Somalia: Abuses by al-Shabaab, the TFG and AMISOM (HRW report)

Human Rights Watch (HRW) publicou esta semana un informe dunhas 60 páxinas sobre Somalia. Neste país, o Goberno so controla unha parte da capital, a pesar do apoio de aliados como os Estados Unidos, a Unión Africana e a Unión Europea (incluída España). Os civís sofren as consecuencias desta guerra que apenas sae nos mass media, desprazados ou recrutados á forza, e privados dos seus medios de subsistencia…

O informe leva por título “Harsh War, Harsh Peace: Abuses by al-Shabaab, the Transitional Federal Government, and AMISOM in Somalia”. Copio un extracto da súa introducción (a negrita é miña):

[...] International actors continue to play a direct —and often counter-productive— role in Somalia. Almost all key foreign actors including the African Union, United States, and European Union have adopted a policy of strong backing for the TFG [Transitional Federal Government] that includes training and arming its fighters. Neighboring Kenya has under false pretenses recruited Somali youths from refugee camps to be fighters, contravening humanitarian principles and returning them to the very chaos they fled. Eritrea, in an effort to undermine the regional interests of its political foe Ethiopia, has supported al-Shabaab and other Somali opposition groups.

Governments supporting the TFG contend that it represents a real chance at peace and good governance for Somalia, while al-Shabaab is the potential leading edge of international terrorism in the region. Many analysts find this policy framework simplistic. But whatever its analytic merits, the policy has failed to achieve its goals. The TFG remains a weak faction confined to a small part of the capital that is under relentless military assault; it would almost certainly collapse without AMISOM’s backing. Somalia’s people continue to suffer pervasive human rights abuses and indiscriminate attacks and al-Shabaab has grown more powerful and radicalized despite increasing international pressure.

Meanwhile, one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises grows more catastrophic by the day. About 1.5 million Somalis are displaced from their homes and half the population is in urgent need of humanitarian aid. More than half-a-million people have sought shelter in other countries as refugees. And as of this writing the UN World Food Programme (WFP) had to suspend food aid to a huge swath of southern Somalia, citing threats, attacks, and unreasonable demands by al-Shabaab and other armed groups. A recent UN report found that an enormous proportion of the food aid WFP delivers to Somalia is diverted by powerful local contractors and armed groups.

There is no easy solution to the complex and deeply entrenched crisis that is tearing Somalia apart. But the UN, other intergovernmental bodies, and influential governments should first reverse the policies that are contributing to rampant abuses. The US government should stop sending mortars and mortar shells to the TFG in Mogadishu, as it had in 2009, so long as the weapons are used without regard to the laws of war, destroying homes and shattering families. UN institutions and key regional and western powers including the African Union should demand that AMISOM and TFG forces also abide by the laws of war instead of turning a blind eye to their allies’ abuses on the ground.

Al-Shabaab and other armed opposition groups should stop committing abuses such as firing mortars indiscriminately and from densely populated areas, using civilians as human shields, and recruiting child soldiers. Al-Shabaab should also halt floggings, amputations, decapitations, and other practices that contravene international human rights standards.

“Jesu, rex admirabilis” (Gregorian chant, sung by Giovanni Vianini)

I am not a Christian, but believe in God and love music, poetry and religious feelings no matter which denomination they come from. Thanks to Giovanni Vianini for sharing culture and beauty!

The text sung here (see PDF score) is slightly different from other sources. In brackets, numbers on the longest I found, Jubilus (48 stanzas)…

[9.] Iesu, rex admirabilis,
et triumphator nobilis,
dulcedo ineffabilis,
totus desiderabilis.

[43.] Rex virtutum, rex gloriae,
rex insignis victoriae,
Iesu, largitor gratiae,
honor caelestis curiae.

[45.] Te caeli chorus praedicat,
et tuas laudes replicat.
Iesus orbem laetificat
et nos Deo pacificat.

[46.] Iesus in pace imperat,
quae omnem sensum superat,
hanc semper mens desiderat,
Et illo frui properat.

[48.] Iam prosequamur laudibus
Iesum, hymnis et precibus,
ut nos donet caelestibus,
cum ipso frui sedibus.

[35.] Iesu, flos matris virginis,
amor nostrae dulcedinis,
laus tibi sine terminis,
regnum beatitudinis.

Amen.

Xurxo Varela no MySpace

Xurxo Varela é unha persoa que vai polo mundo facendo amigos e compartindo cultura e beleza a través da música, coa súa voz, coa guitarra, co violonchelo ou coa viola da gamba. Estou a escoitalo no seu MySpace e préstame, parece que sana a alma oír esta paz doutro tempo sen internet nin telelixo. Graciñas por estas pílulas de “celestial medicina”.

Senegal: Forced begging and other abuses against children (HRW report)

Human Rights Watch (HRW) publicou esta semana un informe sobre os graves abusos que sofren os alumnos dalgunhas escolas coránicas no Senegal. O informe leva por título “Off the Backs of the Children”: Forced Begging and Other Abuses against Talibés in Senegal. Copio un extracto da súa introducción:

At least 50 000 children attending hundreds of residential Quranic schools, or daaras, in Senegal are subjected to conditions akin to slavery and forced to endure often extreme forms of abuse, neglect, and exploitation by the teachers, or marabouts, who serve as their de facto guardians. By no means do all Quranic schools run such regimes, but many marabouts force the children, known as talibés, to beg on the streets for long hours —a practice that meets the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) definition of a worst form of child labor— and subject them to often brutal physical and psychological abuse. The marabouts are also grossly negligent in fulfilling the children’s basic needs, including food, shelter, and healthcare, despite adequate resources in most urban daaras, brought in primarily by the children themselves.

In hundreds of urban daaras in Senegal, it is the children who provide for the marabout. While talibés live in complete deprivation, marabouts in many daaras demand considerable daily sums from dozens of children in their care, through which some marabouts enjoy relative affluence. In thousands of cases where the marabout transports or receives talibés for the purpose of exploitation, the child is also a victim of trafficking.

The Senegalese and Bissau-Guinean governments, Islamic authorities under whose auspices the schools allegedly operate, and parents have all failed miserably to protect tens of thousands of these children from abuse, and have not made any significant effort to hold the perpetrators accountable. Conditions in the daaras, including the treatment of children within them, remain essentially unregulated by the authorities. Well-intentioned aid agencies attempting to fill the protection gap have too often emboldened the perpetrators by giving aid directly to the marabouts who abuse talibés, insufficiently monitoring the impact or use of such aid, and failing to report abuse.

Moved from their villages in Senegal and Guinea-Bissau to cities in Senegal, talibés are forced to beg for up to 10 hours a day. Morning to night, the landscape of Senegal’s cities is dotted with the sight of the boys —the vast majority under 12 years old and many as young as four— shuffling in small groups through the streets; weaving in and out of traffic; and waiting outside shopping centers, marketplaces, banks, and restaurants. Dressed in filthy, torn, and oversized shirts, and often barefoot, they hold out a small plastic bowl or empty can hoping for alms. On the street they are exposed to disease, the risk of injury or death from car accidents, and physical and sometimes sexual abuse by adults.

In a typical urban daara, the teacher requires his talibés to bring a sum of money, rice, and sugar every day, but little of this benefits the children. Many children are terrified about what will happen to them if they fail to meet the quota, for the punishment —physical abuse meted out by the marabout or his assistant— is generally swift and severe, involving beatings with electric cable, a club, or a cane. Some are bound or chained while beaten, or are forced into stress positions. Those captured after a failed attempt to run away suffer the most severe abuse. Weeks or months after having escaped the daara, some 20 boys showed HRW scars and welts on their backs that were left by a teacher’s beatings. [...]

Imanol Dorca: “Egunkaria libre!”

Coincido en case todo, así que copio e pego o artigo de Imanol Dorca, aparecido hoxe en altermundo.org: “Egunkaria libre!”

Sete anos despois do peche do xornal, por fin saíu a sentenza do caso Egunkaria e, como non podía ser doutro xeito, os acusados foron absoltos. Cinco persoas (e outras cinco máis imputadas na vertente económica do caso) comezan ver a luz do final deste pesadelo. Digo comezan ver porque aínda haberá que agardar aos posibeis recursos e aínda falta resolver o sumario económico do caso. Outras non tiveron a sorte de vivir o día de alegría compartida de hoxe, porque morreron encausadas e coas súas contas embargadas tras admirabeis vidas de entrega á lingua dos seus devanceiros.

Tras coñecer o contido da sentenza absolutoria, unha chea de sentimentos amoréanse na miña cabeza: alegría, carraxe, sorpresa.

Sinto alegría, ledicia porque, como dicía, hai cinco persoas con cinco familias, con centos de amigos e miles de persoas detrás, que viviron os derradeiros sete anos coa espada de Damocles sobre a súa cabeza e a partires de hoxe, poderán vivir un pouco máis tranquilamente sen agardar que en calquera momento poidan petar na súa porta os mesmos que xa os levaran á cadea hai sete anos. Joan Mari Torrealdai, Txema Auzmendi, Xabier Oleaga, Iñaki Uria e Martxelo Otamendi foron durante sete anos verdadeiros exemplos de dignidade perante a inxustiza e merecen o recoñecemento, cariño e admiración que xa están a recibir.

Sinto carraxe porque a sentenza non é que veña tarde, é que baixo nengún concepto se debería ter chegado a este punto. Carraxe porque mataron un xornal que non volverá (aínda que ten en Berria un digno sucesor), porque unha vez máis a tortura ficará impune, porque foi un ataque calculado dentro da estratexia do “todo é ETA” que axudaron a crear xentes coma os hoxe enemigos Mayor Oreja e Garzón. E sinto carraxe porque sei que haberá quen diga que o “estado de dereito funciona e ten os seus mecanismos correctores”. Ben sei que da ultra dereita española (en todas as súas vertentes) non se pode agardar outra cousa máis que teimar na falsedade, mais algúns dos que dirán este tipo de cousas son voceiros dun goberno autonómico de dubidosa lexitimidade democrática, outros, membros da pseudo-progresía española e outros, medios de comunicación que raramente foron quen de alzar a súa voz en sete anos. Algúns non esqueceremos o vergoñento tratamento do caso dos sempre corporativistas grandes medios de masas.

E sinto sorpresa porque, se ben non vía posíbel outra saída ao caso máis que a absolución, a sentenza é absolutamente demoledora nalgúns aspectos. Aínda máis demoledora vindo de onde vén. Non só dá a razón á defensa no desmontamento de todas as acusacións, senón que se pode entrever a denuncia de certas prácticas “chapuceiras” da acusación, coma o feito de que axentes da garda civil foran ao mesmo tempo designados como testemuñas e peritos ao mesmo tempo.

Sorprende tamén o tratamento dado á medida de pechar o xornal:

“El cierre provisional o temporal de Euskaldunon-Egunkaria no tenía habilitación constitucional directa y carecía de norma legal especial y expresa que la autorizara. El artículo 129 del Código Penal pudiera ser una cobertura incierta e insuficiente porque un periódico diario no admite ser considerado como una empresa cualquiera.”

E digo eu… aquí non hai prevaricación? Claro que, non son aspectos do franquismo os que se tenta investigar, senón o peche dun simple xornal en éuscaro…

Mais velaí o máis sorprendente: por vez primeira na Audiencia Nacional dáselle verosimilitude á práctica de torturas.

“En la valoración de las declaraciones de los procesados tiene especial relevancia que las denuncias de estos sobre malos tratos y torturas sufridos durante la detención incomunicada –que fueron relatadas con detalle en la vista oral y antes ante el instructor y objeto de denuncia en los tribunales- son compatibles con lo expuesto en los informes médico-forenses emitidos tras ser reconocidos en el centro de detención.”

A onde nos levará isto? A ningures, por suposto… mais unha sentenza que asume que se puxeron en cuestión os dereitos de liberdade de prensa e expresión, e a presenza de torturas nos interrogatorios… non pon no ar a propia democracia española? Algúns dicímolo dende hai tempo.

Cornelius Tacitus (Historiae, I, 1) escribiu “Rara temporum felicitate ubi sentire quae velis et quae sentias dicere licet”, algo así como “Raros son os tempos felices nos que podes pensar o que queres e dicir o que pensas”… :-/