1997

...AS SEEN FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE MAJORITY WORLD

Click here to go to Country Features
Or click on the buttons below to go to a month

FORTRESS EUROPE Over 300 illegal immigrants from India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka die in a sea collision in the Mediterranean on Christmas Day.

BURMA Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is allowed to speak outside her home for the first time for months ­ to a crowd of 1,500. The Bodo Security Force blows up the Brahmaputra Mail train in Assam, killing dozens. It is the most powerful of 40 armed insurgent groups in the north-east INDIA.

WORLD The Worldwatch Institute says Western governments are spending $500 billion a year subsidizing the destruction of oceans, atmosphere and land ­ $100 billion on power stations that worsen global warming, $300 billion encouraging destructive farming and overgrazing and $50 billion on promoting overfishing.

RWANDA Hutu extremists launch a new wave of killings, targeting Tutsi survivors of the genocide.

EGYPT Four Muslim militants are sentenced to death and 13 others given prison terms by a military court for attacks that left three police dead and 28 injured.

MEXICO clears a $12.5-billion-dollar loan from the US which helped the country stave off default in 1995. Finance Minister Guillermo Ortiz, who has overseen a disciplined austerity program, is now pushing to close the divide between the export industry and the local economy.

GUATEMALA Foreign governments and international banks pledge $1.9 billion to support the peace accords signed at the end of the 36-year civil war.

ALBANIA Demonstrators show their anger at the collapse of three pyramid investment schemes. In the capital, Tirana, over 20,000 clash with the authorities, demanding the return of their money and the resignation of the Government. President Berisha assumes emergency powers.

YUGOSLAVIA Tens of thousands of protesters take to the streets of Belgrade in an attempt to step up pressure on President Milosevic to reinstate pro-democracy parties' victory in the local elections.

SOUTH AFRICA Security police finally admit to a role in the killing of black leader Steve Biko in 1977.

CHECHNYA Former Soviet colonel Aslan Maskhadov wins the presidential elections with 64.8 per cent of the vote. Guerrilla leader Shamil Basayev polls 27.7 per cent and then announces that he is to give up politics.

WORLD Over 2,900 people from 137 countries attend the Microcredit Summit in Washington DC, which launches a campaign to get credit to 100 million poor people by 2005.

SOUTH AFRICA imposes an immediate ban on the use and production of all antipersonnel landmines. It also decides to dispose of its entire stock of 160,000.

PAKISTAN Nawaz Sharif of the Muslim League wins a landslide victory in the National Assembly elections. Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party is crushed, but Bhutto insists the elections were rigged.

RWANDA The Red Cross decide to pull out most of their aid workers after four are killed in an ambush in Cyangugu province.

INDONESIA sees the birth of its 200-millionth citizen.

NIGERIA The registration of voters gets under way, the first stage in the replacement of General Sani Abacha's military regime.

ECUADOR Two million march against President Abdala Bucaram's Government during a 48-hour national strike, prompting Congress to vote him out of office. Bucaram had been pushing through neo-liberal economic reforms with US approval but his administration was blatantly corrupt. Vice-President Rosalia Arteage takes over till new national elections at the beginning of 1998.

WORLD Relief agencies brief the UN Security Council for the first time ever. They try to galvanize the world into action in Africa's Great Lakes region.

BURMA Government troops go on the offensive, attacking Karen National Union (KNU) guerrilla camps. 16,000 refugees flee to Thailand to join the 700,000 who have fled in past years. The Army intends to clear the area ready for international investment.

TAJIKISTAN Six hostages, the last of the 16 held by Tajik warlord Bakhrom Sodirov, are freed unharmed. They were taken in attacks on UN and Red

PAUL SMITH/PANOS

Flying the flag: The two month march of landless workers in Brazil

Cross staff. Freedom comes after President Rakhmonov agreed to allow 35 fighters from Afghanistan to join Sodirov.

CUBA secretly invites 100 US business leaders and celebrities to a $500-a-head dinner in Havana to help celebrate 30 years of the Cohiba cigar.

BRAZIL Thousands of landless people set off to march from São Paulo to the capital, Brasilia. Part of the Sem Terra ('Without Land') Movement, they demand speedy land reform and a stop to the violent clampdown on protests. The march will take two months and arrive on the anniversary of the killings of 19 farmers who occupied a private ranch in Para State.

MEXICO Anti-drugs czar General Rebollo is sacked for drug-related corruption. The US is annoyed because it had been passing him sensitive information while he was under Mexican investigation.

KENYA Thousands of students march through the streets of Nairobi in protest at the death of student leader Solomon Muruli.

YUGOSLAVIA The opposition to President Milosevic crowns three months of street protest by installing one of its leaders as Mayor of Belgrade.

WORLD The President of the UN General Assembly unveils a plan to reform the Security Council, creating five new permanent members ­ Japan, Germany and one each from Asia, Latin America and Africa. The current permanent members will resist plans to restrict their existing veto.

The UN Food & Agriculture Organization reports that the rate of global deforestation slowed down in the five years to the end of 1995. But the world still lost an area of forest twice the size of Italy in that period.

ALBANIA Prime Minister Aleksander Meksi resigns after fighting between rioters and police leaves nine dead and many injured. A state of emergency is called as rioters seize army weapons and prepare for full-blown rebellion.

JENNY MATTHEWS

Behind the veil: Woman have disappeared from the streets and public places

IRAN Hundreds die and thousands are injured as an earthquake hits the remote, mountainous province of Ardabil. The quake measures 5.5 on the Richter Scale and rescue efforts are hampered by driving snow and high winds.

IRAQ Saddam Hussein sues the French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur for libel. An article they published described him as a 'poor simpleton', 'a cretin' and 'a monster'.

PAKISTAN A runaway passenger express crashes into a sandbank and kills 126 people. It had been switched to a dead-end line to avert a head-on collision.

ETHIOPIA Drought sweeps through the southern and eastern parts of the country after the failure of last year's October rains. The area's largely nomadic population suffer as their cattle die from exhaustion and disease.

BRAZILThe Senate lifts a 17-year ban on women wearing trousers in the country's legislative chamber.

The lower house of the Congress backs a bill which will end a 40-year state monopoly of the oil and gas industries. The decision is expected to lead to massive private-sector investment.

SRI LANKA Tamil Tigers launch heavy attacks on an army and airforce base in the heaviest fighting for months. The attacks leave over 200 dead.

CARIBBEAN Two of the region's most respected Leftist leaders die a matter of days apart: the former Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley and President Cheddi Jagan of Guyana. In Guyana Prime Minister Samual Hinds takes over the presidency.

BOSNIA The first Bosnian Muslims to be charged with war crimes appear before the UN Tribunal in The Hague. Manfred Nowal, the UN envoy for missing persons, resigns in protest at the lack of progress in accounting for the 25,000 people still missing from the Bosnian war. He was hampered by lack of international support for excavating suspected mass graves.

JORDAN/ISRAEL A Jordanian soldier opens fire on a bus carrying a party of Israeli schoolgirls, killing seven and wounding six. The schoolgirls were on a trip to visit a site on the River Jordan known as the Island of Peace.

NIGERIA Exiled Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka and 11 other dissidents are charged with treason by the military government in Lagos following recent bomb blasts.

EL SALVADOR Both parliamentary and local government elections show big gains for the former left-wing rebels, the FMLN. They capture through democracy what they failed to in combat as the capital San Salvador falls to the mayoral campaign of FMLN candidate Hector Silva.

TIBET/TAIWAN/CHINA The exiled Buddhist leader of Tibet, the Dalai Lama, meets the

President of Taiwan. Beijing denounces both as 'Splittists' and threatens them with military force.

BELARUS President Alexander Lukashenko tightens his control in Belarus, claiming the people welcome a return to a Stalinist dictatorship. He plans a return to the Soviet tradition of mandatory weekend unpaid labour.

AUSTRALIA Parliament overturns the world's first directly pro-euthanasia law, nine months after its introduction in Northern Territory.

CAMBODIA At least 16 people are killed and 150 injured when grenades are thrown into a demonstration headed by opposition leader Sam Rainsy. Second Minister Hun Sen is accused of involvement.

KUWAIT A female professor at Kuwait University is sacked for suggesting that homosexuality exists in the country.

PAPUA NEW GUINEA Prime Minister Sir Julius Chan stands down after weeks of allegations that he paid foreign mercenaries (supplied by a British firm) $24 million to put down the rebel uprising on the island of Bougainville.

IRAQ The Government starts to distribute the first rations under its oil-for-food deal with the UN. The deal allows Iraq to sell two billion dollars' worth of oil over six months to meet Iraqis' humanitarian needs.

BURMA The US imposes economic sanctions banning new investment by American companies after international condemnation of Burma's human-rights record. Hardliner General Tin Oo, known for threats to 'annihilate' opponents of the military regime,

ROBERT MORT / CAMERA PRESS

Bridge to democracy: Aung San Suu Kyi remains under close control in Burma.

is sent a parcel-bomb which instead kills his daughter.

CHILE Argentina warns the US that the proposed sale of 18 F-16 fighter jets to Chile could provoke a regional arms race. The billion-dollar deal will go ahead when the US lifts its 20-year ban on selling weapons to Latin America.

HAITI More than 85 per cent of the electorate fails to vote in national elections.

ANGOLA The Government of National Reconciliation sits for the first time in Luanda, bringing together enemies from one of Africa's bloodiest civil wars.

TRANSNATIONALS 20 workers in South Africa are paid over two million dollars in compensation by a British chemical company, after being poisoned by mercury.

BANGLADESH Results from a survey conclude that agricultural output has dwindled because of the unplanned use of chemical fertilizer and toxic pesticides.

WORLD The heads of three UN agencies launch a major campaign to end female genital mutilation, which is suffered by two million girls each year.

SOMALIA The Belgian Government decides to 'prosecute without mercy' a soldier for urinating on a dead Somali. Two other paratroopers are charged with assault after burning a Somali civilian.

SAUDI ARABIA Hundreds die as fire hits a tent compound near the Islamic holy city of Mecca. Strong winds fan the flames through the crowded encampment causing panic and many are crushed while trying to escape.

ISRAEL Police recommend filing criminal corruption charges against Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu over the appointment of Attorney-General Ronni Bar-on. Clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinian demonstrators continue, especially in Hebron.

BRAZIL The landless marchers reach Brasilia after 700 kilometres and two months. The streets are lined with 120,000 people to welcome them. Politicians promise to speed up land reform and the World Bank offers more money. The Sem Terra activists will believe it when they see it.

A former police officer is sentenced to 450 years' imprisonment for the massacre of 21 residents of a Rio slum. The symbolic judgement is welcomed by human-rights activists.

ST HELENA One of Britain's last dependencies, the tiny island of St Helena (to which Napoleon was exiled), goes into open revolt against its dictatorial British Governor, setting the only police-van on fire.

PERU The longest hostage siege in Latin American history (126 days) ends as a military strike on the Japanese ambassador's residence frees 71 hostages unharmed. The 72nd is killed along with all 14 of the Tupac Amaru guerrillas, some of them while trying to surrender.

GUATEMALA The first rebels are demobilized.

CHINA executes three people and gives 27 others jail sentences for involvement in riots in the Xinjiang region. All are members of the Turkic speaking Uighur minority. Tibetan monk Chadrel Rinpoche is imprisoned for six years for 'colluding' with the Dalai Lama in the search for the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama.

SUDAN President Bachir and five southern leaders sign a peace agreement in Khartoum promising a referendum on independence for the south in four years' time. But key southern leader John Garang is absent and no agreement will stick without him. His Sudan People's Liberation Army takes Yei, capturing rebels of the West Nile Bank Front who have been terrorizing northern Uganda.

BULGARIA The liberal Union of Democratic Forces wins the election after mass protests brought down the Socialist government. They launch a crusade against the corruption that has been rife since the end of communism.

AFRICA The US unveils its economic-recovery program for sub-Saharan Africa, stressing trade and investment rather than aid. The 'African Growth and Opportunity Act' will extend duty-free treatment to additional products from the region, and will next year establish a $150m equity-investment fund and a $500m infrastructure fund.

WORLD The International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague convicts the Bosnian Serb Dusna Tadic of crimes against humanity. It is the first conviction for war crimes since the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials half-a-century ago, and the first by an impartial body.

The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions calls for a code to protect flower workers against dangerous chemicals and unsafe conditions: more and more flowers bought in the rich world are produced in countries such as Colombia and Uganda.

BRITAIN The moderate (New) Labour Party wins a landslide election victory, ending 18 years of Conservative rule. It pledges a more ethical approach to arms exports and will ban anti-personnel landmines.

Radioactivity from Sellafield's nuclear-reprocessing plant is having more impact in the Arctic than the Chernobyl disaster, according to a Canadian report.

CHAD Transnationals Exxon, Shell and Elf announce plans to spend $3.2 billion on developing three oilfields and the World Bank will part-finance the 1,600km pipeline to the Cameroon coast. The economy will double in size in ten years as a result. But tribal groups will have to be resettled, say environmental groups, who also ask if any of the expected six billion dollars in royalties will reach the poor.

IRAQ/UNITED STATES The CIA has spent $110 million in six years on failed attempts to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

WESTERN SAHARA James Baker visits the camps of the Saharawi refugees in Algeria, having been appointed as Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General to try to revive the peace plan between the liberation movement, Polisario, and Morocco, which occupies the former Spanish colony.

SOUTH AFRICA Over 8,000 applications for amnesty have been received by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission led by Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

BURUNDI The world's worst typhus outbreak for 50 years has affected 20,000, mainly in camps guarded from Hutu rebels by the Tutsi-dominated army.

SIERRA LEONE Only a year after the first democratic election in 30 years, the military retakes power.

AUSTRALIA A government report condemns the twentieth-century genocide of Aboriginal people. Between 1918 and the 1970s mixed-race Aboriginal children were taken from their parents. Light-skinned children were put in white families and dark-skinned ones in bleak orphanages.

TURKEY The Army kills 1,000 Kurdish (PKK) separatists in another incursion into northern Iraq, apparently invited by the Iraqi-based Kurdish Democratic Party.

RUSSIA President Yeltsin announces that Russia will no longer target nuclear warheads at the 16 countries of the Western military alliance.

IRAN Relative liberal Mohammed Khatami wins overwhelmingly in the Presidential election, with 70 per cent of the votes. Young people see it as a vote for change from the strict Islamic codes. But his room for manoeuvre is likely to be small.

An earthquake in eastern Iran kills 2,400 and leaves 40,000 homeless; it was ten times more violent than Japan's 1995 Kobe earthquake.

WEST The Socialists win a crushing victory in France while in Canada Jean Chrétien's Liberal Government hangs on to power.

SIERRA LEONE The leaders of the military coup join with rebels of the Revolutionary United Front to resist diplomatic attempts to restore democracy. Neighbouring states Nigeria, Guinea and Ghana launch a naval bombardment of the capital but they are dealt a humiliating defeat by the revolutionary forces of Major Johnny Paul Koroma. The irony of Nigerian forces intervening to protect democracy escapes no-one.

INDONESIA The ruling Golkar party wins 74 per cent in the election. It successfully undermined the potentially dangerous opposition of Megawati Sukarnoputri by engineering her ousting as leader of the Indonesian Democratic Party. She urged her supporters not to vote.

SOUTHERN AFRICA Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe urge relaxation of the ban on the ivory trade but are defeated in the Convention for International Trade in Endangered Species.

CONGO Heavy fighting rages between government forces and militias loyal to ex-President Sassou-Nguesso. France's President Chirac intervenes to arrange a ceasefire.

TURKEY Islamist PM Necmettin Erbakan resigns under pressure from the Army, which values the pro-Western, secular state founded by Kemal Ataturk. Secularist Mesut Yilmaz takes over.

WORLD Irish President Mary Robinson is appointed the new UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Amnesty International accuses rich countries of using all legal and administrative means to deter refugees from seeking asylum.

ANGOLA The UN mission in Angola finds no evidence of the government offensive claimed by UNITA. There are fears that Jonas Savimbi and UNITA are seeking a pretext to restart the war.

MUSLIM WORLD Leaders of the world's biggest Muslim states, meeting in Istanbul, launch a new group for political and economic co-operation, partly to counter the Group of Seven rich economies.

Egypt is holding more than 17,700 political prisoners, mainly Islamists, and many have not been tried, says the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights.

TRANSNATIONALS McDonalds wins a pyrrhic victory in its libel suit against campaigners Helen Steel and Dave Morris. The longest case in British legal history laid bare the company's treatment of animals, the environment and its own workforce.

CHINA The former British colony of Hong Kong is officially handed over to China (see box).

SOMALIA Two Belgian paratroopers who were photographed roasting a child over a fire during the UN peacekeeping operation in Somalia are acquitted. The court accepts their claim that they were merely playing a game with the child.

ALBANIA In an election free from the violence of preceding months, the ruling Democratic Party suffers a crushing defeat at the hands of its Socialist rivals.

WORLD The Earth Summit review conference ends in a shambles with no clear agreements on new aid for developing countries or protecting forests. Developing countries' anger at the rich world's broken promises on aid dominates the summit.

El Niño causes such heavy rainfall and flooding that a state of emergency is declared in Ecuador. It is simultaneously thought to be causing drought in Indonesia. This abnormally warm current in the Pacific occurs every few years and causes havoc to weather patterns all over the world.

WORLD BANK calls for a greater role for government, saying economic and social development is impossible without 'an effective state', reversing its previous enthusiasm for minimalizing government. The Bank is also to assess the full impact of its policies on the poor in a review aimed at overcoming the 'incredible antagonism' of many governments and citizens' groups.

EAST TIMOR Guerrilla leader David Alex dies after he is captured by Indonesian forces.

EGYPT A court overrules the Government's ban on female genital mutilation being practised in hospitals and clinics. It rules that the ban is 'contrary to Islam'.

MEXICO The PRI, which has ruled for most of the century, suffers heavy election losses, losing control of the lower house as well as the capital city, where veteran leftwinger Cuauhtémoc Cardenas becomes mayor.

KENYA The worst unrest in seven years as thousands of students demanding constitutional change fight riot police. Western nations urge President Moi to introduce political reforms or face suspension of aid and loans.

JOHN COBB / PANOS

Smoke and fire - running battles in the streets of Mombasa, Kenya

CAMBODIA Second Prime Minister Hun Sen stages a coup against first Prime Minister Prince Norodom Ranariddh. Some royalists are summarily executed and looting ensues in the capital. All 19 independent or opposition newspapers cease publishing. Pol Pot is arrested and put on trial by former Khmer Rouge colleagues.

UKRAINE Pragmatist Valery Pustovoitenko is confirmed as Prime Minister. His priorities are to stimulate private enterprise, reduce taxes and cut the size of the shadow economy.

UNITED NATIONS Kofi Annan spells out his plans for reform of the UN, including the elimination of 1,000 jobs; a new post of Deputy Secretary-General in charge of collaboration among UN organs; and a new cabinet-style structure. The US says it will support the establishment of three permanent seats on the UN Security Council for developing countries.

CUBA The remains of Che Guevara are returned to Havana from Bolivia. They receive an emotional hero's welcome.

SIERRA LEONE joins Nigeria in being suspended from the Commonwealth until it moves back to democracy.

NORTHERN IRELAND The IRA declares a new ceasefire, raising hopes that Britain's new Labour Government will put the peace process back on track.

BRAZIL Faced with rampant illegal logging, the Government is to open the timber reserves in the Amazon rainforest to commercial loggers on a 'controlled' basis.

PAPUA NEW GUINEA Reformist Bill Skate wins the election.

LIBERIA Warlord Charles Taylor wins through the ballot box the power he formerly tried to take by force in the civil war following his invasion from Côte d'Ivoire in 1989. He receives more than 70 per cent of the vote.

SOUTH-EAST ASIA Burma and Laos are admitted to the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), a free-trade area of 500 million people. Cambodia's application is shelved.

AFRICA France is to slash its troop numbers in Africa as part of a less interventionist approach to African affairs.

TURKEY In an attempt to curtail the power of Muslim fundamentalists, the Government introduces a new law restricting religious education.

LATIN AMERICA A summit of heads of government sees Argentina opposing Brazil's bid for permanent membership of the UN Security Council. Chile is resentful of Argentina's new status as most-favoured ally of the US in the region.

NIGERIA is voted most corrupt country in the world in a survey of businesspeople and political analysts. Bolivia and Colombia come second and third.

FRENCH GUYANA Protesters calling for independence from France clash with police.

SUDAN Some 400 rebels from John Garang's Sudan People's Liberation Army are killed during an attack on their camp by government forces.

BRAZIL More than 20 Amerindians who were thought to have committed suicide in despair at the modern world's encroachment may have been murdered to gain possession of their land, according to a report signed by two judges.

SOUTH AFRICA The killers of former Communist leader Chris Hani appeal for amnesty. FW de Klerk, the last white president, resigns as leader of the National Party.

PAKISTAN Parliament passes a controversial bill countering the threat of terrorism from rival religious sects by giving the security forces sweeping new powers.

THAILAND The economy collapses, causing a domino effect in East Asian markets. A
$16-billion IMF rescue package is put together. Thailand's ratio of loans to GDP is 125 per cent.

IRAN President Khatami appoints a woman, Massoumeh Ebtekar, as Vice-President, and Ayatollah Mohajerani ­ a known liberal who believes in a tolerant Islam ­ as Cultural Affairs Minister.

PERU President Fujimori's post-hostage popularity is in tatters as he is accused of domestic
espionage, wiretapping and harassment of journalists and opponents.

BOLIVIA Former dictator (1971-1978) General Hugo Banzer is elected President on the populist slogan 'Bread, a roof and a job'.

TRANSNATIONALS Greenpeace is crippled by BP's British court order freezing its assets and demanding $2.2 million in compensation for its occupation of an oil rig. Meanwhile five US tobacco companies are forced to pay the state of Florida $11.3 billion compensation for public-health costs.

TAJIKISTAN President Rakhmonov signs a UN-mediated peace accord in Moscow with the mainly Islamic United Tajik Opposition. The five-year war has cost 50,000 lives. But violence does not end as entrepreneur generals nominally loyal to the President use personal militias to fight over economic spoils.

CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC France announces it will pull out its troops for the first time since independence. Civil war is feared following army mutinies last year.

CONGO A European-supported African peacekeeping force is on the cards until the UN starts deliberating whether or not to send one. It decides against and the civil war resumes.

WORLD A report shows that the global arms market grew in 1996 with total sales of $31.8 billion ­ $19.3 billion to developing countries. The top two sellers, the US and Britain, increased their share of the world arms market. The fastest-growing arms markets are in East Asia, where defence budgets are increasing by ten per cent a year.

MONTSERRAT Volcanic eruptions have driven away half of the population of 11,000 in one of Britain's last remaining colonies. British handling of the crisis is roundly criticized by islanders and the region's governments.

ZAMBIA Former President Kenneth Kaunda survives an assassination attempt.

BRITAIN Diana, Princess of Wales, dies in a car crash in Paris soon after her trip to Sarajevo in support of a worldwide ban on landmines. Ironically her death may increase the chances of a landmine ban.

INDIA Mother Teresa dies after a long life in which she became a symbol of charity to the poorest. She had already been succeeded as leader of her Calcutta-based Catholic Missionaries of Charity by Sister Nirmala, a convert from Hinduism.

BANGLADESH In a rare judgment in favour of an abused woman, four police officers are sentenced to death for raping and murdering a teenage girl.

Bangladesh's land border is formally opened to traders from Nepal for the first time ever as India grants transit through the 60-kilometre corridor that separates the two countries.

COMOROS The small island of Anjouan tries to secede. Government troops sent from Grand Comore to quash the rebellion are repelled.

IRAN President Khatami appoints the first-ever director for women's affairs, the third woman given a key role in the new Government.

WORLD The text of a treaty banning anti-personnel landmines is agreed in Oslo ­ the first-ever treaty to limit a conventional weapon. Campaigners are delighted the treaty is not watered down to accommodate the US, which announces it will not sign up to the treaty.

By setting up a bogus CFC trading company in London environmental campaigners prove the widespread smuggling of ozone-destroying chemicals worldwide.

ANGOLA The UN imposes a ban on the rebel movement, UNITA, for failing to comply with the 1994 peace accords.

SRI LANKA The Government's latest offensive against the Tamil Tigers, called Operation Sure Victory, has left 1,400 dead since its launch in May. But for the third year a ceasefire allows the vaccination of two million children against polio.

MALAYSIA becomes the next Asian economy to suffer the domino effect as its currency, the ringgit, goes into freefall. Mahathir Mohamed introduces swingeing restrictions on share trading, undermining the confidence of global capital.

JAPAN announces it will slash overseas development aid by ten per cent. It currently provides 20 per cent of the total.

UNITED NATIONS Kofi Annan appeals to member states to pay their debts to the UN but is imme diately rebuffed by the main debtor, the US. Media mogul Ted Turner donates one billion dollars to the world body.

SOUTH-EAST ASIA Uncontrolled forest fires raging in Indonesia produce a filthy smog that envelops the whole region. The air-pollution index in Kuching, Malaysia, reaches 655. A day's exposure to a level of 250 is equivalent to smoking 20 cigarettes.

MEXICO The Zapatista National Liberation Front is launched in Mexico City but government hopes that Subcomandante Marcos will join the new political organization are dashed when he says the Zapatista guerrilla struggle must continue.

CHINA/KAZAKHSTAN China signs a deal pledging to invest
$10 billion in the oilfields of Kazakhstan. This eclipses the 'deal of the century' done by a Western consortium to tap offshore oil in Azerbaijan. A pipeline will carry the oil to China from the Caspian region, which looks to be

PHILIP WOLMUTH / PANOS

Banana wars: the European union breached trading rules in favour of the Caribbean

the oil centre of the twenty-first century.

CONGO Angola intervenes to end the civil war by overthrowing President Pascal Lissouba and installing his rival, Denis Sassou-Nguesso. Lissouba had aidied Angola's UNITA rebels.

WESTERN SAHARA Talks overseen by James Baker for the UN in Houston result in a signed agreement between Morocco and Polisario on the terms of a referendum on the future of the country to take place in late 1998.

BURMA In the biggest rally of the National League for Democracy in years, Aung San Suu Kyi calls for dialogue with the military regime. In a rare public appearance, long-time dictator General Ne Win visits President Suharto of Indonesia, fuelling the belief that Ne Win is still a power behind the scenes in Burma.

WORLD BANK The World Bank predicts that by 2020 the biggest five developing countries ­ Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and Russia ­ will have 50-per-cent more world trade than the European Union. At the moment Europe has three times more trade.

TANZANIA President Benjamin Mkapa pleads for food aid, declaring a national food emergency and banning food exports.

KENYA Opposition politicians vow to disrupt this year's elections unless President Moi enacts constitutional reforms.

ECUADOR The Secoya people find themselves divided by a heavily guarded barrier erected as part of the border dispute between Ecuador and Peru.

NIGERIA Slave traders in West Africa are buying children from poor villages in countries such as Benin and Togo to sell to Nigeria's middle classes as servants, goat herders and prostitutes.

COLOMBIA The sacred lands of the U'wa people are under threat of oil exploration. They are uninterested in government compensation offers and declare that if their lands are exploited they will commit mass suicide.

PHILIPPINES President Ramos seeks to change the constitution to allow himself a third term in office. He is faced with mass protests. Muslim rebels threaten to re-ignite civil war if more funds are not released to improve the conditions of Muslims.

CAMBODIA The IMF and World Bank suspend all financial programs in protest at Hun Sen's coup in July. The US and Germany also suspend aid.

SOUTH AFRICA Nelson Mandela visits Robben Island and the prison in which he spent 20 years to declare it a national heritage site. The prison is now a museum.

CARIBBEAN/EUROPE The World Trade Organization rules that the European Union has breached trading rules by allowing freer access to Caribbean banana producers (who have ten per cent of the European market) than to the US transnational Chiquita (which has 70 per cent of the market).

INDONESIA The Government revokes the permits of 29 companies it believes started the forest fires still raging and causing appalling smog all over South-East Asia.

AMAZON Less noticed than the Asian forest fires, an even greater area of the Amazon rainforest (26,000 square kilometres) is burning as ranchers and peasants exploit the abnormally long dry season to clear land for farming.

UNITED STATES Congress bans the import of goods made by forced or bonded child labour.

ISRAEL/PALESTINE Sheik Ahmed Yassin, spiritual leader and founder of Hamas, is released from prison by Israel and leaves for Amman, thanks to a bungled Mossad attempt to assassinate another Hamas leader in Jordan. Later 22 Palestinian prisoners are released as part of a compensation deal agreed with Jordan's King Hussein.

WORLD The climatic effects of the El Niño warm current in the Pacific continue to be felt all over the globe. Half Colombia's provinces suffer droughts and forest fires. Floods in the eastern highlands of Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya displace thousands.

KENYA Opposition parties are refused the opportunity to register for the elections.

EGYPT The Government reverses previous egalitarian land reforms.

SRI LANKA Over 400 die in a battle between government troops and Tamil Tigers over the northern highway. Fifteen people are killed and over 100 injured in a truck bomb and gun battles in Colombo.

CAMBODIA Around 50,000 seek refuge in Thailand as fighting between Hun Sen and the Khmer Rouge continues. King Sihanouk leaves for China but former Khmer Rouge leader Ieng Sary throws his support behind Hun Sen.

In his first interview for 18 years, Pol Pot, now under house arrest on the orders of new Khmer Rouge leader Ta Mok, concedes his movement 'made mistakes' but denies that 1.5 million died under his rule.

CUBA Nationwide celebrations mark the thirtieth anniversary of Che Guevara's death. Fidel Castro announces his brother Raul as his successor.

SOUTH AFRICA Drug transnationals wage war with the health minister as she tries to reduce their prices in an attempt to create the country's first national health service.

CHINA Thousands of children in Hong Kong who were born on the mainland face deportation as a result of a new immigration law.

VIETNAM Scientists claim they have discovered a miracle herbal remedy ­ Heantos ­ which can cure addiction to heroin, cocaine and opium.

CONGO Fighting continues but Denis Sassuo-Nguesso is inaugurated as President, to the despair of many who remember his previous spell in power.

SOUTH KOREA The son of President Kim Young-sam is fined for bribery and tax evasion.

ZIMBABWE President Mugabe announces he intends to take five million hectares from white farmers to resettle thousands of black peasants ­ including the farm of former Rhodesian leader Ian Smith.

JAMAICA withdraws from the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights so it can hang 50 convicted murderers more quickly.

COMMONWEALTH Human-rights activists are angered by the failure of Commonwealth leaders to impose sanctions on Nigeria.

INDIA/KASHMIR Four Kashmiri separatist leaders and their supporters are arrested at violent demonstrations marking the 50th anniversary of the arrival of Indian troops.

WORLD A conference on child labour in Oslo stresses the fight against poverty. Child workers who attended previous meetings were not allowed at this one.

ARGENTINA The opposition coalition has a resounding election victory over President Menem's ruling party. 'Mother of a disappeared' Graciela Fernandez Meijide emerges as frontrunner for the presidency in 1999.

COLOMBIA The elections are boycotted en masse. It is revealed that 10,000 child miners work in appalling conditions to support their families.

SWAZILAND Pro-democracy demonstrations are broken up by paramilitary police.

ZAMBIA President Chiluba resists an attempted military coup, saying 'those who rise by the sword die by the sword'.

IRAQ Iraq refuses to give UN weapons inspectors full access despite sabre-rattling from Britain and the US.

CANADA North America's biggest teachers' strike hits Ontario as 126,000 teachers walk out, barring 2.1 million pupils from school.

BOSNIA US donates weapons to the Muslim-Croat Federation's army, part of a $400-million package to train and equip it to achieve balance with Bosnian Serbs.

WORLD The financial mayhem in East Asia has effects all over the world. In Thailand Prime Minister Chavalit Yongchaiyudh resigns as a result of the continuing economic freefall, which has not been slowed by the IMF's rescue package. Indonesia agrees to a wide range of reforms in return for an IMF loan of $23 billion and immediately closes down 220 private banks.

IRAQ expels UN weapons inspectors and refuses to back down despite the threat of US/British military action, which does not materialize because of other Western powers' opposition. When weapons inspectors go back in it is seen as a victory for Saddam Hussein. Poor Iraqis continue to vote with their feet: there are now 100,000 Iraqi refugees in Jordan.

BANGLADESH A month-long boycott of parliament results in a street battle between police and opposition activists. The World Health Organization praises the country's anti-TB program as a model for the world.

BRAZIL fails in an attempt to launch the country's first-ever rocket into space.

Famous plastic surgeon Dr Pitanguy has provided a free service for thousands of Rio's poor: he insists poor people have a right to look beautiful too.

ZAMBIA In the wake of the attempted coup, the Government cracks down on mainstream political opponents. The Democratic Congress Party's President is detained and its Secretary goes into hiding.

BALKANS At the first-ever Balkan summit Greece, Romania, Turkey, Bulgaria, Albania, Yugoslavia and Macedonia discuss peace and reconciliation.

KENYA Parliament votes to revise the country's constitution ahead of the 29 December elections to make it easier for opposition parties to participate.

ETHIOPIA Human-rights groups report hundreds of 'disappearances' and killings of opposition sympathizers.

JORDAN The announcement that 17 women are to stand for election draws support from women. But an Islamist boycott of the election ensures they make no progress.

BURMA Drug baron Khun Sa has now joined forces with the Government. He has gone into business and is using his opium profits to build a four-lane highway from Rangoon to Mandalay.

VENEZUELA will build a new town on its Colombian border to reclaim a lawless area from guerrillas and drug traffickers.

RWANDA Pressure from women's groups leads to 'rape as an instrument of genocide' being added to the charge-sheet at the War-Crimes Tribunal in Tanzania.

SOMALIA The UN appeals for millions of dollars of aid to help thousands of Somalians displaced by floods. 1,461 have died and 230,000 are displaced.

UNITED STATES Washington purchases 21 advanced Russian-made MiG-29C planes from Moldova just to keep them out of the hands of 'rogue' states. President Clinton claims he has done more than any other leader to rid the world of landmines, but the US will still not sign up to the Ottawa Treaty.

SUDAN Peace talks founder between the Government and the Sudan People's Liberation Army. There is no hope of a ceasefire until at least April 1998.

TURKEY The country's largest political party, The Welfare Party, goes on trial for promoting Islamic fundamentalism.

CZECH REPUBLIC An anti-racist rally in the capital sparks a wave of similar rallies in other cities protesting against the murder of Sudanese student Hussan Elamin.

AZERBAIJAN celebrates the first flow of oil from its Caspian Sea fields. By 2010 the country expects to extract over 700,000 barrels of oil per day.

BOSNIA Recently released secret documents reveal that in the first days of the war, Muslim paramilitary leaders murdered scores of Bosnian Serb civilians in Sarajevo.

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC A two-day general strike protests against power cuts and the Government's neo-liberal policies.

PAPUA NEW GUINEA/ INDONESIA The drought attributed to El Niño shows no signs of easing up. Australia has been supplying emergency food aid to Papua New Guinea.

INDIA faces its third government collapse in three years as Congress withdraws from the ruling coalition and forces the Prime Minister to resign.

Over 3,000 male and female prostitutes meet in a Calcutta stadium to demand the protection of workers' rights.

ISRAEL/PALESTINE Prime

BENOIT GYSENBERGH / CAMERA PRESS

Under the Volcano: the people of Montserrat have been neglected by Britain

Minister Netanyahu's attempt to withdraw six per cent of Israeli troops from the West Bank meets with right-wing opposition.

EAST TIMOR Indonesian soldiers storm the university campus in Dili to disperse demonstrators.

CHINA Democracy activist Wei Jingsheng is released from prison after 18 years. He goes to the US for medical treatment.

EGYPT Islamic fundamentalists kill 60 tourists in the Temple of Queen Hatshepsut in Luxor.

HUNGARY votes in a referendum to join NATO.

AUSTRALIA joins the Ottawa Treaty, and announces it will destroy its stockpile of 60,000 antipersonnel landmines.

SOUTH AFRICA Winnie Mandela is 'tried' by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which hears dozens of testimonies to her complicity in murder and torture.

MALAWI Former dictator Hastings Kamuzu Banda dies.

CAMBODIA Opposition leader Sam Rainsy returns from exile, having fled after Hun Sen's coup.

MONTSERRAT's people have been appallingly neglected by Britain for years, according to a report by visiting British MPs.

WORLD The historic Ottawa Treaty banning anti-personnel landmines is signed.

At the climate summit, rich nations agree to reduce their 1990 level of emissions in the next 15 years: Europe by eight per cent, the US by seven per cent and Japan by six per cent. Australia is given special licence to increase emissions. The cuts are modest: rising use in the developing world will mean overall emissions go up.

AFRICA UN statistics issued on World AIDS Day show that two-thirds of the 30.6 million people in the world now thought to be HIV-positive are in Africa.

HONDURAS Carlos Flores of the governing Liberal Party wins 53 per cent of votes in the presidential election.

HAITI The three-year US peacekeeping mission comes to an end with the country still in chaos. There has been no prime minister since April due to election irregularities and this has already cost $120 million in lost foreign aid.

PAKISTAN is paralyzed by a bitter public slanging match between Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and President Farooq Leghari. There are fears that the Army might take over but eventually it is the President who resigns.

BANGLADESH The Government signs a peace treaty with rebels in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, offering them limited autonomy after 24 years of insurgency and the loss of 8,500 lives.

CONGO Laurent Kabila employs Mobutu's spin doctor to improve his own image.

RWANDA Armed Hutu extremists free 600 who were in prison for their part in the 1994 genocide. The rebels are now about 10,000 strong. A later attack on a refugee camp leaves 200 Tutsis dead.

CHINA/UNITED STATES To Beijing's outrage, exiled dissident Wei Jingsheng is welcomed at the White House.

PAPUA Government apathy is leaving thousands to starve to death in both halves of New Guinea, say aid officials. More than a million people in the Indonesian province of Irian Jaya (West Papua) and an unknown number in Papua New Guinea depend on food drops, but governments are not supplying enough aircraft or fuel.

TRANSNATIONALS Tobacco advertising and sponsorship will be banned in the European Union by the end of 2006.

AOTEAROA/NEW ZEALAND's first-ever woman prime minister, Jenny Shipley, is sworn in as leader of the ruling centre-right coalition.

PHILIPPINES The Government is supporting a bill which would mean women who have abortions and doctors who perform them will face the death penalty.

NORTHERN IRELAND Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams becomes the first Republican leader to visit Downing Street since Michael Collins negotiated Partition.

JAMAICA opts for no change in an unexpectedly peaceful election.

SOUTH KOREA Kim Dae Jung is elected president after a lifetime opposing first military dictators then the ruling élite. Popular discontent following the country's financial collapse produces the first-ever opposition victory.

NORTH KOREA Forgotten famine

ON 11 JULY THE WORLD FOOD PROGRAMME appealed for funds to feed North Korea's starving people. As many as 85 per cent of children are malnourished. There were claims that people were so hungry that they were eating corpses. But few people outside the country had even heard that there was a problem.

Why? Because the very word 'North Korea' conjures up images of Stalinism. North Korea has been called the 'world's least deserving government'. It has certainly been one of the most secretive countries in the world. Since the 1950s, when the communist North invaded its southern neighbour, the two countries have existed in a state of distrust, with a heavy demilitarized zone between them. But after the Cold War ended, North Korea began to emerge from its diplomatic isolation, entering the United Nations in 1991 and drawing up an agreement with the US in 1994. In August 1997 Kim Jong Il formally acceded to leadership of the ruling Korean Worker's Party, succeeding his father Kim Il Sung. Amnesty International issued a statement that this marked an opportunity for the country 'to cast off its isolationist tendencies and to develop dialogue and accountability on human-rights issues'.

There has been little sign of this, though the impending famine did bring North Korea, South Korea, China and the US together for the first time since the unofficial end of the Korean War in 1953.

Government officials maintain that the food shortage is a result of severe floods and storms in 1995 and 1996. But natural disasters were not the only cause. They aggravated the inherent problems of an inefficient agricultural system and a rigidly centralized economy in which vast resources are diverted to the military.

The US ­ for the first time in over a decade ­ is insisting that victims of a humanitarian crisis make political concessions in order to receive food aid. So far it has been the largest contributor to the food programme, with South Korea the second-largest.

In the meantime, the crisis worsens. Disasters this year have destroyed 70 per cent of the staple maize crop and the shortfall for 1998 is expected to be even greater than in 1997. Relief workers say that many people are surviving on just 100 grams of food per day ­ the equivalent of one bowl of rice. They say that people in rural areas are living off roots, tree bark and seaweed.

CHINA The dragon after Deng

THE EYES OF THE WORLD were fixed more closely on China than in any year since the Tiananmen Massacre of 1989, thanks to a unique moment in the history of decolonization. Hong Kong, which had been ruled by Britain since the end of the First Opium War in 1842, was handed back to China at midnight on 30 June. One of the ultimate symbols of Asian capitalism was embraced by the country which for so many years symbolized Communism.

CHRIS STOWERS / PANOS

Death of Deng: but China's future direction remains unknown.

Except that these days China itself is more likely to be seen as a symbol of dynamic growth and thrusting entrepreneurialism than of egalitarian idealism. The architect of this vast change in the economic direction of the world's most populous nation, Deng Xiaoping, finally died in February at the age of 92, after years in which he had been only nominally consulted. The last survivor of The Long March generation of Communist politicians, Deng combined ever-accelerating economic liberalism with ruthless suppression of democratic dissent, which many would see as the worst possible political combination.

For years people have been anticipating the change that could spring from Deng's death, but when it came the handover to his chosen successor, 70-year-old former Mayor of Shanghai Jiang Zemin, could not have been smoother. Jiang has shown signs of being more outgoing. He travelled to the White House to meet Bill Clinton and is clearly steering China towards playing a full part in the globalized world economy. Partly to this end, he succeeded in pushing through the fourteenth Congress of the Communist Party sweeping plans for the privatization of state industries.

The economic aspect is not what is worrying the people of Hong Kong, of course ­ their primary concern is how long their traditional freedom of speech will be preserved as part of the official 'one country, two systems' approach. Even before the handover the new Beijing-approved legislature passed laws giving the authorities stronger powers over demonstrations and tighter regulations governing political parties ­ and China admitted this year that it is holding 2,026 people in jail for 'counter-revolutionary' crimes. But Hong Kong's position would have been enormously enhanced had Britain bothered to institute a genuine democratic system while it still had control.

AFGHANISTAN War on women

THE YEAR BEGAN WITH THE TALIBAN ­ the army of Islamic extremists which now controls most of the country ­ forcing 12,000 villagers out of their homes and on an 80-kilometre march through the snow towards Kabul. An unpropitious start for the ordinary people of Afghanistan. And especially for its women, who are being forced on another journey ­ back to the twelfth century, in what British journalist Maggie O' Kane has called 'the greatest assault on womanhood in nigh on a millennium'.

Since the Taliban overthrew the Government on 27 September 1996, a series of decrees have made women's lives nearly impossible.

They are no longer allowed to work. This has meant that the Government is unable to function properly since half of its employees were women. It has meant that families for whom the woman was the main wage-earner are left without an income. Education for girls is forbidden ­ their schools have been closed down. And in September 1997, women were told they could not even go to hospital. A women's hospital would be built. This would, unfortunately, take months. The closure of the hospitals to women was permitted by the World Health Organization but thanks to an international outcry, it has not been carried out.

But Afghanistan's women have disappeared. Enveloped in burquas from head to foot, beaten for showing their ankles, stoned to death for adultery, they remain prisoners in their own homes. There are no women's voices any more. Even the sound of their feet has been silenced. They must shuffle along in special slippers.

Meanwhile, the Taliban are still fighting. They control the southern two-thirds of the country but in the north are waging war against Abdul Rashid Dostam, a former communist and an avowed secularist, and Ahmed Shah Masood, a moderate Muslim. Investors like Unocal, a US oil corporation, and the Argentine-based Bridas, are waiting for the Taliban to win control over the whole country so they can start work on a gas pipeline.

Mario Lopez Olacireegui, managing director of Bridas, is not concerned about the Taliban's human-rights violations. 'We are just an oil and gas company,' he said. 'We are not bothered by human rights or politics.'

So far only Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have given the Taliban official recognition, though they are actively seeking a seat at the United Nations.

ZAIRE/CONGO New era or the same old song?

1997 was the year that many Africa-watchers had been eagerly awaiting – when, after 32 years in power, Mobutu Sese Seko’s corrupt, degraded but iron-fisted grip was finally prised away from Zaire. He lived just long enough to see his own downfall and died in September after some years of ill-health and treatment in expensive Western clinics.

By then his country was under new management – and had even reverted to its former name, being now titled The Democratic Republic of the Congo. His downfall, as it turns out, was the terrible events in neighbouring Rwanda in 1994, where the Hutu genocide of Tutsi people led to the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front winning power. A million Hutu refugees took refuge over the border in Zaire and, though many returned home in the course of 1996, their presence was a destabilizing influence on the whole of eastern Zaire. Tutsis who had lived in eastern Zaire for hundreds of years were threatened with expulsion and responded by taking on the inept Zairean army (supported by the Rwandan Government).

Despite Mobutu’s desperate attempts to hold firm – in March he even recruited Serb mercenaries as reinforcements – the army from the east was unstoppable, especially when it was focused by the leadership of Laurent Kabila, who had opposed Mobutu from the eastern bush for 25 years. Negotiations involving South Africa’s President Mandela failed to arrive at an orderly transfer of power and Kabila’s rebel army took the capital, Kinshasa, in May.

Kabila’s first months in power have been dominated by an international dispute: he ends up in conflict with the UN over his refusal to allow a team to investigate allegations that his forces systematically slaughtered Hutu refugees as part of their drive to power. The evidence of human-rights groups suggests that Hutus were deliberately targeted with a view to weakening the power of Hutu militias in the east of the country.

The affair has not fostered confidence that Kabila’s regime will be markedly different from Mobutu’s. He has already been accused of showing little more respect for democratization and human rights than his predecessor, though he has always insisted that there would have to be an interim ‘stabilizing’ phase before democratic elections can take place. There are signs that a new Tutsi élite has taken up residence in the hilly suburbs of Kinshasa.

But the stakes are so high that cynicism is inappropriate: the Congo has such enormous potential mineral and agricultural wealth that it could act as an engine for African development in general if channelled correctly. And Kabila forms part of a nexus of new African leaders – Eritrea’s Afwerki, Ethiopia’s Zenawi, Angola’s dos Santos and Sudan’s Garang – who met in the 1970s in a climate of shared idealism under the auspices of Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere.

INDIA AT 50 Looking back

1997 was an eventful year for India. In politics, the ruling coalition under Deve Gowda collapsed and Inder Gujral of the United Front took over as Prime Minister. In July, history was made when a Dalit (‘Untouchable’), KR Narayanan, was elected as President.

At the same time India was using another event in its history to re-evaluate its present. On 14 August India remembered ‘its ‘tryst with destiny’, as Jawarharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, called the day of independence. It was a time for sober reminiscence as well as celebration, as Urvashi Butalia noted*:

‘The political partition of India caused one of the great human convulsions of history. Never before or since have so many people exchanged their homes and countries so quickly. In the space of a few months, about 12 million people moved between the new, truncated India and the two wings, East and West, of the newly created Pakistan. By far the largest proportion of these refugees – more than ten million of them – crossed the western border which divided the historic state of Punjab, Muslims travelling west to Pakistan, Hindus and Sikhs east to India.

‘Slaughter sometimes prompted and sometimes accompanied their movement; many others died from malnutrition and contagious disease. Estimates of the number of dead vary from 200,000 (the contemporary British figure) to two million (a later Indian speculation) but that somewhere around a million people died is now widely accepted. As always, there was sexual savagery: about 75,000 women were thought to have been abducted and raped by men of religions different from their own. Thousands of families were divided, homes were destroyed, crops left to rot, villages abandoned.

‘Astonishingly, the new governments of India and Pakistan were unprepared for the convulsion. They had not anticipated that the fear and uncertainty created by the drawing of borders based on head-counts of religious identity – so many Hindus and Sikhs versus so many Muslims – would force people to flee to what they considered “safer” places, where they would be surrounded by their own kind. People travelled in buses, cars, and trains, but mostly on foot in great columns, called kafilas, which could stretch for dozens of miles. The longest of them, said to comprise 400,000 refugees travelling east to India from western Punjab, took eight days to pass any given spot on its route.’
* From ‘Blood’ by Urvashi Butalia (Granta No 57, Spring 1997).

ALGERIA Descent into despair

The human-rights situation in Algeria has become one of those litanies of misery which makes us switch off when the media bothers to report on it. Some background may help you stay switched on.

• The country won its independence from France in 1962, led by the National Liberation Front (FLN), which from 1965 ruled in what was effectively a one-party state. By the 1980s the FLN’s pre-eminence was under severe challenge, notably from Islamic fundamentalists. Mass protest and upheaval forced the Government to agree to a new constitution and multiparty politics.

• In 1991, in the first multiparty elections in Algerian history, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) won 188 of the 232 seats in the first round, compared with the Socialists’ 25 and the FLN’s disastrous 16. The FIS would certainly have come to power in the second round of voting but instead the military took over and imposed a state of emergency.

• The FIS was banned and any leaders who had not fled were imprisoned. The 400 councils it had been running since local elections were dissolved. In response the FIS formed an armed wing, the FIA, which has since been at war with the Government along with another, even more extreme Islamist group, the GIA.

• The civil war has intensified every year since then – and 1997 was the worst year yet. Islamic terrorists are clearly responsible for many of the killings: they have deliberately killed civilians they regard as supporting the authorities or whose lifestyle is considered to be ‘un-Islamic’. They have also killed indiscriminately by placing an increasing number of bombs in public places over the last two years.

• But the Government is suspected of complicity in at least some of the massacres, which often take place in areas that voted heavily for the FIS.

• The biggest single massacre so far took place on 28 August 1997 in Sidi Rais, just south of Algiers, in which 300 civilians died. People fleeing from the atrocity asked for help from security-force units placed just outside the village but they failed to respond.

The regime’s annulment of the election was initially seen by some as the safeguarding of secularism and development against Islamic fundamentalism. But it has produced the dirtiest and most terrifying of civil wars in which the Government has as much to answer for as its opponents.

The Right Livelihood Award – often known as the Alternative Nobel Prize – has again recognized scholars and activists from four continents for their contributions to a sustainable future. Joseph Ki-Zerbo, from Burkina Faso, was honoured ‘for a lifetime of scholarship and activism that has both laid out the history of Black Africa and identified the key principles and processes by which Africans can create a better future’. Ki-Zerbo’s achievements as a historian and his commitment to a democratic and authentically African process of development have inspired thinkers and social activists all over Africa. He has said: ‘We must rebuild the identity from which the African peoples have become alienated by the vicissitudes of history and their own amnesia.’ Ki-Zerbo is also leader of the opposition Party for Democracy and Progress but he acknowledges that he aims to spread ideas rather than win elections.Mycle Schneider from France and Jinzaburo Takagi from Japan have formed a unique partnership aimed at ridding humanity of the threat posed by the manufacture, transport, use and disposal of plutonium. Their scientific research is rigorous and they disseminate its results effectively, so that many people have been empowered to resist the misinformation and secrecy of the plutonium industry.Cindy Duehring was training to be a doctor in the US when in 1985 she had her apartment treated for fleas by a common pesticide. Severely poisoned, she developed a disorder by which exposure to any chemical gives her seizures: she has not been out of her special sealed, non-toxic house in North Dakota since 1989 because breathing unpurified air triggers a bronchial shutdown. In 1986 she founded the Environmental Access Research Network which since 1994 has merged with the Chemical Injury Information Network, with 5,000 members in 32 countries.Michael Succow is a conservationist who established six biosphere reserves and five national parks while a deputy minister in the post-Communist government of East Germany. Two of these have become showcase areas for organic agriculture, sustainable forestry, sensitive tourism and ‘flowering landscapes’. Since then he has advised many other countries on how to do the same: he has helped establish seven parks/reserves in Georgia, covering a third of the country and others covering a third of Mongolia.

Thanks to Lucy Baker, Georg Caspary and Dominic Taylor for their research.