World

Iraqi children are worse off today than they were before the US-led March 2003 invasion, Dan Toole, director of emergency programs for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), told reporters in Geneva on July 16.

The dramatic advances of the Venezuelan revolution, and the alliances it has forged with other insurgent peoples and governments resisting imperialism, are creating an historic opportunity to strengthen international anti-imperialist collaboration and rebuild the revolutionary socialist movement worldwide.

“A previously undisclosed US Army investigation into an audacious January attack in Karbala that killed five US soldiers concludes that Iraqi police working alongside American troops colluded with insurgents”, the July 12 USA Today reported.

The European-wide human rights monitoring organisation State Watch is now collecting reports on the policing of protests during the June 6-8 G8 summit in Germany.

A furor has erupted over the recent formation of the GAM party in Indonesia’s northernmost province of Aceh. Former members of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) announced the formation of the party on July 7. Chaired by former GAM military commander Muzakkir Manaf, it adopted GAM’s white crescent and star symbol on a red background as its logo. Former GAM “prime minister” Malik Mahmud later said that Jakarta had agreed to the establishment of a local party in Aceh based on the former rebel group that fought for Acehnese independence from Indonesia.

The June 30 election has resulted in neither of the two main contenders — the ruling party Fretilin and the recently formed CNRT (National Congress for Timorese Reconctruction) — gaining an outright majority for a new parliament. Fretilin secured 29% of the vote, followed by CNRT with 24%. After the result was announced by the National Election Commission on July 9, a process of wrangling ensued within the East Timorese elite over how the government shall be composed and who shall lead it.

Indonesian police routinely torture, rape and kill with impunity in West Papua and risk fanning separatism there, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report released on July 5.

“Nearly five months into a security strategy that involves thousands of additional US and Iraqi troops patrolling Baghdad, the number of unidentified bodies found on the streets of the capital was 41% higher in June than in January, according to unofficial health ministry statistics”, the July 4 Washington Post reported.

Coinciding with the release of a report by Human Rights Watch exposing endemic human rights abuses in West Papua and the refusal to allow a member of the US Congress to visit the province, protests featuring the Morning Star flag were held.

In the two weeks following the Sharm el Sheikh Summit on June 25, at which Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert promised to release 250 Fatah-affiliated prisoners from Israeli jails, Israel abducted more than 300 members of Fatah in the West Bank.

On June 27, Tony Blair finally stepped down as prime minister, exiting Downing Street to the sound of loud jeers from anti-war protesters and families of soldiers killed in Iraq. His successor, former Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, gave a brief speech at the door of Number 10 in which he used the word “change” no less than eight times. Many British trade union leaders have been hoping that Blair’s departure and Brown’s ascendency may signal a move away from the neoliberal agenda pursued by three successive Blair governments. This was always a vain hope, as Brown was Blair’s treasurer for the entire 10 years of his reign and architect of many of New Labour’s most reactionary policies, including the infamous Private Finance Initiatives that have brought many National Health Service trusts to the brink of bankruptcy.

The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) ruled on June 28 that the 2001 conviction of Libyan citizen Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi — sentenced to 27 years’ jail for allegedly bombing Pan Am flight 103, which exploded over the Scottish town of Lockerbie on December 21, 1988, killing 270 people — “may have suffered a miscarriage of justice”. The SCCRC referred al Megrahi’s case to Scotland’s appeal court.