Iranian planes and hidden toll of sanctions

It’s too early to tell the reason for the midday plane crash on 15 July in Janat-Abad near the former capital of the Persian Empire, northwest of Tehran. All 168 people on board were killed in Qazvin province and there is an inquiry underway.

One thing is sure, though. It wasn’t fired on by the U.S .military which, some twenty-one years ago, shot down flight IR655, killing 290 people, including 66 children. It was the same year as Lockerbie but the captain of the USS Vincennes which fired a missile at the plane was awarded the U.S. Legion of Merit and his crew given Combat Action Ribbons. But, even so, the relatives of the 168 that have died today may yet blame the U.S. and Britain for their dead.

The U.S. foreign policy is being felt in Iran’s aircraft hangars, just as it is in the hearts of the millions of Iraqi refugees a few hundred miles from the crash site. They are fleeing the chaos unleashed by what was called Operation Iraqi Liberation, before the State Department realized the resulting acronym spelled “OIL”. Iran may have been the deciding factor when it came to deposing the U.S.-created Taliban from Afghanistan but as British soldiers die in Helmand, Iran is not the ally. Iran is the eternal irritant, refusing to budge in its support for anti-colonial struggle, fighting Anglo-American desires for apartheid in Palestine, fighting for sovereignty over its energy resources.

President Obama has repeatedly cited economic sanctions as the stick with which to beat Iran as the Islamic Republic continues to pursue its uranium-enrichment programme. But, again, showing more skill than his G8 colleagues, Obama backed off from making sanctions a leading issue at the L’Aquila summit.

Britain’s beleaguered leader, Gordon Brown was caught out again. He has form on this. Last year, with President George W. Bush by his side, he announced “We will take action today that will freeze the overseas assets of the biggest bank in Iran, the Bank Melli.” It turned out to be yet another Brown-blunder – the FT quoted diplomats at the time looking askance. Brown had said he wanted more sanctions when standing next to the then Israeli PM, Ehud Olmert, a year earlier. And in L’Aquila, Brown said he sought changes to the Non-Proliferation Treaty so that proof of a nuclear arms programme is no longer required for sanctions to be imposed on a state he didn’t like. The stakes have certainly been raised since the elections which saw Mahmoud Ahmadinejad retain the presidency and which corporate media was quick to characterise as the stolen election that will presage a green revolution to rival the colour revolutions of the former USSR.

Sanctions currently prevent U.S. citizens from doing business with Iran and there is also a total ban on selling U.S. aircraft and repair parts to Iranian aviation companies and that includes U.S.-made components in Russian aircraft such as the Caspian Airlines Tupolev TU-154M.

Some five years ago, the Iranian Transport Minister, Ahmad Khorram, claimed Iran’s aviation sector was at “crisis point.” Back then, more than one hundred perished in a similar plane and three hundred then perished in an air-disaster in 2003.

At the end of 2006, the head of Russian aviation company, Sukhoi, said that deals with Iran were hitting road-blocks as the U.S. Department of State complained about perceived violations of Bill Clinton’s Iran Non-Proliferation Act. That Act bars the re-exporting of U.S. made components to Iran. Sukhoi's civil aircraft chief Viktor Subbotin said that "If the sanctions are switched fully on, everything will stop."

From those who have been most voluble about the recent Iranian elections– but with notable exceptions – we will not hear about the U.S.-nod to the coup in Honduras, let alone Hezbollah’s candidates all winning in Lebanon and the lack of elections in the Palestinian Authority while Hamas enjoys its mandate.

That more nuanced analysis we shall have to leave to Noam Chomsky who details it in his latest piece, “Season of Travesties: Freedom and Democracy in mid-2009.” There will be few “pro-democracy” demonstrators chanting against the sanctions that may have killed another plane-load.

In the 1990s, Bill Clinton’s UN sanctions on Iraq killed hundreds of thousands of children as discovered by its own agency, UNICEF. We now have a man in the White House who trumpets the use of sanctions over the war-war bluster of George W. Bush. President Bush’s continual threats about the use of military force on Iran did nothing but entrench the Iranian people’s support for the theocratic government.

If much-mooted September is the date for President Obama’s new sanctions, they look set to kill many more civilians than any threats by his former rival and now secretary of state, Hillary Clinton. Hillary and her husband seem never to have been concerned about the lethal impact of sanctions on developing nations. It was she who was certain of her ability to press a button to use U.S. nuclear weapons to kill all 70 million people in Iran.

-- Afshin Rattansi has helped launch and develop television networks and has worked in journalism for more than two decades, at the BBC Today programme, CNN International, Bloomberg News, Al Jazeera Arabic, the Dubai Business Channel, Press TV and The Guardian. He has been living and working in Iran for the past year. He was at Press TV until the recent Presidential elections. He can be reached at afshinrattansi@hotmail.com. This article appeared in CounterPunch.org.

Source: Middle East Online

Riot-hit western China allows Friday prayers

Urumqi Boisterous crowds in this riot-hit western China city turned up at mosques despite announcements that Friday prayers were canceled due to the recent ethnic violence, forcing officials to let them in. Some of the mosques were in areas of Urumqi that saw street fighting earlier this week, after angry demonstrations by minority Muslim Uighurs sparked a crackdown by security forces and clashes with the Han Chinese majority that left at least 156 dead.
They included the White Mosque, one of the most popular places to worship in the large Uighur neighborhood of Er Dao Qiao. About 100 men argued with guards, demanding they be allowed in for prayers, a focal point of the week for Muslims. A Uighur policeman guarding the mosque, who would not give his name, said: "We decided to open the mosque because so many people had gathered. We did not want an incident." On Liberation Road near the White Mosque, a group of about 40 Uighur men and women began to march, shouting, crying and pumping their fists in the air as they walked. Madina Ahtam, a woman in a multicolored headscarf, begged foreign reporters to stay with them as they walked. "Every Uighur people are afraid," she said in English. "Do you understand? We are afraid. ... The problem? Police." A group of 10 police in bulletproof vests and helmets and armed with batons and stun guns blocked their march within minutes, followed shortly by several dozen more police who surrounded the group and forced them to squat on the sidewalk. Police pushed journalists away from the area. Kaishar, a 23-year-old car salesman, said his heart hurt when he first saw that the gates to the mosque were closed.
"There was no reason to shut the gate. They said it was for our safety but actually there is no need, nothing will happen here," said Kaishar, with a red prayer mat folded under his arm.
It was not known how many of the mosques across the city of 2.3 million people were opened.
A few blocks from the White mosque at the Yang Hang mosque, hundreds of men streamed in clutching green and red and blue prayer mats. A white notice that had been glued to the front gate canceling the day's service was gone. An mosque official, who refused to give her name, had said earlier the closure was ordered for public safety reasons after the widespread ethnic violence between Uighurs (pronounced WEE-ger) and Han Chinese. She didn't elaborate.
The Government has imposed curfews and flooded the streets with security forces to avoid a repeat of the running street battles earlier in the week. The secretary-general of the Urumqi Islamic Association, who would give only his surname Ma, denied there had been any order to shut the mosques and said individual mosques may have decided to do so independently.
But a man from the Urumqi Administration for Religious Affairs, who refused to give his name, said only mosques in areas not affected by the violence were told they could open. "In the areas where there were serious clashes and violence, some mosques were closed for the safety of the religious people," he said. Despite tight state control over Islam - imams are paid and vetted by the Government - there are too many mosques in Xinjiang to enforce a mass closure, said Barry Sautman, who specializes in China's ethnic politics at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. There are 23,000 mosques in Xinjiang, the highest mosque-to-Muslim ratio in the world, and that provides room for some anti-Goverment critics to slip through, said Sautman.
"It's impossible to control such an extensive number of religious personnel," Sautman said. In rural areas, he said, many officials in charge of religious affairs are Uighurs and are more sympathetic to Islam. The violence in Urumqi (pronounced uh-ROOM-chee) began Sunday when Uighurs clashed with police while protesting the deaths of Uighur factory workers in a brawl in another part of the country. The crowd then scattered throughout Urumqi, attacking Han Chinese, burning cars and smashing windows. Riot police tried to restore order, and officials said 156 people were killed and more than 1,100 were injured. Other cities in Xinjiang, such as Kuqa, where bombs were set off before the Olympics last year, said mosques opened as normal.
The official Xinhua News Agency quoted the director of the Urumqi Civil Affairs Bureau, Wang Fengyun, as saying that families of innocent civilians killed in Sunday's riot would each receive 200,000 yuan (about $30,000) for each fatality.

Search ends for Air France dead

Search teams have recovered bodies and wreckage from the plane The Brazilian military says it has ended its search for bodies from the Air France jet that crashed into the Atlantic almost a month ago. Fifty-one bodies have been recovered since the plane went down on 1 June. A total of 228 people were on board. A Brazilian spokesman said the recovery of any more of the bodies was "impossible". But a French-led search for the plane's black boxes - which will emit signals until at least 2 July - will continue. The cause of the accident has not yet been established. The Airbus 330 was flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris when it plunged into the sea. See a map of the plane's route "It has been nine days since we have located bodies," Brazilian air force spokesman Lt Col Henry Munhoz told journalists. Searchers had concluded that "it is impossible to recover more dead bodies or remains in the search area", he said. Several French vessels, including a nuclear submarine, will continue to listen out for signals from the plane's flight recorders. They emit signals for at least 30 days after a crash. The crash was the worst in Air France's history. There has been speculation that faulty data on the old-style speed sensors may have been the cause, but French investigators have warned against drawing early conclusions. An initial report by France's Investigation and Analysis Bureau (BEA) is to be released on 2 July. Click here to return

Ahmadinejad won; get over it

Only 50 bodies from the Air France crash have been recovered so far Officials in Brazil have identified the first 11 of 50 bodies recovered from the Air France disaster in which 228 people died three weeks ago. The bodies were those of 10 Brazilians and one male foreigner, officials said. They gave no further details. The Airbus A330 plunged into the Atlantic on 1 June. The data recorders have not been found, and the cause of the crash remains a mystery. Search teams from several countries are still scanning the search area. Investigators are examining the bodies and debris at a base set up in the northern Brazilian city of Recife. Five of the victims were identified as Brazilian men, five as Brazilian women and one as a "foreigner of the male sex", local officials said on Sunday. The nationality of the foreigner has not been revealed. DNA samples Dental records, fingerprints and DNA samples were used to identify the bodies, a statement said. Families of the Brazilian victims and the embassy in Brazil representing the foreigner's home country have been notified, the statement added, but the identities will not be publicised in keeping with relatives' wishes. Debris from the plane is being brought back to Recife Speculation about what caused the plane to go down between Rio de Janeiro and Paris has so far focused on the possibility that the airspeed sensors were not working. The plane is known to have registered inconsistent speed readings just before it crashed in turbulent weather. The plane's "black boxes" can emit an electronic tracking signal for about 30 days and French-chartered ships are scouring the search area pulling US Navy underwater listening devices. A French nuclear submarine is also involved in the search for the recorders, which could be up to 6,100m (20,000ft) deep, on the bed of the Atlantic. US and Brazilian officials said on Sunday that so far no signals had been picked up.

Air France jet 'broke' in mid air

Search teams have found 400 pieces of debris but not the vital black box recorders [AFP] Bone fractures found in bodies recovered from the Atlantic suggest the Air France jet that crashed two and half weeks ago first broke up in the air, aviation experts say. A spokesman for Brazilian medical examiners told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity on Wednesday that fractures in the legs, hips and arms were found in autopsies on an undisclosed number of the 50 bodies recovered so far. "Typically, if you see intact bodies and multiple fractures - arm, leg, hip fractures - it's a good indicator of a midflight break up,'' said Frank Ciacco, a former forensic expert at the US National Transportation Safety Board. "Especially if you're seeing large pieces of aircraft as well," he added. Brazil's O Estado de S. Paulo newspaper, citing unnamed investigators, also said some victims of Air France AF 447 were found with little or no clothing, and had no signs of burns. That lack of clothing could be significant, Jack Casey, an aviation safety consultant in Washington DC, told AP. "In an in-air break up like we are supposing here, the clothes are just torn away.'' Casey also said multiple fractures were consistent with a midair breakup of the plane, which was cruising at about 10,500m when it went down. "Getting ejected into that kind of windstream is like hitting a brick wall - even if they stay in their seats, it is a crushing effect,'' Casey said. "Most of them were long dead before they hit the water would be my guess.'' 'Less fuzzy' With more than 400 bits of debris recovered from the ocean's surface, the top French investigator into the crash expressed optimism on Wednesday about discovering what brought down the Airbus A330-200 on June 1. Search teams are considering ending their operations next week [AFP] But Paul-Louis Arslanian, who runs the French air accident investigation agency BEA, told a news conference outside Paris that the conditions in which recovery efforts are continuing were "one of the worst situations ever known in an accident investigation". He said French investigators were beginning to form "an image that is progressively less fuzzy". "We can say there is a little less uncertainty, so there is a little more optimism." But he cautioned that "it is premature for the time being to say what happened". Brazil's military said the search was becoming increasingly difficult in bad weather and a tentative date of June 25 has been set for stopping recovery efforts. Search teams have yet to find the aircraft's flight data and voice recorders, commonly known as black boxes. The boxes are thought to be deep under water and will send out an electronic tapping sound for just two more weeks.

1984 riots: Court to give order on June 3 on victims’ plea

New Delhi: A Delhi court said on Saturday today that it will pronounce on June 3 its order on the plea of victims of 1984 anti-Sikh riots that they should be heard before deciding on CBI's probe report giving a clean chit to former union minister Jagdish Tytler. Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Rakesh Pandit fixed the date after hearing arguments on the part of victims and the CBI. The victims' associations Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee and November '84 Carnage Justice Committee had earlier filed the application pleading that the court should decide their right to be heard in the matter. The CBI, on the other hand, opposed their plea saying they had no locus standi in the matter. "The injured or aggrieved parties do have a right to be heard. The investigating agency is bound to give notice to such parties and if they fail to do so, the court is bound to hear us as settled by the Supreme Court," Rebecca M John appearing for Lakhwinder Kaur, a widow of the victim killed during riots, said. The counsel also claimed CBI never approached the widow during its investigation into the case. "We have recommended prosecution of one accused Suresh Kumar Paniwala. Nobody was named in the FIR. It is only on the recommendation of Justice Nanavati Commission that we investigated role of Tytler and filed closure report finding no evidence against him," CBI counsel A K Srivastava submitted.

Canada convicts Rwandan of genocide

A court in Canada has found a former Rwandan militia leader guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide for his role in murders, torture and rape during the slaughter of ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Desire Munyaneza could face life imprisonment after a Quebec Superior Court convicted him on Friday. "Desire Munyaneza intentionally killed dozens in Butare and its surroundings that were not directly involved in the conflict, raped several women, and pillaged homes and businesses of people who also had nothing to do with the unrest," Andre Denis, the judge, said. "As such, you have been found guilty of committing war crimes as defined under Canadian law," he said to the accused. Munyaneza was the first person to be tried under Canada's Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act, which allows residents to be tried for crimes committed abroad.

Witnesses
Munyaneza's two-year trial heard from 66 witnesses in Canada, France, Rwanda and Tanzania.
The court was told that Munyaneza, the son of a wealthy Hutu beer distributor, set up roadblocks in southern Rwanda to select Tutsis and moderate Hutu as victims based on their ethnicity or allegiances. One man who was imprisoned in Rwanda for his own role in the genocide testified that Munyaneza orchestrated the massacre of between 300 and 400 Tutsis in a church. "The accused's criminal intent was demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt, as was his culpable violence," Denis wrote in his judgement.The UN estimates that more than 800,000 people were killed during the violence. "I'm very happy he was found guilty. I want to thank and congratulate Canada," Caesar Gashabeze, a survivor of the genocide, said. "We have been waiting for this."

Appeal

The defence said it would appeal the conviction after repeatedly questioning the testimony of witnesses and highlighting the fact that most were unable to identify Munyaneza's prominnent facial scar. "The evidence did not justify a conviction," Richard Perras, Munyaneza's lawyer, said. Munyaneza was arrested in Toronto in 2005 after seeking asylum in Canada, which Canadian immigration officials rejected. He had fled to Cameroon after the genocide.The prosecutor said that the case illustrated Canada's commitment to bringing war criminals to justice. "The case was very challenging as it involved events dating back 15 years in a foreign country, Rwanda," Pascale Ledoux said.Munyaneza will be sentenced in September.

Modi faces first riot probe

New Delhi: Narendra Modi, the BJP’s prospective candidate for Prime Minister, has come directly under the legal scanner in a riot case for the first time.The Supreme Court today ordered a probe into allegations that the chief minister, his cabinet colleagues and senior police officers aided and abetted the infamous Gulbarg Society massacre in which former Congress MP Ehsaan Jafri was burnt to death in 2002.The BJP downplayed the order, which came three days before Gujarat votes on Thursday, as just “another investigation”. The Congress initially sharpened its knives but held fire later in the evening, perhaps to avert the repeat of a perceived polarisation that followed Sonia Gandhi’s reference to “merchant of death” during the Assembly elections in Gujarat.The apex court’s order came in response to a complaint by Jakia Nasim Ahesan, the widow of Jafri, against Modi and 62 others. The Congress politician was one of the 39 killed in Gulbarg Society of Ahmedabad in the riots that followed the Godhra carnage.A special investigation team (SIT), appointed by the Supreme Court, was told today to probe the allegation against Modi and his administration. “The SIT will inquire into the complaint made by the petitioner and file its report within three months,” Justices Arijit Pasayat and A.K. Ganguly said today.Jakia Nasim’s complaint, made on June 8, 2006, said the police had not registered an FIR. She approached the apex court after Gujarat High Court refused to issue any directive in 2007. The high court had asked her to seek redress in a magistrate’s court.Her complaint before the then Gujarat director-general of police P.C. Pandey, known to be a Modi loyalist, had alleged that both the administration and the police failed in their constitutional duty. She has also said she wants to be included as a witness in the case.BJP spokesperson Arun Jaitley saw no reason for the party to worry. “So far, there is not even a whisper against Modi. No inquiry report has ever suggested any involvement of Modi at any level. This is another investigation in a series of investigations,” Jaitley said, dismissing comparisons with Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar.In Ahmedabad, Modi loyalists said the order had come as a godsend for the BJP. Gujarat home minister Amit Shah said: “For us it is a godsend opportunity. Remember how we turned the tables on the Congress after Modi was called “maut ka saudagar?”But Tanvir Jafri, the son of Ehsaan Jafri, said the ruling had come late but was still a “big leap towards justice”.High court advocate Mukul Sinha, who has represented riot victims, said the BJP would not admit it but the party was waking up to the danger of the long arm of the law reaching places once considered impregnable.