by Deep Green Resistance News Service | May 16, 2012 | Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy, Rape Culture
By Survival
An eleven-year old girl from the Chakma tribe in Bangladesh has been raped and murdered by a settler.
Sujata Chakma and her younger brother were grazing cows near their village when she was attacked on 9 May.
A suspect has been arrested, but local indigenous people have little faith he will be brought to justice.
Between January and May this year, at least six Jumma girls and women have been raped. Rina Dewan of the Hill Women’s Federation says, ‘The setters continue to commit rape with impunity; not a single rapist has ever been brought to justice, and this is the single greatest factor contributing to the recurrence of this heinous crime.’
The government of Bangladesh has moved hundreds of thousands of settlers into the Chittagong Hill Tracts, home to eleven tribes, known collectively as Jummas.
The settlers have displaced many of the indigenous Jummas, who have also been subjected to violent repression by the army. Jumma women and young girls are especially vulnerable to violent sexual attacks.
Whilst this violence continues unabated and with seemingly little attempt by the authorities to prosecute the perpetrators, evidence has emerged of further attempts to undermine the rights of the indigenous Jumma people.
A confidential circular, from the political wing of Bangladesh’s Ministry of Home Affairs, has recently emerged. The document was distributed to government officials last year in the run up to the UN International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples on August 9th.
It warned government officials not to contradict the official government policy that there are no indigenous people in Bangladesh – only ‘tribal people’ and ‘small ethnic groups’.
It went on to recommend that no government support should be given during Indigenous Peoples’ Day and that steps should be taken to publicise that ‘there are no indigenous people in Bangladesh’.
This circular comes in the wake of amendments to the constitution in June 2011, which controversially failed to recognize the estimated 50-60 indigenous peoples living in Bangladesh as ‘indigenous peoples’, in line with the United Nations understanding of the term.
Instead, it describes them as, ‘tribes, ethnic groups, ethnic sects and communities’. The government of Bangladesh has since announced that it will remove all references to ‘indigenous’ and ‘Adivasi’ from government documents, laws and even school textbooks.
The government’s attack on the term ‘indigenous’ and on the celebration of Indigenous Peoples’ Day is even more surprising given that in previous years the Prime Minister herself sent messages of support to the country’s indigenous peoples on Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Her party’s election manifesto also contained the term indigenous (Adivasi) several times.
Survival’s Director, Stephen Corry said today, ‘Instead of worrying about whether ministers might accidently use the term ‘indigenous’, the government of Bangladesh should be ensuring that Jumma women and young girls are safe from rape and murder. The record of prosecuting those responsible for these atrocities is scandalous – it’s high time that the government put its priorities in order and respected the rights of the Jummas’.
From Survival International: http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/8336
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | May 13, 2012 | Colonialism & Conquest, Protests & Symbolic Acts
By Malaysia Sun
George W. Bush and several other members of his administration have been found guilty of war crimes by the Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War.
In a unanimous vote on Saturday the symbolic Malaysian war crimes tribunal, part of an initiative by former Malaysian premier Mahathir Mohamad, found the former US President guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Seven of his former political associates, including former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, were also found guilty of war crimes and torture.
Press TV has reported the court heard evidence from former detainees in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay of torture methods used by US soldiers in prisons run by the American forces.
One former inmate described how he had been subjected to electric shocks, beatings and sexual abuse over a number of months.
A high ranking former UN official, former UN Assistant Secretary General, Denis Halliday, who also attended the trial, later told Press TV that the UN had been too weak during the Bush administration to enforce the Geneva Conventions.
He said: “The UN is a weak body, corrupted by member states, who use the Security Council for their own interests. They don’t respect the charter. They don’t respect the international law. They don’t respect the Geneva Conventions…A redundant, possibly a dangerous, and certainly corrupted organization.”
Following the hearing, former Malaysian premier Mahatir said of Bush and others: “These are basically murderers and they kill on large scale.”
It was the second so-called war crimes tribunal in Malaysia.
The token court was first held in November 2011 during which Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair were found guilty of committing “crimes against peace” during the Iraq war.
From Malaysia Sun:
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | May 5, 2012 | Protests & Symbolic Acts, Toxification
By the Associated Press
Thousands of Japanese marched to celebrate the switching off of the last of their nation’s 50 nuclear reactors on Saturday, waving banners shaped as giant fish that have become a potent anti-nuclear symbol.
Japan will be without electricity from nuclear power for the first time in four decades when the reactor at Tomari nuclear plant on the northern island of Hokkaido goes offline for routine maintenance.
After last year’s March 11 quake and tsunami set off meltdowns at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, no reactor halted for checkups has been restarted amid public worries about the safety of nuclear technology.
“Today is a historical day,” Masashi Ishikawa shouted to a crowd gathered at a Tokyo park, some holding traditional “koinobori” carp-shaped banners for Children’s Day that have become a symbol of the anti-nuclear movement.
“There are so many nuclear plants, but not a single one will be up and running today, and that’s because of our efforts,” Ishikawa said.
The activists said it is fitting that the day Japan is stopping nuclear power coincides with Children’s Day because of their concerns about protecting children from radiation, which Fukushima Dai-ichi is still spewing into the air and water.
The government has been eager to restart nuclear reactors, warning about blackouts and rising carbon emissions as Japan is forced to turn to oil and gas for energy.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | May 1, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction
By Jeremy Hance / Mongabay
Six years after the Yangtze river dolphin (Lipotes vexillifer), or baiji, was declared “functionally extinct” by scientists, another marine mammal appears on the edge of extinction in China’s hugely degraded Yangtze River. In less than two months, 32 Yangtze finless porpoises (Neophocaena asiaeorientalis asiaeorientalis), a subspecies of the finless porpoise, have been found dead in Dongting and Poyang Lakes in the Yangtze, reports the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).
The porpoises are suffering from many of the same impacts that pushed the baiji to extinction: illegal electrofishing, strikes by boat propellors, poisons, and possibly pollution and food shortages from lower water levels linked by officials to climate change. Autopsies show that at least two of the animals were killed by electrofishing and boat propellers.
“This tragedy shows that Yangtze finless porpoise is facing enormous challenges,” Lei Gang, head of WWF China’s Central Yangtze program, said in a press release. “The porpoise deaths illustrates that without effective measures to fundamentally reverse the trend of ecological deterioration, future of the incredible creature is far from certain. We have to act immediately.”
Researchers believe that around 1,000 Yangtze finless porpoises survive in the river with the population in dramatic decline. Currently, the IUCN Red List is evaluating the subspecies to see if the situation warrants classifying the population as Critically Endangered.
Breakneck development, including a series of dams, with little environmental regard has left the ecology of the Yangtze River in shambles. Aside from the baiji’s extinction, many of the river’s key species are vanishing. The Chinese paddlefish (Psephurus gladius), arguably the world’s biggest freshwater fish, is listed as Critically Endangered with only two fish confirmed since 2002. Scientists fear the fish may be soon gone for good, if not already, after a 2009 survey couldn’t find a single fish. In addition the Chinese alligator (Alligator sinensis), the Yangtze sturgeon (Acipenser dabryanus), and the Yangtze soft-shell turtle (Rafetus swinhoei) are all listed as Critically Endangered.
Still, a controversial new hydroelectric project, the Xiaonanhai Dam, is moving ahead despite concerns that it will finish off a number of the river’s endangered fish, many found no-where else in the world.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 27, 2012 | Agriculture, Climate Change
By Mongabay
Wilmar International, the world’s largest palm oil processor and trader, has hired a major lobbying firm to overturn the Environmental Protection Agency’s ruling that palm oil-based biodiesel will not meet greenhouse gas emissions standards under America’s Renewable Fuels Standard, reports The Hill.
Wilmar Oleo North America hired lobbying firm Van Ness Feldman to pressure the EPA on its finding that biofuels produced from palm oil do not offer substantial emissions savings relative to conventional gasoline. The EPA based its decision on analysis of lifecycle emissions from palm oil production, which at times occurs at the expense of carbon-dense rainforests and peatlands.
The Hill notes that the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a conservative group that drafts legislative language favoring corporate interests that fund it, is working to overturn the EPA’s finding.
“The Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to restrict the trade of tropical palm oil marks an abandonment of free trade principles that have been so beneficial to so many,” the group said in comments submitted to the EPA.
Malaysian and Indonesian groups have also complained about the EPA’s ruling. The period for comment on the matter closes April 27.
But environmental groups said the assumptions underlying the EPA’s conclusion were too conservative, noting that the agency expects only nine percent of palm oil expansion in Malaysia and 13 percent in Indonesia to occur on peatlands. But a study published today in the National Academy of Sciences, found that half of oil palm plantations in Indonesian Borneo were established on peat lands. Conversions of peat for plantations generates substantial greenhouse gas emissions.
“It is a disturbing development to see a politically motivated group like ALEC join forces with the shadowy palm oil lobby from Malaysia and Indonesia as well as with huge agribusiness companies Cargill and Wilmar to pressure the EPA to overturn what is supposed to be a science-based decision made in the best interests of the American people,” said Laurel Sutherlin with the Rainforest Action Network, in a statement. “The question the EPA is tasked with answering is whether biofuels made with palm oil meet our nation’s greenhouse gas requirements as a renewable fuel. The stark reality of the impacts of palm oil plantation expansion in Southeast Asia, where nearly 90% of the world’s palm oil comes from, makes it clear that it does not.”
“The emissions of palm oil based biofuels substantially exceed the emissions from conventional petroleum diesel,” added Jeremy Martin, Senior Scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
The renewable fuels standard targets 7.5 billion gallons of ‘renewable’ fuels to be blended into gasoline by the end of 2012. The initiative aims to reduce dependence on foreign oil and cut emissions from transportation, but some analysts have questioned the effectiveness of the program, since the bulk of ‘renewable’ fuel is expected to come from corn ethanol, which environmentalists say has mixed climate benefits.
