World fears for peace under Bush
(20/1/05) George W Bush’s imminent inauguration as president for his second four-year-term was greeted today by a new wave of protests against the war and occupation in Iraq.
Bush prepared for the ceremony amid expectorations that it would be met by the largest group of protestors since Richard Nixon’s inauguration during the Vietnam War.
And peace groups all over the world, including the UK’s Stop the War Coalition – to which UNISON is affiliated – are looking to today's protests to reinvigorate the anti-war movement
In a new poll of 21 countries – reflecting opinion in Africa, Latin America, North America, Asia and Europe – a clear majority have stated their grave fears about the next four years with Bush at the helm of the superpower.
Of the 22,000 people who took part in the poll, commissioned by the BBC, 58% said they expected Bush to have a negative impact on peace and security, compared with only 26% who considered him a positive force.
In Britain, 64% anticipated a negative effect.
In America, Democrats in the House of Representatives last week sent a letter to the President calling on him to begin the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.
Said Peta Black of the International Answer Coalition: "Just because Bush is back in office doesn't mean that Americans are for the war in Iraq."
The Stop the War Coalition has a number of events planned, all aimed at repeating the call for the UK government to withdraw its own troops.
Among them are a “day of disobedience” on Tuesday February 15, the focus of which will be a “mass die-in” at Parliament Square, and a massive demonstration on Saturday 19 March, also in central London.
From UNISON
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Cuba Denounces Human Rights Violations by the US
Havana, Jan 20 (Prensa Latina) Cuba´s government denounced flagrant violations of human rights committed daily by the US at the illegal naval base in Guantanamo.
In a diplomatic note handed over to the US Interest Section in Havana and the US State Department on Wednesday, Cuba´s Ministry of Foreign Relations (MINREX) demanded an immediate cessation of this criminal and inhuman behavior.
The text reminds the US of atrocities committed in the said facility and the fact it is using the illegally occupied territory in Cuba as a prison, in violation of International Law and International Humanitarian Law.
They even violate the Naval Convention of February, 1903, signed by then governments of the US and Cuba, under unequal conditions detrimental to the Island.
Under Article II of the said convention, the White House committed itself "to do everything possible to prepare conditions for those places to be exclusively used as coal or naval stations and not for any other purpose."
Cuban authorities were informed but not consulted about the US decision to transfer a group of prisoners from the war in Afghanistan to the US base in Guantanamo, the note stresses.
On January 11, 2002, Cuba issued a statement expressing that such transfer of prisoners to the military base was not in line with regulations under which the facility came into being.
It also stressed that the Caribbean nation had "noted with satisfaction public statements by US authorities that prisoners will receive an adequate, human treatment."
The dramatic reality of prisoners at Guantanamo naval base (currently about 550, according to some media reports), also shows Washington´s double standard in its stale, manipulated campaign for human rights.
The text also says arbitrary detention of these foreign prisoners without following a judicial process, and the torture and humiliation they are submitted to constitute a gross violation of human rights.
With this hypocritical stand, the US leadership has shown the falseness of its own statements as once more it lied to Cuba, as well as to its own people and the international community, by concealing torture of prisoners held in the base.
This is only comparable with torture inflicted to inmates in Abu Ghraib and other prisons in occupied Iraq, the note says.
MINREX joins claims and demands by the international community for the US administration to put an end immediately to these violations of human rights of prisoners in US-illegally occupied Cuban territory.
Given its untarnished record in this matter and its sovereignty over all the Cuban territory, Cuba has all the right to denounce these abuses, the text stresses.
From Prensa Latina
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