********************************************************************** 9 APRIL 2003: ACR WEEKLY NEWSLETTER Vol.2, No.15 ********************************************************************** CONTENTS THAILAND: NEW RESEARCH POINTS FINGER AT STATE FOR PUSHING CHILDREN TOWARDS DRUGS INDONESIA: CHILDREN'S HEALTH FACES A SETBACK AS A RESULT OF ECONOMIC DOWNTURN IRAQ: CHILD GUERILLAS AMONG THE DANGERS IRAQ: SAMAR'S STORY ********************************************************************** ACR Weekly Newsletter will carry reports of children in Iraq along with other news from around Asia in light of the on-going War on Iraq. To contribute to our newsletter, email us at <mailto:acr@ahrchk.net>acr@ahrchk.net ______________________________________________________________________ THAILAND: NEW RESEARCH POINTS FINGER AT STATE FOR PUSHING CHILDREN TOWARDS DRUGS Thailand's recent frenzied 'War on Drugs' has not only received heavy criticism for indiscriminate killings but also it's ineffectiveness in weaning young teens away from drugs. The government has blamed drug dealers but a recent research study by the Child Watch programme points it's finger at the state for having failed to provide teenagers with sufficient avenues to express themselves creatively and constructively. The programme, which is supported by the Thailand Research Fund looked at recreational outlets for youths and the pattern of their behaviour in 12 provinces across the country. The findings were eye-opening. The research found that for every 1 recreational outlet (such as parts or sports grounds) in a province, children had access to 10 sex-related entertainment places (such as bars, pubs, karaoke places, massage parlours and brothels). In Phuket alone, 574 entertainment venues adorn the 543sqkm of the island, or there is one bar for every square kilometer or 455 residents. The research also notes that age limits at all of these places is a farce, rarely enforced. Apart from lack of infrastructural avenues available to children, the research also notes the growing consumerist mindset evolving among teenagers as being responsible children's attraction towards drugs. The only message that teenagers receive these days, from all forms of media, is the need to be rich and look good, there is little that moral anchors such as religion or family can do to keep children away from such temptations unless helped by the state. Recognising that teenage is the most fragile period in a child's life when he/she is in the process of developing their identity and self-esteem at the same time seeking independence, the research mentions that there is a need to provide children with avenues to explore and experiment so that they become willing to tread alternative paths. This research for the first time has pointed it's fingers at policy makers for not having done enough to stop children from getting involved in drugs. The War on Drugs may be a futile investment unless these new findings are considered seriously and worked upon. [Sanitsuda Ekachai, Bangkok Post] ______________________________________________________________________ INDONESIA: CHILDREN'S HEALTH FACES A SETBACK AS A RESULT OF ECONOMIC DOWNTURN No improvement has been made in the overall health condition of children in the country as the economic crisis has plunged most of the population into poverty, Minister of Health Achmad Sujudi said speaking at a press conference held on the Waorld Heath Day, April 7th this year. He said that the main reason for the stagnating health among children was mainly due to increasing poverty and the only way to remedy this would be by undertaking poverty alleviation programmes. Infant mortality rates in Indonesia have been fluctuating since the crisis battered the country in 1997. In 1998, the country succeeded in decreasing the mortality rate from 60 per 1,000 life babies in 1995 to 49. However, in 2001 the rate rose to 51. Children living in conflict-affected areas in Indonesia such as Poso and Aceh have been reduced to live as refugees in camps that do not have basic sanitation and drinking water facilities. Acute respiratory infections and diarrhoea caused by air pollution, unsafe drinking water and poor sanitation are already the main cause of death for children aged one to four years old. In 2001, acute respiratory infections mortality rate reached 23 percent, while diarrhea reached 13 percent. Considering this reality Indonesian children living as refugees face a much greater risk of disease and death. A situation that cannot remian ignored for much longer. [Jakarta Post] ______________________________________________________________________ IRAQ: CHILD GUERILLAS AMONG THE DANGERS [By Gal Luft, The Age] Urban warfare, as the ancient Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu concluded, is the lowest form of warfare. The kind of fighting coalition forces are likely to face in Baghdad involves complicated command-and-control challenges and presents soldiers and commanders with unparalleled tactical and ethical dilemmas. One such challenge is the Iraqis' use of children as urban guerilla fighters. The last Western military to face the perils of child guerillas was the Israeli army during Operation Defensive Shield in March-April 2002. In the Jenin refugee camp - a cramped space inhabited by more than 15,000 people - the Israelis became involved in fierce fighting with hundreds of militants. Many were children. Veterans of the battle reported that Palestinian children threatened them just like adult combatants, and in some cases proved to be no less lethal. American soldiers marching into Baghdad might face a similar challenge. Iraq has one of the worst records of child participation in warfare. Children are trained from very young to protect and defend the regime. During the Iran-Iraq war, boys as young as 12 were part of the Iraqi military, and many of them died in suicide missions such as clearing minefields. Since the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam Hussein's regime has recruited thousands of Iraqi boys, teaching them to use small arms. Saddam also has created child-soldier units - Ashbal Saddam, or Saddam's Lion Cubs. The Cubs have trained about 8000 young men in Baghdad alone who are considered to be well schooled in combat. The child units supply manpower to the Fedayeen Saddam, the paramilitary organisation controlled by Saddam's son Uday, which is likely to spearhead the Iraqi resistance campaign within Baghdad. Child abuse is not limited to Saddam and his party. The Kurdistan Workers Party, operating within Iraq, has been using an estimated 3000 children, reported to be as young as seven, and, like Saddam, has created regiments specifically for children. Other armed opposition groups, such as the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, have been known to use soldiers as young as 10. Pictures of innocent-looking children killed by coalition soldiers are likely to resonate across the world, especially in those countries where opposition to the war is strong. But those likely to face the toughest ethical and moral dilemmas are allied men and women in uniform. Should they grant Saddam's Cubs immunity, or should they treat them like adults? Most Western militaries still harbour cultural inhibitions about targeting children. Soldiers tend to get confused and hesitant when facing little men with guns, even when the rules of engagement allow them to use force against any enemy threatening them. Deciding to pull the trigger on Saddam's Lion Cubs will probably be the most difficult thing this war requires them to do. Gal Luft is a former Israeli battalion commander in Jenin. ______________________________________________________________________ IRAQ: SAMAR'S STORY [Kim Sengupta, Independent UK] Samar Hussein was killed by a bomb that fell on dusty farmland miles outside Baghdad. But, as Kim Sengupta discovers, she is just one of this war's forgotten victims Samar Hussein was in the kitchen helping her aunt Alia Mijbas to make breakfast when the missile landed. The farmhouse where they lived, like most of the hoes in the area, is built of a soft, brown stone, and the explosion was close enough for shrapnel to cut through the house's outer walls like butter and slice into Samar's stomach. Alia was struck on both legs by razor-sharp fragments, while her five-year-old son Mahmood, who was drinking a glass of milk, was hit on the chest and shoulders. The blast knocked over the cooker, which burst into flames, severely burning one of Mahmood's brothers, 11-year-old Sahal. All were rushed to hospital, but Samar died before they got there. She was 13 years old. The victims of this particular explosion were in Manaria, a village in Mohammedia district, about 30 miles south of Baghdad. Since the war began, this mostly rural area of dusty brown fields and quiet villages has seen 53 inhabitants injured and 22 killed. These figures don't come from Iraqi government ministers as they tot up the numbers of victims of "American and British aggression" during their daily news conferences in Baghdad. Instead, I learnt of these deaths from a doctor at the local hospital. For it seems that, while vivid atrocities in Baghdad - such as the marketplace bombings at Sha'ad and Shu'ale, which killed 72 people in two days - get huge international publicity, everyone, including Saddam Hussein's regime, is unaware of the steadily rising number of casualties in the rural areas just outside the capital. What is happening in Mohammedia emerged only by chance. Last Saturday, after the press had been taken to view the aftermath of the bombing of Shu'ale, the Ministry of Information announced that "another big massacre" had taken place, this time in Mohammedia. I and a handful of journalists negotiated the red tape necessary for even such a short trip outside Baghdad, and traveled to the Mohammedia Hospital. We discovered that there had in fact been "just" one death, Samar's (later, senior officials at the Ministry of Information would "apologise" for this low body count, explaining that they had been misinformed by their subordinates). At the hospital I met Alia Mijbas, who, though injured herself, was trying to comfort her son Mahmood as he lay screaming in the next bed. The doctors had told her that he had very little chance of pulling through; they said her son Sahal would survive, but would be disfigured by his burns. "It is very hard to see Mahmood suffer like this," she told me. "I wish I could do something, but I cannot. I am also worried about my other son - he too is suffering badly. Why did this happen?" Alia's doctor is Luay Nhayim, a young, English-speaking medic at the hospital, who trained in Dublin. Unprompted by any ministry minder, he told me that he and his colleagues were both surprised and alarmed by the number of bomb victims being brought to the hospital. They were not aware - and he stressed the word "aware" carefully - that there were any large military installations in the vicinity. Dr Nhayim then showed me a list of the names of dead and injured, and asked if I had any idea why this small group of villages had been targeted. So I went back to Manaria. To reach the village of Manaria, where about 50 families make their living from the land, you drive down a narrow, winding and unpaved road through dusty brown fields. Samar's home is surrounded by these fields, encircled by irrigation channels and swaying stalks of wheat. The only signs of the missile that killed Samar last Saturday morning are a small crater and the pockmarks of shrapnel damage scattered across the house walls and the family's battered Toyota Cressida. "We heard a plane and went outside; it was very loud," 12-year-old Ahmed, one of Samar's brothers, told me. "One of my aunts grabbed me and pulled me around the corner. There was a big, big sound, and smoke. Then I heard screaming inside." Samar's 40-year-old mother, Hamida, was telling her not to go out when the missile exploded. "She just fell. I could see blood coming from her stomach. She was gasping, and as I ran to her she was crying, 'Mama, Mama'... It was so terrible." She stopped, and wiped her eyes with her black chador before continuing. "There were others also hurt, and everyone was crying and screaming. We had to wait for a car because ours was so badly damaged. But I knew my Samar would not last until we got to the hospital. And that is what happened - she died in my arms..." Hamida's voice faded away. Samar's formal education had ended earlier this year, when she had been taken out of school to help with the farm. But she loved reading, and wrote the family's letters for them. "She made me promise her that when we could afford it she would go back to school," said her father, Jasem Hussein. "Maybe it would have been possible, but now all that is gone. I do not know why they did this, I do not understand." There is a similar incomprehension, as well as anger, in two other villages in the district, Zambrania and Talkana. Between them they have lost 19 people in a series of air attacks. Two members of the al-Yussuf family died in Zambrania. One, 12-year-old Ibrahim, had been sent there from Baghdad to stay with relations because his parents thought the capital was too dangerous. Selim Haidari al-Yussuf, 54, told me that his 17-year-old son, Jalal, and Ibrahim, his nephew, died as they were making their way to a neighbour's house. "It was around midday, and my wife had just said the two boys would be eating their lunch with my friend Abdullah, who has the next farm. Then we heard something going very fast through the air, and then the loud noise. "I started running straight away - I knew something bad had happened. When I got there I found Ibrahim was dead and Jalal was very hurt. He had a big open wound in his neck and there was blood pouring out. He was taken to hospital: he died there." Al-Yussuf, a tall man with a ramrod-straight back, sagged suddenly, sitting down on a rug on the ground and putting his head in his hands. His wife Rahima knelt beside him and stroked his hair. Then he looked up and made a grab for a rifle leaning against a nearby tree. "I shall never forgive them for what they did to the two boys. For what? For what? We are farmers, we were not fighting in this war. But now I shall fight. I shall try to kill American and British soldiers when I meet them. Allah will know I am in the right." Three other men in his family joined in, proclaiming loudly that they will avenge their deaths. This may, of course, have been bravado, but they all carried AK-47 semi-automatics, arms handed out by the authorities to fight the invasion. At Talkana, near Rashid, 68-year-old Amina al-Nimr lay on a string bed outside her home, her left leg and arm heavily bandaged. She had been carrying bread back to the house where three generations of her family live when she was caught by the blast from an exploding missile. A 50-year-old neighbour, Khursa Ali, was killed. "She was a young woman compared to me, and one of her daughters had just got married. But she died and I lived," said Mrs al-Nimr. "But I am in much pain. I have bones broken and cuts. When one gets to my age, the pain is worse. I remember very little of what happened. There was a noise and a strong force that threw me down. They told me later it was a bomb." The dead from both villages are buried in desolate rows of graves at the Haj Khudair cemetery, a garden of sand and mud. The newest grave, a mound of grey earth, is that of Samar Hussein. In the rows behind her are the rest of the dead brought in during the last fortnight, matching many of the names in the hospital's casualty list. Daoud, the cemetery's caretaker, was re-arranging some palm fronds covering the graves. "There have been more people buried here in the last two weeks than in the last two years. I knew some of them. They were killed by the Americans and the British," he said. "They all had simple ceremonies, because none of these people are rich. What is so sad is that many of those brought here were so young. We heard about the bombings in Baghdad and Basra, but we did not expect them here." Why should they have? There is nothing within half a mile of these villages apart from fields. As of yesterday, the US army has been moving through this area on its way to Baghdad, but in the previous weeks, when these villagers died, there was no sign of any military presence apart from a few checkpoints manned by bored local militia, who were only too keen to talk to someone with news of Baghdad. Both Hassan Ali Hussein, the village headman at Manaria, and Abdullah Amran, a captain in the militia, were adamant that there had been no movement of Iraqi military in the area that could have attracted the US and British warplanes. "What made them think there were soldiers or weapons there?" asked Captain Amran. "The land is flat, you can see to the distance. Can you see even anti-aircraft guns? They are not here because no one thought they were needed to defend farms." Hassan Hussein agreed. "There is nothing hidden here. Even if the Americans thought something was hidden, why are they attacking the villagers instead of the hiding places? What do they want to achieve by this? All the men here now want to fight the Americans and British, because, surely, they want to kill us." As if in agreement, as we spoke, a bomb exploded 500 yards away. It had landed on a patch of barren land. Back at Mohammedia Hospital, Dr Nhayim was as perplexed - and concerned - as ever. "We were prepared to deal with casualties should any land fighting occur near here. But we were completely taken by surprise by the bombings - we don't know the cause, and we don't think they are justified. My colleagues who worked here during the 1991 conflict tell me too that the type of wounds we are seeing now is different - there is more deep penetration. The weapons are more advanced. We suspect they are cluster bombs." So far, the US and British forces have said nothing about the casualties in Mohammedia, though they have claimed that civilian deaths in Baghdad were caused by Iraqi anti-aircraft shells falling back to ground or - worse - were engineered by the Iraqis as a form of black propaganda. However, the type of damage inflicted - and some of it does look suspiciously like the result of cluster bombs - along with the fact that the Baghdad regime has not sought to capitalise on, and indeed seems unaware of, what is happening here, makes an Iraqi set-up seem unlikely. There is always the possibility that American planners at Central Command have information showing that these isolated villages contain secret caches, part of Saddam's arsenal. Or, perhaps, those people I thought were farmers were in fact Republican Guards in disguise. But what is much more likely is that the deaths in these villages are the result of misinformation, or simple human error. This does, of course, happen; I have seen it in Afghanistan and Kosovo. Whatever the cause, the result has been to sow a deep enmity - and a desire for retribution - in the hearts and minds of precisely those people Washington and London most want to win over. And if that is happening in Mohammedia, it is almost certainly happening in the rest of Iraq. (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.) __________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe from this list visit <http://www.ahrchk.net/phplist/lists/?p=unsubscribe&hash=fe57c50fe96a25b01ec838f0f8bbf251>this link To update your preferences visit <http://www.ahrchk.net/phplist/lists/?p=preferences&uid=fe57c50fe96a25b01ec838f0f8bbf251>this link __________________________________________________________ Asian Human Rights Commission Unit D,7 Floor,16 Argyle Street Mongkok Commercial Centre Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR Tel: +(852)-2698-6339 Fax: +(852)-2698-6367 E-mail: ahrchk@ahrchk.org Web: www.ahrchk.net __________________________________________________________
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