One in three could support torture

One in three Americans could accept torture of suspects in the war on terrorism, according to a November Christian Science Monitor poll (11/14/01). The question asked was "Could you envision a scenario in the war against terrorism in which you would support any of the following actions taken by the U.S. or not?" Sixty percent of respondents said they could accept assassination of leaders in other countries; 32 percent said they could accept torture of suspects held in the U.S. or abroad; 27 percent said they could accept use of nuclear weapons; and 10 percent said they could accept use of biological or chemical weapons.

Organ transplants from executed prisoners

American doctors are increaingly facing the moral dilemma of whether to provide follow-up care for Americans who traveled to China to receive organ transplants from executed prisoners, the New York Times reported in November.

"Kidneys, livers, corneas and other body parts from prisoners are being transplanted into American citizens or permanent residents who otherwise would have to wait years for organs," the Times story explained (NYT, 11/11/01). "Many of the patients come back to the U.S. for follow-up care, which Medicaid or other government programs pay for.

"The transplants in China, which doctors in both countries say are increasing, has presented the American medical establishment with an ethical quandary: Should American doctors treat patients who have received organs from executed prisoners and, if so, would they be tacitly condoning the practice and encouraging more such transplants?

"Or should they rebuke patients who, in desperation, participate in a process that mainstream transplant advocates condemn as morally wrong? ...

"Executed prisoners are China’s primary source of transplantable organs, though few of the condemned, if any, consent to having their organs removed, people involved with the process say. Some of the unwitting donors may even be innocent, having been executed as part of a surge of executions propelled by accelerated trials and confessions that sometimes were extracted through torture.

"Various initiatives are under way to protest the harvesting of organs from China’s prisoners. One bill would bar entry to the U.S. of any doctors from China who want American transplant training. Chinese transplant specialists now travel freely to the U.S. to take part in seminars and other activities that help hone their skills.

But American doctors say there is little they can do to stop the flow of prisoner organs to the U.S. because the Chinese supply is growing just like the American demand.

"More transplantable organs are available in China because more people are being executed. This year, 5,000 prisoners or more are likely to be put to death during a nationwide anti-crime drive."

Alternative visions

"It is not naive to propose alternatives to war," Barbara Kingsolver writes in In These Times (11/26/01). "We could be the kindest nation on Earth, inside and out. I look at the bigger picture and see that many nations with fewer resources than ours have found solutions to problems that seem to baffle us. I’d like an end to corporate welfare so we could put that money into ending homelessness. I would like a humane health-care system organized along the lines of Canada’s. I’d like the efficient public-transit system of Paris in my city, thank you. I’d like us to consume energy at the modest level that Europeans do, and then go them one better. I’d like a government that subsidizes renewable energy sources instead of forcefully patrolling the globe to protect oil gluttony. Because, make no mistake, oil gluttony is what got us into this holy war, and it’s a deep tar pit. I would like us to sign the Kyoto agreement today and to reduce our fossil-fuel emissions with legislation that will ease us into safer, sensibly reorganized lives. If this were the face we showed the world, and the model we helped bring about elsewhere, I expect we could get along with a military budget the size of Iceland’s."

Global warming
threatens food supply

The United Nations has warned that global warming may threaten the world’s food supply, according to a Reuters story (8/11/01) reported by planetark.org.

"Harvests of some of the world’s key food crops could drop by up to 30 percent in the next 100 years due to global warming, a U.N. agency said. The grim prediction was made by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in a document released in Marrakesh which hosts a U.N.-sponsored climate change conference. The report said scientists have found ‘evidence that rising temperatures, linked with emissions of greenhouse gases, can damage the ability of vital crops such as wheat, rice and maize.’ New studies indicate that yields could fall by as much as 10 percent for every one degree Celsius rise in areas such as the tropics. It said that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the U.N. team of scientists that advise governments, estimate that average global temperatures in the tropics could clime by up to three degrees Celsius by 2100. According to U.N. scientists, current climate models predict a global warming of about 1.4 to 5.8 degrees Celsius between 1990 and 2100.

"The UNEP report said a second group of the IPCC found that key cash crops such as coffee and tea in some of the major growing regions will also be vulnerable over the coming decades to global warming. ‘They fear that desperate farmers will be forced into higher, cooler, mountainous areas intensifying pressure on sensitive forests and threatening wildlife and the quality and quantity of water supplies,’ it said."

Mexican activists freed after lawyer’s murder

Two peasant ecologists who had been imprisoned on drugs and weapons charges which they claimed were false were pardoned by Mexican President Vicente Fox after the lawyer who had defended them was murdered.

"The pardon of Rodolfo Montiel and Teodoro Cabrera came after the Oct. 19 killing of human rights lawyer Digna Ochoa," the Los Angeles Times reported (www.latimes.com, 11/9/01). "The unsolved slaying of Ochoa in her Mexico City office has raised a firestorm of criticism and editorials urging that the Fox administration find her killers and bring them to justice. Some see her case as a test of his promise to reduce human rights violations and the impunity of the past. The imprisonment of the two men in May 1999 and their conviction in August 2000 made them a cause celebre among environmentalists. Fox had publicly expressed interest in the case and in February had ordered a review by his interior secretary. But a federal court upheld the verdicts in July.

"In an interview Thursday, Foreign Secretary Jorge Castaneda said more actions to defend human rights will be taken in coming weeks.

"’The case was emblematic because of the number of issues it raised – environmental, rural violence, the role of the military in past rights abuses,’ he said.

"Montiel had organized villagers in the Sierra Madre mountains to oppose commercial logging by Boise Cascade and other companies. Boise Cascade has since left the area. Protesting the deforestation of their region, the peasants wrote letters to the government. When that got no response, they blocked steep mountain roads to prevent logging trucks from reaching sawmills on the Pacific Coast near Zihuatanejo.

"The men were arrested by the army. Prosecuters said the men were taken into custody after they and others fled a house, ignored orders to stop and opened fire on soldiers. Montiel was accused of having a .45-caliber pistol; both men were charged with growing marijuana.

"Both men confessed, but defense attorneys at the legal aid group Miguel Agustin Pro Human Rights Center in Mexico City said the men did so under torture. Ochoa helped in their defense until August 2000, when she went into exile after being kidnapped and threatened with death. She returned to Mexico in April."

Sipaz recently reported that death threats have been made against five more prominent human rights defenders in Mexico City and one in the state of Guerrero. They ask that letters be written to the Mexican government expressing shock and dismay at learning of the death threats against Miguel Sarre, Sergio Aguayo, Edgar Cortez, Juan Antonio Vega, Fernando Ruiz and Abel Barrera, asking that protective measures be implemented for their saftey, and urging the government to pursue effective investigation and prosecution of human rights violators. Write: Lic. Vicente Fox Quezada; Presidente de Mexico; Palacio Nacional. Patio de Honor; ler. Piso, Col Centro, C.P. 06067; Fax 5277.23.76; Phone 55.15.82.56; email: sprivada@presidencia.gob.mx.

African women
peacemakers video

A new video available from the International Fellowship of Reconciliation’s Women Peacemakers Program covers an African consultation of women from different sides of the conflicts in Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Uganda and Zimbabwe. The video portrays some of the consultations highlights, including a discussion of domestic violence and the difficulties of reconciliation. The video, which comes with a viewers’ guide, will interest conflict resolution trainers, peace researchers, African studies and women’s studies classes, and anyone interested in conflect and gender issues. Cost is $25 U.S. (add $5 if requesting airmail shipment). Write IFOR, Spoorstraat 38, 1815 BK Alkmaar, The Netherlands/Pays-Bas. Email office@ifor.org.