Human trafficking on the rise in Laos

 

Cached:  http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90777/90851/7313558.html

16:12, March 09, 2011

Human trafficking is an escalating problem in Laos, due to unemployment, poverty and lack of education opportunities, Lao News Agency (KPL) reported on Wednesday.

The number of Laotians falling victim to human trafficking was reported to increase significantly in 2010, most of whom were poor and lack access to jobs and education.

Most victims were from central and southern Laos, including the capital Vientiane, Savannakhet, Saravane and Champassak provinces that have more communications with neighboring Thailand than other places, said Chiengkham, deputy head of the Police General Department.

Almost 150 victims were repatriated back to Laos from Thailand last year, 119 of them under 18 years old, of whom 109 were female, KPL said.

According to a memorandum of understanding signed between Laos and Thailand in 2005, before victims of human trafficking are returned to Laos, they are taught various job skills and provided with advocacy assistance and accommodation.

Chiengkham said that “limited budget is our problem at the moment to provide humanitarian assistance to the victims, to collect information, and prosecute the traffickers.”

The Laotian government was said to have established anti-human trafficking committees at both central and provincial levels, in a bid to fight the increasingly serious problem in the country.

Source: Xinhua

Philip Smith: Vang Pao burial decision is a disgrace

Lao Hmong veterans who fought in America’s covert war should be fully honored.

Cached:  http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/117551498.html

By PHILIP SMITH

Last update: March 7, 2011 – 7:33 PM

Commentary

The recent funeral and burial of Gen. Vang Pao in California symbolizes why Lao Hmong veterans who served alongside U.S. military and clandestine forces in the “U.S. Secret Army” should be more fully honored by the United States as national policy.

The time is long overdue for Washington to permit these veterans of America’s covert war in Laos to be granted the honor of being buried in U.S. national veterans’ and military cemeteries.

Vang Pao, who, perhaps, became a more complex and enigmatic figure in recent years, died in January in Clovis, Calif., at age 81.

During the Indochina conflict, he was the leader of Laotian and Hmong irregular forces, as well as main-force units, formed in cooperation with the U.S. military and clandestine services of the CIA.

With American support, he helped to lead the largest covert operation in U.S. military history before the war against the Soviet Army in Afghanistan.

His Laotian and Hmong troops rescued American pilots and air crews shot down over Laos during the Vietnam War.

His Lao Hmong special forces also saved the lives of countless U.S. soldiers, in part because of their interdiction of enemy troop and supply convoys as well as by tying up key North Vietnamese divisions in combat in Laos.

Following his death, many appealed to official Washington, including the Pentagon and White House, for his burial in Arlington National Cemetery.

Those making the requests included his family; his combat veterans, led by the Lao Veterans of America; members of Congress, Lao Hmong community leaders, and others.

The appeals were largely met with a mixture of insensitivity, hubris and indifference by those responsible for America’s national security and veterans affairs issues.

In a terribly timed statement on Feb. 4, the opening day of a weeklong funeral and mourning period marked by tens of thousands of grieving Lao-Hmong Americans, U.S. Army Secretary John McHugh announced that burial of Vang Pao at Arlington would not be permitted.

The stench of betrayal from Washington is once again overwhelmingly apparent to Lao Hmong-Americans and the Vietnam veterans who served with them during the bloody war in Southeast Asia.

America has for too long abandoned the Lao Hmong veterans and their refugee families in their hour of greatest need, both in terms of their horrific plight in Southeast Asia following the war as well as their current status in the United States — where they are still largely forgotten, misunderstood or worse.

In light of this, Congress and President Obama should immediately work to enact legislation to authorize the Pentagon and Secretary of Veterans Affairs to grant the approximately 10,000 surviving Lao Hmong combat veterans the final honor which Gen. Vang Pao was denied.

Such legislation was introduced last year but did not reach a vote. Its reintroduction and passage would send an important message of gratitude and respect to Lao Hmong-American veterans and their families.

Lao Hmong veterans, including Vang Pao, should rest with honor at America’s national cemeteries.

Philip Smith is the executive director for the Center for Public Policy Analysis in Washington, D.C. He has worked with the Lao and Hmong community on refugee, human rights and veterans issues for more than 20 years.

Has Gaddafi fled Libya?

Three private planes ‘leave country bound for Vienna, Athens and Cairo’

Cached:  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1364469/Has-Gaddafi-fled-Libya-Three-private-planes-leave-country-bound-Vienna-Athens-Cairo.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 12:33 PM on 9th March 2011

• Libyan Airlines Falcon 900 entered Greek airspace for 15 minutes
• The west wants to ‘divide country and take oil’, dictator claims
• Thirteen-and-a-half hour barrage of bombs on Zawiyah
• Snipers given orders to ‘shoot anything that moves’
• ‘We want the international community to support a no-fly zone’, says Clinton

Three private jets owned by Colonel Gaddafi today left Libya headed for Vienna, Athens and Egypt, according to reports.

Greek officials said they spotted one Libyan Airlines Falcon 900 jet as it briefly entered airspace for around 15 minutes earlier this morning.

The sightings have already prompted speculation that Gaddafi or members of his family have fled the country.

The planes usually carry Libyan officials and VIPs but it is not known who was on board the aircraft.

Karl Stango-Navarra, a journalist based in Valletta, Malta, told Al Jazeera that the three jets are flying in three different directions.

‘One is suggested to be Vienna, the other is supposed to be Athens in Greece, and the other is Cairo, Egypt,’ Stango-Navarra said.

‘Obviously, nobody knows who may be aboard the planes,’ he said.

The development comes as revolutionary forces who have established the Libyan National Council gave Gaddafi 72 hours to quit and leave the North African country amidst escalating violence.

‘A private plane of Gaddafi has crossed Greek airspace en route to Egypt,’ the Greek defence ministry source said.

‘We do not know who is on board.The pilot tabled a flight plan from Tripoli to Cairo,

‘The plane crossed southwest of the island of Crete around an hour ago. It should be landing in Cairo by now.’

The flight comes as forces loyal to Colonel Gaddafi ‘flattened’ the city of Zawiyah with an onslaught of rockets, tanks and war planes as the dictator increases violence in the troubled country.

Gaddafi’s aircraft and tanks pounded rebels in Zawiyah, the closest rebel-held city to the Libyan stronghold of Tripoli in the west, during a 13-and-a-half hour barrage.

Dead bodies were said to be littering the streets as troops swept through the area opening fire relentlessly in a ferocious bid to reclaim the oil-rich city.

The violent frenzy came as Gaddafi gave his fourth rambling TV interview from a hotel in Tripoli since protests began on February 15.

Gaddafi and his entourage made a bizarre visit to a Tripoli hotel where foreign journalists were staying late on Tuesday and gave interviews to French and Turkish television.

Returning to familiar themes, the Libyan leader said the rebels wanted to pave the way for a new colonial era that would allow Britain, France and the United States to divide up the country and control its oil wealth.

Making reference obliquely to unrest in the Arab world and elsewhere, he said: ‘How can (Libyan) parents allow Tunisians, Egyptians, Algerians and Afghans to enrol your children?’

He said rebels were drug-addled youths and al Qaeda-backed terrorists, and said he would die in Libya rather than surrender. One of his sons said if Gaddafi bowed to pressure and quit, Libya would descend into civil war.

Meanwhile today, in besieged Zawiyah, 30 miles west of Tripoli, trapped residents sheltered from the onslaught of four dozen tanks backed up by aircraft firepower.

Bodies were lying unrecovered in the ruins of many buildings destroyed in air raids earlier in the week. There was no one in the streets of the centre of the city of 290,000 and it was not possible to verify the reports independently.

‘Zawiyah as you knew it no longer exists. They have been attacking the town from 10 in the morning until 11:30 in the evening,’ Zawiyah resident, Ibrahim, said early today.

He said that dozens of bodies were scatterer on the streets. ‘There is no electricity, no water and we are cut off from the outside world,’ he added.

The fighter said forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi were in control of the main road and the suburbs of Zawiyah, which in the past three days has become a focal point of a civil war on two fronts to end Gaddafi’s rule.

There were army snipers on top of most buildings, shooting whomever dared to leave their homes. Half of the city was hit by air attacks, including a mosque, he said.

‘The situation is not so good,’ said another resident by telephone.

‘No one can move outside their homes because they there are snipers everywhere,’ he added.

Ibrahim said Gaddafi forces ‘have surrounded the square with snipers and tanks’ but rebels were holding on to the central square area.

‘It’s very scary. There are a lot of snipers,’ he said.

‘There are many dead people and they can’t even bury them. Zawiyah is deserted. There’s nobody on the streets. No animals, not even birds in the sky,’ he said.

The heavy fighting has forced a shutdown of one of Libya’s biggest refineries, which is located near the town, a refinery official said today.

Zawiyah was, briefly, described as a rebel stronghold in the uprising which erupted against Gaddafi last month. But it may now be on the verge of changing hands.

But rebel forces still controlled Zawiyah’s central square, and the enemy was about 1,500 metres away, Ibrahim added.

In a propaganda bid to play down the rebellion, Libyan television showed two reporters meeting residents yesterday in what it said was ‘liberated Zawiyah’. But a Ghanaian worker who fled the city said rebels still controlled the central square, urging residents to defend their positions.

A government spokesman said troops were mostly in control but there was still a small group of fighters. ‘Maybe 30-40 people, hiding in the streets and in the cemetery. They are desperate,’ he said in Tripoli.

Blitzes on Zawiyah came a day after Libyan warplanes bombarded a rebel stronghold with seven air-strikes as Gaddafi tried to prevent them closing in on his Tripoli safe haven.

Anti-Gaddafi insurgents took up any position they could as they returned fire with little more than hand guns and assault rifles, taking pot shots at the roaring jets overhead.

Some lay on the floor while others sat in office swivel chairs in a bid to get a better line of sight as they furiously defended the oil port of Ras Lanouf.

But their brave attempts to stave off the attacks were no match for Gaddafi’s brute force as one strike landed on a residential area. Fortunately, however, most homes in the area had already been evacuated.

The brutal counter-attacks by Gaddafi loyalists suggest the defiant autocrat in power for 41 years will not go quietly or relatively quickly as fellow leaders in Egypt and Tunisia did in a tide of popular unrest now shaking the Arab world.

The international community has now stepped up the pressure on Gaddafi with Prime Minister David Cameron and U.S. President Barack Obama having discussed the ongoing violence.

But today, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made it clear that Washington believes any decision to impose a no-fly zone over this African oil-producing desert state is a matter for the United Nations and should not be a U.S.-led initiative.

‘We want to see the international community support it (a no-fly zone),’ Clinton told Sky News today. ‘I think it’s very important that this not be a U.S.-led effort.’

British Prime Minister David Cameron, who talked with Obama about a no-fly zone by telephone, said planning was vital in case Gaddafi refused to step down in response to the popular uprising that erupted mid-February.

‘I think now we have got to prepare for what we might have to do if he goes on brutalising his own people,’ the prime minister told the BBC.

in the telephone call, the two leaders ‘agreed to press forward with planning, including at NATO, on the full spectrum of possible responses, including surveillance, humanitarian assistance, enforcement of the arms embargo, and a no-fly zone’.

Britain and France are seeking a U.N. resolution to authorise such a zone to ground Gaddafi’s aircraft and prevent him moving troops by air.

Russia and China, which have veto power in the U.N. Security Council, are cool towards the idea, which would be likely to require bombing Libyan air defences.

Hafiz Ghoga, spokesman for the rebel National Libyan Council, said in the rebel base of Benghazi in eastern Libya:  ‘We will complete our victory when we are afforded a no-fly zone. If there was also action to stop him (Gaddafi) from recruiting mercenaries, his end would come within hours.’

Libya missiles

 

Women’s rights marchers in Cairo: Egypt’s revolution means nothing if its women are not free

washingtonpost.com

Women’s rights marchers in Cairo report sexual assaults by angry mob

Cached:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/08/AR2011030805540.html

By Richard Leiby

Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 9, 2011

An International Women's Day demonstration in Cairo's Tahir Square turned violent when a group of men attacked it. Photograph: Str/AP

CAIRO – Women hoping to extend their rights in post-revolutionary Egypt were faced with a harsh reality Tuesday when a mob of angry men beat and sexually assaulted marchers calling for political and social equality, witnesses said.

“Everyone was chased. Some were beaten. They were touching us everywhere,” said Dina Abou Elsoud, 35, a hostel owner and organizer of the ambitiously named Million Woman March.

She was among a half-dozen women who said they were repeatedly groped by men – a common form of intimidation and harassment here that was, in fact, a target of the protesters. None of the women reported serious injuries.

The demonstration on International Women’s Day drew a crowd only in the hundreds to Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the popular revolt that drove President Hosni Mubarak from power. Gone, organizers said, was the spirit of equality and cooperation between the sexes that marked most of the historic mass gatherings in the square.

As upwards of 300 marchers assembled late Tuesday afternoon, men began taunting them, insisting that a woman could never be president and objecting to women’s demands to have a role in drafting a new constitution, witnesses said.

“People were saying that women were dividing the revolution and should be happy with the rights they have,” said Ebony Coletu, 36, an American who teaches at American University in Cairo and attended the march, as she put it, “in solidarity.”

The men – their number estimated to be at least double that of the women’s – broke through a human chain that other men had formed to protect the marchers. Women said they attempted to stand their ground – until the physical aggression began.

“I was grabbed in the crotch area at least six times. I was grabbed in the breasts; my throat was grabbed,” Coletu said.

She and several others said they eventually took refuge in a tourism agency office protected by Egyptian army personnel.

The sexual assault of CBS News reporter Lara Logan during the Tahrir Square protests last month brought the problem to wider Western notice, but Egyptian women say that sexual harassment has long been rampant here and that they grow up expecting to be fondled in public by men with impunity.

Nagla Rizk, also a professor at American University in Cairo, said she went to the march Tuesday full of hope but left within an hour after sensing the ugly mood of the counterdemonstrators.

“The whole event was not successful, and I am very disappointed,” she said. “This is totally alien to the spirit of Tahrir.”

—

Egypt’s revolution means nothing if its women are not free

The Guardian

A mob of men attacking an International Women’s Day demo should not be allowed to happen in the new Egypt

Cached:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/09/egypt-revolution-women

Jumanah Younis

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 9 March 2011 12.00 GMT

Article history

–

A demonstration commemorating International Women’s Day was attacked on Tuesday afternoon in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. More than 200 men charged on the women – forcing some to the ground, dragging others out of the crowd, groping and sexually harassing them as police and military figures stood by and failed to act.

It was a shocking wake-up call. Even in Tahrir Square, the symbol of Egypt’s newfound freedom, it seems that it’s going to take much more than a revolution to overhaul the deep-seated misogyny that some Egyptian men so freely and openly impose on the country’s female population.

The female demonstrators – myself among them – had been protesting against Egypt’s chronic sexual harassment problem, against the many barriers women face in public life, and against the pervasive conservatism that curtails the freedom of women in society at large. The women chanted slogans that had been used in the revolution itself, calling for freedom, justice and equality. But their demonstration quickly attracted a counter-protest.

The women’s chants calling for an “Egypt for all Egyptians” were drowned out by retaliations such as “No to freedom!” shouted by the opposing group. The men charged at the female protesters, who had been standing on a raised platform in the middle of Tahrir Square, and shouted: “Get out of here.”

Many women were dragged away individually by small groups of men who attacked them. I remained on the platform with five other women. A small circle of sympathetic men held hands around us to protect us from the crowd, which swelled on all sides.

Against the charge of the counter-demonstrators, the circle quickly caved. Several women fell to the ground and a number of attempts were made by the attacking group to steal belongings.

As I struggled to stay upright, a hand grabbed my behind and others pulled at my clothes. When, a few minutes later, I found the other women I was with, one told me that a man had put his hand down her top, while another woman had been pushed to the ground and held down by a man on top of her. The police continued to direct traffic around the square as the incident was taking place.

Such outrageous displays of contempt for women cannot be allowed to persist in the new Egypt. Time and time again so-called “women’s issues” have been relegated to the bottom of the agenda: we must end corruption first, we must have political freedom first, etc, etc. On Tuesday, Egyptian women said: “Now is the time.” There is no freedom for men without freedom and equality for women.

This is not a free society if a woman cannot walk down the street without fear of being harassed, attacked, or even molested. Women have a right to participate in Egyptian society as equals – and this revolution will have achieved nothing if it does not recognise the basic right of the Egyptian women to exist, to demonstrate, to work, to live and walk the streets with dignity.