ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE - NI 342 - Chronicle 2001: November

New Internationalist 342Jan / Feb 2002

Another world is possible / CHRONICLE 2001

.WITH A SPECIAL FOCUS ON THE MAJORITY WORLD

JAN | FEB | MAR | APR | MAY | JUN | JUL | AUG | SEP | OCT | NOV | DEC
Click a month above to read an alternative view of the key events of that month.

LEBANON The World Forum on Globalization, attended by representatives from five continents, gathers to work out a common position on the upcoming World Trade Organization ministerial meeting in Doha, Qatar.

UNITED STATES Three quarters of a $200 billion ‘economic stimulus’ package of public funds will go to the top 10 per cent of taxpayers; 41 per cent goes to the top one per cent. The US economy shrinks at an annual rate of 0.4 per cent in the third quarter of the year.

BURUNDI Hutus and Tutsis join a power-sharing agreement brokered by Nelson Mandela. The new transitional government will sit for three years. Tutsi soldier and current president Pierre Buyoya will remain in office for 18 months, to be succeeded by Domitien Ndayizeye, leader of the main Hutu party, Frodebu. Multiparty elections are scheduled for 2004.

CHINA The AIDS crisis comes into the open at a national conference in Beijing. Although the official number of HIV-positive cases in China is 28,000, the official ‘estimate’ is 600,000. Many experts believe the real figure is at least one million.

NICARAGUA Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega concedes defeat for the third time in national elections. Enrique Bolanos takes over as President from Arnoldo Aleman, his predecessor as Liberal Party leader.

KASHMIR At least 35 people are killed in clashes in Indian Kashmir, including a suicide attack on an army camp by the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba.

TURKEY Four people burn themselves to death in Istanbul after security forces raid two houses to take hunger strikers forcibly to hospital. The fast, to protest against prison conditions, has lasted over a year.

US A plane carrying 260 people crashes into a residential neighbourhood in New York, killing all on board (mostly citizens of the Dominican Republic), and several people on the ground. Officials claim the crash was an accident, and not a terrorist attack.

MOROCCO The 7th Conference of the Parties (COP7) of the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) takes place to finalize the details of the Bonn Agreement on implementation and enforcement; 180 countries, excluding the US, sign up. Greenpeace and others say greenhouse emissions in many rich countries will not be sufficiently reduced.

ALGERIA Flash floods kill over 733 people and destroy the homes of 24,000 people.

WEST PAPUA Theys Eluay, leader of the West Papuan separatist movement, is found dead after being kidnapped.

SPAIN A judge is shot dead in Bilbao and a car bomb in Madrid injures over 90 people. Both incidents are blamed on ETA, the Basque separatist group.

BRAZIL Four people are convicted of murder and jailed for 14 years for burning an indigenous ‘Indian’ man to death. The ruling is considered a major victory for indigenous rights.

A National Network Against the Trafficking of Wild Animals (Renctas) report estimates 38 million animals are stolen from Brazil’s forests each year.

MACEDONIA Hundreds of armed police take up positions around Tetovo after some of the worst violence between the Government and Albanian rebels since the peace deal brokered by the West in August. Parliament ratifies a peace accord which gives greater rights to the Albanian minority.

KOSOVO Moderate Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova declares his party’s victory in the Yugoslav province’s elections is a first step towards Kosovan independence.

ZIMBABWE Waves of violence tear through the country as President Robert Mugabe’s war veterans attack the offices of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

BULGARIA Socialist party leader and former Communist party chief Georgi Parvanov wins presidential elections, promising to pursue European Union and NATO membership.

CHECHNYA Chechen rebels meet Russian authorities near Moscow for the first official talks since the war began two years ago.

EGYPT 23 men are jailed for homosexuality, having been arrested in a disco in May. In Egyptian law, homosexuality is not an offence, but the men were convicted on the grounds of ‘threatening the security of the state’ by indulging in ‘sexual practices contemptuous of and contrary to Islam’.

This year’s Right Livelihood Awards went to:

* Gush Shalom, the Israeli peace movement co-founded by Uri and Rachel Avnery in 1993, has led protest against mass deportations, the closure of the occupied territories and the Hebron massacre. It is founded on three principles: One, Israeli withdrawal from all the occupied territories.

Two, recognition of the PLO as the Palestinians’ representative. Three, recognition of the right of Palestinians to establish their own independent state, with East Jerusalem as its capital, alongside Israel. Gush Shalom actions include rebuilding the demolished houses of Palestinians, demonstrating against the expropriation of Palestinian land for Israeli settlements, and supporting the Oslo peace process.

* Trident Ploughshares is a ‘campaign to disarm the UK Trident nuclear weapons system in a non-violent, open, peaceful and fully accountable manner’. Part of a wider international movement aiming to ‘beat swords into ploughshares’, Trident Ploughshares argues that Britain is not only acting immorally but also illegally in having four nuclear submarines. It is breaching Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as well as the 1996 Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice confirming the illegality of nuclear weapons.

There have been 1,400 arrests since the campaign began, holding its first mass action in August 1998. In June 1999, Angie Zelter, Ellen Moxley and Ulla Røder succeeded in putting a Trident-related research laboratory out of action. In court, they presented a comprehensive defence case and were acquitted on all charges.

* The Brazilian Leonardo Boff is one of the founders of liberation theology. Silenced by the Vatican because of his outspoken criticism of the Catholic Church, he left the Franciscan order in 1992 saying that ‘the future of humanity and planet earth’ are more important than the future of the institutionalized church. He is still active as a lay priest in the comunidades de base, poor grassroots groups all over Brazil. Now Emeritus Professor of Ethics, Philosophy of Religion and Ecology at the State University of Rio de Janeiro Boff’s recent work seeks to integrate deep ecology and liberation theology.

* The Venezuelan José Antonio Abreu started out as an economics professor. But in 1975 he founded the National Symphony Youth Orchestra system which now involves 110,000 people. Explicitly oriented towards lower-income groups, music is used as an instrument for social integration. Apart from musical teaching there are workshops in which children learn to build and repair instruments and special programmes for children with disabilities or learning difficulties. Other Latin American and Caribbean countries have been inspired by Abreu’s example to launch similar initiatives.