Will the World Bank Stop Investing in Campesino Assassinations?
By Arthur Phillips | CEPR Americas Blog | March 8, 2013
On February 27, the office of the Compliance Advisor/Ombudsman (CAO) for the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) launched an audit of the lending arm’s $30 million investment in Tegucigalpa-based Corporación Dinant, which produces palm oil and food products. The audit comes in response to widespread claims of violence, intimidation, and illegal evictions carried out by Dinant’s private security guards in Honduras’ Bajo Aguán valley, the center of the country’s ongoing land struggle. In offering its resources and reputation to the company, the World Bank and its member countries are complicit in the deaths of countless innocent farmers.
The COA’s review began just two days after the United Nations Working Group on the use of mercenaries urged the Honduran government “to properly investigate and prosecute crimes committed by private security guards and to ensure that victims receive effective remedies.” A delegation from the Working Group was in the country from February 18 to 22, when it met with government officials and representatives of civil society and the private sector, including security firms. The delegates voiced their particular concern about the “alleged involvement of private security companies hired by landowners in widespread human rights violations including killings, disappearances, forced evictions and sexual violence against representatives of peasant associations in the Bajo Aguán region.” Dinant is the largest single landholder in the region.
An appointed panel of unnamed experts is currently convened in Washington, D.C., to review both the IFC’s adherence to its social and environmental policies and the role Dinant has played in the abuses. Many human rights observers consider the company’s owner, Miguel Facussé, to be one of the country’s most powerful men and hold him responsible for the killings of dozens of campesinos.
The audit had been a long time coming. On November 19, 2010, the human rights organization Rights Action wrote a letter to the World Bank’s then-president Robert Zoellick demanding that the financial institution suspend its funding to Honduras. The group cited the “context of grave human rights abuses and lack of independence of the justice system” as grounds to withhold funding, and characterized support for Dinant as “a case of gross negligence of the World Bank’s human rights and due diligence obligations.” In the letter, Rights Action also noted that “at least 19 farmers in this region have been killed in the context of conflicts with biofuel industry interests.” (In a new report released two weeks ago, the same group declared that 88 farmers and their supporters have been killed in Bajo Aguán since January 2010, most of them in targeted assassinations.)
In the ensuing period, the office of the CAO maintained discussions with local civil society organizations and in April 2012, CAO Vice President Meg Taylor informed the IFC that her office was initiating an appraisal of the funding group’s investment in Dinant. That appraisal, having found sufficient grounds for further investigation, culminated this August in the decision to conduct the current audit.
A diverse group of international organizations, including Oxfam, Vía Campesina and the Latin American Working Group, welcomed CAO’s decision. In a co-signed letter, though, the groups expressed their firm demand that the IFC halt its financial cooperation with the palm oil company
until a) clear evidence is provided of significant progress in overcoming impunity of crimes and human rights abuses committed against organized peasants and their supporters in the Lower Aguán; and b) a comprehensive, just, peaceful and sustainable resolution is provided to the conflicts over land between the Corporación Dinant, the government of Honduras and the local peasant movements.
The panel is scheduled to conclude its audit on March 8.
On Friday, March 1, while the CAO panel gathered in Washington, journalist Carlos Augusto Lara Cruz was reportedly threatened by a Dinant employee while covering a confrontation between campesinos and a military unit. It must be noted that Honduran human rights defenders have consistently and credibly accused military and police units of collaborating with Dinant security guards in kidnapping, torturing, and murdering land rights activists.
One of the latest assassinations in the area took place on Thursday, February 21, when lawyer José Andrés Andrade Soto was shot dead in the town of Tocoa. Andrade Soto led the regional office of the National Agrarian Institute until former president Manuel Zelaya was deposed in the June 2009 coup. Today, farmer organizations continue to struggle for land titles that the Zelaya government granted to them shortly before it was overthrown.
As part of its Summary of Proposed Investment, written before the program’s approval in order to boost the institution’s transparency, the IFC described its cooperation with Dinant as an opportunity to help small farmers in Bajo Aguán. It also declared that there was no controversy regarding the land in question. “Land acquisition is on a willing buyer-willing seller basis, and there is no involuntary displacement of any people,” the report assured.
Since that report was published, scores of campesinos have been assassinated for efforts to re-appropriate their rightful land. The World Bank and its member countries bear some degree of responsibility for their deaths. No matter the outcome of the CAO audit, the IFC should apologize for the suffering in which it has been complicit and should immediately revoke its support for Facussé and Corporación Dinant.
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- Killings Continue in Bajo Aguán as New Report Documents Abuses by U.S.-Trained Honduran Special Forces Unit (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- Honduras: Two More Campesinos Murdered in Aguán (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- Honduras: Murdered Lawyer’s Brother Killed in Aguán (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Number of natives in Canada’s prisons alarming: Officials
Press TV – March 8, 2013
A Canadian official says the number of aboriginals including Métis and Inuit in Canada’s prisons is increasing at ‘an alarming rate’.
According to a statement issued by the Correctional Investigator of Canada Howard Sapers on Thursday, “There are just over 3,400 aboriginal men and women making up 23 percent of the country’s federal prison inmate population.”
“In other words, while aboriginal people in Canada comprise just four percent of the population, in federal prisons nearly one in four is Métis, Inuit, or First Nations,” he added.
He went on to say that “the over-representation of aboriginal people in federal corrections and the lack of progress to improve the disparity in correctional outcomes continues to cloud Canada’s domestic human rights record.”
Meanwhile, Canada’s official opposition party, the New Democrats, issued a statement saying “What we find in this report is a shocking indictment of how… (Ottawa) has failed aboriginal Canadians.”
Also, former Supreme Court Justice Frank Lacobucci has revealed in a study that the aboriginal youths are treated more harshly by the justice system than other groups.
Lacobucci showed in a study that about one quarter of young native offenders were sent to jail for assault, in contrast to less than 15 percent of non-aboriginal youth.
He severely criticized the Canadian judicial system for “systemic racism” and stated that the jailing of aboriginals is a “serious crisis.”
In 2012, the United Nations called on Canada to take “urgent measures” to reduce the overrepresentation of aboriginals and blacks in the criminal justice system and out-of-home care.
Is Palestinian Solidarity an Occupied Zone?
By Gilad Atzmon | March 9, 20013
Once involved with Palestinian Solidarity you have to accept that Jews are special and so is their suffering; Jews are like no other people, their Holocaust is like no other genocide and anti Semitism, is the most vile form of racism the world has ever known and so on and so forth.
But when it comes to the Palestinians, the exact opposite is the case. For some reason we are expected to believe that the Palestinians are not special at all – they are just like everyone else. Palestinians have not been subject to a unique, racist, nationalist and expansionist Jewish nationalist movement, instead, we must all agree that, just like the Indians and the Africans, the Palestinian ordeal results from run-of-the-mill 19th century colonialism – just more of the same old boring Apartheid.
So, Jews, Zionists and Israelis are exceptional, like no one else, while Palestinians are always somehow, ordinary, always part of some greater political narrative, always just like everyone else. Their suffering is never due to the particularity of Jewish nationalism, or Jewish racism, or even AIPAC dominating USA foreign policy no, the Palestinian is always a victim of a dull, banal dynamic – general, abstract and totally lacking in particularity.
This raises some serious questions.
Can you think of any other liberation or solidarity movement that prides itself in being boring, ordinary and dull? Can you think of any other solidarity movement that downgrades its subject into just one more meaningless exhibit in a museum of materialist historical happenings? I don’t think so! Did the black South Africans see themselves as being like everyone else? Did Martin Luther King believe his brothers and sisters to be inherently indistinguishable?
I don’t think so. So how come Palestinian solidarity has managed to sink so low that their spokespersons and supporters compete against each other to see who can best eliminate the uniqueness of the Palestinian struggle into just part of a general historical trend such as colonialism or Apartheid?
The answer is simple. Palestinian Solidarity is an occupied zone and, like all such occupied zones must dedicate itself to the fight against ‘anti Semitism’. Dutifully united against racism, fully engaged with LGBT issues in Palestine and in the movement itself, but for one reason or another, the movement is almost indifferent towards the fate of millions of Palestinians living in refugee camps and their Right of Return to their homeland.
But all this can change. Palestinians and their supporters could begin to see their cause for what it is, unique and distinctive. Nor need this be all that difficult. After all, if Jewish nationalism is inherently exceptional as Zionists proclaim, is it not only natural that the victims of such a distinctive racist endeavor are at least, themselves, just as distinctive.
So far, Palestine solidarity has failed to liberate Palestine, but it has succeeded beyond its wildest dreams in creating a Palestine Solidarity Industry, and one largely funded by liberal Zionists. We have been very productive in schlepping activists around the world promoting ‘boycotts’ and ‘sanctions’ meanwhile Israel trade with Britain is booming and Hummus Tzabar is clearly apparent in every British grocery store.
All those attempts to reduce the Palestinian ordeal into a dated, dull, generalised materialist narrative should be exposed for what they are – an attempt to appease liberal Zionists. Palestinian suffering is actually unique in history at least as unique as the Zionist project.
Yesterday I came across this from South African minister Ronnie Kasrils. In a comment on Israeli Apartheid he said : “This is much worse than Apartheid… Israeli measures, the brutality, make apartheid look like a picnic. We never had Jets attacking our townships; we never had sieges that lasted months after months. We never had tanks destroying houses.”
Kasrils is dead right. It is much worse than Apartheid and far more sophisticated than colonialism. And why? Because what the Zionists did and are doing is neither Apartheid nor is it colonialism. Apartheid wanted to exploit the African, Israel wants the Palestinian gone. Colonialism is an exchange between a mother and a settler state. Israel never had a mother State, though it may well have had a few ‘surrogate mothers’.
Now is the time to look at the unique ordeal of the Palestinian people. Similarly, now is the time to look at the Zionist crime in the light of Jewish culture and identity politics.
Can the solidarity movement meet this challenge? Probably, but like Palestine, it must first, itself, be liberated.
Related article
- Is the Anti-Occupation Movement Driven by Defenders of Genocide? (alethonews.wordpress.com)
John Baird, Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Speaks at AIPAC
By Jim Miles | Palestine Chronicle | March 7, 2013
Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister, John Baird, was in comfortable territory at the current AIPAC policy conference meeting in Washington, D.C.
I have deconstructed his arguments before, as he reiterates the current Harper government of Canada position in its unqualified support for Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and all that goes along with that. I will not repeat those arguments here as they are the same old-same old regurgitations of support for the militaristic Israeli state from a Canadian government that does not truly represent the majority of the people of Canada.
Baird presents the same arguments about Palestine living up to all previous agreements without recognizing that Israel has a lot to live up to as well; in particular that the UN Security Council has previously recognized withdrawal from occupied territories and the right of return of refugees. And as usual, the fault of the violence is the very nature of Arab/Palestinian social-political life, a mythology that Israel and its western supporters are careful to nurture.
What interested me most about his current statements, apart from the ego flattering standing ovations the AIPAC audience rendered unto him, are his comments about stopping aid to the Palestinian National Authority. Baird threatened a similar stopping of aid during the vote to recognize Palestine at the UN, then backed off after the overwhelming support displayed for Palestine.
These threats are being renewed again, against Palestine taking Israel to the International Criminal Court, but one has to wonder if the Canadian government is really aware of what the consequences of that cut might be.
Most of Canada’s aid to Israel is bound into corporate military research and development, including the realm of security and surveillance. The aid to the Palestinian Authority helps the PA maintain their fragile grip on the Palestinian population as it is used for similar areas of security, surveillance, and support for the few Palestinian elites who harvest the aid supplies for their own benefit. The Canadian military and the Canadian national police force, the RCMP, serve as trainers for the PA authorities own militarized units.
So what happens if the aid to Palestine is cut? Many things are possible, the most counterproductive one from the Israeli perspective would be the decrease in the control that the PA is able to exert over the Palestinian population on its behalf as the money supplies dry up. The Palestinian economy, such as it is, mainly in the West Bank, where the majority of the funds are utilized, would suffer even more.
With more economic weakness, and with a weakened PA no longer able to buy influence among its own people, the Palestinians would certainly be more restive and perhaps more aggressive towards their own elites as well as the Israelis – a third intifada would become more probable. Of course, more Palestinian violence would only make the current Canadian government say, “See, we told you they were a violent people,” and so the mythology of Israeli victimization will continue.
It would be a good thing perhaps to shed the yoke and burden of foreign control bought by the power of foreign dollars manipulating the economy and political scene in Palestine. The outcomes of such a cut are indeterminate, but usually in the world of political manipulation, unexpected outcomes are to be expected. For that reason alone, one can expect John Baird and the Harper government to prevaricate over cuts for some time to come.
– Jim Miles is a Canadian educator and a regular contributor/columnist of opinion pieces and book reviews for The Palestine Chronicle.
Free to go…not! Syrian rebels backpedal over UN hostages
RT | March 8, 2013
The Syrian rebels who captured a group of Filipino UN peacekeepers failed to release them despite earlier promises to hand over the hostages to the Red Cross, the Philippines government said.
The Syrian militant group that had captured 21 blue helmet troops in Golan Heights is sticking to its initial demands, said the spokesman for the Philippines Department of Foreign Affairs, Raul Hernandez. After seizing the peacekeepers on Wednesday, the Syrian rebels demanded that Syrian government forces withdraw from the village of Jamlah in exchange for the release of the captives.
The abrupt change of plans appears a sign of discord among the Syrian rebel group, which is detaining the Filipinos. Earlier on Friday they seemed to have played down their demands, calling the hostages “guests” and stressing that they would not harm them.
It comes after the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights released a video showing some of the 21 peacekeepers, with one man – who identified himself as a captain in the UN Philippines battalion – saying that he and his men are in “a safe place.”
The peacekeepers were taken by Syrian rebels in Golan Heights, a territory that Israel captured from Syria in 1967. The land grab was not recognized as legitimate by either Syria or the international community.
The UN has maintained a peacekeeping force in the area to maintain the ceasefire between Israel and Syria since 1974. As of late January, there were more than 1,000 troops and about 100 civilian personnel deployed there.
A flurry of condemnation followed the ill-fated capture, as the countries and organizations usually seen as supporters of the Syrian armed opposition demanded their freedom. The US called it “absolutely unacceptable,” while the EU called such moves “serious breaches of international law.”
The UN and the Philippines government had condemned the capture of the peacekeepers and urged the insurgents to immediately release them. Russia’s UN envoy Vitaly Churkin said the seizure of the UN observers showed “gross disrespect for the United Nations.”
It’s not clear whether the militant group had changed their intentions about the hostages due to the international pressure or because they thought that holding UN personnel does not give them enough leverage on the Syrian government to force their troops out of Jamlah.
The incident will not make the UN withdraw its peacekeeping force from the Golan Heights, UN spokesman Martin Nesirky said.
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Сhina considers investing $40 billion in US shale oil
RT | March 07, 2013
China National Petroleum Corporation, the country’s state-run oil major, is looking for its first stake in the US, as the three largest Chinese oil companies together plan to spend $40 billion to access US crude riches.
The announcement came on Wednesday from Jiang Jiemin, the chairman of china’s biggest oil company during the National People’s Congress in Beijing, Bloomberg reports. “We are currently studying [investing in US oil], ” Jiang Jiemin said.
Last month CNPC’s domestic competitor China Petrochemical Corporation agreed to buy a stake in an Oklahoma oil field from Chesapeake Energy for $1.02 billion.
A trend is unfolding for Chinese oil companies to use government loans to buy stakes in the US energy fields.
“Stake participation by Chinese companies in US oil fields would be welcomed,” a London-based analyst for Global Energy & Natural Resources at Eurasia Group, Will Pearson told Bloomberg. “Full buyouts will continue to be scrutinized and opposed.”
China already owns many entire oil and gas fields across Canada and Latin America, Africa and Australia. However the US is not rushing to sell off their fields, especially in the regions where military or other technology can be accessed for fear of intellectual property theft, Pearson said. In September 2012 President Obama barred a Chinese-owned company from building wind farms near a US Navy base in Oregon as a national security risk.
“The Chinese want to gain experience in shale gas, oil sands and deep water so they can redeploy the best US practices and technologies” back in China says Mirae Asset Securities Ltd. analyst Gordon Kwan.
China has already invested a record $1.52 billion purchasing stakes in oil and natural gas fields in the US this year, Bloomberg reports. China National Petroleum alone plans to double overseas production to 200 million tonnes a year by 2015.
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