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By Amy Kazmin Washington Post Foreign Service Saturday, June 7, 2008; A11
BANGKOK, June 6 -- In the weeks after Tropical Cyclone Nargis battered Burma's Irrawaddy Delta, Burma's most famous comedian -- a dentist known by his stage name, Zarganar, or "Tweezers" -- spearheaded efforts by about 400 Burmese artists to collect and distribute food, mosquito nets, blankets and other supplies to destitute survivors.
His initiative was one of many spontaneous private operations by concerned Rangoon residents -- including businesspeople, students, monks and local journalists -- that brought some measure of help to cyclone victims as U.N. agencies struggled with Burma's military government to get aid into the devastated region.
Long known for sharp comic jibes at the military rulers, Zarganar also spoke publicly in stark terms about the inadequacy of their cyclone relief effort, the physical difficulties and psychological trauma of the victims and the appalling conditions in the delta.
On Wednesday night, Zarganar was taken into custody by Burmese authorities, who insist that the relief phase of the emergency is over. The state-owned New Light of Myanmar newspaper, meanwhile, lashed out at "unscrupulous" elements that it said were exaggerating the problems in the delta.
Human rights groups say the detention of the high-profile figure and the effort to gloss over the extent of the disaster highlight the precedence Burma's rulers are giving to political concerns at the expense of the welfare of an estimated 2.5 million cyclone victims.
"By detaining him, it sends a message of real intimidation to people who the regime thinks could use the humanitarian disaster for political purposes," said Benjamin Zawacki, a researcher with Amnesty International.
More than a month after the cyclone hit, more than 1 million survivors, especially in remote, hard-to-reach areas of the delta, have received no assistance as they try to rebuild their lives, the United Nations says
The Zimbabwean government’s campaign of violence and intimidation against the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has extinguished anychance of a free and fair presidential runoff on June 27, 2008, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today.
Human Rights Watch urged the African Union (AU) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to use its influence and push President Robert Mugabe to take immediate steps to end the violence and hold those responsible to account.
The 69-page report, "'Bullets for Each of You': State-Sponsored Violence since Zimbabwe’s March 29 Elections,” documents numerous incidents of abductions, beatings, torture, and killings by officials and supporters of the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union–Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), the armed forces and police, “war veterans,” and youth militia against MDC activists and perceived MDC supporters. Human Rights Watch has confirmed at least 36 politically motivated deaths and 2,000 victims of violence. The report also examines the Zimbabwean government’s role in perpetrating and inciting the violence for political gain, and its failure to end the violence and prosecute those responsible. Human Rights Watch researchers conducted more than 70 interviews with victims and eyewitnesses to the violence since March in all 10 provinces of Zimbabwe.
“Since the runoff was announced the violence in Zimbabwe has gotten even worse,” said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Zimbabweans can’t vote freely if they fear their vote may get them killed.”
ZANU-PF and its allies are also engaged in a politically motivated campaign of looting and destruction, slaughtering animals, stealing food and property, and burning down homesteads. “War veterans” and youth militia have set up roadblocks and taken control of huge swathes of the countryside in order to limit the flow of information on the extent of the violence and to punish those perceived to have voted for the MDC. The government has also ordered all local and international nongovernmental organizations to suspend their operations in Zimbabwe, accusing them of politicizing aid distribution.
Watch the BBCNews report on the International aid agencies warning of disaster after Zimbabwe's government ordered them to stop work. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxbCUV-CZBw
" The hardest-hit city of Mianyang in Sichuan Province, China, was seen dotted with makeshift shelters housing the victims of the earthquake that shook China three days ago.
The strongest quake in 32 years has wreaked havoc on the lives of Sichuan Province residents, who have been fighting fear and chilly temperatures in makeshift tents while searching for their displaced family members.
A 40-year-old woman hunkered down in a corner of a tent was still trembling in fear, saying, “I still feel the shaking. I can’t get into my house.”
Most shops in the city were closed for fear of aftershocks, except some grocery stores selling living commodities. Dong-A special correspondents visited a gym that reportedly houses the largest number of victims.
A temporary home to 12,000 victims, the gym was packed to capacity with people. Tents were mushrooming outside the gym, swarmed with people searching for their missing family members. In total, 50,000 people were moving in and out of the gym.
Despite police shutdown of the roads a kilometer ahead of the facility, roads moving pass it were almost like parking lots crowded with vehicles and people.
A farmer from a rural prefecture was peeping into tents, holding a board with the names of his three sisters written on it. He lamented, “I can’t find my three sisters.”
A 27-year-old mother, eyes swollen from crying, grabbed every one she bumped into, searching for her husband and 7-year-old son."
Tim Johnson of McClatchy Newspapers reports on how this natural disaster has encouraged the Chinese government to momentarily relax its control over the media:
" BEIJING — Amid a national outpouring of grief over Monday's huge earthquake, China has relaxed its grip — perhaps only briefly — on the Internet and some media outlets.
Chinese witnesses to the devastation in Sichuan province have flooded Web sites with homemade videos, filled chat rooms with commentary and let text messages fly from their mobile phones.
The disaster has provided an opportunity for "citizen journalists" to disseminate tidbits of information at a furious pace rarely seen before, experts said.
China's conventional media, initially lagging behind bloggers and users of instant messaging services, also have found greater freedoms, showing often-distressing images of quake-ruined areas without the sanitizing that censors usually demand.
"This is pretty special in terms of letting a lot of reporting happen," said Andrew Lih, a technology author living in Beijing and former scholar of new media at Columbia University.
The death toll from the earthquake, which registered a calamitous 7.9 magnitude, reached 14,866 people Wednesday. As many as 25,000 others may still be buried under the rubble of devastated towns in rugged Sichuan province.
"You just can't hide it. It's a gigantic event. You've got citizens with cell phones with cameras and video filing stuff," Lih said.
China leads the world for mobile phone and Internet users. Some 574 million Chinese have mobile phones, and 221 million regularly use the Internet, slightly more than in the United States. Also hugely popular are an array of instant-messaging services accessed either by computer or by mobile phone.
Wary of citizen efforts to access sensitive information or conspire against the government, China's one-party state normally employs a vast array of human and electronic means to keep the digital arena sterile, including maintaining barriers to foreign Web sites through what has been dubbed the Great Firewall of China.
But unlike a series of crises earlier this year — such as weeks of snowstorms that paralyzed central China in January and February, or violent unrest among Tibetans in March — the earthquake united the nation in mourning and action. "
This year, more than 50 million new TVs will be purchased. Flat screens, high-definition plasmas and LCDs -- Americans buy more than anyone else.
But have you ever wondered what happens when you throw away an old TV? You put it in the trash or out on the street and then what happens?
You won't believe the answer.
Chances are your old TV will end up on the other side of the world in Africa or Asia. Once there, workers strip out any useful metals and other components and then set the pile on fire to make room for more waste on the next barge. You can't imagine the scene as black smoke full of dangerous chemicals fills the sky and pollutes the water supply.
TVs are often the center of American households -- but on the other side of the world, they're creating an environmental and health crisis that can't be ignored any longer.
Today, Just 12 percent of electronic waste in the U.S. is recycled. Other first-world countries, including all of the European Union, Japan, and Taiwan require manufacturers to collect and recycle their old products, but here, TV manufacturers are not held responsible at all. That needs to change.
Join the Take Back My TV campaign today by sending a letter to the executives of TV manufacturers telling them to take responsibility for their hazardous waste:
Each one of those millions of TVs headed for the garbage contains large quantities of dangerous chemicals. Older cathode ray tube TVs contain between four and eight pounds of lead apiece, and newer flat-panel TVs contain high levels of mercury. When TVs get dumped into landfills, these chemicals seep into the surrounding soil and water supplies. Just 1/70th of a teaspoon of mercury can contaminate a 20-acre lake and make its fish unfit to eat.
The problem is only getting worse. Soon, an FCC-mandated transition to digital TV signals will make millions more TVs obsolete, and Americans will begin discarding them even more quickly.
TV manufacturers have a responsibility to help deal with this waste safely. They earn billions of dollars off these electronics, so they must play a major role in their disposal.
Sony has already committed to the first television take-back program in the United States. That's a major step in the right direction, but the rest of the TV manufacturers have resisted the producer responsibility movement in favor of programs that shift the burden to consumers.
Tell these TV makers to help safely dispose of their products:
LONDON (Reuters) - Interpol on Monday launched an unprecedented worldwide public appeal to track down a man shown sexually abusing children in images posted on the Internet.
The man appears in around 200 photographs featuring abuse of 12 young boys, which investigators believe were taken in Vietnam and Cambodia, possibly in 2002 and 2003.
The pictures had been digitally altered to disguise the man's face with a swirly pattern, but computer specialists at Germany's federal police agency, the BKA, worked with Interpol's human trafficking team to produce identifiable images.
The global police body said it was making the unique public appeal because, despite extensive efforts through its network of 186 member states, the man remained unknown.
Please do not close your eyes to the events in Myanmar. Without internet access, and in a nation that is closed to the outside media, the protesters are in grave danger.
YANGON, Myanmar - Soldiers clubbed and dragged away activists while firing tear gas and warning shots to break up demonstrations Friday before they could grow, and the government cut Internet access, raising fears that a deadly crackdown was set to intensify.
Troops also occupied Buddhist monasteries in a bid to clear the streets of Myanmar's revered monks, who have spearheaded the demonstrations.
The government said 10 people have been killed since the violence began earlier this week, but British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he believed the loss of life in Myanmar was "far greater" than is being reported. Dissident groups have put the number as high as 200, although that number could not be verified.
* * * * *
From Amnesty International:
At least 500 people were reported to have been arrested in a crackdown on anti-government protests in Myanmar by the ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC).
The crackdown escalated on the evening of 25 September in the former capital Yangon, the second-biggest city, Mandalay, and also Meiktila, Pakokku and Mogok. There have been at least nine reported fatalities and Amnesty International has learned that many people have gone into hiding.
Some people were reported to have been arrested in the evening of 24 September, but most were seized during the following 48 hours, as the crackdown by security forces escalated. Among those arrested were hundreds of monks in Yangon.
Others arrested include:
Famous comedian and former prisoner of conscience Zargana
Myint Myint San (f), National League for Democracy (NLD) member
Paik Ko (m), NLD Member of Parliament, Pakokku
Par Par Lay (m), comedian (pictured)
Tin Aung (m), NLD Member of Parliament
Tin Ko (m), NLD youth member in Meiktila
U Win Naing (m), politician
Amnesty International believes these and other detainees are at grave risk of torture or other ill-treatment.
The security forces have reportedly beaten demonstrators with batons, used tear gas on crowds that defy orders to disperse and fired warning shots into the air. Despite the high tension, thousands of people continue to take to the streets in continued anti-government protests.
Amnesty International members across the globe have begun a series of demonstrations outside Myanmar’s embassies and high profile public locations calling for the Myanmar authorities not to respond with violence and to respect the human right to peaceful protest.
Join a demonstration in your town or city: your support is urgently needed. Some of the following demonstrations organised by or with AI include:
Belgium: Saturday 29 September at noon, at "Place De la Liberte"
Canada: Saturday 29 September in Victoria, Regina, Toronto
Czech Republic: Saturday 29 September in the centre of Prague
Germany: Saturday 29 September in Berlin
Hong Kong: Evening of Friday 28 September and Saturday 29 September
Ireland: Saturday 29 September at 2pm in Dublin
Italy: Afternoon of Friday 28 September in Rome; and Saturday in Milan
Japan: Daily in Tokyo
Luxembourg: Afternoon of Friday 28 September
Malaysia: Morning of Friday 28 September
Nepal: Monday 1 October, 2pm, in Kathmandu
Netherlands: Saturday 29 September, Amsterdam
Norway: Friday 28 September in Oslo
Philippines: Daily events
Spain: Friday 28 September in Bilbao; Sunday 30 September in Castelldefels, Madrid, Molins de Rey and Tarragona
Switzerland: Saturday 29 September, at noon in Geneva
Thailand: Morning of Friday 28 September
UK: Sunday 30 September at 11:30am, Trafalgar Square
USA: Monday 1 October, noon in New York
For more information on these and other Amnesty International events around the world, contact your local Amnesty Section.
"I am convinced
that the world is not a mere bog in which men and women trample
themselves and die. Something magnificent is taking place here
amidst the cruelties and tragedies, and the supreme challenge to
intelligence is that of making the noblest and best in our curious
heritage prevail." -- C.A. Beard
