Fidalgo, de CCOO ó Instituto de Empresa
Copio a continuación un artigo sobre o estraño (ou non) cambio de actividade de José María Fidalgo Velilla. Até decembro pasado foi secretario xeral de Comisiones Obreras e agora vai traballar para o Instituto de Empresa:
Del sindicato al empresariado: El presidente de ABC contrata a Fidalgo
El ex secretario general de Comisiones Obreras (CC.OO.) José María Fidalgo dirigirá ‘Negocia’, una nueva unidad del Instituto de Empresa Business School.
Carlos Martínez.
Su nuevo trabajo consistirá en analizar las mejores prácticas de negociación social y los sistemas sociales más equilibrados en el actual contexto de crisis, según anunció el pasado uno de abril la escuela de negocios en un comunicado.
El Instituto de Empresa es una gran empresa privada dedicada a la educación universitaria superior. Como ellos mismos reconocen su objetivo “la formación de la elite empresarial con enfoque global”. A esta institución educativa solo pueden acceder los hijos de las clases más acomodadas, únicos que pueden pagar el precio de los masters que oscila entre los 60 000 y 30 000 euros. Una estrategia sencilla para que el hijo del obrero no vaya a la universidad y que tan bien han interiorizado los promotores del llamado “Proceso de Bolonia”.
El fundador y presidente de Instituto de Empresa, S.L es Diego del Alcázar, que es accionista a su vez de otras empresas como Aguas de Mondariz, Balneario de Mondariz, Publicidad Gisbert, Group Gaceta and Thomil y Ono. En julio de 2007, Diego del Alcázar fue nombrado presidente del Grupo Vocento, cuya “joya de la corona” es el diario ABC, que en estos días está sufriendo un Expediente de Regulación de Empleo por el que se ha despedido a la mitad de su plantilla.
Si ya fue indignante el antecedente de Antonio Gutiérrez que pasó de la misma secretaría a ser diputado del PSOE, su sucesor ha roto todos los esquemas. En caso único en la Historia, Jose María Fidalgo ha pasado de ser Secretario General de un sindicato de raíces comunistas y antifranquistas como CCOO a estar al servicio de uno de los empresarios más influyentes de este país formando y asesorando al empresariado en el arte de la negociación colectiva.
Estos dos casos deberían forzar a una profunda reflexión en el sindicalismo, interesa a todos los trabajadores que sus representantes no estén en manos de quienes tienen un interés contrapuesto a ellos: el capital. Si Fidalgo hubiera defendido con uñas y dientes a la clase trabajadora el empresariado no lo podría ni ver. Si le ofrecen este suculento trabajo es, sin duda, en remuneración a los servicios prestados.
Las actuales limitaciones en la duración de cargos en CCOO sólo sirve para que los profesionales del sindicalismo vayan saltando de un puesto a otro, dedicándose durante sus mandatos a maquinar para obtener un puesto mejor al anterior. No estaría de más, al igual que hacen las grandes empresas con sus ejecutivos, que durante un tiempo después de su cese no pudiesen aceptar empleo con otra empresa de la competencia. De este modo, ningún sindicalista debería poder trabajar para el empresariado hasta que hubiese pasado un tiempo prudencial desde el cese de sus responsabilidades sindicales.
Tampoco estaría de más reformar los estatutos de las organizaciones sindicales que establecen una limitación de los mandatos, fijándose no tanto a la duración de los cargos sino al tiempo en que un sindicalista puede vivir del sueldo del sindicato sin pisar un centro de trabajo. El asesor y ejecutivo de la patronal Jose María Fidalgo es el fruto de un modo de hacer sindicalismo que ha fracasado. Es el momento de buscar alternativas a CCOO y UGT antes de que los trabajadores perdamos más conquistas sociales. Fue muy difícil conquistar los derechos de los trabajadores, pero perderlos está siendo demasiado fácil.
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marcarlos@gmail.com
http://carlosmartinez.info
http://carlosmartinez.info/content/view/24/1/
Public outrage: Police officers above the law in France (AI report)
Amnistía Internacional publicou hai uns días un informe sobre a impunidade dos abusos cometidos por policías en Francia. Leva por título “Public outrage: Police officers above the law in France” e ten tamén versión en francés.
Este informe pode considerarse unha actualización doutro publicado hai catro anos (5 – IV – 2005), titulado “France: The search for justice. The effective impunity of law enforcement officers in cases of shootings, deaths in custody or torture and ill-treatment” e disponible ademais en francés, español e árabe.
AI news: US munitions delivered to Israel
Amnesty International (AI) news, 2 April 2009:
US munitions delivered to Israel
A massive consignment of US munitions was delivered to Israel in recent weeks, according to information revealed by Amnesty International. The organization received information that the Wehr Elbe, a German cargo ship, chartered and controlled by US Military Sealift Command, docked and unloaded its cargo of reportedly over 300 containers at the Israeli port of Ashdod, just 40km north of Gaza by road on 22 March.
The German ship left the USA for Israel on 20 December, one week before the start of Israeli attacks on Gaza. It was carrying 989 containers of munitions, each of them 20 feet long with a total estimated net weight of 14,000 tons.
Asked about the Wehr Elbe, a Pentagon spokesperson confirmed to Amnesty International that “the unloading of the entire US munitions shipment was successfully completed at Ashdod [Israel] on 22 March”. The spokesperson said that the shipment was destined for a US pre-positioned ammunition stockpile in Israel. Under a US-Israel agreement, munitions from this stockpile may be transferred for Israeli use if necessary.
Some of the white phosphorus artillery shells that Israeli forces fired into densely populated residential areas in Gaza last January, killing and injuring scores of Palestinian civilians, were from US-made stockpiles – as clearly indicated by the marking (M825 A1). Other white phosphorus artillery shells were also US-made, as were the overwhelming majority of the other munitions used by Israeli forces to commit grave violations of international law in the recent three-week conflict in Gaza.
Another US official told Amnesty International that the US authorities are reviewing Israel’s use of US weapons during the Gaza conflict to see if Israel complied with US law, but no conclusion has yet been reached.
In the meantime, Palestinian civilians continue to die of wounds sustained in Israeli attacks last January. Two days ago Ghada Abu Halima, who had sustained deep burns from a white phosphorus attack on 4 January, died of her wounds. The attack had killed her husband’s father and four young siblings, including a one-year-old girl, and had severely injured her, her mother-in-law and several other children in the family.
Amnesty International said that the delivery should have been stopped and that failure to do so throws into question whether President Obama will act to prevent US weapons from fuelling conflicts and contributing to attacks against civilians that may amount to war crimes, as were perpetrated in Gaza.
“Legally and morally, this US arms shipment should have been halted by the Obama administration given the extent of the evidence showing how military equipment and munitions of this kind were recently used by the Israeli forces to commit war crimes,” said Brian Wood. “Arms supplies in these circumstances are contrary to provisions in US law.
“There is a great risk that the new munitions may be used by the Israeli military to commit further violations of international law, like the ones committed during the war in Gaza. We are urging all governments to impose an immediate and comprehensive suspension of arms to Israel, and to all Palestinian armed groups until there is no longer a substantial risk of serious human rights violations.”
The US was by far the largest supplier of weapons to Israel between 2004 and 2008. The US government is also due to provide $30 billion in military aid to Israel.
According to one US official, President Obama has no plans to cut the billions of dollars in military aid promised to Israel under a new 10-year contract agreed in 2007 by the Bush administration. This new contract is a 25 per cent increase compared to the last contract agreed by the previous US administration.
Amnesty International has reported in detail on suspected war crimes committed by the IDF and by Palestinian armed groups in Gaza. On 15 January, Amnesty International called on all governments to immediately suspend arms transfers to all parties to the Gaza conflict to prevent further violations being committed using munitions and other military equipment.
Read More
Arms embargo vital as Gaza civilian toll mounts (AI news, 15 January 2009)
Amnesty International blog from the region (January/February 2009)
Crisis in Gaza
USA: Federal judge rules that 3 Bagram detainees can challenge detention in US court
Amnesty International (AI) press release, 3 April 2009:
USA: Federal judge rules that three Bagram detainees can challenge their detention in US court
On 2 April 2009, a US federal judge ruled that three detainees held in the US airbase in Bagram in Afghanistan can challenge the lawfulness of their detention in US District Court. The ruling is narrow and leaves numerous questions open – not least what will happen to the majority of the more than 500 detainees currently held in indefinite detention in Bagram – but it is nonetheless a positive first step towards application of the rule of law to the Bagram detention facility. The new administration – which has until now adopted its predecessor’s position on the Bagram detentions – has not yet said whether it will appeal the ruling.
Pending before Judge John Bates on the US District Court for the District of Columbia are habeas corpus petitions filed on behalf of four detainees who have been held in US custody without charge or trial in Bagram for more than six years: Haji Wazir, an Afghan national; Redha al-Najar, a Tunisian national; and Yemeni nationals Fadi al Maqaleh and Amin al Bakri. Their petitions seek to challenge the lawfulness of their detention in light of the US Supreme Court’s June 2008 ruling in Boumediene v. Bush that detainees held in US custody in the US Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba have this right. The US government had sought to have the petitions of the Bagram detainees dismissed on the grounds that the District Court did not have jurisdiction to consider them.
In its Boumediene ruling, the Supreme Court had said that “the costs of delay can no longer be borne by those who are held in custody”, and that the detainees were entitled to a “prompt” habeas corpus hearing. This observation, Judge Bates, said “is equally powerful here”. He suggested that the Supreme Court had clearly been at least partially motivated “by the prospect of indefinite Executive detention without judicial oversight”. Applying the Boumediene ruling to these Bagram detentions, Judge Bates concluded that “detainees who are not Afghan citizens, who were not captured in Afghanistan, and who have been held for an unreasonable amount of time – here, over six years – without adequate process may invoke… the privilege of habeas corpus”. Judge Bates found that three of the four detainees were in that category – Redha al-Najar, Fadi al Maqaleh and Amin al Bakri. He denied the government’s motion to dismiss the habeas corpus petitions in their cases. In the case of Afghan national Haji Wazir, he delayed his decision, instead asking for further briefing from the parties by 7 May 2009.
In his 53-page opinion, Judge Bates concluded that the four men were “virtually identical” to the Guantánamo detainees considered by the US Supreme Court in its Boumediene ruling. Firstly, they are non-US nationals “apprehended in foreign lands far from the United States and brought to yet another country for detention”. According to the habeas corpus petitions, Haji Wazir was taken into custody in Dubai, United Arab Emirates in 2002, before being transferred to Bagram via Qatar. Amin al Bakri was seized in Thailand, abducted on 30 December 2002 as he was on the way to Bangkok airport to fly home after a short business trip in Thailand. Redha al-Najar was arrested at his home in Karachi in Pakistan in or around May 2002. Fadi al Maqaleh’s habeas corpus petition alleges that he was not in Afghanistan at the time he was taken into custody in or around 2003, but the Bagram authorities have asserted that he was detained in Afghanistan (for the purposes of his decision, Judge Bates assumed the detainees’ allegations of where they were captured to be true).
Secondly, Judge Bates noted, the four detainees, like their Guantánamo counterparts, had been labelled as “enemy combatants”. In Guantánamo, this status was subjected to review by the Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT). Judge Bates noted that in Bagram, such review was conducted by the Unlawful Enemy Combatant Review Board (UECRB), a process he said was “plainly less sophisticated and more error-prone” than even the flawed CSRT scheme. Judge Bates said that he was not determining how extensive a process would need to be to preclude these Bagram detainees from having the right to habeas corpus under the US Constitution – “it suffices to recognize that the UECRB process at Bagram falls well short of what the Supreme Court found inadequate at Guantánamo”.
Thirdly, according to Judge Bates, the “objective degree of control” that the USA operates over the Bagram air base is “very high” and “not appreciably different” to that operated by the USA at Guantánamo. Amnesty International particularly welcomes the judge’s finding on this question of the USA’s effective control over the detainees. As the organization has repeatedly pointed out, the notion that a government can deny rights to those in places under its jurisdiction or effective control, that it would guarantee to those on its sovereign territory, would allow a government unilaterally to strip individuals of the human rights and protections due them under international law. Article 2.1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) provides that the scope of this treaty’s application should extend to “all individuals within its territory and subject to its jurisdiction”. The International Court of Justice has found that this provision “did not intend to allow States to escape from their obligations when they exercise jurisdiction outside their national territory.” The UN Human Rights Committee, overseeing implementation of the ICCPR, has similarly said that “a State party must respect and ensure the rights laid down in the Covenant to anyone within the power or effective control of that State Party.”
Finally, Judge Bates said that while the practical difficulties of providing habeas corpus in these cases might be greater than in the case of the Guantánamo detainees – because Bagram “is located in an active theater of war” – such obstacles were not as great as the government claimed and “certainly are not insurmountable”. He said that technological advances – such as “real-time video-conferencing” – could provide “a workable substitute” for a detainee’s in-court appearance.
Indeed, Judge Bates pointed out that in these cases any such practical barriers “are largely of the Executive’s choosing” given that all four detainees claimed to have been captured outside of Afghanistan, and “the only reason” they were in “an active theater of war” is because the US government “brought them there”. Judge Bates added:
“It is one thing to detain those captured on the surrounding battlefield at a place like Bagram, which [the government] correctly maintain[s] is in a theater of war. It is quite another thing to apprehend people in foreign countries – far from any Afghan battlefield – and then bring them to a theater of war, where the Constitution arguably may not reach. Such rendition resurrects the same specter of limitless Executive power the Supreme Court sought to guard against in Boumediene– the concern that the Executive could move detainees physically beyond the reach of the Constitution and detain them indefinitely” (emphasis in original).
However, Judge Bates then turned to an analysis that effectively focused on questions of US-Afghan relations rather than the human rights of individuals held under the exclusive control of the USA. This focus led to the prospect of Haji Wazir and other Afghan nationals in US custody in Bagram being left without effective access to any court for the foreseeable future. Judge Bates noted that in its Boumediene ruling, the Supreme Court had raised the possibility that granting habeas corpus jurisdiction over cases of detainees held on the sovereign territory of another country could cause “friction with the host government”. In the Guantánamo cases, however, the Supreme Court found that this was not an issue, given that “no Cuban court has jurisdiction over American military personnel at Guantanamo or the enemy combatants detained there… [T]he United States is, for all practical purposes, answerable to no other sovereign for its acts on the base.”
Judge Bates concluded that in relation to Bagram, however, “there is a real possibility of friction with the Afghan government with respect to Afghan detainees”. He continued:
“If a US court were to order the release of an Afghan detainee, the prime destination for such release would be Afghanistan – the country of that detainee’s citizenship and detention. Such unilateral releases of Bagram detainees by the United States could easily upset the delicate diplomatic balance the United States has struck with the host government… [F]or detainees who are Afghan citizens, the possibility of friction with the host country cannot be discounted and constitutes a significant practical obstacle to habeas review.”
Applying this thinking, Judge Bates concluded that in the case of Haji Wazir, his Afghan nationality – and the consequent “possibility of friction with Afghanistan” – precluded the detainee from invoking a constitutional right to challenge the lawfulness of his detention in a habeas corpus petition in US court. Judge Bates said that he was “not persuaded” by other arguments that had been put forward by lawyers for the detainees that there was any other route for Haji Wazir to obtain habeas corpus review in the US courts. However, he delayed his ruling on Haji Wazir’s case until he had heard further arguments on separate questions of US law from the parties.
As of March 2009, there were approximately 550 detainees held in Bagram, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the only international organization with access to detainees in Bagram. According to the ICRC, “most of the detainees are Afghans captured by the US-led coalition in southern and eastern Afghanistan.” Given the continuing denial to Bagram detainees of any effective access to Afghan courts (courts which in any event fall well short of international standards for independence, objectivity and fairness), Judge Bates’s ruling would appear to leave those Afghan nationals whom the US military authorities decide to continue to hold, with no place to go to challenge their detention.
To deprive Afghan nationals of their right to judicial review and remedy in this way would amount to discrimination under international law. Article 2.1 of the ICCPR requires the state party “to respect and to ensure to all individuals within its territory and subject to its jurisdiction the rights recognized in the present Covenant, without distinction of any kind” including on the basis of national origin. Two of the rights recognized in the ICCPR are the right of anyone deprived of their liberty to be able to challenge the lawfulness of their detention in a court and the right to an effective remedy for violations of rights under the treaty. The UN Human Rights Committee has underlined that these two key rights are among those which cannot be diminished even in times of public emergency that threatens the life of the nation.
Judge Bates emphasized that his decision was “narrowly drawn” to the cases of the four detainees before him, part of a “limited subset” of the wider Bagram detainee population. The US government must now broaden the protections it provides for all the Bagram detainees. In the absence of the possibility in Afghanistan for detainees to challenge the lawfulness of their detention in an independent and impartial court, the USA must provide that opportunity in the US courts. All detainees must have access to legal counsel, and to be able to obtain an effective remedy for any human rights violations committed against them in detention.
For further information, see:
USA: Out of sight, out of mind, out of court? The right of Bagram detainees to judicial review (AI report, 18 February 2009)
USA: Urgent need for transparency on Bagram detentions (AI report, 6 March 2009)
USA: Administration opts for secrecy on Bagram detainee details (AI press release, 12 March 2009)
HRW report on Somali refugees in Kenya
Human Rights Watch publicou esta semana un informe sobre as críticas condicións que sofren en Kenya os refuxiados procedentes de Somalia. O informe leva por título “From Horror to Hopelessness: Kenya’s Forgotten Somali Refugee Crisis”. Copio un extracto da súa introducción:
Kenya is in the midst of a rapidly escalating refugee crisis. In 2008 alone, almost 60,000 Somali asylum seekers -165 every day- crossed Kenya’s officially closed border with Somalia to escape increasingly violent conflict in Somalia and to seek shelter in three heavily overcrowded and chronically under-funded refugee camps near Dadaab town in Kenya’s arid and poverty-stricken North Eastern Province. The camps now shelter over 260,000 refugees, making them the world’s largest refugee settlement.
The continuous cross-border movement gives the impression that the closing of the border by the Kenyan government in January 2007 has not affected Somali asylum seekers’ ability to seek refuge in Kenya. In reality, however, it has led to the Kenyan police forcibly returning asylum seekers and refugees to Somalia in violation of Kenya’s fundamental obligations under international and Kenyan refugee law, and to serious abuses of Somali asylum seekers and refugees. Emboldened by the power over refugees that the border closure has given them, Kenyan police detain the new arrivals, seek bribes -sometimes using threats and violence including sexual violence- and deport back to Somalia those unable to pay. By forcing the closure of a UNHCR-run registration center close to the border, the Kenyan authorities have also seriously aggravated the humanitarian assistance needs among Somalis arriving in the three camps near Dadaab town.
The influx of tens of thousands of new arrivals into the already severely overcrowded and under-resourced camps has exacerbated shortages of shelter, water, food, and healthcare for all refugees-new and old. An unknown further number of Somalis, possibly in the tens of thousands, have travelled directly to Nairobi where most disappear into the city, receiving no support and remaining invisible to the outside world.
Kenya officially closed its border with Somalia days after the Ethiopian military intervened to oust the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) from south-central Somalia. Apparently aimed at preventing the entry of fleeing supporters of the UIC into Kenya, the border closure has had an extremely negative impact on Somali civilians trying to flee the violence.
The border closure has allowed Kenyan police to forcibly deport Somali asylum seekers and refugees in flagrant violation of international law and has caused Kenyan political authorities to turn a blind eye to police corruption and abuses in the border areas and the camps. The authorities have also forced the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to close its refugee transit center near the border, and for well over a year Kenyan authorities have failed to respond to calls for new land to decongest the camps. To their credit, however, in an unspoken compromise, the Kenyan authorities allowed UNHCR to register almost 80,000 Somali refugees in the camps in 2007 and 2008, and, in February 2009, granted a limited amount of land to help begin decongesting the camps.
Under its Immigration law, Kenya has the right to regulate the presence of non-nationals in its territory and may, therefore, prevent certain people from entering or remaining in Kenya, including those deemed a threat to its national interests. However, international and Kenyan law obliges Kenya to allow all people claiming to be refugees (“asylum seekers”) access to Kenyan territory to seek asylum with the Kenyan authorities or with UNHCR, and every asylum seeker has a right to have his or her case considered.
Since the border closure, the Kenyan authorities have deported hundreds, possibly thousands, of Somali refugees and asylum seekers, thereby violating the most fundamental part of refugee law, the right not to be refouled -forcible return to a place where a person faces a threat to life or freedom on account of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion. Under its obligations in the 1969 OAU Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of the Refugee Problems in Africa (1969 OAU Convention), Kenya is also bound not to send refugees or asylum seekers back to situations of generalized violence, such as in Somalia.
The Dadaab refugee camps were originally designed for 90,000 refugees, but by the end of February 2009 held 255,000, a 48 percent increase since January 2008. Because of the lack of new land to expand the camps, UNHCR declared the camps full in late August 2008. Between then and the end of February 2009, just over 35,000 new arrivals received no shelter and have been forced to sleep under open skies in makeshift shelters that provide little protection from the harsh weather, or in cramped confines with relatives or strangers who were already living in conditions well below minimum humanitarian standards. By the end of 2009, the camps are likely to hold at least 300,000 refugees and UNHCR estimates it could be as many as 360,000. [...]
