HEALTH HAZARD: How the system makes us sick - NI 331 - Chronicle 2000

Health hazard / CHRONICLE

.WITH A SPECIAL FOCUS ON THE MAJORITY WORLD

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More than any other recent conflict, the war in Sierra Leone has involved children – both as victims and as soldiers to fight for the rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF). An estimated 100,000 people have been tortured or mutilated and 50,000 killed in a conflict involving combatants as young as ten years old.

Currently the nation struggles, with the assistance of the UN’s largest peacekeeping force, to keep its shaky truce intact. But those responsible for the violence are neither controlled nor threatened by a ceasefire which stipulates that attacks on UN personnel and equipment will be regarded as violations but which makes no mention of attacks against civilians. Acts of torture, rape and killing by both the rebels and pro-government forces continue to take place.

Regionalization of the conflict means that while some Sierra Leoneans enjoy peace, for others it remains a distant dream. So far the peacekeepers have failed to halt the flow of weapons into the country, particularly from Liberia, and the fighting frequently overflows into neighbouring Guinea.

In the more peaceful towns, former child soldiers are an unsettling presence. ‘Parents are afraid and refuse to take them back because of what they’ve done,’ says peaceworker Chinsia Ethleen Caesar. While volunteers with limited resources try to reintegrate the former soldiers, tensions mount. ‘People go to sleep hungry,’ says teacher Amadu Tarawallie. ‘Job opportunities are limited and unless this changes we could have riots.’

Meanwhile, calls for justice have raised the dilemma of whether former child soldiers should be tried as part of a UN Special Court to look into war crimes committed since 30 November 1996 – the date of the ill-fated peace accord signed between the Government and RUF. Ethleen Ceasar thinks the children should not be tried. ‘Children were captured from schools, recruited by force and given drugs and guns. If they refused orders they were told they would be killed. People consider the atrocities committed and think “there must be justice”. But they must ask: “Who is recruiting and setting up these child soldiers? Who is supplying guns to Sierra Leone?”’ Getting to grips with these issues is vital if the UN peacekeeping force and the Special Court are to have a chance.

IRAQ Following intense pressure to drop the sanctions against Iraq, the US and Britain finally go along with the desire of the UN Security Council to double the quantity of spare parts Iraq can import for its oil rigs. But daily sorties – and frequent attacks – by US and British aircraft over Iraqi territory continue.

MALAYSIA Former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim is sentenced to six years imprisonment in what is seen by many as a political conspiracy plotted by President Mahathir.

SENEGAL Abdoulaye Wade wins the presidential election against Abdou Diouf, bringing an end to four decades of Socialist rule. Previously arrested twice for upsetting the Government, Wade is seen as a neo-liberal.

UNITED STATES Police fire teargas and make about 600 arrests as they sweep anti-World Bank/IMF protesters from the streets of Washington DC.

ZIMBABWE Eight members of the new opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, are killed and hundreds hospitalized during a vicious campaign of political violence waged by President Robert Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF party. A racially diverse march for peace involving thousands follows.

AFRICA The UN warns that a new famine threatening 12 million lives is looming over the Horn of Africa due to drought and war. Ethiopia is still at war with Eritrea while civil war in Sudan and clan conflicts in Somalia exacerbate local food shortages.

CUBA hosts a ground-breaking summit meeting of the G77. The 133 countries of the South meets in Havana to discuss globalization and North-South relations and to develop a united front against the more damaging policies of the rich-world G8 countries and its financial institutions.

BRAZIL As the country prepares to mark the 500th anniversary of its ‘discovery’ in a week of celebrations, indigenous peoples provide an alternative view. ‘It was an invasion,’ says Neusa Mattos Olvera, a Pataxo Indian. ‘If I went into your home, no-one would say I discovered it.’ At the time of colonization there were six million indigenous people in Brazil – now there are 350,000.

SAUDI ARABIA Amnesty International reports that the nation’s appalling human-rights record is overlooked because of its oil reserves and Western allies. Elections and trade unions are banned and vague laws are used to prosecute perceived government opponents. Capital punishment and flogging are extensively used, migrant workers ill-treated, women out in public alone arrested, and gay people are executed.

PAPUA NEW GUINEA The Government agrees to Bouganville’s demands for a referendum on independence. The Loloata Understanding provides for the election of an autonomous government, followed by a referendum after autonomy ‘can be fairly and properly judged’.

KOREA North and South Korea announce their first bilateral summit since the Korean peninsula was divided in 1948. The two sides remain technically at war, having never signed an armistice after 1953.

PHILIPPINES In a bid to stop slavery and traffic of women and children, delegates from Australia, Canada, Russia, the US and the EU together with those from 16 Asia-Pacific nations meet in the Philippines. More than one million women and children are trafficked each year, including 250,000 women and children from Southeast Asia and 200,000 from Russia.