Mexican journalist found dead

Authorities believe Regina Martínez, who often wrote about drug cartels in Veracruz, was murdered

guardian.co.uk, Associated Press in Veracruz, Sunday 29 April 2012

Police and residents outside Regina Martínez's house in the Felipe
Carrillo neighbourhood in Xalapa. Photograph: Reuters

A correspondent for the Mexican news magazine Proceso has been found dead inside her home in Veracruz state. Authorities believe the journalist, who often wrote about drug trafficking, was murdered.

Regina Martínez's body was found by police inside the bathroom of her home in the state capital, Xalapa, and there were signs of heavy blows to her face and body, the state's attorney general's office said in a statement. Authorities said initial evidence suggested she died of asphyxiation.

Martínez was the Xalapa correspondent for Proceso, one of Mexico's oldest and most respected investigative news magazines, and she often wrote about drug cartels in the area. Proceso said in a news story on its website that she had worked there for 10 years.

Authorities provided no possible motive for her killing.

The Veracruz government spokeswoman Gina Dominguez said agents were searching Martínez's home late on Saturday for evidence.

"All lines of investigation will be exhausted. The fact that she was a journalist is one of them," she said.

Recently Veracruz has been plagued by cartel violence, some of it between the powerful Zetas and the so-called Jalisco Cartel New Generation, which is believed to be linked to the Sinaloa cartel. The coastal state is also on a human trafficking route north to the United States.

The Veracruz governor, Javier Duarte, has ordered an exhaustive investigation into her death, he said in a statement.

Police found Martínez's body after receiving a tip from a neighbour that her house had been left open since early in the day.

In the past year, at least three journalists have been found dead in Veracruz, including Martínez.

In July 2011, a reporter on police matters with the newspaper Notiver, Yolanda Ordaz de la Cruz, was found with her throat cut.

A month earlier, gunmen killed Miguel Angel Lopez Velasco, a columnist and deputy editor with Notiver. He was shot together with his wife and one of his children.

Media watchdogs consider Mexico one of the most dangerous countries in which to be a journalist.

There is disagreement on the number of journalist killings. Mexico's national human rights commission says 74 were killed from 2000 to 2011. The New-York-based Committee to Protect Journalists says 51 were killed in that time.

Related Article:

Latin America looks back on a tradition of violence

Latin America looks back on a tradition of violence

Deutsche Welle, 27 April 2012

Murder, rape and mutilations are common crimes in Latin America, considered one of the most violent areas in the world today. Is the violence a legacy of the region's bloody past? A new study examines the phenomenon.

UN figures show that in Mexico alone, more than 20,000 people were murdered in 2010. In Guatemala, an average of 41 murders per 100,000 residents were committed, in El Salvador, this figure was even 66. In comparison: in Germany, not even one murder - 0.8 cases - per 100,000 people takes place.

The three Latin American countries have all experienced political conflict in their recent past: violent civil wars took place in El Salvador and Guatemala in the 1980s and 1990s. Mexico experienced in the early 1990s an armed uprising of the Zapatistas against the government.

The conflicts in these countries are all considered over for at least a decade now. The violence which still prevails is primarily perceived as being not politically motivated but rather criminal. This is a reason why the continent has hardly played a role in discussions about post-war and post-conflict societies, said Sabine Kurtenbach, author of the paper "The specific features of Latin American post-conflict situations" for the Institute for Development and Peace (INEF) at the University of Duisburg-Essen.

Kurtenbach, an INEF associate fellow, said the experience of war or armed conflict was not an adequate explanation for the high degree of violence in the region. If this were the case, all post-war and post-conflict societies would have such problems, she said.

Kurtenbach is also a senior research
 fellow at Hamburg's GIGA Institute of Latin
American Studies

The causes of violence are complex, according to Kurtenbach's study. In countries such as El Salvador and Guatemala, the experience of war and armed conflict represent a significant factor. The oppressive policies of these governments are accompanied by a lack of willingness to resolve the large gap between poor and rich. Social inequality continued to be a significant factor for the high level of violence in Latin America.

Growing cities and a weak state

Other factors are the speed of urban growth and the dissolution of traditional social ties due to migration into the cities. Criminal youth gangs often take over a substitute role for the family.

However, compared to the usual flight from the countryside into the cities, migration following armed conflicts is significantly more problematic, since a mainly traumatized population in a region is affected.

"This makes the urbanization even more complicated than the classic form due to social change," Kurtenbach said. The risk of violence was increased, since the state for the most part cannot provide the migrants with adequate infrastructure. Organized crime, such as international drug trade, had also led to an increase in violence.

"Transnational networks do not simply spread into a vacuum, but rather go there where there are favorable local factors," Kurtenbach said. A weak state made it possible, especially when the legal system did not function adequately.

Members of the Mara-18 gang behind bars in El Salvador

"Where violence is hardly prosecuted and sanctioned or where state institutions themselves consider violence a legitimate means, incentives are created to employ violence," said Peter Imbusch, an expert for conflict and violence research at the University of Wuppertal.

In post-war societies or countries formerly ruled by military dictatorships, it was an added predicament when the state security apparatus was part of conflicts, Kurtenbach said. This particularly put into question the ability to reform the security sector. This concretely concerned the downsizing of armed forces, the demilitarization of the police, the subordination of the military under civil institutions, as well as the strengthening of the justice system. Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador continue to struggle to implement planned reforms.

A culture of violence

Just how much a country deals with its past is a decisive point for its development after a conflict has ended. This is the only way for a society to agree that violence is no longer a legitimate means, Kurtenbach said. But it was not necessarily the case that the inclination to use violence automatically ceased when an armed conflict ended, Imbusch said.

"Violence does not simply emerge in a society that is in a post-conflict situation, but apparently violence is somehow virulent in some form there," he said. However, there were also structures which generally favored violence, for example the "machismo" culture where violence is considered a legitimate means of defending oneself.

The battle against violence in the region can only be won in the long term, Imbusch said. It was important to ease tensions in troubled hotspots through new education and leisure possibilities. This was a good opportunity for German development cooperation.

Bogota is trying to clean up its streets

In addition, urban development measures could improve the situation, such as is the case in Colombia's capital Bogota. The mayors there across the political spectrum have spent years successfully winning back public space. Dark streets and squares, for example, are better illuminated, so people dare to go back onto the streets again.

Both Kurtenbach and Imbusch agreed that state-imposed repressive measures only have a limited effect, if at all. They often tend to lead to an escalation of the conflicts instead. This was evident in the fight of the Mexican government against drug cartels. Since 2006, at least 50,000 civilians have been killed in the drug war between the military and rival drug cartels.

Author: Christina Ruta / sac

Editor: Michael Knigge

Brooklyn DA refuses to release details of Orthodox sex abuse suspects

Refusal to grant FOI request marks admission by Charles Hynes that suspected Orthodox child abusers receive special treatment

guardian.co.uk, Zoë Blackler in New York, Thursday 26 April 2012

Charles Hynes's refusal comes as New York judges ruled for a mistrial
 in the case of Baruch Lebovits (above). Photograph: New York Daily
News/Getty Images

Brooklyn district attorney Charles Hynes has refused a freedom of information request for details of child sex abuse prosecutions in the Orthodox Jewish community, amid questions over the veracity of his arrest figures.

The refusal coincides with the collapse of his most vaunted prosecution after appellate court judges ruled on Thursday for a mistrial in the case of Baruch Lebovits, sentenced in 2010 to a maximum 32-year jail term.

Lebovits was convicted in March 2010 of abusing a 16-year-old boy. The DA's office said it is prepared to retry the case. But victims' advocates say his mistrial is a major setback in their efforts to encourage other child sex victims to risk community censure and come forward. Advocate Joel Engelman said the decision was "extremely demoralising".

The Guardian reported last month that the DA was facing accusations that he has failed to tackle up the cover-up of abuse in Brooklyn's Orthodox community – the largest Orthodox community in the world outside Israel. Rabbinic leaders are accused of hampering efforts to uncover abuse, and many victims face intimidation and threats to prevent them pressing charges.

The Guardian and the Jewish Forward paper had submitted freedom of information (FOI) requests for details of cases. But this week Hynes's office informed the Forward that it was denying its request, because the close-knit nature of the Orthodox community meant disclosing the names of defendants would reveal the identities of the victims. The DA's spokesman, Jerry Schmetterrer, confirmed that the Guardian's request would also be refused on the same grounds.

The statement refusing the FOI request marks the first admission by Hynes that suspected child abusers from the Orthodox Jewish community receive exceptional treatment.

Hynes's policy clarification follows recent claims to have radically increased prosecutions through his Kol Tzedek outreach effort. Kol Tzedek, which features a victims' hotline staffed by a culturally sensitive social worker, aims to encourage reporting of sexual assaults and to break the cover-up of child sex abuse by the Orthodox Jewish community.

The DA credits the initiative, which began in April 2009, with a surge in arrests. In January, the DA said the tally now stood at "over 90" arrests, a figure confirmed again this week by his spokesman.

Of the 38 cases closed by November last year, 23 had concluded in guilty pleas and six in trial convictions with nine dismissals and acquittals, Schmetterer said. Fourteen of the convictions resulted in jail time. But at least nine of the arrests ascribed to Kol Tzedek were in fact made before April 2009.

The Guardian has learned of five: Stefan Colmer, extradited from Israel in 2008, Yona Weinberg, indicted in 2008, Emanuel Yegutkin, arrested in January 2009, Moshe Spitzer, arrested in March 2009, and Baruch Lebovits, whose landmark conviction was overturned this week and who was indicted in 2008. The DA's spokesperson confirmed in writing last month that all five men were being counted as Kol Tzedek arrests.

The Jewish Week knows of a further four arrests inaccurately credited to Kol Tzedek: one convicted of attempting to kidnap an Hispanic girl, arrested in 2007; another in mental health facility and unfit to proceed, arrested 2008; a third who violated his probation and was reconvicted in 2009, first arrested 2002; and Yehuda Kolko, whose case in 2008 saw him plead guilty to misdemeanor child endangerment, not a sex crime. Kolko is currently being prosecuted for criminal contempt.

Schmetterer refused to answer questions from the Guardian. "I have nothing to say to you," he said. "You have the (FOI) letter. I have nothing to add."

The FOI response – set out in a letter signed by assistant district attorney Morgan Dennehy – appears to explain an apparent misinterpretation of a civil rights statute previously used by the DA to explain why case information was being withheld from public scrutiny.

Earlier responses from the DA's office have cited New York Civil Rights Law 50B, which protects the privacy of sex crime victims. 50B prohibits the release of documents that could identify a victim. It does not, however, restrict the release of case files in which the victims' names or other revealing information has been redacted, said Martin Guggenheim, professor of clinical law at NYU. "To my knowledge," Guggenheim said, "the law permits the disclosure of reports so long as the public official does so in a manner that ensures that the identity of the victim cannot be obtained from the report."

Hynes's argument – that the "unique" circumstances in the Orthodox community prohibits release of any and all information, since to name the defendant is to name the victim – apparently explains his over-stringent response to 50B.

Dennehy's letter goes on to say that sex crime victims from the Orthodox community, if identified, face unique challenges that will make them likely to withdraw co-operation "making the prosecution of the defendants extremely difficult". It would also prevent victims of unreported crimes coming forward in the future if they feared their names would become known. Under New York's FOI law, documents which could "interfere with law enforcement investigations or judicial proceedings" are exempt from disclosure.

Roger Canaff, a former sex crimes prosecutor in the Bronx, said he thought the reason for the DA's silence was justified.

"There are some situations where releasing suspect information could lead to unfairly revealing victim information," Canaff said. "I can imagine a situation where that could happen. So for the sake of the victims I think it's OK to make an exception.

"I haven't dealt with it myself, or seen it anywhere else, but I can understand an office being concerned with that. I can't say whether that's what is going on here, or something else, but I think it's a plausible explanation."

Community activist Isaac Schonfeld, an Orthodox Jew from Borough Park, said the DA's position was illogical because if the everybody in the community really did know everybody else's business, the victims' identities woul already be known. "I don't find the argument compelling," Schonfeld said.

"We have this wonderful compassion in our community. Rather than channelling that into covering up [child abuse], we should be using it to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the problem, and giving the victims tools to deal with it rather than just sweeping it under the rug."

"The DA should be challenging the community to bring these issues into the open and to bring the perpetrators into public view," he added.

Related Articles:

Brooklyn DA accused of failing to tackle Orthodox Jews' cover-up of sex abuse


The Large Families that rule the world

Who Controls America? Who Controls Wall Street? (72% Jews)

Wal-Mart Bribe Report Puts Focus on Mexico’s ‘Gestores’

Jakarta Globe, April 24, 2012

In this Nov. 18, 2011 photo, a man pays at the cash register at a Wal-Mart
Superstore in Mexico City. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. hushed up a vast bribery
 campaign that top executives of its Mexican subsidiary carried out to build
 stores across Mexico, according to a published report by the New York Times.
(AP Photo)

   

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Mexico City. Claims that US retail giant Wal-Mart used payoffs to speed zoning and other permits in its break-neck Mexican expansion is sparking soul-searching in Mexico, where crowded government offices are the working grounds of shadowy facilitators known as “gestores.”

Front-running presidential candidate Enrique Pena Nieto told The Associated Press in an interview Monday that “there is a truly critical situation in the country.”

He said he thinks an independent governmental anti-corruption commission is needed to root out the bribes and payoffs that many say have become as common as paying a light bill, and sometimes easier.

“This is an endemic vice, a vice that leads us nowhere,” Pena Nieto said.

According to a New York Times report, Wal-Mart executives turned to middlemen in the early 2000s to grease the way for building up the company’s Mexican subsidiary, which has become its biggest foreign operation.

Whether at least $8.5 million that was apparently paid to gestores actually wound up as bribes for corrupt local officials remains to be seen. The Times also said an additional $16 million went directly to officials.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. says it is conducting its own investigation, and two US congressmen announced they are opening a probe. The Mexican federal government announced Monday evening that it had no jurisdiction in the case because the report referred only to the involvement of state and city officials.

Many Mexicans wouldn’t be surprised if the claims are true.

A visit to any government office is likely to bring the sighting of a well-dressed man carrying reams of documents who will glide past the long lines, shake hands with the official behind the counter and get ushered into a backroom, where his affairs presumably get a fast-track service. The suspicion is these go-betweens funnel a portion of the fees they charge clients to corrupt officials to smooth the issuance of permits, approvals and other government stamps.

In a country where laws on zoning rules, construction codes and building permits are vague or laxly enforced, the difference between opening a store quickly and having it held up for months may depend on using a gestor.

“Nobody is exempted” from the demands for bribes, said Mexico City security consultant Max Morales, who advises companies on everything from building projects to security against kidnappings. “Even the big American companies are subject to extortion.”

There is none bigger than Wal-Mart de Mexico, which is the nation’s largest retailer and private employer and opened a store a day last year. Corrupt officials “see money, and they exploit you and exploit you, and the first thing you know they try to close you ... as a way to exert pressure,” Morales said.

The watchdog group Transparency International puts Mexico a low No. 100 on its 2011 list that ranks 183 countries by the perception of their level of corruption. On a scale with 10 as the least corrupt, Mexico rates only a 3 — the lowest for any OECD nation and a tie with countries like Suriname and Indonesia.

The pressure of corruption in Mexico is so great that some companies have reportedly opted to leave.

Morales said security and corruption concerns played a role in the 2005 decision by French retailer Carrefour to sell its operations in Mexico. Asked if that was true, Carrefour’s press department responded in an email: “Carrefour Group doesn’t comment on this information.”

Wal-Mart’s competitors in Mexico, the other large supermarket chains, all refused to talk about the scandal. “It is a very delicate issue,” said Jesus Antonio Velazquez, spokesman for the Chedraui chain.

The only people willing to comment were operators of small markets and mom-and-pop grocery stores. They said Wal-Mart was able to put stores where they shouldn’t have been allowed, and they saw something fishy in the company’s rapid expansion that has given it 2,138 stores in Mexico.

“It was so evident,” said Alfredo Neme Martinez, who leads a Latin American association of wholesale market vendors. “They would buy three lots on a corner, and open right away.”

In a statement, Wal-Mart said the bribery accusations, “if they are true, do not reflect the culture of Wal-Mart Mexico and Central America.” The company said it would not comment further because of the investigations.

Associated Press

Related Article:

Wal-Mart silenced Mexico bribe inquiry: NY Times

Catholic nuns group "stunned" by Vatican slap

Reuters, by Andrew Stern, CHICAGO, Fri Apr 20, 2012

(Reuters) - A prominent U.S. Catholic nuns' group said on Thursday it was "stunned" that the Vatican reprimanded it for spending too much time on poverty and social justice concerns and not enough on abortion and gay marriage.

In a stinging report on Wednesday, the Vatican said the Leadership Conference of Women Religious had been "silent on the right to life" and had failed to make the "Biblical view of family life and human sexuality" a central plank in its agenda.

It also reprimanded American nuns for expressing positions on political issues that differed, at times, from views held by American bishops. Public disagreement with the bishops - "who are the church's authentic teachers of faith and morals" - is unacceptable, the report said.

The Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a "doctrinal assessment" saying the Holy See was compelled to intervene with the Leadership Conference of Women Religious to correct "serious doctrinal problems."

The nuns' group said in a statement on its website, "The presidency of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious was stunned by the conclusions of the doctrinal assessment."

It added the group may give a lengthier response at a later date.

The conference said it represented 80 percent of America's 57,000 Catholic nuns. It is influential both in the United States and globally.

Academics who study the church said the Vatican's move was predictable given Pope Benedict's conservative views and efforts by Rome to quell internal dissent and curtail autonomy within its ranks.

"This is more an expression of the Church feeling under siege by trends it cannot control within the Church, much less within the broader society," University of Notre Dame historian Scott Appleby said.

That includes a steady drumbeat of calls to ordain women as priests, which the pope has reasserted was an impossibility.

The Vatican named Seattle Archbishop Peter Sartain and two other U.S. bishops to undertake the reforms of the conference's statutes, programs and its application of liturgical texts, a process it said could take up to five years. 

(Additional reporting by Stephanie Simon; Editing by Peter Cooney)

The Pope said the Church had no authority from God
to admit women priests.

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'Disobedient' Austrian Catholics preach message of reform

The Church of England needs its own rebirth

"The Recalibration of Awareness – Apr 20/21, 2012 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Old Energy, Recalibration Lectures, God / Creator, Religions/Spiritual systems  (Catholic Church, Priests/Nun’s, Worship, John Paul Pope, Women in the Church otherwise church will go, Current Pope won’t do it,  Middle East, Jews, Governments will change (Internet, Media, Democracies, Dictators, North Korea, Nations voted at once), Integrity (Businesses, Tobacco Companies, Bankers/ Financial Institutes, Pharmaceutical company to collapse),  Illuminati (Based in Greece, Shipping, Financial markets, Stock markets, Pharmaceutical money (fund to built Africa to develop), Shift of Human Consciousness, (Old) Souls, Women, Masters to/already come back, Global Unity.... etc.) - New !


"Perceptions of God" – June 6, 2010 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Quantum Teaching, The Fear of God, Near-death Experience, God Becomes Mythology, Worship, Mastery, Intelligent Design, Benevolent Creator, Global Unity.... etc.) (Text version)

“.. For centuries you haven't been able to think past that box of what God must be like. So you create a Human-like God with wars in heaven, angel strife, things that would explain the devil, fallen angels, pearly gates, lists of dos and don'ts, and many rules still based on cultures that are centuries old. You create golden streets and even sexual pleasures as rewards for men (of course) - all Human perspective, pasted upon God. I want to tell you that it's a lot different than that. I want to remind you that there are those who have seen it! Why don't you ask somebody who has had what you would call a near-death experience?


(Religions – Zionism - March 1, 2012 - Matthew Channelled by Suzanne Ward)

9. It can be no other way—simply, this is the physics that governs life in this universe. As Earth continues apace into successively higher planes, nothing with low vibrations in any form—physical bodies, subversive plans, theft, dishonesty, unjust laws and imprisonment, bigotry, cruel customs and deeds—can survive.

10. Moving on, no, it will not be quite like religions being “totally discarded and replaced by universal laws in the Golden Age.” When the truths come forth that science and spirit are one and the same and that religious dogmas were originated by early leaders of church and state to control the masses, people whose consciousness has risen beyond the constraints of third density will adhere to the spiritual aspects of their respective religions and the devised, controlling aspects will fall by the wayside.

11. One of the truths to come forth is that Zionism, which by dark intent has been made synonymous with Judaism, actually is a bellicose political movement within the Illuminati, and its aim for more than six decades has been to create conflict and instability in the entire Middle East. Zionists, who have wielded powerful influence within and behind major governments and their military forces, do NOT represent the Jewish peoples in Israel or anywhere else. And, like all other Illuminati factions, they have been committed to that cabal’s goal of global domination.

12. Although Semites are of diverse national origins and religions, the Zionists have been successful in convincing many that “anti-Semitic” is exclusively prejudice against the Jewish peoples and opposition to Israel’s right to defend itself from its “enemies.” By means of that blatant distortion, they obtained not only world sympathy, but also massive defense funding from Israel’s allies, most especially the United States, all of which served to increase the Illuminati’s vast profits from their industrial-military machine.

13. In addition to controlling the masses through dogmatic teachings, religions have served the dark purpose of divisiveness to such an extent that it resulted in centuries of trauma and bloodshed. Witness the Crusades, wars between Catholics and Protestants, pogroms against Jews, executions of “blasphemous” individuals who refused to “recant.”  (Read More …)

"Matthew preparing us for the Golden Age." -  Jan 19, 2012 (Channelled by Suzy Ward)



(SaLuSa channelled by Mike Quinsey, March 16, 2012)

“…. Each project is underway and that will result in a sudden wealth of information reaching you. Events are such that the facts can no longer be kept hidden, and with that there will be an explosion of people coming forward to tell what they know. It may take longer where the Vatican is concerned, as it is akin to a secret society that has kept its dark secrets hidden well away. However, nothing will remain concealed for too long, as you are entitled to know the truth and the extent to which you have been deceived….”  

Christ Consciousness Is The Energy of The New World – Mar 7, 2012  (Kryon channelled by David Brown)

'They're killing us': world's most endangered tribe cries for help

Logging companies keen to exploit Brazil's rainforest have been accused by human rights organisations of using gunmen to wipe out the Awá, a tribe of just 355. Survival International, with backing from Colin Firth, is campaigning to stop what a judge referred to as 'genocide'

Guardian, The Observer, Gethin Chamberlain, Sunday 22 April 2012

Undercover investigators film

Trundling along the dirt roads of the Amazon, the giant logging lorry dwarfed the vehicle of the investigators following it. The trunks of nine huge trees were piled high on the back – incontrovertible proof of the continuing destruction of the world's greatest rainforest and its most endangered tribe, the Awá.

Yet as they travelled through the jungle early this year, the small team from Funai – Brazil's National Indian Foundation – did not dare try to stop the loggers; the vehicle was too large and the loggers were almost certainly armed. All they could do was video the lorry and add the film to the growing mountain of evidence showing how the Awá – with only 355 surviving members, more than 100 of whom have had no contact with the outside world – are teetering on the edge of extinction.

It is a scene played out throughout the Amazon as the authorities struggle to tackle the powerful illegal logging industry. But it is not just the loss of the trees that has created a situation so serious that it led a Brazilian judge, José Carlos do Vale Madeira, to describe it as "a real genocide". People are pouring on to the Awá's land, building illegal settlements, running cattle ranches. Hired gunmen – known as pistoleros – are reported to be hunting Awá who have stood in the way of land-grabbers. Members of the tribe describe seeing their families wiped out. Human rights campaigners say the tribe has reached a tipping point and only immediate action by the Brazilian government to prevent logging can save the tribe.

This week Survival International will launch a new campaign to highlight the plight of the Awá, backed by Oscar-winning actor Colin Firth. In a video to be launched on Wednesday, Firth will ask the Brazilian government to take urgent action to protect the tribe. The 51-year-old, who starred in last year's hit movie The King's Speech, and came to prominence playing Mr Darcy in the 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, delivers an appeal to camera calling on Brazil's minister of justice to send in police to drive out the loggers.

The Awá are one of only two nomadic hunter-gathering tribes left in the Amazon. According to Survival, they are now the world's most threatened tribe, assailed by gunmen, loggers and hostile settler farmers.

Their troubles began in earnest in 1982 with the inauguration of a European Economic Community (EEC) and World Bank-funded programme to extract massive iron ore deposits found in the Carajás mountains. The EEC gave Brazil $600m to build a railway from the mines to the coast, on condition that Europe received a third of the output, a minimum of 13.6m tons a year for 15 years. The railway cut directly through the Awá's land and with the railway came settlers. A road-building programme quickly followed, opening up the Awá's jungle home to loggers, who moved in from the east.

It was, according to Survival's research director, Fiona Watson, a recipe for disaster. A third of the rainforest in the Awá territory in Maranhão state in north-east Brazil has since been destroyed and outsiders have exposed the Awá to diseases against which they have no natural immunity.

"The Awá and the uncontacted Awá are really on the brink," she said. "It is an extremely small population and the forces against them are massive. They are being invaded by loggers, settlers and cattle ranchers. They rely entirely on the forest. They have said to me: 'If we have no forest, we can't feed our children and we will die'."

But it appears that the Awá also face a more direct threat. Earlier this year an investigation into reports that an Awá child had been killed by loggers found that their tractors had destroyed the Awá camp.

"It is not just the destruction of the land; it is the violence," said Watson. "I have talked to Awá people who have survived massacres. I have interviewed Awá who have seen their families shot in front of them. There are immensely powerful people against them. The land-grabbers use pistoleros to clear the land. If this is not stopped now, these people could be wiped out. This is extinction taking place before our eyes."

Deforested areas in Brazil.
Illustration: Giulio Frigeri

What is most striking about the Funai undercover video of the loggers – apart from the sheer size of the trunks – is the absence of jungle in the surrounding landscape. Once the landscape would have been lush rainforest. Now it has been clear-felled, leaving behind just grass and scrub and only a few scattered clumps of trees.

Such is the Awá's affinity with the jungle and its inhabitants that if they find a baby animal during their hunts they take it back and raise it almost like a child, to the extent that the women will sometimes breastfeed the creature. The loss of their jungle has left them in a state of despair. "They are chopping down wood and they are going to destroy everything," said Pire'i Ma'a, a member of the tribe. "Monkeys, peccaries, tapir, they are all running away. I don't know how we are going to eat – everything is being destroyed, the whole area.

"This land is mine, it is ours. They can go away to the city, but we Indians live in the forest. They are going to kill everything. Everything is dying. We are all going to go hungry, the children will be hungry, my daughter will be hungry, and I'll be hungry too."

In an earlier interview with Survival, another member of the tribe, Karapiru, described how most of his family were killed by ranchers. "I hid in the forest and escaped from the white people. They killed my mother, my brothers and sisters and my wife," he said. "When I was shot during the massacre, I suffered a great deal because I couldn't put any medicine on my back. I couldn't see the wound: it was amazing that I escaped – it was through the Tupã [spirit]. I spent a long time in the forest, hungry and being chased by ranchers. I was always running away, on my own. I had no family to help me, to talk to. So I went deeper and deeper into the forest.

"I hope when my daughter grows up she won't face any of the difficulties I've had. I hope everything will be better for her. I hope the same things that happened to me won't happen to her."

The Survival campaign reflects growing international concern over the plight of the world's remaining indigenous tribes. Earlier this year the Observer revealed how police were colluding with tour operators in India's Andaman Islands to run human safaris into the jungle heartland of the protected Jarawa tribe. A video showing half-naked Jarawa women and girls dancing in return for food caused outrage in India and around the world. Further revelations followed, exposing human safaris in Orissa, in India, and in Peru, where tour operators are profiting from the exploitation of Amazon jungle tribes.

Meanwhile, drug traffickers are posing a threat to other Amazon tribes. Last year a previously uncontacted tribe was photographed from the air close to the Peru-Brazil border only to go missing a few months later after a gang of drug traffickers overpowered guards protecting their land.

The Brazilian embassy in London referred requests for a response to the president's Human Rights Secretariat, which did not respond. However, Brazil has recently been able to point to research that shows it has been making progress in tackling illegal logging. The country's National Institute for Space Research estimates that 6,238 sq km of rainforest was lost between 2010 and 2011, down dramatically from the 2004 peak of 27,700 sq km. The same year, Brazil pledged to cut deforestation by 80% by 2020.

The year-on-year fall last year was 11% and in March Brazil's forestry department raided and closed down 14 illegal sawmills on the borders of the Awá's land. Even so, the figures also show that two states recorded sharp rises in deforestation, and illegal logging is destroying the Awá's jungle at a faster rate than that of any other Amazon tribe.

In a statement, Survival urged the Brazilian government to give more support to Funai and to increase its efforts to shut down illegal activities in the Awá's territories. "Timing is crucial, and the timing of this is now, because while all hope is not lost an entire people are on the verge of being lost, most critically the uncontacted Awá. And we have a moral responsibility to act. EU and World Bank money has helped fund huge projects in Brazil that have exploited the Awá's land resources and made infrastructure ripe for developers."

The Survival International campaign will launch later this week at survivalinternational.org

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Wal-Mart silenced Mexico bribe inquiry: NY Times

Reuters, Sat Apr 21, 2012

A worker walks through the ''Action Alley'' at a new Wal-Mart store in

Chicago,  January 24, 2012. The store will open on January 25, and it will be

Wal-Mart's largest outlet in Chicago.  (Credit: Reuters/John Gress)

(Reuters) - Retail giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc squelched its own internal investigation of allegations made by a former executive of its subsidiary in Mexico that the Mexican division had orchestrated a campaign of bribery to grab market dominance, the New York Times reported on Saturday.

The paper said in September 2005 a senior Wal-Mart lawyer received an e-mail from a former executive at the company's largest foreign unit, Wal-Mart de Mexico, describing how the subsidiary had paid bribes to obtain permits to build stores in the country.

Wal-Mart sent investigators to Mexico City and found evidence of widespread bribery, but Wal-Mart's leaders then shut down the investigation and notified neither American nor Mexican law enforcement officials, the Times reported.

"We take compliance with the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) very seriously and are committed to having a strong and effective global anti-corruption program in every country in which we operate," Wal-Mart said in a statement.

The Times reported that the former executive gave names, dates and bribe amounts, adding that he knew so much because for years he had been the lawyer in charge of obtaining construction permits for Wal-Mart de Mexico, or Walmex as the company is known locally.

The Times said the company found a paper trail of hundreds of suspect payments totaling more than $24 million.

Wal-Mart also found documents showing that Wal-Mart de Mexico's top executives not only knew about the payments, but had taken steps to conceal them from Wal-Mart's headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, the newspaper reported.

The Times said that the company's lead investigator said there was reasonable suspicion to believe Mexican and U.S. laws had been violated and had recommended an expanded investigation, but that instead Wal-Mart's leaders shut it down.

None of Wal-Mart de Mexico's leaders were disciplined, the report said.

Eduardo Castro-Wright, whom the former executive identified as the driving force behind years of bribery, was promoted to vice chairman of Wal-Mart in 2008, the paper said.

Wal-Mart declined to make him available for an interview.

"Many of the alleged activities in The New York Times article are more than six years old," the company said in a statement.

"We are deeply concerned by these allegations and are working aggressively to determine what happened."

(Nivedita Bhattacharjee in Chicago and Will Dunham)

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Mexico lawmakers call for Wal-Mart bribery probe

Wal-Mart's Mexico probe could lead to departures at the top

Walmart investigates claims of a cover-up over $24m in Mexican bribes

What does the Walmex corruption scandal mean for Banco Walmart?

Vast Mexico Bribery Case Hushed Up by Wal-Mart After Top-Level Struggle

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Scores ill after Peru police base food poisoning case

BBC News, 21 April 2012

Related Stories 

• Peru mining protest turns deadly
• Peru sees illegal mining protest
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More than 90 police officers at a jungle base in Peru have been taken to hospital with food poisoning.

The officers developed fever, nausea and stomach ache after eating chicken soup at Mazuco police base in Tambopata province, officials say.

Police said they would investigate the suppliers of the meals.

The officers had been deployed to the base to reinforce operations against illegal gold miners in the Madre de Dios area.

The police officer said 150 police had been taken to the medical post on the base, but many had to be moved to hospitals because the base did not have enough medication.

One of the officers who fell ill told local media he and his colleagues had been "poisoned with bad food, dirty meat, and eggs and fish that were off".

Mercury rising

Regional police chief Hector Dulanto said he would travel to the area to investigate the case.

The area has been the scene of violent clashes between the security forces and miners protesting against tougher penalties for illegal operations.

The miners say the new rules will put them out of work, but the government says the sanctions will encourage miners to get the necessary permits.

An estimated 50,000 miners do not have a licence to operate.

The government says large areas of jungle have been destroyed by illegal mining and high levels of mercury, which is used for mining, have been found in waterways.