Evictied lands in Cambodia are offered to South Korean businessmen for profit: UN's Raquel Rolnik (0)


Housing Rapporteur Raquel Rolnik, next stop CCNV in DC

At UN, Rights Reports Overshadowed by Climate Change and Sex, Evictions, Films and UNU

Sunday, October 25, 2009
By Matthew Russell Lee
Inner City Press

Inner City Press asked Rolnik about her entreaty to the governments of Cambodia and Nigeria to stop their mass evictions. In the Cambodian case, the cleared site is now being offered to South Korean businessmen for profit. The news is not good, Ms. Rolnik said.
UNITED NATIONS, October 24 -- There are only two big issues, a major human rights group told Inner City Press on Frday, in the UN's Third Committee: Gaza and the gays. The reference was to Richard Goldstone's report on Gaza -- which now seems destined not for the Committee but the full or plenary General Assembly -- and a forthcoming report by Martin Scheinin which touches on the lesbians, gay, transgendered and bisexual issue.

This is sure to draw fire from Egypt, Syria and other countries which last year when a motion for decriminalization of homosexuality was proposed, countered with amendments referring to bestiality. Only at the UN.

Blocked out by these two super charged issues are appearances of the UN's other special rapporteurs, who travel the globe, from rural Russia to Brazil to yes, the South South Bronx to assess government's compliance with the treaties that they sign. On Friday Raquel Rolnik, the special rapporteur on housing, told the Press how climate change will mostly hurt the poor.

Inner City Press asked Rolnik about her entreaty to the governments of Cambodia and Nigeria to stop their mass evictions. In the Cambodian case, the cleared site is now being offered to South Korean businessmen for profit. The news is not good, Ms. Rolnik said. She said evictions have also continued in Angola, where UN HABITAT claimed to have gotten a commitment to the contrary.

Ms. Rolnik is a law professor in Brazil, so Inner City Press asked for her views on President Lula's much touted plan to limit land use for ethanol. Ms. Rolnik said as a Brazilian she might be biased, then said the problem goes beyond ethanol to all of agri-business. She noted that Brazil grows the soy beans to feed cattle all over the world. One wanted to hear also about the favelas, and recent surge of violence. Next time.

Rapporteur Manfrek Nowak spoke, not only about torture but also imprisonment. He said that in Uruguay, people were kept in metal boxes called las latas, but later were released. Inner City Press asked if he'd look into the two UN system staff in Sri Lanka who reportedly were tortured by the government. Not personally, he said. Doesn't charity begin at home? Said otherwise, if the UN system can't even defend its own people, what can it do for others?

An event sponsored by UN University featured the Bruce Jencks of the UN Development Program bragging about UNDP's work with local entities like Catalonia. He apologized for not speaking Spanish, much less Catalan. But one wondered if UNDP likewise has an agreement to work not only with northern Sri Lanka, but South Ossetia, and if not, why not. Madrid gives a lot of money to UNDP, and is said to not be happy with the UN's hype of Catalan. But to actually oppose it would be bad politics at home. And so UNU goes forward, webcasting to the world.

Radhika Coomaraswamy, herself from Sri Lanka, hosted a film screening early in the week. To make a film about the brutal lives of child soldiers cannot be easy. The Dutch production "Silent Armies," based on a thinly veiled Lord's Resistance Army, is far from a perfect film. But it aims high, or low, to confront the audience with children being forced to kill their own parents, children blown up by casually mislaid bombs, and a United Nations more concerned with the "big picture" of working with governments than the fate of children pulled into the bush and a hellish life. Sounds about right.

In an attempt to draw in European audiences, "Silent Armies" plays up a Dutch restauranteur who son befriends an African boy the same age. While the Dutch boy mimics machine gun killings on Play Station, the African boy has a wooden console carved by his father in a wheelchair. Regardless, the screening of this film at the UN was more appropriate than the one slated for October 25, when the UN is given to Disney to put on Tinker Bell, who -- or which -- will be named a "Goodwill Ambassador of Green." For the green?

Footnote: An argument being advanced for taking the Goldstone report straight to the full General Assembly is that it will somehow show the United States respect. "They took the leap to join the Human Rights Council in Geneva," one insider said. "We don't want their first time in the Third Committee on this to be overshadowed by Goldstone, which we know they'll have to oppose. Let them have their moment." Really? To be continued.
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Asian summit off to shaky start (0)


Heads of government and state gather for a photo session after one of the meetings at the Thai resort of Hua Hin. The theme of the summit is "Enhancing Connectivity, Empowering Peoples." (Erik de Castro / AFP/Getty Images / October 24, 2009)

ASEAN gathering is marred by political sparring and criticism of a new rights body.

October 24, 2009
By Charles McDermid and Jakkapun Kaewsangthong
Los Angeles Times

"This was vintage Hun Sen. He sees Abhisit as a young, 45-year-old novice and he wants to test him... This represents all the differences in ASEAN. You have dynamic new leaders and old-time politicians who have dominated the political scenes for decades. Hun Sen represents the old generation -- he's the last of the dinosaurs" - Kavi Chongkittavorn, a leading Thai journalist and former assistant to the secretary-general of ASEAN
Reporting from Hua Hin, Thailand - This year was supposed to be different.

Determined to overcome its reputation as an elite fraternity in which hard issues generally went unmentioned, the 10-member Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations gathered in Thailand over the weekend to welcome the dawn of what Thailand's youthful leader has billed a "new" ASEAN.

Yet even before the annual summit began, political rivalries and festering embarrassments dominated headlines and raised questions about the group's relevance on the evolving world stage -- and its resolve to tackle difficult issues such as poverty and human rights.

Under the banner "Enhancing Connectivity, Empowering Peoples," Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva is hosting the first gathering of ASEAN since the 42-year-old group ratified a long-awaited charter late last year. The charter laid the foundation for forming a European Union-like community, without a common currency, by 2015.

"ASEAN used to be a joke," said Kavi Chongkittavorn, a leading Thai journalist and former assistant to the secretary-general of ASEAN. "In the old days, they would get together because they had known each other for years and play golf and talk business. Now it's a different generation, and different language is being used to engage people.

"ASEAN is no longer a joke . . . but they have to catch up to new political concepts, or the whole thing will crumble."

Kavi said the group is divided along ideological and generational lines that have left it polarized on issues such as human rights, political intervention and territorial disputes.

One example is the split between Cambodia's prime minister, former Khmer Rouge commander Hun Sen, and Abhisit, an Oxford-educated economist born in England.

Before arriving at the summit Friday, Hun Sen, the longest-serving leader of an ASEAN nation, sent an unmistakable salvo Abhisit's way by offering political asylum to Thailand's fugitive former prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra.

Hun Sen called Thaksin his "eternal friend" and compared him to Myanmar's Nobel Peace Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi.

An ASEAN summit in April was abruptly canceled when anti-government protesters aligned with Thaksin smashed through the glass doors of a convention center in the Thai resort of Pattaya, forcing several leaders to be evacuated by helicopter from the roof.

Thaksin, a billionaire telecommunications tycoon, was ousted in a bloodless coup in 2006. He skipped bail after an indictment on corruption charges and has been living at various locations -- including Nicaragua, Montenegro and the United Arab Emirates.

Thaksin, who retains wide popularity in Thailand's rural northeast and has vowed to return to power, has consistently mocked Abhisit, saying he is politically immature and heads a shaky coalition.

"This was vintage Hun Sen. He sees Abhisit as a young, 45-year-old novice and he wants to test him," Kavi said. "This represents all the differences in ASEAN. You have dynamic new leaders and old-time politicians who have dominated the political scenes for decades. Hun Sen represents the old generation -- he's the last of the dinosaurs."

Activists from across the region blasted ASEAN's first human rights body, inaugurated Friday, calling it toothless and ineffectual.

Officials had billed the formation of the Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights as a watershed event aimed at reining in the alleged human rights abuses of some member states, specifically military-run Myanmar, where an estimated 2,100 political prisoners remain behind bars.

But a civil society group stormed out of a meeting Friday when five of their representatives were rejected by officials from their home countries -- indicative of an ongoing reluctance to face hard questions about human rights.

Longtime Myanmar activist Khin Ohmar, who said she was kicked out of the forum Friday, charged that only representatives handpicked by their governments were allowed to attend the meeting.

"This is the same old story of ASEAN: the same attitude and same behavior toward their own people. There was all this commitment for the new charter and the first human rights commission -- to have this happen is just embarrassing," said Ohmar, coordinator of the Burma Partnership and a member of the ASEAN Task Force on Burma. "This is two steps backward. Why are they so afraid to hear from civil society?"
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