Starting Points

Oct 10, 2009

BBC, South Asia - Deadly attack on Pakistan army HQ

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Six soldiers and four gunmen have been killed in an attack on Pakistan's army HQ outside the capital Islamabad, the military says.

Troops battled the gunmen after they attacked the heavily armed complex in Rawalpindi in army uniforms. Earlier reports said eight soldiers died.

Officials said one of the dead soldiers was a brigadier, and that two gunmen remained at large.

The attack comes as the army prepares a major operation against the Taliban.

ANALYSIS

Aleem Maqbool BBC News, Islamabad The army's main headquarters lies within one of the most heavily secured areas in the country. To attack it in the middle of the day, leaving senior military officials trapped inside, shows a new level of audacity on the part of the militants.

Just a few weeks ago, the government here said it was winning its fight against the militants, and that the Taliban was in disarray. The events of this week will have many questioning those claims.

Speculation that the army will soon launch a ground offensive against the Taliban in the tribal areas of South Waziristan has only left many Pakistanis bracing themselves for more violence in the cities.

It also follows a series of bombings in north-western Pakistan. On Friday at least 50 died in a blast in Peshawar.

The BBC's Aleem Maqbool in Islamabad says that in recent days Taliban positions in the tribal areas have been bombed by the air force, amid speculation that the army's offensive there is soon to be intensified.

There was a period of relative quiet in August after Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud was killed, but the rate of militant attacks has increased since then, our correspondent adds.

No-one has yet claimed responsibility for the latest attack, but the Taliban has been threatening to carry out attacks unless operations against the militant group were stopped.

Police official Mohammed Jalil told AP news agency that gunmen drove up to the army compound in a white van just before midday local time (0600 GMT).

They took up positions, fired on the compound and threw hand grenades, security officials said.

RECENT MILITANT ATTACKS

24 Sept - Seven pro-government tribal elders killed by militants in town of Janikhel, north-western Pakistan

26 Sept - At least 16 people killed in two suicide car bombs, in Peshawar and Bannu

5 Oct - Suicide bomber attacks UN offices in Islamabad killing five

9 Oct - At least 50 killed in suspected suicide bombing in Peshawar

Roads to the area were sealed off and helicopters hovered over the compound.

The military reported that the attack had been repelled after a gunbattle lasting around 45 minutes.

"The situation is under control ... all the gunmen have been killed", Maj-Gen Athar Abbas told local TV.

However, military officials later said that two more militants were still at large, after reports of sporadic gunfire in and around the compound.

AP quoted an intelligence official as saying that the two managed to slip into the compound and troops were trying to capture or kill them.

Islamist militants have carried out a number of attacks against high-profile, high-security targets in recent years.

In March this year gunmen opened fire on a bus carrying the Sri Lankan cricket team in the city of Lahore. Six policemen and a driver were killed and several of the team were injured.

In the same month, dozens of people were killed when a police training centre on the outskirts of the city was occupied by gunmen.

China: Media Summit Participants Should Push For Press Freedom | Human Rights Watch

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Address State Censorship, Restrictions on Foreign Journalists

October 7, 2009

The Summit’s participants need to know that this event is being convened by a government that regularly denies basic press freedoms. Without a candid discussion about the difference between genuine media and propaganda, the need to stop harassing and abusing Chinese and foreign journalists, and the importance of reliable, real-time information from inside China, the summit runs the risk of eroding rather than defending media freedoms.

Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch

(New York) - Participants at the World Media Summit, to be held in Beijing on October 8-10, should use the opportunity to urge the Chinese government to respect press freedom and stop its routine harassment, detention, and intimidation of journalists, Human Rights Watch said today.

The Summit - organized by China's state-run Xinhua News Agency, whose director Li Changjun is the former vice-director of the Propaganda Department - expects representatives of 130 foreign media organizations to discuss future media trends and opportunities in bilateral and multilateral media cooperation. The participants will include News Corporation Chairman & CEO Rupert Murdoch, AP President & CEO Thomas Curley, Reuters News Editor-in-Chief David Schlesinger and BBC Director-General Mark Thompson.

"The Summit's participants need to know that this event is being convened by a government that regularly denies basic press freedoms," said Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. "Without a candid discussion about the difference between genuine media and propaganda, the need to stop harassing and abusing Chinese and foreign journalists, and the importance of reliable, real-time information from inside China, the summit runs the risk of eroding rather than defending media freedoms."

Human Rights Watch said that China's domestic media has for decades been subject to strict government controls which ensure that reporting falls within the boundaries of the official propaganda line. For example, in May 2009, the Guangdong provincial government demanded - in the name of "harmony," "stability," and "national interests above all" - that state media outlets reduce "negative" coverage of issues ranging from government officials to public protests.

Foreign journalists have been effectively barred from entering Tibet since the March 2008 protests there except on highly circumscribed visits. Chinese reporters have been blocked from writing about issues of global importance, such as the tainted milk powder exported from China in 2008, which eventually sickened tens of thousands of children and killed six. The Chinese news assistants of foreign correspondents are forbidden to engage in any "independent reporting."

Although Article 35 of the Chinese Constitution guarantees freedom of the press and the Chinese government's April 2009 National Human Rights Action Plan reiterates that commitment, both Chinese journalists and foreign correspondents are regularly harassed, detained, and intimidated by government officials, security forces, and their agents. In the past month alone a group of unidentified individuals attacked, hit, and pushed to the ground three reporters from Japan's Kyodo News Agency who were covering a rehearsal in Beijing for the October 1 National Day parade. On August 31, 2009, two private security guards employed by the Dongguan municipal government in southern Guangdong province to maintain order at a crime scene attacked Guangzhou Daily reporter Liu Manyuan when he attempted to take photos at the scene. The guards shoved Liu to the ground and beat him for around ten minutes, leaving bruises on his neck and arms and prompting his temporary hospitalization.

These issues and developments do not appear on the Summit's official program.

"Silence at the World Media Summit about the Chinese government's restrictions on press freedom would betray the courageous Chinese journalists who strive day after day to defy state censorship," said Richardson.

Foreign corporations have a mixed record of pressing for greater freedom of expression in China. In 2005, the U.S. Internet company Yahoo established a dangerous precedent when it disclosed information to Chinese police which proved instrumental in the conviction and 10-year prison term of journalist Shi Tao on charges of violating China's state secrets law. Similarly, companies such as Microsoft and Google have censored information on search engines and blogs in China. These companies have since begun to develop and implement standards to protect free expression and privacy with academics, investors, and civil society, including Human Rights Watch. However, these efforts are new and have yet to demonstrate impact in countries like China.

In June 2009, however, foreign technology companies, in alliance with international business associations and elements of the U.S. government, set a positive example in their response to the Chinese government's demand that those firms install Internet filtering software on all personal computers sold in China. Although the Chinese government described that software, called Green Dam Youth Escort, as a pornography filtering tool, analysis by independent experts indicated it posed a much more sinister threat to privacy, choice, and security. The foreign companies' opposition to the plan helped prompt the Chinese government to suspend the mandatory installation of the filtering software on June 30, 2009.

"There is no doubt that press freedom needs more allies in China," said Richardson. "The question is whether some of the world's biggest media companies will fulfill that role."

US: New Legislation on Military Commissions Doesn’t Fix Fundamental Flaws - Human Rights Watch

Proceedings to Try Detainees at Guantanamo Remain Substandard

October 8, 2009

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More Human Rights Watch reporting on the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay

Special feature on military commissions trials

Tinkering with the discredited military commissions system is not enough. Although the pending military commissions legislation makes important improvements on the Bush administration’s system, the commissions remain a substandard system of justice.

Joanne Mariner, Terrorism and Counterterrorism Program director

(New York) - Draft legislation on military commissions fails to remedy the system's serious flaws, Human Rights Watch said today.

The amendments to existing military commissions legislation - to be called the Military Commissions Act of 2009 - were included in the conference report on the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The new rules are expected to be passed by Congress this week.

"Tinkering with the discredited military commissions system is not enough," said Joanne Mariner, Terrorism and Counterterrorism Program director at Human Rights Watch. "Although the pending military commissions legislation makes important improvements on the Bush administration's system, the commissions remain a substandard system of justice."

The Military Commissions Act of 2009 revises the procedures governing the use of military commissions to try alien "unprivileged enemy belligerents" (individuals labeled "unlawful enemy combatants" during the previous administration). The draft legislation addresses some of the worst due-process failings of the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

Notably, the bill limits the admission of coerced and hearsay evidence and grants greater resources to defense counsel. The revised system would still, however, depart in fundamental ways from the trial procedures that apply in the US federal courts and courts-martial. Nor does it satisfy the constitutional and policy concerns set forth by the Obama administration in recent months. It does not, for example, include a sunset clause to set a time limit on military commission trials, a provision the administration had specifically requested.

Human Rights Watch warned that as the latest version of the military commissions created by the Bush administration, the revised tribunals would be viewed globally as unfair, harming international cooperation on counterterrorism. It noted that trying only non-US citizens before the commissions would raise further concerns about fairness and discrimination. And it pointed out that by allowing child suspects to be prosecuted in military proceedings, the US was bucking a global trend to end this practice.

The very purpose of the military commissions is to permit trials that lack the full due-process protections available to defendants in federal courts, Human Rights Watch said. Tinkering with the procedures of tribunals created from scratch forfeits the benefits of using long-established civilian criminal courts whose procedures and protections have been tried and tested via years of litigation.

The federal courts have shown themselves to be fully capable of trying terrorism cases while protecting intelligence sources and the due-process rights of the accused. In the more than seven years since the military commissions were announced, only three suspects have been prosecuted, while the federal courts have tried more than 145 terrorism cases during the same period.

Unlike the federal courts, which enjoy constitutional protection against executive pressure, the commissions lack independence. Indeed, the previous commissions were highly susceptible to improper political influence, leading several military prosecutors to resign in protest.

Human Rights Watch also raised concerns about the overbroad scope of the commissions' jurisdiction, emphasizing that civilians should not be prosecuted before military tribunals. The administration has continued to deem terrorism suspects unconnected to armed conflict to be law-of-war detainees, and the new legislation even allows alleged supporters of terrorism to be tried in military proceedings.

In light of President Barack Obama's promise that the federal courts would be the first option for trying detainees, Human Rights Watch called on the Obama administration to prosecute terrorism suspects currently held at Guantanamo in the federal courts.

"Anyone responsible for terrorist activity against the US should be tried in the regular courts, whose verdicts, unlike those of military commissions, are recognized both domestically and internationally as legitimate," said Mariner. "Any verdict obtained in the military commissions will be controversial and subject to reversal on appeal."

Sudan: End Rights Abuses, Repression - Human Rights Watch

Envoys, UN, AU Should Press Ruling Party for Nationwide Reforms

October 6, 2009

Sudan is at a crossroads. It can either make good on its promises or allow the situation to deteriorate further with its repressive practices.

Georgette Gagnon, Africa director

(New York) - The Sudanese government should end attacks by its armed forces on civilians in Darfur and make the major human rights reforms envisioned in the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), Human Rights Watch said in a report issued today. Special Envoys to Sudan, concerned governments, and United Nations and African Union officials meeting in Moscow today should press Sudan's government to make these legal and policy changes a matter of urgent priority, Human Rights Watch said.

The 25-page report, "The Way Forward: Ending Human Rights Abuses and Repression across Sudan" documents human rights violations and repression in Khartoum and northern states, ongoing violence in Darfur, and the fighting that threatens civilians in Southern Sudan. It is based on field research in eastern Chad and Southern Sudan in July and August.

"Sudan is at a crossroads," said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. "It can either make good on its promises or allow the situation to deteriorate further with its repressive practices."

Today's meeting of concerned governments and intergovernmental bodies in Moscow including the UN, AU and League of Arab States comes at a critical time in Sudan. The National Congress Party (NCP)-led Government of National Unity (GNU) is facing an interlocking mosaic of human rights and political challenges in the coming months.

Darfur peace talks, which have faltered in recent months, are set to resume this month in Doha. Under the terms of the 2005 CPA, national elections are scheduled for April 2010 and a southern referendum on independence for January 2011. Sudan's failure in any of these processes can undermine its overall progress.

"Those who care about the Sudanese people should put human rights first, through strong, comprehensive and coordinated pressure on the governing party to change its ways in the South, on Darfur and in Khartoum," said Gagnon.

The government should immediately end attacks on civilians in Darfur, charge or release people it has arrested arbitrarily, and end harassment of civil society activists, said Human Rights Watch. It should prioritize provisions of the CPA that have clear human rights and security implications, Human Rights Watch said. These include genuine reform of its national security apparatus, North-South border demarcation, and security agreements to withdraw and downsize troops and integrate former militias.

Arbitrary Arrests

Sudanese national security officials, acting under the sweeping powers of the National Security Forces Act (NSFA), have been arresting and detaining civil society activists, opposition leaders, and suspected rebels in Khartoum, Port Sudan, Kassala, Darfur and elsewhere, often for prolonged periods and without access to family or lawyers, Human Rights Watch research indicated. For example, at least seven Darfuri students who are members of the United Popular Front (UPF) have been in detention since April 2009. Their group held events at several Sudanese universities supporting the International Criminal Court (ICC), which on March 4 issued an indictment against Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir.

On October 1, security officers arrested two more members of the student group in Gazeera state following a university debate on Darfur. Government security forces have also harassed and arrested activists from Kassala in eastern Sudan and political opposition party members in Khartoum and Southern Kordofan.

On August 28, security officers arrested another Darfuri activist, Abdelmajeed Saleh Abaker Haroun, in downtown Khartoum and they continue to detain him without charge.

"The Sudanese government should end its practice of arbitrary arrests, release or charge people it has detained without legal basis, and it should genuinely reform national security laws," said Gagnon.

Harassment of Civil Society and Suppression of Information

The full extent of human rights violations in the northern states and in Darfur is unknown because of government censorship of the media. Its closure of three Sudanese human rights organizations following the ICC indictment further restricted the flow of information about human rights across Sudan. The expulsion of 13 international humanitarian organizations from Darfur around the same time has also restricted the flow of information about humanitarian needs.

The policy of pre-print censorship, which Human Rights Watch has documented, continued with security officers operating under the Security Forces Act censoring and suspending newspapers and blocking civil society activities, particularly on elections, while preparations are beginning for the April 2010 elections.

Human Rights Watch has found that on at least six occasions in the last four months, security and humanitarian authorities interrupted or prevented civil society groups and political parties from holding talks about elections in Khartoum, Port Sudan, Medani and elsewhere in northern states and Darfur. In one case, security officials detained and questioned members of the Communist party for distributing leaflets in Khartoum.

"By repressing civil society groups and political parties, the Sudanese government is restricting fundamental political freedoms at the time they are most important," Gagnon said.

Between January and June, security officials prevented publication of newspapers on at least 10 occasions through heavy censorship, harassed or arrested journalists and the author of a book on Darfur, and shut down an organization that was training and supporting journalists. In September, government censorship caused suspension of at least two major papers.

President Bashir announced on September 29 that his government would stop pre-print censorship, but also warned journalists not to exceed established "red lines." It remains to be seen whether this statement will translate into greater freedom of expression on critical matters of public interest.

Ongoing Clashes in Darfur

In Darfur, recent clashes between the governing party-led Sudan Armed Forces and rebels in September and the use of indiscriminate bombings demonstrate that the war is not over. Government air and ground attacks on villages around Korma North Darfur on September 17 and 18 reportedly killed 16 civilians, including women, and burned several villages.

Witnesses from the North Darfur town of Um Baru told Human Rights Watch that government bombing in May hit water pumps and killed and injured scores of civilians.

"They were dropping 12 bombs a day," one witness told Human Rights Watch. "They dropped in all the areas around the town."

Clashes between government and JEM rebels at Muhajariya, South Darfur, in February included an intensive government bombing campaign that killed scores of civilians and displaced 40,000. An estimated 2.7 million people in displaced persons camps in Darfur and 200,000 in Chad are unable to return to their villages for fear of the attacks and violence, including sexual violence, by government soldiers and government-allied militia.

Insecurity in Southern Sudan

In Abyei and other flashpoints along the North-South border, the GNU's failure to implement the peace agreement provisions on border demarcation and troop withdrawal and downsizing threatens to expose civilians to further abuse and danger. Both armies have failed to downsize and to integrate former militias fully, as required by the security arrangements in the peace agreement.

During the February clashes in Malakal between the northern government forces and the southern Sudan People's Liberation Army soldiers, former militias whom the armed forces failed to integrate instigated violence and human rights violations. The presidency has still not taken sufficient action to remove NCP-backed former militias from the area and reduce the threat of further violence.

Elsewhere in Southern Sudan, intense inter-ethnic fighting killed at least 1,200 civilians in the first half of 2009. The Sudan People's Liberation Movement-led Government of Southern Sudan has so far been unable to protect civilians from the civilian-on-civilian fighting, or from a steady stream of attacks by the rebel Lord's Resistance Army operating in Central and Western Equatoria since September 2008.

"The people of Southern Sudan have borne the brunt of the intense inter-ethnic fighting, rebel attacks and clashes between the northern and southern armies," Gagnon said.

Both the southern government and the national government need to do more to prevent the violence and protect civilians, Human Rights Watch said. The United Nations Mission in Sudan peacekeeping mission should also increase efforts to prevent violence and protect civilians, Human Rights Watch said.

Nobel Spotlights Need for Obama to Act on Rights - Human Rights Watch

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Stand up for Persecuted Human Rights Activists; Shut Guantanamo

October 9, 2009

(New York) - The award of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize to US President Barack Obama should encourage him to apply his stated principles to both foreign and domestic human rights policy, Human Rights Watch said today.

The Nobel committee awarded the prize for "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples," and Obama said he would accept it "as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations." Human Rights Watch said Obama should now act decisively to end abuses in US counterterrorism policy, promote accountability for serious human rights crimes wherever they occur, and push for the protection of human rights defenders worldwide.

"As a Nobel laureate, President Obama has a special responsibility to speak up for activists jailed and persecuted for promoting human rights," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "The president will honor his Nobel Prize when he puts a meaningful end to the debacle at Guantanamo, by trying or releasing all of the prisoners held there."

Human Rights Watch said Obama should use his status and celebrity to protect human rights activists under threat or marginalized, including Nobel laureates Aung San Suu Kyi, the Dalai Lama, and Shirin Ebadi, and other reported candidates for the prize such as the Chinese dissidents Hu Jia, Liu Xiaobo, Gao Zhisheng and Chen Guangcheng, the Egyptian opposition leader Ayman Nour, and the Russian human rights group Memorial.

Obama, who said the prize "must be shared with everyone who strives for justice and dignity," spoke of "the young woman who marches silently in the streets on behalf of her right to be heard even in the face of beatings and bullets; for the leader imprisoned in her own home because she refuses to abandon her commitment to democracy." The latter was a reference to Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese leader who has been jailed or under house arrest for almost two decades.

However, Human Rights Watch said Obama - who was recently unwilling to meet the Dalai Lama - should push for a vigorous public discussion of Tibet during his Beijing visit in November.

Obama should also institute real reforms on counterterrorism issues, Human Rights Watch said. The president signaled his clear intention to repudiate the Bush administration's abusive legacy on his second full day in office by announcing the shutdown of CIA "black sites" and the planned closure of the military prison at Guantanamo. But he later backtracked significantly from his promise of reform by resurrecting the failed system of military commissions and suggesting that his administration would continue to hold some prisoners in preventive detention.

Human Rights Watch said Obama should end the practice of arbitrary detention by abolishing Guantanamo. Simply moving the prisoners from Cuba to the United States, as his administration has signaled it may do, will not solve the problem, but rather give it a new name.

US counterterrorism abuses had been a boon to terrorist recruiters and a key irritant in relations between the United States and the Muslim world, Human Rights Watch said. By eliminating these abuses - and bringing to justice those responsible for such abuses - Obama's reforms would lessen the likelihood of future conflict.

The Obama administration has strongly defended the principles of international justice as applied to Congo, Kenya, and Sudan, but changed its position when the UN Goldstone report urged investigation of Israel and Hamas for possible war crimes. Human Rights Watch urged Obama to apply those principles to all parties, regardless of whether they are US allies or not.

"Justice is a critical component for lasting peace, because impunity for perpetrators of serious crimes fuels further violence," Roth said. "President Obama should use his leadership to press for justice for all victims of human rights abuses, wherever they live."

India: Too Many Women Dying in Childbirth - Human Rights Watch

Despite National Commitment, Many Unable to Access Services

October 7, 2009

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Magnum In Motion

Unless India actually counts all the women who die because of childbirth, it won’t be able to prevent those thousands of unnecessary deaths. Accountability might seem like an abstract concept, but for Indian women it’s a matter of life and death.

Aruna Kashyap, South Asia Researcher in the Women's Rights Division

(Lucknow, India) - Tens of thousands of Indian women and girls are dying during pregnancy, in childbirth, and in the weeks after giving birth, despite government programs guaranteeing free obstetric health care, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

The 150-page report "No Tally of the Anguish: Accountability in Maternal Health Care in India" documents repeated failures both in providing health care to pregnant women in Uttar Pradesh state in northern India and in taking steps to identify and address gaps in care. Uttar Pradesh has one of the highest maternal mortality ratios in India, but government surveys show it is not alone in struggling with these problems, including a failure even to record how many women are dying.

"Unless India actually counts all the women who die because of childbirth, it won't be able to prevent those thousands of unnecessary deaths," said Aruna Kashyap. "Accountability might seem like an abstract concept, but for Indian women it's a matter of life and death."

The report cites numerous examples of cases in which breakdowns in the system ended tragically. Kavita K., for example, developed post-partum complications, but the local community health center was unable to treat her, according to her father, Suraj S., who said the family then tried to take her to government hospitals in three different towns.

"From Wednesday to Sunday - for five days - we took her from one hospital to another," he told Human Rights Watch. "No one wanted to admit her. In Lucknow, they admitted her and started treatment. They treated her for about an hour, and then she died."

India created a flagship program, the National Rural Health Mission, in 2005 to improve rural health, with a specific focus on maternal health. The program promises "concrete service guarantees," including free care before and during childbirth, in-patient hospital services, comprehensive emergency obstetric care, referral in case of complications, and postnatal care. But the system is not working as it should in many cases, Human Rights Watch research showed.

The report identified critical shortcomings in the tools used to monitor the health care system and identify recurring flaws in programs and practice. While accountability measures, such as monitoring how and why women die or are injured, or how many pregnant women with complications can use the government's emergency obstetric facilities, may seem dry or abstract, they are critical to intervening in time to make a difference and to saving the lives of women.

The major gaps in the system identified by Human Rights Watch are:

The failure to gather the necessary information at the district level about where, when, and why deaths and injuries are occurring and whether women with pregnancy complications in practice get access to emergency obstetric care; and
The absence of accessible grievance and redress mechanisms, including emergency response systems.

"India has recognized that thousands and thousands of its women are dying unnecessarily, and it could be leading the world in reversing that deadly pattern," said Kashyap. "But for all India's good intentions, the system still leaves many women at risk of death or injury."

The research for the report was conducted between November 2008 and August 2009, and included field research and interviews with victims, families, medical experts, officials and human rights activists in Uttar Pradesh and elsewhere in India. Researchers reviewed government surveys and reports by local and international nongovernmental organizations.

The investigations in Uttar Pradesh also show that while health authorities are upgrading public health facilities, they still have a long way to go. The majority of public health facilities have yet to provide basic and comprehensive emergency obstetric care. Many have a health worker trained in midwifery but who can do little to save the life of a pregnant woman unless supported by a functioning health system, including an adequate supply of drugs, emergency care, and referral systems for complications.

The reality is far different from what is guaranteed to women on paper. Niraja N., a health worker who routinely accompanies pregnant women to health facilities so they can give birth told Human Rights Watch:

"Nothing is free for anyone. What happens when we take a woman for delivery to the hospital is that she will have to pay for her cord to be cut ... for medicines, some more money for the cleaning. The staff nurse will also ask for money. They do not ask the family directly ... We have to take it from the family and give it to them [staff nurses] ... And those of us [ASHAs] who don't listen to the staff nurse or if we threaten to complain, they make a note of us. They remember our faces and then the next time we go they don't treat our [delivery] cases well. They will look at us and say ‘referral' even if it is a normal case."

In part, this happens because many women are unaware of their entitlements under health care programs and have no way to make sure that their complaints and concerns about the treatment meted out to them at health facilities or by health workers are heard and addressed.

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Is Columbus Day Sailing Off the Calendar? - WSJ.com

Parades Get Dumped, the Holiday Renamed; Brown's 'Fall Weekend'

By CONOR DOUGHERTY and SUDEEP REDDY

Arrivederci, Columbus Day.

The tradition of honoring Christopher Columbus for sailing the ocean blue in 1492 is facing rougher seas than the Niña, Pinta and Santa Maria.

Philadelphia's annual Columbus Day parade has been canceled. Brown University this year renamed the holiday "Fall Weekend" following a campaign by a Native American student group opposed to celebrating an explorer who helped enslave some of the people he "discovered."

Christopher Columbus

And while the Italian adventurer is generally thought to have arrived in the New World on Oct. 12, 517 years ago on Monday, his holiday is getting bounced all over the calendar. Tennessee routinely celebrates it the Friday after Thanksgiving to give people an extra-long weekend.

"You can celebrate the hell out of it if you get it the day after Thanksgiving -- it gives you four days off," says former Tennessee Gov. Ned McWherter.

In California, Columbus Day is one of two unpaid holidays getting blown away by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as part of a budget-cut proposal. In Washington, D.C., Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid canceled this year's weeklong Columbus Day recess so the senators can buckle down on health care. (They still get Monday off, though.)

Another obstacle: Columbus Day hasn't transcended its original purpose, as some other holidays have. Sure, Columbus Day celebrates one of the world's great explorers. But Memorial Day and Labor Day also do double duty as summer's official bookends, whereas Columbus Day is stuck in mid-October, halfway between summertime and Christmas. And many Americans apparently prefer more days off around Christmas.

So some employers have turned to "holiday swapping." In Calimesa, Calif., the city council recently voted to swap two holidays -- Columbus Day, and a day honoring labor organizer Cesar Chavez -- for one floating holiday and day off on New Year's Eve.

Mayor Jim Hyatt says the swap is partly a reward to give workers more flexible use of their time off. "Nothing against Columbus Day," he says.

In Wilmette, Ill., teachers and staff are working this Columbus Day, but they get a make-up day off on Dec. 23. Ray Lechner, superintendent of Wilmette District 39, says the reality is that Columbus Day is a low holiday priority. "We would not mess with religious holidays," he says.

Columbus Day itself was created during a holiday switcheroo. Back in 1968, Congress passed the Monday Holiday Law, which not only established Columbus Day on the second Monday of October, but also moved three other federal holidays -- Memorial Day, Veteran's Day and Washington's Birthday (a.k.a Presidents' Day) -- so that they always fell on Mondays, too. And the golden age of three-day weekends was born.

The fact that this year's holiday falls on the actual date that Columbus is believed to have landed is mere coincidence. It won't happen again until 2015, assuming the holiday exists.

A spokesman for the Knights of Columbus, the fraternal society founded in 1882 with the explorer's name, said: "So far as we're concerned, it's quite obviously an appropriate holiday."

Columbus Day used to be a big deal in Columbus, Ohio. But it has been 11 years since the city had an official parade for its namesake, in part because of the controversy swirling around Columbus. There were fireworks and a beauty contest.

"It was the biggest parade in town," says Joseph Contino, a local who flies tanker jets for the national guard and is trying to refuel the idea of celebrating the big day with a big parade.

The city isn't helping, Mr. Contino says. "Their reaction is as if it was the Ku Klux Klan."

A city official says that's not right. "The mayor thinks a parade is a great idea and thinks that the Italian community should take the lead on that," says Dan Williamson, a spokesman for Mayor Michael B. Coleman.

"It would be stupid to pretend there is no controversy around Christopher Columbus," he adds. But the mayor of Columbus isn't taking sides.

The holiday isn't under threat everywhere. New York City's longtime Columbus Day parade will still be marching up Fifth Avenue this year, as it has since 1929. The bond market takes the day off, too.

But 22 states don't give their employees the day off, according to the Council of State Governments. And in other places, Columbus Day is under attack. "We're going after state governments to drop this holiday for whatever reason they come up with," said Mike Graham, founder of United Native America, a group fighting for a federal holiday honoring Native Americans.

His group's agenda: Rename Columbus Day "Italian Heritage Day" and put it somewhere else on the calendar, then claim the second Monday in October as "Native American Day." South Dakota already calls it that.

Other organizations want to rename the day "Indigenous Peoples' Day," as several California cities, including Berkeley, have done.

Columbus's defenders aren't prepared to watch their hero's holiday sail off the edge of the earth. They say he should be celebrated for risking his life to explore the world and for forging modern ties between Europe and the Americas.

His supporters acknowledge Columbus took slaves back to Spain and opened the door to conquistadors who killed Native Americans. But much of the criticism is built on "judging a 16th century man by 21st century standards," says Dona De Sanctis of the Order Sons of Italy in America, a group of half a million Italian-Americans that tries to defend Columbus' legacy.

At Brown University, the rename-the-holiday activists "stressed this was against Columbus, but not Italian-Americans," says Reiko Koyama, a junior who led the effort to persuade the school to change the name to "Fall Weekend." Brown happens to be in Rhode Island, a state with the largest proportion of Italian-Americans in the U.S.

Ground zero of the Columbus battle has been Colorado, home to the nation's first official Columbus holiday about a century ago. Columbus Day parades in Denver have faced acrimonious protests for much of the past decade. Marchers have been on the receiving end of dismembered dolls and fake blood strewn across the parade route. Dozens of protesters have been arrested over the years.

This year, the attacks took a new twist: A prankster sent an email to local media -- purporting to be from parade organizers -- saying the event had been canceled.

"I consider it much more than a hoax. This is a personal attack on me," says Richard SaBell, president of the Denver Columbus Day Parade Committee. "As in years past, we are undeterred. The parade will not be stopped."

Write to Conor Dougherty at conor.dougherty@wsj.com and Sudeep Reddy at sudeep.reddy@wsj.com

Surprise Nobel for Obama Stirs Praise and Doubts - NYTimes.com

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By STEVEN ERLANGER and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

PARIS — The choice of Barack Obama on Friday as the recipient of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, less than nine months into his eventful presidency, was an unexpected honor that elicited praise and puzzlement around the globe.

Normally the prize has been presented, even controversially, for accomplishment. This prize, to a 48-year-old freshman president, for “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” seemed a kind of prayer and encouragement by the Nobel committee for future endeavor and more consensual American leadership.

But the prize quickly loomed as a potential political liability — perhaps more burden than glory — for Mr. Obama. Republicans contended that he had won more for his star power and oratorical skills than for his actual achievements, and even some Democrats privately questioned whether he deserved it.

The Nobel committee’s embrace of Mr. Obama was viewed as a rejection of the unpopular tenure, in Europe especially, of his predecessor, George W. Bush.

But the committee, based in Norway, stressed that it made its decision based on Mr. Obama’s actual efforts toward nuclear disarmament as well as American engagement with the world relying more on diplomacy and dialogue.

“The question we have to ask is who has done the most in the previous year to enhance peace in the world,” the Nobel committee chairman, Thorbjorn Jagland, said in Oslo after the announcement. “And who has done more than Barack Obama?”

Still, Mr. Obama, who was described as “very surprised” when he received the news, said he himself was not quite convinced, adding that the award “deeply humbled” him.

“To be honest,” the president said in the Rose Garden, “I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who have been honored by this prize, men and women who’ve inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace.”

He said, though, that he would “accept this award as a call to action, a call for all nations to confront the challenges of the 21st century.” Mr. Obama plans to travel to Oslo to accept the award on Dec. 10. He will donate the prize money of $1.4 million to charity, the White House said.

Mr. Obama, only the third sitting American president to win the award, is suddenly put in the company of world leaders like Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who won for helping end the cold war, and Nelson Mandela, who sought an end to apartheid.

But less prominent figures have also won the award.

The reaction inside the administration was one of restraint, perhaps reflecting the awkwardness of winning a major prize amid a worldwide debate about whether it was deserved.

Republicans in Washington, reacting in disbelief, sought to portray Mr. Obama as unworthy. In an official statement, Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said, “The real question Americans are asking is, ‘What has President Obama actually accomplished?’ “

But there was much praise as well, even if Mr. Obama’s allies worried that the prize might be a liability and even if much of the praise came from Europe, giving ammunition to conservatives who say Mr. Obama cares too much about opinion there.

President Nicolas Sarkozy of France said the award marked “America’s return to the hearts of the world’s peoples,” while Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said it was an “incentive to the president and to us all” to do more for peace.

“In a short time he has been able to set a new tone throughout the world and to create a readiness for dialogue,” she said.

For a world that at times felt pushed around by a more unilateralist Bush administration, the prize for Mr. Obama seemed wrapped in gratitude for his willingness to listen and negotiate, as well as for his positions on climate change and nuclear disarmament.

Last year’s laureate, former President Martti Ahtisaari of Finland, saw the award as an endorsement of Mr. Obama’s goal of achieving Middle East peace.

“Of course, this puts pressure on Obama,” he said. “The world expects that he will also achieve something.”

The prize, announced as official Washington — including the president — was asleep, caught the White House off guard.

The first word of it came in the form of an e-mail message to the White House staff from the White House Situation Room, which monitors events worldwide around the clock, at 5:09 a.m. It carried the subject line “item of interest.”

Shortly before 6 a.m., the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, telephoned Mr. Obama, awakening him to share the news.

“There has been no discussion, nothing at all,” said the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel.

The award comes at a time of considerable challenges for the president, with few sweeping achievements so far.

On the domestic front, he is pressing Congress to overhaul the nation’s health care system. In foreign affairs, he is wrestling with his advisers over how to chart a new course in Afghanistan and has been working, with little movement, to restart peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians.

The Rose Garden appearance was an example of Mr. Obama’s heavy workload; it was squeezed into a day that already included his regular intelligence and economic briefings, a private meeting with a senator, lunch with the vice president, a major speech outlining plans for a new consumer protection agency and a strategy session on Afghanistan with his national security team.

Announcing the award, the Nobel committee cited Mr. Obama “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples” and said that he had “created a new climate in international politics.”

In a four-paragraph statement, it praised Mr. Obama for his tone, his preference for negotiation and multilateral diplomacy and his vision of a cooperative world of shared values, shorn of nuclear weapons.

“Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future,” the committee said. “His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.”

The other sitting American presidents to be given the award were Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, for negotiating an end to a war between Russia and Japan, and Woodrow Wilson in 1919, for the Treaty of Versailles.

Former President Jimmy Carter won in 2002 for his efforts over decades to spread peace and development. Mr. Carter called the award to Mr. Obama “a bold statement of international support for his vision and commitment.”

Former Vice President Al Gore won in 2007, sharing the prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for his work on climate change. Mr. Gore called Mr. Obama’s award “well deserved” on Friday.

Mr. Obama has generated considerable goodwill overseas, with polls showing him hugely popular, and he has made a series of speeches with arching ambition. He has vowed to pursue a world without nuclear weapons; reached out to the Muslim world, delivering a major speech in Cairo in June; and sought to restart peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, at the expense of offending some of his Jewish supporters.

But he has had to devote a great deal of his time to the economic crisis and other domestic issues, and many of his policy efforts are only beginning.

In addition to the challenges in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the situation in Iraq is extremely fragile; North Korea has staged missile tests; Iran continues to enrich uranium in defiance of United Nations Security Council resolutions, though it recently agreed to restart nuclear talks; Israel has resisted a settlement freeze; and Saudi Arabia has refused to make new gestures toward the Israelis.

Ahmed Youssef, a Hamas spokesman, congratulated Mr. Obama but said the prize was based only on good intentions. Muhammad al-Sharif, a politically independent Gazan, was incredulous. “Has Israel stopped building the settlements?” he asked. “Has Obama achieved a Palestinian state yet?”

The Nobel committee did not tell Mr. Obama in advance of the announcement, said its chairman, Mr. Jagland. “Waking up a president in the middle of the night,” he said, “this isn’t really something you do.”

Steven Erlanger reported from Paris, and Sheryl Gay Stolberg from Washington. Reporting was contributed by Walter Gibbs from Oslo, Alan Cowell from London, Nicholas Kulish from Berlin, Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem, and Taghreed El-Khodary from Gaza.

Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi Allowed to Meet With Western Envoys - washingtonpost.com

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By Tim Johnston
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, October 10, 2009

BANGKOK, Oct. 9 -- Burma's military government granted detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi a rare meeting with Western diplomats Friday in the former capital, Rangoon.

Suu Kyi, who was sentenced to an additional 18 months of house arrest in August, met with diplomats from Australia, Britain and the United States in a government guesthouse, but strict conditions imposed by the ruling junta limited the conversation's scope.

Two representatives of Burma's Foreign Ministry also attended the hour-long meeting.

"It was a very interesting meeting, very focused on the subject at hand, which was sanctions. Daw Suu Kyi was very interested in all the details," said British Ambassador Andrew Heyn, using a term of respect for older women.

He said Suu Kyi, 64, appeared healthy and in good spirits.

"She was very clear that it was a fact-finding session, and she made absolutely explicit that she had not reached a policy on sanctions," he said. But Suu Kyi did ask, he said, under what conditions Western countries might lift sanctions, a topic that brought the fate of the 2,100 political prisoners held in Burmese jails into the conversation, along with free and fair elections next year and dialogue with Burma's ethnic minorities.

The United States has severe restrictions on doing business with Burma, while the European Union has targeted members of the regime, their families and their business associates.

The United States has recently undertaken a major review of its Burma policies and concluded that it will leave its sanctions in place but end the country's diplomatic isolation, a measure that critics fear might push the country further toward China.

Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy won a landslide victory in Burma's previous elections, in 1990. She has spent almost 14 of the intervening 19 years under house arrest, and analysts have said that her latest sentence, imposed after an American tourist swam across a lake to her house, is designed to keep her out of circulation until after the elections.

Despite her prolonged isolation, Suu Kyi remains the junta's most formidable opponent. But she has recently reached out to the generals, offering to discuss lending her moral authority to the drive to lift a catalogue of sanctions that are economically crippling and personally embarrassing for a military that still struggles for legitimacy 47 years after it toppled the last civilian government.

Health-Care Bill May Not Get Single GOP Vote in the House - washingtonpost.com

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By Ben Pershing
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 10, 2009

The House is inching closer to voting on a comprehensive health-care bill, even as the chamber appears so divided that the measure may not attract a single Republican supporter.

The final vote, likely in late October, is impossible to predict, but lawmakers and aides from both parties said this week that there is a strong chance the GOP will be unanimous in its opposition. Such a result would mark the second time -- the first came on the economic stimulus package in February -- that the entire House minority rejected one of President Obama's top domestic initiatives.

"We're still hoping that some of them will come on board, but we see no sign of it," said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), a member of the Democratic leadership.

Even the most moderate Republicans, who might be inclined to vote with Democrats on big-ticket legislation, say they don't expect to do so on health care.

"I don't think I would, and I don't sense much support from any Republicans," said Rep. Peter T. King (N.Y.), predicting that the GOP support would be either zero or "no significant number."

The effort at bipartisanship has been difficult on Capitol Hill. The two parties have traded blame for that, with Republicans alleging that they've been shut out of the process and Democrats arguing that GOP members were never interested in a constructive discussion -- only in a chance to deal a defeat to Obama.

Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) spent weeks huddling with Republican senators on health care through the "Gang of Six" but had modest results: The White House's only hope for a Republican nod when the Senate Finance Committee votes Tuesday is Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (Maine).

And the House's 177 Republicans have played almost no substantive role in moving health care through the chamber, as Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has summoned to her office Democrats of every stripe to build a health-care bill that will appeal to the majority of her members.

This week there were some new, largely symbolic attempts at consensus: Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius met with conservative House Republicans in a closed-door session, and House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) and House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) met. "We could have got something done in July," Cantor lamented afterward. But now, he said, Republicans "are opposed to it to a person."

Rep. Steven C. LaTourette (Ohio) said he and his fellow moderate Republicans will oppose the bill because there "haven't been any substantive attempts" to reach across the aisle. "If they want it to be bipartisan, there have to be some discussions," he said.

Some big-name Republicans off the Hill, such as California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former Senate majority leader Bill Frist (Tenn.), have voiced support for the general idea of health-care reform, but none has endorsed a measure like the one expected to emerge from the House, which may include a government-sponsored insurance program, or public option.

LaTourette singled out the public option as what most concerned him and others in the GOP. A public-option provision in the Senate bill is far less likely.

If the House bill is merged with a more conservative Senate bill, would LaTourette support the final version? "Maybe," he said.

Democratic strategists say that at least a few GOP lawmakers would feel compelled to vote for such a bill.

Unanimous party opposition to major bills is rare. President George W. Bush's first major tax-cut package got 28 House Democratic votes in 2001. Nine Democrats broke ranks with their party to support the Medicare prescription-drug bill in 2003. Even this year's climate-change bill, which was heavily criticized by conservatives, drew eight Republican votes as it passed the House.

Surveys suggest that the public does care about the final tally. A Quinnipiac University poll released this week found that 57 percent of respondents think Congress should not approve a reform bill with only Democratic votes.

But for Republicans, "there's very little reward in voting for this," said former Virginia congressman Tom Davis, the head of the moderate Republican Main Street Partnership. He added that he thought there would not be any political price to pay for a no vote.

Polls have shown broad support for the general idea of health-care reform, but opinion is more mixed for specific proposals such as the public option. Democrats say voters want the public option, and they are sure to use the health-care vote to bludgeon vulnerable Republicans.

"I think they run a huge risk," Van Hollen, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said of the GOP. "I think they've placed themselves firmly on the side of the insurance industry and the status quo."

Staff writer Perry Bacon Jr. contributed to this report.