World

The Campaign to Free Women’s Rights Defenders in Iran reported on March 12 that Shadi Sadr and Mahboubeh Abasgholizadeh were charged on March 11 with being a “threat to national security”. They are the only two women remaining in custody after the arrests of more than 30 women on March 4. Sadr, a lawyer, was arrested while defending the women activists arrested at a demonstration that day. Sadr and Abasgholizadeh have been denied access to their lawyers and have been interrogated without their lawyers being present.

In 1989, 39 pharmaceutical giants sued the government of AIDS-stricken South Africa, seeking to stop it from implementing a law to improve the poor’s access to life-saving AIDS drugs. That aggression sparked a public outcry within South Africa and elsewhere, leading to an international campaign that only ended in 2001 when the 39 companies dropped their case.

During a whirlwind tour of a series of Latin American nations, in what the media reported as a “counter-tour” to that being carried out by US President George Bush at the same time, Venezuela’s socialist President Hugo Chavez signed a number of agreements that extend his country’s push to integrate the region’s economies. Via the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), promoted in alliance with socialist Cuba, Venezuela is signing a large number of agreements that aim to promote pro-people development based on cooperation rather than competition, in order to break foreign economic domination of the continent, predominantly by US capital.

The Fiji Women’s Rights Movement is protesting the March 13 promulgation of the Water Authority of Fiji Bill, which according to public service and public sector interim minister Poseci Bune will provide more “effective management” of water, including “opportunities for competition in the provision of water” and facilitating the “corporatisation of the Water Authority of Fiji”. Opposition to water privatisation sprang up last July when organisations including the Fiji Human Rights Commission protested the inclusion of five major private sector figures in a nine-person committee established to prepare a charter on water and sewerage. In a March 15 statement, FWRM executive director Virisila Buadromo said that “Water is a basic human right, and we are very worried about the commercialisation of this essential resource. We are appalled that water, as essential to life as air, will be treated like a business — especially in light of clear community concerns on the issue.”

The March 1 British Guardian reported that an “elite team of officers advising the US commander, General David Petraeus, in Baghdad has concluded that they have six months to win the war in Iraq — or face a Vietnam-style collapse in political and public support that could force the military into a hasty retreat”.

US President George Bush has been touring Latin American countries this March with two goals in mind: keep the continent divided and keep it subservient to US imperialist interests. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has also been visiting his neighbours. His goals are the opposite: to unite the countries of Latin America and to encourage and support the continent’s independence from US imperialism.

A March 9 Venezuelanalysis.com article reported that the previous day Venezuelan authorities had arrested two National Guard officers over an alleged plot to assassinate Hugo Chavez, the country’s socialist president. Agents from Venezuela’s Military Intelligence Directorate took retired General Ramon Guillen Davila and his son, Capitan Tomas Guillen, into custody. They will be tried for instigating rebellion.

On March 16 police arrested Satur Ocampo, a member of Congress from the left-wing Bayan Muna party list. Ocampo, who had been in hiding for eight days, was taken into custody shortly after he filed a court petition to quash the arrest warrant. He faces charges of killing military spies in the ’80s, according to a March 17 Philippine Daily Inquirer report.

The Netherlands-based Royal Philips Electronics NV, one of nearly 40 chemical majors sued by Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange for supplying the defoliant to the US military, is now also being sued by its insurers. The US made extensive use of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.

On April 9, East Timor will hold its second presidential election, which will be followed by parliamentary elections. The East Timorese political system combines a president, who is commander-in-chief of the army and who has veto powers over legislation, with an executive cabinet headed by a prime minister who is elected by the parliament.

Suciwati, the widow of Munir, the prominent Indonesian human rights activist killed by arsenic poisoning aboard a plane in 2004, visited Australia in February to call on the Australian government to help pressure Jakarta to resolve the case. Accompanying her was Usman Hamid, the executive director of Kontras — the Indonesian Commission for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence — an organisation set up by Munir.

Two large undercover security guards arrive first in a separate car to survey the parking garage. They radio “all clear” back to the second car, carrying Patricia Isasa and her escort. The first guards then scout out the route to the restaurant and stake out her table according to lowest security risk.