The Tank Man

Unfortunately, studying for the bar got in the way of blogging today. I did manage to catch Frontline's program on "The Tank Man." The documentary was first aired a few years ago but they showed it again in commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. The Tank Man was an anonymous protester who became internationally known when he was photographed standing in front of tanks in Tiananmen Square. The version here is from Jeff Widener of AP.

The whole program is available online.

On a related note, check out this post from Matthew Yglesias on China's new requirement that all PCs include internet-censoring software.

This also highlights why political developments in China are so crucial for the entire world. If, say, Iran tried to do this it almost certainly wouldn’t fly. But companies will fall all over each other to cater to the Chinese market. Then, once the technology is in place other autocracies can try to piggyback on work that’s been done in and for China. But absent China, almost all of world output would be happening in democratic nations, and it would be easy to structure the global economy in the kind of way optimists were hoping it would work for China.

North Korea's Labor Camps

As you've probably heard, American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee have been sentenced to 12 years in a North Korean prison camp. They were convicted of an unspecified "grave crime."

While Pyongyang has not said where the women will serve their time, their future likely includes the possibility of hard labor, starvation and torture in a penal system many consider among the world's most repressive, said David Hawk, author of the 2004 study "The Hidden Gulag: Exposing North Korea's Prison Camps."

Ling and Lee may be sent to a "kyo-hwa-so" or re-education reformatory "that is the equivalent of a felony penitentiary in the U.S., as opposed to a county jail or misdemeanor facility," he said.

-----------------------
North Korean defector Kim Hyuck, who spent a total of seven months between 1998 and 2000 in a "kyo-hwa-so," said that the percentage of prisoners who die from the harsh conditions would be unimaginable in the west.

"It is not an easy place," he said of the camps. "Centers for men and women are separate. But even [the] women's place is not comfortable at all. . . . When I was in the center, roughly 600-700 out of a total 1,500 died."

Hawk said many of the re-education camps are affiliated with mines or textile factories where inmates labor for long hours, shifts that are often followed by work criticism sessions and the forced memorization of dry North Korean policy doctrine.

The literal meaning of a "kyo-hwa-so" in Korean is "a place to make a good person through education," said Hawk, who interviewed a dozen gulag survivors for his study for a group known as the U.S. Committee for Humans Rights in North Korea.

Kim, 28, who now studies math at a South Korean university, said that escape from the camps is nearly impossible.

The Hidden Gulag: Exposing North Korea’s Prison Camps is available online.

ABC News Interview with Lakhdar Boumediene

While traveling with President Obama to Paris this week, ABC News' Jake Tapper took the opportunity to interview ex-Gitmo detainee Lakhdar Boumediene. (A post on a previous interview with Boumediene, who was the plaintiff in the landmark Supreme Court case, Boumediene v. Bush, that gave detainees the right to seek judicial review of their imprisonment is here.) Blogger Glenn Greenwald makes some important points about what this case illustrates and the issues it raises.

Nigerian Families Settle With Shell

The Nigerian families who sued Shell have settled for $15.5 million. The trial was supposed to begin tomorrow. A previous post on the lawsuit, which was about the execution of protesters in the 1990s, and the Alien Tort Statute under which the case was brought, is here.

While a jury has never found a multinational company to be liable for human rights abuses by a U.S. jury, a few others have settled. In December, a federal jury acquitted Chevron in a lawsuit brought by Nigerians for a violent clash on an oil platform off the country's coast.

From the plaintiffs' attorneys' press release:

Today, the parties in Wiwa v. Shell agreed to settle human rights claims charging the Royal Dutch/Shell company, its Nigerian subsidiary, Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC or Shell Nigeria), and the former head of its Nigerian operation, Brian Anderson, with complicity in the torture, killing, and other abuses of Ogoni leader Ken Saro-Wiwa and other non-violent Nigerian activists in the mid-1990s in the Ogoni region of the Niger Delta.

The settlement, whose terms are public, provides a total of $15.5 million. These funds will compensate the 10 plaintiffs, who include family members of the deceased victims; establish a Trust intended to benefit the Ogoni people; and cover a portion of plaintiffs’ legal fees and costs. The settlement is only on behalf of the individual plaintiffs for their individual claims. It does not resolve outstanding issues between Shell and the Ogoni people, and the plaintiffs did not negotiate on behalf of the Ogoni people.

----------------------

Marco Simons, [EarthRights International] Legal Director, stated, “The courts repeatedly rejected Shell’s efforts to dismiss this case, setting important legal precedents for the continued prosecution of corporations in breach of international law. This reinforces the plaintiffs’ demands that corporations such as Shell safeguard human rights and the environment.”

Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon

As the counting takes place in Lebanon's election, Al Jazeera profiles Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.

However, of all the Palestinian refugees in the Arab world, it is those who have taken shelter in Lebanon who have suffered the most.

According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) the international body set up to ensure the welfare of Palestinian refugees, the highest percentage of Palestinian refugees who are living in abject poverty reside in Lebanon.

There are about 400,000 officially registered Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, or approximately 10 per cent of the population. Just under half of the refugees continue to live in camps.

The issue of "naturalisation" of Palestinian refugees has often been used as a political card in Lebanon, a small country built on a delicate confessional balance.

Due to the sensitivity of the issue, there has been no official census in Lebanon since 1932 that could determine the number of Christians and Muslims of various sects.

Mostly Sunni Muslims, the Palestinian refugees are seen as a potential boon to Lebanese Muslim political aspirations, especially Sunni ones.

---------------------

However, the future of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon will be among the first items on the agenda of Lebanon's new parliament.

The Sabra Shatila Foundation, after consultation with human rights organisations including International Lawyers Sans Frontieres and members of Lebanon's legislature, will table a draft law in parliament which promises, in the words of the foundation, to: "erase, in one vote, decades of illegal and immoral treatment of more than 10 per cent of Lebanon's population".

The draft text reads: "Be it enacted by the Chamber of Deputies ... that all Palestinian refugees in Lebanon shall immediately acquire, receive and enjoy the full faith and credit of all civil rights possessed by Lebanese citizens except citizenship or naturalisation."

The alternative can only mean that Lebanon's refugee camps will be a hotbed for further frustration and disappointment for their residents, and could well prove to be a fertile breeding ground for future extremism.

Clashing and Curfews in Amazonas

The Peruvian army has imposed curfews in the state of Amazonas after violent clashes between police and indigenous protesters. They are protesting plans to drill for oil and gas on ancestral land.

"We are fighting because we fear our land will be taken away," said Denis Tangoa, a protester at one blockade told Reuters news agency.

Fuel and transport blockades have disrupted Peru's Amazon region for almost two months.

The indigenous tribes want to force Congress to repeal new laws that encourage foreign mining in the rain forest.

"We are not going to give up until they reverse these laws that will damage us," Luis Huansi, a tribal leader told Reuters.

Helping Victims of the "Virgin Myth"

This week's CNN Hero is Betty Makoni, a native of Zimbabwe who founded the Girl Child Network (GCN). Many young girls in Zimbabwe are the victims of

a widely held belief that if a man with HIV or AIDS rapes a virgin he will be cured of his disease. This so-called virgin myth, perpetuated by Zimbabwe's traditional healers, has led to the rape of hundreds of girls, according to UNICEF. Some of those victims are too young to walk, much less protect themselves.

Makoni's organization help these girls through 700 girls' clubs and three "empowerment villages" where girls who have been abused receive emergency medication, reinstatement in school and counseling.

Makoni's efforts are feature in "Tapestries of Hope" a feature length documentary on the virgin myth and its victims.

Bad Branding

I've written before about "conflict minerals," i.e. minerals that are tied to armed conflict in the Congo and that are used in computers. AMD has inexplicably named their new chip "The Congo."
On the ENOUGH blog, David Sullivan writes:

Did someone actually think it was a good idea to name a microchip after the Congo? It is, after all, the place where trade in minerals vital to technology like ultra-thin laptops is fueling the deadliest conflict in the world.

Okay, AMD isn’t one of the 21 companies that Enough has contacted about Congo’s conflict minerals, so I can understand that they didn’t get the memo. But apparently Hewlett Packard is one of the laptop manufacturers planning to use the new ‘Congo’ chip technology, and they have been one of the most outspoken companies attempting to address mineral supply chain issues. So maybe the folks over AMD are tracing the supply chains for their minerals as we speak, and we can look forward to a microprocessor that’s billed as ‘conflict-free.’ That or courtesy of a truly egregious public relations error we can look forward to some exciting new entries in the Come Clean 4 Congo YouTube contest… Either way, it should be interesting!

Event in DC: Suman, Anti-Trafficking Campaigner from India

From Change.org's End Human Trafficking blog:

Stop Modern Slavery and Free the Slaves are hosting a speaker from India, Suman, who has worked for more than 25 years for the liberation of child laborers, fighting not only for their welfare but their right to a healthy childhood. She is a pioneer in the struggle to end child labor and trafficking in India, tackling all aspects of the issue including: prevention, awareness, intervention, and rehabilitation.

Apart from organizing nationwide campaigns and creating awareness about trafficking at village level, Suman has been a part of many rescue operations of children over the years. However, Suman‘s most ground-breaking work has been in her development of methods of enabling children to recover from slavery, forced separation from families and experiences of violence and torture. Through the care of Suman and the teams she has led, hundreds of children have re-gained their strength, learned the value of education and become able to assert their rights. Her work with these children has shown that recovery is possible.

Join Suman as she speaks to Stop Modern Slavery and supporters of Free the Slaves on Monday, June 22nd at 7 pm at:
Capitol Hill Tower (www.capitolhilltower.com)
1000 New Jersey Ave SE
Party Room

Getting there: Take the GREEN line to the NAVY YARD metro stop. Exit the Dept of Transportation side (NOT the baseball park side). Once you exit the metro, you will see a CVS across the street from you on New Jersey Ave. Turn left out of the metro and walk one block down. You'll see a Courtyard Marriot on your right and a dry cleaners. Capitol Hill Tower is the next door past the dry cleaners--it's on the corner of K St SE and New Jersey Ave SE. The party room is on the first floor just past the elevators.

Please RSVP to Sally Smith (that's where she lives) at sksmith1881@gmail.com if you plan to attend. Feel free to spread the word!

Samantha Orobator Sentenced to Life in Laotian Prison

Samantha Orobator, a pregnant British woman, plead guilty to drug smuggling in Laos. Previous post here.) While Laotian law would have mandated the death penalty in her case, it also prohibits the execution of pregnant women.

How Orobator became pregnant remains a mystery, although it appears she may have been able to obtain sperm and impregnate herself to avoid the death penalty.

The case appears to be an embarrassment to the Laotian authorities, which also obtained from Orobator a statement that she was not raped and that the father of the child is not a Laotian citizen. “This case is not about babies, it is a case about heroin,” Kenthong Nuanthasing, the country’s chief government spokesman, told the South China Morning Post last month.

“We don’t want the outside world to blame us [for the pregnancy]. That is why we asked her to write a letter to certify that she was not raped and the baby inside her is not a Lao baby . . . She did not have intercourse with any man in prison. There is no male close to her during her time in prison. All the prisoners are women and all the guards are female. Maybe it is a baby from the sky like [the Virgin] Maria.”

If both Laos and Britain agree, she may be transfered to Britain to serve her sentence. The prisoners' rights group Reprieve is campaigning for her transfer.

(Image from the Times Online story.)