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Al-Ahram Weekly 30 Sep. - 6 Oct. 1999 Issue No. 449 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 30 Sep. - 6 Oct. 1999 Issue No. 449
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Focus Features Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters A week in the world:
Unfinished business
By Gamal NkrumahWhat happens to a populist Balkan strongman when he wakes up one morning to find his people spitting in his face? Well, this is just about what happened to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic this week. About 50,000 people marched through central Belgrade on Sunday demanding an end to the Milosevic regime. The demonstrations were instigated by the opposition Alliance for Change. The protesters assembled at Republic Square before setting off down Belgrade's boulevards and along the city's main thoroughfare, Terazije Avenue.
But if it is any consolation for Milosevic, the demonstrations were far smaller than those of 19 August when no less than 150,000 people called for Milosevic's resignation. Milosevic insists that the opposition to his rule is fomented by Western intelligence services and that opposition leaders are Western agents in the payroll of the West.
Outside Belgrade, the turnout was even lower. In Novi Sad, Serbia's second largest city, demonstrations were suspended indefinitely. In Nic, Serbia's third largest city, only about a 1,000 showed up at an anti-Milosevic protest march. A battle between Milosevic and his political foes is looming over opposition plans to democratise and liberalise the country. But opposition to Milosevic seems strongest in Belgrade. The Serbian countryside and provincial cities appear to remain resolutely behind the battle-hardened Yugoslav president.
Further north in Europe, the leading Belarus opposition figure, Semion Sharetsky this week announced plans for forming a democratic government in exile and called for the international community to treat the authoritarian regime of Belarus strongman Aleksander Lukashenko as a pariah state. Without Russian backing, Lukashenko's rule wouldn't last very long and Sharetsky pleaded with Western powers to offer Russia financial support to persuade Moscow to stop supporting Lukashenko.
Sharetsky claims that Russian or Belarus hit men were paid $100,000 to assassinate him in late August. He fled Belarus and escaped to Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, were he is heavily protected by Lithuanian security forces. Relations between the two neighbours have reached their lowest ebb. In a referendum held in November 1996 Lukashenko obtained sweeping powers to alter the constitution and extend his mandate to 2001. Lukashenko then proceeded to dissolve parliament and name new hand-picked parliamentarians. He branded Sharetsky a traitor and a Western agent and vowed to "physically liquidate" him. In reply, Sharetsky said that since Lukashenko's five-year term expired on 20 July, under the terms of the Belarus constitution, "Lukashenko should be treated as a usurper and all his actions be considered void." Belarus, however, is Russia's staunchest ally in the entire former Soviet Union. Russian President Boris Yeltsin treats Lukashenko as his favourite protégé.
At a time when calls for the cancellation of Third World debts are increasing to a deafening crescendo, it is utterly disgraceful that the World Bank has suspended all its credits to the impoverished and landlocked West African nation of Niger after the predominantly Muslim country failed to honour a debt repayment of $2 million. Since the end of July, Niger has stopped benefiting from structural adjustment assistance from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Only 34 per cent of school-age children are receiving basic education, the lowest rate internationally. Government employees are owed a total of between 10 and 11 months in back pay. The country's healthcare system has collapsed and infrastructural development is at a standstill.
African countries and some Western donor agencies and non-governmental organisations argue for the complete end to debt repayments as opposed to the partial write-off agreed by the leading industrial nations. For Niger, the Western donor governments and international financial institutions used the pretext of the 9 April assassination of President Ibrahim Bare Mainassara by current ruler Major Daouda Mallam Wanke to suspend aid and trade.
Meanwhile, lawyers for thousands of Allied prisoners of war launched an appeal in Tokyo to win compensation for the suffering endured at the hands of Japanese troops during World War II. The first day of hearings was held in the Appelative Court in Tokyo on behalf of 20,000 British, American, Australian and New Zealand veterans and civilian internees. They were appealing against a decision taken in November last year that compensation claims totaling $440 million were illegal. At the end of the four-year legal battle, Judge Shigeki Inoue of the Tokyo District Court ruled that under international law individuals could not make claims for compensation against Japan. In 1951, under the San Francisco Peace Treaty, Japan paid $120 per person in compensation to military internees and $80 to civilians. What is astounding is the audacity of the Allied servicemen and their lawyers. Have these very same military men who fought colonial wars in Africa, Asia and the Middle East no shame? Will they pay compensation to the hundreds of thousands of Africans and Asians who suffered under colonial rule and the horrendous colonial wars? If not, then why do Western powers balk when Africans call for reparations for the African slave trade?
