By API

Three young Norwegian women were arrested in Bolivia over two years ago. They were trying to smuggle 22.4 kilos of heroin from Bolivia to Norway. Before the case was finalised one of the girls escaped and boarded a plane to Norway. The Norwegian government did not arrest her on arrival into the country.

Now the second girl has escaped and is believed with the help from the Norwegian embassy in Brazil.

Why is Norway helping criminals to escape from justice after committing crimes and being jailed in other countries? Drug trade is an international crime and all countries including Norway should fight it.

The Norwegian media reports that “Brendemo Hagen og Madelaine Rodriguez (25) were sentenced in april to 13 years in jail. On appeal the sentences were reduced to 10 years and 8 months.  Brendemo Hagen got pregnant before the sentencing and gave birth to a son. The Bolivians were sympathetic to her, allowing her to be out on a cash bond of 350.000 Norwegian kroner.

She was reporting to the police every fourteen days as directed by the court. The plan was to allow the child grow outside the prison. The deal was to wait for the child to be 2 years old.  Her family in would then take the child to Norway while the convict was to return to jail to serve her sentence.

When contacted, the Norwegian embassy in Brazil denies they have issued her with a passport, but admits that they issued one to the young baby.

There is a possibility that the convict’s family got her a passport from Norway and the embassy decided to give the child a passport so that both of them can leave South America to Norway.

It is reported that the father of the one year old child is a South American. The two met while the convict was in jail, becoming intimate and getting pregnant.

It is not known if the boyfriend helped her to escape from Bolivia to Brazil where the Norwegian embassy took over.

Bolivia now says they will involve Interpol to look for her and take her to serve her sentence.

If it is true that the Norwegian embassy helped her escape from her drugs sentence, the international community should protest against Norway and demand she is arrested when she arrives in the country and send to Bolivia to finish her sentence. That is the only way to get rid of the flourishing drug network world-wide.

Reliable source say the convict and the baby were given refuge in the Norwegian Embassy in Brazil for 4 days. The embassy is not confirming if she has left the embassy and to which direction.

End

NEPAL: Reintegration challenges for displaced women, girls

Photo: Amy Lieberman/IRIN

Tara Bhatta, 28, is among the estimated 100,000 still displaced in Nepal following the 2006 ceasefire

KATHMANDU, 26 August 2011 (IRIN) – Nepal’s efforts to help conflict-affected women and girls gain a stronger footing in society may not be enough for the widows, rape victims and former Maoist combatants now tainted by social stigma, activists say.

“Because women have held guns and left their homes, because they were sexually assaulted, people won’t accept them so easily back into their communities,” said Susan Risal, director of Nagarik Awaz for Peace, a local NGO working for sustainable peace.

“It’s not so easy to just reintegrate… We expect that the widows and victims of sexual violence will get shunned from their communities,” she added.

About 100,000 people remain displaced in Nepal following a 2006 ceasefire and peace accord with communist Maoist fighters. Many observers believe women were disproportionately affected by the decade-long conflict and its aftermath: Sexual violence was prevalent during rebel attacks, war widows were subjected to violence and discrimination, and national insecurity led to an increase in trafficked women.

Efforts to address the problem are now drawing foundational support from two UN Security Council resolutions – 1325 and 1820 – acknowledging the vulnerabilities of women and girls in post-conflict societies and their right to representation, and the adoption of a National Action Plan, the first of its kind in Asia, in February 2011 (10 years after 1325 was passed, and three years after 1820 was approved).

Many are hopeful the five-pillar plan, if executed and funded sufficiently, could deliver prompt and free legal services, more residential homes, social services and access to relief and recovery packages for women and girls. But local peace and reconstruction campaigners predict obstacles due to a lack of support and ongoing discrimination.

“It’s a big challenge of how to implement this plan and where to go from here,” said Tulasa Amatya, founder of Community Action Nepal, a Kathmandu-based NGO which supports conflict-affected women.

“You go to local districts and you see Maoists working there, and you don’t feel peace and security. The dialogue in Nepal is all about politics and who will take the lead, and not about the women and the kids affected by it all.”

Displaced women who are not widows, sexual violence victims or former combatants also doubt their potential to resume their pre-conflict lives.

Forced to flee

Tara Bhatta was forced to flee to Kathmandu from her village of Baitadi in the far west in 2002 after Maoist demands became intolerable. Her father-in-law was in the army and Maoist fighters frequently made threats and demanded arms, food and a place to stay. Bhatta, 28, says they were also physically violent.

The violence intensified when she refused to join the Maoists. Female fighters made up 30-40 percent of the Maoists, some recruited willingly, others by force, according to the UN Women office in Nepal.

About 19,000 of these former female fighters are demobilized in cantonment camps. They are screened, based in part on the number of children they have in order to identify those without significant family obligations, as they await possible reintegration into the national army, Risal said after a recent visit to camp.

While Bhatta finds life in Kathmandu expensive and challenging, she says she doubts she will be able to reclaim her house in the west with her husband and two young sons. She has heard little about the Action Plan and did not seem certain about how much support it could provide.

“Of course if there is a chance, we will happily return. It is very hard to survive here. But I’m very skeptical we could do that,” said Bhatta.

Several years ago her husband was barred from the house by Maoists still occupying the surrounding land, even after the ceasefire.

Compensation package

She has not received a one-off government financial compensation package for conflict-affected people, which amounts to around US$350 depending on the person’s circumstances. Many others like Bhatta had not received any aid yet, said Sangeeta Thapa, UN Women’s programme coordinator in Nepal.

“Women don’t have the proper information or the means to go to Kathmandu,” Thapa said of why few people have accessed the compensation packages. “It’s a politically biased process.”

An orphan of the conflict, Jamuna Tamang, now 19, has not received any compensation package either, and says that even with its aid, she and her twin sister might not be able to reclaim their abandoned house in Kathmandu. They left when they were seven, after their father was kidnapped and they could not care for themselves alone.

“We were very young when our father [a teacher] was kidnapped by the Maoists and killed and were lucky because our aunt took us in,” Tamang explained. “That is our land, but maybe we are too young to go and take it back.”

The National Action Plan, which is still being budgeted, will be implemented over the next five years.

al/nb/cb source www.irinnews.org

In Brief: Measles outbreak reported in Zanzibar

Photo: Flickr Creative Commons/Sanofi Pasteur

Electron microscope image of the virus responsible for measles

STONE TOWN, 26 August 2011 (IRIN) – The first measles outbreak in five years on Zanzibar’s main island has prompted health officials to mount a two-day emergency immunization of 10,000 children under five.

Most of the 76 cases recorded occurred over the past two weeks, said Health Minister Malik Abdallah Juma.
“We have had no deaths so far, and we managed to treat 62 children; the remaining 14 are still in hospital under close [observation] by doctors,” he said.

Abdulhamid Ameir Salum, the manager of Zanzibar’s Expanded Programme on Immunization, said the outbreak was partly due to delays in vaccine delivery caused by high global demand as well as to parents’ reluctance to bring their children to health centres for immunization.

iy/am/mw source www.irinnews.org

ZIMBABWE: Import duties drive up food prices, hurt poor

Photo: IRIN

Food has become unaffordable

HARARE, 26 August 2011 (IRIN) – Barely a month after the Zimbabwean government reintroduced duties on imported food items such as cooking oil and maize meal to protect local manufacturers, the move appears to have backfired, making essentials unaffordable for low-income consumers.

The government scrapped import duties on cooking oil, sugar, maize meal, meat, salt, soap and other basic goods in 2009 to encourage the flow of these commodities into the country after the emptying of shop shelves in the wake of hyperinflation.

A quick survey by IRIN revealed that the price of all basic commodities has shot up recently. Two litres of cooking oil which cost US$4 a month ago was up by almost a dollar; a bar of washing soap cost up to 80 US cents more; while margarine rose by 40 cents and imported chicken was selling at around a dollar more in some shops.

Tendai Biti, the finance minister, announced the reinstatement of import duties on basic commodities in July 2011.

However, local industry remains depressed. John Mufukare, secretary of the Business Council of Zimbabwe, told the media recently that local firms had failed to achieve the 60 percent half year production targets due to financial constraints. 

Profiteering

Meanwhile, Innocent Makwiramiti, a Harare-based economist and former chief executive officer of the Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce, put the blame squarely on local manufacturers.

“We have observed that locally produced goods feature prominently in the list of commodities whose prices have gone up sharply. There is no reason why that should be so and the only explanation is that they are doing it for speculative reasons and out of greed,” Makwiramiti told IRIN.

He feared that some manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers would create artificial shortages by hoarding goods, thereby pushing up prices.

We have observed that locally produced goods feature prominently in the list of commodities whose prices have gone up sharply

Welshman Ncube, the industry minister, promised investigations into the price hikes, which he described as “unjustified”.

“We will ask the Consumer Council of Zimbabwe, the Competition and Tariffs Commission and the Pricing Commission to look into the price hikes and establish if the emerging pricing pattern is out of speculation. We will take stern action against the offenders,” Ncube told IRIN.

However, economist John Robertson warned against introducing price controls. “Price controls will have a disastrous effect on the economy. Several years ago, the government tried it and we had biting shortages as producers decided to stop operations or simply hoarded the commodities, which went to the black market and prices rose steeply,” he told IRIN.

“Struggle to survive”

Moses Zirima, a teacher in Harare with a family of four, said: “Prices of basic commodities have been sharply increasing in the last three weeks and the struggle to survive has intensified for people like me. My family has cut down on the amount of food we eat on a daily basis because we can no longer afford big amounts of sadza [thick porridge] and meat.”

Zirima, like other civil servants, was awarded a paltry salary increment in July, and even before the recent wave of price hikes he was struggling to make ends meet.

“Given that the salaries of the majority of the people are still poor, the decision by the government to reintroduce duty on basic commodities is ill-timed. Most of us don’t think that prices should rise at this rate especially given the fact that we are using foreign currencies which should be stable,” added Zirima.

The coalition government set up in 2009 adopted multiple foreign currencies to replace the local dollar which had been rendered useless by the world’s highest hyperinflation rate, and the move helped bring down inflation to below 2 percent.

Health threat

The hike in prices has forced people to source essentials such as illegal cooking-oil produced in unhygienic conditions.

Tecla Sibanda, a vegetable vendor from a low-income suburb in Chitungwiza, about 35km south of Harare, told IRIN she had opted to source homemade cooking oil from illegal producers. Sibanda said several people had fallen ill after using the oil for cooking in the past but “we will cross that bridge [the possibility of falling ill] when we come to it.

“My family shares a house with three other tenants and we had an arrangement that we would take turns every week to buy basics such as cooking oil and mealie-meal and then share. However, the price increases that we are seeing taking place have rendered that impossible, so each family for itself.

“I learnt from one of the tenants that the backyard businessman who used to supply homemade cooking oil during those days of shortages had resumed operations, so that is where I am buying from now and the queues that form at his shop show that many people are doing the same,” said Sibanda.

The informal sector, which has helped many Zimbabweans to survive by selling imported foodstuffs, has been particularly affected by the re-imposition of import duties.

“These [price hikes] are worrisome developments which, if not addressed, will reverse the gains made in overall macro-economic stabilization,” said Finance Minister Biti at a recent press conference.

fm/jk/cb source www.irinnews.org