human Rights Council’s annual session opens Monday determined to put more pressure on Syria’s hardline regime after publication of a list of officials suspected of crimes against humanity.

“We want Syrian authorities to give up being in denial,” said one diplomat. The Human Rights Council must “continue to put pressure on Syrian authorities”.

The annual meetings which will be opened by UN rights chief Navi Pillay and Nassir Abdulaziz Al Nasser of Qatar, president of the UN General Assembly for 2011-12, will also look into latest developments in Iran, Libya, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and North Korea.

However debates during the first three days were expected to focus on the nearly one-year deadly crackdown by the regime of Bashar al-Assad on dissent in Syria.

More than 7,600 people have been killed since the uprising against Assad’s rule erupted in March, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group.

About 90 government ministers and senior officials, including the foreign ministers of France, Germany, Spain, Egypt and Iran, as well as Libyan Prime Minister Abdel Rahim al-Kib, were expected to attend.

Qatar, which has backed calls for an Arab peacekeeping force in Syria, and several other Arab countries, the European Union and the United States have called for an “urgent debate” on the escalating crisis on Tuesday.

“I hope that a strong political message will come from this debate with an appeal for better access to humanitarian aid, and particularly a humanitarian truce for which the ICRC continues to work,” said council president Laura Dupuy Lasserre of Uruguay.

International investigators on Thursday gave Pillay a list of Syrian military and political officials suspected of crimes against humanity that will be discussed on March 12.

The UN-commissioned panel said it documented a widespread and systematic pattern of gross violations by Syrian forces, “in conditions of impunity”, since March 2011.

It said Syria’s government had “manifestly failed” to protect its people, but also said it had found instances of gross abuses committed by rebel fighters, many of them army defectors.

The commission recommended the initiation of an inclusive political dialogue, bringing together the government and opposition groups.

The human rights council was expected to look into a draft resolution that would renew the panel mandate.

The council wants international pressure on the Assad regime to be stepped up, an end to the violence and better access for humanitarian aid, Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe, US ambassador to the council, told a press briefing.

A European diplomat also confirmed that the annual session which winds up on March 23 aims to agree on a “strong resolution” as the situation on the ground continued to get worse. He called the panel list “shattering”.

The council has so far held three special sessions on the festering Syria crisis and Pillay has asked the UN Security Council and General Assembly in New York to hold Assad to account for crimes against humanity.

Hasni Abidi, director of the Study and Research Centre for the Arab and Mediterranean World in Geneva, praised the council for its work in the Syria crisis, saying that “for the first time we can see that the human rights council has an edge over traditional UN bodies” in New York.

“It sets the bar very high,” he told AFP, “which means that there is no possible room left for negotiations with the Assad clan when those people are wanted for crimes against humanity.”

Religious intolerance, freedom of expression, human rights violations because of sexual orientation and minority rights are also on the menu of the four-week session.

On March 7 a debate on gay rights has been scheduled but the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has expressed its misgivings.

“We hope that member countries of the OIC will not boycott the debate, which would be a very negative message,” said Dupuy Lasserre.

Exiled Rwandan general shot in South Africa

Days before an exiled Rwandan army general was shot and wounded in South Africa, two of the men charged in the shooting were plotting another attempt on his life, a witness testified Wednesday.

The Rwandan witness, a former roommate of one of suspects, was testifying in the trial of three Rwandans and three Tanzanians accused of attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder and weapons charges in the June 2010 shooting of Lt. Gen. Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa.

Rwandan authorities deny allegations of involvement that have been made by Rwandan President Paul Kagame’s opponents.

South African prosecutors won’t say whether they believe Kagame’s government was behind plots against Nyamwasa, who was once Rwanda’s military chief and has been in exile in South Africa since 2010.

Last year, Nyamwasa was among four men, all former top Kagame aides now in exile in South Africa and the United States, convicted in absentia by a Rwandan military court of disturbing public order, threatening state security, sectarianism and criminal conspiracy. The four have accused Kagame of crushing dissent and democracy after helping to end the 1994 genocide that left more than 500,000 people dead in Rwanda.

South African prosecutors have said key witnesses are under police protection in South Africa because they fear Rwanda’s government.

The possibility Kagame’s government has pursued his opponents abroad has been raised elsewhere.

In Sweden earlier this month, a person close to the Swedish government told The Associated Press a Rwandan diplomat had been expelled because he had engaged in “refugee espionage.” The person spoke on condition of anonymity because it was a sensitive diplomatic matter. Sweden is home to a small community of Rwandans, some of whom run blogs and online newspapers that are critical of Kagame.

Last year, police in Britain warned some Rwandans living there that their lives were in danger after the men criticized the government of the east African nation.

Testimony in the South African trial has hinted that shadowy figures were determined to kill Nyamwasa, trying more than once and offering large amounts of cash to draw in conspirators.

After Nyamwasa survived the shooting, prosecutors say the people pursuing him plotted to kill him in his South African hospital bed. But that case, which had been tried separately, was dropped earlier this month after a key witness changed his story and accused police of forcing him to make earlier statements.

Wednesday, Adriani Kamali testified in the shooting trial that he came to South Africa from Rwanda in 2002, when he met one of the suspects in Nyamwasa’s shooting, Amani Uriwani, another Rwandan. The two were roommates at the time of the shooting.

Kamali said that about two weeks before the shooting, Uriwani and another suspect, Hassan Mohamedi Nduli, introduced him to another Rwandan identified only as Vincent. Kamali said Vincent at first said he was recruiting a gang to break into the Johannesburg home of a man he said had taken money from his brother. Vincent at first said he only wanted the money back, but several days later said he wanted someone to attack the man.

“They wanted him dead,” Kamali said. Kamali said he backed out when he realized he was being asked to commit murder, but by then was deeply enough involved to have been paid several thousand rand (more than $1,000), shown the intended victim’s house and given a key to one of its security gates.

Vincent persisted, offering as much as 100,000 rand more (about $13,000), Kamali said. Kamali continued to refuse.

Kamali said he only realized the identity of the intended victim and that a new plot had been hatched without him when he saw news reports about Nyamwasa’s shooting. Kamali said he recognized the general’s home when he saw it on TV.

Prosecutor Shaun Abrahams refused to say Wednesday whether investigators knew more about Vincent’s identity. Abrahams said Vincent was no longer in South Africa, but would not say where he was believed to be. – Sapa

Mugabe turns 88, still going strong

by Jan Raath, DPA

Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe is expected to be presented with a very large cake on his 88th birthday Tuesday, ahead of elaborate and costly official events to mark the occasion in the impoverished nation.

The aging and reportedly ill Mugabe, who has been at the helm of since independence in 1980, has insisted repeatedly in recent weeks that he will continue to run Zimbabwe for the foreseeable future.

As it does every year, the media is likely to capture Mugabe as he marks the occasion, posing with the birthday cake presented by family and staff.

In the days that follow, the festivities that have been organized by his special “21st of February Movement”, are to kick off.

Some 5,000 members of Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party and their families are expected to attend the main party, which is to be followed by the finals of a special football tournament – the 1-million-dollar Bob ’88 Super Cup.

There will also be a Miss February 21 beauty pageant.

Mugabe is believed to be recovering from prostate cancer, and last year flew repeatedly to Singapore, for what observers said were “rejuvenation treatments.”

At key public events last year, including party conferences, Mugabe was seen falling asleep and generally appeared to be weakening.

However, since his most recent return from the Far East last month, Mugabe has embarked on a strong public relations campaign.

The president has held a wave of interviews and public speeches and, at a football event, was photographed puffing into a “vuvuzela,” the plastic horn made famous at the 2010 football World Cup in South Africa.

His reinvigorated appearance has been accompanied by a firm stance on his future political role in the southern African nation.

“All the people support that I stand,” Mugabe said about the next election. “There is no one (else) who can stand at the moment,” he told state media in an interview at the weekend.

While Zanu-PF says it wants to hold elections this year, the rival Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and civil society groups say they want constitutional reforms to be concluded first.

The MDC is part of the coalition government in place since 2008, when Zanu-PF was forced by its regional neighbours to share power, following elections that were marked by violence and allegations of fraud.

Observers say Zanu-PF wants its veteran leader on the ticket for the next election, in part, as no one else in the party has been groomed to take over the job.

Officials in neighbouring South Africa – which is in charge of monitoring the fragile and often violated coalition deal – have already publicly expressed concern about a messy succession in Zimbabwe, should Mugabe die while in power.

UN nuclear inspectors in Iran

AP,l Tehran – U.N. nuclear inspectors stia two-day visit to Tehran on Monday sought to meet Iranian nuclear scientists and visit a key military facility as they try to gauge allegations that Iran is pushing toward making an atomic weapon.

The trip is the second in less than a month by the International Atomic Energy Agency team, reflecting growing concerns over alleged weapons experiments – something Iran has so far both denied and refused to discuss.

Herman Nackaerts, a senior U.N. nuclear official, said in Vienna before the team departed on Sunday that he hoped for progress in the talks but his careful choice of words suggested little expectation the meeting will be successful.

The West suspects Iran’s nuclear program is geared toward making weapons, a charge Iran denies, insisting it’s for peaceful purposes only, such as power generation.

Iran’s state radio said Monday the inspectors hope to meet Iranian nuclear scientists and visit the Parchin military complexThe report said the IAEA had requested to visit Parchin, an Iranian military base and conventional weapons development facility outside of Tehran. The site has also been suspected of housing a secret underground facility used for Iran’s nuclear program, a claim denied by Iranian authorities.

IAEA inspectors visited the site in 2005, but only one of four areas of potential interest within the grounds. At the time, the nuclear watchdog did not report any unusual activities but the Parchin site was prominently mentioned in the agency’s report last year.

The report asserted that Iran constructed “a large explosives containment vessel” in which to conduct experiments on triggering a nuclear explosion, apparently 11 years ago, adding that it had satellite images “consistent with this information.”

“Whatever the reasoning of the agency is, it proves the IAEA is not loyal to its previous commitments,” the Iranian radio said. The tone of the commentary suggested the visit to the military complex would likely be denied.

The IAEA visit comes as Iran last week announced what it described as key advancements in its nuclear program, inserting the first domestically made fuel rod into a research reactor in Tehran and installing a new generation of Iranian-made centrifuges at the country’s main uranium enrichment facility in the central town of Natanz.

Beyond concerns about the purported weapons work, Washington and its allies want Iran to halt uranium enrichment, which they believe could eventually lead to weapons-grade material and the production of nuclear weapons. Iran has been enriching uranium up to 20 percent, while uranium enriched to more than 90 percent can be used for a nuclear warhead.

The IAEA team wants to talk to key Iranian scientists suspected of working on an alleged weapons program. They also hope to break down opposition to their plans to inspect documents related to nuclear work and secure commitments from Iranian authorities to allow future visits.

The IAEA summarized its information last November in a 13-page document drawing on 1,000 pages of intelligence. It stated then for the first time that some of the alleged experiments can have no other purpose than developing nuclear weapons.

Iran has denied alleged weapons experiments for nearly four years, saying they are based on “fabricated documents” provided by a “few arrogant countries” – a phrase authorities in Iran often use to refer to the U.S. and its allies.