Al-Ahram Weekly | International

		Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 29 March - 4 April 2001 Issue No.527
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Reality check
IN THE aftermath of UN Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson's bombshell, UN bureaucrats are shifting uneasily in their seats as they await news of where the fiery human rights advocate and former Irish president will head next. Citing unbearable red tape and a shocking lack of funding, Robinson started off the annual commission session last Monday with the announcement that she would stand down in September rather than seek another four-year term.
In her years with the UN, Robinson has taken on the big guns: Russia on Chechnya, China on the Falun Gong, NATO on civilian deaths during the bombing of Serbia, and, most recently, Israel on the Palestinian Intifada. But she says she can do more outside the confines of the UN -- a blow to the beleaguered institution and a hint that she could end up with a high-profile NGO, like Amnesty International. Robinson denied this week that she had any such position lined up, telling The Guardian that she was after an "academic position" as ground zero for her new campaign. Admitting that her provocative departure was intentionally insolent, Robinson told The Independent that it should show governments that it's "time for a reality check."

Slash and burn
AN ESTIMATED 500,000 animals have been culled and burned in the ongoing European war on foot-and-mouth disease. In Stockholm last week, the EU backed the radical elimination policy over widespread inoculation saying the long-term effects would be disastrous on exports because the EU would lose its trade status as a "disease-free" zone. In light of recent outbreaks of mad cow disease and the raging foot-and-mouth scare, the classification seems nothing more than a gross misnomer.
The highly infectious foot-and-mouth, which affects hooved animals like cows and sheep, is harmless to humans, but considerably weakens animals, sometimes causing death. Detected last month in the UK, there are now 500 confirmed cases. The disease has also spread to France, which uncovered its second case on Friday, and the Netherlands, which found its fourth on Saturday. A French ban on the export of meat and livestock scheduled to be reviewed on Tuesday was expected to be extended. Animal rights activists and farmers alike are concerned over the mass cull, claiming that animals are not being killed properly and are being left to suffer and die.

Paying up
ONE OF the most shocking of police brutality cases to shame New York City's controversial police department could at last be put to rest with news this week of a tentative settlement reached between the city, the police union and Haitian immigrant Abner Louima. Louima, who was arrested on 9 August 1997 outside a New York nightclub, was beaten and sexually assaulted by police officers in the bathroom of a Brooklyn police station. His injuries led to a two-and-a-half-month internment in hospital.
Louima's case, filed in the summer of 1998, galvanised critics of the NYPD, who went on to launch a storm of protest over the death of Amadou Diallo, another immigrant riddled with bullets by plain-clothes policemen in 1999. Louima claims that the notorious "code of silence" among police officers, along with a police union rule giving accused officers 48 hours before submitting to questioning, has fostered a breed of "untouchables". The settlement would be unprecedented for the city department: $7 million, with an additional $1.6 million from the union. Six police officers were convicted in the case, with the primary attacker, Justin A Volpe, serving a 30-year term.

Mutual defiance
TO SAY that China-US relations are strained is to miss the point -- they have always been tense. The new Bush administration, however, has taken up the dance of delusion, talking amiably with China about bilateral relations, while executing tough initiatives, like a UN resolution condemning human rights infractions and an arms agreement with Taiwan. Meetings between President Bush and Chinese Deputy Prime Minister Qian Qichen in Washington last Thursday were further shadowed by the case of Chinese national Xue Donghua, a researcher at Washington's American University, who is being held by the Chinese government for the nebulous crime of "activities that undermine state security" -- the catch-all offense used to ensnare political activists.
Xue, along with her husband and their five-year-old son, was detained in Beijing airport on 11 February and has been held in isolation since. The couple were separated and the child sent to a state children's centre until he and his father were released 26 days later. US Secretary of State Colin Powell called the treatment "outrageous," but Qian unabashedly claimed that the human rights situation in China has never been so good.

A tear for Mir
RESIDENTS of the south Pacific were treated to a galactic light show last Friday, when Russia's cranky orbiter Mir executed its last mission: a swan dive into the Pacific ocean some 2,900 kilometres east of New Zealand. The best show was in Fiji, where sonic booms from the station's re-entry into the atmosphere were accompanied by streaks of light smeared across the sky. The manoeuvre that sent Mir to its watery grave was flawless -- a coup for Russian ground controllers at Mission Control in Korolyov.
The station was once Russia's pride and joy, but after 86,330 orbits, the degradation of Mir was deemed too severe to justify repair. With Mir's descent went a great deal of Russian pride, having ceded the country's autonomous place in space for its joint efforts at the international space station. Stoic cosmonauts praised Mir as a valiant agent of Russia, but one can only imagine that they were thanking the heavens that nothing went awry.
Compiled by Nyier Abdou

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