INMIGRACIÓN | Ni trabajo, ni papeles, ni techo de ladrillo que derribe un terremoto
El Haití oculto de El Ejido
Gora y Abdulah ven la tele, en el garaje semiderruido donde viven. | Miguel Cabrera
Se han cumplido diez años de los sucesos racistas del Poniente almeriense
Las condiciones de los inmigrantes en los poblados es peor que entonces
Miguel Cabrera | Almería
Actualizado lunes 15/02/2010 09:57 horasDisminuye el tamaño del texto Aumenta el tamaño del texto
Gora y Abdulah observan cómo un niño haitiano recibe alimentos de manos de las fuerzas internacionales desplegadas en el país asolado por el terremoto mientras esperan a que esté listo el tiéboudienne, el plato nacional de su país, Senegal, que se cuece en una olla mugrienta. "Tiene arroz, pescado, pimientos, calabacín y berenjenas", dice Abdulah, de 27 años.
Justo minutos antes, la Cruz Roja ha tocado a la puerta de la vieja cochera semiderruida en la que viven, en el paraje ejidense de Tierras de Almería, para entregarles alimentos. Desde hace unas semanas, por primera vez en mucho tiempo, la organización humanitaria se ha visto en la necesidad de repartir víveres en los poblados de chabolas porque ha constatado que muchas de las más de 4.000 personas que las habitan en Almería -de ellas 2.800 en el Poniente- pasan hambre.
En el caso de los asentamientos almerienses ni siquiera un terremoto sería capaz de atraer la atención del mundo. Por la sencilla razón de que la mayoría de los inmigrantes no tiene un techo de ladrillo o cemento que pueda caer sobre sus cabezas, sino plásticos, cartones o maderas.
En estos días se cumplen diez años desde que el 5 febrero de 2000 la joven Encarnación López fuera apuñalada en el mercadillo de Santa María del Águila por Lesbir F., un joven marroquí esquizofrénico, y desatara la caza del moro, una ola de violencia y rechazo a los inmigrantes que ha pasado a la historia como los sucesos de El Ejido. Por aquellos días quedaron de manifiesto las penosas condiciones de vida que tenían que soportar los inmigrantes que vivían en el Poniente almeriense.
Una mujer acarrea garafas en un poblado.
Diez años después, aún son miles de de personas los siguen padeciendo la misma situación: no tienen papeles, trabajo ni un hogar digno.
Mientras Abdulah se muestra efusivo y hospitalario, Gora, de sólo 23 años, mantiene la mirada perdida, fija en el infinito, que a veces se clava en los visitantes, triste, amarga, como una petición desesperada de auxilio. Ambos llevan más de dos años en Almería, después de llegar en patera a Canarias. Desde allí, les trasladaron en avión a Madrid, a continuación a un albergue de Zaragoza, y después viajaron a Málaga para encontrarse con unos compatriotas.
La falta de trabajo les impidió quedarse y recalaron en este inhóspito lugar, entre invernaderos, apartados y olvidados del mundo. Sin papeles, apenas pueden trabajar dos o tres días a la semana. Lo justo para comer mal. Porque además deben pagar 100 euros al mes por el alquiler de su 'casa', una única habitación de apenas 12 metros cuadrados, sin agua ni servicios, que comparten con otros dos senegaleses. Todos duermen en tres colchones tirados en el suelo.
Hoy, sus amigos han tenido suerte y han subido a las furgonetas de los agricultores a las seis de la mañana, en el frío cruce de caminos donde la mayoría ha vuelto a carecer de fortuna, y han regresado, cabizbajos, a sus chabolas. Sus compañeros traerán por la tarde, por ocho o nueve horas de trabajo, 30 euros cada uno. El convenio del campo establece el jornal en 44 euros. Los agricultores también se escudan en la crisis para bajar los salarios.
La situación de los cuatro ocupantes de la chabola durante tanto tiempo no es una excepción, como explica el también senegalés Abdourahmane Niang, responsable de la atención a los asentamientos de chabolas de la Cruz Roja en Almería desde 2003. "De un tiempo a esta parte, las chabolas han dejado de ser un lugar de paso, como hace unos años, para convertirse en residencias permanentes, donde muchas personas llegan a vivir años y años".
Resignados a su suerte
Y es que a la crisis general se une la que también atraviesa la agricultura almeriense, la peor en los últimos 20 años. Todo ello no sólo se deja reflejar en las cada vez peores condiciones de vida, sino en el estado de ánimo. "Antes nos encontrábamos en las chabolas con gente que luchaba por buscar trabajo, por tener una casa propia, por mejorar e irse a otro lugar, pero ahora cada vez son más quienes se resignan a su suerte porque no ven salidas", dice Niang.
Otro de los efectos de la crisis es la presencia de mujeres y niños en los poblados. Casi todas se han visto arrastradas a ellos por la pérdida de su trabajo o porque los familiares con quienes vivían han tenido que dejar sus casas en alquiler, o lo que es peor, a dejar de pagar la hipoteca y perderlas. Esto explica que en la puerta de algunas chabolas permanezcan coches aparcados, de personas que han regresado al pozo.
Cruz Roja ha contabilizado en el Poniente medio centenar de mujeres y unos 25 niños en los asentamientos, sobre todo en El Ejido, Roquetas y La Mojonera. Una decena de ellas malvive en el poblado del paraje de La Cumbre, próximo a la urbanización de lujo de Almerimar. Una montaña de basura es la inmunda señal de bienvenida al asentamiento en el que conviven con 70 hombres y cinco niños, la mayoría marroquíes. Hasta hace un año, los residentes aportaban un euro por cabeza al mes para pagar un servicio de recogida semanal, pero el paro y la crisis les ha llevado a dejar de pagar. Y la empresa, la misma que trabaja para el Ayuntamiento, imputada en la operación Poniente, ha dejado de acudir.
Hace ya más de un año y medio desde que Sara El Akil, Hani Khnati y Zohra Sraghna se trasladaran a una chabola de plásticos que linda con el vertedero de basuras. Ellas llegaron con visado para trabajar en la fresa de Huelva, pero una granizada las dejó sin empleo en abril de 2008. Sara y Hani, las dos mayores, tienen cuatro y tres hijos, respectivamente, en Marruecos, que cuidan sus madres. Ahora están doblemente atrapadas entre los plásticos de los invernaderos que les rodean y los de sus propias chabolas, sin papeles y, como es el caso de Zohra, con una orden de expulsión.
El tiempo pasa muy despacio en este lugar. Los hombres deambulan por la calle o en el interior de las chabolas, entre vasos de café o té. De ahí que reciban con agrado la visita de los voluntarios, que también les enseñan nociones básicas de informática o el manejo de internet, algo que les es de mucha utilidad para hacer gestiones y evitarse desplazamientos engorrosos a Almería, sobre todo por la posibilidad de que les detenga la Policía, como apunta Abouobaida Laarreg, quien también trabaja en la Cruz Roja almeriense desde 2003.
"Todo está muy mal, y vamos a peor", reconoce Reduane, un marroquí de 35 años que habla perfectamente el español y que ejerce de líder del poblado. No en vano, él, tras llegar en patera a Almería, reunió los ahorros suficientes para trasladarse a Madrid, donde ha trabajado varios años como vigilante de obra. Tras perder el empleo, tuvo que volver a El Ejido. Hoy está parado y malvive en una chabola. "Mucha gente que logró salir de los asentamientos y se había ido a otras ciudades se ve obligada a regresar porque no tienen donde ir", dice Niang.
"Nos vemos obligados a robar hortalizas en los invernaderos para comer, lo reconozco, pero no podemos hacer otra cosa", explica Reduane B. encogiéndose de hombros.
DEPOIS COMEMOS ESPANHOL...
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Monday, February 15, 2010
A CIGANADA ROMENA A APROVEITAR-SE DOS HUMANISTAS INTERNACIONALISTAS
Exploitation des enfants roms : la France et la Roumanie se mobilisent
LE MONDE | 13.02.10 | 13h58 • Mis à jour le 13.02.10 | 13h58 Réagissez (7) Recommandez Classez Imprimez Envoyez Partagez
Partagez :Buzzer !
Bucarest Correspondant
Le secrétaire d'Etat aux affaires européennes, Pierre Lellouche, s'est rendu à Bucarest les 11 et 12 février pour plaider en faveur d'une "mobilisation commune" franco-roumaine en vue de contrôler les allers et retours de Roms roumains entre la France et leur pays d'origine.
M. Besson veut restreindre les droits des sans-papiers
Entretien Luc Beal-Rainaldy : "Ce projet n'aura pas d'incidence sur l'emploi de travailleurs sans papiers"
Les faits Douze Afghans en voie d'expulsion vers la Grèce et les Pays-Bas
Les faits Evacuation partielle d'un immeuble squatté par des Africains à Paris
Les faits Deux Haïtiens sous le coup d'un arrêté de reconduite à la frontière
Bilan La France a renvoyé 29 288 étrangers en 2009
Edition abonnés Dossier : Sans-papiers, les multiples visages de la clandestinité
L'aide au retour humanitaire, mise en place par la France il y a trois ans, est loin d'avoir atteint son but. En 2009, environ 8 000 Roms ont été reconduits en Roumanie avec, en poche, un billet d'avion et 300 euros. Mais les deux tiers d'entre eux sont revenus. "Leur donner de l'argent est inefficace, car la plupart retournent en France pour réclamer à nouveau de l'argent", a déclaré le Roumain Marian Tutilescu, secrétaire d'Etat de l'intérieur.
L'aspect délicat de cette affaire est la délinquance juvénile des enfants, poussés à la mendicité et aux petits larcins. En 2009, selon la préfecture, 40 % des Roms mis en cause pour des délits à Paris étaient mineurs. Au-delà des chiffres, il y a les petites histoires qui marquent. "Je suis moi-même intervenu à Paris parce qu'une femme faisait la manche avec un petit enfant dans les bras sans cache-nez, sans bonnet, sans gants, se souvient Pierre Lellouche. C'était inacceptable, d'autant qu'à côté d'elle se tenait l'organisateur du trafic qui, lui, était bien habillé et avait quelques centaines d'euros dans sa poche. J'ai fait arrêter tout le monde. Le principe de libre circulation en Europe n'a pas été conçu pour ouvrir la voie à tous les trafics."
"Famille européenne"
Le premier ministre roumain, Emil Boc, s'est engagé à désigner un secrétaire d'Etat chargé de la réinsertion des Roms. Les autorités roumaines ont aussi promis d'envoyer en France un contingent renforcé de policiers et de magistrats pour aider la police française à démanteler le trafic d'êtres humains.
L'appui des policiers roumains, qui connaissent bien ces pratiques ainsi que les réseaux qui s'y livrent, est indispensable. "Il ne s'agit pas de désigner une commission, mais d'obtenir des résultats, a précisé M. Lellouche. Moi, je voudrais ne plus voir d'enfants exploités dans les rues de Paris. Ce n'est pas bon pour l'image de l'Europe, ce n'est pas bon pour l'image de la Roumanie et cela nuit au travail de réunification de la famille européenne."
Le secrétaire d'Etat français souhaite que cette nouvelle politique devienne un "modèle européen" validé par la Conférence européenne sur les Roms qui aura lieu à Cordoue (Espagne) en avril. D'ici là, les autorités roumaines devront passer aux actes.
Mirel Bran
ENTÃO POR CÁ NO REINO DO MELHOR ACOLHIMENTO DO MUNDO, COM O ZÉ POVINHO MAIS INTERNACIONALISTA (E MASOQUISTA) QUE EXISTE À FACE DA TERRA COM UM CPPENAL SEMPRE DEFENDIDO PELA PALMA A CERTIFICADORA E EXPLICADORA DE QUALQUER ESCOLHO QUE APAREÇA NA CARREIRA DO SEU MARIDO IRMÃO OU NA DO SÓCRATES O BOSS MÁXIMO O ARRASTO É SEMPRE GARANTIDO.ENTRAM, SACAM, VÃO EMBORA E VOLTAM QUANDO QUISEREM.E AI DE QUEM LHES TOQUE COM UM DEDINHO QUE AS ONG´S, ASSOCIAÇÕES E SOS , TODOS PAGOS PELO MAI TRATAM LOGO DO FUTURO DO XENÓFOBO E RACISTA...O PRINCÍPIO É SÓ UM:DAR SEMPRE A OUTRA FACE!
LE MONDE | 13.02.10 | 13h58 • Mis à jour le 13.02.10 | 13h58 Réagissez (7) Recommandez Classez Imprimez Envoyez Partagez
Partagez :Buzzer !
Bucarest Correspondant
Le secrétaire d'Etat aux affaires européennes, Pierre Lellouche, s'est rendu à Bucarest les 11 et 12 février pour plaider en faveur d'une "mobilisation commune" franco-roumaine en vue de contrôler les allers et retours de Roms roumains entre la France et leur pays d'origine.
M. Besson veut restreindre les droits des sans-papiers
Entretien Luc Beal-Rainaldy : "Ce projet n'aura pas d'incidence sur l'emploi de travailleurs sans papiers"
Les faits Douze Afghans en voie d'expulsion vers la Grèce et les Pays-Bas
Les faits Evacuation partielle d'un immeuble squatté par des Africains à Paris
Les faits Deux Haïtiens sous le coup d'un arrêté de reconduite à la frontière
Bilan La France a renvoyé 29 288 étrangers en 2009
Edition abonnés Dossier : Sans-papiers, les multiples visages de la clandestinité
L'aide au retour humanitaire, mise en place par la France il y a trois ans, est loin d'avoir atteint son but. En 2009, environ 8 000 Roms ont été reconduits en Roumanie avec, en poche, un billet d'avion et 300 euros. Mais les deux tiers d'entre eux sont revenus. "Leur donner de l'argent est inefficace, car la plupart retournent en France pour réclamer à nouveau de l'argent", a déclaré le Roumain Marian Tutilescu, secrétaire d'Etat de l'intérieur.
L'aspect délicat de cette affaire est la délinquance juvénile des enfants, poussés à la mendicité et aux petits larcins. En 2009, selon la préfecture, 40 % des Roms mis en cause pour des délits à Paris étaient mineurs. Au-delà des chiffres, il y a les petites histoires qui marquent. "Je suis moi-même intervenu à Paris parce qu'une femme faisait la manche avec un petit enfant dans les bras sans cache-nez, sans bonnet, sans gants, se souvient Pierre Lellouche. C'était inacceptable, d'autant qu'à côté d'elle se tenait l'organisateur du trafic qui, lui, était bien habillé et avait quelques centaines d'euros dans sa poche. J'ai fait arrêter tout le monde. Le principe de libre circulation en Europe n'a pas été conçu pour ouvrir la voie à tous les trafics."
"Famille européenne"
Le premier ministre roumain, Emil Boc, s'est engagé à désigner un secrétaire d'Etat chargé de la réinsertion des Roms. Les autorités roumaines ont aussi promis d'envoyer en France un contingent renforcé de policiers et de magistrats pour aider la police française à démanteler le trafic d'êtres humains.
L'appui des policiers roumains, qui connaissent bien ces pratiques ainsi que les réseaux qui s'y livrent, est indispensable. "Il ne s'agit pas de désigner une commission, mais d'obtenir des résultats, a précisé M. Lellouche. Moi, je voudrais ne plus voir d'enfants exploités dans les rues de Paris. Ce n'est pas bon pour l'image de l'Europe, ce n'est pas bon pour l'image de la Roumanie et cela nuit au travail de réunification de la famille européenne."
Le secrétaire d'Etat français souhaite que cette nouvelle politique devienne un "modèle européen" validé par la Conférence européenne sur les Roms qui aura lieu à Cordoue (Espagne) en avril. D'ici là, les autorités roumaines devront passer aux actes.
Mirel Bran
ENTÃO POR CÁ NO REINO DO MELHOR ACOLHIMENTO DO MUNDO, COM O ZÉ POVINHO MAIS INTERNACIONALISTA (E MASOQUISTA) QUE EXISTE À FACE DA TERRA COM UM CPPENAL SEMPRE DEFENDIDO PELA PALMA A CERTIFICADORA E EXPLICADORA DE QUALQUER ESCOLHO QUE APAREÇA NA CARREIRA DO SEU MARIDO IRMÃO OU NA DO SÓCRATES O BOSS MÁXIMO O ARRASTO É SEMPRE GARANTIDO.ENTRAM, SACAM, VÃO EMBORA E VOLTAM QUANDO QUISEREM.E AI DE QUEM LHES TOQUE COM UM DEDINHO QUE AS ONG´S, ASSOCIAÇÕES E SOS , TODOS PAGOS PELO MAI TRATAM LOGO DO FUTURO DO XENÓFOBO E RACISTA...O PRINCÍPIO É SÓ UM:DAR SEMPRE A OUTRA FACE!
A LIGA DO NORTE ANDA A PRECISAR DO ANTÓNIO COSTA
Disturbios en Milán tras el asesinato de un joven egipcio
La Liga del Norte promete mano dura: "Los expulsaremos casa por casa"
MIGUEL MORA | Roma 14/02/2010
Vía Padova, un barrio multiétnico de la periferia de Milán situado en las cercanías de plaza Loreto, el lugar donde se expuso el cadáver de Benito Mussolini en abril de 1945, se convirtió en la noche del sábado en el escenario de una batalla urbana. El detonante fue el asesinato de un inmigrante egipcio de 19 años, acuchillado durante una reyerta, dijeron las autoridades, por un grupo de latinoamericanos aun no identificado. Los norteafricanos, que forman el colectivo más numeroso del barrio, respondieron volcando coches e incendiando mobiliario urbano durante varias horas. La policía detuvo a 39 magrebíes por la guerrilla, cuatro de las cuales quedaron bajo arresto.
Mientras las fuerzas del orden buscan a los autores del homicidio, la revuelta encendía otra vez la polémica política sobre la inmigración. Mientras la Liga del Norte, que gobierna el país y el ayuntamiento de Milán en coalición con el Pueblo de la Libertad, prometía "controles y expulsiones casa por casa, piso por piso" en los barrios de inmigrantes de la ciudad, Maurizio Gasparri, portavoz de los senadores del PDL, arremetió contra "los ingenuos de izquierda que lanzan elogios demagógicos a la integración".
El Gobierno, aseguró Gasparri, "continuará en su línea de firmeza, y no tolerará guerras étnicas". "Quitaremos la residencia y expulsaremos de inmediato a los violentos, hacen falta medidas drásticas, coherentes con las normas aprobadas por el centro derecha. Aplicaremos la tolerancia cero a quienes destruyan nuestras ciudades".
Usando el tono usual en la mayoría de Gobierno, que tiende a equiparar inmigración y criminalidad, Gasparri afirmó que "la violencia racista no es compatible con las reglas italianas de la democracia, la legalidad y la tolerancia", y alabó la devolución de inmigrantes en alta mar puesta en práctica por Interior en julio pasado tras la firma del pacto secreto con Libia. Según ACNUR y otras organizaciones de derechos humanos, esa política es ilegal porque viola las normativas internacionales sobre el derecho de asilo.
Menos evasivo que otras veces, el líder del Partido Democrático, Pierluigi Bersani, aseguró que los "gravísimos disturbios demuestran que la política de seguridad del Gobierno ha fracasado", y acusó al Ejecutivo de tratar la inmigración como mero asunto electoral: "Prefieren cabalgar y cultivar los problemas de los inmigrantes para obtener votos antes que afrontarlos con seriedad y resolverlos".
ELE É QUE SABE INTEGRAR.E LUCRAR COM ISSO.EMBORA POR NOSSA CONTA.E COM UM AMPLO CAMPO DE IDEIAS INOVADORAS QUE FORAM DESDE A DESCOLONIZAÇÃO JÁ, COM ABANDONO DOS "CRIMINOSOS COLONOS" ATÉ AO MELHOR ACOLHIMENTO DO MUNDO COM A MAIS RÁPIDA NACIONALIZAÇÃO AO FIM DE 6 ANOS DOS QUAIS 3 PODEM SER EM PRISÃO... E EXAMES "ORAIS" PARA ANALFABETOS...TUDO NO SEGREDO DOS DEUSES NÃO VÃO OS INDÍGENAS DESCONFIAR...
La Liga del Norte promete mano dura: "Los expulsaremos casa por casa"
MIGUEL MORA | Roma 14/02/2010
Vía Padova, un barrio multiétnico de la periferia de Milán situado en las cercanías de plaza Loreto, el lugar donde se expuso el cadáver de Benito Mussolini en abril de 1945, se convirtió en la noche del sábado en el escenario de una batalla urbana. El detonante fue el asesinato de un inmigrante egipcio de 19 años, acuchillado durante una reyerta, dijeron las autoridades, por un grupo de latinoamericanos aun no identificado. Los norteafricanos, que forman el colectivo más numeroso del barrio, respondieron volcando coches e incendiando mobiliario urbano durante varias horas. La policía detuvo a 39 magrebíes por la guerrilla, cuatro de las cuales quedaron bajo arresto.
Mientras las fuerzas del orden buscan a los autores del homicidio, la revuelta encendía otra vez la polémica política sobre la inmigración. Mientras la Liga del Norte, que gobierna el país y el ayuntamiento de Milán en coalición con el Pueblo de la Libertad, prometía "controles y expulsiones casa por casa, piso por piso" en los barrios de inmigrantes de la ciudad, Maurizio Gasparri, portavoz de los senadores del PDL, arremetió contra "los ingenuos de izquierda que lanzan elogios demagógicos a la integración".
El Gobierno, aseguró Gasparri, "continuará en su línea de firmeza, y no tolerará guerras étnicas". "Quitaremos la residencia y expulsaremos de inmediato a los violentos, hacen falta medidas drásticas, coherentes con las normas aprobadas por el centro derecha. Aplicaremos la tolerancia cero a quienes destruyan nuestras ciudades".
Usando el tono usual en la mayoría de Gobierno, que tiende a equiparar inmigración y criminalidad, Gasparri afirmó que "la violencia racista no es compatible con las reglas italianas de la democracia, la legalidad y la tolerancia", y alabó la devolución de inmigrantes en alta mar puesta en práctica por Interior en julio pasado tras la firma del pacto secreto con Libia. Según ACNUR y otras organizaciones de derechos humanos, esa política es ilegal porque viola las normativas internacionales sobre el derecho de asilo.
Menos evasivo que otras veces, el líder del Partido Democrático, Pierluigi Bersani, aseguró que los "gravísimos disturbios demuestran que la política de seguridad del Gobierno ha fracasado", y acusó al Ejecutivo de tratar la inmigración como mero asunto electoral: "Prefieren cabalgar y cultivar los problemas de los inmigrantes para obtener votos antes que afrontarlos con seriedad y resolverlos".
ELE É QUE SABE INTEGRAR.E LUCRAR COM ISSO.EMBORA POR NOSSA CONTA.E COM UM AMPLO CAMPO DE IDEIAS INOVADORAS QUE FORAM DESDE A DESCOLONIZAÇÃO JÁ, COM ABANDONO DOS "CRIMINOSOS COLONOS" ATÉ AO MELHOR ACOLHIMENTO DO MUNDO COM A MAIS RÁPIDA NACIONALIZAÇÃO AO FIM DE 6 ANOS DOS QUAIS 3 PODEM SER EM PRISÃO... E EXAMES "ORAIS" PARA ANALFABETOS...TUDO NO SEGREDO DOS DEUSES NÃO VÃO OS INDÍGENAS DESCONFIAR...
Sunday, February 14, 2010
AS CAUSAS DO MAL.MAS TODOS MUITO INTERNACIONALISTAS, HUMANISTAS PARA DISFARÇAR MUITA GATUNAGEM...
Mais chefes que índios
Publicado por PauloMorais em 14 Fevereiro, 2010
Para um país com dez milhões de pessoas, um Presidente, um primeiro-ministro e respectivas cortes, um governo e um parlamento nacionais, dois governos e dois parlamentos regionais, mais de trezentos presidentes de câmara e correspondentes vereadores, mais de quatro mil presidentes de junta de freguesia… é demais.
Publicado por PauloMorais em 14 Fevereiro, 2010
Para um país com dez milhões de pessoas, um Presidente, um primeiro-ministro e respectivas cortes, um governo e um parlamento nacionais, dois governos e dois parlamentos regionais, mais de trezentos presidentes de câmara e correspondentes vereadores, mais de quatro mil presidentes de junta de freguesia… é demais.
O SOBADO VISTO DE LONDRES
From The Sunday Times February 14, 2010
Portuguese look to Brazil, not Brussels, for help
Faced with a Greece-like situation, people are relying on Latin linksMatthew Campbell in Lisbon
Outside the Brasilia sandwich bar in a poor part of Lisbon one afternoon last week a group of men leaned against the wall, chatting and smoking cigarettes. One of them whistled at the black prostitute touting for business over the road. A beggar in a threadbare coat swigged from a bottle.
Welcome to sunny Portugal.
Known for its seaside resorts and soulful fado music, the unassuming country on the western frontier of Europe is just as much in the mire as Greece as it struggles with soaring debt and rising unemployment, which have pushed a naturally melancholic people to the brink of despair.
Any mention of the word “work” provokes sniggers outside the sandwich bar. “There’s no jobs round here,” says Dario, 30, a bricklayer. “I’d go to Brazil if I could afford the air fare.”
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Jose Socrates, Portugal’s socialist prime minister, finds himself in a corner. Having lost his majority in September’s elections, he is struggling to keep order. He insists that his country does not need help from the European Union, let alone the International Monetary Fund, to restore fiscal health.
The markets, however, do not seem convinced by assurances that spending cuts alone will bring the deficit — which reached 9.3% of GDP last year — to below 3% by 2013.
It takes a lot to stir the introspective Portuguese, but a giant demonstration has been called for March 4 to vent anger against a promised publicsector wage freeze and job cuts.
Like neighbouring Spain, the country has taken great strides from the days of dictatorship, emerging with optimism and relief into the sunny upland of paved roads and democracy after joining the EU in 1986.
Socrates boasts that in the five years he has been in office Portugal has become one of Europe’s leaders in renewable energy and electronic government, allowing more and more citizens to pay their bills over the internet.
He has won plaudits for guaranteeing every schoolchild a laptop computer and English lessons from the age of six. Although they may not find a job at the end of it, 35% of Portuguese people now go to university.
What sustained Portugal before, though, was not the dynamism of its politicians but its low labour costs. Eastward expansion of the EU and the loosening of trade barriers with Asia were disastrous for Portugal. It found it could not compete with the likes of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The economy stopped growing a decade ago.
“We must learn to adapt, to diversify and rediscover the dynamism of our ancestors,” said Antonio Monteiro, a former foreign minister and ambassador to Paris, referring to the golden era of the great 15th-century navigators. “We must learn to compete in a globalised world.”
People are sceptical, though, about the government’s chances, and for many a voyage of discovery seems preferable to sitting out an economic meltdown at home: the “brain drain” has accelerated in recent months as unemployment has crept up to almost 11% — it is double that for the young — with signs of worse to come.
The promised budget cuts, casting doubt over muchvaunted projects such as a high-speed rail link to Madrid and a new airport in Lisbon to replace the tiny one on the edge of the city, have heightened the sense of uncertainty.
By contrast, Brazil, a Portuguese-speaking power in the tropics, seems a land of opportunity. “We feel closer to Brazil than to Germany or other European countries,” said Luis Barbosa, a telecommunications company director who spent 15 years running businesses there. “We have the same, easy-going temperament.”
He talks about the reemergence of a “golden triangle” binding Portugal, Brazil and Angola, another former colony, which has become one of Africa’s largest oil producers.
“It will never replace Europe,” he said. “But it’s a useful card to have up our sleeve.”
The balance of power may have shifted, though, in this age-old alliance, and some refer to “reverse colonisation” to describe the way newly rich Angolans are buying up chunks of the Portuguese economy, not to mention the goods in the Louis Vuitton store on the Avenida da Liberdade in central Lisbon.
Others talk of the “Latin-Americanisation” of Portugal, not just because of the influx of Brazilian money. About 20% of Portugal’s population is estimated to be living below the poverty line, and the contrast between the weed-choked immigrant slum on the edge of Lisbon known as Cova da Moura, or “Moor’s den”, and the poolside villas, gated communities and luxury hotels on the coast at Cascais reflects the greatest gap between rich and poor in any European country.
BMW unveiled its latest 5-series model at a glitzy event in a Cascais hotel last week. But not even this opulent enclave is safe from the storm: the Casino Estoril, a cathedral of gleaming marble and neon owned by Stanley Ho of Macau — another former Portuguese colony — recently laid off 100 workers.
Expensive cars gleamed in the car park on Wednesday night but the atmosphere inside suggested a funeral parlour: there was not a high roller in sight as a group of bored-looking retired people stared in silence at a turning roulette wheel.
Cova da Moura, considered the most sordid slum in the country, is by no means as desperate as the rag-strewn slums around Rio de Janeiro, but taxi drivers are not happy to go there. African youths sitting in doorways glare menacingly at drivers who venture in.
The more worrying part of “Brazilification”, perhaps, is Portugal’s apparent powerlessness against South American drug-trafficking gangs that have taken root with impunity on its soil. Police say about a third of Europe’s cocaine comes in by sea through Portugal.
For some the pull of Latin America is an example of life imitating art: in The Stone Raft, a 1986 novel by Portugal’s Nobel laureate Jose Saramago, the Iberian peninsula breaks off from Europe and floats westward out into the Atlantic.
Portugal insists that it has no intention of leaving Europe, let alone reinstating the escudo. “That will never happen,” says Monteiro, the former diplomat. “We are in Europe and will stay there.”
MAS É UM SOBADO CHEIO DE DIREITOS HUMANOS E GARANTIAS PARA ACOLHIDOS.AGORA É A VEZ DOS INDÍGENAS PAGAREM COM LINGUA DE PALMO...
Portuguese look to Brazil, not Brussels, for help
Faced with a Greece-like situation, people are relying on Latin linksMatthew Campbell in Lisbon
Outside the Brasilia sandwich bar in a poor part of Lisbon one afternoon last week a group of men leaned against the wall, chatting and smoking cigarettes. One of them whistled at the black prostitute touting for business over the road. A beggar in a threadbare coat swigged from a bottle.
Welcome to sunny Portugal.
Known for its seaside resorts and soulful fado music, the unassuming country on the western frontier of Europe is just as much in the mire as Greece as it struggles with soaring debt and rising unemployment, which have pushed a naturally melancholic people to the brink of despair.
Any mention of the word “work” provokes sniggers outside the sandwich bar. “There’s no jobs round here,” says Dario, 30, a bricklayer. “I’d go to Brazil if I could afford the air fare.”
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Jose Socrates, Portugal’s socialist prime minister, finds himself in a corner. Having lost his majority in September’s elections, he is struggling to keep order. He insists that his country does not need help from the European Union, let alone the International Monetary Fund, to restore fiscal health.
The markets, however, do not seem convinced by assurances that spending cuts alone will bring the deficit — which reached 9.3% of GDP last year — to below 3% by 2013.
It takes a lot to stir the introspective Portuguese, but a giant demonstration has been called for March 4 to vent anger against a promised publicsector wage freeze and job cuts.
Like neighbouring Spain, the country has taken great strides from the days of dictatorship, emerging with optimism and relief into the sunny upland of paved roads and democracy after joining the EU in 1986.
Socrates boasts that in the five years he has been in office Portugal has become one of Europe’s leaders in renewable energy and electronic government, allowing more and more citizens to pay their bills over the internet.
He has won plaudits for guaranteeing every schoolchild a laptop computer and English lessons from the age of six. Although they may not find a job at the end of it, 35% of Portuguese people now go to university.
What sustained Portugal before, though, was not the dynamism of its politicians but its low labour costs. Eastward expansion of the EU and the loosening of trade barriers with Asia were disastrous for Portugal. It found it could not compete with the likes of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The economy stopped growing a decade ago.
“We must learn to adapt, to diversify and rediscover the dynamism of our ancestors,” said Antonio Monteiro, a former foreign minister and ambassador to Paris, referring to the golden era of the great 15th-century navigators. “We must learn to compete in a globalised world.”
People are sceptical, though, about the government’s chances, and for many a voyage of discovery seems preferable to sitting out an economic meltdown at home: the “brain drain” has accelerated in recent months as unemployment has crept up to almost 11% — it is double that for the young — with signs of worse to come.
The promised budget cuts, casting doubt over muchvaunted projects such as a high-speed rail link to Madrid and a new airport in Lisbon to replace the tiny one on the edge of the city, have heightened the sense of uncertainty.
By contrast, Brazil, a Portuguese-speaking power in the tropics, seems a land of opportunity. “We feel closer to Brazil than to Germany or other European countries,” said Luis Barbosa, a telecommunications company director who spent 15 years running businesses there. “We have the same, easy-going temperament.”
He talks about the reemergence of a “golden triangle” binding Portugal, Brazil and Angola, another former colony, which has become one of Africa’s largest oil producers.
“It will never replace Europe,” he said. “But it’s a useful card to have up our sleeve.”
The balance of power may have shifted, though, in this age-old alliance, and some refer to “reverse colonisation” to describe the way newly rich Angolans are buying up chunks of the Portuguese economy, not to mention the goods in the Louis Vuitton store on the Avenida da Liberdade in central Lisbon.
Others talk of the “Latin-Americanisation” of Portugal, not just because of the influx of Brazilian money. About 20% of Portugal’s population is estimated to be living below the poverty line, and the contrast between the weed-choked immigrant slum on the edge of Lisbon known as Cova da Moura, or “Moor’s den”, and the poolside villas, gated communities and luxury hotels on the coast at Cascais reflects the greatest gap between rich and poor in any European country.
BMW unveiled its latest 5-series model at a glitzy event in a Cascais hotel last week. But not even this opulent enclave is safe from the storm: the Casino Estoril, a cathedral of gleaming marble and neon owned by Stanley Ho of Macau — another former Portuguese colony — recently laid off 100 workers.
Expensive cars gleamed in the car park on Wednesday night but the atmosphere inside suggested a funeral parlour: there was not a high roller in sight as a group of bored-looking retired people stared in silence at a turning roulette wheel.
Cova da Moura, considered the most sordid slum in the country, is by no means as desperate as the rag-strewn slums around Rio de Janeiro, but taxi drivers are not happy to go there. African youths sitting in doorways glare menacingly at drivers who venture in.
The more worrying part of “Brazilification”, perhaps, is Portugal’s apparent powerlessness against South American drug-trafficking gangs that have taken root with impunity on its soil. Police say about a third of Europe’s cocaine comes in by sea through Portugal.
For some the pull of Latin America is an example of life imitating art: in The Stone Raft, a 1986 novel by Portugal’s Nobel laureate Jose Saramago, the Iberian peninsula breaks off from Europe and floats westward out into the Atlantic.
Portugal insists that it has no intention of leaving Europe, let alone reinstating the escudo. “That will never happen,” says Monteiro, the former diplomat. “We are in Europe and will stay there.”
MAS É UM SOBADO CHEIO DE DIREITOS HUMANOS E GARANTIAS PARA ACOLHIDOS.AGORA É A VEZ DOS INDÍGENAS PAGAREM COM LINGUA DE PALMO...
O MUNDO MARAVILHOSO DA AMNISTIA INTERNACIONAL
The conscience stifled by Amnesty
When Gita Sahgal questioned the human rights group’s links to Islamic radicals, it suspended her. Now she fears for her safetyMargarette Driscoll
(Justin Griffiths-Williams)
Sahgal argues that Amnesty should not be associated with Cageprisoners, which appears to give succour to militants who believe in global jihad
Amnesty International has made its name as a champion of free speech, campaigning on behalf of prisoners who have spoken out against oppressive regimes around the world. But when it comes to speaking up about the organisation itself ... well, that seems to be a different story.
Last week Gita Sahgal, a highly respected lifelong human rights activist and head of Amnesty’s gender unit, told The Sunday Times of her concerns about Amnesty’s relationship with Cageprisoners, an organisation headed by Moazzam Begg, a former Guantanamo internee.
Since his release in 2005, Begg has spoken alongside Amnesty at a number of events and accompanied the organisation to a meeting at Downing Street last month. Sahgal felt the closeness of the relationship between Amnesty and Cageprisoners — which appears to give succour to those who believe in global jihad — was a threat to Amnesty’s integrity. “To be appearing on platforms with Britain’s most famous supporter of the Taliban, whom we treat as a human rights defender, is a gross error of judgment,” she wrote to Amnesty’s leaders following the Downing Street visit.
Feeling her concerns were not being addressed, she decided to go public. Hours after our story appeared she was suspended. Sahgal’s phone started ringing off the hook with news organisations seeking interviews. The story also lit up the blogosphere, partly because of Amnesty’s importance — it has some 2.8m members and a raft of glamorous supporters — but also because what Sahgal was talking about touched that raw nerve, the naivety of white middle-class liberals in dealing with Islamic radicals.
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To say the past week has been a difficult one for Sahgal would be an understatement. She fears for her own and her family’s safety. She has — temporarily at least — lost her job and found it almost impossible to find anyone to represent her in any potential employment case. She rang round the human rights lawyers she knows, all of whom have declined to help citing a conflict of interest. “Although it is said that we must defend everybody no matter what they’ve done, it appears that if you’re a secular, atheist, Asian British woman, you don’t deserve a defence from our civil right firms,” she says wryly.
So no one in the human rights world wants to cross swords with Amnesty: that’s no surprise and least of all to Sahgal. “I know the nature of what I’m up against,” she says. “I didn’t do what I did lightly.”
She is feisty, unrepentant and by no means without support: we meet, for instance, in an office lent to her by a family friend of Peter Benenson, the lawyer who founded Amnesty in 1961. She has had many private messages from former colleagues. “People are shocked,” she says. “There is a lot of disquiet in the organisation and that’s been quite heartening.”
Amnesty and Begg have taken issue with what Sahgal, 53, has to say. Claudio Cordone, Amnesty’s interim secretarygeneral, wrote to The Sunday Times to say it was “preposterous” to accuse Amnesty of being linked in any way to the Taliban. “Amnesty International works with Moazzam Begg as a former detainee of Guantanamo Bay and as a victim of the human rights violations suffered there . . .” he said. “Moazzam Begg has never been tried or convicted of any terrorism-related offences and has publicly rebutted accusations against him in this respect.”
Cordone objected to people like Begg being subjected to “trial by media”, but part of Sahgal’s point is that human rights organisations have to be super-scrupulous not only in the people they choose to support, but also about the company those people keep — and any decisions they make must stand up to public scrutiny.
The treatment of Guantanamo detainees keeps making headlines, the latest last week when the government was forced to publish evidence showing MI5 knew that Binyam Mohamed was being tortured at the United States’s behest. “Amnesty underscores the importance of Binyam Mohamed’s case and of course that’s right,” says Sahgal. “Moazzam Begg has ongoing cases and I hope he wins them. But that’s not the issue.”
Given the sensitivities involved it seems reasonable to ask where Begg’s sympathies lie. In his autobiography he describes becoming interested in Islamic politics in his twenties and he later ran a bookshop that stocked Islamist writing. He travelled to Bosnia and Afghanistan and admits giving money to Muslim combatants, but denies being involved in any fighting.
In 2001 he took his wife and young children to live in Afghanistan in order, he says, to fulfil a dream of being a teacher. He helped to establish a school with sections for boys and girls and installed water pumps. When the allied attack on Afghanistan started later that year, the family fled to Pakistan where Begg, now 42, was picked up. His family have always insisted it was a case of mistaken identity.
In his book he says the Taliban were better than anything Afghanistan had had in the past 25 years. “I was talking about something I believed at the time,” he says now. “That’s what I understood from my knowledge of the country, that there had been no law and order, there had been warlords that had taken over the country, children used as sex slaves, drug production was very high and the Taliban put a stop to all this. That was the reality on the ground. It was the best of the worst.”
He believes it is right to be talking to the Taliban now. “Because the Taliban are Afghans and we are not,” he says. “The British are not Afghans and neither are the Americans. And as much as you might not like what they stand for, they have more right in that land than anyone else.
“Ultimately, what we’re doing now as part of our foreign policy is we’re talking to the Taliban, we are engaging with the Taliban, the people we’ve been demonising for the past nine years, and that is precisely what we did in Northern Ireland.
“I’ve never said we should give the Taliban money — that is what the government is doing. But we need to be engaging with people who we find most unpalatable. So the dialogue with the Taliban is something I not only welcome but something I have been saying for a long, long time.”
As for human rights abuses committed by the Taliban, Begg says he has seen and written about them himself: “I’ve seen them because I lived there. But I’ve seen Americans commit more human rights abuses, I can promise you. But I haven’t said we shouldn’t talk to the Americans.”
He counters Sahgal’s view by saying she is, in her own way, a fundamentalist: “She advocates the government shouldn’t even be engaging with the Muslim Council of Britain. It’s not a normal position.” And he rejects her description of him as Britain’s most famous supporter of the Taliban: “That is a ridiculous thing to say. I have toured the country with former US soldiers several times ... that doesn’t seem to be a very Taliban Al-Qaeda thing to do, does it?”
Indeed it does not. But when Asim Qureshi, one of Begg’s senior colleagues at Cageprisoners, appeared on a radio programme with Sahgal last week and was reminded of a speech he had given at a rally organised by Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamist political party, in which Qureshi supported “jihad” against oppression of Muslims, he did not distance himself from the sentiments. Cageprisoners not only campaigns on behalf of those detained without trial, but also for Islamic radicals who have been through the due process of the British courts, such as Abu Hamza and Abu Qatada. Sahgal believes the organisation has an agenda “way beyond being a prisoners’ rights organisation”.
The bigger picture is how human rights organisations — and society more widely — should view Islamic radicals. There has been much debate over whether, spurred by a sentimental knee-jerk anti-Americanism, white liberals have sympathised with Islamic radicals, thereby implicitly tolerating their intolerance, particularly towards women. “For me that’s a form of racism,” says Sahgal, “because what it does is wipe out the experiences of the people they oppress. And it’s not helped by a discourse about a ‘clash of civilisations’, which elides jihadi ideologies and treats them as normal Muslim thinking. That’s devastating for ordinary Muslims.”
If the men incarcerated in Guantanamo were white fascists, she says, “I hope we would defend them. We would have to defend them — but we wouldn’t necessarily put them on 50 or 100 platforms after that”. The problem, she believes, is that human rights organisations want to believe they represent “perfect victims”.
“But a victim can also be a perpetrator,” she says. “It’s a very simple thought.”
This is something that has troubled her for many years. Some years ago, before she joined Amnesty’s staff, she was asked by the organisation to speak alongside a man whose son had been arrested during an insurgency in northern India: “His son had disappeared and he’d gone from police station to police station looking for him. It was a very moving story and it was hard not to cry. He was coming to thank Amnesty for the postcards they’d written and the letters they’d sent to the government. He felt his son owed his life to that, and that, of course, is the power of our work.
“The problem was that he was surrounded by men who were clearly Sikh political activists, allied to the group which assassinated Indira Gandhi. A perfectly well-meaning person had invited me to speak on a platform beside a perfectly genuine victim but hadn’t paid any attention to who accompanied him.”
Now, for flagging up this sort of error, Sahgal finds herself out in the cold. She says she needs to keep talking about this issue because she feels it won’t solve itself. She’ll be watching with interest to see if there is a cooling of relations between Amnesty and Cageprisoners. “The signs are that there won’t be,” she says. “The signs are that the cool relationship is with me.”
OS INTERNACIONALISTAS CASEIROS ENGOLEM QUALQUER PATRANHA DESDE QUE SEJA IMPORTADA.ESCRAVIZAR OS SEUS CONCIDADÃOS É O QUE LHES DÁ MAIS GOZO...
Second Amnesty chief attacks Islamist linksRichard Kerbaj
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Recommend? (11)
Sam Zarifi
A senior executive at Amnesty International has urged the charity to admit it made a “mistake” by failing publicly to oppose the views of a former terror suspect.
Sam Zarifi, Amnesty’s Asia Pacific director, backed Gita Sahgal, an official who was suspended after revealing her concerns about Amnesty’s links to the former Guantanamo detainee, Moazzam Begg, a British citizen.
In an internal memo leaked to The Sunday Times, Zarifi, who oversees Amnesty’s work in Pakistan and Afghanistan, claimed the charity’s campaigns blurred the line between giving support for a detainee’s human rights and endorsing extremist views.
“We should be clear that some of Amnesty’s campaigning ... did not always sufficiently distinguish between the rights of detainees to be free from torture and arbitrary detention, and the validity of their views,” says Zarifi in the email, sent to his staff and dated February 10. Zarifi advised Amnesty to consider its working relationships with activists more carefully.
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He said: “We did not always clarify that while we champion the rights of all — including terrorism suspects, and more important, victims of terrorism — we do not champion their views.”
Amnesty’s decision to suspend Sahgal, the head of its gender unit, while continuing its support for Begg, 42, of Birmingham, has provoked criticism.
Zarifi said Amnesty should have done more to respond to public concerns about its relationship with Begg and Cageprisoners, a pressure group that highlights the plight of Muslim detainees, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.
He wrote: “The organisation had taken steps to clarify that it did not in any way support all, or even many, of Moazzam Begg’s views. Obviously we did not do enough to establish this in the public sphere. We can and should publicly admit this mistake and move on and ensure we do not make the same mistake again.”
Amnesty officials called for the closure of Guantanamo Bay at a meeting in Downing Street last month.
Begg, who was held there for three years until 2005, has embarked on a European tour, hosted by Amnesty, urging countries to offer a safe haven to Guantanamo detainees.
Begg took his family to live in Afghanistan under Taliban rule but admits they were responsible for abuses.
Amnesty was founded in 1961 to give support to prisoners of conscience.
A ANA GOMES ESTARÁ CONTRA CLARO...A CIA É QUE É O PERIGO...
When Gita Sahgal questioned the human rights group’s links to Islamic radicals, it suspended her. Now she fears for her safetyMargarette Driscoll
(Justin Griffiths-Williams)
Sahgal argues that Amnesty should not be associated with Cageprisoners, which appears to give succour to militants who believe in global jihad
Amnesty International has made its name as a champion of free speech, campaigning on behalf of prisoners who have spoken out against oppressive regimes around the world. But when it comes to speaking up about the organisation itself ... well, that seems to be a different story.
Last week Gita Sahgal, a highly respected lifelong human rights activist and head of Amnesty’s gender unit, told The Sunday Times of her concerns about Amnesty’s relationship with Cageprisoners, an organisation headed by Moazzam Begg, a former Guantanamo internee.
Since his release in 2005, Begg has spoken alongside Amnesty at a number of events and accompanied the organisation to a meeting at Downing Street last month. Sahgal felt the closeness of the relationship between Amnesty and Cageprisoners — which appears to give succour to those who believe in global jihad — was a threat to Amnesty’s integrity. “To be appearing on platforms with Britain’s most famous supporter of the Taliban, whom we treat as a human rights defender, is a gross error of judgment,” she wrote to Amnesty’s leaders following the Downing Street visit.
Feeling her concerns were not being addressed, she decided to go public. Hours after our story appeared she was suspended. Sahgal’s phone started ringing off the hook with news organisations seeking interviews. The story also lit up the blogosphere, partly because of Amnesty’s importance — it has some 2.8m members and a raft of glamorous supporters — but also because what Sahgal was talking about touched that raw nerve, the naivety of white middle-class liberals in dealing with Islamic radicals.
Related Links
Second Amnesty chief attacks Islamist links
To say the past week has been a difficult one for Sahgal would be an understatement. She fears for her own and her family’s safety. She has — temporarily at least — lost her job and found it almost impossible to find anyone to represent her in any potential employment case. She rang round the human rights lawyers she knows, all of whom have declined to help citing a conflict of interest. “Although it is said that we must defend everybody no matter what they’ve done, it appears that if you’re a secular, atheist, Asian British woman, you don’t deserve a defence from our civil right firms,” she says wryly.
So no one in the human rights world wants to cross swords with Amnesty: that’s no surprise and least of all to Sahgal. “I know the nature of what I’m up against,” she says. “I didn’t do what I did lightly.”
She is feisty, unrepentant and by no means without support: we meet, for instance, in an office lent to her by a family friend of Peter Benenson, the lawyer who founded Amnesty in 1961. She has had many private messages from former colleagues. “People are shocked,” she says. “There is a lot of disquiet in the organisation and that’s been quite heartening.”
Amnesty and Begg have taken issue with what Sahgal, 53, has to say. Claudio Cordone, Amnesty’s interim secretarygeneral, wrote to The Sunday Times to say it was “preposterous” to accuse Amnesty of being linked in any way to the Taliban. “Amnesty International works with Moazzam Begg as a former detainee of Guantanamo Bay and as a victim of the human rights violations suffered there . . .” he said. “Moazzam Begg has never been tried or convicted of any terrorism-related offences and has publicly rebutted accusations against him in this respect.”
Cordone objected to people like Begg being subjected to “trial by media”, but part of Sahgal’s point is that human rights organisations have to be super-scrupulous not only in the people they choose to support, but also about the company those people keep — and any decisions they make must stand up to public scrutiny.
The treatment of Guantanamo detainees keeps making headlines, the latest last week when the government was forced to publish evidence showing MI5 knew that Binyam Mohamed was being tortured at the United States’s behest. “Amnesty underscores the importance of Binyam Mohamed’s case and of course that’s right,” says Sahgal. “Moazzam Begg has ongoing cases and I hope he wins them. But that’s not the issue.”
Given the sensitivities involved it seems reasonable to ask where Begg’s sympathies lie. In his autobiography he describes becoming interested in Islamic politics in his twenties and he later ran a bookshop that stocked Islamist writing. He travelled to Bosnia and Afghanistan and admits giving money to Muslim combatants, but denies being involved in any fighting.
In 2001 he took his wife and young children to live in Afghanistan in order, he says, to fulfil a dream of being a teacher. He helped to establish a school with sections for boys and girls and installed water pumps. When the allied attack on Afghanistan started later that year, the family fled to Pakistan where Begg, now 42, was picked up. His family have always insisted it was a case of mistaken identity.
In his book he says the Taliban were better than anything Afghanistan had had in the past 25 years. “I was talking about something I believed at the time,” he says now. “That’s what I understood from my knowledge of the country, that there had been no law and order, there had been warlords that had taken over the country, children used as sex slaves, drug production was very high and the Taliban put a stop to all this. That was the reality on the ground. It was the best of the worst.”
He believes it is right to be talking to the Taliban now. “Because the Taliban are Afghans and we are not,” he says. “The British are not Afghans and neither are the Americans. And as much as you might not like what they stand for, they have more right in that land than anyone else.
“Ultimately, what we’re doing now as part of our foreign policy is we’re talking to the Taliban, we are engaging with the Taliban, the people we’ve been demonising for the past nine years, and that is precisely what we did in Northern Ireland.
“I’ve never said we should give the Taliban money — that is what the government is doing. But we need to be engaging with people who we find most unpalatable. So the dialogue with the Taliban is something I not only welcome but something I have been saying for a long, long time.”
As for human rights abuses committed by the Taliban, Begg says he has seen and written about them himself: “I’ve seen them because I lived there. But I’ve seen Americans commit more human rights abuses, I can promise you. But I haven’t said we shouldn’t talk to the Americans.”
He counters Sahgal’s view by saying she is, in her own way, a fundamentalist: “She advocates the government shouldn’t even be engaging with the Muslim Council of Britain. It’s not a normal position.” And he rejects her description of him as Britain’s most famous supporter of the Taliban: “That is a ridiculous thing to say. I have toured the country with former US soldiers several times ... that doesn’t seem to be a very Taliban Al-Qaeda thing to do, does it?”
Indeed it does not. But when Asim Qureshi, one of Begg’s senior colleagues at Cageprisoners, appeared on a radio programme with Sahgal last week and was reminded of a speech he had given at a rally organised by Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamist political party, in which Qureshi supported “jihad” against oppression of Muslims, he did not distance himself from the sentiments. Cageprisoners not only campaigns on behalf of those detained without trial, but also for Islamic radicals who have been through the due process of the British courts, such as Abu Hamza and Abu Qatada. Sahgal believes the organisation has an agenda “way beyond being a prisoners’ rights organisation”.
The bigger picture is how human rights organisations — and society more widely — should view Islamic radicals. There has been much debate over whether, spurred by a sentimental knee-jerk anti-Americanism, white liberals have sympathised with Islamic radicals, thereby implicitly tolerating their intolerance, particularly towards women. “For me that’s a form of racism,” says Sahgal, “because what it does is wipe out the experiences of the people they oppress. And it’s not helped by a discourse about a ‘clash of civilisations’, which elides jihadi ideologies and treats them as normal Muslim thinking. That’s devastating for ordinary Muslims.”
If the men incarcerated in Guantanamo were white fascists, she says, “I hope we would defend them. We would have to defend them — but we wouldn’t necessarily put them on 50 or 100 platforms after that”. The problem, she believes, is that human rights organisations want to believe they represent “perfect victims”.
“But a victim can also be a perpetrator,” she says. “It’s a very simple thought.”
This is something that has troubled her for many years. Some years ago, before she joined Amnesty’s staff, she was asked by the organisation to speak alongside a man whose son had been arrested during an insurgency in northern India: “His son had disappeared and he’d gone from police station to police station looking for him. It was a very moving story and it was hard not to cry. He was coming to thank Amnesty for the postcards they’d written and the letters they’d sent to the government. He felt his son owed his life to that, and that, of course, is the power of our work.
“The problem was that he was surrounded by men who were clearly Sikh political activists, allied to the group which assassinated Indira Gandhi. A perfectly well-meaning person had invited me to speak on a platform beside a perfectly genuine victim but hadn’t paid any attention to who accompanied him.”
Now, for flagging up this sort of error, Sahgal finds herself out in the cold. She says she needs to keep talking about this issue because she feels it won’t solve itself. She’ll be watching with interest to see if there is a cooling of relations between Amnesty and Cageprisoners. “The signs are that there won’t be,” she says. “The signs are that the cool relationship is with me.”
OS INTERNACIONALISTAS CASEIROS ENGOLEM QUALQUER PATRANHA DESDE QUE SEJA IMPORTADA.ESCRAVIZAR OS SEUS CONCIDADÃOS É O QUE LHES DÁ MAIS GOZO...
Second Amnesty chief attacks Islamist linksRichard Kerbaj
2 Comments
Recommend? (11)
Sam Zarifi
A senior executive at Amnesty International has urged the charity to admit it made a “mistake” by failing publicly to oppose the views of a former terror suspect.
Sam Zarifi, Amnesty’s Asia Pacific director, backed Gita Sahgal, an official who was suspended after revealing her concerns about Amnesty’s links to the former Guantanamo detainee, Moazzam Begg, a British citizen.
In an internal memo leaked to The Sunday Times, Zarifi, who oversees Amnesty’s work in Pakistan and Afghanistan, claimed the charity’s campaigns blurred the line between giving support for a detainee’s human rights and endorsing extremist views.
“We should be clear that some of Amnesty’s campaigning ... did not always sufficiently distinguish between the rights of detainees to be free from torture and arbitrary detention, and the validity of their views,” says Zarifi in the email, sent to his staff and dated February 10. Zarifi advised Amnesty to consider its working relationships with activists more carefully.
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He said: “We did not always clarify that while we champion the rights of all — including terrorism suspects, and more important, victims of terrorism — we do not champion their views.”
Amnesty’s decision to suspend Sahgal, the head of its gender unit, while continuing its support for Begg, 42, of Birmingham, has provoked criticism.
Zarifi said Amnesty should have done more to respond to public concerns about its relationship with Begg and Cageprisoners, a pressure group that highlights the plight of Muslim detainees, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.
He wrote: “The organisation had taken steps to clarify that it did not in any way support all, or even many, of Moazzam Begg’s views. Obviously we did not do enough to establish this in the public sphere. We can and should publicly admit this mistake and move on and ensure we do not make the same mistake again.”
Amnesty officials called for the closure of Guantanamo Bay at a meeting in Downing Street last month.
Begg, who was held there for three years until 2005, has embarked on a European tour, hosted by Amnesty, urging countries to offer a safe haven to Guantanamo detainees.
Begg took his family to live in Afghanistan under Taliban rule but admits they were responsible for abuses.
Amnesty was founded in 1961 to give support to prisoners of conscience.
A ANA GOMES ESTARÁ CONTRA CLARO...A CIA É QUE É O PERIGO...
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