international SATURDAY, MARCH 31, 2012
Mexico’s Pena Nieto vows to restore peace Ruling party struggles to retain power
SAN PEDRO SULA: Police officers stand guard outside the front of the San Pedro Sula prison in northern Honduras, hours after a fight between two rival groups originated a fire and caused the death of at least 13 people on Thursday. The incident happened less than two months after a deadly prison blaze killed more than 350. — AFP
Thirteen dead in new Honduras prison fire TEGUCIGALPA: At least 13 people died Thursday in a Honduras prison fire, officials said, less than two months after a deadly prison blaze killed more than 350. “There are 13 bodies. We have not yet been able to identify the circumstances of the incident” at the San Pedro Sula prison in the north of the country, said Marleny Vanegas, of the city prosecutor’s office. “We will have to await the results of the investigation.” According to initial reports by the authorities, the detainees themselves put out the fire with buckets of water. Earlier, police spokesman Walter Amaya had put the death toll at one. Officials said the fire was rapidly brought under control. “We have regained control of the prison,” Amaya said. Amaya said rival groups of detainees seemed to have cause the fire, but cautioned he was awaiting the results of the investigation for further details. Local media reports spoke of as many as 20 killed, and said the fire broke out after inmates attacked and beheaded a prisoner who had been appointed by wardens to impose discipline. Security Minister Pompeyo Bonilla said the fire at the facilitywhich was built for 800 inmates but currently holds 2,250 — had “once again highlighted the critical situation” in the country’s overcrowded prisons. A horrific fire erupted on February 14 at a prison in Comayagua, some 90 kilometers (55 miles) north of the capital Tegucigalpa. The incident, in which 361 people were killed, was one of the world’s deadliest prison blazes ever, and underscored the problem of overcrowding in Latin American jails. Agents from the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) concluded that the Comayagua fire was accidental, but US ambassador to Honduras Lisa Kubiske also said official “negligence” and “legal violations” were to blame, due to overcrowding at the facility. In May 2004, another fire at the San Pedro Sula prison left 107 people dead. The country’s prison system is considered a looming disaster by observers, with some 13,000 people held in facilities designed for just 8,000. Honduras’s second city, San Pedro Sula is considered one of the most violent in the world by the United Nations. It is frequently the site of armed clashes between rival drug traffickers and their armed units, the ultraviolent “maras” gangs of youths who often bear numerous tattoos.— AFP
GUADALAJARA: Mexican presidential front-runner Enrique Pena Nieto vowed to quell the growing violence engulfing his country as the campaign for the July 1 election took off yesterday with the ruling conservatives struggling to retain power. Pena Nieto, of the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), is hot favorite to succeed President Felipe Calderon, whose term in office has been dominated by the government’s struggle to bring brutal drug cartels to heel. Addressing a crowd of around 30,000 supporters in the western city of Guadalajara after midnight, Pena Nieto promised to restore peace in Mexico and end the criminal violence that has claimed over 50,000 lives in the last five years. “We’re starting a campaign to win the presidency of the republic, but more importantly, we’re starting a movement to wake up minds to change Mexico,” he said in a square in the old colonial part of Mexico’s second city. “Mexico has been wounded by the lawlessness and violence,” he said. “Many people’s lives are afflicted by worry, and what’s worse, they’re living in fear.” Calderon’s conservative National Action Party, or PAN, has been battered by the bloody clashes between drug cartels and security forces, as well as its failure to reduce the number of poor and create enough jobs for Mexico’s growing population. Roughly half of the country lives in poverty, which is blamed for fuelling the spiraling violence that has rattled tourists and investors under Calderon’s watch. Calderon, who is barred by law from seeking a second term, staked his reputation on defeating the drug-trafficking gangs, but his army-led offensive has only led to more murders, kidnappings and robberies in Mexico. Drug-related murders leapt from 2,826 in 2007 - Calderon’s first full year in office - to 15,273 in 2010, and by another 11 percent in the first nine months of 2011, government data shows. For more than two years, the race to succeed Calderon has been led by the 45year-old Pena Nieto, who was governor of the State of Mexico next to the capital
between 2005 and 2011. Pena Nieto said he would lift 15 million people out of poverty, improve education and triple economic growth to create jobs. “We need someone who really knows how to govern, and he is someone who can,” said social worker Graciela Gonzalez. His cause has been aided by voter fatigue with the PAN, which has
“For me there’s no option. Negotiating or making deals with criminals is criminal itself. I’m not going to make deals with criminals,” she said, playing upon PAN claims that the PRI has in the past forged accords with gangsters to keep the peace. And there would be no return to the past, she added. “We won’t be subject to
GUADALAJARA: Mexican presidential candidate Enrique Pena Nieto (R) from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), speaks with his wife Angelica Rivera during the start of his presidential campaign, at Guadalajara square esplanade in Guadalajara, state of Jalisco, early yesterday. Mexico will hold presidential elections next July 1, 2012. — AFP failed to live up to the high hopes Mexicans had when the party ended 71 years of often corrupt PRI rule in 2000. Poll after poll has given Pena Nieto a double digit lead over PAN rival Josefina Vazquez Mota, despite a string of gaffes and the revelation in January that he had cheated on his first wife and fathered two children out of wedlock. Vazquez Mota, the first woman to be nominated for the presidency by one of Mexico’s three main political parties, also kicked off her campaign at midnight, in Mexico City. Addressing a much smaller rally at PAN campaign headquarters, the petite Vazquez Mota pledged to continue the party’s firm line on crime.
authoritarianism again. We won’t accept a Mexico of corruption and impunity again,” she said. Yet the PAN, a party once renowned for its disciplined, united front in presidential campaigns has been rocked by infighting and scandal, damaging her bid. Pena Nieto’s other main adversary, the 2006 runner-up Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, is campaigning hard again for the top job after claiming he was robbed by Calderon six years ago. But the fiery leftist alienated many former supporters with massive street protests he launched in the capital after that close result, and he trails in third place.—Reuters
US lawyers tested in court over anti-terrorism act NEW YORK: Lawyers for the Obama administration were put to the test by a US judge on Thursday to explain why civilian activists and journalists should not fear being detained under a new anti-terrorism law. Activists and journalists are suing the government to try to stop implementation of the law’s provisions of indefinite detention for those deemed to have “substantially supported” al Qaeda and the Taleban and “associated forces.” Government lawyers argued in federal court in New York that the plaintiffs did not have standing to challenge the
National Defense Authorization Act’s “Homeland Battlefield” provisions signed into law by President Barack Obama in December. During day-long oral arguments, US District Judge Katherine Forrest heard lawyers for former New York Times war correspondent and Pulitzer Prize winner Chris Hedges and others argue that the law would have a “chilling effect” on their work. While the judge said she was skeptical that the plaintiffs would win a constitutional challenge to the act, she also said she wanted to “understand the meaning to the ordinary citizen.” “I can’t
take the statute and strike it down for what it says, but can Hedges and others be detained for contacting al Qaeda or the Taleban as reporters?” she said. Hedges told the court that “I don’t think we know what ‘associated forces’ are. That’s why I’m here.” The lawsuit, filed in January, cited Obama’s statement of his “serious reservations with certain provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation, and prosecution of suspected terrorists” when he signed the act. Forrest asked Assistant US Attorney Benjamin Torrance if “associated forces” could be interpreted in different ways.
Torrance said the plaintiffs were “taking phrases out of context” and that the law specifically applied to those found to have ties to al Qaeda and the Taleban. “What does substantially supported mean? How much is enough? When are someone’s activities substantial or insubstantial?” the judge asked. Torrance told her he did not have a specific example and said “it is not proper for plaintiffs to come in and say they are chilled and what not.” He emphasized that the activity would “have to take place in the context of armed conflict.” The judge did not immediately rule on the motion.— Reuters