Iran’s Nobel winner hits out at US foreign policy

On Dec. 10 Iran’s Shirin Ebadi became the first Muslim woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize and sent a bold anti-war message to the West, accusing it of hiding behind the Sept. 11 attacks to violate human rights. Reformist lawyer Ebadi, who won the $1.4 million prize for her work for the rights of women and children in Iran. Ebadi slammed the US administration for double standards in ignoring UN resolutions in the Middle East, while using them as a pretext to go to war in Iraq, and she lashed out at what she called breaches of the Geneva conventions at the US Guantanamo Bay military jail.

“In the past two years, some states have violated the universal principles and laws of human rights by using the events of Sept. 11 and the war on international terrorism as a pretext,” she said in her acceptance speech. “Regulations restricting human rights and basic freedoms ... have been justified and given legitimacy under the cloak of the war on terrorism.” (Reuters)

Hunger strike by Australia asylum seekers worries supporters

Twenty-four refugees are on hunger strike in an Australian government-funded detention center, located on the tiny Pacific island nation of Nauru, protesting the pressure from the Australian government to return home to Afghanistan, where they say they face persecution. The UN High Commissioner on Refugees has decided that the resurgence of Taliban activity has made it too dangerous for many to return refugees to Afghanistan. The Australian government thinks otherwise.

Since the hunger strike started Dec. 10, seven have been hospitalized. One released from hospital, the spokesman said, had rejoined the protest.

The national director of A Just Australia, Howard Glenn, fears for the welfare of those on hunger strike. “These people are at the last stage of desperation after two and a half years they have seen a thousand others pass through the camp and they have been left behind. I wouldn’t like to imagine their mental state. They say that they want to stick it out to death,” he said. Glenn is also dismayed at the lack of media organizations protesting the ban on journalists going to Nauru to look into the situation. (IPS)

S.F. nonprofit sues former Salvadorian commander

A San Francisco nonprofit that has successfully sued foreign military leaders for crimes against humanity has again filed suit against a former Salvadoran military commander the group says is responsible for torture and assassinations during the early years of El Salvador’s civil war.

The Center for Justice and Accountability, along with a Tennessee law firm, claims in a civil suit filed in Memphis that Nicolas Carranza, a US citizen living in Memphis, was El Salvador’s vice-minister of defense between 1979 and 1981, a time during which violent attacks were mounted against Salvadorans who criticized their government.

The center is bringing the case on behalf of seven Salvadoran plaintiffs — six of whom now live in the United States — who say they were tortured or had family members killed by security forces under Carranza’s command. The plaintiffs are asking for unspecified punitive and compensatory damages. In El Salvador, a 1993 amnesty passed after the peace accords that ended the war prevents charging military officers or troops with wartime atrocities.

The US suit against Carranza was brought under a 1789 law that allows victims to seek redress in US courts even if the offenses occurred elsewhere, as long as the perpetrator is in the United States. (San Francisco Chronicle)

Six die in Israeli Gaza camp raid

Six Palestinians have been killed and about 17 wounded following an Israeli incursion into a Gaza refugee camp, hospital sources say. There were fierce battles after the Israelis entered Rafah camp, in the biggest operation there in two months. Attack helicopters provided back-up to Israeli troops after they were fired on and had hand grenades thrown at them.

Witnesses said about 20 Israeli armored vehicles, including tanks, took part in the operation, the target of which was two houses, one the residence of Islamic Jihad leader Khaled al-Qadi, and the other of Salamah al-Bahabsah from Hamas. Mr al-Qadi was believed to be behind a number of attacks against Israeli troops. He was arrested in the raid.

Two of the wounded, including a boy aged 12, are said to be in a critical condition. (BBC)

Six more Afghan children killed in U.S. attack

For the second time in a week, the U.S. military admitted Dec. 10 that Afghan children were killed in attacks against Taliban and al-Qaida suspects, crushed under a wall at a compound stacked with a fugitive militant’s weapons.

Both assaults were in the Pashtun-dominated southeast and risked further alienating the country’s largest ethnic group, from which the Taliban emerged and still draws its main support.

“The next day we discovered the bodies of two adults and six children,” Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty told a news conference. “We had no indication there were noncombatants in the compound.”

Afghans were outraged by the latest killings, which they said damaged the Americans’ image in a nation desperate for security.

The news comes on the heels of a tragic US military blunder in neighboring Ghazni province on Dec. 7. Nine children were found dead in a field after an attack by an A-10 ground attack aircraft that was targeting a Taliban suspect.

US officials have apologized for that incident. (Associated Press)

Kim aide jailed over summit cash

A former aide to ex-South Korean President Kim Dae-jung has been sentenced to 12 years in jail relating to a North Korean summit scandal.

Park Jie-won was found guilty of illegally sending money to North Korea ahead of a 2000 meeting, and taking $12.5 million from a major company.

The summit, seen as historic at the time, won Kim the Nobel peace prize.

It is now known that the Hyundai group paid Pyongyang $500 million just days before the meeting.

Earlier this year, Kim Dae-jung apologized to the nation for the scandal, admitting that the $500 million was remitted to North Korea with the government’s knowledge.

Critics have accused Kim of buying the 2000 summit. He has argued that it was in the national interest. (BBC)

Iraq to Stop Counting Civilian Dead

Iraqi Health Ministry officials ordered a halt to a count of civilian casualties from the war and told workers not to release figures already compiled, the head of the ministry’s statistics department told The Associated Press.

Dr. Nagham Mohsen, the head of the ministry’s statistics department, said the order came from the ministry’s director of planning, Dr. Nazar Shabandar. She said the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority, which oversees the ministry, didn’t like the idea of the count either.

“We have stopped the collection of this information because our minister didn’t agree with it,” she said, adding: “The CPA doesn’t want this to be done.”

The Health Ministry’s civilian death toll count had been reported by news media as early as August, and the count was widely anticipated by human rights organizations. The ministry issued a preliminary figure of 1,764 deaths during the summer.

The Associated Press conducted a major investigation of Iraq’s wartime civilian casualties, documenting the deaths of 3,240 civilians between March 20 and April 20. That investigation, conducted in May and June, surveyed about half of Iraq’s hospitals, and reported that the real number of civilian deaths was sure to be much higher.

The Health Ministry’s count, which was to be based on the records of all Iraq’s hospitals, had promised to be more complete.

The US military doesn’t count civilian casualties from its wars, saying only that it tries to minimize civilian deaths. (Associated Press)

Thousands of Japanese denounce Iraq troop dispatch

An estimated 5,000 protesters took to the streets of Tokyo on Sunday, denouncing a government decision to send troops to Iraq as a violation of Japan’s pacifist constitution.

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s cabinet approved a plan on Tuesday to send troops to Iraq, clearing the way for what is likely to be the nation’s biggest and most dangerous overseas military mission since World War II.

No member of Japan’s military has fired a shot in combat or been killed in an overseas mission since World War II, although they have taken part in UN peacekeeping operations since a 1992 law made that possible. (Reuters)

Hiroshima survivors slam US as atomic bomber Enola Gay goes on show

Three aging Hiroshima victims traveled to Washington from Japan to lodge written protests with President George W. Bush and the National Air and Space Museum, before the plane used to drop an atomic bomb on them went on display to the public on Dec. 15.

Survivors accuse the museum of dishonoring the memory of the 230,000 killed in the blast by not displaying casualty figures next to the plane.

“If the Enola Gay is going to be displayed, they should also say what happened beneath the plane on a day the bomb was dropped,” said Sunao Tsuboi, who was around a mile from the epicenter of the blast on August 6, 1945.

As it is currently arranged, the plane will bear a label describing it as the “most sophisticated propeller-driven bomber of World War II” and mentioning the technological prowess of the aircraft that “found its niche on the other side of the globe.” (Agence France Presse)

Syria under US sanctions threat

US President George W Bush has approved economic and diplomatic sanctions against Syria over its alleged support for terrorism.

Possible actions include a ban on US exports to Syria and the freezing of the country’s assets in the US.

The bill, passed by large majorities in both chambers of Congress, is intended to penalize Syria for its alleged support for anti-Israeli militant groups and for its apparent pursuit of biological and chemical weapons.

It makes a series of demands on Syria, and requires the president to take action if these are not met.

Damascus has described the law as: “Really bad - bad for Syria, bad for peace in the Middle East and bad for American-Syrian relations and American-Arab relations in general.” (BBC)

Pact Expands Generic Drugs in South Africa to Fight AIDS

Two major makers of anti-AIDS drugs agreed Wednesday to expand licensing of the drugs in southern Africa to generic manufacturers, potentially making both existing and new, more powerful AIDS treatments available at drastically lower prices.

The agreement ended a yearlong inquiry by South African government regulators into accusations that the companies had gouged consumers and stifled competition with their pricing and licensing policies. Jonathan Berger, a lawyer at the AIDS Law Project at the University of the Witswatersrand in Johannesburg, said the average price of anti-retroviral treatment could drop to as little as $25 from as much as $225 — a figure that dwarfed the average monthly income here.

Surveys showed that anti-AIDS drugs were currently available to only a tiny sliver of the estimated 30 million people in sub-Saharan Africa who have already tested positive for H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. (New York Times)