Social Justice E-Zine #35
Kim or Ray Goforth
goforth86 at home.com
Sat Jan 29 22:14:01 PST 2000
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"A woman's place is in her union." - Coalition of Labor Union Women Slogan
SOCIAL JUSTICE #35
January 31, 2000
Ray Goforth
Kim Goforth
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IN THIS ISSUE:
1) CAN WE TAKE OPEN MARKETS FOR GRANTED?
2) RUSSIAN SOLDIERS RAPING CHECHEN CIVILIANS SAYS HUMAN
RIGHTS WATCH
3) UK AND US SHAREHOLDERS FORCE VOTE ON BP AMOCO ARCTIC
PLANS
4) REBUILDING THE FREE PRESS IN EAST TIMOR
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Welcome to the latest issue of SOCIAL JUSTICE E-ZINE. The
name Social Justice encompasses the struggles of people
everywhere who work for gender equality, democratic government,
economic opportunity, intellectual freedom, environmental
protection, and human rights.
Social Justice is an electronic magazine (e-zine) designed for
free distribution through the internet. SJ now reaches
approximately 10,000 e-mail recipients in eight dozen
countries. Stories from SJ are then broadcast on radio stations
throughout the English speaking world. Feel free to make copies
and share with friends (or enemies). Think of this as a regular
magazine without the recycling. If there's nothing you want to
read in this issue, just hit delete.
Those wishing to be added to the subscription list (or
conversely, those who want off the list) should write to us at:
goforth86 at home.com
http://members.tripod.com/~goforth/socialjustice.html
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CAN WE TAKE OPEN MARKETS FOR GRANTED?
Remarks by John J. Sweeney
World Economic Forum- Davos, Switerland
January 28, 2000
Thank you, Chairman Barnevik. I am delighted to join the distinguished
members of this panel to express the views of working families in the United
States including 40 million people who live in union households about the
future of open markets and free trade.
Surely, whatever our disagreements, we can all agree that neither the existence
of open markets nor their value can or should be taken for granted. The rules
must be defined; the benefits must be demonstrated.
We must ask ourselves: what is the fundamental test of globalization?
It's not whether markets are more open or less open. That mistakes the means
for the end. The end is human development. The fundamental question is
whether globalization is helping to lift the poor from poverty; whether it is
empowering the many, not just the few; whether its blessings are shared widely;
whether it works for working people.
The global market that has been forged in the last decades is now being called to
account. The recent global financial crisis was an economic five-alarm fire.
Seattle provided a political wake-up call. Both suggest the current course cannot
be taken for granted, and should not be.
Yes, globalization is creating vast new wealth, but financial crises are growing
more frequent and severe, and inequality is rising, as the UN reports, both
among and within nations. This means that the seeds for rejection of
globalization are in every political system, in developed nations as well as
developing nations.
Freedom, as Nobel prize-winner Amartya Sen teaches us, is both the object and
the means of development. Yet more direct private investment goes to
developing nations that are not democratic than to those that are even when
China is not counted in the calculation.
That is why Seattle is so important. The protests in the streets by workers,
environmentalists, farmers, and students from across the world were mirrored by
the anger inside the hall from developing country delegates who felt just as
locked out as the demonstrators. As Joseph Stiglitz reminds us, if we care about
equitable, sustainable development, then the impact on people not only incomes,
but the environment, health, food safety and democratic participation as well as
urgent issues such as debt forgiveness, can no longer simply be left to chance.
Understand the message of Seattle. It wasn't an isolationist rejection of open
markets; it was a call for new global rules. Workers North and South marched
together. And the many different voices made one clear statement: the current
course cannot be sustained; fundamental reform is needed.
Clearly, we have to do better. If we do not if the global system continues to
generate growing inequality, environmental destruction and a race to the bottom
for working people then I can assure you, it will generate an increasingly
volatile reaction that will make Seattle look tame.
All of us need to think anew. Leaders of the global institutions face a legitimacy
crisis that cannot be solved by better public relations. Their institutions will
become more accountable, or more irrelevant.
Leaders of developing nations face a growing inequality of income and hope.
They should not be forced into one economic strait-jacket. For they will either
find ways to empower workers and protect the environment, or face growing
popular resistance.
Global non-governmental organizations raise fundamental concerns. Now it is
important for the NGOs to go from opposing what is, to proposing what can be.
They must not assume that the price of development requires cashing in basic
human rights.
Heads of global corporations and banks must not be misled by their own
rhetoric. They will be held accountable for how they do business by consumers,
by workers, by governments. Leaders of the corporate community should join
the effort to build enforceable laws that put limits on cut-throat competition. It is
in the self-interest of multinational corporations and the governments that
regulate them to have rules that are agreed upon by all.
Labor leaders across the world also must change to meet the new challenges. At
the AFL-CIO, we know that we have to deepen our own growing
internationalism, and develop new sophistication in bargaining and organizing
across national lines.
We also recognize that we must join our voices with those in developing
countries calling for high-road development strategies. We must work to ensure
that developing countries are no longer crippled by unpayable debt burdens, and
that they have the resources they need to engage in trade negotiations on an
equal footing as well as the technical support to implement and enforce labor
and environmental standards.
Seattle marked a crossroads. Now, joined by millions of others across the world,
we pledge not to rest, but to continue to press for core workers' rights that are
the basis of economic freedom and equitable development.
In this panel, in this conference, I realize I raise a minority voice. But these
views are shared by a broad and growing majority both in the United States,
where voters overwhelmingly believe that workers' rights and environmental
protections should be enforced in the global economy, and across the world, by
working people whose voices too often go unheard in meeting halls such as this
one.
Here, let us all agree on one thing: that business as usual cannot be the order of
the day. This global economy will either be reformed or face ever greater
resistance.
(John L. Sweeney is the President of the AFL-CIO, a 13 million member trade
union federation in the United States.)
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RUSSIAN SOLDIERS RAPING CHECHEN CIVILIANS
SAYS HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
(Nazran, January 20, 2000)--Russian soldiers have been raping Chechen women
in areas of Russian-controlled Chechnya, Human Rights Watch charged today.
A team of Human Rights Watch investigators in Ingushetia has spoken to a
number of Chechen refugees who saw the bodies of victims, or had
conversations with women who had been raped.
"Rape is a war crime, and these allegations about rape in Chechnya are very
serious," said Regan Ralph, executive director of the Women's Rights Division
of Human Rights Watch. She stressed that according to international law, any
single rape could be a war crime.
According to "Malika" (not her real name), on December 19, 1999, Russian
soldiers raped and killed her neighbor, twenty-three-year-old "Fira" (not her real
name). They were both residents of the Chechen town of Shali. Malika
described Fira as "very beautiful," and five or six months pregnant. She said the
soldiers also killed Fira's mother-in- law, "Rozet" (not her real name),
aged about sixty, during the same incident.
According to Malika, she and other neighbors heard screams, cries, and
gunshots coming from the house before discovering the bodies. Human Rights
Watch has the family names of the victims and witnesses, but is withholding
them on Malika's request.
Malika participated in the washing of the bodies before burial (a Muslim rite),
and described the condition of the pregnant Fira:
On her breasts, there were dark blue bruises. There was a strangely square bruise
on her shoulder. Near her liver, there were also dark bruises. On her neck, there
were teeth marks, and her lips also had teeth marks, like someone had bitten her.
She had a little [bullet] hole on the right side of her head, and a big wound on
the left side of her head.
The Chechen villagers who buried Fira's body were not able to conduct a
forensic examination of the victim, but the location and nature of her wounds
strongly suggested an act of sexual violence.
Rozet, the mother-in-law, had gunshot wounds in her chest.
Human Rights Watch has received similar allegations of rape from the village of
Alkhan-Yurt, which was the scene of summary executions, looting, and other
serious abuses by Russian soldiers in mid-December (See, Human Rights Watch
letter to Prime Minister Putin, December 28, 1999). "Zeinap" (not her real
name), a thirty-two-year-old woman from Alkhan-Yurt, provided Human Rights
Watch with the names of two women who had told her that they were
raped by Russian soldiers in early December. One of the women was
twenty-five and married, while the other was an unmarried twenty-year-old
woman whom Zeinap knew well. According to Zeinap, relatives were planning
to send the younger woman to Kazakhstan after the rape for treatment.
Zeinap said that soldiers were frequently drunk and asked the villagers for
vodka and young women, saying, "We have not been with a woman for a long
time, we need a woman." She said that it is possible that more cases of rape
occurred but that "even if it's true, people will not speak about it."
A second woman from Alkhan-Yurt interviewed independently by Human
Rights Watch provided a similar account of cases of rape in Alkhan-Yurt.
"Zaman" (not her real name), aged fifty-five, believed that five or six women
had been raped, "including one old woman like me. At night at 2:00 or 3:00
a.m., the soldiers came into the cellar. Some soldiers would stand guard,
aiming their guns at [the people in the cellar] while the others were raping." She
said that many people refused to discuss the issue of rape: "A lot of women were
raped, but our people won't talk about it--these women have to marry."
Zaman broke out in tears as she described the extreme precautions she and her
neighbors had to take to protect their young daughters from rape:
There were five young women with us in the cellar: my three daughters aged
twenty-six, twenty, and twelve, and our neighbor's girls, aged eighteen and
nineteen. We made a pit outside in the yard near the stables. We put a pipe [for
air] in the pit, covered it with earth, and the five girls were staying in that pit.
The soldiers used to come by and say, "Where are the young girls, we
need three girls for each soldier." So we kept the girls in the pit.
The girls were kept there for several days. A third witness from Alkhan-Yurt,
forty-year-old "Sultan" (not his real name), also told Human Rights Watch about
a case of rape: "Seven contract soldiers [non-officers who serve in the military
on a contractual basis] raped a woman in our village. It is a savagery. Her family
lives near the cemetery; there were few people left in that part of the village.
They [the soldiers] pulled her husband out in the street, and then raped her. The
woman is not young, she is forty-two or forty-three. I know the woman's name,
but it is against our traditions to name her."
Reports of rape have emerged despite the strong taboo in Chechen culture
against revealing instances of sexual assault. Chechnya's Muslim culture and
national traditions strictly regulate relations between men and women, and
inappropriate behavior is subject to severe and often violent sanctions.
Unmarried women who have been raped are unlikely to be able to get married,
and married women who are raped are likely to be divorced by their husbands.
These factors make it difficult to document cases or rape and sexual abuse in
Chechnya, and make it likely that rapes in Chechnya are under-reported.
"Women who are raped suffer severe consequences within Chechen culture, in
addition to the mental and physical trauma of the rape experience itself," said
Ms. Ralph. "The very fact that Chechens are talking about cases of rape with
outsiders shows how concerned they are about these abuses."
Rape is considered a war crime under Protocol II additional to the Geneva
Conventions, which prohibits in its Article 4 (Fundamental Guarantees), "at any
time and any place whatsoever ...outrages upon personal dignity, in particular
humiliating and degrading treatment, rape, enforced prostitution and any form of
indecent assault." In recent years, The Ad-Hoc International Criminal Tribunals
established in the aftermath of the wars in Rwanda (ICTR) and the Former
Yugoslavia (ICTY) have indicted and convicted several persons for rape as a
war crime.
For more information on sexual violence as a war crime, see:
http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/kosovo98/seviolence.shtml
For more Human Rights Watch coverage of Chechnya, visit
http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/russia/chechnya. To receive Human Rights
Watch Chechnya coverage via email, send a blank message to:
hrwchechnya-subscribe at igc.topica.com
For Further Information:
In Nazran, Peter Bouckaert +7 901 497 9071 or +7 87322 61339
In New York, Rachel Denber +1 212 216 1266
In Brussels, Lotte Leicht +32 2 732 2009
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UK AND US SHAREHOLDERS FORCE VOTE ON BP AMOCO ARCTIC
PLANS - Shareholders to choose between arctic oil or solar factory
A hundred shareholders holding over 120,000 shares today (26/1/00) forced BP
Amoco's Arctic exploration plans onto the company's annual general meeting
agenda by submitting a formal resolution opposing BP's controversial 'Northstar'
project.
Investors in BP Amoco will now have the chance to vote on whether the
high-risk rig and sub-sea pipeline project in the Arctic Ocean should go ahead.
The move will also give BP Amoco's 800,000 shareholders a chance to prevent
the company from lobbying for the opening of the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge, the only part of America's Arctic completely off-limits to oil
exploration.
The resolution submitted by British and American investors also asks BP
Amoco to invest capital freed up from arctic projects in expanded solar
manufacturing capacity. The hundred shareholders have been gathered together
by Greenpeace, the US socially responsible investor Trillium Management
Corporation and US Public Interest Group PIRG.
Simon Billenness, senior analyst with Trillium Asset Management Corporation
said:
"As US investors we support BP Amoco's aim to play a leading role in
supplying the world's energy needs without damaging the environment.
Unfortunately we have yet to see any sign of BP Amoco actually acting on this
green vision. With this resolution, shareholders in the US and for the first time
in Europe have a chance to put policy into practice. They can choose between
funding dirty arctic oil or clean and profitable solar power."
BP Amoco is forging ahead with Northstar, which will use risky and untested
technology to transport oil ashore in pipes buried beneath the seabed. The US
Army Corps of Engineers have said that there is an up to one in four chance of a
major spill during Northstar's lifetime. Oil spills would harm polar bears,
endangered bowhead whales and seals that migrate through the area.
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is an important polar bear breeding ground
as well as home to indigenous groups such as the Gwich'in people. BP Amoco
currently finances 'Arctic Power', a group set up solely to lobby US Congress to
open up the wildlife refuge for oil and gas drilling.
Concerned shareholders submitting the resolution are asking BP Amoco to
switch investment to solar and make its vision of being a green energy company
a reality. BP has a solar subsidiary, Solarex, yet ironically the company is not
making profits from solar because of its lack of ambition for solar business.
Solar is too expensive to generate large-scale consumer demand because the
level of solar panel production is too low. However a recent report by financial
analysts KPMG, showed that panel prices would come crashing down if just one
large solar factory was built. This factory would cost slightly less than Northstar.
Despite this market opportunity, 99.95% of BP Amoco's investments are in
fossil fuels - which cause devastating climate change.
BP Amoco's CEO John Browne has made widely publicised statements
supporting action on climate change - while encouraging massive oil expansion
in the Arctic. The Western Arctic is on the frontline of climate change, warming
three to five times faster than the Earth as a whole, resulting in major problems
like a reduction in sea ice, which is threatening Arctic species such as the polar
bear and walrus who feed on the ice.
Greenpeace campaigner Stephanie Tunmore said:
"The Arctic already undergoing massive changes due to global climate change.
Polar bear populations are already suffering. Yet BP Amoco is investing US $5
billion on arctic oil expansion. This is entirely incompatible with their vision of
being environmentally responsible."
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:
- Stephanie Tunmore on 0171 865 211
- Greenpeace press office on 0171 865 8255/6/7/8
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REBUILDING THE FREE PRESS IN EAST TIMOR
The World Association of Newspapers and UNESCO are launching
a new initiative to help rebuild the newspaper industry in
war-torn East Timor.
A mission of technical experts will leave on Sunday (30 January)
for East Timor to assess the needs of the local press for printing
facilities and a distribution network.
"Establishing a strong, free press is a vital and urgent priority in
the process of building a new democracy on the island," said
Timothy Balding, Director General of WAN.
Koichiro Matsuura, the Director General of UNESCO, said: "An
independent press in Timor is an essential factor for the
development of democracy. The project, which we have
entrusted to the World Association of Newspapers, is an example
of a partnership that the United Nations system, in particular
UNESCO, should continue to promote in the future with
professional media organizations."
The WAN/UNESCO mission, supported by advice from the Pacific
Area Newspaper Publishers Association, will prepare funding
proposals for the international community, which has committed
itself to rebuilding East Timor, devastated in the recent conflict.
The mission team consists of John Cox, of Sydney, Australia, a
newspaper production consultant and former Chief Production
Manager for John Fairfax Ltd.; Lloyd Donaldson, a New Zealander
based in St. Petersburg, Russia and Director of Rusmedia
Consultants; and Carlos Arnaldo, Chief of Media Development for
UNESCO.
The team will be in East Timor from 1 to 3 February and will work
with UNTAET, the United Nations administration in East Timor.
The initiative follows an ongoing WAN/UNESCO project to help
the independent press in Kosovo and in Serbia and Macedonia.
That project aims to build a private distribution network for
independent newspapers in Kosovo and Macedonia; to provide
new private printing facilities for independent publications in
Serbia; and to extend the existing independent distribution
network in Serbia and Montenegro.
The Paris-based WAN, the global organisation for the newspaper
industry, defends and promotes press freedom world-wide. It
represents 17,000 newspapers; its membership includes 63
national newspaper associations, individual newspaper executives
in 93 countries, 17 news agencies and seven regional and
world-wide press groups.
More Information
For further information, contact Larry Kilman, Director of
Communications at WAN, 25, rue d'Astorg, 75008 Paris, France,
tel: +33 1 47 42 85 00, fax: +33 1 47 42 49 48, email:
lkilman at wan.asso.fr, Internet: http://www.wan-press.org
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For those who have inquired: Kim and Ray Goforth hold
undergraduate degrees in political-economy from The Evergreen State
College and law degrees (juris doctor) from the University of Washington.
Ray works for a labor union and Kim advocates for victims of domestic
violence. Ray's essays are frequently printed in publications around the
world and he makes the occasional radio and television appearance. Kim
and Ray are active in a wide variety of progressive causes and live a happy
life in Seattle, Washington USA.
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