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Crisis in Darfur: Powell Warns Sudan to End Militia Attacks
The New Haiti: Arrest, Murder and Repression
Report: $20B of Iraq's Oil Revenue Unaccounted For By U.S.
Crisis in Darfur: Powell Warns Sudan to End Militia
Attacks
Secretary of State Colin Powell traveled to Sudan yesterday
where tens of thousands of black Africans have been killed
in the western Darfur region and more than a million people
displaced. We go to Sudan to speak with a University president
and we speak with former Congressman Walter Fauntroy who was
arrested for protesting outside the Sudanese embassy in Washington.[includes
transcript]
Secretary of State Colin Powell yesterday threatened Sudan
with unspecified UN Security Council action if it failed to
crack down on Arab militias that have killed tens of thousands
of black Africans in the western Darfur region and made more
than a million people homeless in the past 15 months alone.
Criticized for responding too slowly to the crisis and under
pressure in Congress, Powell traveled to Khartoum yesterday
in the highest-level visit to Sudan by the US for more than
two decades. Powell met with President Omar Hassan Ahmed el-Bashir
warning him to end attacks by the militias, provide full access
for humanitarian aid, restart political talks with rebel groups
and allow more international cease-fire monitors into the
region.
The Sudanese government has repeatedly denied there is mass
suffering in Darfur. The UN has described the situation as
the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today. A senior
U.S. official recently told Reuters that up to one million
displaced Sudanese could die this year in Darfur refugee camps
because government-backed Arab militias have razed villages,
burned crops and destroyed water sources.
En route to Sudan, Powell told Reuters: "People are
dying and the death rate is going to go up significantly ...
we see indicators and elements that would start to move you
toward a genocidal conclusion, but we're not there yet."
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan arrived in Khartoum as Powell
left the Sudanses capital to visit Darfur for a few hours.
U.S. officials and aid workers said they expected Sudanese
authorities to try to mask the reality on the ground there
where hundreds of thousands of people are malnourished and
face spreading disease in many of the overcrowded camps.
- Gasim Badri, President of Ahfad University for Women
in Omdurman, Sudan
- Rev. Walter Fauntroy, retired Congressman from Washington
D.C. He was one of the founders of the Congressional Black
Caucus. In 1961 Martin Luther King appointed him to be director
of the Washington Bureau of the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference. He then helped organize the 1963 March on Washington.
- David White, reporter for the Financial Times.
The New Haiti: Arrest, Murder and Repression
We speak with Rep. Maxine Waters about the arrests of Haitian
Prime Minister Yvon Neptune and prominent Haitian singer Annette
Auguste (So Anne) by the new US-backed regime in Haiti. And
labor leader David Welsh, who recently returned from Haiti,
discusses the situation on the ground and the case of a local
Haitian mayor who has been in hiding since the overthrow of
democratically-elected Haitian president Jean Bertrand Aristide.
Haitian Prime Minister Yvon Neptune was arrested Sunday after
living in hiding since the March 12 installation of the new
US-backed interim Prime Minister Gererd Latortue.
Neptune is being detained at a prison in the capital city
of Port-au-Prince. In an interview from his prison cell Tuesday
with the Associated Press and two Haitian radio stations,
Neptune said he has no confidence in new Haitian leaders who
allowed his home to be looted and burned after the removal
of President Jean Bertrand Aristide. Aristide says he was
the victim of a modern-day kidnapping in the service of a
coup backed by the United States.
Neptune says he went into hiding when Latortue was installed
three days before he agreed to step down as prime minister
and was told "by official sources that there were people
in a position of power who were trying to harm me." He
was barred from leaving Haiti along with some 40 ex-officials.
He surrendered after learning there was a warrant for his
arrest. The arrest is connected with the killings of anti-Aristide
gang members on February 9th. Authorities have yet to list
charges, and Neptune has said he is innocent.
In the cell next to Neptune is Jocelerme Privert, the interior
minister under Aristide, who said he hadn't seen a judge since
being detained in April on similar accusations. At least five
other Aristide officials are in the same prison.
Since President Aristide's removal, the new US-backed Haitian
regime has unleashed a campaign of terror, particularly supporters
of Aristide's Lavalas party. One report from the National
Lawyer's Guild found that over a thousand bodies were dumped
in a mass grave by the state morgue in March. Today we take
a look at some of the stories in the new Haiti. From Prime
Minister Yvon Neptune to the arrest of prominent Haitian singer
and voodoo priestess Annette Auguste, known as So Anne. We
begin with Congresswoman Maxine Waters who has denounced the
arrest of Neptune calling it "part of a politically-motivated
campaign to arrest and intimidate" Lavalas members.
- Rep. Maxine Waters, Democratic Congresswoman from California
serving in her seventh term. She is the Chief Deputy Whip
of the Democratic Party and serves as Co-Chair of the House
Democratic Steering Committee. She is the former chair of
the Congressional Black Caucus.
- David Welsh, labor leader in Bay area who recently returned
from Haiti as part of a delegation with the San Francisco
Labor Council.
Report: $20B of Iraq's Oil Revenue Unaccounted For
By U.S.
A new report finds that the U.S. handed over "power"
to Iraq without properly accounting for what it has done with
some $20 billion of Iraq's own money. We speak with one of
the authors of the report in British charity Christian Aid.
The Bush administration handed over power to Iraq without
properly accounting for what it has done with some $20 billion
of Iraq's own money. This according to a new report published
Monday by Christian Aid - a leading British charity.
The report points out that the May 2003 U.N. resolution giving
the C.P.A. the right to spend Iraqi oil revenue required the
creation of an international oversight board, which would
appoint an auditor to ensure that the funds were spent to
benefit the Iraqi people.
Instead, the U.S. stalled, and the auditor didn't begin work
until April 2004. Even then, according to an interim report,
it faced "resistance from C.P.A. staff." And now,
with the audit still unpublished, the C.P.A. has been dissolved.
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman writes: "Think
of it this way: given the Arab world's suspicion that we came
to steal Iraq's oil, the occupation authorities had every
incentive to expedite an independent audit that would clear
Halliburton and other U.S. corporations of charges that they
were profiteering at Iraq's expense. Unless, that is, the
charges are true."
For a copy of today’s program, call 1 (800) 881 2359.
Our website is www.democracynow.org.
Our email address is mail@democracynow.org.
Democracy Now! is produced by Mike Burke, Sharif Abdel Kouddous,
Ana Nogueira, Elizabeth Press, Jeremy Scahill and Parvez Sharma.
Mike Di Filippo is our engineer.
Thanks also to Uri Galed, Angela Alston, Orlando Richards,
Simba Russeau, Johnny Sender, Rich Kim, Joe Murgio, John Randolph,
Chris Zucker, Karen Ranucci, Denis Moynihan, Eric Rweyemamu,
Jenny Filipazzo and Isis Phillips.
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