Human Rights: October 2004 Archives

PROUT Editor's note: Sixty percent of the Iraqi population are small children. Another 20 percent are women. Considering the fact that it is now established that there were no WMD in Iraq and that there were no links between Saddam and Al Quaeda, that hence George Bush invaded Iraq under false pretenses when the real reason was to plunder Iraq of oil and other riches, the only conclusion then regarding the article below is that George Bush has committed crimes against humanity and should be tried in the ICJ (International Court of Justice) and the ICC (International Criminal Court) in Rome, and locked away in solitary confinement for the rest of his natural life. Does any American Congressman or Senator have the guts to declare this as the next course of action? Does any Congressman or Senator have the guts to say unequivocally that George Bush deserves to be impeached for his unlimited and continuing crimes against humanity?
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By Sarah Boseley

29 October , 2004
The Guardian

About 100,000 Iraqi civilians - half of them women and children - have died in Iraq since the invasion, mostly as a result of airstrikes by coalition forces, according to the first reliable study of the death toll from Iraqi and US public health experts.

By Garda Ghista

Our sister Amina was freed from death by stoning on the last day of September, 2003. Many of us did not know Amina Lawal was a divorced woman from Katsina State in Nigeria, sentenced to death by stoning for adultery on the grounds of becoming pregnant out of wedlock. Many of us did not even know that our sister was in danger – we did not even know that we had a sister. We live in an age that is called post-human - an age wherein humanity is posthumous. For many of us, Amina was a flickering figure that appeared on a news sound byte. This is what post-human means. People are reduced to disposable, ephemeral images manipulated by a remote. These images describe her in the traditional modernistic labels of “Nigerian,” “Muslim,” and “woman.” What these labels do is to create a feeling that she is “alien,” and hence we have no responsibility to even care. Essentially the nationalism of the modern era of humanism is, as former UN General Romeo Dallaire said, just another kind of racism.

By Luke McIlveen

October 24, 2004

HUNDREDS of Australian soldiers were used as guinea pigs by the army in tests of an anti-malaria drug which has psychotic side effects while they were serving in East Timor.

An investigation by The Sunday Telegraph reveals that the soldiers were ordered to take the drug, Larium, by the army as part of tests to observe side effects, which can include depression and paranoia.

by Richel Langit

JAKARTA, Oct 6 (IPS) - Hours before her execution, Thai national Namsong Sirilak had a rare chance to talk over the phone with her 12-year-old son in Bangkok. Sirilak's son, who had not seen her for the past 10 years, asked her when she was coming home. The 32-year-old mother replied that she did not know because she was ''still too busy''.

PROUT Editor's note: The USA is not the ideal place to live. The USA does not even provide health care to its citizens. Only the employed receive health insurance, and even many of the employed are not provided health insurance coverage by their employers. Yet, just to the north, in Canada, every single citizen is taken care of. Any Canadian citizen can walk into any hospital and be cared for. So why are Americans under some absurd illusion that the USA is the greatest place to be? The American Medical Association (AMA) has more than 1000 lobbyists who make sure that Americans are brainwashed into believing that Canada is a socialist country with socialized medicine. The AMA makes sure that American citizens never demand universal health care. American health care is no longer in the public sector. It has been 100 percent taken over by private corporations. Corporate executives rather than doctors decide on many medical cases, because the bottom line is the cost, not the patient's welfare. Eighteen thousands Americans die prematurely every year because of no health insurance and hence not going for necessary treatment.
Failing to provide health care is failing to provide basic human rights. It can also be called crimes against humanity on the part of the political leaders. Failing to provide health care is against the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Any American president who fails to provide health care to all citizens should be tried for crimes against humanity at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and locked up for life.
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by Kevin Dobbs

published: 10/19/2004

Patients Claim Intimidation

As part of a nationwide string of hotly contested lawsuits against nonprofit hospitals, South Dakota's major health systems are being accused of overbilling uninsured patients and profiting from abusive debt-collection tactics.

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

September 29, 2004

EERWALA, Pakistan — I'm still trying to help out President Bush by tracking down Osama bin Laden. After poking through remote parts of Pakistan, asking for a tall Arab with a beard, I can't say I've earned that $25 million reward.

But I did come across someone even more extraordinary than Osama.

Usually we journalists write about rogues, but Mukhtaran Bibi could not be more altruistic or brave, as the men who gang-raped her discovered. I firmly believe that the central moral challenge of this century, equivalent to the struggles against slavery in the 19th century or against totalitarianism in the 20th, will be to address sex inequality in the third world - and it's the stories of women like Ms. Mukhtaran that convince me this is so.

Minister of Foreign Affairs of The Republic of Cuba,
at the 59th Session of the United Nations General Assembly. New York,
24 September 2004.

Mr. President:

Every year at the United Nations we go through the same ritual. We attend the general debate knowing beforehand that the clamour for justice and peace by our underdeveloped countries will be ignored once again. However, we persist. We know that we are right. We know that one day we will accomplish social justice and development. We also know that such assets will not be given away to us. We know that the peoples will have to seize them from those who deny us justice today, because they underpin their wealth and arrogance on the disdain for our grief. But it will not be always like this. We say so today with more conviction than ever before.