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.

US Suicidal terrorists commandeer and crash four aircraft into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Washington DC and (after struggle with passengers) a field in Philadelphia.

BOLIVIA Peasants throw up roadblocks and battle with soldiers in the Chiaparé region in protest at the US-sponsored coca eradication plan. Almost a quarter of Bolivians are out of work as a result of the 1997 ‘Dignity Plan’ to eradicate coca by 2002, which is nearly complete.

INDIA The Supreme Court extends the deadline for cleaner fuel, giving the Government 18 days to come up with detailed plans to convert 9,000 diesel buses to compressed natural gas (CNG). The World Health Organization estimates that 100,000 Indians die each year from air pollution.

BANGLADESH In the run-up to national elections 13 people are killed in political violence, bringing the death toll in pre-election clashes since campaigning started in July to 140.

PERU The Supreme Court issues an international arrest warrant for former president Alberto Fujimori, now a fugitive in Japan. Fujimori came to power claiming to be a compatriot of the Peruvian voters. His birth registration documents were suddenly found in Kumamoto, Japan, soon after he fled Peru.

COLOMBIA US oil company Occidental (Oxy) pulls out after drilling unsuccessfully in U’wa land. The U’wa people in the cloudforests of northern Colombia had threatened to commit suicide should Oxy extract oil (considered by the U’wa to be the ‘blood of the earth’) from beneath their ancestral lands.

Andy Crump / Panos Pictures

BANGLADESH The world’s largest-ever class action is launched against the British Geological Survey (BGS). London-based firm Leigh Day, representing hundreds of Bangladeshi villagers, claims that if experts from the BGS had tested for arsenic when they visited Bangladesh in 1992, thousands of people could have been saved from serious illnesses.

BRAZIL The battle over genetically modified (GM) crops reaches fever pitch as the soya planting season begins. Brazil is the only big world producer that can offer GM-free soya, but is under huge pressure from the US and companies like Monsanto, which plans to build a $500 million pesticides factory in the country.

KENYA The International Monetary Fund refuses to unblock further loans until an effective anti-corruption bill is passed. If the loans come at all they will be too late to rescue the economy before elections due in 2002.

SEYCHELLES President France-Albert René narrowly beats the nationalist opposition party, led by Anglican minister Wavel Ramkalawan, to stay in office after 24 years. René calls rising prices, draconian foreign-exchange regulations and empty shelves in the shops the ‘birth pangs of economic success’.

DR CONGO Concern grows over efforts to expel the ‘negative forces’ – hardline militias involved in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. As some are handed over to the UN, more go underground to intensify their campaign against the regimes of Rwanda and Burundi.

ZAMBIA Archbishop Emanuel Milongo, who was married in May by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon of the Unification Church (the ‘Moonies’), is threatened with excommunication by the Vatican.

US The annual IMF and World Bank meeting is cancelled, though planned demonstrations continue on a smaller scale.

AFGHANISTAN Two Belgian-based Moroccans posing as journalists kill Ahmed Shah Massoud, leader of the Northern Alliance.

ERITREA 11 of the ‘G15’ group of critics of President Isaayas Afeworki’s People’s Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ) are arrested, 3 have their passports withdrawn, 8 private news-papers are closed and up to 15 journalists may have disappeared.

SOUTH AFRICA UN Anti-Racism Conference in Durban ends with acrimony as the US and Israel walk out. The draft final document refers to ‘the racist practices of Zionism’. Egypt maintains Israel is a racist state, while Syria wants the final document to say that the Nazi holocaust was a Jewish lie.

ETHIOPIA The Ministry of Justice bans the Ethiopian Women Lawyers’ Association (EWLA), which has helped many women who have been abused. The Government says that the association was engaged in activities ‘not specified in its mandate’.

SWAZILAND King Mswati III revives a traditional law on chastity, banning sex for young girls in an attempt to combat the spread of HIV/

AIDS. Following Mswati’s 33rd birthday party it is announced that for five years ‘maidens’ will be expected not to shake hands with males ‘nor wear pants’.

FRANCE A massive explosion rips through the AZF chemical plant in a residential area of Toulouse, killing 29 and injuring 2,500, of whom 34 are in a critical condition; 600 homes are destroyed and 10,000 more are badly damaged.

The only thing known for SURE about the perpetrators of the suicidal assault on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 11 September is that they all died, among the 266 passengers and crew in the four hijacked aircraft. None was Afghani. All had been resident in the US. The exact number of people killed in and around the World Trade Center will probably never be known. The estimated toll fell steadily, from an initial 7,000 to less than 4,000. Among them were some 250 firefighters and police officers, as well as janitors, catering staff – and many Muslims. This was the largest death-toll in a single incident on US soil since the end of the Civil War, and the first foreign attack of any significance on US territory. Rene Clement / Hollandse Hoogte / Panos Pictures One obvious question remained unanswered: why had the lavish US ‘security’ apparatus failed so conspicuously to protect its citizens? This failure should have cast some doubt on the reliability of the FBI, the Department of Justice, the CIA and dozens of other operators in the US security business when it came to identifying those who might have organized the 11 September attacks. Nonetheless – and perhaps partly as a consequence – more than 1,100 individuals were arrested, almost all of them young males of Arab descent. Many were held without access to lawyers or knowledge of the charges against them. Investigations were extended to groups ‘linked to terrorism’ – such as the US chapter of Women in Black, a pacifist group which holds vigils against the violence in Israel and the Palestinian Territories. Reliable reports suggested that US officials seriously considered using ‘truth’ drugs and other ‘pressure’ tactics on suspects, including the threat of extradition to countries where torture is routine. In November a further 5,000 people were summoned to interviews with the FBI and President Bush signed a Military Order allowing for the trial of non-US citizens by special military commissions. According to Amnesty International, this ‘creates the risk that people may be executed after a trial conducted by a court whose decision cannot be appealed but only reviewed by the executive, which selected the individual for prosecution in the first place’. Such a process is in direct contravention of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the US ratified in 1992. Added to this, a 25-year ban on the assassination of foreign political leaders was lifted. For more information see: NI 340 - Twin Terrors