Good morning/evening, here is my
World Roundup for
December 16, 2003
Legend:
fr = French language
it = Italian language
ro = Romanian/Moldovan language
es = Spanish language
de = German language
pt = Portuguese language
is = Icelandic language
su = Suomi language (Finnish)
nl = Dutch language
Everything else in English language
Note: That which you can see on your evening news will (usually) not be covered here.
In the US-supported dictatorship in Equatorial Guinea, a man named Cipirano Nguema Mba made the worst mistake of his life - stealing from his uncle, the bloodthirsty tyrant who runs this oil rich country. Mr. Mba was found in Cameroon with about 980,000 dollars he had stolen from the Army.
In further corruption news:
[Dictator Teodoro] Obiang's half brother, General Agustin Ndong Ona, was reported to have attempted suicide following what was described as a "lively discussion" with the president's eldest son.
If you read the World Update regularly, then you already know about the huge scandal in Kenya as a minister, an assistant minister and a member of Parliament were all caught on film having sex with hookers in Nairobi's red light district.
Unfortunately, police are now under pressure to destroy the videotape with the incriminating evidence. Oddly enough, when the three men were first arrested, their names were not published to avoid embarassment for the government. The backlash however, has fingers pointing in every direction, and more than half a dozen prominent politicans are suspected - almost forcing the police to reveal the names. Irony!
Odd story out of Bristol in England as someone apparently threw a "corrosive substance" at 24 people in a bar. No details on who or why.
US Presidential candidate Wesley Clark is in The Hague to settle an old score with his former opponent: Slobodan Milosevic.
Couple of interesting points about this: Milosevic is being tried under the new International Criminal Tribunal for war crimes. General Clark, as an American, is immune from prosecution in this court (note: this includes perjury as well). The other noteworthy aspect is that although the ICT is under the mandate of the UN, the United States will edit and censor General Clark's testimony before it is released to the public:
The Bush administration has invoked a rule under the tribunal to allow State Department lawyers to review and edit the testimony to insure that it does not violate American national security or intelligence sources and methods. Under universal rules of the tribunal, all witnesses are precluded from talking about their testimony until it is over.
MSNBC has a more honest interpretation:
Washington secured the right to ask the U.N. court to edit the recording and transcript of Clark's testimony in the interests of U.S. national security before it is made public on Friday.
Did people die in the fighting after the break-up of Yugoslavia? Yes. Was it awful and horrendous? Yes. Is this trial of Milosevic a farce? Yes as well. Sorry if you disagree with me. Having an American offer testimony in a court from which he is immune against a head of state being tried in a UN mandated forum is farcical to the extreme.
Forgotten wars: Rebels kill 9 human beings and took 4 more hostage in Dagestan, an autonomous region ethnically close to Chechnya.
The rebels used knives to finish off the wounded and beheaded [local military commander] Khalikov. They then took four villagers hostage and left Shaury in three vehicles, NTV television reported.
Authorities could not say late Monday where the rebels might be and what was the condition of the hostages. They also could not say where the rebels might have come from.
It seems one of the last rays of hope has gone out in Liberia as the UN has thrown in the towel for its disarmament plans of rival militias.
In neighboring Sierra Leone, the UN is stepping up patrols to keep the rioting militias from infiltrating across the border.
Long time strongman and US ally Heydar Aliyev was finally buried in Azerbaijan. Among the "dignitaries" attending the funeral were Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, President of Kalmikiya, Chairman of the State Council in Dagestan, President Kuchma of the Ukraine and acting President of Georgia, Nino Burjanadze along with future President, Mikhail Saakashvili.
In totally unrelated news, Mr. David Woodward, President of the British Petroleum Azerbaijan company said the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline would always be profitable:
As was informed, at words of Mr. Woodward, such a pipeline would bring profit even in existence of the lowest prices. If along the coming 30 years one barrel of oil will be realized at the world market on 10 dollars, then, the pipeline, from the standpoint of economy, will act as profitable object.
In the strife-torn Central American nation of Guatemala, another outspoken priest was killed. Bishop Furlan, age 72, was gunned down as he left church. A similarly outspoken priest, Bishop Gerardi, was killed in 1998 when he was bludgeoned to death - days after issuing a report blaming the military for the atrocities committed in the US-sponsored 36-year-long civil war.
All I can say is odd, odder and even more odd.
In a secret ceremony conducted in the dead of night, the killer whale "Keiko" was buried in the ground in Norway.
"We wanted to let him be at peace," said Dane Richards, one of his carers. "He's free now and in the wild."
"It was beautiful. He went to the grave quietly, quickly and peacefully, just like he died," said Mr Richards.
I still do not understand why a 12,000 pound whale was buried in the land. I guess humans are too squeamish to realize that normally, dead whales are not buried at all, but are returned to the sea, which is their natural home.
Prepare for the Chunnel 2, as President Aznar of Spain's recent visit to Morocco has paid off - the two countries have agreed to build a tunnel between them under the Mediterranean Sea. Theoretically, in the future you will be able to take a train all the way from Scotland to Capetown, South Africa.
The troubles continue for President Toledo of Peru as he had to appoint a new Prime Minister when the last one quit over allegations of homosexuality.
Ordinary Peruvians said they were distressed at [former Prime Minister] Merino's departure, and predicted that the president -- whose popularity is just 11 percent -- was sowing the seeds of his own undoing.
If you're a regular reader of the World Update, then you know about the ongoing trial of former President Chiluba in Zambia. The trial hasn't concluded yet, but Mr. Chiluba is accused of embezzling millions of dollars from the government and laundering them through bank accounts in the United States and Britain. Coincidentally:
The UK and US governments have supported the prosecution throughout, donating funds and expertise to the investigation
By the way, that's your taxpayer funds that are going to a tiny, poor country in southern Africa to prosecute someone you've probably never heard of.
Forgotten wars: Under heavy pressure from India, the tiny country of Bhutan has sent soldiers to fight the rebels hiding in their country from the Indian province of Assam. Bhutan, a nation of just 2 million people, has its hands full as the ULFA and NDFB rebels repulsed two attacks on their training camps.
Despite the United States' desperate ambition to have all sides sign a peace accord, heavy fighting is ongoing in the western region of Darfur in The Sudan. An estimated 670,000 people have been driven from their homes, 70,000 of them crossing over the border in Chad.
Chad meanwhile has its own problems as MDJT (Movement for Democracy and Justice in Chad) rebels in the north have killed at least 30 government soldiers. A large segment of the MDJT rejected a peace deal that had, tragically, been signed only hours earlier in nearby Burkina Faso.
The politically savvy leaders of China are taking advantage of the capture of Saddam Hussein to declare their own war on "East Turkistan" rebel groups. The "East Turkistan" groups are actually Muslim people who are ethnic Uighurs, located in the oil rich Chinese province of Xinjiang on Afghanistan's border.
In the past, China revealed as little as possible about the sensitive issue of separatist violence in the huge and remote western region of Xinjiang.
Apart from anything else, it was highly embarrassed by the claims of local Muslim Uighurs that they were being oppressed and overwhelmed by outsiders in their own land.
You see, it's now en vogue to have a "War on Terrorism" to crush any internal revolts and China has managed to get the US to support in its general crackdown on Muslims. It is noteworthy that the now banned "terrorist groups" were completely legal and had international offices until last year.
Again, keeping up with the World Update pays off as you will already know what is going on in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. China's head of state, Wen Jiabao, is chairing a conference in Africa to strengthen ties with the region. Some selected excerpts from Wen Jiabao's remarks:
China on its part has taken further measures to increase its imports from African countries, and China-Africa two-way trade is increasing by more than 20 percent. A total of 117 new China-invested enterprises are up and running in Africa, and our bilateral cooperation in energy development and hi-tech industries is getting off the ground. Our cooperation in human resources development is on the upswing. China has sponsored a variety of training programs and trained nearly 7,000 African personnel of a wide range of professions.
The Chinese Government has fulfilled ahead of schedule its debt exemption commitments and canceled 31 African countries' debts.
China will continue to participate in UN peacekeeping operations in Africa, and provide assistance to the peacekeeping efforts of African regional organizations.
China is ready to coordinate its positions with African countries in the process of international economic rules formulation and multilateral trade negotiations, with a view to safeguarding the legitimate rights and interests of developing countries.
We will further open our market, and grant duty-free market access for some of the commodities from the least developed countries in Africa. We will increase our capital investment to the African Human Resources Development Fund by 33 percent, and provide professional training of various kinds to 10,000 African personnel in the next three years.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan seems to be on the same page:
Africa offers China huge investment opportunities in its emerging markets and mining sectors, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said today.
And China has now declared it will invest 1 billion dollars in Nigeria alone. It seems that the Chinese are making a major play for the forgotten continent. African nations have a great deal of political instability but are emerging as the future for oil deposits (Angola, Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea among others), are rich in diamonds as well as essential industrial elements like copper and bauxite, and also excellent high-tech elements like uranium.
The impoverished, war-torn country of Uganda caused a little embarassment to its coalition "partner", the United States, when residents asked the US to send troops and equipment to fight the nightmarish Lord's Resistance Army.
The residents had asked the ambassador why the American government, being a super power, could not send its troops and military equipment to help UPDF fight the LRA to end the 17 year-long conflict.
"This is a Ugandan war we cannot commit our troops and military equipment here, otherwise thank you for having confidence in us," [American ambassador] Kolker said.
I guess stopping the Lord's Resistance Army's 17-year rampage of terror and child kidnappings isn't worth an invasion, unlike Iraq, which has plenty of a black viscuous fluid that Uganda does not.
Elsewhere, government troops arrested everyone strange in the Lira District to "rid the district" of LRA chief Kony's supporters. Of the 500 arrested, nearly 400 were released immediately. This was a show of force and a bit of propaganda by the government as they have had almost no success in battling the LRA for years. It's a little too simplistic to arrest everyone who is odd and then say they are "spies" for the LRA.
US puppet and president of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni, met with President Mbeki in South Africa for talks to bring peace to Burundi.
Here is why this is so tragically laughable: The LRA, which has held off the Ugandan army for 17 years, is based in the south of the Sudan, and controls the north of Uganda, meanwhile Ugandan troops from the south have repeatedly fought wars in Rwanda, Burundi and Dem. Republic of Congo, where they are actually quite dominant. Ugandan soldiers are so "good" that in fact, most of them are gone, looting and rampaging abroad, mostly in Rwanda. They still collect checks from the Ugandan government but actually live and rule elsewhere.
The further twist is that the US wants Museveni to placate the SPLA in the Sudan so the SPLA will sign a peace deal, which will lead to the LRA having no support, which will lead to a brutal crackdown on the LRA, and Museveni will be given a lot of US cash (so called "humanitarian aid") and a plum job with the UN to avoid any future prosecutions for atrocities. Make sense yet?
The human rights violations continue apace in Mauritania as the Ould Taya government is alleging that Ould Haidalla, the ould dictator of the country, was planning a coup against the new Ould. Despite the utter corruption in the country, the prosecution was apparently losing its case, so now the trial is "indefinitely" paused, leaving Ould Haidalla rotting in jail at the request of, you guessed it, Judge Ould Abdi.
You will be happy to know that Colombia has extended ChevronTexaco's production rights for a huge gas field until 2019. That little extension cost the company a mere 175 million dollars.
Ousted democratically-elected leader of Georgia, Edouard Shevardnadze, gave the BBC a nice little interview in which he thanks the US for all its years of support.
As he spoke, numerous pictures looked down from the walls. Mr Shevardnadze's Cold War pals - among them James Baker, George Bush senior and Ronald Reagan - smiled at the man who was for many years the darling of the West.
The shake-up continues in the despotic country of the Central African Republic as strongman Francois Bozize dismissed his cabinet and has now replaced them with a lot of his cronies. Bozize came to power on March 15, 2003 when he ousted former dictator Ange-Felix Patasse.
The Foreign Affairs Secretary, Blas Ople, of the Phillipines died in Taiwan while en route to meet President Arroyo in Bahrain on Sunday.
The two dirt poor nations of Eritrea and Ethiopia are on the verge of war again as boundary disputes have flared up. The two nations fought a bloody civil war that killed approximately 80,000 human beings.
Troops have been busy in the Ethiopian town of Gambrella as they massacred at least 100 people in a repression of the Anuak ethnic peoples.
The Ethiopian military police on Saturday started "pulling out educated people and community leaders" and "killing them with guns or by slitting their throats;" [US anonymous source] said local people believed Anuaks were specifically targeted.
A US citizen has reportedly been arrested by the soldiers. Omot Omot Bewar, formerly a refugee from the area who came to the US seeking asylum is currently in Gambella on a visit to his former home. According to friends in Minnesota where he is normally a student, he attempted to video the violence and was beaten and detained.
News reports from the region are still sketchy and confused. A U.S. State Department spokesperson said he and the Department were "unaware" of the violence.
It looks like the illegitimate northern half of Cyprus will not join the south when it becomes a member of the European Union. The vote was close, very close, but not quite enough to control the Turkish Cypriot parliament and jumpstart reunification talks.
Peace!