Politics

Unidentified people set fire to NLD headquarters

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YANGON, Myanmar – Unidentified people threw a burning torch into National League for Democracy headquarters in Bahan township at 4am Friday.

Neighbors put out the flames using buckets of water and fire extinguishers after finding there was no water available for nearby hydrants. After they had put out the fire, the local fire service arrived, which also did not bring water with them.

“The strange thing was that the water was cut off,” one bystander told Myanmar Now. “There was no water supply at all around the office. There was no water from the hydrants when we tried to put out the fire. We had to use buckets of water. It’s lucky that there were fire extinguishers ready.”

There was some structural damage as well as damage to office furniture.

NLD representatives said they would report the arson to the police.

The NLD Party was formed after the 1988 democratic revolution. Standing as an opposition party, the NLD party entered the parliamentary by-election in 2012.

By Htay Win
Photo credit Myanmar now

Mercosur meeting that promised incorporation of Bolivia to the group results in an invitation to Uruguay to ‘jump ship’

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Argentinian president Alberto Fernandez, who has spent the last weeks leading up to the current Mercosur virtual summit promising to work to incorporate Bolivia into the bloc as a member-in-full, took a complaint from the Uruguayan president and flippled into an invitation to leave the group.

Uruguay’s Luis Lacalle Pou said, “It should not be a burden, we are not willing to make it a corset in which our country cannot move, that is why we have talked about flexibility,” in a speech referencing Argentina’s opposition to negotiations outside the group.

The speech was fiery and so was Fernandez’s response, “We don’t want to be anyone’s burden. For me, it is an honor to be part of Mercosur … If it is a burden, the easiest thing is to abandon ship.”

Uruguay is one of the four founding remembers of the 30-year-old group. Bolivia has been in observer status since the 1990s and its president announced at the summit, the country’s “immediate willingness to carry out the tasks necessary to assume full membership,” a step that requires the approval of Brazil.

The meeting will continue on April 22.

By Milan Sime Martinic

Photos of Bolivian ex-president in prison keep making the media, daughter charges ‘psychological and physical torture’

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Jeanine Añez is held by Bolivian courts as a “flight risk” and because of fear she might “interfere with investigations,” but her daughter Carolina Ribera says that by allowing pictures of the jailed former leader prison authorities are interfering with her mother’s privacy in actions that amount to psychological and emotional torture, and “physical harassment.”

Ribera says the ruling MAS party is using her mother as a political trophy and “so they believe they have the right to violate her in all those ways.”

“It is a type of harassment to take her pictures clandestinely, without her authorization, to Photoshop it, edit, and to publish it in all the networks and to tell lies about her. It is because of this that my mother is suffering physical and emotional torture,” said her daughter in a television interview decrying a widely published picture of her mother on her prison bed, eating. The picture was later shown to be Photoshopped with the addition of fries and a Burger King bag. This was relevant because Añez has claimed health issues with high blood pressure and, according to a Bolivian verification site, she was eating an avocado and not fried fast foods.

“She is feeling harassed in this form because this generates certain rejection, certain discomfort in the condition in which she is because she feels invaded,” charged her daughter.

Añez is being held in La Paz’s Miraflores Women’s prison among high-security inmates who are serving sentences of more than 8 years.

By Milan Sime Martinic

Policy paper by US-Brazil think tank recommends Biden cut ties with Bolsonaro

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Recommendations arriving at the White House this week from NGOs and experts comprising the US Network for Democracy in Brazil, USNDB, request the Biden administration suspend all political and economic agreements, negotiations, and alliances made with the Bolsonario regime.

In a 31-page document, written by professors from 10 universities, directors of NGOs such as Greenpeace and Amazon Watch, and endorsed by 100 academics from universities, organizations, and activists, USNDB supports the recommendations with high criticism of the authoritarian tendencies of Presidents Donald Trump and Bolsonaro. The paper also advises the US to restrict imports of wood, soy, and meat from Brazil, until it can be confirmed are not linked to deforestation and human rights abuses.

By Milan Sime Martinic

Sentencing memorandum in US case says Honduran president ‘played a leadership role in a violent, state-sponsored drug trafficking conspiracy’

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A pre-sentence report submitted by US Attorneys against Tony Hernández, brother of current Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, describes the president participating firsthand in his brother’s cocaine smuggling ring and taking bribes.

The president’s brother was convicted of trafficking “multi-ton loads of cocaine” through Honduras by plane, boat, and helicopter and using government forces to secure drug shipments.

A statement by US Attorney Audrey Strauss says the convicted Hernandez is a “ruthless, powerful, and murderous cocaine trafficker” who “facilitated the shipment of large loads of cocaine by bribing Juan Orlando Hernández.”

According to transcripts from trial closing arguments, US Attorneys charged that the defendant paid bribes to the president as recently as 2019,.and that the president “did not only want the cash, he wanted access to the defendant’s cocaine.”

It is unusual for US prosecutors to name sitting heads of government in criminal cases, but the president is named directly 58 times in court documents.

By Milan Sime Martinic

Bangladesh sentences 14 Islamists to death for attempting to kill prime minister in 2000

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Nine operatives of the outlawed Harkatul Jihad Bangladesh, HuJI-B, were in court Tuesday, five others on the run, as the sentence was pronounced by a judge at the Dhaka Speedy Trial tribunal-1 for placing a 170-lb bomb where the prime minister’s helicopter was scheduled to land in Gopalganj district in July 2000. The plot failed because security forces detected the device.

“The verdict will be executed by a firing squad to set an example unless the law barred it,” the judge said. The prevailing practice is execution by hanging. For the five on the lam, the judge said their sentence would be executed upon arrest or surrender.

The condemned have the right to appeal.

By Milan Sime Martinic

Marches to demand resignation of Paraguayan president after he dodges impeachment

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President Mario Abdo Benitez survived a congressional vote to oust him, but the country’s National Coordination of Peasant and Indigenous Organizations is organizing marches on the capital, Asuncion, to demand his resignation for “ineptitude and corruption” in failing to prevent and mismanaging the large scale health crisis that has left the country overwhelmed.

Congress is dominated by Benitez’s Colorado political party and it voted 42 to 36 to reject impeachment. However, since then hundreds of protesters, including doctors and nurses, have been gathering outside the legislature, demanding his resignation, and are expected to be joined by the marchers this March 25.

By Milan Sime Martinic

Turmoil in Congo as main opposition leader dies after becoming sick during presidential election

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Opposition candidate Guy-Brice Parfait Kolelas, who had charged that Congo has become a “police state,” died while being evacuated to France for treatment, announced his campaign manager. The Congolese Constitution provides for a postponement if a candidate dies or is unable to participate in the vote, but his death was announced hours after the closing of the polls Sunday.

There was uncertainty before the election as a video of Kolelas wearing an oxygen mask and making a statement circulated as the hospital confirmed he tested positive for coronavirus.

“My dear compatriots, I am in trouble. I am fighting death,” the candidate says in the video statement. “However, I ask you to stand up and vote for change. I would not have fought for nothing.”

By Milan Sime Martinic

China buys nearly 4 million tons of corn from the US in 4 days, in possible political move

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A purchase of 800k tons Friday topped a volume greater than 100k for the fourth time this week, resulting in interim purchases of 3.876 million tons, announced the USDA. All sales made on a single same day to the same destination with volumes over 100k tons are required to be reported to the department.

It may not be what it seems, however. “Recent purchases, of almost 4 million tons, may have a more political than commercial motivation, since of the total already committed on behalf of China in the USA– 23.6 million tons–only 7.8 million tons have been loaded so far, suggesting that their need for corn would not be an emergency or immediate,” say analysts at Agrinvest Commodities.

Corn prices have declined in recent years despite deals with China, which is expected to become the world’s largest corn importer due to its increasing purchases of the animal feed after storms and drought damaged their local supply. While farm bankruptcies have been on the increase, up 25% in 2019 alone, and with the debt-to-asset ratio for farms steadily increasing for the past 15 years, the recent large purchases of corn are driving up corn prices globally, and may even contribute to food inflation in some economies.

By Milan Sime Martinic

Peru’s ex-president Vizcarra to avoid prison, for now; only second president since 1985 to do so

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After being impeached for “moral incapacity” last November, Peru’s attorney general asked for 18 months of preventative prison while Martín Vizcarra is investigated for corruption charges, but a judge this week ruled he can remain free during the investigation, with certain restrictions such as no travel outside his home area and having to appear in court when required.

The country has a political system that has been described as cannibalistic, which has devoured the ambitions of those who achieved its highest political office and set up an amazing President-to-prison conveyor that has ensnared all but one of its presidents since 1985. Persecution, prosecution, prison–Peru is one of the most frequent presidential impeachers of all countries on Earth.

Vizcarra, who was president since 2018, has had 21 of his properties seized by the country’s attorney general office to guarantee eventual payment of reparations that may be ordered by the courts, said the AG’s office as it announced it will appeal the ruling.

By Milan Sime Martinic

Jailed former Bolivian president taken to clinic with out-of-control blood pressure

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Jeanine Anez, accused of insurrection that allowed her to become president, was taken by ambulance from the La Paz woman’s prison to a private clinic for treatment. She was at the central prison instead of receiving the usual treatment for a former head of state because the government says she is being accused of crimes committed before she assumed the presidency, namely being a part of a purported coup d’etat. She claims political persecution.

“She has gotten sick–unbalanced,” said the prison warden, referring to what others have said is unbalanced blood pressure. “Doctors will let us know the situation.”

By Milan Sime Martinic

Imprisoned Bolivian president says government is violating her rights as a woman and former head of state as government ups the charges and judge orders her held for 4 months

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In appeals for oversight to the UN, the EU and the US, former Bolivian President Jeanine Anez, charged with sedition, says the government is ignoring her human rights. Former president Evo Morales has called on Twitter for punishment and those he says conspired in a coup to take him out of office in 2019.

Prosecutors now say she is not being held as an ex-president but for her actions prior to assuming the office; they have added new allegations that she forced the presidents of the upper and lower houses of Bolivia to resign so that she could take over as next-in-line.

By Milan Sime Martinic