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4/25/2009

SOLOMON TSUNAMI SOMALI PIRATES’ LONE GUNMAN LEAVES 13 DEAD IN LAWLESS PAPUA BEGGARS’ LONGEST CROP WAR

Filed under: bangladesh, burma, disease/health, government, human rights, intra-national, irian jaya, kenya, png, police, rampage, solomon islands, somalia, thailand, usa — admin @ 7:16 am

Papua was on high alert as a range of incidents, including attacks on
police stations, claimed 11 lives to mar voting day in the country’s
easternmost province, still plagued by separatist threats.

Kenya, with nearly a quarter of its 38 million people facing severe hunger,
is now reporting a rapid spread of diseases affecting the country’s vital
wheat and banana crops. The crisis is being exacerbated by plummeting
public confidence in the country’s year-old coalition government.

To wage today’s battles against pirates who took control of 42 ships and
captured 815 sailors last year, the Royal Navy is combining machines and
methods forged during the Cold War with centuries-old naval warfare skills.
The Royal Navy is also hitting back at pirates by using some of the
pirates’ own tricks.

A lone gunman shot and killed at least 13 people in a “premeditated” attack
at an immigrant centre in upstate New York, before turning his weapon on
himself. The gunman first used his car to barricade the back door of the
American Civic Association in Binghamton, 140 miles north of New York City.

The South Asian nation of Bangladesh wants to do something about the
increasing number of beggars migrating into its cities from the
countryside. Legislation has been approved that could send many of the
country’s most destitute to jail for openly asking for charity. Some aid
agencies are skeptical this approach will solve the problem.

Mobile-phone users in Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu, and Nakuru will be able to
access Google Maps and search up-to-date online maps, look up businesses,
advertise free via Google Maps Local Business Centre, create their own maps
and even check locations while on the move.

It began with British betrayal after the Second World War and has
stubbornly outlived every other conflict. But now, as it marks its diamond
jubilee, the world’s longest-running war is nearing its endgame. The
guerrilla army of the Karen ethnic group, which has been fighting since
1949 for independence from Burma, is facing the greatest crisis in its
history. If Karen resistance collapses, as some believe is likely, it will
be a triumph for the Burmese junta as it consolidates its hold on power.

The incident is, by Port Moresby standards, neither here nor there. Coming
off an overpass and you notice people scattering in light rain. Blocking
traffic is an urban response-style light police truck, with a two-sided
troop seat in the back. A woman is running, followed by two police. One of
the officers punches her hard in the face, then she doubles over from what
appears to be a truncheon in the guts.

Now tsunamis won’t be able to catch you unaware, thanks to a mathematics
formula worked out by scientists that will give advance warnings and an
idea of their destructive might.

The incidents, however, did not prevent most Papuans from voting on
election day. According to National Police data, 75 percent of Papuans
voted at more than 6,000 polling stations across the province. The polls
had to be delayed in Yahukimo and Paniaki, with bad weather obstructing the
delivery of polling material to the two regencies.

Recent reports from Kenya’s breadbasket region of the Rift Valley have
confirmed what the country can ill-afford - the spread of a deadly strain
of a parasitic fungus called stem rust that is threatening to wipe out the
country’s wheat fields.

Most of the other warships deployed to fight pirates in the region are
concentrated north of Somalia, close to the Suez Canal, through which 10
percent of the world’s sea trade passes. Northumberland was the first
warship on the scene from a new European Union task force, charged with
patrolling the southern flank of the 2-million-square-mile piracy zone,
near Mombasa. It was here that pirates scored their biggest victory seizing
the supertanker Sirius Star, laden with $100 million in crude oil.

He calmly walked into the front of the building armed with two pistols and
began shooting, killing one receptionist and wounding another. Moments
later he marched into a nearby classroom and began spraying bullets into
people reportedly undergoing citizenship tests.

Ragged beggars are a common sight on the streets of Dhaka and other cities
in Bangladesh. The government wants to make their presence a rarity, if not
eliminate it totally. To that end, a new law curtailing begging in the open
and on crowded streets will be strictly enforced. Violators will face up to
three months in jail.

Google has maps for Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda, but the level of detail is
not what it is for Kenya. “Google Maps is not just searchable digitized
maps helping you to find a local place, service or product. Our goal is to
make information with a geographical dimension available to everyone and to
allow users to update the maps and develop.”

After a three-year offensive by the junta, the Karen National Liberation
Army (KNLA) has been forced into increasingly small pockets of resistance.
Deprived of funds and equipment, it is able to do little more than slow the
advance of the Burmese Army as it lays waste to hundreds of villages,
driving thousands of terrified civilians before it.

We go through a roundabout and come back. The woman is running now, arms
crazy above her head as the police truck pursues her over gutters. Soon
after, we find the woman and a group of her friends standing by the
roadside, panting and bleeding heavily. One man has a deep gash running
across his left cheek. The bashed woman is half-laughing, half-crying. They
are drunk on “steam”, the local metho-rated liquor cooked in secret stills,
flavoured with orange cordial and sold dirt cheap in the markets.

The research, led by a maths professor, was prompted by the 2004
post-Christmas tsunami that devastated coastal communities in Indonesia,
Sri Lanka, India and Thailand. In this instance, an earthquake in the ocean
depths triggered a long surface wave which resulted in six massive wave
fronts, one after the other.

The disruptions began when homemade bombs exploded under a bridge on the
border between Papua and Papua New Guinea. No one was killed, but police
found two unexploded bombs while sweeping the area. Unknown assailants
stabbed five ojek (motorcycle taxi) drivers in Wamena, leaving four of them
dead and one in critical condition. A fuel storage tank at a state oil
company depot in Biak exploded during refilling, instantly killing a
bystander.

The strain was first detected in East Africa a decade ago. But it has
spread to other wheat producing areas in the world, largely because poor
farmers here have not been able to afford the fungicide needed to combat
the problem. “It started spreading very fast. We have it in Kenya. We have
it in Ethiopia, spreading toward the north [to] Egypt and it probably
reached India. It is a serious concern. Stem rust, of course, is
controllable with chemicals, but it is damn expensive. The only solution is
to bring in new varieties that are resistant to stem rust. We are at a
quite advanced stage.”

Somali sea bandits hijacked more than 40 large vessels last year, ransoming
about 30 of them for a million U.S. dollars or more. Sirius Star was
released in January after an estimated $3 million ransom was paid, but the
other ships, and about 200 crew, remain in pirates’ hands. The rise in
piracy, and consequent rise in the cost of shipping insurance, drove up the
cost of shipping petroleum, electronics and food.

In seconds, a dozen people were dead, another five were wounded, and more
than 30 had fled amid pandemonium. The gunman, believed to be a 42-year-old
Vietnamese American from nearby Johnson City, had recently lost his job
with IBM in his home town. “It was premeditated,” said the Binghamton
police chief. “The suspect had put a car against the back door blocking any
exit for victims.”

Parliament approved a bill cracking down on beggars and it will take about
a month to draft guidelines on how authorities will enforce the new law.
They note that some beggars seek pity by pretending to be ill or displaying
a disability. Sympathizers say most of those in such a condition on the
streets really have no alternative.

“We believe more accurate, representative local information can greatly
improve the breadth of information available about a given area, and in
turn can help efforts to bolster tourism and business investment.” Google
Maps is available in 23 African countries, but the company is providing
more detailed maps that go beyond the capital cities and include other
aspects of life. The company will divulge more information once the team
finalizes its plans.

Most serious of all, the Karen leadership is losing the support of
neighbouring Thailand, where it was formerly able to organise, arm and –
when necessary – retreat. Trapped between the Burmese Army to the west and
an increasingly unfriendly Thailand to the east, with hundreds of thousands
of their people in wretched refugee camps, the Karen are experiencing a
humanitarian and military catastrophe.

The man with the cut face is leaning through the window, spraying bloody
protestations of innocence. Asked why they didn’t just run away, all they
can repeat is: “It wasn’t our fault; we didn’t do anything.” Papua New
Guineans will stand before they fall. “The trouble is, they are Goilala,
which means they probably did do something, anything from holding up a car
to illegally selling betel nut by the side of the road.”

Of these waves it was the third and largest one that caused the most
devastation, hitting the beaches with terrifying speed. Reaching a height
of 20 metres or 65 feet, it hefted a train from its tracks as it travelled
along the Sri Lankan coastline, killing almost 1,000 people.

Police security posts at the Skaw Wutung border between Indonesia and Papua
New Guinea were attacked by unknown gunmen, with no casualties reported.
About 50 men armed with homemade bombs, spears, cleavers, bows and
cassowary bones attacked the Abepura Police station in Jayapura. The police
shot into the crowd, killing one attacker and injuring eight others.

In Kenya, most of the fields affected by the stem rust strain belong to
small-scale farmers, who grow 20 percent of the wheat consumed annually.
Although maize is the staple among most Kenyans, wheat flour has grown
crucial to the country’s overall food supply. Drought and post-election
violence in maize-producing areas of the country prevented many farmers
from planting crops. Domestic maize production was so poor, the government
had to begin importing corn to help feed some 10 million Kenyans facing
starvation.

To beat pirates in potentially violent showdowns, the Navy has adopted the
pirates’ tactics of using “mother ships” carrying fast boats to spring on
opponents. In the early days of Somali piracy, pirates ranged only a few
miles from their hometowns and threatened just a few thousand square miles
of ocean. The reason was simple: Most pirates were former fishermen and had
only the tools of a typical fishermen. Their personal firearms and their
small, motor-propelled wooden fishing boats, called skiffs. The skiffs were
too slow and too flimsy to catch anything but the most rickety of vessels.

The surviving receptionist, lying bleeding on the floor, alerted police
with her mobile phone and survived the ordeal. “After he shot her she
pretended she was dead. As he exited down the hallway she crawled
underneath the desk and sometime after that she called us.” Some of those
fleeing hid in the basement. More than a dozen hid in a cupboard. At least
five were wounded.

The Bangladesh Finance Ministry says it wants to emulate some neighboring
countries that have implemented plans to rehabilitate urban beggars by
providing them with employment training programs. Imprisonment and brief
training schemes will not solve the problem.

The company has boosted the popularity of the maps by including content
from local celebrities such as Wangari Maathai (Nobel Peace Prize winner),
Julie Gichuru (TV presenter), Churchill (comedian) and Humphrey Kayange
(Kenya Rugby 7’s team captain). Google Maps will help create a greater
understanding of the socio-economic situation in different regions.

“The military situation is as bad as it’s been at any time in the past 60
years. The Karen have less territory, fewer soldiers and fewer resources to
sustain resistance. The Burmese have them more and more surrounded, and
their backs are up against the wall.” A Karen leader on the Thai border
said that the KNLA and Burmese Army were fighting near the town of
Kawkareik, close to the Thai border. All year there have been reports of
Karen villagers being driven into the jungle by marauding soldiers.

Goilala are conspicuously short street dwellers originally from the Central
Province. They are branded Moresby’s most prolific troublemakers, first
suspects in any crime. Programs to rid PNG’s capital of crime are earnestly
afoot. It won’t be easy because criminal behaviour is not confined to
street people. Moresby’s police wield a brutal form of shoot-first,
ask-later justice, and some people see PNG’s politicians as notorious
pork-barrellers. When street people are asked to clean up their act, they
ask: What about them?

If we could understand more about how these long waves behave we could
predict where they might hit and how devastating they might be. The number
and height of the tsunami waves hitting the shoreline depends critically on
the shape of the initial surface wave in deep water.

At daybreak, the rector’s building at Cendrawasih University - about 5
kilometers from the Abepura Police station - was set ablaze by unknown
people. The fire razed important documents and badly damaged one of the
building’s three floors, but claimed no casualties. All the incidents,
except the explosion at the Pertamina depot, were intended to disrupt the
elections in Papua. The depot explosion was simply an accident.

Meanwhile, residents in western Kenya’s Nyanza province, hit hard by last
year’s poor maize harvest, are now reporting the outbreak of a disease that
is destroying banana trees there. Many Kenyans rely on bananas to
supplement their diets. But the once-plentiful fruit is prematurely
ripening and rotting on trees infected with a disease called banana
bacterial wilt. On some plantations, yield losses of 90 percent are being
reported.

Then the pirates innovated. They began capturing trawlers and small
freighters for use as motherships. When about a dozen armed Somalis
intercepted a ship, the pirates had no interest in its cargo. Instead, they
commandeered the harmless-looking freighter to launch their next attack. It
was more than three months before the pirates released the ship and her
crew.

Police arrived within two minutes and surrounded the centre, deploying FBI
hostage negotiators and a heavily armed Swat team. They established mobile
phone contact with 27 survivors barricaded in the basement and relayed
instructions about how to block the door against their attacker.

Every day thousands of beggars are coming to Dhaka city and other cities.
So it is not the solution by putting them in jail for three months or a
rehabilitation center for one month, two months. It is not the solution.
The government should focus on creating jobs in rural areas to stem the
internal migration by the poor into the cities.

One local company, KenyaBuzz, a community events, business and tourism
site, is already making use of the Google Maps API (application programming
interface), on its Web site. “Google Maps serves as a great platform
helping to provide accurate, comprehensive, location-based information for
our audience.”

“It’s a cat-and-mouse kind of struggle. The Burmese burn down villages and
relocate the people close to their own camps.” The Karen conflict has its
origins in the Second World War, when many Karen fought alongside the
British Army against the invading Japanese. The seven million Karen were
promised their own state by the British but when independence came in 1948
the promise was forgotten. A year later, in January 1949, the Karen began
the armed struggle that has continued ever since.

Trust between the citizens of PNG and the authorities is broken. That
explains why almost half of Australia’s annual $358 million in aid to PNG
goes to improving law and justice. Reinstating trust is crucial. Yumi
Lukautum Moresby (”You, me, look out for Moresby”) is making a difference
by building a bridge between the people of the notorious crime-breeding
urban settlements - in which there is no electricity, no toilets, and a few
shared taps for up to 5000 people - and the authorities.

From this it is possible to work out whether a ‘trough’ or a ‘peak’ is the
leading wave. In the case of a trough then the familiar sight of the tide
suddenly going out is the precursor to an approaching tsunami.

The Vice President said he had received a report from Papua Police
indicating efforts and a conspiracy to disrupt the elections. But the
National Police chief said the attack on the Abepura Police station had
nothing to do with the polls, adding it was a random attack aimed at
undermining security officers.

Wheat and banana farmers say they need the government to urgently release
funds to help fight the diseases threatening to impoverish them and to
leave east Africa’s largest economy in even greater need of food aid.
Middle-class workers say they, too, are struggling to put food on the table
because of persistent high inflation, mostly due to rising food costs.

It appears the killer turned one of his guns on himself. Police took nearly
an hour to search the building, amid concerns there may have been more than
one gunman, and then had to persuade 27 immigrants that it was safe to
leave the basement. A total of 37 people were hidden in various sections of
the building. The American Civic Association is a charity that helps
immigrants with naturalisation applications.

It is believed that several hundred thousand Bangladeshis live off begging.
A survey several years ago in relatively prosperous Dhaka found that the
average beggar there managed to collect about $1.5 a day. Approximately 40
percent of Bangladeshis get by on less than $1 per day.

The tourism sector, which has faced a slump because of the worldwide
economic crisis, is also looking to Google Maps for a boost. “Adding
tourism locations on Google Maps creates a free marketing channel and will
drive more people to our Web site and ultimately to the tourist locations.”

In the early decades of the war, the KNU dominated the Irrawaddy Delta,
close to the former Burmese capital Rangoon, as well as areas north of the
city and all of Kayin State. But in the 1990s an increasingly well-armed
Burmese Army made steady gains and in 1995 the KNU was driven out of its
capital, Manerplaw. Buddhists in the Christian-dominated KNU broke away to
form the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA), which now fights alongside
the Burmese Army. Formerly, the KNU had operated as a quasi-government,
providing schools and clinics and receiving income from tax, as well as
from a profitable trade through Thailand in timber, gold, zinc and
antimony.

Overcrowded Moresby routinely features in top 10 lists of the world’s most
dangerous cities. These rankings are decided by business or travel
magazines, which see Moresby through the prism of tourists or expats, who
live safely guarded in hotels or behind razor wire with all-night security
guards. The real test should be whether Moresby is safe for locals.

‘If a peak is the leading wave, there is no warning except a
fast-approaching wall of water. Potentially this could provide vital
information for areas facing an impending disaster.’

“This was purely an act of violence committed by armed guerillas.” Police
have named six people as suspects in the attack and are questioning eight
others as witnesses.

The country’s growing crisis comes on the heels of allegations that top
politicians on both sides of the coalition government have been involved in
scandals aimed at enriching themselves at the expense of Kenyan taxpayers.

Warships assigned to piracy patrols rarely engage pirates on their own.
They deploy specialized search-and-seizure teams, which consist of marines
armed with rifles and machine guns, traveling in raider craft.

Two women and a man suffering gunshot wounds were being treated at Wilson
Medical Centre in nearby Johnson City. Binghamton, a quiet university town
with a population of 47,000, is the home of IBM and has a low crime rate,
enjoying the nickname Parlour Town for the handsome front parlours of its
elegant villas.

An official report from the Commission of Inquiry into the Solomon Islands
riots found there was no conspiracy behind the violence, blaming police
incompetence instead. Riots erupted after Snyder Rini was elected prime
minister by legislators. Dozens of Chinese-owned businesses were looted and
burned in the riots. Chinese businesses were targeted at least partly
because of allegations they had helped fund the unpopular Mr. Rini to bribe
legislators for support. The damage was estimated at $180 million Solomon
Island dollars but a commission warned that compensation would only trigger
more anger against the Chinese community.

Google is also working with local software developers by providing APIs for
Google Maps to help programmers, Web masters and designers to incorporate
the functionality of Google Maps on their sites and develop new services
based on local information.

The loss of territory brought a loss of funds, which made it harder to arm
and equip itself. The KNU claims to have 10,000 soldiers, including village
militia men, but the number of active fighters is probably between 3,000
and 5,000.

It is women who suffer most. Domestic and sexual violence is described by
Amnesty International as endemic. Women fear reporting domestic violence
partly because of their husbands, partly because police have a reputation
for raping female complainants.

Later the same day, a small aircraft operated by a local airline crashed in
Wamena, killing all six crew on board. The cause of the crash is currently
being investigated.

An opinion poll was released showing that 70 percent of Kenyans believe
that the coalition government, formed to help the country heal from the
ethnic bloodletting that followed the disputed presidential elections, has
achieved nothing since it took power.

A naval engagement with pirates often begins with a commercial ship
reporting an attack, using a radio frequency set aside for emergency calls.
Other times, a maritime patrol plane, usually flying from Djibouti, spots a
potential mothership or pirate skiff, identifiable not by its appearance,
but by its vector. A trawler speeding away from Somalia, toward a
slow-moving tanker ship, just might have hostile intentions.

President Barack Obama said last night: “Michelle and I were shocked and
deeply saddened to learn about the act of senseless violence. Our thoughts
and prayers go out to the victims, their families and the people of
Binghamton.”

The Royal Solomon Islands Police had failed to do its duty in containing
the violence. There was confusion between local police and Regional
Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) police, who have access to
superior resources. RAMSI police and Solomon Islands police were not clear
on who was to take responsibility for containing the violence. It
catalogued a series of failures by the police that resulted in a security
breakdown, including a lack of credible intelligence information,
equipment, and organizational ability.

The KNU suffered another blow when its respected and charismatic leader,
Pado Mahn Shar, was assassinated at his home in Thailand by unidentified
gunmen. Among many Karen there was a suspicion that the ease with which the
killers escaped, and the failure to apprehend them, reflected a cooling of
the welcome afforded by Thailand. Last month Karen military commanders were
ordered out of Thailand and back across the border. This probably reflects
the Thai Government’s increasing dependence on Burma for raw materials and
energy – the two governments are jointly planning ambitious hydroelectric
dams along the Salween River which forms part of their border.

Chamber of Commerce members are encouraged to give street people jobs. They
go through short skills courses and are placed with companies for work
experience. AusAid, pays the wages. “Some are the kids straight out of jail
and we’re always up-front with employers. But it doesn’t seem to bother
many of them. Last year we found 70 per cent of them were retained.”

Naval commanders, in touch with each other by phone, e-mail and satellite
network, sort through the roster of warships in the region to figure out
who might respond fastest. They call this “deconfliction.” When the
responding ship is close enough, it launches a helicopter to scout ahead
and confirm that the suspect seafarers are indeed armed, while preparing to
lower the boarding teams’ boats into the water.

The New York State governor called it a “senseless killing”, adding: “When
are we going to be able to curb the kind of violence that is so fraught and
so rapid? We all have a profound sadness.”

A spokesperson from the RAMSI police force in the Solomon Islands says the
policing problems in the report have been fixed. The Assistant
Commissioner, Commander of the Participating Police Force in RAMSI says his
officers acted professionally and properly in discharging their
responsibility. The Royal Solomon Islands Police Force has improved their
capacity to deal with riots, has more trained officers and equipment, and
has developed a call out system.

The border is a valuable conduit not only for the Karen but for Burmese
struggling to overthrow the military dictatorship. After the junta cracked
down on large pro-democracy demonstrations of monks and activists, many of
them escaped into Thailand.

Measures such as this are making Moresby safer. “We definitely think so.
There are perceptions and everyone’s got them. But right now as we drive
through one of the roughest areas of Port Moresby, Kaugere, and we don’t
see any rocks coming towards us. A safe place is good for all of us. It’s
incumbent upon us to get involved.”

The ship’s presence alone was often enough to prevent pirate attacks.
Beyond that, the helicopter might deter pirates simply by “flying close to
demonstrate the aircraft’s machine gun and giving the pirates warning of
their serious intentions.”

The attack is the third massacre in the US in a month. A gunman in Alabama
killed ten people and then himself. Another lone gunman killed eight in a
North Carolina nursing home.

“It’s a crucial route for information. If that’s closed down the whole
country will become much more isolated.” The United Nations has ruled that
the continued detention by Burma of the pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu
Kyi violates domestic and international laws. The latest one-year detention
period of Ms Suu Kyi, who has spent 13 of the past 19 years under house
arrest, expires in May.

YLM (Yumi Lukautim Mosbi) hunts corporate sponsorship, runs awareness
campaigns, gets kids playing sport and works with government. It has
organised a toll-free number to evacuate women and children from violent
situations using a private security company. In PNG, people can’t rely on
police to respond to 000. In Australia, this would be seen as a spectacular
failure by police. Two private companies, Protect Security and phone
company Digicel, donated the service, so we are not interested in exploring
the point. In PNG, do it however you can.

If the pirates persist, the boarding teams deploy, flanking the pirates’
boats to approach from both sides, moving fast with weapons at the ready.
If the pirates lay down their weapons, they are taken into custody without
a shot fired. If they shoot, the boarding teams fire back, then climb
aboard.

Not all art is strictly about the aesthetic, some pieces provide an
important function in the community like the large black and white
photographs installed this week on rooftops across Kibera, Kenya. The
intimate photos, taken by photographer JR, act as a second roof, protecting
the village’s delicate structures from water damage, a vital job in one of
Africa’s worst slums.

Everyone is saying Moresby is safer than five years ago, but you’ll still
hit the accelerator hard through the several well-known trouble spots. One
explanation for the lessening crime rate is that so many leading criminals
- they don’t much call them raskols these days, it’s seen as too cute - are
dead.

3/7/2009

KIRIBATI FISHERMEN DOWNGRADE MUTINUOUS KANGAROO DEATH SQUADS WHILE PRESERVING LEATHERBACK GRISI SIKNIS

Filed under: bangladesh, cook islands, disease/health, fiji, government, kenya, kiribati, military, nicaragua, png, police, rampage, solomon islands, wildlife — admin @ 7:47 am

Three fishermen from Kiribati who went missing at sea for nearly five weeks
have been found alive on an island in Papua New Guinea.

Some 50 people were killed when Bangladesh paramilitary troops fought among
themselves during a mutiny in their headquarters over a pay dispute.
“Nearly 50 people have been killed in sporadic fighting in the headquarters
of Bangladesh Rifles (BDR).”

The outlook on Fiji’s long-term sovereign credit rating has been revised
down from stable to negative by the international rating agency Standard
and Poors. The sovereign credit rating indicates the level of risk in
investing in a specific country, and takes political risks into account.

Papua New Guinea has created a nearly 190,000-acre preserve to protect tree
kangaroos and other endangered species, after years of criticism for
turning a blind eye to environmental issues. The Pacific island nation,
where illegal logging is rampant, has recently tried to overhaul its image
in the conservation community, taking the lead on such issues as getting
tropical forest protections included in a U.N. climate pact.

A team of traditional indigenous healers and regional health authorities
from the North Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAN) trekked out to visit three
rural Miskito communities along the Río Coco to investigate reports of an
outbreak of a mysterious collective hysteria, known as grisi siknis, or
crazy sickness.

The fishermen were taken adrift by rough seas until they were discovered by
Papua New Guinea villagers. Authorities in Kiribati thought they drowned,
but the men survived on fish and sea water for weeks.

Rank and file soldiers in the Bangladeshi military has staged a nationwide
insurrection. The mutineers seized control of 12 military bases across the
nation, as officers and military commanders were unable to halt the mutiny.
The nation’s new prime minister warned the mutineers they faced stiff
punishment if they continued their violent insurrection and ordered heavy
artillery and armored divisions to move against them.

Fiji’s sovereign credit rating remains at B. Standard and Poors has
downgraded the outlook for the rating’s future because of what it describes
as a “quite dramatic fall in Fiji’s international reserves” -from $US618
million at the end of 2007 to $431 million in December 2008.

The plan for a conservation area stemmed from an unusual agreement between
the government and 35 indigenous communities to protect the 187,800 acres
of remote tropical forest, coastal reefs and mountains on the island of New
Guinea. Leaders representing the 10,000 villagers living in the YUS
Conservation Area, named for the Yopno, Uruwa and Som rivers that run
through it, have agreed to prohibit hunting, and development such as
logging and mining. In exchange, US conservation agencies will provide as
much as $2 million for health and education programs.

The regional health coordinator for the RAAN, said that 34 people have
reportedly fallen ill with grisi siknis in the river community of Santa Fe,
seven people in the nearby community of Esperanza and two in the
neighboring community of San Carlos. The outbreak of grisi siknis, which
has no scientific explanation, is the largest case of collective hysteria
since a massive outbreak in the RAAN community of Raití in 2003.

Villagers in PNG’s New Ireland province found the men and took them to a
medical centre run by the Lihir Gold Mine for treatment. A docotor says the
men were treated and are well. “Medically-wise they’ll need to be observed
24 hours at least and they are starting to eat well.”

The mutineers did lay down their arms, after 18 members of the government,
including ministers of parliament, went to meet with the leaders of the
uprising, putting their own lives at risk. The official death toll stands
at 11, with reports of up to 100 civilians and military personnel believed
dead. Corruption is thought to have been the cause that spurred the rebels
to outrage sufficient for mutiny.

Standard and Poor’s Sovereign Ratings Analyst, said weak growth prospects
especially in tourism, sugar and garments also contributed to Fiji’s
downgraded outlook. The outlook on Papua New Guinea and Cook Islands,
remains unchanged. At this stage, Papua New Guinea and Cook Islands have
weathered the financial crisis better than many countries, but warns they
remain vulnerable to low commodity prices and tourist numbers.

By creating the country’s first national conservation area, the PNG
government and people have established a much-needed safe zone for the
irreplaceable biodiversity it contains. Other researchers said the
agreement would go a long way toward ensuring the survival of the
Matschie’s tree kangaroo, a leaf-eating mammal the size of a raccoon that
looks like a cross between “a bear, kangaroo, koala and monkey.”

Though doctors, anthropologists and sociologists have all studied previous
cases, no one has been able to explain the phenomena. Traditional healers
and witches have explained the mysterious illness with different theories
ranging from a curse to incomplete witchcraft.

“They’ve lost some weight obviously. But otherwise they’re in very good
condition.” The fishermen need a week to fully recover before they could be
re-united with their families back in Kiribati.

The mutineers were from the paramilitary border guard units knows as the
Rifles. Corruption in Bangladesh is rampant, and the impoverished nation of
144 million is listed 147th out of 180 nations on the corruption index kept
by Transparency International, a watchdog group. The Rifles have
experienced problems with pay and equipment for years, reportedly due to
corruption.

The leatherback (Dermochelys coriacea) is the world’s oldest and largest
turtle. Having witnessed the extinction of the dinosaur and the development
of mankind, this magnificent sea creature is now facing extinction in our
Pacific Ocean.

The strange illness apparently affects young people more than old, putting
people in a strange trance and apparently giving them super-human strength.
A 15-year-old girl with siknis can overpower six or seven men. The men
can’t detain her, and have to tie her up in bed sheets.

“They are completely adapted to living in the rain forest and trees, which
is not what you think of when you think of kangaroos.” This kangaroo is
found only on the island but is related to tree kangaroos found in
Australia. Other rare species in the area include the long-beaked echidna
– an egg-laying mammal that looks a bit like a hedgehog — and the Huon
Astrapia, a bird of paradise.

Kenya police ‘ran death squads’and have a reputation for brutality. A UN
investigator has called for the removal of Kenya’s police commissioner and
attorney general over a wave of alleged extrajudicial killings. “Kenyan
police are a law unto themselves. They kill often, with impunity.”

A leatherback turtle nesting beach survey was conducted on Bougainville
Island in Papua New Guinea. The survey recorded 46 leatherback turtle nests
and one false crawl. Of the 46 nesting sites found along the beaches of
Bougainville, there were also 12 unidentified turtle nests, which were
determined to belong to green and hawksbill species.

Among the Rifles mutineers’ demands was the right to participate in UN
peacekeeping operations, which reportedly pay significantly more than
regular operations. The stand down and release of dozens of hostages
followed a warning today by Prime Minister Sheik Hasina that the
paramilitary Bangladesh Rifles must return to the barracks and surrender
their weapons or face unspecified consequences.

Until now, their habitat was under significant threat. Nearly a quarter of Papua New Guinea’s
rain forest has been damaged or destroyed between 1972 and 2002 — mostly
due to illegal logging to extract timber that is made into flooring and
furniture in Chinese factories and sold in the United States and Europe.
But many of Papua New Guinea’s forests, including the new reserve, are
still untouched, and researchers have hope the unique arrangement will find
success.

The illness doesn’t necessarily make people violent, but it does make them
hysterical. Many of the affected will take off running madly, and other
villagers can’t stop them. Sometimes, however, grisi siknis can turn
violent. In the case of Raití in 2003, some of the affected people ran
around town with machetes trying to cut others.

Security forces went on a killing spree against rebel militias in Mt Elgon
in western Kenya, and against some 500 suspected Mungiki members. The
attorney general was “the embodiment in Kenya of the phenomenon of
impunity. There is overwhelming testimony that there exists in Kenya a
systematic, widespread and well-planned strategy to execute individuals,
carried out by the police.”

Some had feared the mutiny could spread to the regular military or
represent the beginnings of a politically motivated coup d’état, and that
PM Hasina’s government could be in jeopardy if the rebellion was not
swiftly put down. There will be angry calls for punishment of the
insurgents, but there will likely also be angry calls for tough action to
combat corruption, perceived to be pervasive in politics and public life.
More mass graves have been found at a military base where soldiers staged a
mutiny this week. At least 100 people are reported to have been killed,
mostly army officers.

This survey also served to verify nesting sites recorded during an aerial
survey. Bouganville lies between Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands,
with all three having nesting populations of the leatherback turtle. The
researchers traveled around Bouganville by dinghy interviewing, surveying
and sharing turtle awareness with the local communities as well as
measuring turtle nests along the shore. “There was a high density - close
to 43% of all the nests were in a 5.4 km stretch of beach between the
villages of Papanoa and Naboi. This would be the most likely spot for
conservation work along with some educational outreach about turtles, as
these nests will likely be harvested for eggs.” Communities in Bouganville
frequently harvest the eggs of the turtles for food.

Unlike government-run parks that often exist in name only in many parts of
Asia, the land committed for the project is all owned by local clans.
Conservationists are counting on the locals to bring a unique commitment to
protecting their homes. The reserve is also a good first step toward
reducing global emissions: the trees in the reserve absorb 13 million tons
of carbon each year while deforestation globally represents about 20
percent of carbon emissions.

The mysterious illness has existed in the indigenous communities since the
1960s, but had disappeared for years until the 2003 outbreak. The illness
apparently only affects indigenous Miskito and Mayagna populations. In
2004, the illness was cured by a local healer who treated it with herbs and
other natural medicines. The three local healers sent to the communities
will employ the same techniques.

Some 1,500 people died in the violence after the December 2007 poll. There
were horrifying witness accounts of how young men and defenceless women
were executed by Kenyan police, apparently for being in the wrong place at
the wrong time.

The country has suffered several military coups since independence in 1971.
The army maintains this week’s mutiny by border guards was over pay and
conditions and was not politically motivated.

“For villagers this has been part of their diet for a long time, their
cultural resource and part of their biodiversity. Like fisheries, you want
to manage it well, you don’t want to catch all your fish or you will have
no more in the future, just like turtles. We need to help conserve them or
they will disappear as a species on earth. The leatherback turtle
population in the Western Pacific has declined by 95 per cent in the last
30 years.

“Hopefully, other tropical forest nations will follow this example of
simultaneously combating climate change and conserving the ecosystems on
which people depend.”

2/9/2009

FLOODED POPPIES MINIMIZE SECURITY DROUGHT CRISIS

Filed under: australia, burma, capitalism, china, disaster, disease/health, fiji, government, human rights, irian jaya, kenya, png, police, solomon islands, thailand, usa, vietnam, wealth — admin @ 6:07 am

The Solomon Islands declared a national disaster after torrential rain and
flooding in the South Pacific nation killed eight people and left another
13 missing, destroying homes and bridges.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC)
is reporting that populations in large areas of Kenya and the Horn of
Africa are now facing an exceptional humanitarian crisis that requires
urgent food assistance. The combined effect of high worldwide food prices
and a crippling drought are seriously jeopardizing the lives, livelihoods,
and dignity of up to 20 million people in rural and urban communities.

Opium poppy cultivation inched up by 3 percent last year in Myanmar,
according to a United Nations report, the second consecutive annual
increase that appears to signal a reversal of years of declining opium
production in the so-called Golden Triangle.

Indonesian security forces attacked a group of one hundred tribal people
who were peacefully protesting about delays to local elections in Nabire,
West Papua.

“Containment of the problem is under threat. Opium prices are rising in
this region. It’s going to be an incentive for farmers to plant more.”

Twelve communities on the Solomons’ main island of Guadalcanal had been
assessed as disaster-hit and appealed for international assistance.
Australia and France have already promised emergency aid.

Papua New Guinea’s law and order problem is set to get worse if a
recommendation to increase the national minimum wage is approved by the
government.

The Golden Triangle, the area where the borders of Thailand, Laos and
Myanmar meet, once produced two-thirds of the world’s opium, most of it
refined into heroin. But pressure by the Chinese government to eradicate
opium in Myanmar helped lead to steep declines, with a low point of 21,500
hectares, or 53,000 acres, of poppies planted in Myanmar in 2006. Since
then, opium cultivation has bounced back by around 33 percent, to 28,500
hectares last year.

For the past 17 years Papua New Guinea’s lowest income earners, like
security guards, have brought home just $US13 a week. Government plans to
increase that to $US43 has business owners worried.

When police began attacking the crowd, the demonstrators called for Mr
Yones Douw, a respected human rights worker, to document the violence. When
Mr Douw arrived, the police attacked him – witnesses said he was kicked,
beaten on the side the head and punched in the face before being arrested,
along with seven protesters. The police also beat other protestors, and
fired rubber bullets into the crowd. Five people were seriously wounded,
and many others received minor bullet wounds.

Since December, flooding has also hit the Pacific island nations of Fiji,
Papua New Guinea, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands, with tens of
thousands of islanders abandoning homes.

UN officials warn that the global economic crisis may fuel an increase in
poppy production because falling prices for other crops may persuade
farmers to switch to opium. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said corn
prices had fallen by half over the past year. The price of opium, by
contrast, has increased 26 percent in Laos and 15 percent in Myanmar over
the same period.

Heavy rain and flooding on Guadalcanal and nearby Savo Island has caused
widespread damage and forced the evacuation of more than 70 villagers to
the capital Honiara.

The PNG Manufacturers Council said the economy cannot accommodate a higher
salary. “It’s not the fact that the private sector doesn’t want to pay, its
whether the economy can accommodate that high level of salary.”

“In Kenya 80 percent of the territory is affected, with the northern and
lower eastern Kenya the most affected. We’re talking of a target population
of 1.6 million for the Red Crescent.”

Farmers in the isolated highlands of the Golden Triangle are also hampered
by bad roads and difficulties getting their crops to market. They often
find that small parcels of opium are easier to carry across the rough
terrain.

The Solomon Islands Red Cross had sent emergency staff and volunteers to
distribute relief supplies to communities in West Guadalcanal and Longu, in
the island’s east. The Solomon Islands is a nation of about 500,000 mainly
Melanesian people, spread across hundreds of islands, which gained
independence from Britain in 1978.

The global economic crisis is only just starting to short-change Papua New
Guinea, with the wage set to further undermine the local economy. “We
become less competitive, our prices go up and we don’t sell any goods.” It
could lead to thousands of workers being laid off, adding to the country’s
already high unemployment and crime rates.

Other areas are Djibouti with 50 thousand people in dire need. Ethiopia is
affected with an estimated 5 million need of food. The Red Cross is moving
in to start assisting the first 150 thousand people. The Red Cross and the
Red Crescent are also active in southern Somalia, as well as Somaliland and
Puntland.

Although opium is still grown in parts of Laos, Vietnam and Thailand, UN
officials say that about 94 percent of the region’s opium comes from
Myanmar. Most of the Golden Triangle heroin is sold within the region, but
small amounts also reach the United States and Australia. Recent seizures
of heroin thought to come from the Golden Triangle have been made on the
Thai resort island of Phuket, Ho Chi Minh City and Yangon, Myanmar’s
commercial capital.

“The key issue for PNG is more people working and that basically improves
the lifestyle of people and that without a doubt helps law and order
because when people can put food on the table there is harmony, you take
that opportunity away and you have unrest. Or, employers could head to the
labour black market, choosing instead to pay workers their current wage
under the table.”

Eyewitnesses say that a range of security forces were involved in the
attack, including Brimob, Indonesia’s notorious para-military police, plus
soldiers and Indonesia’s Intelligence Service.

The alarming spread of HIV by heroin users in southern China several years
ago persuaded the Chinese authorities to crack down on opium and heroin
trafficking. Western intelligence officials say Chinese spies are active in
anti-narcotics operations in Myanmar, especially in northern areas where
central government control is weak. “There’s strong collaboration with
Chinese intelligence.”

Last month 11 Fijians died and more than 9,000 people were forced into
evacuation centres after the worst floods in decades. Sugar is Fiji’s
second major industry following tourism and sugar farms in the west have
been devastated by the flooding, with damages estimated to be in the tens
of millions of dollars.

The UN report on opium poppy cultivation is based on surveys taken from
helicopters and on the ground. The United States relies more heavily on
satellite images to calculate opium cultivation, and its reports are
sometimes at odds with those of the United Nations. The UN report did not
cover methamphetamine production and distribution, which among some
criminal syndicates has displaced opium and heroin in the region.

“We have launched an appeal seeking 95 million dollars, now we have
received only 6 percent in the two months since we launched and this is not
enough to run an operation.”

In Thailand, methamphetamines remain a problem but longstanding efforts by
the royal family to substitute opium production with vegetables, coffee and
macadamia nuts have virtually wiped out opium production among the northern
hill tribes.

Floods ravaging northern Australia have washed crocodiles onto the streets,
where one was hit by a car. More than 60 per cent of the vast northeastern
state of Queensland has been declared a disaster area, and flooding after
two recent cyclones has affected almost 3,000 homes. The army has been
called in to help with rescue and recovery efforts, while three reports of
large crocodiles washed up from flooded rivers have come in from homes in
the Gulf of Carpentaria region.

The incident fuels concerns that repression and violence against the Papuan
people is increasing.

“Many employers are doing the right thing, but there are many unscrupulous
employers who will exploit their workers to gain maximum profit out of the
cheap labour.”

Afghanistan remains the world’s premier source of opium, producing more
than 90 percent of global supply. Afghan soil is also remarkably more
fertile than the rocky, unirrigated opium fields in the Golden Triangle.
The UN estimates in its 2008 report that one hectare of land yielded an
average of 14.4 kilograms, or 31.7 pounds, of opium in Myanmar but 48.8
kilograms in Afghanistan.

“The damage bill is estimated at $76 million and growing. But we won’t
really know the full extent of the damage until the water subsides, so that
figure could double, it could treble.” It was the worst flooding seen in 30
years. Fresh food supplies were flown into the westerly townships of
Normanton and Karumba, which had been cut off by flood waters. The flooding
comes amid a heatwave over in south-eastern Australia.

The situation has been exacerbated by the global and financial crisis.
However a small fraction of the billions of dollars being spent by
governments to bail out banks and financial institutions could help save
millions of lives in the Horn of Africa.

The death toll in Australia’s worst-ever bushfires has risen to 128 people,
as hundreds more flood community shelters after losing everything they own.
The state government in Victoria, where the fires have raged since
Saturday, is being advised to prepare for 230 fatalities. Police confirmed
128 deaths from the fires, many which officials suspect were deliberately
lit.

2/1/2009

GRISLY FOOTAGE OF BURNING SHOE FUELS REPRESSION

Filed under: irian jaya, kenya, media, thailand, usa — admin @ 9:16 am

A huge sculpture of the footwear hurled at President Bush during a trip to
Iraq has been unveiled in a ceremony at the Tikrit Orphanage complex.

Graphic television footage of violent and cruel acts should be banned, a
group of angry parents says. Members of the Network of Family Watch and
Creative Media are demanding that television stations put a stop to
repeated images of horror that could harm children and instill violent
tendencies.

There is mounting evidence that violence and repression in West Papua are
intensifying. Lately, there were several reports of killings and
shootings, and a rise in ‘accidental deaths’ of Papua’s tribal people at
the hands of the Indonesian military and police.

Rescuers combed a tanker crash site in Kenya where around 100 people were
killed when oil they were scrabbling for caught fire in one of the east
African nation’s worst accidents of recent times.

Assisted by children at the home, sculptor Laith al-Amiri erected a brown
replica of one of the shoes hurled at Bush and Prime Minister Nuri
al-Maliki by journalist Muntadhir al-Zaidi during a press conference in
Baghdad.

Network leader Anya-orn Panichpuengrat said parents were concerned
children watching the news would be disturbed by horrific scenes being
played and re-played. She said footage aired in recent weeks showing
people being beaten and even shot dead should not have been broadcast.
Most of the offending footage was obtained from surveillance cameras. She
said ugly scenes were broadcast repeatedly during news segments and “it
felt as though the violence was never ending”.

At least four Papuans have been ‘accidentally’ shot dead by police in West
Papuan towns and four bodies have been found dumped by the side of the
road or in rivers.

Prime Minister Raila Odinga said the disaster, in which 178 people were
burned and injured, showed the desperation of poor Kenyans and the
nation’s lack of preparedness for accidents. “Poverty is pushing our
people into doing desperate things just to get through one more day,”
Odinga said during a visit to victims of the blaze, which took place on
Saturday evening on a road near Molo town in the central Rift Valley.

Al-Zaidi was jailed for his actions, and a trial is pending. But his angry
gesture touched a defiant nerve throughout the Arab and Muslim world. He
is regarded by many people as a hero. Demonstrators took to the streets in
the Arab world and called for his release.

The network plans to visit television stations to inquire into their
reasons for running such footage. While the broadcasts could help track
down suspects, showing the entire tape was unacceptable, she said. Ms
Anya-orn said one case involved the shooting to death of a security guard
and then a woman by her jealous boyfriend in Prachin Buri. Another showed
a vocational student being gunned down during a fracas connected to
inter-school rivalry near Kasetsart University. Footage of a teenage boy
being brutally beaten by a gang of teenagers in Ayutthaya was aired on
television repeatedly.

A 13 year-old boy was ‘accidentally’ killed when police fired over the
heads of a crowd after a dispute in a local market. In another incident,
police fired on a group of Papuans celebrating New Year, killing one man.
In retaliation for a violent response to this killing, police shot dead an
eight year-old boy and destroyed local people’s houses.

“This being a rural area, there was no response by any disaster team
because there is no such team.” Regional authorities revised the death
toll to 94 from 111 after difficulties counting the bodies in darkness.
“We counted 89 bodies last night and five have died this morning,” Rift
Valley provincial commissioner Hassan Noor Hassan told reporters. The Red
Cross said up to 110 had died, a health minister said 97, and police gave
a toll of 91.

The shoe monument, made of fiberglass and coated with copper, consists of
the shoe and a concrete base. The entire monument is 3.5 meters (11.5
feet) high. The shoe is 2.5 meters (8.2 feet) long and 1.5 meters (4.9
feet) wide. The orphans helped al-Amiri build the $5,000 structure –
unveiled Tuesday — in 15 days, said Faten Abdulqader al-Naseri, the
orphanage director. “Those orphans who helped the sculptor in building
this monument were the victims of Bush’s war,” al-Naseri said. “The shoe
monument is a gift to the next generation to remember the heroic action by
the journalist.”

“Is it right that children are watching this?” Ms Anya-orn asked. “The
children will slowly build a tolerance to violence and could even imitate
those acts.” She said television stations must stop running grisly footage
and the broadcast regulatory body must step in and impose stricter
controls. The government should establish a rights protection agency to
receive complaints and seek prosecution of irresponsible media outlets,
she said.

Papua’s High Court extended the sentences of 11 Papuans who had been
arrested for peacefully displaying the banned West Papuan flag, from eight
months to between three and three and a half years. There are also reports
of renewed activity, supported by the Indonesian army, of the notorious
Islamic militia group, Merah Putih (Red and White), in the highland town
of Wamena.

When the oil tanker careered off the road, hundreds of locals began
pouring to the scene with jerrycans to try to scoop up some free fuel.
Suddenly, the oil caught light and the blaze engulfed the crowd. Many
bodies were burned beyond recognition. Rescuers said someone may have
accidentally dropped a cigarette, although there was also suspicion
someone angered at being blocked by police may have started the fire on
purpose.

1/27/2009

WHITE-EYED WORLD BANK CHAOS REIGNS AS EXCHANGE STUDENTS RAMPAGE INCREASES FOOD PRICES

Filed under: kenya, nicaragua, rampage, solomon islands, usa, wildlife — admin @ 8:16 am

The Teachers strike in Nairobi turned chaotic as some primary school pupils
went on the rampage. Muslim Primary School pupils in Kawangware smashed
windows and destroyed property as they protested against their head teacher
who had forced them stay in school despite there being no teachers on duty.
Two pupils were injured and taken to hospital by their parents.

The World Bank approved a US$7 million grant to Nicaragua to help the
country mitigate the impact of increased food prices by providing immediate
relief to the most vulnerable groups and expanding the supply of
agricultural products.

Birds from the family Zosteropidae — also called “white eyes” — could be
poster children for rapid evolution.

At the nearby Kawangware Primary School, pupils were locked in the school
compound for hours even as they threatened to leave. Parents camped outside
the school and held a peaceful demonstration asking the head teacher to
release their children.

“This operation will support two existing government programs, thereby
ensuring their continuity and targeting to areas and individuals most
affected by the crisis,” said Laura Frigenti, World Bank Director for
Central America.

They form new species faster than any other known bird, according to new
research.

Police watched from a distance as the events unfolded. When the students
were released they went on the rampage stealing from passers by.
Photographer Stafford Ondego was not spared as pupils snatched his phone
and fled. He reported the incident at the chief’s camp.

“The first program will ensure that poor children in the most vulnerable
areas continue to receive lunch at school, maintaining their intake of
nutritive food at a time of crisis and encouraging their continued
attendance; and the second program will support small farmers to increase
their production during the next agricultural cycles,” she added.

Portland police have confirmed that a 17-year-old Peruvian exchange student
was one of two victims killed in a downtown shooting rampage.

Knut national treasurer Fred Ontere said the union would not relent until
their demands were met. However, he said the union was open to negotiations
but suggested the implementation of their pay raise be two phases.

DNA analysis reveals that all 80 species of white eyes emerged in the last
2 million years.

Police say Marta “Tika” Paz de Noboa of Arequipa, Peru, was shot when Erik
Salvadore Ayala fired into a crowd outside The Zone, an under-21 nightclub.

At Katina School in Dagoretti no teacher reported to work while in Old
Olympic Primary School in Kibera, only pupils turned up.

Between early 2006 and mid-2008 global food prices have increased
dramatically. In Nicaragua, domestic food price inflation increased from
10.7 percent in January 2006 to 34.2 percent in August 2008.

The second victim was 16-year-old Ashley Wilks, a sophomore at Clackamas
High School. Seven others were wounded before Ayala shot himself in the
head. He is in critical condition in a Portland hospital.

Police say they don’t know of any links between Ayala and the victims, and
the shooting may have been random. A handful of other birds and mammals
have been known to adapt to new environments in such short order, but white
eyes are unique because their speciation isn’t a simple reaction to shifts
in local habitats, said study author Christopher Filardi.

The head teacher said many of the pupils came to have breakfast and lunch
which the school offers.

High food prices affect a majority of Nicaraguans, but the poor are
disproportionately affected by high food inflation rates, as the share of
their incomes devoted to food purchases is larger than higher income
groups.

“White-eyes evolved into dozens of new species extremely fast while
simultaneously spreading across much of the southern hemisphere,” he said.
“At this geographic scale, there is no one thing from the outside that
could have made this happen; there is something special about those birds.”

Standard Eight pupils took over the role of teachers and they taught each
other. At Shadrack Kimalel in Ngumo Estate, pupils left after teachers
failed to turn up. Parents were seen picking pupils from primary schools
within the city.

The Emergency Food Price Response Project will support the ongoing Integral
School Nutrition Program (PINE), benefiting approximately 263,000 preschool
and primary school children in 52 municipalities (eight departments) who
experience severe or high poverty levels. This component will be
implemented by the Ministry of Education.

White eyes may evolve faster, in part, because females can start breeding
as young as four months old. It takes most tropical songbirds closer to a
year to reach sexual maturity, Filardi explained.

At Moi Avenue Primary School, journalists were barred from entering by a
lady who seemed to be in charge and only person in school. Parents, too,
were denied entry. She refused to comment on anything, instructing the
pupils to get into their classes and settle down. Parents remained at the
gate hoping to be allowed to take their children home.

The Agro-Seeds Program (Programa Agroalimentario de Semilla – PAS)
distributes a technological package of certified seeds, fertilizers,
training and technical assistance to beneficiaries in the form of a credit.
The loan can be reimbursed with in-kind contributions or in cash at the end
of each agricultural cycle.

And unlike most birds, white eyes are hardwired to be social. They forage,
travel, and even preen together, making it easier for them to colonize,
according to the study.

“This strike has come at a wrong time. We hope the Government and the
teachers reach a consensus. They should bear in mind the heavy toll this
crisis and last year’s post-poll chaos that kept our children out of school
for long,” Mr Jacob Otieno a parent at Moi Avenue primary school said.

The program will assist approximately 31,590 small producers from areas
where the agricultural cycle is most compromised. This component will be
executed by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, with the support of
public sector agencies, such as the Nicaraguan Agricultural Technology
Institute, the Rural Development Institute, the Nicaraguan Basic Food
Company, and the Rural Credit Fund.

Once they arrive at a new location, they quickly settle in for the long
haul, genetically isolating themselves. Different species in the Solomon
Islands exist just 1.2 miles (2 kilometers) from one another. The splendid
white eye, is endemic to the Solomon Island of Ranongga and has a range
that can be traversed in a single day’s walk.

Elsewhere, in Western teachers boycotted going to their places of work. At
Nangina Girls Boarding Primary in Funyula, parents rushed to withdraw their
children from the school fearing for their security.

“The project will help in the design of other core programs of the National
Food and Nutrition Security Policy, such as the development of a nutrition
curriculum for children and teachers and the design of tools and guidelines
for the provision of child and maternal health services by the Ministry of
Health,” said Joseph Owen, World Bank Country Manager to Nicaragua.

11/20/2008

OVER OUR BURNING IVORY PIG BODIES

Filed under: General, brazil, congo, government, kenya, nicaragua, rampage, vanuatu, wildlife — admin @ 3:58 am

The last time rival political forces fought one another street by street
for control of the Nicaraguan capital was three decades ago, in July 1979,
at the culmination of the Sandinista insurrection that overthrew the
Somoza dictatorship. The streets of Managua were once again aflame amid
the boom of mortar rounds, as the Sandinistas and their rivals battled for
control — but it was the erstwhile revolutionary movement that now stands
accused of being a dictatorship.

An undercover investigation of the illegal wildlife trade in five African
nations led to the seizure of about a ton of ivory along with hippo teeth
and cheetah, leopard and python skins, the Kenya Wildlife Service said.

In Vanuatu, a Chief pleads for forgiveness on behalf of his errant
jail-breaking son in an unprecedented custom ceremony, in the tropical
islands of Vanuatu, in the South Pacific.

The prize, this time, is not control of the Nicaraguan state, but simply
the mayorships in 146 municipalities, which were up for election on
November 9. But allegations of massive vote fraud and conflicting claims
of victory have set off several days of violence between rival political
bands, leaving Nicaragua’s fledgling institutional democracy struggling
for its life.

A four-month investigation coordinated by Interpol, an international
police association based in Lyon, France, led to the arrest of 57 suspects
in the Republic of Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Uganda and Zambia, the Kenyan
conservation agency said in a statement. Undercover agents tracked
suspects and illegal products to local ivory markets, airports, border
crossings and smuggling points.

Vanuatu, a peaceful tropical island nation in the South Pacific, witnessed
an never-before-seen kustom ceremony when, Chief Joshua Batakoro Vanua,
father of Lee Tamata, a high risk escapee, from the local jail,
ceremonially offered ten pigs to the community heads, in a plea for
forgiveness for the misdemeanors of his son.

The Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) has announced a partial recount of
votes from last Sunday’s mayoral polls, in which it has yet to declare
winners in several hotly contested cities, including the capital. But the
mobs of activists of the ruling Sandinista party and the opposition
Liberal Constitutional Party (PLC) aren’t waiting idly to hear the
outcome.

The operation, which ended Saturday, was a blessing for countries whose
elephant populations “have declined tremendously over the years,” Wildlife
Service Director Julius Kipng’etich said.

Ten pigs were handed over to the community leaders during a custom
ceremony held at the Chief’s Nakamal. The leaders included the newly
elected Prime Minister of Vanuatu, Edward Natapei. This was the highest
price ever paid for peace, in the traditional custom system of the island
of Pentecost.

Downtown banks and businesses have been forced to close early for several
days and both the British and U.S. Embassies have warned their citizens to
remain vigilant and avoid any large crowds as political gangs clash on the
streets, destroying public and private property and turning parts of the
capital into a virtual war zone.

“Co-operation among countries in East, West and Southern Africa against
wildlife crime has set an inspired example,” said Giuliano Zaccardelli, an
Interpol program director. “Similar operations could also be conducted in
Asia, the Americas and in any other region where criminal interests,
including trafficking in illegal wildlife products, are common.”

Earlier this year, before the general elections, a Pentecost chief
demanded that Jenny Ligo,a woman candidate, pay 10 pigs in a kustom
ceremony for her right to continue to contest the elections. Jenny had
already performed a 10 pig-killing kustom ceremony, just to enter the male
dominated arena of politics.

The violence broke out after opposition leaders accused the Sandinistas of
turning the election into a fraudulent sham in order to take control of
the country’s most important cities, including Managua. The poll, in which
the government refused to allow monitoring by any credible outside
electoral observers, was riddled with alleged irregularities that began
months before election day when several opposition parties were banned
from participating, and continued after the vote, with stacks of ballots
found mysteriously dumped in the woods.

In one case, when Kenya Wildlife Service officers tried to arrest a Kenyan
and a Tanzanian man found with two pieces of ivory weighing 13 kilograms
(29 pounds), the men resisted and a wildlife officer fired in
self-defense, grazing one of the suspects in the head.

When Chief Joshua discovered how much fear and damage his son had caused
to members of the local community in Port Vila, he felt duty-bound to
offer the pigs on behalf of his son, asking for the leader’s forgiveness.

The U.S. State Department this week noted reports of “widespread
irregularities taking place at voting stations throughout the country,”
and said the Supreme Electoral Council’s decision to “not accredit
credible domestic and international election observers has made it
difficult to properly assess the conduct of the elections.”

In another case, a suspect who had been arrested escaped in the darkness.
In two separate instances, officials caught suspected smugglers
transporting several pieces of elephant tusks on motorbikes.

While Chief Joshua spend three months in the capital Port Vila, away from
his island home and family, he counseled his son. Chief Joshua had to sell
kava and taro to raise the funds to buy the pigs for the peace ceremony.

Business groups, church leaders and opposition parties have called for an
internationally audited nationwide recount, and the PLC has threatened to
paralyze the national legislature by walking out and denying it a quorum.

The elephant populations of many African countries were being decimated
until the U.N. Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species
banned the ivory trade in 1989. Since then the elephant population of
Kenya, for example, has grown from 16,000 to 27,000. But that is far fewer
than the estimated 167,000 elephants that lived in Kenya in 1973.

Ten mature pigs are not only highly prized, but a very expensive exercise
for the father as pigs are the wealth of a village. Curled pig tusks are
used as currency in some areas of the Vanuatu islands, with the Tari Bunia
Bank having 14 branches. The bank issues cheque books, has reserves and
gives loans, all on the currency of pig tusks. While there is a vault to
the bank there are no need for locks. “The bank is protected by spirits
and snakes,” says the bank manager.

The day after the vote, despite trailing by five percentage points in the
official count to Sandinista candidate and former boxing champ Alexis
Arguello, the PLC’s Managua mayoral hopeful Eduardo Montealegre declared
himself the winner based on his party’s own tabulation of the vote tallies
released to the parties at each balloting station. Montealegre, a former
finance minister who has adopted the cartoon image of Mighty Mouse after
opponents dubbed him “the rat,” called on his supporters to take to the
streets to “celebrate” the victory and “defend the vote at whatever
consequence.”

A plane equipped with body-heat sensors will be used by the Brazilian
government to locate and protect isolated Indian tribes in the Amazon. The
heat sensors will be mounted on a government plane normally used to
monitor deforestation. It is not clear when the effort will start.

Chief Joshua said “My son has erred and I ask for your forgiveness,” said
Chief Joshua, who spent time counseling his errant son while in Vila. The
Chief will now return home with assurances from his son that he will serve
the full term of his sentence and act with respect towards the law. Lee’s
name means peace in the language of his home island, Pentecost.

11/14/2008

INFERTILE YAM DISASTER BEFORE RISING TOURISM SEAS?

Filed under: General, disease/health, kenya, kiribati, solomon islands, tuvalu, vanuatu, weather — admin @ 1:46 pm

For Kiribati, the threat of submergence because of sea level rise seems
distant when compared to the range of potentially disastrous ecological and
economic problems it is faced with in the short-term.

There are many staple foods in the Solomon Islands many however prefer yam,
or uvi, as it is known in Guadalcanal.

The cost of treating infertile couples has halved with the launch of a new
programme expected to become one of the vanguard methods of addressing
Kenya’s high infertility rates.

The alarm bells of sea level rise as a result of global warming and climate
change—brought centrestage in no small measure by the 2006 documentary film
‘An Inconvenient Truth’— catapulted the world’s low-lying atoll nations to
the front pages of the global media.

According to the World Bank, tourism is the largest and the fastest
developing industry in the world today.

In the Pacific, Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands have been
perceived as the most threatened.

Yams are a primary agricultural commodity in the Solomon Islands, and have
been used extensively prior to the colonization of the Islands.

Nairobi-based Aga Khan University Hospital said it has achieved its first
two pregnancies using the new treatment and that many more were in the
pipeline.

The amount of tourists having visited other countries has become 4.5%
higher and reached 842 million people as compared to 2005.

Over the past few years, these countries have been the focus of much
research by the world’s scientists to find definitive answers relating to
their impending submergence.

This essentially means that they were brought to the Solomon Islands by our
early ancestors.

Latest University of Nairobi statistics show that almost a quarter of
Kenyan men and nearly a fifth of women are infertile with the majority
unaware of their condition.

In Kiribati alone, two small islets have been submerged by rising sea
levels. Everything one has heard and read about Kiribati being a nation
that is supposed to be among the early victims of sea level rise, that may
not even survive the next few decades rings true as the jet approaches the
runway at Bonriki Airport on Tarawa, Kiribati’s capital.

According to the information given by Washington Profile, the largest
tourist inflow has been marked in Southern Asia and become 10% higher as
compared to 2005.

It is used for important ceremonial events such as reconciliation, weddings
or feasts to show ones status.

Until recently, there was almost nothing that could be done to help them.

India is the most attractive country for foreign travellers. A remarkable
growth - 8.1% has been noted in Africa.

The extreme vulnerability of this ribbon-like string of atolls in the
middle of the world’s largest ocean becomes apparent as their fraying edges
constantly battered by the tides come into view.

A simple Google search show that yams were first cultivated in Africa and
Asia about 8000 B.C.

Hospitals have since last year been racing to introduce wider and cheaper
In-Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) programmes, in a bid to open a route to
child-bearing for the infertile.

The retaining walls at the far end of the runway have been reduced to
rubble because of the relentless onslaught of the waves.

A remarkable growth - 8.1% has been noted in Africa. Most foreign tourists
have visited SAR, Kenya and Morocco. In countries of Asian-Pacific area the
number of tourists has become 7.6% higher, and in Europe - 4% higher.

The drive down the one single road that runs through the 30-odd kilometre
length of the atolls that form Tarawa — never more than a couple of hundred
metres at their widest and strung together by a series of two-lane
causeways — is marked with sights of crumbling sea walls and mounds of
refuse lining the coastline in several places.

In the Solomon Islands, where refrigerators are not yet a common household
item, yams are very important since they can be stored for up to six months
without refrigeration.

However, in Kenya, the first IVF baby was born just 18 months ago, under a
pioneer treatment priced at Sh300,000.

Along the lagoon to the west, acres of coconut trees shorn of both frond
and fruit stand mute testimony to the encroaching salt water and
lengthening periods of drought that the atolls have faced in recent years.

In countries of Asian-Pacific area the number of tourists has become 7.6%
higher, and in Europe - 4% higher

Further down at Betio, the southernmost point on Tarawa, one sees
overcrowding that is so unusual for Pacific islands — and of course
poverty.

“We usually cook them very early in the morning, we store some for later in
the day and some for the kids to take to school,” said Lilly Vale, a mother
of two young kids who resides near the Poha area in West Guadalcanal.

Sea level rise not the only problem Increased global awareness of climate
change and sea level rise and the rash of alarmism that has predicted their
impending submergence have tended to portray these as the biggest problem
faced by the 33-island nation straddling the equator across three time
zones.

The huge need for better access to the treatment has seen two hospitals,
Nairobi and now Aga Khan, as well as two clinics introduce the procedure.

Despite the intense scrutiny of the scientific establishment, the interest
of ecologists and aid agencies as well as the glare of the global media,
islanders’ opinion on the submergence issue is sharply divided — and for
all sorts of reasons ranging from anecdotal and experiential evidence on
both sides of the argument, through religious beliefs, to downright
cynicism.

Most foreign tourists have visited SAR, Kenya and Morocco. In countries of
Asian-Pacific area the number of tourists has become 7.6% higher, and in
Europe - 4% higher.

President Anote Tong, the London School of economics-educated head of
state, is understandably cautious: “I am not suggesting and have never
suggested that the islands are sinking because of the rise in sea levels,”
he says. “But there is no doubt we are increasingly facing the effects of
climate change in many ways.”

“We cook them over hot stones… we keep the stones hot throughout the day
just to keep the yam hot.”

We have only started this year and so far we’ve handled two patients, one
in April and one in August both of whom are pregnant,” said Dr Praful S.
Patel, a senior lecturer at the hospital and an expert in IVF.

Germany which was the site of World Cup has become a leader here. Tourism
industry in the Near East has obtained the same result.

In fact, recent sea level data analyses suggest that the danger of
submergence for Kiribati’s atolls—unlike the neighbouring atoll nation of
Tuvalu — is no longer as immediate as was estimated earlier (estimates of
20 to 50 years have now been stretched to more like 80 to 100 years).
Though increased erosion, a greater frequency of higher tides and longer
periods of drought may be a direct result of climate change (just as
similar phenomena have affected other parts of the world, including the
frequent hurricanes in the United States), submergence is no longer the
immediate, central issue.

Lilly says that leftovers are often wrapped in banana leaves and stored in
the kitchen, normally a leaf hut separate from the main house.

These first pregnancies have put Aga Khan Hospital ahead of its peers in
success rates.

The amount of tourists having visited Southern and Northern American
countries became just 2% higher in 2006.

Yet, in actual fact, the country may be faced with a wide range of far
worse and far more urgent potential disasters than sea level rise — though
climate change may well be playing the role of a catalyst in many of these
looming problems.

Lilly says that her family will continue to consume yam even though many in
the village seem to prefer rice nowadays.

But from there, only about a third of IVF fertilised embryos lead to a
confirmed pregnancy.

Such low rates are connected with reducing of tourists visiting Canada and
Mexico.

“I just think that it is healthier, I have noticed many of the villagers
getting sick when they switch to rice and tinned food… our grandparents
lived healthy lives until they were very old, most depended only on yam and
sea food.”

The success rate in Kenya has so far been higher than that.

According to the information provided by the World Tourism And Travel
Council, 8.3% of world’s working places, 9.3% of international investments,
12% of exports and 3.6% of world internal gross product account for a share
of tourism and its branches.

Over the past decade or so, Tarawa has faced fiercer and more frequent
storms, higher tides and longer droughts. Several residents pointed out
that the westerly winds that ushered in the wet season around December had
virtually disappeared in the past seven years, resulting in longer dry
periods and erratic and far less frequent wet spells.

Dietitians would agree with Lilly since Yams are high in Vitamin C and
Vitamin B6.

The real obstacle for couples, however, has been cost. In Kenya, this
treatment has been pioneered by the likes of Dr Praful S Patel and Dr
Joshua Noreh of the Nairobi IVF clinic, who delivered Kenya’s first test
tube baby just over one-and-a-half years ago.

Tourists spend 10.2% of all means expended by world consumers. An average
tourist having visited Europe has made an income at amount of $790 (for
Eastern Europe and European Republics of the Former USSR this rate is
$370).

This has resulted in large-scale migration from the smaller outer islands
to Tarawa, particularly to Betio, where the population density at about 111
per square kilometre compares with that of Hong Kong, making it the densest
urban agglomeration in the Pacific islands. In the past five years alone,
the population is thought to have grown by as much as 20,000 on that narrow
strip of land. With almost no sewerage system, not just groundwater but
even the surrounding lagoon is contaminated and travel advisories warn
strongly against swimming in the lagoon or drinking well water.

This means that yams are high in potassium and low in sodium which is
likely to produce a good potassium-sodium balance in the human body, and so
protect against osteoporosis and heart diseases.

In its first two years of availability in Kenya, IVF has been priced at
more than Sh300,000 per treatment. Aga Khan is now offering IVF for an
average Sh150,000, opening the cheapest route yet for childless couples.

For the USA and Canada the income from a tourist is $1190, for Asia - $890,
for Africa - $590, for The Near East - $710.

The local hospital (manned mostly by Cuban doctors) has been registering
increasing cases of enteric disorders. Housing in Betio resembles
shantytowns in other parts of the world—and without adequate garbage
disposal systems, waste accumulates on the shoreline. In some places around
Tarawa, this is simply burnt, compacted and used as a base for reclaiming
land.

Almost 80% of foreign tourists come from European and Southern American
countries. Eastern Asia, Australia and New Zealand supply approximately 15%
of tourists.

The only source of freshwater on these remote atolls is rainwater and
because of the unfortunate combination of a fast growing population and low
rainfall, groundwater reserves have been depleting faster than in previous
years. Also, newly sunk bore wells pump out water faster than the rate at
which it percolates, leaving the population facing serious freshwater
shortages — which is expected to only get worse in time to come.

10/18/2008

Scrap Metal Crime in Kenya

Filed under: china, kenya, resource — admin @ 4:13 pm

A demand for scrap metal by China is fuelling an unprecedented rate of crime in Kenya and vandalism of key installations to meet a growing demand for raw material. Electricity, phone cables and railway lines have been vandalized as the Chinese importers continue to pay premium prices for metal.

State corporations have as a result lost millions of shillings in stolen cables and structures as thieves go for valued copper steel and aluminum metals all of which are in high demand in the rapidly expanding Chinese economy.

But it is not only the big state corporations that are suffering abandoned houses in villages and town’s cattle dips, livestock inseminations centers and bus stops have all been stripped bare of iron sheet roofing.

Similar fate has befallen street lightning posts, sign posts as have roadside railings on highways endangering lives of motorists and other road users. Abandoned and broken down vehicles have not been spared either as the mad rush for scrap metal intensifies across the country.

Unemployment

In some extreme cases unemployed youths have stolen utensils such as cooking pots from their parents houses which they sell to dealers for about a dollar a kilo , money the spend on illicit booze heightening misery in poor families.

A number of youths have been found electrocuted and hanging from power installations as they tried to bring down power transformers valued for their copper casings.

In a recent incident on the outskirts of Nairobi a young man was killed and his body set on fire by an angry mob as he and 3 others tried to a uproot a steel gate from a compound which they intended to hack into small pieces and later on sell to merchants

Scrap buying yards have sprung every neighborhood, estate and village .Local merchants are profiting big-time buying scrap and selling it to Nairobi’s industrial area based traders, who in turn export to China making huge profits as the country suffers.

Highly valued of all the metals is copper which attracts the highest price the result of which is that Telkom Kenya the sole operator of fixed line phones has lost virtually all it’s infrastructure in parts of Nairobi and environs .

The company has been forced to set up a more aggressive security department as has the Kenya Power and Lightning Company (KPLC) spending millions of shillings on expensive security infrastructure, money that would otherwise have been spent on other priorities.

The youth

Idle youths are spending their daytime spying on where next to pounce on these valued metals after which they come at night to take the loot before selling it to traders who hardly care where such merchandise is coming from.

Sadly the millions of shillings earned by youths from sale of the metal is spent on drink to the last coin.

Some children in slums are as well dropping from school to engage in the trade with many spending their days collecting waste metal pieces .

Victims of the trade are blaming the police for not only laxity but for corruption as well , with hundreds of people mainly traders being arrested daily for buying stolen metal , but are soon set free after paying a bribe.

Peter Gikonyo a scrap dealer in Mukuru slums is one such a person, almost every other week police have raided his premises confiscating telecom cables but has never spent a night in cells after greasing hands.

“ All police are interested in is money “ he said arguing that the amount he pays them was peanuts compared to the more than 400% paid by exporters for prized copper.

Police now no longer arrest he adds but instead pass through his yard weekly to collect protection fees.

“ We must make the hay as the sun shines”, Gikonyo offers, adding that the boom will not last forever.

The government has tried to reign on the trade but little success so far has been realized.3 years ago a 100% export duty was imposed to apparently cushion local industry but the Chinese appetite for the metals and willingness to pay a premium hardly impacted on the trade .

This year the government proposed in the national budget read in July to ban scrap metal exports but the measure is yet to be approved by parliament and the Scrap Metal Dealers Association of Kenya is already up in arms, threatening court action to stop any such legislation.

The Kenya Association of Manufacturers (KAM) has in the past complained that local factories unable to offer as high prices as the Chinese risked closure and loss of thousands of jobs.

Two years ago a local Auto battery maker Kenya Battery Manufacturers closed down blaming Chinese importers of starving it of lead, a critical component in batteries, by offering extraordinarily high prices.

10/15/2008

Kenya’s Domestic Workers Suffer at the Hands of Abusive Employers

Filed under: human rights, kenya — admin @ 11:59 am

Mary is 32 years old but her worn face and hands make her appear twice as old. Illiterate and living in Nairobi, Kenya’s most expensive city, she faces career opportunities that are limited to domestic work. She speaks softly and tends to avoid eye contact. But despite a voice that barely exceeds a whisper, she’s demanding to be heard.

For 16 months, Mary’s employer, a prominent woman who works for an international humanitarian organization and recently ran for public office, paid her every three months, on average. Each paycheck was around $45, a fraction of the salary she was supposed to earn.

Mary, who asked that her real name not be used for fear of reprisals, lived with her employer, cooking, cleaning, doing laundry by hand and caring for the children 12 hours each day, six to seven days a week, including holidays.

She was supposed to receive $75 per month and counted on that money to care for her two children, living in rural Kenya.

When she asked her employer about being paid, Mary says she was always told, “Be patient. You’ll get your money.” But the money never came. “I used to feel so bad at times,” she said. “My tears would just flow.”

Mary finally quit when her 13-year-old son was accepted into secondary school, an important but expensive educational milestone in Kenya. She saw her employer spending thousands of dollars on campaigning and entertaining, though she had not paid her in more than three months.

Mary knew she couldn’t stay. “I felt like a slave,” she said. “The thought that my kid was going to have to drop out of school and I was working so hard just didn’t make sense to me.”

Domestic Help Sought

Though there are Kenyans who treat their domestic workers well, Mary’s case is not an isolated one.

In Kenya, nearly everyone, except the very poor, hires domestic help. The Kenyan government and other groups studying the issue estimate that almost 2 million households in Nairobi employ nannies, cooks, maids and gardeners.

It’s a work force consisting of the poorest, least educated and, sometimes, most vulnerable Kenyans — almost all of whom are women or children. It’s an industry that drives much of Kenya’s underground economy, but also one that produces a modern-day “upstairs, downstairs” society. Domestic workers, regardless of age, are referred to as “house girls” and “house boys,” and are expected to be seen and not heard.

Abuse of these workers, ranging from paying virtual slave wages to sexual abuse, is rampant, says Edith Murogo, director of the Center for Domestic Training and Development, an organization that trains impoverished young Kenyan women and men in not only the skills they need to be productive domestic workers, but also their rights.

“House help workers don’t know they have any rights,” she said. “So when abuse happens, they keep quiet.”

There are problems with husbands, and sometimes sons, sexually harassing and even assaulting domestic workers. “It happens from a point of vulnerability that men take advantage,” Murogo said.

But she says it’s the women that often inflict the most abuse, yelling, beating and berating the “help” into submission. “Mostly it’s women that routinely mistreat house help,” Murogo said.

There are the stereotypes, some based in truth, that if the woman of the house doesn’t manage her “girl” right, she will steal from the family, mistreat the children and sleep with the husband.

“It is common whenever Kenyan women are talking, the conversation will go to house girls, and it’s usually negative,” Murogo said.

The relationship between the “woman of the house” and the “house girl” is a complicated one. On the one hand, women want and need the help to run the household, but at the same time, having another woman in the house taking care of the family is also seen as a threat.

The result is that domestic workers are dehumanized, often considered possessions of the family rather than employees. “The house help is like something to use,” Murogo said. “I know people who lock their help in during the day, who don’t give them any days off, who pay as little as 1,500 Kenyan shillings [$23] per month, much lower than the minimum wage.”

Kenya has a law that all domestic workers must be paid at least the equivalent of $75 per month, and have one day off per week, but it is rarely enforced. The minimum wage is higher than most Kenyans are willing to pay for help, and there’s no mandate from the government or nongovernmental organizations to change the situation.

“It’s really a hidden industry,” Murogo said.

But there have been high-profile cases in which employers were found to have bribed police to cover up abuse, and the plight of domestic workers often doesn’t fit into the traditional international programming of nongovernmental organizations.

Murogo says she has been frustrated by the lack of attention to the issue from international humanitarian organizations. “The NGO community is always talking about women’s rights, and that’s great,” she said, pointing to commonplace projects like access to water and school construction. “But what about women’s rights in our homes?”

Albert Njeru, who heads the Kenyan Union of Domestic, Hotels, Educational Institutions, Hospitals and Allied Workers, which represents domestic workers, says less than than 3,000 people are registered with the union, the result of little knowledge and education among workers. He also noted that many workers are underage, an illegal but common practice in Kenya.

The union, using numbers from Kenya’s Bureau of Statistics as well as its own research, estimates that there are hundreds of thousands of children working as domestic help illegally and being paid very little, if at all.

“Employers will provide the food, some clothing, work the children for seven days a week and never pay them,” Njeru said.

In 2001, the Kenyan government passed the Children’s Act, making it illegal to hire any child younger than 16, but, as with the minimum wage, the law has been difficult to enforce.

“An employer comes in and says this is my sister or a member of my family,” Njeru said. “It’s very hard to prove it’s not true. Workers fear reporting. There’s intimidation from the families, and sometimes from the police. And they fear that they will have to leave without being paid, even if their pay is just a little.”

While the union launched a campaign last year to educate Kenyans about the ills of employing children as domestic help and has found some nongovernmental organizations willing to partner on the issue of child labor in Kenya, he says that the overall human rights issues of domestic workers is too large a problem for the union to address alone.

“One or two organizations will not be able to penetrate the issue of domestic worker abuse,” Njeru said. “We need cooperation with other agencies, local and international.”

For Mary, silence is no longer an option. Her son sits at home, unable to go to school, and, after years of working with harsh detergents, her nail beds are now rotted. She can no longer do laundry and potential employers see her as “damaged goods.”

She needs the money her former employer owes her to survive. Working with the union and Murogo’s organization, Mary has been successful in getting her former employer to pay back some of the money, and was promised the rest by the end of August, which she says she still hasn’t received.

Now she plans to go back to her former employer’s home and demand the rest of the money, the equivalent of about $1,000, which is substantial by Kenyan standards. “Ukoloni Mamboleo,” she said, which loosely translates to “new colonizer” in Swahili, Kenya’s traditional language.

Although the existing form of domestic help was a concept brought in with British colonization, Mary said, “It’s not a Britain who’s colonizing me, but my own African sister.”

10/10/2008

Ten ’schooled’ Kenyans hold Key to an HIV Vaccine

Filed under: disease/health, kenya — admin @ 12:20 pm

Local scientists have managed to identify 10 HIV positive Kenyans with an antibody that could hold the key to developing an effective AIDS vaccine.

The individuals, who the scientists say have powerful antibodies that neutralise the virus, stopping it from infecting new cells, have neither used any antiretroviral drugs nor been attacked by opportunistic infections despite living with the virus for over nine years.

On being screened, the individuals were found to possess high CD4 count–immune cells used to fight infections–and very low viral loads-amount of HIV in the body-, which were uncharacteristic of an infected person.

They also have very low possibilities of transmitting the virus to another individual as well as being able to delay progression to AIDS, the last stage of the disease where opportunistic infections reign, killing the individual if not well managed.

This means if a vaccine that elicits these antibodies is developed; it would significantly cut down on the number of new infections in Kenya and other HIV hotbeds.

The 10 individuals are now being followed to establish who among them qualify to be what scientists refer to as Elite Controllers-individuals who are able to control HIV viral load to less than 50 copies compared to over 30,000 copies of HIV in a person without such antibodies.

“This new phenomenon is being seen in both men and women who we have screened in Nairobi, and we are keenly following them to identify the key antibodies that make them tick,” says Prof Omu Anzala, the Director of Kenya Aids Vaccine Initiative.

Disclosing the findings, Prof Anzala said those screened so far have an immune system able to elicit antibodies – CD4 and CD8- with a unique protein that target specific sites of HIV stopping it from infecting new cells.

In Africa, of the 1,700 HIV positive people who been screened in the past one year, 170 have HIV neutralising antibodies. Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, South Africa, and Zambia, are some of those marked to help in solving this problem.

In Africa, of the 1,700 HIV positive people who been screened in the past one year, 170 have HIV neutralising antibodies. Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, South Africa, and Zambia, are some of those marked to help in solving this problem.

“What we are experiencing now is phenomenal and provides critical information of how we move forward and the massive work we need to undertake in this direction,” says Dr Wayne Koff, of International Aids Vaccine Initiative (IAVI).

In interview, Wayne said they have managed to identify four antibodies with ability to neutralise the virus and are currently studying them to see which ones are broadly neutralising-those with ability to neutralise different types of HIV strains such as A, B, C and D.

In this quest, they are also paying particular attention to immune systems of individuals who have lived with HIV for the past three years without using ARVs. Some of them are believed to possess the neutralising antibodies.

Buoyed by these new findings, IAVI is going to set aside between 30 and 50 per cent of its budget on vaccine discovery on the identification and development of a vaccine with the ability to elicit broadly neutralising antibodies, according to Dr Koff.

Likewise, IAVI has developed what they call Protocol G, whose sole objective is to help scientists identify elite controllers across Africa and other parts of the world.

Identifying the broadly neutralising antibodies and then using the knowledge to develop a vaccine to produce similar responses in HIV negative individuals has been the most difficult thing for scientists. It has taken them over 10 years to just understand this phenomenon well.

Speaking recently in Nairobi to a group of scientists from Africa, Dr Koff admitted that “as a field we have not understood as yet how to elicit broadly neutralising antibodies to tackle HIV.”

“But now,” adds an elated and optimistic Prof Anzala, “we are on the path to somewhere and can see light at the end of the tunnel.”

The closet the scientists came to generating neutralising antibodies was during the Vaxgen vaccine trials. It never worked as the vaccine failed to elicit such antibodies in amounts necessary to control HIV infection.

Still, there other challenges even with the new discovery. The four neutralising antibodies identified so far work on just one site of HIV, when they are need to do so on various points to be able to disable it effectively. Consequently, the search is now on to find other antibodies that work on different sites of the virus.

Discovery of these antibodies will help the scientists develop a vaccine with the ability to disable a wide range of HIV strains such as A, C, and D, which are circulating in Kenya.

As for now, the four antibodies discovered are crucial since unlike the cellular immune response that destroys a cell once infected and on which past vaccines have been developed; the neutralising antibodies are able to prevent the virus from infecting the cell in the first place.

Studies in the primates have already shown that broadly neutralising anti-bodies to possess the ability to prevent infection.

This encouraging information has led scientists to establish Neutralising Antibody Consortium, whose sole responsibility is pick-up more antibodies with ability to prevent HIV infection. Formed in 2002, the Consortium has grown from four academic institutions to 18 now.

But as they undertake all these initiatives, scientists believe a vaccine that produces both broadly neutralising antibodies and cellular immune response would be the most effective one in controlling the virus.

Cellular immune response is where the immune system cells identify and kill the infected CD4 cells. These two approaches are going to require massive investment as well as facing numerious challenges.

In its AIDS Vaccine BluePrint 2008: A Challenge to the Field, A Road Map for Progress, IAVI is acutely aware of this fact.

IAVI admits that the virus remains difficult to contain because of its HIV immune evasion mechanisms, is sexually transmitted, and has high capacity of recombination, among others.

•••

‘Sexually-transmitted grades’ kills quality education

Plan International warns children of all ages, both genders, are vulnerable to school violence

Sexual exploitation in African schools has become so widespread that children have come up with their own terms to refer to sexual relations with their teachers.

From ‘Sexually Transmitted Grades’ to ‘BF’, or bordel fatigue, which refers to exhaustion from multiple sexual activities with teachers, this slang hints at the prevalence of exploitation in Africa’s learning environments.

The lexis of abuse was discovered during research for Plan International’s (PI) latest report, ‘Learn Without Fear,’ part of the organisation’s global campaign to end violence in schools.

“We’ve been aware of the problem for a long time but we’ve had to just go on anecdotal evidence of violence and its effects,” John Chaloner, PI Regional Director for West and Central Africa, told IRIN. “What this report has done is to talk to children, to teachers and to parents. So now we’re dealing with evidence not hearsay”.

Drop out danger

As schools reopen throughout Africa, the report reveals alarmingly high levels of violence, which are undermining government efforts to provide quality education. The report concluded many girls and boys are dropping out of school as a result of sexual abuse and corporal punishment.

“Our teachers should be there to teach us and not to touch us where we don’t want,” a 15 year-old girl from Uganda told PI, “I feel like disappearing from the world if a person who is supposed to protect me, instead destroys me”.

According to the report, research in Uganda found that eight per cent of 16 and 17 year-olds had had sex with their teachers. In South Africa, at least one-third of all child rapes are by school staff. In a survey of ten villages in Benin, 34 per cent of children confirmed sexual violence in their schools.

While boys usually suffer more violent – and possibly deadly - corporal punishment at the hands of their teachers than their female classmates, sexual harassment and exploitation appear to be overwhelmingly carried out against girls. The report found girls are vulnerable to attacks not only from teachers and other care givers, but also from male students, either at school or on the journey to or from school.

“Teachers often justified the sexual exploitation of female students by saying that their clothes and behaviour were provocative, and that they, the teachers, were far from home and in sexual need,” according to PI’s report.

Sex exchange

What can appear a ‘grey area’ in this situation is the apparent collusion of some female students.

‘Africell’, or ‘a free sell’ has been coined to describe girls who do not wear underwear to provoke teachers into sexual activities in exchange for good grades or ‘sexually transmittable means’ – food, school materials or school fees.

But these girls are not the instigators, said Atoumane Diaw, Secretary General of the National Union of Elementary Teaching in Senegal.

“These children are often encouraged by their parents. Do you think a ten year-old is going to buy herself ‘sexy’ clothes? No, it is the system, it is society that is corrupt. These poor families need [financial] help so they won’t put themselves into this situation”.

In addition to financial assistance, Diaw suggested practical measures for schools: “A modest uniform for students so everyone looks the same. Separate toilets for boys, girls or teachers. And surveillance so that the teacher is not left alone with a pupil after class”.

Poverty facilitates the abuse, according to PI. Children are increasingly responsible for the economic welfare of their families; teachers are often underpaid, or not paid at all, with some seeing sexual favours from students as ‘compensation’.

Authors of the report noted that in many African cultures, corporal punishment is often viewed as an acceptable form of discipline. Social norms that encourage male aggression and female passivity are also seen to champion various forms of violence against girls.

Speak out

“We need to educate people so we tackle the problem [of violence] before it happens.” said Atoumane Diaw. “Our campaign is…raising awareness with teachers. We’re educating children about their rights and their worth. Laws have to be harmonised and enforced in different countries. We must go forward together, fight together.”

The Kenyan education ministry recently launched guidelines on school safety after a recent deadly spate of high school student riots.

Violence in schools, and particularly sexual violence, is chronically under-reported because of cultural norms, students’ feeling of shame, and because they do not know in whom they can confide, according to PI’s report. It adds teachers are often reluctant to report colleagues’ abuse.

“As adults, we need to be watchful, we need to be alert.” PI’s John Chaloner told IRIN, “Children need outlets, like help lines, so they can express themselves. We need to get the message out so that children will no longer be harmed by the very people who should be protecting them”.

10/6/2008

How human cargo is trafficked through Kenya

Filed under: bangladesh, global islands, human rights, intra-national, kenya, somalia, sri lanka — admin @ 1:51 pm

Immigration Police have identified routes used by human traffickers and smugglers to move their cargo in and out of Kenya.

The most active route was discovered in northern Kenya in Moyale.

Immigration Police say that from Moyale, human cargo is ferried to Garissa, Isiolo then Nanyuki and Voi from where it is taken to Tanzania through Taveta border town.

Another route starts from Moyale to Isiolo and Nanyuki and to Nairobi’s Eastleigh.

Some of the human cargo, comprising girls and boys hidden in trucks carrying beans, is sold into slavery in this sprawling suburb, while the rest is taken to Mombasa destined for South Africa or to Busia for transportation to Burundi or South Africa.

South Africa is the launch-pad to Europe and Canada.

Panya routes

While there are three border points between Mombasa and Lunga Lunga, on the border with Tanzania, there are 820 ‘panya routes’ used by traffickers to transport their human cargo to Tanzania, according to an immigration officer in Lunga Lunga.

The route from Moyale is ideal because the vast expanse of land in Kenya’s north is poorly secured.

“There are only 20 immigration officers in northern Kenya, an area bigger than many European states,” said an immigration officer.

“But there are 4,500 policemen, mostly locals eager to see their people secure jobs in foreign lands and a good number of them collude with cartels.”

Sri Lankans, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis come through Mombasa disguised as ship crews because sailors are not required to have passports.

Ship docks

Once the ship docks, they are moved to Nairobi to await Kenya passports, genuine or otherwise, to move to Europe and North Africa.

The traffickers are reported to poison those who fail to secure jobs in Kenya or passage out of the country to avoid confrontation with victims’ relatives back in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh who would have paid dearly for the service.

“These things happen,” says Immigration spokesperson John Njehu.

International press reports indicate that key suspected traffickers, Nagaratnam Thavayogarajah, popularly known as Thavam, and Satkunarasan Satkunasingam (aka Rajan), used Nairobi as a base to ferry hundreds of Sri Lankans to the West.

Their offices were situated in a travel agency and a popular Nairobi restaurant where they charged $12,000 in the late 1990s for passage from Sri Lanka through Kenya and Malawi.

Most baffling

According to police and immigration officials at Busia, the most baffling route is from Somalia to Kenya through Uganda.

Hundreds of Somalis charter planes to Entebbe International Airport from where they get to the Busia border where their passports are stamped.

Instead of crossing into Kenya immediately, they return to Uganda to await nightfall when they cross over into Kenya using ‘panya’ routes.

“We don’t understand why they should go through Uganda immigration and then use ‘panya’ routes to get into Kenya,” says a Busia police spokesman. “We have arrested a number.”

Terror suspect

As these investigations were carried out in Busia, a Canadian of Somali descent was arrested for having inexplicably travelled through Uganda. “He is a terror suspect. We are interrogating him,” police said.

Three in every four foreigners arrested in Busia between May and August entered Kenya through ‘panya’ routes despite their travel documents being stamped in Uganda.

Authorities are convinced that the cartels use Uganda because it does not have sophisticated equipment to detect fake travel documents.

Somalis don’t require visas to travel to Uganda, which is not the case with Kenya. However, Ethiopians don’t require visas to get into Kenya, yet they are required in neighbouring Tanzania.

And to get around this, they come to Kenya and take up new citizenship to allow them passage through Tanzania to South Africa or elsewhere.

About 800 Ethiopians who passed through Kenya are languishing in Tanzania jails. The Indian Ocean has been a free-for-all gateway to and out of Kenya.

Recently, Kenyan authorities rescued a group of Somalis attempting to cross into Kenya by sea from drowning.

“They almost drowned,” said an officer at Lunga Lunga border post.

9/26/2008

Pirates hijack ship off Kenya coast in a Multipolar World

Filed under: belize, global islands, government, human rights, intra-national, kenya, military, somalia — admin @ 12:53 pm

Somali pirates on Thursday afternoon seized a ship carrying more than 30 military tanks in a dramatic hijacking that sent ripples in the maritime industry.

The Ukrainian vessel flying the flag of Belize was expected to dock in Mombasa Friday morning with its cargo that was believed destined to Southern Sudan according to maritime sources.

The ship was on its last two of a 10-day voyage and was hijacked between Kismayu and Mombasa, Seafarers Assistance Programme Coordinator Mr Andrew Mwangura said.

“The ship, whose design is that of a vehicle carrier, had 17 crew members and 38 military tanks on board,” he said on the phone adding: “This was to be the third ship to dock in Mombasa with military equipment from Ukraine.”

Mr Mwangura said that although the destination of the tanks was not immediately known, they were likely destined to Southern Sudan where the previous ones had been delivered.

Somali waters are considered the most dangerous in the world, with each militia group controlling their own sections of the ocean.

Ships carrying food aid to the war ravaged country have to be escorted by navy war ships, with the most recent being Canadian Navy which ends its escort mission on September 27.

News agency reports quoting Ukraine’s foreign ministry, had earlier reported that the ship was carrying T-72 tanks and had a crew of 21 on board. The captain contacted the ship’s owner by telephone and reported that armed men were boarding, shortly before losing communications.

The country has not had an effective national government for 17 years, leading to a collapse of law and order both on land and at sea.

Multipolar World

The international financial crisis has suddenly accelerated a tendency that has been manifest since the United States’ first setbacks in Iraq: American hegemony, and, one should say, Western hegemony, which seemed to settle over the world after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Communist system at the end of the 1980s-beginning of the 1990s, has seen its heyday.

Already since the beginning of the 21st century, Western claims to impose a Western conception of human rights and to promote democracy as the best guarantor of security and prosperity have been challenged. The so-called emerging states, notably in Asia, preach another kind of modernization. The poor countries commonly called “third world countries” during the Cold War, denounced the unkept promises of development aid. As it benefited from the economic globalization it sought to insert itself into, China, joined by Vladimir Putin’s Russia, challenged Western pretensions to fixing the rules of the game.

The United Nations General Assembly, before which Nicolas Sarkozy spoke Tuesday, September 23, emphasized the birth of this multipolar world. It’s what French diplomacy has advocated for decades. However, contrary to what was imagined, multipolarity is not presenting itself as an orderly construction based on several power centers maintaining well-codified relations among themselves.

The multipolar world that is brewing is, quite the contrary, disorganized, almost anarchic. No organizing principle seems to preside over its constitution. Russia may well attempt to find new allies in Latin America, China and Africa against the United States; their interests diverge when Russia changes borders in the Caucasus by force. Both have reasons to rejoice over the decline of the American ex-”hyperpower,” but, in fact, their dependence on the global economy makes them as much victims as beneficiaries of the international financial crisis.

Everyone, or almost everyone, demands new rules. Nonetheless, before new equilibria emerge from the present disorder, it would be wise to expect some dangerous squalls.

Secret tank deal shows poor priorities

A secret tank deal by Kenya’s Army would have gone unnoticed if Somali pirates hadn’t hijacked a Ukrainian ship ferrying the 33 tanks to the port of Mombasa.

The Russian built T-72 tank can run on three types of fuel: diesel, benzene and kerosene.

Its not clear when the Department of Defence placed an order for T-72 tanks from Russia. The Army has not explained how much it spent on the equipment, neither has it explained the role of the 33 tanks in Kenya’s security strategy.

Apart from tanks, Somali pirates found tons of ammunition and auxiliary equipment within the ship, which they have threatened to offload for use in their country’s civil war. The pirates are demanding US$35 million in ransom before they release the vessel and its cargo.

Typical of most African governments, Kenya’s leaders are spending billions of dollars on security while ordinary people die of hunger, disease and poor shelter. Kenya ranks at the bottom of international social and economic indicators.

A growing population is putting pressure on neglected infrastructure. Public hospitals lack drugs as thousands of Kenyans perish each year on a road network broken to the point of tatters. Kenyan cities are going without fresh water due to lack of investment in water production.

The capital city of Nairobi is getting less water today than it was receiving a decade ago after a colonial era dam collapsed at Sasumua. The port city of Mombasa gets water from a supply system built by the British when the town’s population was less than a third of current figures.

Lack of investment in electricity production has made Kenya’s electricity tariffs the highest in Africa. Industries suffer from constant power blackouts which have undermined economic growth, leading to massive losses and job cuts.

Agricultural production in Kenya is far below demand. The country is producing less coffee, maize, tea, wheat, millet and everything else compared to twenty years ago. Sugar milling companies in Western Kenya, stuck with 19th century technology, are creaking out low quality sugar in significantly less quantities than when Kenya was a British colony.

Amidst all these, the Kenyan government has seen it fit to invest billions of shillings in military equipment. As stated earlier, if it wasn’t for Somali pirates, majority of Kenyans would never have known that tanks were about to get imported into the country. But, lack of priority in government procurement appears to be the norm these days.

Its been announced that Kenya will spend about $23 million in the purchase of second-hand fighter jets from the Kingdom of Jordan. The F-5 fighter that the Kenyan Airforce is so fond of went out of production in 1989, meaning that the jets Kenya is buying are at least 19 years old. Kenya will also pay Jordan to train its pilots in using the junk aircraft.

Meanwhile, other branches of the security forces are on a shopping bonanza. Regular and Administration police have enhanced their recruitment drives to boost numbers. They are receiving modern equipment, weapons, 4-wheel drive trucks, uniforms and riot gear. Considering the conduct of police during the post-election violence, its obvious that this enhanced expenditure is not for the benefit of ordinary men and women.

The Kenya Police has just finished rehabilitating giant Russian-built helicopters fitted with night-vision equipment, gun detectors and communications technology. The helicopters will carry a team of quick response officers assisted by highly trained dogs.

Just this week, the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights - a government body - blamed police for the execution of 500 Kikuyu youth and the disappearance of scores of others. According to survivors, the dead and the disappeared were all abducted by people identifying themselves as police officers. A man whose dramatic arrest in Nairobi was shown on the front page of the Daily Nation, was later found dead in the city mortuary.

For most Kenyans, the acquisition of helicopters, night vision equipment and vicious dogs can only portend doom as far as personal freedoms are concerned.

By purchasing bigger weapons to arm a greater number of police and soldiers, the Kenyan government is treading a path set by authorities in situations of high wealth inequality. Kenya is among the top three most unequal societies on earth.

On one hand there is an extremely wealthy minority whose standard of living can comfortably secure them a place among the world’s rich and famous. On the opposite extreme is a majority of people without access to adequate food, housing, health care and education. These are people whose future is so bleak that the only options are crime, prostitution, alcoholism and violence.

Amidst this depressing scenario, authorities seek to preserve the status quo by unleashing greater surveillance of the disadvantaged majority. The objective is to make life safer and easier for the rich minority.

The fruits of economic growth are used to buy guns instead of building roads. Public funds are used to buy tanks instead of medicines for government hospitals. In an unequal society, the government will find it better to employ soldiers and police rather than employing doctors and teachers. Instead of facilitating constructive engagement between the rich and the poor, the system is designed to keep them apart.

Such trends have happened elsewhere and Kenya is blindly going down the same path. Unfortunately, that particular path usually ends up in self-destruction, for the human spirit cannot tolerate oppression forever.

Police ‘executed suspects’

Filed under: kenya, police — admin @ 5:14 am

Secret police killings of more than 500 youths were sanctioned by the Government, a new report claims.

The murders were carried out by special execution squads and were part of the crackdown on Mungiki. They were authorised by the top “political leadership” and the police command, says the report.

But while providing graphic details on the alleged executions by police, the report offers very little evidence that the killings were sanctioned at top levels of government.

The watchdog claims to have recorded evidence from some police officers who claimed they were ordered to take part in the killings but said that part of their report cannot be released until the officers’ safety is guaranteed.

The officers were said to be seeking guarantees of safety under the Witness Protection Act. They are said to have named senior officers who gave the execution orders.

Besides shooting their victims, the police are said to have strangled, drowned, bludgeoned and mutilated some of their targets.

And the squads of ruthless killers formed to carry out the killings are still active, according to the report, by the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights.

Names of victims, the dates on which they were killed and places where their bodies were dumped are all detailed.

The watchdog also gives accounts from witnesses including details of how and where the victims were seized, the names of the police officers involved and the registration numbers of the vehicles they used.

The rights group also claims police deployed to the special murder squads took advantage of the shoot-to-kill policy to set up an extortion cartel in which families of youths arrested were forced to pay hefty amounts of money to have them freed.

Witness accounts show the rogue officers demanded between Sh10,000 and Sh1 million to free a suspect, otherwise he was killed. Kwekwe Squad, a crack unit formed last year to hunt Mungiki sect members, is accused of being at the forefront of the killings.
Months after the squad was formed, the report says, other teams, including regular and Administration Police officers were involved. But the police on Tuesday officially denied that they had anything to do with the killings. Police spokesman Eric Kiraithe said: “It’s impossible for police to engage in those activities. Those are not actions that may hold anybody responsible here at Kenya Police.”

The shocking new claims were revealed by KNCHR vice-chairman Hassan Omar and the watchdog’s principal human rights officer Victor Kamau. “It’s unacceptable to kill citizens in utter disregard of the rule of law. The attorney-general must rule that all these murders and extra-judicial killings are investigated and perpetrators prosecuted,” said Mr Omar.
According to the report, the last execution, allegedly by the police, was on July 7 and several other youths are reported to have disappeared as late as last month.

7/10/2008

Attacks by ‘ghosts’ worry Coast schools

Filed under: General, disease/health, global islands, kenya — admin @ 4:22 am

Cases of what doctors call hysteria, and which Coast residents believe are ghost attacks, have increased.

Last year, ‘ghosts’ attacked Mbaraki Primary School. Then Mombasa Mayor Sharrif Shekue rushed to the school with two goats - a black and a white, which were sacrificed in the school compound to ‘appease the spirits’.

But Muslim and Christian parents opposed this, saying only superstitious people allowed sacrifices in schools. The incident made many parents withdraw their children from the school, leading to suspension of learning for some days.

At least two to four cases of ‘ghost attacks’ that lead to indefinite closure of schools have been reported every month this year.

Belief in superstition

Experts, however, say apart from biological and environmental factors, the disturbances in schools by ‘unseen forces’ could be due because Coast Province abounds in superstitious beliefs.

Every time ‘ghosts’ attack a school, parents rush to ‘rescue’ their children. The latest was at Star of the Sea High School last week, which is reported to have affected students and parents.

Being a Catholic school, a priest was summoned and a doctor called in to assess the situation.

However, they left without a solution as students cried, made noise and fell on the ground, while others got angry and demanded that the gates of the school be opened to set them free.

Dr Jennifer Othigo, who is the chief administrator of the Coast General Hospital and a guidance and counselling expert, says several factors are responsible for the incidents in girls’ schools.

She says lack of guidance and counselling for adolescents, was largely the problem.

“Such situations cause anxiety in the young girls and when they do not get the right guidance at the right time by the right people, it can be chaotic,” says Othigo.

4/24/2008

Mercy: false hope

Filed under: global islands, government, human rights, kenya, wealth — admin @ 9:31 am

Mercy: completely forgotten

Mercy, 25, is a Kamba from south-east Kenya. Her husband was “an excessive drunk” and violent, so she left to live alone with their two children. She is sometimes forced to resort to ukahaba: “taking up with any man and going with him as long as he can feed your children for the day, or pay their school fees.” She is aware of the risk of HIV and AIDS but says this is “the reality” of being jobless.

She worries about security in Kibagare, the behaviour of young people and the rising incidence of rape, due partly to the increasing abuse of marijuana and alcohol.

Her children are her main concern and she longs for the opportunity to have some vocational training or a loan to start a business. “If…I am given a good foundation…I am convinced - without any doubt - that I could change my life and the future life of my children.”

I left Kitui (south-eastern Kenya) and came to live here in Nairobi in 1999. I am now 25.

When I got to Nairobi, I worked as a maid for a while, then I got married. My husband and I were blessed with two children, a boy and girl, but we did not stay together for long because he was an excessive drunk and he would beat me so much. So I decided to leave him and live alone with my children… When I left this man, he continued being a terrible drunkard, and he was hit by a car one day and died.

The harsh reality of unemployment

I raise these children on my own, with many problems. At first I was still working as a housemaid for a Nigerian family, but then they returned to their home. So now I depend on any casual labour I can find to feed them. Mostly I find temporary work washing clothes, but if I don’t get that I take up with a man, as I cannot watch my children die of hunger…

I live in a small room which I rent at 700 shillings a month, but it’s not easy to make the rent money… It is this situation that forces me into ukahaba, even if there are problems ¬ like diseases such as AIDS. I don’t have any other option. This practice of ukahaba means taking up with any man and going with him as long as he can feed your children for the day, or pay their school fees… I just have to do that so I can get food, rent and school fees for my children… This is the reality of not having a job.

I just pray to God that I get a good job or that as young people we get a good project, such as keeping chickens. Whatever kind of job really, so that I leave prostitution alone… Also if I could get a good man we can live together as husband and wife – that would be great.

Poverty undermines cooperation
We do not have [self-help] groups — those that exist are [older] women’s groups and their lives are much better than ours. We cannot work together because our problems [are so bad that] everybody can only be concerned with their own house. So now, even if you call a meeting it’s difficult to get enough people. Everybody follows their own path and thinks you will just waste their time — they do not see that any good results might come of it. I would like to have a group, but there are many different opinions on that.

The [only] organisation that I’ve seen helping people is the Catholic Church. It helps the very old women, especially those who have been left with their own children’s orphans. But even then it’s not all of them who are helped — just a very few.

“We have been completely forgotten”

Other private organisations or government agencies do not come here, they just get us together and take pictures and promise to return - but they do not. I don’t know if they feel that our problems are just too many, I don’t know…

Nowadays, we feel like everyone who comes here are liars and they just give us false hope…
because it seems that there are people using us for their own benefit. There are so many who have come here, taken our pictures and done things like that, but then they disappear, so we wonder where do they go? It looks like we have been completely forgotten…

We even wonder if we are wanted in this world – because of the conditions we live in, which truly are not fit for humans. And we wonder when will this situation change or will we die in this state? We also wonder if our children will also be poor like us, because they have no foundations upon which to build a future.

“Life back home is very hard”

My parents died a long time ago, even before I came to Nairobi. I started living with my sister and my elder brother, but now they both live back in Ukambani (Kitui district, south-eastern Kenya).

We last saw each other a very long time ago; I don’t go home because I lack the bus fare and [my brother] is also unable to come to Nairobi. With the little money that I earn I am just able to cover the rent and to buy food. I would very much like to go home but for now, life does not allow it.

Life back home is very hard, however, even more than here in Nairobi, because there money can scarcely be found at all. Back at home, even though education is free, parents contribute money to help provide a meal for the schoolchildren and it’s very hard to get that cash. It’s better here in Nairobi, where you can at least wash clothes for somebody and make some money.

“It was my wish…to support myself”

I went to school until Standard 8 (final class of primary school) and then there was no more money for fees… I was one of seven children and the last. I am the only child who went to school because my elder sister was married by then and she lived in Nairobi — she helped me. But there was no money to take me on to a college to acquire any skills, or to go to secondary school, even though it was my wish to get enough education to support myself in life…

I pray that I receive some help so that I can acquire some skills — even tailoring — so that I can fend for myself. I think if I get 1,000 shillings I can start training myself, even if it’s just one day a week, so that even if I am fired from being a maid I can take care of myself without relying on anyone. So that even if the maid jobs were not available I could have my own work and my children would be educated without many problems.

I would also find them a nice place to live so that they could grow up with good manners, because I will not lie to you, if I sent these children of mine to stay with you, you would not even last two days before returning them to me! Because they have no respect, they have been misled by others here in this kijiji (Swahili for village, here meaning Kibagare). I tell you, my sister, there are problems here.

“The fear that is in this community is great”

Cases [of rape] have increased greatly, especially of children who are deceived by grown-ups. Some are promised sweets and mandazi (popular semi-sweet doughnut) and such like. Rape is also on the increase because of drunkenness and drugs – also the smoking of bhang (marijuana), which has increased in the village. Now the children are seeing that it is OK to imitate these people…

I tell you, the fear that is in this community is great. I go everywhere with my daughter and I don’t know when I’ll stop doing this, because I do not know when this situation will change. There are so many problems that you just thank God when you wake up in the morning and find you are still alive [smiles].

Drug use has reduced the security situation in this kijiji… The police pass through here, but the young people know the time [they come]. So when the police are in the area, you don’t see anyone loitering about aimlessly. But just let the police leave, and they start committing the most outrageous acts [laughs].

Some even ask to be arrested because in jail nowadays there is food, not like here in Kibagare. Now when you hear somebody wants to commit a crime in order to be arrested, what can you do but leave them to it?! I think that, even if we do get help, these youths should go and have the drugs removed from their system first.

The impact of poverty on young girls

As you can see, so many girls are pregnant; almost every girl in this village has at least one child. Those girls don’t really care about their children because at night they leave them and go roaming around, looking for men in Kangemi and then in the morning they go home to sleep and leave the children [to fend for themselves].

They get pregnant when they are so young – around 12 years, sometimes younger – because their lives are hard. You know, because they have been born in such hardship this way of life attracts them, so they start making money early so that maybe they can start helping their parents. You often find they have left school and taken up a bad lifestyle; so many of them have started contracting different diseases. Many have died of AIDS.

“We live like we are not human beings”

The problem is that there are very many people and the population is increasing at a very fast rate. You see here, there are many houses which are so close together there is no space left to build toilets. Most people have to relieve themselves in polythene bags and tins, and in the morning you find those bags spread everywhere and sometimes in the river that people use for their domestic water supply. As a result, people get diseases…

We have drinking water but most people don’t have the 2 shillings you need to buy the water; many have died because of drinking dirty water.

I hear some people saying this is the government’s land; others say it is private so I don’t really know whose it is. It has become an issue that politicians use to get our votes at election time. There are times when we are threatened that the community will be demolished; other times [buildings are] burned down. We don’t really know where we stand — we just live on God’s mercy.

My request would be that the owners of these houses get the title deeds and that they build real houses. So that when we build homes too, we are sure that the houses will not be burned down or destroyed, so that we stop being afraid of losing our belongings as now. When somebody leaves their home to look for work, they are always afraid and hoping not to hear that something has happened in the village.

In my opinion, I think that if we could find somebody to buy us plots of land, and if they built houses and made toilets for us, I think life would change – so we could be like other Kenyans. You see, we live like we are not human beings. When I look at other people, they have so much money they don’t even know what to do with it, while for us, even finding food is by the grace of God. I wonder if there is really anybody thinking about us.

“I am convinced…I could change my life”

When I look at the children we have, I wonder: if our lives are this bad and have no direction or hope for the future, what will the future hold for our children? I feel like if we don’t get help from somewhere, it will get worse. But if, say, I am given a good foundation somewhere else, if I am given money to start a business, or if I received training in some vocational work, I am convinced – without any doubt – that I could change my life and the future life of my children. So that when I die, I would leave them at least some foundation from which they could rely on themselves, and be of use to future generations.

There are many businesses to undertake; the problem is getting money to start the business. For example, if I could get some money I could start to sell kale, cabbage, tomatoes. If we could get money, even a loan that we repay with a small amount of interest, I can see that would help us.

Our problem as young people is lack of employment. If it was possible for us to be given jobs, even something like rearing chickens, we would be able to create more opportunities and life would be better, as we would be busy rather than just being idle…

3/18/2008

Poll Chaos ‘Was Planned’

Filed under: General, global islands, government, kenya — admin @ 5:11 am

Post-Election violence in Eldoret, Nakuru and Naivasha was organised by businessmen and political leaders, the Human Rights Watch (HRW) has claimed.

The report - Ballots to Bullets, Organised Political Violence and Kenya’s Political Crisis of Governance - claims leaders held meetings to prepare residents for ‘war’ if they lost the election.

Presenting the report on Monday, human rights researcher, Mr Ben Rawlence, called on the Government to prosecute perpetrators of chaos and restore trust of victims.

“The coalition government should support the inquiries established under the February 2008 mediation process to investigate abuses by State forces and those responsible for violence,” he said.

“As displaced people move to their ancestral homes, there is real risk that ethnic jingoism will increase and tensions rise as victims share their stories,” warns the report.

To forestall further polarisation, the HRW group recommends a safe return or re-location of displaced populations.

11/5/2007

Somali pirates leave 2 hijacked ships off Horn of Africa

Filed under: General, global islands, kenya, military, usa, wealth — admin @ 7:26 am

NAIROBI, Kenya - The American military says Somali pirates have left two boats they had hijacked in the waters off the Horn of Africa.

The newly liberated vessels are under U.S. Navy escort farther out to sea, where naval personnel will later board the vessels and treat the 24 crew members.

A spokeswoman says the Navy is in radio contact with pirates aboard three other ships in the region, encouraging them also to leave those ships and sail back to Somalia.

The spokeswoman says no shots were fired during the incident.

The U.S. has now intervened four times in one week to help ships hijacked by Somali pirates.

10/29/2007

Kenya: Country Should Stamp Out Sex Tourism And Child Prostitution

Filed under: General, kenya, usa, wealth — admin @ 5:53 am

IT IS UNFORTUNATE THAT Labour minister Newton Kulundu’s faux pas at the launch of a report hosted by the US embassy last week got more media attention than the contents of the report being launched.

The minister accused the United States and the United Kingdom of being “the greatest violators of human rights, democracy and transparency” while the visibly perturbed US ambassador, Micheal Ranneberger, looked on.

Mr Kulundu forgot one basic principal of diplomacy - do not spit in the face of your host, even if you do not agree with him.

But this lapse in judgment on the part of the minister is not a good enough reason for the media to deflect attention from the contents of the shocking report.

The report, Trafficking in Persons from a Labour Perspective: The Kenyan experience, published by the American Centre for International Labour Solidarity, highlights a problem that seems to have escalated in the last few years - the buying and selling of human beings for the purpose of exploitation.

The International Labour Organisation estimates that at any given time, 12 million women, men and children worldwide are coerced into bonded labour, involuntary servitude, or sexual slavery. This modern form of slavery is the second-most lucrative business for international crime syndicates, after trafficking in weapons.

A study by the Kenyan Institute of Policy Analysis and Research (IPAR) has found that Kenya is a major source, transit and destination country for trafficked women, men and children who are forced into unpaid work or forced prostitution.

Kenyan victims are trafficked to other countries mostly through bogus employment agencies that deceive victims into going abroad for work. Unsuspecting victims are then sent to Europe, Australia, North America or the Middle East/Gulf region, where they end up as bonded labour or prostitutes. Some African countries, such as South Africa and Bostswana, are also recipients of these modern-day slaves.

But while the international aspect of the trade receives the most attention, it is worth noting that internal trafficking of women and children in particular is a growing problem in Eastern Africa.

Counter-trafficking activists believe that many children from Kenya, Burundi and Rwanda are trafficked to Kenya’s coastal areas for sexual exploitation in the growing sex tourism industry.

It is estimated that in the coastal town of Mtwapa alone, between 10,000 and 20,000 children are trafficked for the purpose of sex tourism.

A recent Unicef report shows that while Italian, German and Swiss men form the bulk of the foreign tourists who sexually exploit children at the coast, a large proportion - 39 per cent - of the perpetrators are local Kenyan men.

Many of the children being exploited are not from the coast region but are imported from rural areas from around the country.

You don’t have to spend a lot of time at the Kenyan coast to know that child prostitution and sex tourism are rampant there. In Mombasa and Malindi, it is common to see aging white men well into their 70s and 80s with girls young enough to be their granddaughters.

Locals tolerate this type of sexual exploitation because, as one put it to me recently, “nothing gets a family out of poverty faster than a daughter who has a white boyfriend.”

In many cases, girls are encouraged by none other than their parents and relatives to look for older white men who will not only pay the girl for her services, but her family as well.

The Unicef report also found that witchdoctors are commonly engaged by sex workers to ensure a steady supply of foreign tourists who can support them. (The allure of the foreign tourist is greater than that of a local tourist as he is often able to pay more, and is likely to be a seasonal client, thereby allowing the women and girls to have more than one “boyfriend” in a given year.)

Many of the girls (and some boys) are the source of income to impoverished parents living in deprived rural areas. Others make a lot of money for middlemen and traffickers who supply children and women to tourists looking for sex while on holiday.

The sad thing is that despite the passing of the Sexual Offences Bill and the publication of damning reports that confirm that Kenya is fast becoming a preferred destination for sex tourists, no one has either been arrested or deported for engaging in sex tourism or paedophilia.

Tourism may be a leading revenue earner for Kenya, but it is about time we vetted the tourists who come into this country.

Known paedophiles and sex tourists must not be given a visa to enter the country. Their records must be entered into every immigration and security database in the world, including Interpol. Parents, relatives and middlemen forcing children into servitude or prostitution must be arrested and prosecuted.

More importantly, we must create the economic and social conditions that prevent parents, relatives, middlemen and traffickers from condemning our children to lives of sexual slavery.

10/26/2007

Majimbo

Filed under: General, global islands, government, kenya — admin @ 5:39 am

(Nairobi)
Only a federal system of government (majimbo) can uplift the living standards of Kenyans, ODM-K presidential candidate Kalonzo Musyoka said on Sunday.

He said majimbo had been misconstrued to look like a recipe for chaos by its opponents and this had instilled fears among Kenyans, yet it was a harmless system that would guarantee equitable distribution of wealth.

“Majimbo simply means a region and was well defined in the Bomas draft constitution which was well received by majority of the people of Kenya,” he said.

According to him, only a few individuals in the Party of National Unity (PNU) were against what was good for Kenyans.

Identified regions

He said that the Bomas draft had identified various regions that would form jimbos. These were Luo Nyanza, the greater Kisii, upper Rift, South Rift, Central, Central Eastern, Lower Eastern and Coast among others.

Mr Musyoka was speaking at Tononoka Grounds in Mombasa at the climax of his three-day campaign tour of the Coast Province.

Giving examples of disparities in the distribution of resources, he said Coast Province contributed Sh57 billion to the Treasury in 2003 but still lacked basic infrastructure.

During the same period Nairobi gave Sh129 billion while Central Province delivered about Sh1 billion. But when it came to disbursement of funds, he said Central Province gets the lion’s share while the Coast got very little.

“Majimbo is the only system that can correct the imbalance in the distribution of the national cake. Regions like the Coast that produce a lot of revenue have to get their rightful share to address economic and social development,” he said. According to him, the area had been marginalised for many years “and this must come to an end.”

PNU has strongly opposed majimbo, saying that it would divide the country along ethnic lines and that it might trigger chaos.

Some PNU leaders have said that people who do not come from particular regions will be evicted by indigenous people. However, both ODM and ODM-K have said this would not happen.

Contradicted

The position taken by Mr Musyoka contradicted that of his party secretary-general, Mr Mutula Kilonzo, who said majimbo was an idea whose time came and went and it should be left to rest.

“It is unfortunate that men and women who were teenagers or younger when the debate for majimbo in the 1960s polarised the country should be the ones to bring it back,” he said.

“It is a political backslide and worse, they are confusing federalism as a political system with Majimbo, a tribal snake pit,” Mr Kilonzo said in his opinion piece.

Mr Musyoka, who praised the system, asked Coast residents to reject PNU and Shirikisho Party of Kenya whose leaders have opposed to majimbo.

“After sensing defeat, these people are now creating fear yet they know too well that Coast people and others from marginalised communities have suffered under the unitary system,” he said.

Earlier, Mr Musyoka had pledged to engineer economic and social change in the country if he wins the General Election.

He said: “Today, I take this opportunity to make a solemn pledge of ensuring that there is change in this country should I win the top seat.

“It is evident that majority of Kenyans are hit hard by poverty making life for them unbearable. I will ensure equitable distribution of the national cake to benefit all and sundry.”

The Mwingi North MP spoke at the Jesus Celebration Centre in Bamburi where he attended a service before addressing a well attended rally at the Tononoka Grounds.

At the rally, Bahari MP Joe Khamisi said he was shocked by President Kibaki’s rejection of majimbo but assured Kenyans that ODM-K will revive the Bomas draft which contains the tenets of the system. “It is sad that Shirikisho Party of Kenya whose ideology is against unitary government has now joined PNU which is opposed to majimbo,” he said.

He said president Kibaki was solely to blame for the problems that Kenyans were facing and should stop blaming it on the opposition.

“I do not deny the fact that I served in both Moi and Kibaki governments but I was just a mere minister who had no powers to authorise anything because the Presidents had all the powers to make things happen,” he said.

Mr Musyoka said if elected, his administration would set up a metropolitan police force in Nairobi and Mombasa to root out insecurity and allow businesses to operate round the clock.

“Hawkers have suffered for long in the hands city askaris but promised to turn hawking into cottage industry to enable small scale traders do their business in dignity and build a strong economy,” he said.

Muslims cheated

Mr Musyoka said the Muslim community in Kenya was being cheated by some leaders who want to use them for their political gains then dump them.

Muslims have rights like all other Kenyans and this will be guaranteed under an ODM K government, he said.

His running mate, Dr Julia Ojiambo said cases of insecurity were rampant and this had caused bitterness among Kenyans. She called on Kenyans to vote for Mr Musyoka because he was focused on security and peace.

She also urged wananchi to avoid violence during the campaigns.

10/25/2007

Kenya police deny sect killings

Filed under: General, kenya, police — admin @ 5:03 am

Kenyan police have denied carrying out extra-judicial killings of alleged members of the outlawed Mungiki sect.

Police spokesman Eric Kiraithe dismissed the allegation of police executions of suspects as “outrageous”.

The Kenya National Human Rights Commission (KNHRC) had made the claim after investigating incidences of dead bodies being dumped around the capital.

In June, the president ordered police to hunt down Mungiki sect members blamed for a series of grisly murders.

“Even if you hide, we will find you and kill you,” President Mwai Kibaki had said in a warning to members of the quasi-religious sect which was outlawed in 2002.

Mungiki followers have been demanding protection fees from public transport operators, slum dwellers and other businessmen in and around Nairobi.

Those who refuse are often brutally murdered.

Arrests

Mr Kiraithe said KNHRC’s allegations were a plot to discredit the government in the run-up to the December elections.

Mungiki followers

Rise of Kenya’s vigilantes

A news agency reports that more than a dozen bloodied bodies have been dumped in bush on the outskirts of Nairobi in the past week.

The state-sponsored KNHRC has been investigating whether these and other killings were the victims of police executions.

KNHRC commissioner Hassan Omar said the organisation had reports of “cars being driven to secret locations with suspects” followed by “gunshots, then dead bodies and food for the hyenas”.

Mr Omar said some of the latest victims may have been innocent of any crime.

But Mr Kiraithe insisted that police officers followed the rule of law when dealing with suspects.

After the president’s directive, police raided the Nairobi slum of Mathare to arrest hundreds of suspected sect members.

At least 30 people died in gun battles with police during that operation, leading the human rights organisation Amnesty International to call for an enquiry.

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