CentrePoint News News That Matters

By UNPO

The New York-based rights group [Human Rights Watch] said local authorities and community organisations in northeastern India’s Mizoram state frequently targeted Chin migrants, one of Burma’s many oppressed ethnic minorities.

“They live at the mercy of the local population,” HRW said in a report on the plight of the Chin, whose ancestral homes are in the mountainous reaches of northwest Burma.

“The Chin in Mizoram lack jobs, housing and affordable education,” HRW consultant Amy Alexander said, adding most were relegated to temporary, labour-intensive and low-paying jobs, earning around $2 a day for 10- to 16-hour shifts.

The report comes at a time when attention has turned on the Rohingyas, another minority group in Burma, who have been fleeing abuse and harassment.

In the past two months, 550 Muslim Rohingyas are feared to have drowned after the Thai army forced 1 000 found in the Andaman Sea into wooden boats before towing them out to international waters and cutting them adrift.

Despite relatively close ethnic ties between the Chin and Mizoram natives, tensions between the two populations regularly flared into anti-Chin pogroms, the HRW report said.

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http://www.unpo.org/content/view/9162/101/

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By World Tribune

GAZA CITY — The Hamas regime has executed a Palestinian human rights researcher and journalist accused of working for Israel. 

Haidar Ghanem was of several, perhaps dozens of Palestinians accused of spying for Israel who were executed by Hamas during the 22-day war in the Gaza Strip, according to Palestinian sources.Ghanem, a 46-year-old resident of Rafah and a researcher for the Israeli organization B’Tselem, was killed on Jan. 7, while operating a news agency.

“He was taken to an abandoned building in southern Gaza and shot to death,” a Palestinian source said. “Others were executed the same way.”

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http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2009/                me_palestinians0082_01_28.asp

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By Christian Today

The Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao began his European tour yesterday amidst calls from human rights groups to address continuing violations of fundamental freedoms.

CSW has asked the British Government to raise a number of issues and cases during the Premier’s visit, not least that of an elderly Christian couple engaged in poverty relief.

According to China Aid Assocation Hua Zaichen, the 91 year-old husband of 79 year old Shuang Shuying who has been incarcerated for her beliefs for almost two years, is extremely unwell, and may be close to death. However, the Chinese authorities are refusing to allow Shuang Shuying to see her husband before he passes away.

Shuang Shuying has been ill for the majority of her time in prison. The family, who are known for their work amongst the poor and oppressed, have been persecuted for years by the Chinese Government. 

The case of Shuang Shuying reflects the ongoing repression of Christians in China who operate outside the officially registered church. Some 50 to 100 million Protestants alone seek to avoid the theological and practical constraints imposed by registration and therefore risk being targeted by the authorities.

These restrictions, which clearly violate international standards of freedom of religion and belief, were raised by house church leaders during a recent meeting with the Chinese authorities. 

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http://www.christiantoday.com/article/csw.urges.european.community. to.address.religious.freedom.in.china/22407.htm

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By Michael Werbowski

The rising rage is palpable across Europe. Grumblings of discontent simmering beneath the surface for years have turned nasty, in places such as Greece last year. In 2009, these feelings persist and are intensifying by the day.

The cold temperatures haven’t dampened the ire which has spread from the Mediterranean to the Balkans (Bulgaria) right up to the Baltic Sea and as far even as Iceland. Scuffles have broken out in the Baltic States (Lithuania and Latvia) over perceived corruption among officialdom, drastic government spending cuts, inflation, tax hikes topped off with the sudden downturn in the local economies due to the ongoing global market, and financial turmoil.

Helmeted riot police stand in front of the Lithuanian Parliament in Vilnius. Petras Malukas/AFP/Getty photo.

In the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, thousands of enraged throngs gathered outside parliament chanting “thieves, thieves!”. One of the three “Baltic tigers”, which implemented draconian neo liberal inspired and IMF prescribed market reforms back in 2000 is now reeling from the impact of the global downturn and the consequences of rapid economic restructuring towards free market principles.

A similar rowdy mass gathering took place on Tuesday, in front of the Latvian national parliament buildings. Latvia’s economy is staying afloat with a 7.5 Billion Euro stand-by loan from the IMF ($9.8 Billion). The government envisages austerity measures which must be implemented as part of the “IMF’s loan package”.

The Legacy of decades of Sachs’ “Shock Therapy”

Many of these economic transformations adopted earlier in the decade by the Baltic states were modeled on experiments done in eastern and central Europe known as “shock therapy”. This economic dogma, devised by Harvard trained professor Jeffrey Sachs, heralded an era of growth or “boom times”…

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http://www.worldpress.org/Europe/3298.cfm

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By Oliver Guitta

In the middle of the massive coverage of U.S. President Barack Obama’s inauguration, a rather troublesome news story emerged. Unfortunately, it failed to get the coverage it deserves. If confirmed, it deserves the full attention of the Obama administration: the story has to do with bio-terrorism. 

The story began with a Jan. 6 report in the Algerian newspaper Echorouk that a number of terrorists had died of the plague in one of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) training camps in Tizi Ouzou. Another Algerian newspaper En-Nahar, affirmed that 50 terrorists have been diagnosed with the plague, 40 of whom have already died.

Now some analysts dismissed outright this story saying it was totally fallacious. But a few observations at this point give credibility to this story, even though one cannot be sure of the provenance of the plague. Consider the following:

1. Algerian authorities have been totally silent. Reliable sources usually willing to share information declined to comment on this report. As can be expected, Algerians authorities were not too pleased that the story was confirmed by American sources…

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http://www.metimes.com/International/2009/01/27/al-qaida_and_                         the_plague/9143/

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By Grace Matsiko

LRA leaders in planning meeting last year. Uganda Monitor photo.

At least 100 bodies of people killed by Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels of Joseph Kony have been discovered in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the UN mission has said.
 
The victims are believed to have been killed in an attack by LRA rebels on a village in Tora, northeastern Orientale province on January 16, the UN Mission in Congo (Monuc) said. 

Monuc spokesman Lt. Col. Jean-Paul Dietrich, who made the revelations to French news agency, AFP on Wednesday, said the attack is believed to have been carried out by just 13 rebels.

LRA rebels subsequently killed four other people in two separate incidents in the region on January 17 and 19, Col. Dietrich added. The report by Monuc yet to be verified from independent sources by Saturday Monitor, did not indicate whether the bodies were found in a mass grave or scattered. 

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http://www.monitor.co.ug/artman/publish/news/13_LRA_rebels_ execute_100_Congolese_villagers_79082.shtml

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By Steve Herman

Hospital staff help wounded ethnic Tamil who was evacuated from the war torn area. AP photo.

Aid organizations are hopeful a statement by Sri Lanka’s president will allow additional sick and wounded civilians caught in the northern war zone to get to safety. 

Aid organizations in Sri Lanka are optimistic they will soon be able to assist more civilians caught between government and rebel forces. 

Proposed cease-fire would allow for civilian evacuations

The country’s president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, is calling for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam to allow, during a 48-hour period, innocents trapped in the war zone to leave. 

Sri Lankan government and military officials deny reports they have declared a cease-fire to allow evacuations. 

A spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross, Sarai Wijeratne, says its workers need assurances from both sides to conduct evacuations and that has only been happening on a weekly basis. 

For the rest of the story, click here…

http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-01-30-voa24.cfm

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By the BBC

More than 60,000 people in Zimbabwe have now been infected by cholera, the World Health Organization (WHO) says.

This figure had been described by the UN’s health agency and other agencies as being the “worst case scenario” in the epidemic which broke out in August.

Cholera has now claimed the lives of more than 3,000 people in Zimbabwe.

The epidemic of the disease, which broke out in August 2008, has been fuelled by the collapse of Zimbabwe’s water, sanitation and health systems.

For more on this story, click here…

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7860070.stm

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By Robert Mitchell

She had me at hello … or just about. Our conversation had barely started when privacy activist Betty Ostergren interrupted me to say that she had found my full name, address, Social Security number and a digital image of my signature on the Web.

I had set out to discover just how much information I could find about myself online, and Ostergren, who runs the Virginia Watchdog Web site, was my very first call. If this was what could be uncovered in just a few minutes, what else would I find? Quite a bit, as it turns out.

What information is available about you in cyberspace? Where does it come from? What risks does it present and what, if anything, can you do to protect yourself? To answer those questions I decided to use my own identity, Robert L. Mitchell, a national correspondent at Computerworld, as my research subject.

Starting with the information Ostergren had turned up about me, I spent a few weeks combing through more than two dozen public and private resources on the Web and visiting many other Web sites to build a dossier on myself. I conducted both free and paid searches. I contacted a private investigator for tips on my investigation. And I spoke with data aggregators and privacy experts.

For more on this story, click here…

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=Security&articleId= 9125058&taxonomyId=17&pageNumber=1

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By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart

The media wing of one of al Qaeda’s Yemeni franchises, al Qaeda in Yemen, released a statement on online jihadist forums Jan. 20 from the group’s leaderNasir al-Wuhayshi, announcing the formation of a single al Qaeda group for the Arabian Peninsula under his command. According to al-Wuhayshi, the new group, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, would consist of his former group (al Qaeda in Yemen) as well as members of the now-defunct Saudi al Qaeda franchise.

The press release noted that the Saudi militants have pledged allegiance to al-Wuhayshi, an indication that the reorganization was not a merger of equals. This is understandable, given that the jihadists in Yemen have been active recently while their Saudi counterparts have not conducted a meaningful attack in years. The announcement also related that a Saudi national (and former Guantanamo detainee) identified as Abu-Sayyaf al-Shihri has been appointed as al-Wuhayshi’s deputy. In some ways, this is similar to the way Ayman al-Zawahiri and his faction of Egyptian Islamic Jihad swore allegiance to Osama bin Laden and were integrated in to al Qaeda prime.

For the rest of this analysis, click here…

http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20090128_al_qaeda_arabian_       peninsula_desperation_or_new_life

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