MRN

By Firoz Osman – Media Review Network

This is a shortened version of the paper delivered by Dr Firoz
Osman at the Africa Day Conference held on Friday, 27 May 2011 at UNISA.

Alarm bells have been ringing in Washington, Tel Aviv, Paris and London, as they desperately try to contain and dilute the shock waves emanating from the North African and Arab revolutions. These states are all artificial creations that enclose diverse ethnic, religious and linguistic groups, incorporated as minorities in the post-colonial era. The installation of monarchies and puppet rulers accountable only to their Western masters ensured the ferocious subjugation of the populace.

The majority of these states failed to introduce good governance and institutions of representation that ensure inclusion, the equal distribution of wealth among various groups, and respect for cultural diversity. The spread of poverty, unemployment, civil wars, sectarian and ethnic clashes and conflicts began with corrupt political leaders who exploited tribal and class differences to advance their rapacious ambitions.

Many African and Arab states underwent extraordinarily long periods of martial law or emergency rule, transforming interim measures into a permanent way of conducting political life. Declarations of emergency were simply a pretext to suspend basic rights and exempt rulers from any constitutional limitations.

After decades of brutal rule, all the while maintaining their control through fraudulent elections, the banning of opposition parties, the persecution of critics and the use of emergency laws, they systematically robbed and plundered their countries resources. The fabled oil wealth of the Arab countries presents a misleading picture of their economic situation, one that masks the structural weaknesses of many Arab economies and the resulting insecurity of countries and citizens alike.

Read More »The north African arab revolt

(source: Ma’an News Agency)

“If the aim of the blockade policy was to weaken the Hamas administration, the public employment numbers suggest this has failed,” a UNRWA spokesman said Tuesday as the UN marks Gaza’s fifth year under intense Israeli siege. Commenting on a report released by the UN agency charged with providing care and services for the one million refugees living in the Gaza Strip, on the fifth anniversary of the siege, spokesman Chris Gunness added “it has certainly been highly successful in punishing some of the poorest of the poor in the Middle East region.”

According to UNRWA, wages in Gaza fell 34.5 per cent since the first half of 2006, while unemployment reached 45.2 percent in the second half of 2010.

“These are disturbing trends,” Gunness said, “and the refugees, which make up two thirds of Gaza’s 1.5 million population were the worst hit in the period covered in this report. It is hard to understand the logic of a man-made policy which deliberately impoverishes so many and condemns hundreds of thousands of potentially productive people to a life of destitution.”

On 14 June 2006, militants in the Gaza Strip captured an Israeli soldier patrolling its border. In retaliation for the capture of a soldier, Israeli forces entered the West Bank and abducted eight Hamas ministers and 21 party lawmakers from their homes and offices. Imports and exports into and out of Gaza were scaled down to a fraction of normal levels in an attempt to pressure the ruling party Hamas to return the soldier. Hamas, negotiating on behalf of the factions which captured the soldier, are demanding the release of 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in return for his release.

Read More »Un marks 5 years of Gaza siege

Robert Fisk: I saw these brave doctors trying to save lives – these charges are a pack of lies

Eyewitness: Bahrain didn’t invite the Saudis to send their troops; the Saudis invaded and received a post-dated invitation

(source: Independent.co.uk)

Has the Khalifa family gone mad? Yesterday, the Bahraini royal family started an utterly fraudulent trial of 48 surgeons, doctors, paramedics and nurses, accusing them of trying to topple the tin-pot monarchy of this Sunni minority emirate. The defendants in this flagrantly unfair military court are, of course, members of the majority Shia people of Bahrain. And since I was a witness to their heroic efforts to save lives in February, I can say – let us speak with a frankness that the Bahraini rulers would normally demand – that the charges are a pack of lies.

Doctors I saw, drenched in their patients’ blood, desperately trying to staunch the bullet wounds of pro-democracy demonstrators shot in cold blood by Bahraini soldiers and police, are now on trial. I watched armed policemen refusing to allow ambulances to collect the wounded from the roads where they had been cut down. These are the very same doctors and nurses I stood beside four months ago in the Sulaimaniya emergency room, some of them weeping as they tried to deal with gunshot wounds the like of which they had never seen before.

“How could they do this to these people?” one of them asked me. “We have never dealt with trauma wounds like these before.” Next to us lay a man with bullet wounds in the chest and thigh, coughing blood on to the floor. The surgeons were frightened that they did not have the skills to save these victims of police violence. Now the police have accused the doctors and staff of killing the patients whom the police themselves shot.

How could these fine medical men and women have been trying to “topple” the monarchy?

Read More »Charges are a pack of lies