Fredericton Peace Coalition

“Eugen David, a small-time farmer with a chipped tooth and muddy boots in this obscure wrinkle of Transylvania, is an unlikely man to attract the attention of movie stars and moguls. But he counts Vanessa Redgrave, George Soros and Teddy Goldsmith among his backers in a land battle with a Canadian gold mining company.”

12:10pm, January 3, 2007

Wilmot United Church, King St.

Urgent Action Letter Writing happens on the first Wednesday of every month at 12:10pm in the parlour room at Wilmot United Church. All welcome to participate.

The subject of this month’s urgent action letter writing is regarding threats and fear for security of ECAP (Equipo de Estudios Comunitarios y Accion Psicosocial) members in Guatemala.

ECAP, the group under threat, is a Guatemalan organization that provides psychosocial support to massacre survivors and witnesses involved in various legal cases before both Guatemalan courts and the Inter-American system. Many of these individuals belong to the Association for Justice and Reconciliation (AJR), the witness association that the Maritimes-Guatemala Breaking the Silence Network has accompanied. AJR has filed charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes against the military high commands of Efraim Rios Montt and Romeo Lucas Garcia before Guatemalan courts. Since mid-2006, a number of organizations, including ECAP and the AJR, have supported a legal process initiated in Spain by the Rigoberta Menchu Tum Foundation against Rios Montt, Oscar Humberto Mejia Victores, German Chupina, Angel Guevara, Pedro Garci a Arredondo, Donaldo Alvarez Ruiz, Romeo Lucas Garcia and Benedicto Lucas Garcia for crimes against humanity and genocide.

Robert Fisk: We’ve shut him up. The moment Saddam’s hooded executioner pulled the lever of the trapdoor in Baghdad yesterday morning, Washington’s secrets were safe. The shameless, outrageous, covert military support which the United States – and Britain – gave to Saddam for more than a decade remains the one terrible story which our presidents and prime ministers do not want the world to remember. And now Saddam, who knew the full extent of that Western support – given to him while he was perpetrating some of the worst atrocities since the Second World War – is dead.

A piece on the victims of radiation contamination caused by India’s uranium mines.

Gudiya’s large, limpid eyes are inescapable. As Mangal, the unemployed father of this 5-year-old, comes home, with a tender smile she does her best to sidle up to him from her cradle. “She cannot walk, talk, sit or laugh,” Mangal says, as he caresses her. “She will never have a life.”

Three security certificate detainees are on hunger strike. Mohammad Mahjoub is still having problems receiving medical treatment for his Hepatitis C and high blood pressure after having gone on a 79-day hunger strike last year. In early December, the Federal Court recognized that Mr. Mahjoub would be seriously at risk of torture if deported to Egypt, which is the only ‘alternative’ to indefinite detention offered him by the Canadian government.

Blog from a young Iraqi woman with recent entries on the execution of Saddam Hussein and reflections at the end of another bloody year in Iraq.

“Saddam to the gallows. It was an easy equation. Who could be more deserving of that last walk to the scaffold – that crack of the neck at the end of a rope – than the Beast of Baghdad, the Hitler of the Tigris, the man who murdered untold hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis while spraying chemical weapons over his enemies? Our masters will tell us in a few hours that it is a “great day” for Iraqis and will hope that the Muslim world will forget that his death sentence was signed – by the Iraqi “government”, but on behalf of the Americans – on the very eve of the Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, the moment of greatest forgiveness in the Arab world.” 

From RightsAction:

On December 20th, Environmental Movement of Olancho (MAO) activists Heraldo Zuñiga and Roger Ivan Cartagena were shot and killed in the central plaza of Guarizama, in northern Olancho.

MAO denounces police sergeant Juan Lanza and other police officers linked to the powerful logging companies for the double murder, which brings the number of environmental activists murdered in Olancho in recent years up to six.

WHAT TO DO:

Send brief letters to the authorities, listed below, expressing your concern about the December 20th murder of environmental activists Heraldo Zuñiga and Roger Ivan Cartagena in Guarizama, Olancho; demanding an immediate impartial and thorough into the crime, police sergeant Juan Lanza and links to other authorities and loggers; demanding justice be applied to the material and intellectual authors; and strongly encouraging appropriate IAHRC-ordered protective measures be implemented for threatened Environmental Movement of Olancho activists Santos Efraín Paguada, Víctor Manuel Ochoa, René Wilfredo Gradiz, Macario Zelaya, Pedro Amado Acosta, Father Andrés Tamayo and others receiving death threats.

CANADIANS:
Delia Beatriz Valle Marichal, Honduran Ambassador to Canada: tel. (613)
233-9800, fax (613) 232-0913; embhonca@embassyhonduras.ca;
Warren Kidd (Consul), Office of the Canadian Embassy in Honduras: tel. (504)
232-4551, fax (504) 239-7767; warren.kidd@international.gc.ca,
tglpa@international.gc.ca

HONDURAN GOV’T AUTHORITIES:

Señor MANUEL ZELAYA ROSALES
Presidente de la República de Honduras
Casa Presidencial
Boulevard Juan Pablo Segundo
Palacio José Cecilio del Valle
Tegucigalpa, Honduras
Fax: (504) 221-4552

Abogado LEONIDAS ROSA BAUTISTA
Fiscal General del Estado
Ministerio Público
Lomas del Guijarro, Tegucigalpa, Honduras
Fax:  (504) 221-56-67
E-mail: Lrosa@mp.hn

Doctor RAMON CUSTODIO LOPEZ
Comisionado Nacional de Derechos Humanos
Boulevard Suyapa, antiguo Edificio de Cannon
E-mail: central@conadeh.hn

“Israeli security forces killed 660 Palestinians in 2006 – three times more than in 2005, according to an Israeli human rights group.”