The greed behind Burma’s agony – Sunday Business Post
September 30th, 2007
http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2007/09/30/story26992.asp
Corruption is endemic in the military-dominated Burmese economy, and army cadres have been enriched using the country’s natural resources, writes Simon Roughneen in Kuala Lumpur.
from bdcburma.org
With at least 14 people dead after Burmese soldiers opened fire on protesters in Rangoon last Wednesday and Thursday – and fears that the toll could be much higher – Burma’s ‘‘people power’’ revolution seemed to be fading by this weekend.
Only a few thousand reportedly took to the streets, down from an estimated 100,000 before the government’s violent reaction. However, cracks in the ruling junta over the crushing of dissent mean that an olive branch may be offered to the pro-democracy movement.
Last Friday, diplomatic sources in Bangkok said that the junta’s second-in-command, General Maung Aye, was scheduled to meet democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, after dissenting from the bloody crackdown authorised by General Than Shwe, Burma’s military dictator.
As the killing proceeded, the UN Security Council failed in an attempt to impose western-led global sanctions against the Burmese regime.
Punitive measures were blocked by China and Russia last Wednesday evening, although agreement was reached on a watered-down press statement expressing ‘‘concern’’ and urging ‘‘restraint, especially from the government’’. (more…)
Tensions high as DRC awaits poll results – ISN
November 3rd, 2006
With votes being counted in the second round of presidential elections in DRC, peace pledges by both candidates have not allayed fears of post-result violence.
Kabila supporters (People's Daily, China)
By Simon Roughneen
As votes are being counted after a second round of presidential elections in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), observers and citizens are hoping that the country’s first democratic polls sine 1960 will finally renounce bloodshed and mark a transition from conflict to peace.
Observers and the country’s Independent Electoral Commission reported that the second round of presidential elections had gone well, save for a couple of incidents in the northeast, but there are fears that a narrow victory for either candidate could result in violence.
Sunday’s run-off came after none of the 32 candidates registered an overall majority in the 31 July first round. DRC interim President Joseph Kabila won 44 percent of the vote, but fell short of a majority by just 900,000 votes out of 18 million cast.
In the Assembly elections also held on 31 July, Kabila’s Alliance for Presidential Majority took 300 of the 500 seats, while Bemba’s Union of Nationalists won 116. (more…)
Uncertainty ahead of Congo vote – ISN
July 27th, 2006
Haunted by a violent and corrupt legacy, the Democratic Republic of Congo prepares for elections.
IDPs on the move in the Kivus (Photo: Bob Kitchen/The IRC)
By Simon Roughneen in Paris & Nairobi
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) will hold presidential and parliamentary elections on Sunday, 30 July, marking the vast country’s transition from corruption, tyranny and violent anarchy. However, the elections are being held amid grave political and strategic uncertainty. Fears pervade that Congo’s conflicts could re-erupt as a result of elections that are meant to underline a transition to stability and provide a seedbed for development.
The last democratic elections held in Africa’s second largest state took place in 1960 after Zaire, the DRC’s name between 1971 and 1997, gained its independence from Belgium. The victor, Patrice Lumumba, was later assassinated, and his short tem in office was marked by an attempted secession by the mineral-rich Katanga province and a UN peacekeeping intervention. Mobuto Sese Seko then ruled Zaire with a Western-financed iron fist, from 1964-1996.
Since Mobutu’s accession to power, the past 40 years have seen the systematic impoverishment and destruction of a vast and potentially wealthy country. Gross domestic product (GDP) was US$259 per capita at independence. It is now less than US$100. (more…)
Influence Anxiety: China in Africa – ISN
May 15th, 2006
By Simon Roughneen in Nairobi for ISN Security Watch (15/05/06)
Chinese investment in Africa, 2005 (risingpowers.foreignpolicyblogs.com)
“Business is business. We try to separate politics from business. Secondly I think the internal situation in the Sudan is an internal affair, and we are not in a position to impose upon them,” Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Zhou Wenzhong said in an interview with the New York Times on 22 August 2005.
In the Mao era, China dealt with Africa as part of a show of solidarity with countries that shared some of China’s experience of Western oppression. However, these links were fostered in an ideologically charged time, when China sought to display affinity with other socialist countries and to demonstrate an almost nihilistic aversion to the institutions and norms of international relations. Although it joined the UN in 1971, any real alteration of China’s foreign policy did not come until the Deng-initiated reforms post-1979.
Even then reform was piecemeal and cautious, predicated on careful changes to China’s domestic political economy, which allowed for marketization of the economy while retaining a totalitarian state. According to Christopher Alden, senior lecturer in International Relations at the London School of Economics, in an article for YaleGlobal magazine, China’s foreign policy changed in 1993 when it shifted from being an oil exporter to being an oil importer. (more…)
Hard to believe your eyes: drought in Kenya and Ethiopia – OpenDemocracy
May 15th, 2006
http://www.opendemocracy.net/democracy-africa_democracy/drought_3542.jsp
Driving through northern Kenya’s drought-affected famine district as the midday sun lifts temperatures to over 40 degrees centigrade, pools of water shimmer in the distance, laying between dessicated trees and shrubs, with the mountains of Turkana peering through the haze.
Mirage in Turkana, northern Kenya (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
But these aren’t pools. There is no water here. By a cruel irony, this parched land taunts its thirsty and hungry people with distant images – mirages – of glistening oases in the distance. There hasn’t been rainfall since 2004, according to Akwari Nubukwi, an elder in the village of Kanigipur in the southern Turkana district. “We use the water from the riverbed, where we dig to find it. But it is just a little water, and even the goats and dogs drink from it”, he told me.
The locals who are now suffering without water, whose animals – their main food and livelihood source – are dying, know better to be caught out by the illusion of water. Akwari adds: “Many animals have died. We haven’t had rain for a year. People are losing their animals. We are hungry now.” (more…)
Cattle dying, people next? – HeraldAM
May 2nd, 2006
Leaning on his walking stick, Shamsidin Mohamed flicks his fingers up and down in turn, alternating between whispering and counting out loud in his native Somali.
By the time he has finished, he tots-up 23 cattle dead out of a herd of 70. It is a catastrophic loss. These herders are dependent on their animals for food and income. No agriculture is possible in such a barren, rock-strewn, sun-dried place, more lunar than earthly in appearance.
“This is very dangerous here. Just a little rain, but no pasture for the animals. Most people can’t count the dead animals. We have to move many kilometres every day looking for pasture, water. The animals are weak, they die in the bush, sometimes people don’t know when and where
Emaciated cattle in southern Oromo region in drought-affected Ethiopia, clse to Kenyan border (Simon Roughneen)
The vital winter rains failed across southern Ethiopia, northern Kenya and much of Somalia, leaving Shamsidin and 8 million others in this vast desolate region balancing precariously between subsistence and destitution.
Here, with people utterly dependent on herding animals for food and income, destitution means potential starvation. With their skin stretched taut over protruding ribcages and calvicles, the cattle are emaciated, shuffling along with their heads bowed, as if lacking the strength to see where the herder is taking them. (more…)
Even Camels Thirst Here – Irish Examiner
March 24th, 2006
On the road between Lodwar and Lokichar in northern Kenya’s Turkana district, we met a woman carrying 15 litres of water in a container balanced on her head.
She got the water she carries from a borehole further along the road. It is shared between around 100 families. And with the water table depleted, the water must be rationed. Moreover, the water she brings will be given to animals as well as her family. It will not go far.
It is an onerous task in any circumstances – but ordinarily Turkana women would not stop to rest while ferrying water even on the 7 mile roundtrip she is making.
Turkana women at Lodwar, northern Kenya, March 2006 (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
It is now evening, and Esther is tired, weakened by months of not having enough food, and as she says;
“We don’t know if we will have enough food, there is not enough water.”
Here, where people’s lives are inextricably bound to their animals, no water means no food.
She adds, “Our animals are dying and they are our food and our livelihood. Without them we are nothing”
With 5 rings around her neck in the Turkana style, Esther is – or was – deemed well-off by local standards. (more…)
Gone in 60 seconds? – The Irish News
December 7th, 2005
http://www.irishnews.com/pageacc.asp?tser1=ser&sid=510155
Well, according to the Prime Minister of Pakistani-controlled or ‘Azad’ Kashmir, it was a bit less: ‘what we have achieved over the last 40 to 50 years has gone in 40 to 50 seconds’.
School building badly-damaged by the earthquake (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
But according to the relatives of those who died in the October 8 earthquake, the now 3 million homeless, it was just thirteen seconds.
Thirteen seconds to kill over 80,000 people, including over 20,000 children. Thirteen seconds to make three million homeless, to destroy almost every school and medical facility in the region, to destroy the infrastructure and livelihoods
Much faster than anything in the ‘Gone in 60 Seconds’ Hollywood no-brainer from a few years’ ago. (more…)
