News in brief from five continents

CANADA:
Fiasco over Afghanistan

Like its counterpart in the United States, the right-wing Canadian government is in trouble over a war—in this case the role of 2,500 Canadian troops in the occupation of Afghanistan.

The Canadian military has been charged with turning over captured alleged Taliban members to Afghan authorities on at least 18 occasions. These prisoners were reportedly tortured and abused by the Afghan puppet government.

Canadian Defense Minister Gordon O’Connor testified earlier in March that the International Committee of the Red Cross would inform Canada if any detainees were being mistreated.

On March 19, O’Connor stated he had misled Parliament about the matter. In reality, as O’Connor admitted, the Red Cross was only obliged to report its findings on the treatment of detainees to Afghan authorities.

Several opposition legislators have demanded O’Connor resign for misleading the Canadian parliament.

An additional four investigations are under way into whether Canadian troops mistreated three Afghan men captured in April 2006.

Canadian troops are based in Afghanistan’s southern city of Kandahar, where there has been a great deal of resistance from Afghan forces fighting to liberate their country from the Western occupation. Canadians have taken relatively heavy casualties among the U.S./NATO coalition forces.

There have been frequent mass protests in Canada, and especially in Quebec, against the Canadian role in the occupation.

ZIMBABWE:
Imperialist diplomats warned

Following continued imperialist intervention aimed at subverting the independence of Zimbabwe, the government in Harare warned Western diplomats March 19 that it would not hesitate to expel them if they gave support to the opposition.

Envoys in Zimbabwe reported anonymously that U.S. Ambassador Christopher Dell walked out of the meeting. The United States and Britain, the former colonial power, have been particularly hostile to the Robert Mugabe government over the past decade. This hostile pressure has increased since Mugabe has pressed to take land from European landholders and distribute it to the African population, especially to liberation fighters.

Foreign Minister Simbarashe Mumbengegwi told the diplomats that Western embassies had gone too far by offering material resources to opposition activists who were recently jailed. Mumbengegwi, who had summoned the envoys to a meeting, read a statement that said the Vienna Convention governing diplomatic behavior prohibited foreign ambassadors from involvement in the internal affairs of the host nation, and added that Zimbabwe would not hesitate to use that provision to expel them.

President Mugabe, who has led Zimbabwe since its independence in 1980 and has withstood the recent attacks so far, accused the opposition party of resorting to violence sponsored by former colonial power Britain and other Western allies to oust his government: “We have given too much room to mischief-makers and shameless stooges of the West. Let them and their masters know that we shall brook none of their lawless behavior.” (Zimbabwe Sunday Mail, March 18)

ARGENTINA:
Remember the disappeared

March 24 is the 31st anniversary of the 1976 military coup that brought in a brutal dictatorship to run the second-biggest and most industrially developed South American country. During the dictatorship, some 30,000 Argentine people, mostly leftists and union organizers, were murdered by the regime without any record of their executions. They became known as “the disappeared.”

In Buenos Aires and in many other provincial capitals, demonstrations on March 24 will mark the anniversary—and protest the more recent disappearance of Julio López, a witness who testified against Miguel Etchecolatz, one of the key members of the repressive state. López has been missing for the past six months. The main demand will be that López reappear alive.

The demonstration has been called by the Grandmothers and Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo and other major human-rights organizations. It is supported by 120 community organizations, unions and left parties.

ITALY:
Int’l conference on resistance

An international conference called “With the resistance, for just peace in the Middle East” will take place on March 24 and 25 in Chianciano Terme, Italy.

Speakers from the Middle East will include Waleed al Modallal, professor of political science at the Islamic university of Gaza; Ali Fayyad, university professor and director of the Consultative Centre for Studies and Documentation, Lebanon; Mufid Qutaysh, Communist Party of Lebanon; Ayatollah al Sayyed Ahmed al Baghdadi, religious patriotic leader against occupation and imperialism; Abdul Jabbar al Kubaysi, secretary general of the Iraq Patriotic Alliance, spokesperson of the Patriotic National Islamic Front.

Some of the speakers from Italy will include Moreno Pasquinelli and Aldo Bernardini. Speakers from the worldwide anti-imperialist movement will include the Egyptian anti-globalization leader Samir Amin, and Larry Holmes, co-director of the International Action Center.

PHILIPPINES:
Gov’t crimes to be raised at Netherlands Tribunal

The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal will hear testimony against the government of Philippines President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the government of U.S. President George W. Bush and their accomplices on March 21-25 in The Hague, The Netherlands.

The Bush and Macapagal-Arroyo governments are accused of gross violations of human rights, economic plunder and ecological destruction, and transgression of the Filipino people’s sovereignty.

Representatives of the plaintiff—Filipino organizations which initiated the case before the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal—will hold a press briefing and photo/video session with the media before the presentation of charges against the accused.