A view of part of Guayaquil, Ecuador's second most populated city and main port, which is now dominated by violence as a hub for shipping drugs out of the country to the United States and Europe. CREDIT: Carolina Loza León / IPS

By Carolina Loza
GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador, Feb 12 2024 (IPS)

“For a couple of years now we’ve been seeing the violence growing so fast,” said José, who asked not to give his last name for fear of reprisals he may face in Monte Sinai, a low-income neighborhood in Ecuador’s most populous city, Guayaquil.

José, a 45-year-old Venezuelan, came here looking for a better life in 2019. “You could scrape by, barely, but you could make a living,” he said.

For José, Ecuador offered an opportunity for a peaceful life that allowed him to cover his expenses and raise his three children, something he could no longer do in his native Venezuela. He first moved to a shantytown in this part of western Guayaquil, which is also the country’s main port and one of its two economic hubs, along with Quito, the capital.

José paused before telling IPS: “In the last two years, the violence has accelerated, it’s impossible to live.”

This South American country has recently become one of the most violent in Latin America and the world. And José’s anxious observations coincide with the analysis of different organizations and experts.

Ecuador’s geographic position between two cocaine producers, Colombia and Peru, make it a strategic location for drug distribution across the Pacific Ocean.

The demand for drug trafficking, the gradual economic devastation and the weakening of the country’s political system exacerbated in 2023 with the dissolution of the legislature and a call for early elections, helped strengthen criminal gangs, which began to take root in Ecuador as part of the chain of trafficking of cocaine and other drugs.

Growing institutional corruption enabled the gangs to infiltrate the police and the prison system, making it easier for imprisoned criminal leaders to turn prison facilities, intended for rehabilitation, into their centers of operations and expansion.

In the gangs’ struggle to gain control, in 2021, the first large-scale massacre inside a prison in Ecuador occurred, something that became routine as the violence escalated.

For years in Ecuador, criminal organizations have been coordinating their actions against the State, according to Renato Rivera-Rhon, an organized crime and security analyst. “Prisons are an environment of opportunity for organized crime in Ecuador,” he said in an interview with InSightCrime, an organization that focuses on criminal activities.

Rivera-Rhon mentioned that networks within prisons facilitate dialogue, and gang leaders have lawyers within the network, indicating the existence of a web of a certain level of agreements between organized crime gangs.

Police officers prepare to patrol the streets in Guayaquil, on Ecuador’s Pacific coast, days after the declaration of a state of emergency as the government tries to combat the drug gangs that have turned Ecuador into one of the world’s most violent countries. CREDIT: Carolina Loza León / IPS

José told IPS how he went from being a street vendor outside schools in Guayaquil without any complications to becoming a victim of extortion, forced to make “protection payments” known locally as “vacunas” or vaccines.

Monte Sinai was one of the first areas in Guayaquil where residents and business owners became the victims of criminal gangs who began demanding “vacunas”, although none of the residents consulted by IPS would identify the group that controls the area, and they never refer to it by name.

The extortion method varies depending on the business and the payment can be demanded weekly, monthly or, as in José’s case, daily. “One of them (a gang member) would hang around when I was selling outside the schools, and would keep track of how much I sold and charge me a third of what I earned that day,” José said.

“You can’t live like this. They don’t let you do anything, you can’t survive,” he complained.

One of José’s three sons was also a victim of extortion when he set up a fast food business selling mainly hamburgers.

Friends of José told him that when they rode on public transportation buses, people would get on and ask for “a little donation,” which was actually another form of extortion. The charge was one dollar, which they had to plan for on top of the 0.35 cent fare.

“You prefer not to ride the bus, because you don’t have the money to pay a dollar for each trip,” said a friend of José’s who preferred not to be identified.

Monte Sinai is a rapidly growing neighborhood, a city within a city as some demographers call it, where a large number of people make a living in the informal economy.

In Ecuador, a country of some 17 million inhabitants, where more than 3.6 million people live in Greater Guayaquil, over 50 percent of the economically active population works in the informal economy.

The growth of gangs in Ecuador took hold gradually, in poor areas such as Monte Sinai, and their presence and control boomed during the last two years. Bomb threats, sporadic detonations, leaflets in which gangs threaten individuals or groups such as immigrants, and an increase in robberies are reflections of the violent control exercised by these groups.

The activity of the gangs has spread throughout the country, in an escalation that has reached the point of total chaos at times, such as on Jan. 9.

That day, a television station was taken over by a gang in Guayaquil, there were bomb threats in several cities and shootings near judicial entities, which led the government to declare a state of emergency.

The state of emergency allowed for joint military and police action in the streets and prisons, under the premise that the State is in conflict with armed criminal groups.

Lorenzo and his teenage son Carlos are photographed on one of the unpaved streets of Monte Sinai, a low-income neighborhood in northwest Guayaquil, which they had to flee because of threats and extortion by criminal gangs in the area. CREDIT: Carolina Loza León / IPS

Rivera-Rhon stressed that on Jan. 9, the alliances and ties between criminal gangs were demonstrated by the scope and coordination of the chaos in the country and the fear provoked among the public.

He said that “if you look at things from the point of view of someone in the capital, law enforcement has a monopoly of force, but this is not the case in rural areas, where there is total abandonment by the State.”

The expert on crime mentioned how in localities on the border with Colombia, there was already a social order imposed by armed groups that “generated a contagion to other areas of the country” and wondered whether the State had control over the exercise of force in other parts of the country and neighborhoods in cities such as Guayaquil.

Carlos Carrión, secretary of the Fundación Desaparecidos en Ecuador (Foundation for Missing People), said abandonment by the State has been going on for decades. A resident of Jaramijó, a fishing village near the port city of Manta, for years he has led petitions for the repatriation of fishermen imprisoned in the United States for transporting drugs.

Carrión pointed to the lack of response at the State level and the growing control of drug trafficking networks that recruit fishermen, without any control by the armed forces. “Nobody seems to have cared for years, and look where we’ve ended up,” Carrión told IPS by telephone from Jaramijó, some 190 kilometers north of Guayaquil.

Lorenzo, 46, said the Jan. 9 violence was nothing new. In 2023 he had to move from Guayaquil to the port of Posorja, after he became the victim of robberies and closed down his small business.

“Outside the store there were four guys on a motorcycle. From far away, one of them pulled a gun on me and I didn’t know how to get away. I had a backpack, where I carried my phone. I also had my watch and money that I always carry, about 20 or 40 dollars. They took everything,” said Lorenzo, who had worked hard to open a small store selling food and other products in Monte Sinai.

He told IPS that “they said to me: ‘get out of here.’ They left quickly, after going around the same street twice.” It was the last episode of violence and extortion he put up with in Guayaquil and the one that led him to decide to close his shop and look for work in Posorja, a small fishing port 113 kilometers away.

“I used to live here, but now we’re doing better. I had my monthly income from the store, but I had to leave the house in Monte Sinai to rent in Posorja,” he said during one of his last Sunday visits to the neighborhood to see friends and check on his now empty house.

One of his sons, teenager Carlos, was with him on the Sunday he was interviewed by IPS in Monte Sinai. His two older sons have also moved out of the neighborhood.

Businesses are closed in a small shopping center on Delta Avenue, near the main university in the Ecuadorian city of Guayaquil, due to people’s fear of going out in certain areas of the port city. CREDIT: Carolina Loza León / IPS

Lorenzo’s biggest fear before leaving Monte Sinai was that something would happen to his children. He even considered emigrating in 2022, crossing the Darien Gap, after hearing about people who had made it through that dangerous stretch of Panamanian jungle to the United States.

Both José and Lorenzo lived in fear of the impact that the violence and increased insecurity could have on their families.

According to José, violence during 2023 in the area “increased by 70 percent.” And so far, according to his former neighbors, the armed forces have not yet arrived in Monte Sinaí, despite the fact that a state of emergency has been declared and that the area is notorious for the violence suffered by local residents.

José stays in contact with his former neighbors, a community that welcomed him with solidarity and to which he will always be grateful.

“I love Ecuador, I was welcomed here, but the situation had become unlivable,” he said from Quito, the capital, where he now sells candy at stop lights. At the end of January, José decided to move to Quito and check out the possibility of settling in this city, where he feels safer.

With most of Monte Sinai’s schools closed due to the violence, José had no alternative when he was left without a source of income and became subject to constant threats, he told IPS during a second meeting in Quito, 430 kilometers from his old life.

His eldest son sold the supplies for his fast food business and returned to Venezuela, while his two teenagers are still in Guayaquil, waiting for their father to get everything ready in Quito.

Lorenzo is no longer returning to Monte Sinai, he told IPS by telephone from Pasorj
a a few days after the interview there, because both he and his son Carlos received new threats. He is looking for alternatives to move to the coastal province of Manabí, which is also affected by violence, although to a lesser degree than Guayas province, of which Guayaquil is the capital.

José finds some consolation in living in Quito and being able to go out on the street with a little more peace of mind. He quotes a friend who stayed in Guayaquil: “Back there, the only thing they don’t charge us for is breathing.”

Many in the crowd taking videos of the extrajudicial killing in Sialkot.

By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Dec 7 2021 (IPS)

Mukhtiar’s heart sank when he saw the grisly incident of lynching of a man in the industrial city of Sialkot, in Punjab province.

The videos, taken on cell phones and put online, showed 49-year-old Priyantha Kumara Diyawadanage, a Sri Lankan national and manager of a garment factory, showing him being punched, kicked, hit with stones and iron rods, and killed. Not content, they then dragged his dead body out of the factory and set it on fire.

It was the same city which 11 years ago, had witnessed mob lynching two brothers, 22-year-old Hafiz Muhammad Mughees Sajjad and Mohammad Muneeb Sajjad, 16, in 2010, with support of the local police, on charges of theft. Later their bodies were hung upside down in the city square.

“There must have been no less than 2,000, men, mostly young, charged and in a frenzy, chanting ‘Labbaik Ya Rasool Allah’ (Here I am at your service, O Messenger of Allah), a slogan used by a far-right Islamic extremist political party, Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP),” said Sakhawat Mughal, a reporter working for Hum News, a private television channel, recalling what he saw.

“Many men had batons in hand. The police looked on and waited for backup,” he said, adding: “Had the handful of the law enforcers reacted, many more lives would have been lost.”

People from all walks of life have been shocked and condemned the incident.

“The Sialkot incident is a horrible example of the growth of extremism and violent mob lawlessness,” said the National Commission for Human Rights chairperson, Rabiya Javeri Agha. “The government should ensure speedy and equitable justice, and perpetrators must face the full force of law.”

According to rights activist Usama Khilji, director of Bolo Bhi, a civil society organisation geared towards advocacy, policy, and research in civic responsibility and digital rights, the TLP has managed to infiltrate the middle class disenchanted with mainstream political parties. The party stirred up ordinary people’s sentiments using tools of “religious passion and hatred towards any perceived act of anti-Islam” to drum support for itself and respond with violence when called upon to cause mischief.

What was even more disturbing was that not only did the people join in throngs to watch the horrendous incident, but they also filmed it and even took selfies showing Diyawadanage body burning in the background.

“Today, sections of the middle-class youth feel proud of lynching on a genocidal level, believing killing alleged blasphemers is an act of valour,” lamented Khilji.

Sitting 130 kilometres away in Lahore, the capital city of the Punjab province, and belonging to the Christian community, the breaking news from Punjab, for Mukhtiar, who goes by one name, was even more disturbing.

Along with the footage of the mob and burning of Diyawadanage body, the various television channels also showed archival photos of his late daughter Shama, and her husband, Shahzad. They were lynched by a mob in 2014 and pushed into a burning brick kiln where the husband worked, in Kot Radha Krishan’s village of Chak 59, near the city of Kasur, also in Punjab. They were punished for allegedly burning pages of the Holy Quran.

“Her three kids who are living with me were disturbed and cried a lot on seeing their parents’ faces plastered on the screen, as the older two remember the incident quite clearly,” said the grandfather, talking to IPS over the phone.

“The incident that happened yesterday (Friday, December 3) was a criminal act, as was my daughter’s and son-in-law’s lynching,” he said, adding: “Do you think any civilised person would want to carry out a sacrilegious act against any faith?”

“Nothing that happened on the part of Diyawadanage constitutes the offence of blasphemy as is the case in nearly all cases prosecuted under these laws,” pointed out Peter Jacob, executive director of Centre for Social Justice. Initial investigations by police suggest the manager had removed posters of a religious moot, as the factory would be whitewashed.

Peter Jacob, executive director of Centre for Social Justice addressing a crowd of protestors in Lahore. He and other rights activists have condemned the killing.

Mukhtiar further pointed out the consequences of committing blasphemy against Islam in Pakistan were “far too grave” for anyone to dare.

Statistics also point that one does not have to belong to a religious minority to be accused of blasphemy and face vigilante violence. The majority of the accused are Muslims.

At least 1,890 persons have been accused of committing blasphemy, under various clauses of the blasphemy law, from 1987 to 2021, said Jacob, who has been collecting data for the last 30 years, adding: “The year 2020 saw the highest number of accused.”

Of the 75% Muslims accused this year, 70% belonged to the Shia sect, he said, and 20% belonged to the Ahmadi community, 5% were Sunni, 3.5% were Christians and 1% Hindus. Religions of 0.5% could not be ascertained, Jacob told IPS over the phone from Lahore.

From 1992 till December 4, 2021, there have been 81 extrajudicial killings on suspicion of blasphemy and apostasy, 45 were Muslims, 23 Christians, nine Ahmadis, two Hindus and two persons whose religious identity could not be ascertained, Jacob noted.

In 2017, Mashal Khan, a Muslim student studying at Abdul Wali Khan University, in Mardan, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, was killed by his peers for allegedly posting blasphemous content online. The accusation was later proved to be fabricated.

Even in Shama and Shahzad’s murder, rights activists later found the attack was instigated by the brick kiln owner who had an altercation with Shahzad over a money dispute.

The Prime Minister terming the incident a “horrific vigilante attack” promised that all those responsible would be punished with “full severity of the law”. News reports say police have arrested over a hundred, including 19 who played a “central role” in the brutal killing.

For Mukhtiar, these promises ring hollow.

“There will be a lot of promises for a few weeks, and then when the public’s attention is diverted, the perpetrators will be released, you wait and see,” he said.

“Of the five men charged with murder and sentenced to death, two have been released,” he said. After seven years, he was tired of doing the court rounds or seeking justice. “I’m old and a heart patient, and I have the responsibility of these three kids too!”

Khilji also remained sceptical whether justice will be “dispensed to the mob” given Pakistan’s “dismal track record” in such cases.

“Entire police stations have been burnt down for perceived inaction towards blasphemy-accused people by the TLP,” he said, giving the example of the state caving into this group that exudes “massive street power”.

And this “capitulation” to those demanding, inciting, encouraging, and perpetuating violence, pointed out Saroop Ijaz, senior counsel with Human Rights Watch’s Asia division, has reinforced the “legitimacy of violence” in the public consciousness.

A December 5 editorial in Dawn said: “… on the last day of his life, Mr Diyawadanage came face-to-face with the consequences of the Pakistani state’s decades-long policy of appeasing religious extremists.”

“The Sialkot incidence is yet another reminder that violence and impunity are now embedded in society on the issue of blasphemy,” Ijaz told IPS, emphasising the urgent need for holding a “national conversation on violence” and, in particular, on how religion is often used to incite violence.

But, he was not sure if the government was “ready and willing to provide an enabling environment for such a conversation” to be had.

Yury Fedotov, Executive Director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. "The magnitude of the problems we face is such that it is sometimes hard to imagine how any effort can be enough to confront them. But to quote Nelson Mandela, 'It always seems impossible until it is done'. We must keep working together, until it is done" – Yury Fedotov. Credit: Courtesy of UNODC

By Yury Fedotov
VIENNA, May 27 2015 (IPS)

With terrorism, migrant smuggling and trafficking in cultural property some of the world’s most daunting challenges, “the magnitude of the problems we face is such that it is sometimes hard to imagine how any effort can be enough to confront them. But to quote Nelson Mandela, ‘It always seems impossible until it is done’. We must keep working together, until it is done.”

The words are those of U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Executive Director Yury Fedotov, who was speaking at the closing of the 24th Session of the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (Crime Commission) held in the Austrian capital from May 18-22.

Earlier this month, IPS Editor-in-Chief Ramesh Jaura interviewed Fedotov on how the challenges facing the United Nations’ drugs and crime agency translate into challenges on the sustainable development front.“The share of citizens experiencing bribery at least once in a year is over 50 percent in some low-income countries. Many detected human trafficking movements are directed from poor areas to more affluent ones. Research also suggests that weak rule of law is connected to lower levels of economic development” – UNODC Executive Director Yury Fedotov

Q. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), established in 1997, understands itself as “a global leader in the fight against illicit drugs and international crime”. At the same time, you have taken up the cudgels on behalf of sustainable development. What role does the UNODC envisage for itself in achieving sustainable development goals to be agreed at the U.N. summit to adopt the post-2015 development agenda in September?

A. Crime steals from countries, families and communities and hampers development while exacerbating inequality and violence, especially in vulnerable countries. Trafficking in diamonds and precious metals, for instance, diverts resources from countries that desperately need the income.

The share of citizens experiencing bribery at least once in a year is over 50 percent in some low-income countries. Many detected human trafficking movements are directed from poor areas to more affluent ones. Research also suggests that weak rule of law is connected to lower levels of economic development. These are just some of the many challenges that the international community faces around the world that are related to crime.

UNODC’s broad mandate includes stopping human traffickers and migrant smugglers, as well as tackling illicit drugs. It encompasses promoting health and alternative livelihoods and involves battling corruption, illicit financial flows, money laundering and terrorist financing. Our work confronts emerging and re-emerging crimes, including wildlife and forest crime, and cybercrime, among others, all of which hinder sustainable development.

Currently the United Nations is making the transition from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In Goal 16, the Open Working Group, responsible for identifying the development goals stressed the need to promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, and to provide access to justice for all, as well as building effective, accountable and inclusive institutions. Justice is also one of the six essential elements identified by the Secretary-General in his own Synthesis Report on this subject.

Goal 3, which focuses on “ensuring healthy lives”, underlines the importance of strengthening prevention and treatment of substance abuse. These goals – justice and health – go to the very heart of UNODC’s mission. I am hopeful that when the U.N. Heads of State Summit on Sustainable Development in September 2015 takes place these goals will remain.

Q. UNODC organised its Thirteenth Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice from Apr. 12 to 19 in Doha, Qatar. The 13-page Doha Declaration contains recommendations on how the rule of law can protect and promote sustainable development. Is that the reason that you described Doha as a “point of departure”?

A. The Doha Declaration was passed by acclamation at the 13th Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, and contains crucial recommendations on how the rule of law can protect and promote sustainable development. The declaration is driven by the principle that these issues are mutually reinforcing and that crime prevention and criminal justice should be integrated into the wider U.N. system.

At the 24th Session of the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (May 18-22), there were nine resolutions before the Commission and they pave the way for the Doha Declaration to go before the U.N. General Assembly and ECOSOC for approval. The other resolutions, for instance on cultural property and standard rules on the treatment of prisoners, seek to implement the principles of the Doha Declaration.

It is for this reason that I described the 13th Crime Congress in Doha as a significant “point of departure”. Doha is the first, but not the last step in the process of implementing the Declaration and ensuring that we turn fine words into spirited and dedicated action in the areas of crime prevention and criminal justice – action that can benefit the millions of victims of crime, illicit drugs, corruption and terrorism.

If we do this, we have an opportunity to energise the 60-year legacy of Crime Congresses and give it the power to shape how we tackle crime and promote development for many years to come. Indeed, I see a strong, visible thread between the recent Crime Congress, September’s UN Summit on Sustainable Development and the 14^th Crime Congress in Japan in five years’ time.

Q. The Doha Declaration also pleads for integrating crime prevention and criminal justice into the wider United Nations agenda. This suggestion comes at a point in time when the United Nations is turning 70. Are there some issues which the United Nations has ignored until now or is there a range of issues that have emerged over previous decades?

A. Member States are increasingly affected by organised crime, corruption, violence and terrorism. These challenges undercut good governance and the rule of law, threatening security, development and people’s lives.

Sustainable development can be safeguarded through fair, human and effective crime prevention and criminal justice systems as a central component of the rule of law. As stated by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon: “There is no peace without development; there is no development without peace; and there is no lasting peace and sustainable development without respect for human rights.”  We need to break down the walls between these activities and integrate the various approaches.

UNODC is well placed to assist. We work closely with regional entities, partner countries, multilateral and bilateral bodies, civil society, academia and the private sector to support the work on development. We can also offer our support at the global, regional, and local levels, through our headquarters and network of field offices.

Q. Do you find willingness on the part of all countries around the world to agree on national, regional and international legal instruments, to combat all forms of crime, and their willingness to pull on the same string when it comes to implementation?

A. Our work is founded on the U.N. Convention against Transnational Organised Crime and its three protocols, the Convention against Corruption, international drug control conventions, universal legal instruments against terrorism and U.N. standards and norms on crime prevention and criminal justice.

Almost all of these international instruments have been universally ratified by the international community. Why? Because countries recognise that crime today is too big, too powerful, too profitable for any one country to handle alone. Countries recognise that, today, crime not only crosses country borders, but regional borders. It is a global problem that warrants comprehensive, integrated global solutions.

The UNODC approach to this unique challenge is threefold. First, we are building political commitment among Member States. Second, we deliver our activities through our integrated regional programmes across the world. Third, we are working with partners, both within and outside the United Nations, to ensure that our delivery is strongly connected to other activities at the field level.

In support of this action, and to give just one example, UNODC is networking the networks. Today’s criminals have widespread networks and vast resources; if we are to successfully confront them, we need to ensure greater cross-border cooperation, information sharing and tracking of criminal proceeds.  The initiative is part of an interregional drug control approach developed by UNODC to stem illicit drug trafficking from Afghanistan and focuses on promoting closer cooperation between existing law enforcement coordination centres and platforms.

Q. UNODC has assigned itself a wide range of tasks. Which are your priorities in the biennium ending this year, during which you have 760.1 million dollars at your disposal?

A. I would mention two matters that are of international importance. First, smuggling of migrants not just in the Mediterranean or the Andaman seas, but also elsewhere. We are witnessing unprecedented movements of people across the globe, the largest since the Second World War. People are leaving because of conflict, insecurity and the desire for a better life. They are falling into the arms of unscrupulous smugglers and many of them are dying, while trying to make the dangerous journey across deserts and seas.

Second, the nexus of transnational organised crime and terrorism is a major threat to global peace and security, and has been recognised as such in recent Security Council resolutions. Every extremist and terrorist group requires sustainable funding. The most reliable, and sometimes the only, means of achieving this is through illicit funds gained from transnational organised crime, including cybercrime, drug trafficking, people smuggling and many other crimes.

Information on the magnitude and exact nature of such relationships remains incomplete, and more research is needed. Based on data and analysis, however, for some regions, we can follow the funding in support of violent extremism and terrorism. In Afghanistan, for example, the Taliban could be receiving as much as 200 million dollars annually as a tax on the drug lords.

Edited by Phil Harris    

Excerpt:

Azzum Atme checkpoint border crossing from the West Bank into Israel, where hundreds of Palestinian labourers cross into Israel each day using Israeli buses. These labourers already face long delays at the checkpoint and if they are banned from Israeli buses their trips will take even longer. Credit: Mel Frykberg/IPS

By Mel Frykberg
RAMALLAH, West Bank, May 24 2015 (IPS)

A  decision by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) to segregate buses in the occupied West Bank has backfired after causing an uproar in Israel’s Knesset, or parliament, and political damage on the international stage.

This came as Israel faces mounting international criticism over its land expropriation and settlement building in the West Bank, and other forms of discrimination levelled against Palestinians.

Israel’s new extreme right-wing government is also being attacked on the domestic front with liberal Israelis, and Israeli NGOs involved in human rights, accusing the government of damaging Israel’s image and values.“The EU is Israel’s biggest trading partner and the threat of economic sanctions on Israel is a language the Israeli government understands far more than empty threats from the Americans who never followed any criticism of the Israeli government with any action” – Prof Samir Awad, political scientist at Birzeit University

Israeli settlers in the West Bank have been waging a campaign to prohibit Palestinians, particularly labourers who work in Israel, from using their buses in the occupied West Bank for over a year, saying that they represented a security threat, refused to give up their seats for Israelis and expressed sexual interest in Israeli women.

Last week, approval was given for buses to be segregated but after the backlash the plan was quickly scrapped.

However, Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Ya’alon quickly denied that segregation or racism had anything to do with the issue and that the decision to ban Palestinians from Israeli buses had only been based on “security” needs.

Neither has Ya’alon given up on the plan. He intends to instruct the IDF to come up with a new plan to cover all 13 crossing points from the West Bank into Israel.

This development came simultaneously as European Union foreign policy head Federica Mogherini paid a 24-hour visit May 20-21 to Jerusalem and Ramallah in an effort to push the Israeli-Palestinian peace process forward, stating that Europe wanted to play a more prominent role in the process.

But behind Mogherini’s visit was growing approval within the European Union for more pressure to be exerted on Israel to stop expropriating land from the Palestinians to build more illegal Israeli settlements and enlarge current ones.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry was on the defensive following its perception of bias from the European Union.

“The Israeli government will not be pressured by the European Union into making any concessions with the Palestinians in regards to the peace process,” said a spokesman from Israel’s Foreign Ministry – who insisted on remaining anonymous due to “ongoing problems at the ministry”.

“If the EU exerts one-sided pressure on Israel, without putting any pressure on the Palestinians, the situation will backfire because it will allow the Palestinians to avoid direct negotiations with us at the negotiating table,” the spokesman told IPS.

“Any future peace negotiations will have to involve face to face talks between the Palestinians and us. We will accept nothing less.”

Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely, quoting a mediaeval biblical scholar, instructed all Israeli diplomats not to apologise for Israel’s occupation, stating that “all of the land (meaning East Jerusalem and the Palestinian territories) belonged to Israel.

As Israel finds itself painted into a corner politically, Palestinian and Israeli analysts have been debating whether there would be any European pressure on Israel and whether that pressure would have any effect.

Political scientist Prof Samir Awad from Birzeit University, near Ramallah, believes that the European Union will be able to successfully pressure the Israeli government, despite its extremism.

“The EU is Israel’s biggest trading partner and the threat of economic sanctions on Israel is a language the Israeli government understands far more than empty threats from the Americans who never followed any criticism of the Israeli government with any action,” Awad told IPS.

“EU pressure on Israel will also be buoyed by the fact that a number of EU countries have officially recognised a Palestinian state while others have recognised a state in principle and are critical of Israel’s continued occupation and land expropriation in the West Bank,” added Awad.

However, political analyst Benedetta Berti, a research fellow at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv, is not convinced that the European Union will succeed in pushing Israel to any negotiating table.

“If we look at their record so far there has been a lot of rhetoric but not much actual action. So far, 16 out of the 28 EU ministers have told Mogherini to go ahead with labelling settlement goods exported to Europe,” Berti told IPS.

“It hasn’t happened yet as they have to get 20 of the 28 EU ministers on board for that and due to the divisions in the EU over Israel I’m not sure that it will happen in the near future,” explained Berti.

Meanwhile, an Israeli rights group has accused the Israeli authorities of being indifferent to attacks on Palestinians by Israeli settlers and security forces.

“Most cases of violent crimes against Palestinians not only go unpunished – but often are completely ignored by the authorities. Even when criminal investigations against soldiers accused of such offences are opened, they almost always fail,” said Yesh Din, a volunteer organisation working to defend the human rights of Palestinian civilians under Israeli occupation.

The groups said that approximately 94 percent of criminal investigations launched by the IDF against soldiers suspected of criminal violent activity against Palestinians, and their property, are closed without any indictments. In the rare cases that indictments are served, conviction leads to very light sentencing.

“Moreover, Palestinians who attempt to file complaints about crimes committed against them face staggering obstacles in their way. The complete absence of military police stations open to the Palestinian public in the West Bank, for example, makes it literally impossible for Palestinians to file complaints directly with the military police,” stated Yesh Din.

Edited by Phil Harris    

Long before the attack in Paris that inspired the slogan “Je Suis Charlie”, a young French publisher had released a collection of stories titled je suis favela about life in Brazilian slums.

In an ironic twist of history, sales of the collection have taken off since Jan. 7, when gunmen targeted the offices of satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, leaving 12 people dead.

French publisher Paula Anacaona

Some readers apparently thought the je suis favela stories were an attempt to shed light on the situation of marginalised communities in France, but instead they learned about marginalised populations in South America, where similar forces of exclusion may push young people into crime.

“We can all learn from what is happening elsewhere in the world, because we’re all affected by similar social and economic issues,” says Paula Anacaona, the publisher of je suis favela and founder of Éditions Anacaona, whose mission is to publish Brazilian books in France.

Educated as a translator of technical texts, Paris-born Anacaona, 37, became a literary translator and publisher by chance. On holiday in Rio de Janeiro in 2003, she happened to start chatting with a woman who revealed she was a writer and who promised to send her a book.

Back in Paris, Anacaona received the book two months later and “loved it”, as she told IPS in an interview. She translated the work, written by Heloneida Studart and later called Le Cantique de Meméia, and managed to get a Canadian company to publish it.“To understand the favela, you have to understand the grandparents who came to the cities from rural areas, often with nothing and unable to read or write” – Paula Anacaona, founder of Éditions Anacaona

Studart, who died in 2007, was also an essayist, journalist and women’s rights activist, and the book caught the attention of French-speaking readers in several countries.

Other writers got in touch, and Anacaona found herself becoming a literary translator. But by sending out the works to publishing companies, she was also taking on the role of agent, a time-consuming task.

“With all that was involved, I thought why not publish the books myself?” she recalls. She set up Éditions Anacaona in 2009 and decided to focus initially on literature from and about the ghetto or favela in Brazil, because “no one else was doing it.”

The first published book under her imprint was le Manuel pratique de la haine (Practical Handbook of Hate), a very violent and dark work set in the favela and launched in 2009.

Two years later came je suis favela, published in 2011. Anacaona selected the writers for the collection, choosing authors from both the favela and the “middle class” and translating the works written in Portuguese into French.

Her motivation, she says, was to try to change perceptions of those considered to be living on the fringes of society. The cover of je suis favela features a young black woman sitting on a balcony and doing paperwork, possibly homework, with the city in the background.

“As you can see, she’s not dancing, so this isn’t about stereotypes,” Anacaona says.

Cover of ‘je suis favela’

The book has since been published in Brazil, with the title Eu sou favela, giving Anacaona a certain sense of accomplishment. “In Rio, twenty percent of the population lives in the favela, so the book is relevant to many readers,” she says.

In France, where there has been national soul-searching since the Charlie Hebdo attacks – with Prime Minister Manuel Valls calling the social exclusion of certain groups a form of “apartheid” – the book provides insights into the reasons and consequences of marginalisation, albeit from a distance of 8,620 kilometres.

“French readers have responded to the book because people really are trying to understand the space we all share and the reasons for radicalisation,” says Anacaona.

Now representing more than 15 authors, she has widened her company’s scope to include “regionalist” authors such as the late Rachel de Queiroz and José Lins do Rego, from the northeast of Brazil, who wrote about characters outside urban settings.

“To understand the favela, you have to understand the grandparents who came to the cities from rural areas, often with nothing and unable to read or write,” Anacaona says.

Her company’s contemporary writers include the award-winning Tatiana Salem Lévy, named one of Granta’s Best Young Brazilian Novelists, and the stand-out Ana Paula Maia, who began her career with “short pulp fiction” on the Internet and now has numerous fans.

Both writers were part of the contingent of 48 Brazilian authors invited to this year’s Paris Book Fair, which took place from Mar. 20 to 23.

Billed as “un pays plein de voix” (a country full of voice), Brazil was the guest of honour, and the writers discussed topics ranging from the depiction of urban violence to dealing with memory and displacement. Anacaona had a central role as a publisher of Brazilian books, with her stand attracting many readers.

Brazilian writer Ana Paula Maia. Credit: Marcelo Correa

She has translated and published two titles by Maia – Du bétail et des hommes (Of Cattle and Men) and Charbon animal (Animal Coal) – which focus on characters not normally present in literature. Maia writes about a slaughterhouse employee and a worker at a crematorium, for instance, in an unsentimental manner with minimal dialogue and almost no adjectives.

“She really can’t be categorised,” says Anacaona, who adds that despite Maia’s fashion-model appearance, the writer identifies with those living on the margins because she grew up among people who did not fit into the mainstream.

Both publisher and writer bear a resemblance and even have a name in common, and Anacaona acknowledges that she is attracted to Brazil and its literature because of her own mixed background – her French mother is white and her South American father is of African descent.

“In Brazil, it’s possible to be both black and white, and that’s something that is important to me,” she says.

As for the books, she has recently published a boxed set of 14 Brazilian plays, with the translation sponsored by the Brazilian Ministry of Culture, in an attempt to make Brazilian theatre more known in France.

There is also a second favela collection, titled je suis toujours favela (I am still favela), that includes literature as well as journalistic and sociological articles about the slums.

Between the first and second collections, Anacaona says she has found that the “favela has changed so much”, which she credits to the impact of policies to diminish inequality, launched by former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva  – perhaps a lesson for France and other countries.

Edited by Phil Harris 

Forest rangers putting out a fire at a charcoal burning kiln in Kenya’s Mau Forest. The future of the country’s indigenous forest cover is under threat but this has little to do with poverty and ignorance – experts say that it is greed which allows unsustainable practices, such as the lucrative production of charcoal and logging of wood. Credit: Robert Kibet/IPS

By Robert Kibet
NAIROBI, Apr 25 2015 (IPS)

Armed with twigs and placards, enraged residents from a semi-pastoral community 360 km north of Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, protested this week against wanton destruction of indigenous forest – their alternative source of livelihood.

With climate change a new ordeal that has caused frequent droughts, leading to suffering and death in this part of Africa, the community from Lpartuk Ranch in Samburu County relies on livestock which is sometimes wiped out by severe drought leaving them with no other option other than the harvesting of wild products and honey.

“People here are ready to take up spears and machetes to guard the forest. They have been provoked by outsiders who are out to wipe out our indigenous forest to the last bit,” Mark Loloolki, Lpartuk Ranch chairman, who led the protesting community members told IPS.

They threatened to set alight any vehicle caught ferrying the timbers or logs suspected to be from their forests.Illegal harvesting of forest products is pervasive and often involves unsustainable forest practices which cause serious damage to forests, the people who depend on them and the economies of producer countries

Their protest came barely a week after counterparts from Seketet, a few kilometres away in Samburu Central, held a similar protest after over 12,000 red cedar posts were caught on transit to Maralal, Samburu’s main town.

Last year, students walked for four kilometres during International Ozone Day to protest against the wanton destruction of the same endangered forest tree species.

A report titled Green Carbon, Black Trade, released by the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) and Interpol in 2012,  which focuses on illegal logging and its impacts on the lives and livelihoods of often some of the poorest people in the world, underlines how criminals are combining old-fashioned methods such as bribes with high-tech methods such as computer hacking of government websites to obtain transportation and other permits.

Samburu County, in Kenya’s semi-arid northern region, hosts Lerroghi, a 92,000 hectare forest reserve that is home to different indigenous plants and animal species. Lerroghi, also called Kirisia locally, is among the largest forest ecosystem in dry northern Kenya and was initially filled with olive and red cedar trees.

It is alleged that unscrupulous merchants smuggle the endangered red cedar products to the coastal port of Mombasa for shipping to Saudi Arabia where they are sold at high prices.

“This is a business that involves a well-connected cartel of merchants operating in Nairobi and Mombasa,” said Loloolki.

In Kenya, the future of indigenous forest cover is under threat but has little to do with poverty and ignorance – experts say that it is greed which allows unsustainable practices, such as the lucrative production of charcoal and logging of wood.

“This forest is our main water catchment source and home to wild animals such as elephants,” Moses Lekolool, the area assistant chief, told IPS. “Elephants no longer have a place to mate and reproduce or even give birth, with most of them having migrated.”

According to Samburu County’s Kenya Forest Service (KFS) Ecosystem Controverter Eric Chemitei, “as a government parastatal, we [KFS] do not issue permits for transportation or movement of cedar posts. However, we do not know how they get to Nairobi, Mombasa and eventually to Saudi Arabia as alleged.”

At the same time, Chemitei told IPS that squatters currently residing inside the forest are mainly families affected by insecurity related to cattle rustling, adding that their presence was posing a threat to the main water towers of Lerroghi, Mathew Ranges, and Ndoto and Nyiro mountains.

He further noted that harvesting of cedar regardless of whether forest was privately or publicly owned was banned in 1999, and that over 30,000 hectares – one-third of the Lerroghi forest – has been destroyed.

Reports from INTERPOL and the World Bank in 2009 and from UNEP in 2011 indicate that the trade in illegally harvested timber is highly lucrative for criminal elements and has been estimated at 11 billion dollars – comparable with the production value of drugs which is estimated at around 13 billion dollars.

In a report on organised wildlife, gold and timber, released on Apr. 16, UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said: “There is no room for doubt: wildlife and forest crime is serious and calls for an equally serious response. In addition to the breach of the international rule of law and the impact on peace and security, environmental crime robs countries of revenues that could have been spent on sustainable development and the eradication of poverty.”

According to the KFS Strategic Plan (2009/2010-2013/2014), of the 3.4 million hectares (5.9 percent) of forest cover out of the Kenya’s total land area, 1.4 million are made up of indigenous closed canopy forests, mangroves and plantations, on both public and private lands.

The plan also indicated that Kenya’s annual domestic demand for wood is 37 million cubic metres while sustainable wood supply is only around 30 million cubic metres, thus creating a deficit of seven million cubic metres which, according to analysts, means that any projected increase in forest cover can only be realised after this huge internal demand is met.

Last year, Kenya’s Cabinet Secretary for Environment Judi Wakhungu said that KFS’ revised policy framework for forest conservation and sustainable management lists features including community participation, community forest associations and benefit sharing.

The policy acknowledges that indigenous trees or forests are ecosystems that provide important economic, environmental, recreational, scientific, social, cultural and spiritual benefits.

Nevertheless, illegal harvesting of forest products is pervasive and often involves unsustainable forest practices which cause serious damage to forests, the people who depend on them and the economies of producer countries.

Forests have been subjected to land use changes such as conversion to farmland or urban settlements, thus reducing their ability to supply forest products and serve as water catchments, biodiversity conservation reservoirs and wildlife habitats.

Meanwhile, the effect of forest depletion on women has been noted by Veronica Nkepeni , Director of Kenya’s Centre for Advocacy and Gender Equality, who told IPS that the “most affected are women in the pastoralist areas, trekking long distances in search of water as a result of the effects of forest depletion leading to water scarcity.”

Edited by Phil Harris    

Sahar Baker (left), with Ahed Baker (right) and sister-in-law in front of their beach camp house, with photographs of the four cousins killed by Israeli gunboats in summer 2014 while playing football on the beach in Gaza. Credit: Khaled Alashqar/IPS

By Khaled Alashqar
GAZA CITY, Mar 3 2015 (IPS)

“I have lost all meaning in life after the death of my child, I will never forgive anyone who caused the tearing apart of his little body.  I appeal to all who can help and stand with us to achieve justice and punish those who killed my child.”

As the tears rolled down her cheeks and with a rattle in her voice, 47-year-old Sahar Baker recalled the last moments of her ten-year-old son Ismail, who was killed along with three of his cousins after being targeted by Israeli gunboats while they were playing football on the beach during the Israeli attacks on Gaza last summer."We will not forget how our children were killed in cold blood without any reason. We hope that the Israeli army commanders will be tried before international justice and that they will be punished for the killing of the children" – Ahed Baker

Sahar’s plea for justice may soon be one step nearer now that the Palestine Government is set to formally join the International Criminal Court (ICC), which deals with war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas signed the Rome Statute, the ICC’s founding treaty, on Dec. 31, after the U.N. Security Council rejected a Palestinian attempt to set a deadline for Israel to end its occupation of territories it captured in 1967. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has said the Palestinians will formally join the ICC on Apr. 1.

Mohammad Shtayyeh, a member of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), is reported as having said that a first complaint will be filed against Israel at the ICC on Apr. 1 over the Israeli war against Gaza last year and Israeli settlement activity.

Palestinian membership of the ICC “provides an opportunity to raise the issues on Israel’s use of force based on occupation and crimes against the people and the land in Palestine, where we did not have the capacity before to sue Israel for its crimes against the Palestinians,” Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Al-Malki told the press during a visit to Brazil to attend the inauguration ceremony of President Dilma Rousseff at the beginning of January.

The Baker family, who live in a beach camp in Gaza, is now hoping that Palestinian membership of the ICC will open the door for the prosecution of Israeli leaders and army officers for their crimes.

Sahar’s cousin Ahed Baker, father of Zakaria (10) and grandfather of Ahed Atif (9), shares her pain and bitterness. He is still looking for a way to bring the Israeli army to trial for the murder of his son and grandson, another two of the four young cousins killed on the beach. He told IPS that he and his family would do everything possible to ensure that their case makes its way to the ICC.

Sahar Baker holds a photograph of her ten-year-old son Ismail, killed along with three of his cousins during the Israeli attacks on Gaza in summer 2014. Credit: Khaled Alashqar/IPS

“We will not forget how our children were killed in cold blood without any reason,” said Ahed. “We hope that the Israeli army commanders will be tried before international justice and that they will be punished for the killing of the children.”

Palestinian leaders have long waved the card of membership of the ICC as a form of pressure on the Israeli government in their attempt to secure a Palestinian state.

However, apart from its political and legal benefits, Palestinian membership of the international court has created some serious implications for the Palestinians.

Israel has already frozen the transfer to the Palestinian Authority of tax funds owed to it. These funds are generally allocated for the salaries of Palestinian public employees and government operating expenses in Gaza and the West Bank, and the freeze is hampering the functioning of the Palestinian Unity Government and undermine the already weak public sector in Palestine.

Israel has also indicated that further ‘punitive’ steps will be taken soon against the Palestinians as a result of joining the ICC. Membership of the ICC thus appears to be the start of a new lengthy battle for Palestinians.

Some Palestinian human rights centres, including the Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights in Gaza City, are now working against the clock to compile documentation on the numerous cases of civilians who were killed during last summer’s Israeli war against Gaza, to be able to submit all the documents required for the ICC to investigate war crimes in Gaza and hold Israel accountable.

“Over the long years of occupation, there has been no equity for civilian victims and this, in my point of view, was a key reason that Israel waged three wars in less than five years. In fact, it has been due to the absence of justice and a sense that occupation is immune to accountability,” Issam Younis, Director of the Al Mezan Centre told IPS.

“Going to the ICC will bring justice to victims through international justice and ensure that there are no repeated offences of occupation without accountability,” he said.

According to Palestinian human rights advocates, membership of the ICC carries two overlapping purposes for Palestinian people and their leaders.

For the Palestinian people, of Gaza in particular, it not only opens an important door to achieving justice but also helps to criminalise the entire Israeli occupation establishment and its vicious atrocities against humanity.

For the Palestinian leadership, on the other hand, it seeks to strengthen the political, legal and diplomatic status of Palestine at the international level and pressure Israel to accept the creation of an independent Palestinian state in future negotiations.

What underpins the two goals is a historical desire for real justice and protection. Whether the ICC can deliver, only time will tell.

Edited by Phil Harris   

Dead addax (white antelope) hunted by soldiers in Chad – “We should not underestimate the seriousness of wildlife crime”. Credit: John Newby/SCF

By Bradnee Chambers
BONN, Mar 1 2015 (IPS)

It is no exaggeration to say that we are facing a “wildlife crisis”, and it is a crisis exacerbated by human activities, not least criminal ones.

Whatever our definition of wildlife crime, it is big business. In terms of annual turn-over it is up there narcotics, arms and human trafficking – and the proceeds run into billions of dollars each year, helping to finance criminal gangs and rebel organisations waging civil wars.“Whatever our definition of wildlife crime, it is big business. In terms of annual turn-over it is up there with narcotics, arms and human trafficking – and the proceeds run into billions of dollars each year”

With seven billion people on the planet, it is tempting to shrug one’s shoulders and ask “What difference can any one individual make?”  Such an attitude means that we are in danger of repeating the “tragedy of the commons” – everyone making seemingly rational decisions in their own immediate interests – but this is a short-sighted approach that undermines the common good and ultimately sows the seeds of its own downfall.

With seven billion people on the planet, it is also tempting to say that people’s need for food, shelter and well-being should take precedence over nature conservation, but the two are not necessarily irreconcilable.  In fact far from it – the two often go hand in hand and are totally compatible – non-consumptive use of wildlife, such as whale-watching and safaris, provide sustainable livelihoods for thousands of people.

Extinction has been an ever-present phenomenon, with a few species losing their specialised niche or being edged out to a more aggressive competitor or, in the case of dinosaurs, being wiped out by a meteorite strike.

The number of species going extinct is increasing fast, at a rate that cannot be attributed to natural causes and it is clear that there is a human foot pressing down heavily on the accelerator pedal.

South Africa reports record numbers of rhinos killed for their horn; demand for ivory is pushing the elephant to the brink; tiger numbers might have risen in India of late but the wild population and the range occupied by the cats are a fraction of what they were at the beginning of the twentieth century.

And we are not just losing vital pieces in the elaborate jigsaw puzzle of ecosystems; we are losing elements of our natural heritage that contribute to human culture and society, and the lifeblood of sustainable activities that create employment in the tourism sector, generating foreign exchange and significant tax revenues.

Wildlife crime is not an abstract. It affects us all and there is more that individuals can do to make a difference than they perhaps imagine.  Understanding the consequences of killing the animals and highlighting the connection between the increased poaching and organised criminal gangs and terrorists have been extremely helpful in strengthening  political messages and in persuading  the public to demand that more be done.

The gangs care little about the fate of the animals – either the individuals they kill or the survival of the species.  They think nothing of shooting the rangers who stand in their way.  They do care about their profits and high demand for ivory in East Asian markets has sent the price through the roof – not that the poacher in the field or the craftsman in the backstreet workshop receive much of a share.

If demand evaporates, the price will fall and killing elephants for their ivory will no longer be a viable business. The gangs will have to find some other source of income, but they would have to do this soon anyway, as current levels of poaching mean that there will not be any elephants left in 30 years.

The maxim “get them while they are young” applies to many things, not least the environment and junior members of the household often influence the family’s behaviour with regard to recycling, saving energy and water, food purchases and a range of other “green issues”. So raising awareness among the younger generation of the need to tackle wildlife crime is crucial.

The fight against wildlife crime has to be conducted on several fronts.  It does register on governments’ radar and pressure from civil society can help keep it high on the agenda.  The public has a vital role to play in keeping pressure on governments, either individually or through local pressure groups and NGOs. People can also modify their own behaviour by minimising their footprint on the planet.

We should not underestimate the seriousness of wildlife crime, but nor should we dismiss the potential impact of the actions of individuals as consumers, customers or voters.

Edited by Phil Harris  

Excerpt:

By Guillermo Medina
MADRID, Dec 22 2014 (IPS)

Political and institutional corruption has become the main concern of Spanish citizens after unemployment and the dramatic social consequences of the economic crisis, according to opinion polls.

The systemic nature of corruption – recognised by most analysts but denied by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy of the right-wing People’s Party (PP) – is coinciding exasperatingly with the impoverishment of most of society and the enrichment of a few of its members, leading to a rejection of current politics and institutions that verges on social rebellion.

In the 2011 municipal elections, 39 percent of candidates under investigation for corruption throughout Spain were re-elected, according to a report by the Politico analytical group. Some notoriously corrupt officials even claimed that the “favourable judgment of the electorate” was a kind of absolution.“The systemic nature of corruption is coinciding exasperatingly with the impoverishment of most of society and the enrichment of a few of its members, leading to a rejection of current politics and institutions that verges on social rebellion”

But indifference towards corruption was transformed into intolerance when the crisis arrived and scandals began to emerge.

In October 2004, a poll by the Centre for Sociological Research (CIS) found that only 0.6 percent of respondents mentioned corruption among their main concerns; by October 2014, according to the same source, 42.3 percent were naming it as their second-highest concern.

Citizens have now made a direct connection between corruption and the crisis, profligacy, unemployment, impoverishment, inequality and a political style. Irritated and provoked by their observation of the obscene ostentation and impunity of the corrupt, many have reached the conclusion that it will not be possible to eradicate corruption without profound change.

In the view of many Spanish citizens, corruption has its origins in a model of party politics that reduces democracy to a mere mechanism for deciding – every four years – which party will occupy the seats of power, with no substantial change for the people.

The meteoric rise of Podemos (“We Can”), the movement and political party proposing radical change, is therefore not surprising. Founded in January this year, Podemos secured 25 percent of voter intentions in a survey published on Dec. 7 by the newspaper ‘El País’.

Due to deficiencies in the electoral law and certain flaws in their original make-up, the other parties have thwarted the wishes of the electorate and have created a crisis of representation.

Frequently, lax laws, long criminal proceedings, short statutes of limitations and the most varied tricks of judicial ingenuity conspire to grant impunity to conduct that is harmful to the common interest and causes public scandals.

No wonder Carlos Lesmes, president of the General Council of the Judiciary, said recently: “We have a criminal system devised to penalise the petty thief, but not the large fraudster; it does not work in cases such as we are seeing now, in which there is so much corruption.”

People today are aware of the relationship between politics and corruption. One of the most pernicious effects of this omnipresent phenomenon is that it monopolises and conditions political debate, weakening institutions like Congress and the government itself, which should be focusing their attention on solving the country’s crucial problems.

Politics are deadlocked. Accords have become unviable because the country is divided by two contrary and reactive forces, between those who are enraged at the “caste” and are seeking a radical alternative, and those who are frightened by what they rightly consider to be a threat to their interests and prioritise attacking their rivals, while trying to convince us that they are fighting corruption.

At this point, the corruption and disrepute of the political class has resulted not only in the growth of Podemos, but is perceived as a curse even by the business community, which sees it as a hindrance to economic recovery.

A survey among the 500 participants at the recent National Congress of Family Business awarded only 1.08 out of 9 points to the political situation. Last year the result was 1.66 out of 9.

Democracy does not create corrupt people, but corrupt people end up corrupting democracy, and then corruption becomes a structural, systemic problem. Multiple abscesses turn into gangrene and after that, ending corruption means cleansing the entire system.

Fighting corruption is only possible in the broader context of political and institutional regeneration. So it seems to those who demand regeneration, and because they feel that the established parties are lacking in political will, they state their intention to vote for Podemos.

The anti-corruption measures proposed so far by the government are uninspiring and lack depth because they do not make the necessary connection between corruption and political regeneration. The opposition Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) goes further than the PP although its proposals are also inadequate and somewhat vague.

It is impossible to fight corruption effectively without reforming the bipartisan model, introducing internal democracy and carrying out a thorough reform of the system of justice to guarantee the independence of the judiciary, as judges and magistrates are demanding.

Political corruption goes hand-in-hand with the exercise of power, whether in Andalusia (PSOE), Catalonia (Convergence and Union), Valencia (PP) or Spain as a whole (PP). Therefore the existence of regulatory institutions, a real separation of powers, and free and independent media are essential for combating it.

Even if it is accepted that ending poverty and unemployment is more important than regeneration, I do not see how the former can be achieved without the latter.

The idea that the economic crisis has generated a political crisis is widespread, but the reverse is equally true, so we are up against the question of which came first, the chicken or the egg.

For a time, the Spanish government has tried to face the economic crisis, leaving aside the political crisis, with dire consequences. Unfortunately the Prime Minister does not take this view and believes instead that the long-heralded economic recovery will be the panacea for all ills. The results are clear for all to see. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

(Edited by Phil Harris)

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

In poorer Tegucigalpa neighbourhoods like Flor de Campo, the gangs mark the limits of their territories by hanging dolls from power cables. Credit: Thelma Mejía/IPS

By Thelma Mejía
TEGUCIGALPA, Nov 22 2013 (IPS)

The capital of Honduras, one of the world’s most violent countries, has turned into a huge cage, where people lock themselves into their homes behind barred windows and iron doors along the steep winding, narrow streets of the city.

And in the poor areas of Tegucigalpa, a city of 1.6 million, people have to make protection payments to the maras or gangs, which set curfews for entering and leaving the areas under their control.

In some of the poor neighbourhoods, the maras mark the limits of their territory by hanging dolls from the power lines, IPS saw.

In the Sunday Nov. 24 elections, 24, this society held hostage by soaring levels of violence crime will choose between hard-line zero tolerance and more integral approaches that take into account prevention and socioeconomic aspects, to combat the problem.

On average, 20 homicides a day are committed in this impoverished Central American country of 8.5 million people. In 2012 alone, 7,172 murders were committed, according to the Autonomous National University of Honduras’ Violence Observatory.

That makes Honduras the country with the highest homicide rate in the world, according to the latest ranking by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), with 96.1 murders per 100,000 population, compared to a global average of 8.8, a Latin American average of 29, and a Central American average of 41.

In Peña por Bajo, a poor neighbourhood on the south side of Tegucigalpa, the police announced with great fanfare three months ago that they had seized control of a dozen houses from the gangs. But a month ago, after the police had stopped patrolling the area, the maras destroyed the houses and the people who were living in them had to flee.

The people of Tegucigalpa are also fed up with extortion rackets – which not even the politicians escape. Candidates have told the media that they have had to pay “taxes” to criminals to be allowed to enter certain areas to campaign.

In the last four years, 2,607 people have also been displaced from their homes because of the violence, according to the United Nations refugee agency, the UNHCR.

Karim Vargas is tired of living in danger, and says she doesn’t know to what extent Sunday’s elections will change her life.

She lives in Peña por Bajo and works as a receptionist in a hotel. And although she wants security, she is not convinced that militarisation is the answer.

That is the proposal of the candidate of the governing right-wing National Party (PN),
Juan Orlando Hernández, who promises to be tough on crime.

Hernández, the president of Congress, which his party controls, is the architect of the recently created Military Police of Public Order (PMOP), which will carry out intelligence work to fight organised crime.

In October, the new force’s first 1,000 agents began to patrol the streets of Tegucigalpa and the second-largest city, San Pedro Sula, in the midst of the election campaign, without receiving training for their new policing and intelligence tasks.

“You feel a little bit safer when you see them in the streets,” said Vargas, 28, the mother of a two-year-old daughter. “But we know this won’t last, because when they leave, the mareros [gang-members] will come back and spread fear and everything will be the same again.

“It’s all politics, and that won’t save my life,” she told IPS.

Bringing down the rates of violence and crime is the most pressing issue in the campaign for the election of President Porfirio Lobo’s successor, who will take office Jan. 27.

Political analyst Ernesto Paz told IPS that Hernández, who promises the most aggressive approach to crime, is trying to convert “the vote to punish the government for its policies into a vote of fear; we’ll see if he manages to pull it off.”

The PN candidate told foreign correspondents: “I am going to bring back peace and tranquillity by the hands of the military police.”

Hernández is competing with seven other candidates from nine political parties, in elections that will mark the end of a two-party system and the emergence of a multi-colour array of political forces after decades of control by the PN and the Liberal Party (PL), a more moderate right-wing party.

Besides the PN and PL, the parties disputing the elections include the social democratic Innovation and Unity Party, the Christian Democrat Party, and the left-wing Democratic Unification party – all of which are smaller traditional parties.

But the political, social and institutional upheaval caused by the June 2009 coup that toppled then president Manuel Zelaya, leader of the PL at the time, led to the emergence of four new parties, which people who want change have pinned their hopes on.

The parties are the left-wing Freedom and Refoundation (Libre) party, created by Zelaya when he returned to the country from exile in 2011, the leftist Broad Front of Political and Electoral Resistance (FAPER), the centre-right Anticorruption Party, and the far-right Patriotic Alliance.

These elections will also mark an end to the institutional effects of the coup, because the elections that Lobo won four years ago were organised by a government that had taken power in a coup, and it took months for the new president to be recognised by the rest of Latin America and by the international community.

Libre, Zelaya’s party, stands a real chance of turning the PN and the PL into opposition parties. The party’s candidate is Zelaya’s wife, Xiomara Castro, who is neck and neck with Hernández according to the latest polls, carried out in October.

Castro has 29 percent poll ratings, compared to Hernández’s 27 percent, while the third in line, Mauricio Villeda of the PL, has recently seen his popularity spike, which has created a new sense of uncertainty about the outcome.

Castro, like Villeda, advocates an integral approach to fighting crime, which would combine police measures with prevention and rehabilitation. She proposes community policing, with agents who establish a closer relationship with the people in the neighbourhoods they patrol.

Ombudsman Ramón Custodio complained to IPS about the “politicisation of insecurity,” saying that tackling the problem is a priority for the state “and should not be a platform for generating votes.”

Custodio does not believe the problem will be solved by any of the candidates, no matter who is elected. He recommended that Honduras enter a new era of broad pacts and reforms, to avoid opening a “Pandora´s box” that would generate greater problems of governance.

Besides electing a new president Sunday, voters will choose three vice presidents, 128 legislators and their alternates, and the mayors of the country’s 298 municipalities.

A mural in Bushwick aims to raise awareness about residents' rights in dealing with the police. Credit: Kim-Jenna Jurriaans/IPS

By Kim-Jenna Jurriaans
NEW YORK, Aug 27 2013 (IPS)

A colourful mural occupies the full left side facade of a three-storey house on the corner of Irving and Gates Avenue in the Brooklyn neighbourhood of Bushwick. It depicts a group of youths taking cellphone footage of an arrest scene. Above it, a message reads, “You have the right to watch and film police activities.”

“We painted this mural to make people aware of their rights,” says 19-year-old Justin Serrano, who grew up in this predominantly Hispanic community, where about a third of households live below the poverty line.

The mural, painted by youths at Make the Road New York, a non-governmental organisation that offers community and youth-empowerment programmes in working-class communities across the city, reflects the prevalence of police in the lives of young people in Bushwick. It also provides insight into their relationship with the New York Police Department (NYPD) in their community."It makes me feel like I'm non-human."
-- Justin Serrano, on stop and frisk tactics

For youths growing up in communities of colour, such as Bushwick, that relationship over the last decade has been marked by one policing tactic in particular: Stop, Question and Frisk.

Stop and frisk, as it’s popularly known, allows police officers to stop and search persons under reasonable suspicion they are involved in criminal activity. It’s a staple tactic in New York’s zero-tolerance approach to policing and has become the modus operandi under the city’s last two mayors.

A high return rate?

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the city’s police commissioner Ray Kelly have credited the policy with a citywide decline in violent crime and 8,000 guns being taken off the streets.

Criminal justice scholars and civil liberties advocates, meanwhile, have long questioned the policy’s effectiveness and the police department’s predominant focus on poor communities of colour.

Available NYPD data shows that between 2003 and 2012, New York police performed close to five million stops. In roughly 88 percent of these stops, the subject was black or Hispanic.

In 90 percent of stops, police were unable to prove any wrongdoing. Last year alone, blacks and Hispanics were subject to nearly 400,000 innocent stops.

While the number of stops skyrocketed in recent years, gun recovery has been persistently low throughout the decade, at less than one percent of stops.

Collateral damage

Change seems to be on the horizon after two historic wins for police-reform advocates in New York this month, but community advocates and criminal justice scholars emphasise the collateral damage created by millions of innocent stops.

The explosive rise in the number of stops involving young men of colour has raised particular concern about the adverse impact on generations of youths growing up “overpoliced“, according to researcher Brett Stoudt, a psychology professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the CUNY Graduate Centre.

From 2008 to 2009, youths between the ages of 14 and 21 made up one-third of all stops while accounting for only one-tenth of the city’s population, one of his studies revealed.

Stoudt says that repeatedly being stopped under suspicion of criminal activity without having done anything wrong has a demoralising and disempowering effect on young people.

The high number of stops in select neighbourhoods also creates a “cyclical environment” by increasing the chances that youth in these communities “for one reason or another” are caught up in the criminal justice system, according to Stoudt, co-author of the recently report “Stop, Question and Frisk Policing Practices in New York City“.

For example, “during a stop, an officer may find a small amount of marijuana. Or [the young person] can get scared and they run,” he tells IPS.

Changing behaviour

“It makes me feel like I’m non-human,” says Serrano of the more than twenty times he’s been stopped. On one occasion, he was rushing home to bring medicine to his mom and ended up at the local precinct instead.

In New York, young people’s experiences with police don’t stop in the streets – they also extend into schools and residential buildings, where NYPD can legally be present.

This surveillance of all aspects of daily life can lead youth to significantly change their personal behaviour, says Stoudt, including not seeking help from police when they need it.

Sitting on a bench at a local playground, Serrano takes a minute from eating ice cream to offer advice to two younger friends pulling up on BMX bicycles.

“You gotta stop riding your bike, man,” he says. “Since I started riding my skateboard, I’ve been stopped way less.”

Serrano also stopped “hanging out” inside his community, he says. Instead, he meets his friends in a gentrified section of a nearby neighbourhood, where they are not bothered.

In the Brooklyn neighbourhood of Flatbush, a few miles south of Bushwick, Keron Gray says he avoids being outside with his “louder friends” and stays clear of routes where he is more likely to be stopped.

“It’s annoying,” says Gray. “When you’re shopping on Fifth Avenue [in Manhattan], that doesn’t happen.”

Is reform inevitable?

City officials have long defended the tactic of stop and frisk by pointing to a higher prevalence of violent crimes in target communities.

In a landmark decision on Aug. 12, U.S. District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin rejected that argument, ruling that the NYPD’s application of stop and frisk created “a policy of indirect racial profiling” that had violated the constitutional rights of non-whites.

Scheindlin, who found that “the racial composition of a precinct or census tract predicts the stop rate above and beyond the crime rate,” ordered a sweeping reform process.

Last week,  New York’s City Council overrode a mayoral veto and passed two bills that establish independent oversight over NYPD policies and expand legal recourse against bias-based profiling.

The NYPD did not respond to a request for comment. Meanwhile, Mayor Bloomberg, who has moved to appeal the federal ruling, has warned that both decisions will stifle police work and cause a surge in violent crime.

But between this month’s events and a new mayor taking office in 2014, reform seems inevitable for the nation’s largest police force.

For Serrano, however, some damage is irreparable. “The first time I was stopped, I was with my little brother… To this day, [he] sees me different[ly] – he sees me as a criminal.”

Women and children from the Mexican village where the Esparza family was murdered demand justice outside the schoolhouse. Credit: Mónica González /IPS

By Katelyn Fossett
WASHINGTON, Apr 19 2013 (IPS)

Development experts here are warning that widespread, unchecked violence against citizens in Latin America is posing a threat to the development of the entire region.

According to a high-level panel of development workers and government officials at the World Bank on Thursday, violence is increasing in the region, at odds with otherwise promising development gains, and that increase poses a real threat to Latin America’s fragile progress.

“Behind Latin America’s economic boom, there is a hidden wave of crime and violence that threatens a decade of progress hurting all citizens, particularly the poorest, who have no way of protecting themselves,” Hasan Tuluy, vice-president of the World Bank for Latin America and the Caribbean, said Thursday.

“I’m afraid that citizen insecurity is becoming the Achilles’ heel of development.”

The World Bank is currently holding its annual Spring Meetings here in Washington, together with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

At Thursday’s panel discussion, participants referred to an incident in El Salvador a little over a year ago, when the country’s two most powerful gangs called a truce. That single incident led to a 52-percent drop in killings, though only minor decreases in extortion, theft and drugs.

For many, the truce highlighted an extreme example of rampant violence, in which a few criminal groups had essentially supplanted government and neutered the rule of law entirely. In El Salvador, citizens’ rights are in the hands of a corrupt few, and any temporary calm – such as the truce – is a fragile peace.

“When there is [widespread] corruption, when the justice system can’t function … it makes it harder to draw the line between licit and illicit activity,” Joseph Bateman, a programme office at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), an advocacy group here, told IPS.

Experts say that unchecked crime poses a threat to public institutions and civil society, both of which are necessary to democratic growth and economic prosperity.

“Crime has tangible direct costs, such as the cost of funding private and public security infrastructure to prevent and combat crime,” Ana Corbacho, an economic advisor at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), told an audience Thursday.

“But the implications of crime on the region’s wellbeing are potentially much greater. Violence not only victimises individuals – it undermines trust in public institutions.”

The relationship between stronger law enforcement and development in Latin America has been the subject of recent development scholarship, which has picked up particularly following a call for proposals from the World Bank on methodologies to measure the cost of crime in the region.

One of the resulting studies found that in Mexico, municipalities with greater levels of violence associated with drug cartels had a 6.8 percent lower rate of electricity consumption – considered a proxy indicator for gross domestic product (GDP) – than did less violent municipalities.

In a study that took into account the opportunity costs for jail time and the cost of stolen goods, scholars found that crime cost Uruguay about 319 million dollars a year.

But the ripple effects of widespread crime stretch far beyond the immediate damage.

Another of the World Bank-commissioned studies found that incarcerated youths were 15 percent less likely to have access to formal education, undercutting an otherwise growing trend of expanding educational access in the region.

More attention is also being focused on the effects of gender violence on early infant health and nutrition. Women in abusive households, for instance, are more likely to give birth to underweight children, and children of domestic abuse victims are more likely to grow up with feeble health.

Labyrinth of insecurity

Thursday’s panel emphasised the need for a broader framework for approaching the issue of citizen insecurity, a term that itself implies a move from a focus on criminal justice and law enforcement to crime prevention.

“There was a time when the reaction to increased violence was increased law enforcement,” Pablo Bachelet, a senior communications officer for the Inter-American Development Bank, a Washington-based multilateral donor, told IPS.

“And now we’re finding out that we need a more holistic and integrated approach – community services, youth services, available community spaces, job opportunities.”

Bachelet cited the example of what is known as Pacifying Police Units, a law enforcement and social services programme that was pioneered in Brazil in 2008. The units cleared out gang leaders as well as gang weapon and drug stashes in Rio de Janeiro’s most crime-laden neighbourhoods.

That process was then followed up immediately with the coordination of public agencies, NGOs and the private sector to meet the social needs of the community in the vacuum that followed, in order to ensure that the drop in violence was sustainable.

“[Citizen security] tries to change the focus from combating crime to protecting citizens,” WOLA’s Bateman told IPS.

Mauricio Funes, the president of El Salvador and a keynote speaker at Thursday’s World Bank event, laid out the key components of these integrated approaches, looking to a reform initiative already underway in the small country that is yielding slow but steady results.

The reforms, aimed at both preventing crime and strengthening institutions, included increasing the number of police officers, introducing new prevention policies (from youth centres to employment programmes), strengthening institutions, and eliminating corruption throughout the criminal justice system.

“There is no single response to [this] challenge, but we can find a way out of this labyrinth of insecurity,” President Funes said Thursday. “Reducing crime and ensuring justice will be the main tasks of our time.”

Carlos Mojica, surrounded by other gang members in the Cojutepeque prison. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR, Aug 25 2012 (IPS)

The two main youth gangs in El Salvador and the government have exchanged the main points they would like to discuss in talks aimed at bringing to an end to two decades of spiraling criminal violence. But the media, legislators and the public at large remain hostile to the possible start of negotiations.

The leaders of Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18, who are in different prisons, made the first move, presenting the government of centre-left President Mauricio Funes with the demands they would want to include on the agenda of eventual negotiations.

In public, the government still rejects the possibility of sitting down to talk with the “maras” or gangs, principally because of the potential political fallout from an initiative that is not widely accepted, say analysts who spoke to IPS.

But the Funes administration has also provided the gang leaders with its list of proposals to be discussed in what would be the second phase of efforts towards curbing the violence in El Salvador – after the current contacts, which are preliminary and indirect, but with facilitators on both sides.

In March, the two maras agreed to a ceasefire between themselves and against the police, the military and civilians. Since then, the number of homicides in this impoverished Central American nation of 6.2 million people, up to then one of the most violent countries in the world, has been drastically reduced: from 12 to 14 a day to five or six.

“We believe the process is moving forward, although there are hurdles, there are obstacles, there are people and entities opposed to it,” the leader of one of the two factions of Barrio 18, Carlos Mojica, told IPS. Mojica is taking part in the preliminary, indirect negotiations with the government from a prison near the capital where he is doing time.

The gangs first emerged in the United States, created by Salvadoran refugees fleeing the 1980-1992 civil war. When many of the gang members were deported, they began to recruit youngsters living in the slums in this country, and the maras grew into violent organisations dedicated to extortion, kidnapping and drug trafficking.

The local media, which are mainly conservative, act as a sounding board for the broad public opposition to negotiations between the government and the maras, as do most of the members of the single-chamber Congress. But the media and the legislature both play a key role when it comes to accepting proposals set forth by the gangs.

The government’s role in the truce between the two maras is not clear. But it was generally understood to have acted as a facilitator. In March, some gang leaders were transferred to medium-security prisons – a move that analysts saw as part of the process that gave rise to an agreement.

Some of the gang leaders’ proposals for negotiations have to do with changes to legislation that currently excludes the members of maras from privileges like parole for inmates who are suffering from terminal illnesses or are over 65 years old.

“Look what they are asking for: changing the laws. That shows the power achieved by these groups,” analyst Dagoberto Gutiérrez told IPS.

According to official estimates, there are some 60,000 gang members in El Salvador, not counting the 10,000 who are in prison.

Other demands are even less likely to be accepted, such as the repeal of the anti-gang law approved by Funes himself in 2010, which outlaws the very existence of the maras.

Experts agree that the law, which focuses on law enforcement approaches to cracking down on gangs, has failed to generate results, just like past legislation based on a “zero tolerance” approach.

For example, it allows the police to arrest anyone suspected of belonging to a gang. However, the suspect must be released if there is no evidence that he or she committed a crime.

“Article 3 of the constitution stipulates that no one can be discriminated against because of race, sex or other consideration. But they do discriminate against us,” Mojica told IPS, surrounded by around 100 gang members held in the prison in the city of Cojutepeque, 36 km east of San Salvador.

“The Ley de Proscripción de Pandillas (anti-gang law) is unconstitutional,” he added.

The gangs are also demanding the repeal of articles that require that gang members classified as highly dangerous be held in isolation in special prisons.

These gang members are concentrated in the prison in the central Salvadoran city of Zacatecoluca, where they are held in total isolation. The facility is popularly known as “Zacatraz”, in reference to the notorious federal U.S. prison on an island in San Francisco Bay, which was closed in 1963. Mojica was held in the Zacatecoluca prison until March.

The mara leaders also want the elimination of the sentence reduction to which witnesses are entitled if they testify against others allegedly involved in a crime.

Prosecutors heavily rely on the sentence reduction mechanism to secure the conviction of gang members, who pack the cells of El Salvador’s overcrowded prisons.

But members of the maras say the mechanism is abused, and cases are thrown together with insufficient evidence.

They also want the suspension of police operations in areas with a heavy gang presence – an idea that is especially resisted by the communities in question and society in general.

“The police have a constitutional mandate to fight crime, and a halt to these operations in those areas cannot be considered,” commented Mauricio Figueroa, executive director of the Fundación Ideas y Acciones para la Paz Quetzalcoatl (Quetzalcoatl Ideas and Actions Peace Foundation).

“This could be an obstacle that could trip up the talks,” he told IPS.

For his part, Raúl Mijango, a former guerrilla commander and former legislator who is acting as a facilitator or mediator in this first preliminary and indirect phase of a possible negotiation process, assured IPS that these suggestions are not seen as “points of honour” by the gang members.

In July, the leaders of the two maras read out their petitions in private to Organisation of American States (OAS) Secretary-General José Miguel Insulza, who visited the country to learn about the pre-negotiation process.

These points were reported by the blog Política Stéreo.

Insulza promised to act as a guarantor of the agreement already reached and any future accords.

On Jul. 31, the Diario de Hoy newspaper published the list of proposals that the government presented to the gangs, which included a complete halt to all crimes in which people are killed or injured, and of kidnapping, extortion, robbery and drug sales.

Studies show that the gangs have been strengthened financially by means of drug trafficking and dealing, and especially extortion, which targets the civilian population indiscriminately, regardless of social class.

Extortion – for example, demands for protection money from bus drivers – was not suspended after March, and this has further dampened any possible public faith in the truce and in eventual negotiations, said the analysts consulted by IPS.

The government also proposes that all members of gangs involved in crimes or wanted by the authorities turn themselves in voluntarily, and suggests the handing over of all illegally-owned firearms or explosives.

In addition, it wants the gangs to reveal the whereabouts of the clandestine cemeteries where they bury their victims to hide all evidence of the murders.

The authorities reported that of the 680 people missing in the first half of the year, only 317 have been found.