Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, Prime Minister, Spain:
My friends we have 5 years to achieve our goal — to stop executions around the world: If we work together it is a goal within our reach.
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Here’s a story first read on the Reprieve web site that is not only disturbing in itself but even more disturbing that it exposes the Obama Administration as being, in it’s approach to openness and transparency at least, just as corrupt as the Bush regime. Atrocities are reported on both sides but the Sri Lankan government forces have shown no mercy to either combatants or civilians. It is estimated that 10,000 Tamils died in the fighting, many of them in circumstances that can only be described as war crimes. Despite the billions of dollars Shell has made from it’s numerous oil wells the locals have been driven into poverty. The land is saturated by oil leaks and dumping, the air is polluted by illegal gas-flaring and the rivers are so contaminated that fish cannot live in them. It is the 25th anniversary of the Bhopal gas disaster that killed over 8000 mostly poor people within 72-hours. The massive leak, 42 tons of toxic Methyl Isocyanate (MIC), happened on December 2, 1984. A further 15 – 20 thousand have died since and hundreds of thousands were made ill, many are still suffering today. “The unacceptable face of capitalism,” was first coined in 1973 by the then prime minister Edward Heath. Edward Heath was a Conservative (Tory) prime minister. Nothing has changed except that the unacceptable face of capitalism is uglier than anything referred to by Ted Heath. Reprieve is a legal action charity that uses the law to enforce human rights of prisoners, from death row to Guantanamo Bay. Ask the question “exactly what is torture?” and most people will proffer an answer. But the mental picture conjured up in your audiences mind will probably differ from person to person. The medieval rack and thumbscrew will come to the minds of many of course but while most of the ancient methods are no longer used they have been replaced with equally heinous practices in modern times. Water-boarding by the United States Secret Service being one exception that has been reborn in recent times. “If I come out of prison, I want to continue my education. I would like to be free. One of the judges promised that I would be pardoned….Mother, I am innocent.” The words of young Iranian Delara Derabi, the day before she was hung by the neck until dead on 1 May 2009. Homage to Anna Politkovskaïa By Anick Roschi “Dove” |
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