Day: February 23, 2004

LRA Kills Almost 200 in Weekend Attack

Lord’s Resistance Army soldiers attacked a camp for displaced persons near Lira, Uganda, this weekend. According to the BBC, 190 of the estimated 4,000 people living in the camp were killed in the attack and many more were injured.

The BBC quoted MP Charles Angiro describing the attack,

The rebels came with sophisticated guns… and grenades. When they arrived at the camp at 5.30pm, they approached it from three fronts – from the north, east and south and left the western side for their exit. . . They bombed the camp… and overpowered the local defence forces and then started burning the huts.

Angiro complained that the army has not done enough to protect civilians in the area from the LRA, and that it had tried to downplay the extent of the casualities.

Angiro told the BBC that he counted at least 500 huts burned to the ground by the LRA.

Source:

Uganda rebels ‘burnt my family alive’. The BBC, February 23, 2004.

Cuba Limits Free Speech to Protect People from Satanic Cults

Cuba received widespread condemnation in early January when it implemented a ban on ordinary Cubans using the Internet.

Under a law that went into effect on January 18, 2004, only people with special authorization from the government will be allowed to have Internet access.

Technically, access to the Internet in Cuba has always required government permission, but as many as 40,000 people have skirted the law to obtain unofficial access to the INternet. The new law is an attempt to crack down on such access so that Cuba can more closely monitor who is using the Internet and for what purposes they are using it.

As Amnesty International noted in a press release about the change,

The new measures, which limit and impede unofficial internet use, constitute yet another attempt to cut off Cubans’ access to alternative views and a space for discussing them. This step, coming on top of last year’s prosecution of 75 activists for peacefully expressing their views, gives the authorities another mechanism for repressing dissent and punishing critics.

But to be fair to Cuba, the government said it only had its people’s best interests at heart. As Friends of Cuban Libraries noted in a press release, Cuban officials offered up a number of justifications of the new law, including this:

In a letter to a New Zealand newspaper (Scoop, January 24),
the Cuban ambassador, Miguel Ramirez, described Amnesty International’s protest
as “totally biased and full of prejudices according to the values of western
and developed countries…,” and he defended Cuba’s new law as a reasonable
measure to “regulate access to [the] Internet and avoid hackers, stealing
passwords, [and] access to pornographic, satanic cults, terrorist or other
negative sites…”

I can understand why they wouldn’t want people to have access to satanic sites, though — after all, Castro’s getting a bit old for that sort of competition.

Sources:

Cuban law prohibiting Internet access to take effect. UNWire, January 15, 2004.

Cuba Says Internet Ban Deters “Satanic Cults”. Press Release, Friends of Cuban Libraries, January 27, 2004.

Cuba: Further bans on freedom of expression. Press Release, Amnesty International, January 12, 2004.

India Uses Low-Tech Method of Malaria Control: Fish that Eat Mosquitoes

An Indian malaria researcher recently reported on the success of initial pilot projects to use fish that eat mosquito larvae to control malaria.

This is a traditional method that was commonly used before the introduction of DDT in the 1950s and is once again being looked at as part of the solution to malaria.

The idea is to stock ponds, rivers and wells with fish like guppies that feed on the mosquito larvae. Dr. VP Sharma of the COuncil for Medical Research said that while the technique could not be used everywhere, in places where it was appropriate to use it had virtually eliminated a subspecies of malaria-carrying mosquito in some districts where mosquito-eating fish were introduced.

According to the BBC, Sharma credited the fish introduction program for India’s falling malaria rate which declined by about 200,000 cases per year after the program’s introduction. Sharma did add that, “It will take another five years before the real impact would be known” from the numerous fish introduction programs that the World Bank is underwriting.

Source:

Fish eat away at malaria in India. Richard Black, BBC, January 5, 2004.

Hunger In Swaziland? Just Build More Palaces

Swaziland’s King Mswati III took a lot of heat in January when he announced that he was going to begin construction on a set of nine palaces at a cost of $15 million. The palaces will house 7 of the king’s 10 wives.

This comes at a time when up to one-third of Swaziland’s population will require international food aid.

The king is certainly no slouch when it comes to spending while his subjects are on the verge of starvation. In November 2003 he spent more than $1 million to by BMWs for his late father’s surviving wives. What’s food compared to fine German automotive engineering?

The decision to build the palaces in light of the impending food crisis was widely condemned. Mario Masuku, president of opposition party People’s United Democratic Movement — which the king has banned — said of the announcement,

We are angered and embarrassed by the wanton, senseless and limitless expenditure by the monarchist government of Swaziland. [The palace construction] is typical of an autocratic regime lacking the democratic fundamentals of inclusivity and grass-root participation.

Sources:

Swazi King to Build New Palaces Despite Population’s Hunger. UNWire, January 16, 2004.

Swaziland: Donors condemn palace building programme. Integrated Regional Information Network, January 19, 2004.

South Asian Nations Sign Free Trade Pact

In January, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka signed a free trade zone agreement that will start to bring trade barriers between those countries down beginning in 2006.

The agreement calls on the most developed of these countries — Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka — to virtually eliminate tariffs with the other countries by 2013, but gives the other countries until 2016 to lower their tariffs. There is, however, a provision that allows countries to maintain a list of “sensitive” products on which tariffs can be maintained.

Beyond advancing the cause of free trade, the real importance of this pat is the shot in the arm it could give to trade between Pakistan and India. Currently, trade between the two rivals is estimated at about $1.5 billion. That could double under the free trade regimen. And, of course, the more the two countries become economically intertwined, the higher the cost (and hence, the lower the risk) of war between them.

According to the BBC, there are now more than 200 regional free trade agreements.

Sources:

South Asia ‘agrees to free trade’. The BBC, January 2, 2004.

South Asia signs free trade pact. Reuters, January 6, 2004.