WOMEN STERILISED WITHOUT CONSENT IN CAMPAIGN TO LOWER BIRTHRATE (Usbekistan)

Saodat Rakhimbayeva says she wishes she had died with her newborn baby. The 24-year-old housewife had a Caesarean section in March and gave birth prematurely to her son Ibrohim, who died three days later. Then came a further devastating blow: She learned that the surgeon had removed part of her uterus during the operation, making her sterile. The doctor told her the hysterectomy was necessary to remove a potentially cancerous cyst, while she believes he sterilised her as part of a state campaign to reduce birthrates. "He never asked for my approval, never ran any checks, just mutilated me as if I were a mute animal," the pale and fragile Mrs Rakhimbayeva said. "I should have just died with Ibrohim." According to rights groups, victims and health officials, Mrs Rakhimbayeva is one of hundreds of Uzbek women who have been surgically sterilised without their knowledge or consent. Human rights advocates and doctors say autocratic president Islam Karimov this year ramped up a sterilisation campaign he initiated in the late 1990s. In a decree in February, the health ministry ordered all medical facilities to "strengthen control over the medical examination of women of childbearing age". It did not specifically mandate sterilisations, but critics allege that doctors have come under direct pressure from the government to perform them: "The order comes from the very top," said Khaitboy Yakubov, head of the Najot human rights group in Uzbekistan. The Central Asian nation of 27 million has a population density among the world's highest in areas such as the fertile Ferghana Valley. Rights groups say the government is dealing with poverty, unemployment and severe economic and environmental problems that have triggered an exodus of Uzbek migrants to Russia and other countries. Heightening the government's fears is the spectre of legions of jobless men in predominantly Muslim Uzbekistan succumbing to the lure of Islamic radical groups. Uzbekistan once had one of the Soviet Union's highest birthrates, four to five children per woman.

Scotsman

Violence flares at English Defence League’s Dudley protest

Admin : A revised figure is that 21 people were arrested in the disturbance in Dudley on Saturday.




Taxpayers and traders were today a facing a bill of at least £150,000 after a controversial protest brought Dudley town centre to a standstill.

Houses and cars were damaged, missiles were hurled at officers and steel fences were pulled down as trouble flared between demonstrators and police.

Shops were boarded up, the market cancelled and roads closed in preparation for the arrival of hundreds of English Defence League protestors from across the country.

Councillor Anne Millward, leader of the council, said today the protest had cost the authority more than £150,000 and businesses, forced to close for the day, had also been hit hard by the loss of trade.

By 2pm on Saturday there were around 600 protesters on the protest site at the car park in Stafford Street, less than half of the 1,500 police had been expecting.

They continued to chant and rattle the fencing until around 2.20pm, when a group of around 200 protesters broke through the gates and headed towards Greystone Street and Steppingstone Street where they met lines of police and vans.
Bricks and cans were thrown at officers forcing them to change into riot gear and police dogs were brought in as a back-up. After a 10-minute stand-off with police the protesters returned to the car park.

After speeches the protest drew to a close at around 3.30pm, but trouble flared again as several hundred tried to get to Tower Street where the Interfaith Network and Unite Against Fascism (UAF), were holding their own event. The EDL protesters were met by a barrier of officers in riot gear and after some 40 minutes most of them made their way towards their coaches.

The EDL said it was demonstrating against a planned £18million mosque in Hall Street but Dudley Council said protest was “pointless” as talks continue with Muslim leaders over an alternative to the scheme.

Councillor Millward said: “Yet again this group of outside extremists brought disorder and violence to our town.
“Honest, hard working people who run local shops and businesses have again been hit as hard as anyone.

“The local authority share their frustrations and expect the protest will have again cost the council in excess of £150,000.

“This was the same when the EDL protested in April, and is clearly a complete waste of local taxpayers’ money.”

Express and Star

BULGARIANS PROTEST AGAINST ARREST OF ALLEGED NEO-NAZI ATTACKERS

About 200 people gathered Sunday for a protest procession against the arrest of six alleged “neo-Nazi” who have been arrested for attacking youngsters in a tram in the Bulgarian capital. On June 6, boys with hoods on attacked four people between 17 and 23 years of age, who were on their way to a rally against the illegal detention of foreigners at the Special Center for Temporary Accommodation of Foreigners in the Sofia suburb Busmantsi, widely known as the Bulgarian Guantanamo. According to the Prosecution's Office, the attackers were Dimitar Lazarov, Vasil Pavlov, Matey Penev, Emil Aleksiev, Rosen Kanev, and Mario Abdel Gamal. The Sunday rally has been organized through a group in Facebook, which gathered 160 supporters. The protest started from the National Palace of Culture and ended in front of the courthouse, where the protesters have put posters of the fense saying “Freedom for Mitko” and “Freedom for Rosen”. Many of the protesters have worn t-shirts saying “Emo is innocent”, “Justice for Rosen” and “Justice for Mario”. The parents of some of the accused have also joined the rally. According to them, the boys have been set up and the real perpetrators have not been found yet.


The father of one of the arrested boys has claimed that his son has been home at the time of the incident. He said he does not have an explanation why his son's name was on the defendants' list. Rosen Kanev's mother has also claimed her son was home all day on June 6. At the rally, she has been wearing a t-shirt saying “The true perpetrators are free, the innocent are in jail”. According to her, the attack in the tram has been done by an ambassador's son and Rosen was only a scapegoat. Rosen's friends have admitted he had hooliganism activities in the past but in their words, they had nothing in common with the attack in the tram. “If his file was clean, he would not have been arrested because there are no proofs for his guilt,” said one of the protesters and added that Rosen will be in jail until September because the judges were “on vacation”. Other participants in the rally have also wondered if there were other proofs against the six boys except that the victims have recognized them in photos. Some protesters expressed their concerns that the arrests have been done only in order to prove that the Bulgarian police is working effectively. “The boys have been caught in a situation where each one of us may fall too and this is why they should be supported,” the protesters said.

Novinite

Two spoiler candidates bid for BNP leadership

“The man in the beige suit, dyslexic and partial to the occasional drink” is Richard Barnbrook’s idiosyncratic way of inviting support for his bid to become chairman of the British National Party. In any other party a leader “partial to the occasional drink” has to resign, but as in so many things the BNP is different.

Barnbrook is one of three candidates who have declared their intention to try to replace Nick Griffin as leader of the racist party. He and Derek Adams are latecomers to the contest, although Eddy Butler, who has been actively gathering support since May, has predicted for some time that Griffin would put up a “stooge” candidate.

Candidates for the leadership have to obtain nominations from 20% of the 4,200 members of at least two years’ standing, something that Butler describes as “incredibly difficult” as most of those 4,200 are “armchair members, unknown to most organisers and activists”. The more candidates, the more difficult it is for any one of them to obtain the 840 signatures needed.

On Sunday Butler claimed that the mastermind of the “stalking horse” campaign was Patrick Harrington, Griffin’s old friend from his National Front days, who is now a member of the executive committee of Third Way, a rival to the BNP. Harrington was recently taken onto the BNP’s payroll in a human resources role, a bizarre position for the general secretary of a trade union, except that “Solidarity” is not a real union but a BNP front. It is unlikely there will be any action soon from Solidarity to represent those BNP employees who were not paid in June because the party has run out of money.

Barnbrook, the BNP’s London Assembly member, is prominent in the BNP in London and the south of the country. It had been thought that he was supporting Butler and had been sacked as the party’s Barking and Dagenham organiser because of it. However Butler says enigmatically that Chris Roberts, the BNP’s London organiser, replaced Barnbrook by an unnamed “hard working and well respected local activist who is, I believe, a supporter of Nick Griffin”, so that Barnbrook could concentrate on his London Assembly role.

Adams, who used to run a pub in Manchester that was used for a BNP victory rally after Griffin’s election to the European Parliament last year, is more likely to attract support among BNP members in the north. His electoral pitch amounts to very little: he loves the BNP, it is doing very well, but if you think a change is needed then nominate me, a “clean-hands candidate who will be a fresh face but who, unlike Mr Butler, has not sought to advance my candidacy by working with supporters who spread lies and black propaganda”. Despite his claim not to be “a stalking horse for undeclared and shadowy third parties”, his parroting of Griffin’s line shows that is exactly what he is.

Although Griffin does not need to collect signatures as his name goes forward automatically, he has also set out his stall in the hope that members will tick the box on the “official” nomination form in support of him continuing rather than nominating Butler. Hypocritically he, who has so often sacked party employees on the spot in contravention of employment legislation, and has most recently incurred a huge liability to settle with Michaela Mackenzie who took her unfair dismissal to an employment tribunal, argues against Butler’s plan to close the party’s Belfast call centre as it would mean breaking contracts and sacking “our young team”.

Arrogant as always, Griffin does not appeal for support but for no election at all. “In ten years, our activists and I have turned this party from a bad political joke into a major factor in British politics. There is still much to be done, and it is best done under proven, principled and visionary leadership, without futile, time-wasting elections.”
Many supporters and opponents of the BNP believe that the party remains a “bad political joke”, judging by Griffin’s recent actions, such as making the party liable for up to £170,000 because of his stupid and infantile act of including the image of a jar of Marmite on the BNP’s general election broadcast.

The announcement of the candidates on the BNP website, posted on the BNP website in the early hours of Monday 19 July, makes a point of listing the candidates’ 150-word statements in alphabetical order. Is it coincidence that both the new candidates appear higher in the alphabet than Butler, in a petty ploy to exploit the ultra short attention span of many BNP members?

The official scrutineer, whose job it will be to collect nomination forms from the PO Box set up for the purpose and to open them, is Andrew Brons MEP. Brons works closely with Griffin in the European Parliament and shares constituency office staff with him. It is unclear whether Butler agrees that Brons’s appointment is the “fairest way” to ensure that the “process is seen to be fair and totally impartial”.

Butler has rejected the election rules, drawn up by Clive Jefferson as head of the BNP’s “elections department”, under which nominations for the leadership can only be made by members personally posting their “official” nomination form, with witnessed signature, to Brons. He continues to urge his supporters to download forms from his blog (the existence of which is itself a contravention of Jefferson’s rules) and to return them to him.

Nominations close on 10 August, after which a new outbreak of accusations and recriminations about whether Butler has been validly nominated is expected, a row that is likely to end up in court.

Hope Not Hate

AS FAR RIGHT GROUP PLAN MARCH TO CITY CENOTAPH (uk)

The Scottish Defence League is planning a march on Glasgow to pay tribute to soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan – despite a 
veterans’ group warning that troops do not want its support. An application has been lodged with Glasgow City Council for a march on Saturday, September 18, during which up to 250 members of the far right organisation will lay a wreath at the Cenotaph on George Square. Its March for Heroes is part of a fresh bid to win support in Scotland, after dismal marches on major Scottish cities where the SDL was hugely outnumbered by counter-demonstrators and bussed off by police. The event is intended to pay tribute to soldiers fighting in current wars as well as the veterans of past conflicts. But The British Legion, which represents soldiers and veterans, said the armed forces would be furious that the cenotaph was being used as the fulcrum for a protest. George Ross, general secretary of the Royal British Legion Scotland, said: “The Cenotaph is there to remind us all of the sacrifice of 
individuals, past and present, who have given their lives in the line of duty to bring about democracy and freedom.

“The legion would not get involved in any political events. “Using the cenotaph to make a political point is totally wrong. It’s disgraceful.” When asked if veterans of either modern conflicts or past wars would be angry about the SDL’s protest, Ross said: “Yes. We are one great country. We believe in democracy and freedom, which our forefathers fought to bring about.” Aamer Anwar, the human rights lawyer who brought together rival political parties, trade unions and activists under the banner of Scotland United to oppose the SDL, said: “I think the whole of Scotland and Glasgow will be united in their disgust and will be determined to make 
sure these people do not get to march in the city.” The SDL has not previously sought permission for marches in Edinburgh or Glasgow. A form which was submitted to Glasgow City Council ahead of its abortive rally last year did not have a full name on it, rendering the application ineligible. The current application was filed by a Mr Scott Clinton and seconded by Mr D Close. The address was given as an office building in Glasgow. Clinton did not want to speak to the Sunday Herald. The far right organisation is trying to regroup after being confronted with mass protests when it attempted to rally in Glasgow and Edinburgh.

A previous march in Kilmarnock in protest at the opening of a mosque marked a change in tactics, targeting a smaller town to avoid the same scale of opposition. However, it has no clear leadership structure in Scotland, relying on small, cell-like groups that do not have contact with each other. The man who led the Kilmarnock demonstration, who wished to remain anonymous, said: “I don’t know who Scott Clinton is. “There are different divisions, which is our strategy. “The EDL don’t have a lot to do with us. They just let us do our own thing.” Glasgow City Council has not yet met with police and organisers of the march, or decided whether it will allow it to go ahead.

Herald Scotland