Archival Rescue 19 ~ Aus Detention

Outcry over school 'raids' to detain children
March 16, 2005 - 7:07PM Sydney Morning Herald

Argument raged today over immigration officers removing children from schools and locking them in detention centres.

Parents, opposition politicians and medical experts say the practice is cruel and must stop.

They condemned the Immigration Department after the NSW Teachers Federation uncovered what they said were instances in the past fortnight of immigration officials detaining school children because their parents had overstayed their visas.

The federation maintains that children as young as six were taken to Villawood detention centre, in some instances after being removed from their school yards by immigration officials.

It is investigating immigration raids on schools in Stanmore, Kogarah, Chester Hill, and a Seventh-Day Adventist school.

In one instance, two girls aged 11 and six were taken from a school in Sydney's inner west and immigration officers refused to allow the principal to contact the children's carer, the federation's senior vice-president Angelo Gavrielatos said today.

The Immigration Department has confirmed the raids but said today it only occasionally entered schools.

"The number of cases where officers need to enter school premises to detain children is very small," a spokesman said.

"We work closely with the school in question to ensure as far as possible the cases are handled sensitively ... we attempt to engage the assistance of the school principal to resolve any issues relating to pupils."

However, Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone said children were only taken to Villawood after advice from detained parents.

One incident had occurred where a principal was notified and the parents had asked that the child be removed from the classroom.

"If you wish to create the impression that there are immigration officers running around snatching children from schools, good luck to you," Senator Vanstone said.

She said newspaper reports were exaggerated, adding: "My advice is that over the last couple of weeks there have been two instances in NSW schools.

"The supposition put to me that children were taken from a schoolyard in front of other children is not correct."

Mr Gavrielatos called on the Federal Government to end what he maintained was a "cruel" policy.

"We are shocked and appalled at the events of the last week or two which have seen officials from the Department of Immigration enter our schools and remove children from schools," he told reporters in Sydney.

"This is an absolute outrage, it has shocked us all. We call on the government to end the cruelty ... and observe the basic rights that these children have."

NSW Parents and Citizens Association president Sharryn Brownlee said parents were horrified about the reported schoolyard raids, and the students had been traumatised.

"The impact on these young children's lives will remain with them forever," she said.

The National Association of Practising Psychiatrists said the raids would have a huge impact on the children detained, their friends and school staff.

"It's very traumatic for everybody and it could well have long-lasting effects on some of them," president Dr Jean Lennane said today.

"There's nowhere for them to look for help or security - if you can't rely on a school as a place of safety, where can you look?"

Labor's immigration spokesman Laurie Ferguson said the Immigration Department's actions were "absolutely over the top and unnecessary."

NSW Education Minister Carmel Tebbutt would not comment on the raids today but a spokesman previously said the Immigration Department's actions were inappropriate.

A child removed from Stanmore Public School, in Sydney's inner-west, said immigration officers turned up at the school and took him into custody.

Immigration officers interrupted a class to take away Ian and his six-year-old sister, Janie, the ABC reported.

The children's mother had been stopped at the airport on an alleged visa violation.

"[The principal] showed me two people and they said that I had to go to this detention centre, Villawood," Ian told ABC radio today.

The immigration officers had forbidden him from saying goodbye to his friends, he said.

"They didn't let me do that," he said. "I stayed at that school for seven years now and, yeah, I miss my friends."

Ian said he had been frightened at being taken away.

A school parent, Kathy Thurston, told ABC other children at the school had been traumatised by the events.

AAP

Archival Rescue 18 ~ Electoral Fraud

Vote Fraud. Election hacked. Teresa Heinz lifts lid on can (worms). Republicans go Banana.

Hackers may have won Bush office; Kerry's wife
March 10, 2005 - 6:45AM Sydney Morning Herald

The US presidential election could have been computer hacked, the wife of Democrat candidate John Kerry has claimed.

Teresa Heinz Kerry is openly sceptical about George Bush's victory some four months after the election, questioning the legitimacy of the optical scanners used in some states to record votes.

"Two brothers own 80 per cent of the machines used in the United States," she said during a fund raising event in Seattle.

They are "hard-right" Republicans, she claimed, arguing that it was "very easy to hack into the mother machines".

Heinz Kerry urged Democrats to push for accountability and transparency, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

"We in the United States are not a banana republic," she said. "I fear for 2006. I don't trust it the way it is right now," she added, referring to mid-term elections.

Heinz Kerry also expressed her outrage at the attacks of some Catholic bishops on her husband's support for abortion rights.

"You cannot have bishops in the pulpit - long before or the Sunday before the election - as they did in Catholic churches, saying it was a mortal sin to vote for John Kerry," she said.

PA

Archival Rescue 17 ~ Afghanistan prison abuse

Backlogging, this one appeared a few weeks ago.

Troops destroyed Afghanistan abuse photos
By Richard Serrano in Washington
February 19, 2005 LA Times & Sydney Morning Herald

In a case that echoes the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq, US soldiers in Afghanistan posed before cameras while threatening to shoot prisoners in the head, shoving a detainee into a wall, and in "trophy shots" with the corpse of an enemy fighter who invaded their camp last year.

Military documents released on Thursday say the American soldiers, fearing "another public outrage", destroyed many of the photos and video images after photographs of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib were beamed around the world, resulting in widespread shock and criticism.

The remaining images were discovered by chance last year during the routine cleaning of a captain's office at Bagram airfield in Afghanistan. The photos were apparently shot at a small base in Afghanistan around the same time as the abuses at the large prison outside Baghdad triggered an internal army investigation.

This led to preliminary charges against eight soldiers for dereliction of duty after the army decided that more serious assault charges would not hold up.

It was unclear, however, whether the eight were prosecuted or disciplined. It was also unclear whether charges were brought against supervising officers in Afghanistan who admitted they ordered the destruction of many of the photos after the Abu Ghraib scandal erupted.

The army said on Thursday when asked about the case it "remains committed to addressing identified problems in detainee operations and to communicating the progress to the public".

Hundreds of pages of internal army investigative records, made public as a result of a public records lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union, recount interrogations of dozens of soldiers who were confronted with the photos. Most admitted to military investigators that they were posing in them. Many acknowledged that their behaviour was wrong.

The documents are the latest allegations of US military abuse of detainees in Afghanistan. Military investigators are investigating a December 2002 incident in which two detainees died after being captured and beaten.

American military investigators have also been looking into allegations of murder and torture involving an 18-year-old Afghan army recruit who died while in US custody last year. The inquiry has also focused on the alleged torture of seven other Afghan soldiers.

At least eight prisoners have died in US military custody in Afghanistan since the US-led invasion in 2001, military officials and documents say.

In the newly disclosed case, the images are said to show US soldiers "hazing" fellow troops by dressing them up as detainees with their hands cuffed and sandbags over their heads, then dousing them with water and rolling them through the mud. The soldiers said this was done to celebrate birthdays and promotions.

While it is not known what activities were depicted in the destroyed photos, the surviving images from Firebase Tcyz, near the Afghan village of Dah Rah Wod, do not show the kind of sexual humiliation of prisoners that was a hallmark of the sensational disclosures at Abu Ghraib.

Also, the Afghanistan case involved regular army troops rather than reservists.

The Abu Ghraib scandal became public last year and it appears that at that time many of the Fort Drum soldiers began destroying their pictures.

"After seeing the problems they had in Iraq I knew this was a problem and should have never been done," a specialist said. "I realised there would be another public outrage if these photographs got out so they were destroyed."

Los Angeles Times

Archival Rescue 16 ~ ASIO

And so beggin'eth the end.

Get smart: spy school a click away
March 8, 2005 - 3:00PM Sydney Morning Herald

ASIO has hit the internet to advertise for new recruits.

The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) has paid for a "sponsored link" on popular web search engine Google to find new generalist intelligence officers.

Sponsored links enable organisations and companies to have their name and a brief message pop up when a web surfer keys in the name or associated words.

Google charges a small fee for every click on the advertiser's link.

The spy agency has been going through a major recruitment drive over the past two years.

In 2003-04 it recruited a record 195 staff and cut the time it takes from advertising to job offer by five weeks, to 20 weeks.

The top spy agency spent more than $750,000 on advertising last financial year, three times that spent in the previous year.

ASIO expects staff numbers to rise from its current figure of just over 800 to 1,000 by next year.

AAP

Archival Rescue 15 ~ Outsourcing Detention

Fresh evidence of CIA torture network
By Michael Gawenda, Herald Correspondent, in WashingtonMarch 8, 2005 Sydney Morning Herald

More details have emerged of a Central Intelligence Agency fleet of secret jets said to transport terrorism suspects around the world for interrogation in countries that the State Department has consistently accused of regularly torturing prisoners.

According to the CBS television program 60 Minutes broadcast on Sunday, suspects had been flown to Morocco, Egypt, Libya, Guantanamo Bay and even some former Soviet republics such as Uzbekistan, which, the State Department says, regularly uses torture in its prisons and detention centres.CBS showed one of the aircraft it said was used by the CIA for carrying prisoners, a Boeing 737, parked on a runway in Glasgow, which it said had made at least 600 flights to 40 countries, all after September 11, 2001, including 30 trips to Jordan, 19 to Afghanistan and 17 to Morocco.

According to the report, the 737 made trips to Uzbekistan despite reports that torture in Uzbek jails is as bad as anywhere in the world. A former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, told 60 Minutes he had complained to his superiors that information was being obtained by torture and sent his deputy to the CIA station chief to inquire about torture.

According to Mr Murray, who resigned from the Foreign Service when he was recalled from Uzbekistan, the CIA chief confirmed that torture was taking place. The CIA on Sunday denied that any meeting had taken place between the CIA chief in Tashkent and Mr Murray's deputy.The suspects are often picked up by local security services or police at the behest of the CIA, and are then drugged, stripped and dressed in prison clothes by masked CIA operatives before being put on the jets, 60 Minutes alleged. The CIA offered no comment on the other allegations made on 60 Minutes concerning the jets.

Sending terrorist suspects overseas for interrogation began during the Clinton presidency, but required White House approval before anyone could be subject to so-called rendition.
That rule changed after September 11, according to a New York
Times report at the weekend, when President George Bush signed a classified directive that gave the CIA power to operate without case-by-case approval. Neither the Administration nor the CIA have publicly acknowledged that hundreds of terrorist suspects have been subjected to rendition, but it is widely accepted that the practice, which gathered speed after September 11, continues to this day.

On 60 Minutes, Michael Sheuer, a former CIA analyst who said he helped devise the rendition program during the Clinton presidency, said US authorities did ask officials in the countries to which suspects were taken not to torture them."But they don't have the same legal system we have; we know that going into it," Mr Sheuer said. "We ask them not to torture these people, but we aren't there to check on them."Asked whether the CIA knew people were being tortured and whether this was acceptable, he said: "It's OK with me. Our role was to gather information. My job was to protect American lives."It is unknown whether the Australian and former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Mamdouh Habib was flown to Egypt on the aircraft shown on 60 Minutes or another smaller jet.

Archival Rescue 14 ~ Gender Equality

Topping up the other half of the glass;

For Women half is the battle
March 8, 2005 Sydney
Morning Herald

There is not one country where women are truly equal with men, reports Cosima Marriner on International Women's Day.

Women have made great strides in recent years - increasing their numbers in parliaments, gaining on men in the pay stakes and becoming more educated. The last big international study of gender equality, Progress of the World's Women, issued by the United Nations in 2002, found advances around the world, although the pace of change was too slow in many regions, especially sub-Saharan African countries struggling with poverty, conflict and the effects of HIV/AIDS. Where are the best - and worst - places for women to live? The answer is not as obvious as it may seem. Despite their problems, at least 13 countries in sub-Saharan Africa have higher rates of women's parliamentary participation than countries such as France, Japan and the United States, the UN notes.

Few countries shine on many levels and in some categories there are surprising standouts, including Rwanda and Kenya. Nordic countries such as Sweden, Finland and Norway come closest to female nirvana when judged by political representation, wages, health and family-friendly policies.

The worst countries for women to live in - by our standards at least - are likely to be poor and war-torn, or unsympathetic to women's rights, such as Saudi Arabia. But finding the faultlines is not as simple as plotting the borders between East and West.

The chasm between the haves and have-nots makes the US "shocking" for many women, says a University of Adelaide academic, Barbara Pocock. Low minimum wages (about $A6.50 an hour compared with $12.30 an hour in Australia), a welfare system aimed at pushing people back into work, expensive health care and the dominance of individual bargaining means many women are left on the outer.

In Australia, women are generally well educated and healthy, their wages are relatively close to men's and they have their rights enshrined in law. But academics warn the gains of the 1970s and '80s are starting to erode as women struggle to balance work and family.

"We certainly have more [Australian] women in positions of power than we had, we have more women earning higher incomes and they are better educated," says the feminist Eva Cox, a senior lecturer in humanities at the University of
Technology, Sydney. "But we haven't changed our work culture nearly enough. On the numbers game we've done a lot better than we have on the power-shifting game."

POWER

Rwanda is an unlikely bastion of female empowerment. But with women occupying 39 of the 80 seats in its national parliament, the war-torn nation boasts the highest proportion of female politicians anywhere in the world. Rwanda's gender balanced parliament is due to two factors: a 30 per cent quota for women enshrined in its constitution and a proportional representation system for elections.

Quotas and proportional representation are crucial if women are to increase their numbers in government, says Marian Sawer, professor of politics at the Australian National University. Quotas force parties to stand a certain number of female candidates. Proportional representation provides an incentive to put forward a balanced ticket to appeal to a range of voters.

Women in the Nordic countries have benefited from these two measures, making up 45 per cent of the Swedish parliament, 37.5 per cent in Finland and 36 per cent in Norway, according to the Interparliamentary Union.

At the other end of the scale are the Gulf states and some Pacific
nations. The parliaments of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates have no female representatives. Nor do Tonga, Micronesia, Nauru or the Solomon Islands.

In recent decades Australian women steadily increased their
representation in Federal Parliament, only to suffer a decline in last year's election when the proportion of female MPs dipped from 25.3 per cent to 24.7 per cent. Sawer attributes this to the Coalition's increasing move to the right, its aversion to quotas (unlike Labor, which has achieved a 35 per cent quota), and
the adversarial nature of Westminster politics. Sawer believes quotas are important if the sexes are to be equally represented. "It's important to ensure there are a range of perspectives represented in Parliament ... It also raises the status of women in society in general," she says.

MONEY

Nowhere on Earth can women expect pay equity, but Kenya comes closest. Kenyan women earn 10 per cent less than Kenyan men, the UN's 2004 Human Development Index says. But this is probably due to the relatively small participation of women in the formal labour force in Kenya, says Pocock. This also explains the small wages gaps in Cambodia (where women earn 77 per cent of what men do), Ghana (75 per cent), and Tanzania (71 per cent).

An effective minimum wage is the key to narrowing the gap, says Pocock. Sweden has the second best female-to-male wage ratio, at 0.83. Australian women have the seventh smallest wages gap in the world, earning 71 per cent of the male wage.

The wages gap is widest where pay rates are unregulated, individual bargaining rights are minimal and immigrants with little protection make up a large proportion of workers. This includes Saudi Arabia, where women earn just 21 per cent of the male wage, Oman (22 per cent), Belize in Central America (24 per cent) and Peru (27 per cent). How much women earn is partly dictated by their education level. Most countries have now achieved gender equality in secondary school education, according to the Progress of the World's Women report.But in parts of sub-Saharan Africa and Asia there are still far fewer girls in secondary school than boys. In Niger, Guinea, Mozambique, Burundi and Chad, fewer than 10 per cent of teenage girls are enrolled in high school.

FAMILY

Many developed countries - including Australia - score poorly on child care, maternity leave and child benefits for women. A 2004 OECD report found Turkey, Mexico and New Zealand were the only countries in the developed world with poorer family-friendly provisions than Australia. Scandinavian mothers receive the most support. Australia, New Zealand and the US are among a handful of governments that do not require women to be paid some form of maternity leave. In countries as diverse as Russia, Colombia, Laos and Morocco, the government foots the entire bill for three to six months of maternity leave. In other countries, including Iraq, Afghanistan and Zimbabwe, employers must pay maternity leave benefits.

The Howard Government recently introduced lump sum baby care payment, which will eventually increase to $5000, but this is not genuine maternity leave, because it is paid to all mothers regardless of whether they return to work after the birth of their child or stay at home.The Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Pru Goward, blames the lack of maternity leave, affordable child care and flexible workplaces for the slow growth in the number of Australian women in full-time work. In 1980, 27 per cent of Australian women were in full-time work. Despite a surge in female university graduates, that figure has increased only to 31 per cent today. "Good child care is essential if you're going to increase the participation of women in the workforce," says Goward. "Women can't work without feeling confident their children are well looked after."

HEALTH

So poor is their health that Zambian women can expect to live to only 32.5 years, Zimbabwean women to 33.5 and Sierra Leonean women to 35.6, according to the 2004 Human Development Index. The combined effect of civil wars, HIV/AIDS and extreme poverty shorten the lives of many African women and contribute to high maternal mortality rates.
Japanese women are likely to live nearly three times as long as African women, on average reaching their 85th birthday. Hong Kong women also live long lives (average age 82.7), as do those in Sweden (82.5), Australia (82) and Italy (81.9).

Women in disadvantaged social positions are twice as likely to suffer poor health, says a 2004 World Health Organisation report, because they are likely to be exposed to malnutrition, poor water supply and sanitation, unsafe sex, tobacco, drug and alcohol use, dangerous work and pollution.Health is a key factor in rating women-friendly countries because it is linked to education, wealth, employment and gender bias, says Dr Angela Taft, from the Public Health Association of Australia. Under the Taliban, women in Afghanistan were not allowed to be seen with a man who wasn't a family member. As there were no female doctors, this meant they were unable to seek medical treatment. The suicide rate increased, as did the mortality and morbidity rate. In China and India, where there is cultural preference for sons, there are high rates of foeticide and infanticide.

SAFETY

Although the UN rates the mistreatment of women as one of the three biggest problems hindering development, there is little internationally comparable data. Results from a UN survey are expected by the end of the year.

Among developed countries, Australia has a relatively high incidence of sexual assault. One per cent of women in Australia, Finland and Sweden reported having been sexually assaulted, compared with the 0.6 per cent international average, according to the UN's International Crime Victims survey 2000. Women in Japan, Ireland, Poland and Portugal were least likely to have been sexually assaulted.

But Australian women were less likely to suffer domestic violence than those in other countries. "Women in our country are well educated, and the legal system makes physical and sexual assault crimes," Taft says, noting the laws also need to be properly implemented.Eight per cent have been physically assaulted by an intimate partner, according to the UN, compared with nearly half the Bangladeshi female population, 34 per cent in Egypt and 29 per cent in Canada.Violence against women is rife in countries involved in civil wars. In Rwanda from April 1994 to April 1995, estimates of the number of women and girls raped range from 15,700 to more than 250,000, the UN says.

Domestic violence increases in countries at war. Women who live in male-oriented societies are also more vulnerable. The first sexual experience of many girls is often unwanted and forced.
Gender mutilation and child marriages are common in some countries, and hundreds of thousands of girls are bought and sold into prostitution or sexual slavery every year, according to a WHO report on violence and health.

"In countries where women are legislatively and culturally inferior, the rate of violence against women is much higher," Taft says.Free at last to lead a life of her own "I have my freedom," says Marie Baby Sapateh when asked what she likes best about living in Australia. The 36-year-old Sierra Leone native was one of 2 million people - more than a third of the country's population - forced to flee her homeland in the late 1990s. Sierra Leone was destroyed by a decade of civil war that came to an end in 2002.

Sapateh escaped to Guinea first before arriving in Australia in 2001 as a refugee. She suffered the full horror of war in Sierra Leone. Her husband was shot dead in front of her, she was gang-raped, and two of her children went missing. "We suffer the worst suffering," Sapateh says of Sierra Leone women, who have a life expectancy of 45. "They rape women young and old; they don't ask. They amputate some girls. They ask the son to rape the mother."

Sapateh has since been reunited with her two children - she declines to speak about the details - and is working as a nursing assistant and living in Marrickville."My life is happy because I am here with my family. We came here traumatised from war, we were treated badly ... and now we are free." In Australia she has access to medical care, government assistance and better wages - and she is free to wear trousers."There I eat and sleep, but not like here. Here I have computer, I have video, I have this, I have that ... I can also look after my other family back home. When I was there I couldn't give them five cents. There you are the man's belonging. Here everyone gets their own share."

Archival Rescue 13 ~ Syd local

Mardigras!

Fun night on the main drag
By Erin O'Dwyer
March 6, 2005 The Sun-Herald

Feathers, frocks and foreign tourists were all out in force last night as the annual Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade took to the streets of Sydney in a celebration of fun and freedom.

Tourists keen for a holiday snap with a real-life drag queen arrived early, even as many in the parade were still squeezing into their sequin dresses and stilettos.

Drag queen Gene Poole was among those taking it all in their hairy strides.

"This is what Sydney is all about," Poole said.

"They have so much courage," said Terry Hong, a visitor from South Korea. "It's getting better in South Korea but this is good, great."

About 500,000 people were expected to watch the 130 floats in all their gaudy glamour.

Charles and Camilla were in attendance, and more than a few Princess Marys. There were dozens of Dafydds from ABC TV's Little Britain, and of course perennial parade favourites Dykes on Bikes, Amnesty International and Sydney Leather Pride.

The parade's key message was "freedom".

Organisers compiled a dishonour roll of than 80 countries where homosexuality is illegal, and the parade's leading float used the opportunity to call for freedom in countries such as Afghanistan, India and Iran.

At the head of the parade were Vicki Harding and her partner Jackie, made famous after they featured with their daughter, Brenna, 8, in a Play School segment on ABC television last year.

"Mardi Gras is a time of year when gay and lesbian people are able to celebrate who we are," Harding said.

"There are so many people who are unhappy, confused or not open about their sexuality. This gives them a chance to connect with an understanding community."

Police on duty said there had been no disturbances. Thunderclouds also refused to rain on the parade.

Publicist Terry Stuart said: "Mardi Gras does something to people. Mardi Gras is here to stay. It's a celebration of life and freedom."