Miren Gutiérrez

Miren Gutierrez* interviews LUIS ROSARIO ALBERT, filmmaker

ROME, Apr 28 (IPS) – Puerto Rican Juan Melendez spent more than 17 years on death row in a Florida prison for a 1983 murder to which another man had repeatedly confessed – evidence prosecutors withheld. He was only released in 2002. Now a documentary by Luis Rosario Albert tells Melendez’s story, the multifaceted circumstances that surrounded it and the human rights struggle in Puerto Rico that followed.The modern death penalty was introduced to Puerto Rico in 1898 by the U.S. government established when Spain turned Puerto Rico over following the Spanish American War. Puerto Rico abolished the death penalty in 1929, two years after their last execution. In 1952, when Puerto Rico drafted and ratified its own constitution, the Bill of Rights included the decree “the death penalty shall not exist.”

However, because of Puerto Rico’s status as a Commonwealth of the U.S., it is subject to some federal laws, and the U.S. has sought the death penalty on federal charges in a number of cases, including Melendez’s. This has been considered by many to be a betrayal of the island’s autonomy.

In an e-mail interview, Albert says the “reasons for Juan’s release do not appear to have been related in any way to Puerto Rican opposition to the death penalty, although groups such as the Puerto Rican Coalition Against the Death Penalty, and the Comision de Derechos Civiles de Puerto Rico helped promote Juan’s story since his release. Juan’s story has provided a very effective example for educating the people of Puerto Rico about the death penalty system.”

IPS: So far, you have done documentaries illustrating Puerto Rican culture. Why this change in subject?

LUIS ROSARIO ALBERT: This case struck me because after being on death row for almost 18 years for a crime he didn’t commit, Juan has become a prominent member of the abolition of the death penalty movement in the U.S. The first reason was that his story needed to be documented. I remember that after watching “The Exonerated”, the film by Bob Balaban, thinking why we cannot do something to help the cause of this fellow Puerto Rican.

Secondly, I have great respect for a person that after all that time in jail – he could have done other things… But he decided to fight back and help transform his reality by fighting the death penalty. He has a unique ability to tell his story in an especially captivating and dynamic way.

The extent of the injustice, and the remarkable way in which everything had to line up all at the same time in order for Juan to be exonerated is also extraordinary. Had everything not lined up perfectly, he would not be alive today.

His appellate attorney quitting and being replaced by a team of exceptional attorneys, and an investigator; his trial defence attorney becoming a judge which created a conflict of interest and required the case to be removed from the county where he was convicted; the fact that the case fell into the hands of a courageous female judge; the fortuitous rediscovery of the taped confession of the real killer 16 years after Juan had been sentenced to death – all of these factors had to come together – it is extraordinary that they did. And it is shocking to think what would have happened if they did not.

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Miren Gutierrez* interviews SARAH FINKE, of the International Transport Workers’ Federation

ROME, Feb 13 (IPS) – Shipping used to be for men. Now women are starting to be seen commanding merchant vessels, oil tankers and cruisers, “manning” ships and operating liner engines.

In an e-mail interview with IPS, Sarah Finke – the Women’s Officer at the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) – discusses some of the challenges faced by women on ships, and the role of unions in this tough sector. The ITF includes 654 unions representing about 4.5 million transport workers in 148 countries.

IPS: The ITF says “millions of women work in the transport industry world-wide”. How many of these are in the maritime sector?

Sarah Finke: We estimate that there are around 23,000 women seafarers worldwide, representing a low 2 percent of the total workforce, and clustered disproportionately in the ferry and cruise sectors, and in service roles. The total number is slowly increasing, as is women’s representation in the ranks of ships’ officers and masters. But it is an unacceptably slow process, and one that trade unions have to lead and drag forward.

IPS: Which countries ‘produce’ more women seafarers?

SF: It largely shadows the situation for men, with the Philippines and Indonesia (the biggest seafaring nations in the world) ranking highest, but also with significant numbers of Eastern Europeans, which reflects that region’s history of cruising and cruise fleets.

IPS: In 2005, at a conference in Rio de Janeiro, a group of 40 female seafarers called for greater attention to job prospects for women and discrimination. “Sexual harassment is a reality for many women at sea,” says a recent International Labour Organisation (ILO) report. Has anything changed?

SF: It will take a new research project to establish an improvement on the ground, but there are hopeful signs. Positive measures on bullying and harassment have been introduced by European ship owners and by unions in the European Transport Workers’ Federation, the ITF’s European arm. There has also been real campaigning by our affiliated unions for equality and against violence towards women.

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Miren Gutierrez interviews AYE AYE WIN of Dignity International

ROME, Jan 26 (IPS) – NGOs like Dignity International are packing their bags to fly to Belem in Brazil where the World Social Forum (WSF) is taking place this year. The stakes are high.“We are all gathering in Belem because we still firmly believe that another world is possible,” says Aye Aye Win, executive director of Dignity International, a Netherlands-based organisation supporting people and groups engaged in fighting for human rights. “I do believe that the current global economic crisis in many ways confirms the importance of the WSF as a forum that proposes viable alternatives, and it would be wise for the World Economic Forum at Davos (Switzerland) to lend its ears to ideas coming out of it.”

Aye Aye has worked for the Council of Europe, an organisation that seeks to develop common principles based on the European Convention on Human Rights. She has coordinated the Global Forum for Poverty Eradication, from which Dignity International originated. She has worked also for the Advocacy and Early Warning Department of the London-based NGO International Alert, the Sasakawa Peace Foundation in Japan, and the Development Centre of the Organisation For Economic Cooperation And Development (OECD, a grouping of 30 wealthy nations).

Aye Aye Win spoke with the IPS Editor-in-Chief about the role of the WSF today.

IPS: The WSF is a movement against the “kind of globalisation which is based only on the values of market and profit,” in the words of WSF international committee member Roberto Savio. Do you feel vindicated by the global financial crisis?

Aye Aye Win: The financial crisis is a sad proof that globalisation based only on the values of the market is fundamentally flawed. You cannot endlessly go on speculating in the global casino. The bubble cannot endlessly grow. All of them eventually burst, leaving millions destitute, as is the case now. The reckless behaviour of the financiers, and the system that permits it, amount to a crime of unimaginable scale. What angers me in all this is that governments come galloping along to rescue the very financial institutions that have profiteered from the people and whose behaviour has led to the crisis! Having said this, it is also obvious that state intervention is necessary now that chaos has come.

IPS: Do you think this will lead to a different type of capitalism?

AAW: After a bit of patchwork here and there through bailout plans and stimulus packages, there is a real risk that things will soon return to business as usual – capitalists return to market worship, start playing again in the global casino and again enter another cycle of speculation. We as social activists have an opportunity now to go back to the drawing board to reconstruct the global economic system to be one based not on greed but one that does reward hard work and innovation, a system built on solidarity and justice. We need to come up with viable alternatives – move beyond ideology and find solutions that work. This will indeed be a challenge. We are so good at ‘opposing’ but we need to become much better at ‘proposing’!

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Miren Gutierrez* interviews NANCY SNOW, propaganda expert

ROME, Jan 22 (IPS) – The war of words continues in Gaza, in spite of the ceasefire. Nancy Snow, propaganda expert, talks to IPS about information spin strategies and whether we, the public, have learnt any lessons from Iraq.

Snow is a writer and a Huffington Post blogger. Her latest book is “Persuader-in-Chief” about public diplomacy and persuasion in the Age of Obama. She is also Associate Professor at the Newhouse School of Communications, Syracuse University.

IPS: The Israeli propaganda effort is being directed to justify their attack. The sight of Hamas rockets streaking into Israel has been helpful in this respect. But do you think Israel’s effort has achieved anything?

NS: Israel’s effort seems to be designed to shake the confidence of Hamas. Of course, innocent people are in the way of this power struggle. We don’t know yet if Hamas will be emboldened or weakened by the Gaza conflict. We do know that global public opinion is against Israel for its raining of air attacks on a densely populated area. A lot of people died unnecessarily simply because of where they lived.

IPS: On Dec. 28, Israel released a video of a missile attack against what appeared to be a lorry being loaded with rockets. A caption says: “Grad missiles being loaded onto the Hamas vehicle.” As of last week, 632,714 people had watched it. However, it turned out that a Gaza resident named Ahmad Abdallah Muhammad Sanur claimed that the truck was his and that he and his workers were moving oxygen cylinders from his workshop. How do you think this case has hampered Israel’s propagandistic efforts?

NS: If one believes that the IDF (Israel Defence Forces) is acting in self-defence and that Hamas is completely responsible for creating the Gaza conflict, then the resident’s claim that this truck was his and that they were only moving oxygen cylinders places innocent victims smack in the middle of the propaganda war between Hamas and the IDF. If Sanur’s claims are true, naturally it hurts the IDF position that only Hamas is the target of its rockets.

IPS: Has the ban on foreign correspondents “helped”? (The television channels Al-Jazeera and BBC operated there during the attack). The absence of reporters from other major organisations has meant, for example, that Sanur’s story has not been as widely told as it probably would have been, or his account subject to examination.

NS: How do you think the ban is affecting this war of words? I’m all for the complete access of media to conflict areas. If correspondents are willing to put themselves in harm’s way in order to tell the story, completely and truthfully, then they should be allowed in. When a ban takes place, all we can wonder is what is being left out of the story being told? We cannot allow just officials to tell their stories. We need people on the ground, both citizen journalists and foreign correspondents, to complete the landscape picture.

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Miren Gutierrez interviews SYLVIA BORREN, Co-Chair of the GCAP

ROME, Dec 4 (IPS) – The Doha Financing for Development Conference is over and many are now wondering how it went and what really happened. Sylvia Borren, co-chair of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP), was there.

In an email interview with IPS, Borren evaluates the outcomes of the conference from the perspective of civil society.

IPS: What was civil society’s role in this process?

SB: Well, the two day pre-conference of the civil society was rather good. We had enough expertise in our networks and 250 people attending to have well-researched argumentation in the room. And we put together a solid civil society paper of improvements and additions on all issues for our governmental delegations.

The official U.N. meeting opened against the horrific backdrop of the Mumbai attacks with blood and violence on our TV screens. It proved that no ‘war on terrorism’, masculine competition and a ‘winner takes all’ mentality can stop terrorist or violence.

A press conference gave us the opportunity to hand over our input to the president of the General Assembly (Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann), who gave an impassioned speech about the urgency of putting need above greed, and changing paradigms in our world. He spoke of our input in his opening speech to the General Assembly the next day where Gemma Adaba from ITUC (International Trade Union Confederation) was our strong civil society voice, high on the five-minute speakers list.

IPS: What were the governments’ contributions?

SB: French President (Nicolas) Sarkozy, holding the EU presidency, made a strong plea for urgent solutions, especially for Africa. But for me he was too ‘pro’ his own G20 initiatives and rather ‘divide and rule’ towards the G77 as well as the EU, in stressing the French bond with Africa. His proud claims about 60 percent of official development aid coming from Europe and the extra 1 billion euro for the food crises made me snort cynically…

Yes, 60 percent of about 100 billion euro. And the French are still not near reaching their promised 0.7 percent of GNI (Gross National Income) for aid or supporting unfair trade practices. He didn’t mention the 260 billion euro which the EU just approved for stimulating the economies of Europe itself: encouraging consumerism in order to keep production going. Save the car industry, who cares about climate change.

The U.S. delegation was the same, they kept boasting about being the biggest bilateral aid donor, and having doubled that in the last eight years. As it was only 0.16 percent of their GNI in 2007, and they have never committed to the 0.7 percent — they too were walking on thin ice. After all twice (nearly) zero remains (nearly) zero.

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Interview with Ines Alberdi, executive director of UNIFEM

ROME, Aug 28 (IPS) – Ines Alberdi has worked for over 25 years on gender issues and in politics.

She comes to the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) from her previous position as professor of sociology at Madrid University where she has taught political sociology and sociology of gender since 1993. Prior to that, she was director for research at the Centre for Sociological Research. Her main interest has been gender-based violence.

“It is crucial to see the women’s rights movement in this context of creating more democratic, equitable, and just societies that benefit the population as a whole. And I devoted my professional life to this cause,” she says.

Alberdi spoke to IPS Editor in Chief Miren Gutierrez about the role of UNIFEM.

IPS: UNIFEM talks about the importance of incorporating gender into national poverty reduction strategies. How is this done?

Ines Alberdi: National poverty reduction strategies are particularly important entry points to ensure that women’s needs will be taken into account. It is based on these plans that governments allocate resources and donors contribute to national budgets or to specific sectors. To have a strong gender perspective incorporated at this planning stage is therefore crucial.

Gender advocates and women’s machineries must therefore be closely involved in devising national development plans. UNIFEM’s work has focused on opening policy spaces, for example in the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) countries. As Kyrgyzstan began formulating its new development strategy, UNIFEM worked with civil society organisations to raise the profile of gender equality measures. These encompass measures to increase women’s political participation, perform gender analysis of school curricula, reflect gender differences in pension reform and end violence against women.

Kyrgyzstan has also pioneered a set of gender-responsive development indicators, harmonised to capture both national priorities and international commitments to gender equality, such as those in the Beijing Platform for Action, CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women) and the MDGs (Millennium Development Goals).

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Interview with Sylvia Borren, former executive director, Oxfam Novib

ROME, May 22 (IPS) – Sylvia Borren was executive director at Oxfam Novib from 1999 until Feb 2008. Before that she was programme director.

Oxfam Novib is the “elephant”, in her words, at Oxfam International, a confederation of 13 organisations working with over 3,000 partners in more than 100 countries, whose aim is to fight “for a just world without poverty”.

She talks with IPS Editor-in-Chief Miren Gutierrez about her legacy and other issues such as aid and how that intermixes with gender, and her work at the Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP).

IPS: Oxfam International is a heterogeneous association… Was it difficult to keep a common goal and work together?

Sylvia Borren: Oxfam Novib is not large or influential enough on its own. The idea was to try to achieve greater impact through collective efforts. We had to jump over our shadow and link hands in order to have an impact. This became a strategic priority.

We are heterogeneous. At Oxfam we say we are an organisation of elephants (Oxfam Great Britain, Oxfam Novib), mice (Oxfam Australia, the U.S., Belgium, Hong Kong) and fleas (New Zealand, Ireland). And to my great delight Oxfam India and Oxfam Mexico are joining.

To handle this diversity we went from a representational to a competency business model, which made it possible to benefit from everyone’s strengths. For example, New Zealand is excellent in evaluation; Belgium, in mobilisation; Australia, in working with youths in parliament; Great Britain has more people on the ground… You have less paternalism this way… The win-win situation comes when you combine these qualities.

IPS: Surely it wasn’t always a harmonious relationship…

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Q&A: “We Are Haunted By a War Begun Under False Pretences”
Interview with Chuck Lewis, founder of the Centre for Public Integrity

WASHINGTON, Jan 23 (IPS) – Eight key players in the George W. Bush administration, including the president himself, made at least 935 false statements in the run-up to and aftermath of the invasion of Iraq in 2003.These are some of the findings of a mammoth report just released by the Centre for Public Integrity, directed by founder Chuck Lewis.

Lewis asked his researchers to track every utterance by the top U.S. officials made from Sep. 11, 2001 through Sep. 11, 2003, regarding Iraq, “weapons of mass destruction”, and the alleged link between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. These officials include President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and former White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan.

What this report proves is remarkable, even though it is now a matter of public record that there were no WMD in Iraq and that the attacks against the U.S. in 2001 had no connection to Saddam Hussein.

Lewis concludes in a statement: “Clearly, this Iraq chronology calls into question the repeated assertions of Bush administration officials that they were merely the unwitting victims of bad intelligence. More broadly, consider the timeless words of the late historian and Librarian of Congress, Daniel Boorstin, in his classic 1961 work, “The Image”: ‘We suffer primarily not from our vices or our weaknesses, but from our illusions. We are haunted, not by reality, but by those images we have put in place of reality.’ America went to war nearly five years ago after an orchestrated campaign of false statements by the nation’s top officials, a war begun under the illusion of an imminent national security threat. We are haunted by a war begun, in other words, under false pretences.”

Lewis spoke with IPS’s Editor in Chief Miren Gutierrez about what he says is “an unprecedented, 380,000-word, online searchable, public and private Iraq war chronology, the public statements interlaced with the internal knowledge, discussions, doubts, and dissent known at the time. What they said publicly juxtaposed against what they knew internally.”

IPS: You have tagged how many false statements were made by these top officials over the two years. How many exactly? Can you make any comparisons?

CL: We found 935 false statements… Bush made the most statements; McClellan the fewest. No one has ever done this for any other U.S. war, to my knowledge, a public and private chronology of what they said versus what they knew internally. There is no comparison to the past.

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