Carpet mafia
Campaigner killed for speaking out

The body of Iqbal Masih was left lying outside the Police Headquarters in Lahore for 16 hours following his murder, according to Ehsan Ullah Khan, President of the Bonded Labour Liberation Front (BLLF).

Until 1993 Iqbal Masih had worked for 12 hours every day knotting carpets. He was one of six million child workers aged under 14 in Pakistan, half a million of whom work in carpet factories. Then he campaigned relentlessly to raise the awareness of the world to the plight of his fellow child-bonded labourers. He worked with the BLLF, which demands protection for workers and the full implementation of Pakistan’s Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act of 1992. This has been largely ignored by loom owners and the so-called ‘carpet mafia’.

Initial reports suggested Iqbal had been murdered by a farm labourer, Mohammed Ashraf. Ashraf allegedly fired at Iqbal and killed him. However, following a post-mortem report, the Director of the International Forensic Programme of the US-based Physicians for Human Rights stated that ‘further investigation is clearly necessary to resolve the discrepancies between the pattern of injuries and the alleged circumstances of the attack’.

Since the death of Iqbal there has been increased intimidation of those who question the carpet industry. Zafar Yab Ahmed, a journalist investigating bonded labour for The News, and Ehsan Ullah Khan of BLLF have been arrested and charged with sedition and collusion with Indian intelligence agents, who are accused of setting up a ‘plan to exploit the murder of Iqbal Masih with a view to causing recurring financial loss to Pakistani business interests abroad’.

BLLF offices have been raided across Pakistan and four of their members arrested. Iqbal’s family has been constantly harassed and 13 of them have been arrested – including his mother and sister.

The BLLF Chairperson in Britain, Shahid Dastgir Khan, called for an impartial and independent inquiry into Iqbal’s murder and reiterated BLLF demands. To date, the Government of Benazir Bhutto seems unwilling to concede these demands, preferring instead to attempt to discredit those who seek to expose the inhumanity of the carpet industry in Pakistan.

Paul Donovan

Letters expressing concern regarding Iqbal Masih’s death and the treatment of the Bonded Labour Liberation Front should be addressed to Pakistan’s High Commissioner or Ambassador in your country.

Patrimonial loot
Guatemalans are up in arms amid reports that their national archive has been looted by the wife of the collection’s director. Maria Elisa Rohrmoser de Gil was arrested in New York for selling documents allegedly stolen from the General Archive of Central America. Rohrmoser’s husband Julio Roberto Gil Aguilar was fired, though no charges have been filed against him. When his replacement, Mercedes Elizabeth Flores Garcia, tried to retrieve the inventory stored in the archive vault, she discovered that only Gil Aguilar, whereabouts unknown, has the combination.

Time, vol 146, no 2

Timor shift
In a seismic political shift that augurs trouble for General Suharto, the Commander-in-Chief of US Pacific forces has privately told Congressional officials that the time has come for Indonesia to get out of East Timor. Admiral Richard Macke has concluded that the East Timor occupation has become more trouble than it is worth. He said that Jakarta’s generals should cut their (and Washington’s) political losses, pull out their troops and allow the Timorese, with UN help, to hold a referendum to determine their own political future.

The Nation, vol 261 no 3

Sterile debate
In south-eastern Brazil, São Leopoldo’s municipal government has approved sterilization as a means of birth control for low-income families with at least two children. The municipal council voted that both tubal ligations and vasectomies be funded by the city government. However, Brazilian law still calls sterilization a form of physical mutilation which is punishable by eight years in prison. Consequently, only three of São Leopoldo’s health-service doctors will perform the operations. According to news magazine Veja, sterilization is one of the most popular operations in Brazil and doctors do not want to legalize it because they can charge much more for an illegal procedure.

World Press Review, vol 42, no 7

Same-sex partners
A major survey has revealed that almost 25 per cent of multinationals ‘are now prepared to recognize same-sex partners’ when recruiting men and women for jobs in Europe. Covering nearly 200 companies active in 14 countries, Mobil Europe’s data-sharing study reveals a radical shift in corporate attitudes.

Nicola Cole, Gemini News Service

 

Too much
In response to growing inequality within the US the New York-based Council on International Affairs and the Boston-based Share the Wealth Project are launching a new periodical simply entitled Too Much. The first issue looks at what baseball might be like in an America with less inequality. ‘Believe me,’ says Chuck Collins, the group’s co-ordinator, ‘it would be a much better game’. Recent studies have shown that the most affluent one per cent of Americans owns 40 per cent of the nation’s wealth – more than is owned by the bottom 90 per cent of the population.

Share the Wealth, 37 Temple Place, 3rd Floor,Boston, MA. 02111

Online radicals
Two useful new ‘sites’ are available online. The Natural History Book Service (NHBS) offers free and easy access to a catalogue of over 40,000 books, CD-ROM’s, videos, reports and papers on the environment: http://www.nhbs.co.uk.   Corporate Critic Online from the Ethical Consumer Research Association offers a database of information and criticisms of companies under 13 social and environmental criteria. A subscription fee is payable for this service: contact ECRA Publishing Ltd, 16 Nicholas Street, Manchester M1 4EJ, UK.

Energy jam
Blackcurrants could be a valuable source of energy – not in foods, but in power stations. A Swedish agriculturist reckons the bushes could be a good energy source. They grow extraordinarily well in the cold and new, high-yielding varieties have doubled wood production. Blackcurrant power may be one solution to the energy jam.

Consumer Currents, no 175

 

RWANDA

Double trouble
Exiles escape charges as prisoners die

One year after the genocide in Rwanda there is still no justice for the victims and their families, says a report by Médecins sans Frontières.* Since April 1994, only three people – two in Canada and one in Belgium – have been subject to judicial proceedings.

The vast majority of the military and militias responsible for the genocide have found refuge in Tanzania or Zaire, where they benefit from aid provided by the international community in the form of relief programmes for Rwandan refugees. The French Army, which controlled the south-west of Rwanda in mid-June 1994, took no measures to arrest them.

Meanwhile, inside Rwanda, one in eight of the inmates of Gitarama prison died between September 1994 and May. The prison was built for 400 but there are now over 7,000 prisoners awaiting judgement, the majority of them on charges of genocide. They have less than half a square metre of living space each. Many have no choice but to stand day and night.

Among the referrals to Kasbgayi hospital, 38 per cent are suffering from trauma wounds and 41 per cent from rotting feet caused by standing on the wet and dirty ground, often resulting in amputation. The surgical unit is so crowded that prisoners now have to share beds.

Kasbgayi medical co-ordinator Dr Arnaud Viesse says: ‘The conditions in the prison are so bad that we are seeing an increase in serious wounds and burst eardrums from beatings. If an epidemic breaks out there is no saying how many will die – too many are dying already. Gitarama prisoners must be transferred to new centres as soon as possible.’

As many as 47,000 people are locked up in prisons and detention centres throughout the country. The Rwandan Government has announced that seven more detention centres will be opened over the next few weeks, and is building an extension at Gitarama. It is vital that the extension is used to ease the overcrowding and not filled with new detainees.

Nikki van der Gaag

* Health status of the inmates of Gitarama Prison, July 1995.

 

Cars equal Asthma
High levels of pollution bring AIRWATCH demonstrators onto the streets of Islington, London. Islington has the highest level of asthma in the UK, according to statistics collected by Islington 2000, a local environmental group. This kind of local action against air pollution is burgeoning all over the world.

 

 

NICARAGUA