After 36 years, hospitals in Egypt have again begun to carry out Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). The government claims this is a first step towards abolishing the practice. Feminists and human rights groups have appealed to the courts to stop the plan to reserve one day per week to the practice. They say this "bad, and illegal decision" may legitimate and thus help perpetuate a more hygienic version of a practice which must be eradicated. The Egyptian Human Rights Organisation argues that "excision (FGM)... is a crime which affects the human body and health. It violates Article one of the International Treaty against Torture, which Egypt has of Britain's 43,000 Gulf war veterans have contracted one of the possibly war-related iliness. At least 125,000 and perhaps 300,000 Iragis died from the 88,000 tons of bombs dropped over the course of the 42 day war. Others are still dying from the after-effects of the 940,000 rounds of 30 mm depleted uranium (DU) bullets and 4,000 120 mm DU shells fired by US and British soldiers "Operation Desert Storm" was the first real use of bullets and shells made with depleted uranium (DU), a by-product in the production of nuclear fuel. Two and a half times as dense as steel, DU projeciles fly 1,000 meters farther than conventional shells, at a velocity up to five times the speed of sound and with enough punch to perce prisoners, according to Al Wasat newspaper. Thirty are supporters of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Paletine, the movement led by George Habash. The others are militants of the Islamic Jihad and the fundamentalist movement Hamas. * Czech Republic Demonstrations in support of a squatted alternative cultural centre have brought Prague's long ormant autonomous youth movement out into the open. Several hundred high school students and young workers marched through the capital on 25 February under banners sayıng " 10o many Hotels" "Housing is a right" and "Our dreams are your nightmares". Over 1,700 passers-by signed a petition protesting the signed" World News Reports
The country's Health Minister claims the move is a necessary step towards bringing the process into the realm of public debate, and making possible an educational campaign.
In the capital, Cairo, 73% of girls under 16 have suffered genital mutilation, and in country areas up to 95% of girls are still mutilated. The Egyptian Human Rights Organisation estimates that 45% of victims are sexually frigid as a result of their ordeal, and almost one third have either physical problems (infection, sterility) or mental troubles (fear of marriage, of sexual intercourse, or of giving birth). All versions of this practice, often euphemistically called female circumcision, aim at removing sexual desire, and the most extreme forms of mutilation make pre-marital sexual intercourse physically impossible. FGM is also widespread in Sudan, Ethiopia, and among some Moslem and Animist national groups in sub-Saharan Africa.
Most West European and North American countries continue to reject claims of asylum by women who say deportation would expose their steel-sided tanks. In the three yars since the war, Dr. Siegwart-Horst Gunther has found many children in Iraq playing with cigar-shaped DU projectiles. Some of them have contracted leukaemia. When he took one of the shells back to Germany to be analyzed, he was fined 3,000 marks tor "putting into circulation radioactive materials which could pose a health threat." This January Iraqi officials filed a protest over the use of DU arms with the International Red Cross. The main reasons for the American aggression against Iraq were control of oil and the defense of the imperialist order in the area. But the world's "greatest democracy," also used the war to test new arms, without consideration for the consequences on the civilian population or even their own soldiers. A wise commercial move, it seems. After seeing the Iraqi tanks so efficiently disabled, weapons manufacturers in other countries are now anxious to make their own DU weapons. Last fall, the US granted a British firm a license to export 158,758 kilograms of DU - enough to make thousands of rounds. Where profit is at stake, there are really no principles. *
Surces: Arkin, William M., "The desert glows - town hall's plan to evict the occupants of the Ladronka alternative cultural centre so that a private company can build a hotel on the site. Earlier that day, the Police antiextremist division had visited the squat and made physical threats against key activists Illegal occupation of a delling carries a penalty of up to 2 years imprisonment under §249 of the Czech Penal Code For more information contact the Anarchist Magazine Autonomie, PO Box 223. 112 10 Prague 1, Czech Republic, or visit the Landronka squat: Tomanova 1, 160 00 Prague 6. * According to research by The Independent on Sunday, big business is increasingly willing to finance the anti-left activities of Labour Party leader Tony Blair. Donations are chanelled through the shadowy Industrial Research Trust. Since Blair has at least 23 full time staff, some earning six figure annual salaries, his expenses must be in excess of half a million pounds each wing members of researchers, agents and secretaries. In other words, Blair and his supporters have a paid staff more than ten times larger than the Party as such. Add this to the Industry Forum - Labour's sonding board in the City and the industrialist-dominated Forum for Wealth daughters to FGM.. * Iraq: US used radioactive
Reports bullets in "Desert Storm" Alongside the thousands of victims of the US-imposed embargo, Iraqi hospitals are filling up with victims of "Desert Fever" and "Gulf War Syndrome." Many of the symptoms resemble illnesses caused by radiation or by exposure to heavy metals - loss of hair, leukaemia, fatigue, birth defects and lung or kidney damage. In the USA, 13 out of 15 babies fathered by veterans in one National Guard unit have birth defects. And 1,000
32 Internationa/ Viewpoint #267 June 1995 with propaganda," The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May, 1993; Bernstein, Dennis, and Thea Kelley, "The Gulf War Comes Home, The Progressive, March, 1995; Brown, Paul, "US Uranium Imported for British Shells," Guardian, 24 Dec. 1993, and Lafitte, Roland and Naima LefkirLaffitte, "Armes radioactives contre l'ennemie irakien, Le Monde Diplomatique, Apr., 1995.
Copyright Haiti Information Bureau Paletine/Israel
The Paletinian Authority in the Gaza strip and Jericho is detaining at least one hundred political
Creation, which advises Blair on issues like the minimum wage, and you see a Labour leadership more cut off from the base of the party, and better organised, than ever before Labour's previous leaders have all had "presidential" longings. But Blair has gone further, bulding up an unprecedented political machine, accountable to him alone, and already involved in manipulating debate in the party and the affiliated trade unions. The "Blair project" is based on assuring the party leader presidential powers over the party - and soner or later the entire
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Back issues of IV cost SUS 1.50/E1. The bound 1994 collection costs $25/E15, and
China
Who benefits most from the reforms?
(%)
private entrepreneurs
50
Self-employed
41
Cadres
34
Professionals
22
State sector managers
18
Peasants
8
Workers
Based on a sample of 20,000 people in 27 big and medium cities in 10 provinces. Research carried out in late 1994 by the China Social Sciences
Academy and the State Statistical Bureau. Source:
Sing Tao Daily, February 24, 1995
Urban unemployment
Labour government. This is the only way the right can re-shape the party. And it is the only way a Labour government will be able to force through the neo-Thatcherite reforms the leadership is planning.* Italy The centre-left coalition won regional elections in nine of the country's 15 regions on April 23, including Rome and Latium. But as Franco Turigliato reports, the right carried the most populous regions of the south and the most industrial parts of the North (Lombardy, Piedmont). The rightwing block won just over 40% of the vote. The 'centre-left' (PDS, Greens, Socialists, and splinters of the Christian Democrats and Republicans) also won about 40%. The Northern League fell from 9% to 6.5%, but remains a force to be reckoned with on the ground The right had hoped that these elections would end their internal divisions. In fact, the instability has been prolonged Having said this, 40% of the population has been won to the right. This block is homogenous enough to hit hard. And in places like Milan where the centre-left might take power, it is hard to see how the PDS could form a bloc with Rifondazione and the Northern League given their serious differences. Rifondazione Comunista did well - we won 8.3% of the vote, compared to 6.8% in the 1994 parliamentary elections. Fiat auto plant worker Rocco Papandrea, one of the Bandiera Rossa comrades, was even elected to the Piedmont regional council. The main axis of our campaign were defence of pensions, the 35 hour working