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NYC Health Officials Find New, Virulent HIV Strain (Update2)

Feb. 11 (Bloomberg) -- New York City doctors have discovered a previously unseen strain of HIV, which appears to be resistant to three of the four types of anti-viral drugs that combat the disease, and progresses from infection to full-blown AIDS in two or three months, the health department said.

``We've identified this strain of HIV that is difficult or impossible to treat and which appears to progress rapidly to AIDS,'' said New York City Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden.

Frieden said the case, diagnosed in a man in his mid-40s who reported multiple male sex partners and unprotected anal sex -- often while using the drug crystal methamphetamine -- was ``extremely concerning and a wake-up call.''

Antonio Urbina, medical director of HIV education and training at St. Vincent's Catholic Medical Center, site one of Manhattan's largest AIDS clinics, said at a news conference that the patient's use of crystal methamphetamine shows that the drug ``continues to play a significant role in facilitating the transmission of HIV.''

The drug reduces peoples' inhibitions and their likelihood of using condoms or other forms of safe sex, he said.

`Alarming'

While drug resistance is increasingly common among patients who have been treated for HIV, cases of three-class antiretroviral-resistant HIV -- or 3-DCR HIV -- in newly diagnosed, previously untreated patients are extremely rare, and the combination of this pattern of drug resistance and rapid progression to AIDS may not have been seen previously, the Health Department said in a news release.

The strain found in New York was ``highly unusual,'' said Ronald Valdiserri, 53, deputy director of the National Center for HIV, Sexually Transmitted Diseases and Tuberculosis at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, in an interview.

``We're talking about a single case, but clearly the fact that we are dealing with such broad resistance of drugs and the rapid clinical progression is quite alarming,'' Valdiserri said.

Fuzeon

Frieden said the one drug the HIV strain isn't resistant to is Enfuvirtide, sold under the trade name Fuzeon, developed by Trimeris Inc. of Durham, North Carolina, and Roche Holding AG of Switzerland.

The drug, which costs a patient an average $20,000, is the first in a class called fusion inhibitors that work by preventing HIV from infecting healthy cells. It requires a 20-minute mixing process and twice-daily injections, according to the Fuzeon Web site.

The problem, Frieden and other physicians said, is that this drug is most effective when used in a ``cocktail'' with other retrovirus drugs such as nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors, non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors and protease inhibitors.

The normal time of progression from infection to full-blown AIDS in an untreated patient is about nine years, with death following within 18 months, said Carly Stanton, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. For someone treated with anti-viral drugs, the average progression to disease from infection is 11 years, with death occurring within an average six years, Stanton said.

Fast Onset

``In this patient's case, onset of AIDS appears to have occurred within two or three months and at most 20 months after HIV infection,'' the Health Department statement said.

James Braun, president of the Physicians Research Network, a public health advocacy group in the city, said, ``We believe that the transmission of treatment-resistant HIV was a disaster waiting to happen, particularly in communities where safer sex is not practiced regularly and in light of people using drugs like crystal meth.''

Doctors at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in Manhattan diagnosed the patient, Frieden said. David Ho, director of the center, said the fact that the patient's strain ``is not amenable to standard anti-viral therapy, along with his rapid clinical and immunological deteroriation, is alarming.''

Ho said that although this represents a single case, ``it is prudent to closely watch for any additional possible cases while continuing to emphasize the importance of reducing HIV risk behavior.''

AIDS Population

The city reported 4,941 new cases of AIDS in the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2004, an increase from 4,164 the preceding year, according to Health Department statistics. Persons diagnosed and living with HIV/AIDS in New York City totaled 88,479 out of a total population of 7.3 million in calendar year 2003, the last year in which statistics are available.

Trimeris stock traded at $13.25, up 51 cents, in composite trading on the New York Stock Exchange as of 2:40 p.m., and down $4.98 from a year ago. Roche shares traded at 123.2 Swiss Francs, up 0.5 francs, in composite trading in Zurich, down six Swiss Francs from a year ago.


To contact the reporter on this story:
Henry Goldman at New York City Hall hgoldman@bloomberg.net

Darfur's Babies of Rape Are on Trial From Birth

GENEINA, Sudan - Fatouma spends her days under the plastic tarp covering her tent, seated on a straw mat, staring at the squirming creature in her arms.

She examines over and over again the perfectly formed fingers and toes, 10 of each, and the tiny limbs, still curled in the form they took before leaving her belly five days before, and now encircled with amulets to ward off evil.

Everything about this baby, the 16-year-old mother declared, is perfect. Almost everything.

"She is a janjaweed," Fatouma said softly, referring to the fearsome Arab militiamen who have terrorized this region. "When people see her light skin and her soft hair, they will know she is a janjaweed."

Fatouma's child is among the scores of babies produced by one of the most horrific aspects of the conflict in Darfur, the vast, arid region of western Sudan: the use of rape against women and girls in a brutal battle over land and ethnicity that has killed tens of thousands and driven 2 million people from their homes.

Interviews with traditional midwives and aid organizations here indicated that there are probably two dozen such babies just in Al Riyadh, the displaced people's camp where Fatouma lives. It is one of scores of places where ethnic Africans have fled in Darfur and eastern Chad from attacks by government forces and their allied Arab militias.

A recent United Nations investigation into war crimes in Darfur laid out, in page after graphic page, evidence of widespread and systematic rape in the two-year conflict. In one incident, a woman in Wadi Tina was raped 14 times by different men in January 2003. In March 2004, 150 soldiers and janjaweed abducted and raped 16 girls in Kutum, the report said. In Kailek, it said girls as young as 10 were raped by militants.

The fruit of these attacks is now being born in Darfur, and will inevitably become a long-term legacy of the conflict. In a society where deep taboos surrounding rape persist and identity is passed, according to Muslim tradition, from father to child, the fate of these children and their mothers is uncertain.

"She will stay with us for now," Adoum Muhammad Abdulla, the sheik of Fatouma's village, said of the days-old infant. "We will treat her like our own. But we will watch carefully when she grows up, to see if she becomes like a janjaweed. If she behaves like janjaweed, she cannot stay among us."

The fact that he and the new mothers call the children janjaweed, a local insult that means "devil on horseback," underscores just how bitter the division between those who identify themselves as Africans and those who see themselves as Arabs has become, and points to the potential difficulty of acceptance and integration in the years ahead.

In a conflict that began over land but has been fueled by ethnic strife, these children will carry a heavy burden. Long after the fighting ends, they will endure as living reminders of war.

"To them, every Arab is a janjaweed," said one foreign health worker in Geneina who has worked with rape victims. The worker insisted on anonymity because the government has penalized aid organizations that speak out on the topic. "The hatred and animosity will be very difficult to overcome."

Some women have reported that their attackers have used racial epithets and declared that they wanted to make more Arab babies, leading some to conclude that the use of rape is part of a campaign of ethnic cleansing. But the United Nations investigation found that while rape was clearly being used to demoralize and humiliate the population, it did not conclude that it was genocidal in nature.

In Fatouma's case, the child she has borne marks her forever as a victim, and may spoil her chances at marriage, at having more children, at having a normal life if her family ever returns to its village, which was burned to the ground by Arab militants more than a year ago.

For her daughter, who remained nameless until the seventh day after her birth, as tradition here dictates, the future is even more uncertain.

"One day I hope I will be married," Fatouma said, casting her eyes down. "I hope I find a husband who will love me and my daughter."

Like so many women and girls here, Fatouma's ordeal began with a trip out of the relative safety of the displaced people's camp where she lives to search for firewood. Many women earn money by gathering firewood to sell in the market, which makes them vulnerable to attack by militants who roam freely around the camps. "The janjaweed chased us, but I couldn't run fast enough," Fatouma said. "They caught me, and they beat me."

Five men held her captive overnight, she said, raping her repeatedly under a tree. In the morning she ran away, stumbling into a nearby displaced people's camp, where she spent the night, then found her way back to Al Riyadh.

"When my mother saw me, she cried and she said, 'Look how they beat you,' "

Fatouma said pointing to a dark scar below her right eye. She told her mother, Tama, what had happened, though she herself was confused.

"They did bad things to me," she said, her eyes cast down. "Very bad things."

A few months later she began to feel a strange pain. At first she tried to ignore it, but as the swelling continued she started punching at the movement in her belly with her fists. Tama, suspecting that her daughter was pregnant, ordered her to stop, and took her to a health clinic. A test confirmed the truth.

"I cried for a long time," Fatouma said.

From the next tent, Tama whispered to a visitor: "She is so small. Look at what they did to my daughter. She is just a child."

When the labor pangs began Fatouma was wholly unprepared for the pain.

"I was so afraid, I thought I would die," Fatouma said.

After a night agony, a midwife placed a squirming baby girl in her arms.

Sudden motherhood has overwhelmed Fatouma. Her gray T-shirt was stained with ragged concentric circles of breast milk, and she had trouble figuring out how to feed and clean the infant."I am very happy to be a mother," she said, after a long afternoon of sitting in her tent, staring at her daughter. "I will love her with all my heart."

But if her neighbors are any guide, Fatouma's prospects are dim. Ashta, a 30-year-old woman who lives on the other side of Al Riyadh camp, also spends her days alone in a bare tent with her 2-month-old son, Faisal. She absentmindedly rocks him, trying to quell his constant crying. He was born nine months after Ashta was attacked by a group of militants.

"Faisal changed my life," Ashta said. "Because of him I am sick. Because of him my life is ruined."

Ashta's husband, who has been in Libya for eight years, working as a cow herder, has cast her off, abandoning her and their two children. She lives in a tent next to her brother, who has taken her in.

She said she was raped as she fled her village, Bemiche. Two of her brothers were killed in the attack, and as she wandered in the desert looking for water, a group of bandits set upon her, she said.

One man "beat me with sticks, and said if I tell anyone they would kill me," Ashta said.

She does not know what to make of the child she has borne. She has no expectation of remarrying and stoically faces a long life of loneliness and hardship.

"Without a man you cannot have anything in life," Ashta said. "Your children suffer. Now we don't even have a bed to sleep on. We have no future."

Ashta's brother, Mohammad, said he refuses to blame his sister for what happened to her, despite taboos about rape.

"It is not her fault," he said. "She is a victim of war. We will take care of the child. It is very difficult to love a janjaweed, but we will try to accept him as our own."

While a Sudanese government report on atrocities in Darfur acknowledges that violence against women has taken place, Jamal Ibrahim, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, said in an interview that accounts of rape in Darfur have been wildly exaggerated.

"Human rights organizations and aid groups have to justify their work somehow, so they make these fictions," Mr. Ibrahim said. "If it has happened it is in isolated cases. This kind of thing is not part of our culture."

But in displaced people's camps, accounts of rape are common, and families struggle to deal with the legacy of sexual violence.

Kaltouma Adam Mohammed, a traditional midwife who said she had has delivered eight babies to women who were raped, said that while rape is traditionally seen as a great shame on a family, in the context of this war families are more likely to forgive and accept the mother and child.

"I tell them: 'Sometimes we feel like we have the janjaweed here with us, but it is just a child. He doesn't know anything about this war. We cannot hate this child,' " she said. "We don't know what will happen when these children grow up. If they are like their fathers, they must leave us. But we will try to love them, to accept them. It is God's will that it be so."

The Best Court for Justice for Darfur (2 Letters)

To the Editor:

Re "Court of First Resort," by Samantha Power (Op-Ed, Feb. 10):

Fear that the International Criminal Court will prosecute those responsible for the killing in Darfur extends well beyond the Sudanese militia leader Ms. Power describes. Sudanese government leaders whom I met during a recent visit to Khartoum were also visibly concerned about the court.

The Bush administration, disliking the court, has proposed instead a new, temporary tribunal for Darfur. But the shorter start-up time of the International Criminal Court, an existing institution, would allow it to begin deterring the killers more quickly. And as a permanent court, it has greater staying power that would better allow it to pursue fugitives.

When the International Criminal Court treaty was negotiated, the United States government feared politicized prosecutions by a prosecutor selecting targets on his own. It favored having the Security Council, where the United States exercises a veto, determine the court's docket.

Because Sudan has not ratified the treaty, the court can gain jurisdiction over Darfur only by Security Council referral. That's an approach the Bush administration should support.

Kenneth Roth
Executive Director
Human Rights Watch
New York, Feb. 10, 2005

•

To the Editor:

The refusal of the Bush administration to support and participate in the International Criminal Court in The Hague serves only to cripple efforts to secure justice and relief for the millions suffering and dying at the hands of unrestrained attackers and corrupt brutal regimes.

The unchecked catastrophe occurring now in the Sudanese region of Darfur is only the latest in a series of genocides to which the world community has shamefully borne witness without adequate intervention.

Have we learned nothing after Rwanda and Bosnia? At least in Bosnia, military action by the United States and NATO belatedly brought an end to years of ethnic cleansing and led to the prosecution of war criminals. Are we to allow the Sudanese government to continue to condone the massacre of its own people?

After months of diplomatic bickering, the United States finally acknowledged that genocide was indeed occurring in Darfur, as if labeling war crimes would make them go away.

Dorothy Robbins
Cleveland, Feb. 10, 2005

Sudanese Refugees Ponder Return to Homes

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- Civil war drove Christine Pompeo from her village in Sudan's deepest south to a crowded apartment in the Arab world's biggest city. Now a peace treaty has been struck to end the 21-year war that displaced 4 million, but Pompeo and many others are hesitant about returning.

``There are no jobs in the south, we can't work on our farms and so many people are suffering. We have no money here but life is safe,'' Pompeo says, brushing a tear away during a Cairo church celebration of the Jan. 9 peace treaty signing. ``I am worried for my future.''

Pompeo, 30, from a village near the southern city of Juba, is among an estimated 500,000 Sudanese living in neighboring countries who have been recognized by the United Nations as refugees.

They account for a portion of the overall number of Sudanese who left the country during the war, which pitted southern rebels from Christian and animist backgrounds against soldiers of Sudan's Islamic-oriented government, which is based in the Arab-influenced north.

Unofficial estimates put the number of people who left Sudan during the conflict at between 2 million and 4 million. Inside Sudan alone, another 4 million people were displaced, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

The U.N. refugee agency is now laying the groundwork for hundreds of thousands of refugees to return, with the first batches expected to arrive as early as July. This weekend the UNHCR's deputy high commissioner, Wendy Chamberlin, begins a weeklong trip to southern Sudan, Uganda and Kenya to inspect the effort.

Repatriation is vital to peace. The returnees are needed to help rebuild a region where cities and infrastructure lie decimated and little development has taken place during the two decades of fighting. The war left more than 2 million people dead, either from violence or war-related famine.

UNHCR has asked for $92 million to bring the refugees home, but it has received just $6 million so far. Without more help, many refugees -- including thousands who had pinned hopes on migrating to another country like the United States -- will be reluctant to return to a home offering little immediate hope.

``Southern Sudan in its present condition is so poor and lacks so much infrastructure. Not all the refugees will be rushing to return,'' says Javier Lopez, the UNHCR's acting deputy representative for operations in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum. ``Refugees returning don't know what they are going to find because they've been living outside for so long. They will probably find nothing and feel their lives in places like Cairo are much better.''

Of the 500,000 recognized Sudanese refugees, almost half are living in teeming refugee camps in Uganda. Another 88,000 are in Ethiopia; 69,000 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo; 60,000 in Kenya; 36,000 in the Central African Republic and 30,000 in Egypt.

U.N. officials say several thousand Sudanese who had been living in camps in Uganda and Kenya have started returning on foot to their villages since the Jan. 9 peace treaty signing. In some cases, bombs or looting have destroyed the homes they left behind. In others, refugees are returning to find their land occupied by strangers.

The UNHCR's Cairo-based assistant regional representative, Damtew Dessalegne, says while many refugees returning to southern Sudan after years of exile could face unemployment, war-destroyed homes or strangers living on their land, their involvement is crucial to the region's rebirth.

``Many have the knowledge and the skills necessary to rebuild their communities,'' he said.

One southern refugee living in Cairo, Boutros Akot Monot, believes most of his countrymen will heed the call to return.

``There are many problems in southern Sudan, but people are hoping to return to improve it,'' 30-year-old Monot said. ``There is nothing like our own country.''

February 10, 2005
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

Court of First Resort
By SAMANTHA POWER

TEN years ago, I asked Bosnian civilians under siege in Sarajevo where they would go if they could escape. Most chose one of the sand or pebble beaches along the Adriatic. Last summer, when I traveled through the Sudanese province of Darfur, I asked the same question of Sudanese who'd seen their homes torched, their cattle stolen and their children butchered. The surprisingly common answer, whether from refugees wandering the Sahara, or from farmers who had never had electricity or running water, was this: "The Hague." They had heard there was an international court there, and they wanted to go testify.

I didn't have the heart to tell them that their attackers couldn't be tried at the International Criminal Court because Sudan was not a party to it and because the United States, even though it was Khartoum's fiercest critic, was likely to block an investigation by the court.

In late January, a United Nations commission issued its findings on Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have been killed. Much has been made about the commission's refusal to describe the atrocities by government-backed militias as genocide. But more striking was the commission's authoritative documentation of some of the worst horrors of the last half-century: violations "without any military justification" that "no doubt constitute large-scale war crimes." In addition, the team delivered a sealed list with the names of 51 Sudanese suspected of war crimes and recommended just what the Darfurians had been urging all along: investigation and prosecution in The Hague.

The Bush administration has been more forthright than any of the United Nations' 191 member states in denouncing the atrocities in Sudan - a fact that should shame European nations that pride themselves on their human rights pedigrees. The United States was the first to characterize the violence as genocide and the first, way back in June, to name potential perpetrators and call for punishment. It has also dismissed offers by the Sudanese government to conduct the trials at home, rightly recognizing that Khartoum is unlikely to prosecute crimes that it has ordered and committed.

But the Bush administration can't decide what it dislikes more: genocide or the International Criminal Court, which aims to punish it. Administration officials have missed no opportunity to undermine the court. During President Bush's first term, the United States suspended military aid to more than 20 countries that refused to shield Americans from potential prosecution, including Mali (a fledging democracy), Ecuador (a partner in drug interdiction efforts), and Croatia (a fragile government trying to stem a nationalist tide).

In one of its most astounding moves, the administration teamed up with Republican lawmakers in August 2002 to pass a law that includes a measure known colloquially as the "Hague invasion clause," which authorizes American troops to use "all means necessary and appropriate" to liberate American servicemen should they ever be imprisoned. That's not exactly the kind of diplomacy that will, as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice promised on the eve of her trip to Europe, join the United States and its allies "around a common agenda for the next several years, one that is firmly rooted in our values, our shared values."

Since coming into force in July 2002, has the court done anything to justify the administration's fears that Americans will be hauled before an "unaccountable" tribunal? For example, has its chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo, begun investigating the torture and murder carried out by American soldiers and contractors in Iraq or Guantánamo Bay? No. Mr. Moreno Ocampo has explained that these crimes don't fall within his jurisdiction.

Instead, working with Christine Chung, formerly a top federal prosecutor in New York, Mr. Moreno Ocampo has been busy building complex cases against militia leaders in Congo and against the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda, which the State Department has branded a terrorist group. Mr. Moreno Ocampo took up these cases not on his own initiative, but because Congo and Uganda asked him to. And now, although Mr. Moreno Ocampo has the funds and the personnel to investigate the horrors in Darfur, he cannot act unless the United Nations Security Council tells him to.

But the United States so mistrusts the International Criminal Court that President Bush has instead proposed that the African Union and the United Nations create a Sudan tribunal based at the war-crimes court run by the United Nations in Tanzania. "We don't want to be party to legitimizing the I.C.C.," Pierre-Richard Prosper, the United States ambassador for war crimes issues, said in late January. That's an about-face from the American stance in 2002, when Mr. Prosper criticized the very same United Nations ad hoc tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia that he now hails. Citing "problems that challenge the integrity of the process," like a lack of professionalism among staff, Mr. Prosper demanded that the interminable proceedings at those courts be wrapped up by 2008, regardless of who was left at large. Justice at these courts, he said, "has been costly, has lacked efficiency, has been too slow, and has been too removed from the everyday experience of the people and the victims."

Temporary courts suffer other disadvantages next to the permanent International Criminal Court. Because their mandates are finite, they tend to rush indictments and arrests, disregarding their potentially destabilizing effects on societies still reeling from conflict. The permanent court, by contrast, can time its arrests to advance both justice and peace.

Moreover, creating a court from scratch takes months, or even years. A new statute would need to be devised, staff members and judges would need to be recruited, and the African Union, which has never before overseen criminal trials, would need a crash course.

The ad hoc court could cost as much as $150 million annually. By contrast, the supposedly bloated international court, which is already investigating multiple crises simultaneously, will cost roughly $87 million in 2005. Couldn't that same $150 million be better spent on arming and transporting African Union peacekeepers into Darfur to prevent the massacres from being committed in the first place?

Skeptics say that international courts will never deter determined warlords. Musa Hilal, the coordinator of the deadly Janjaweed militia in Darfur, gave me a very different impression when I met with him soon after the Bush administration had named him as a potential suspect. He had left Darfur and was living in Khartoum, courting journalists in the hopes of improving his reputation. Almost as soon as I sat down with him, he began his defense. Like his victims, he had only one place on his mind. "I do not belong at the Hague," he said. Surely President Bush doesn't want to find himself on the side of someone his administration considers a killer.

Samantha Power, a lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, is the author of "A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide," which won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction.

A Princeton Philosopher's Unprintable Essay Title
Harry G. Frankfurt, 76, is a moral philosopher of international reputation and a professor emeritus at Princeton. He is also the author of a book recently published by the Princeton University Press that is the first in the publishing house's distinguished history to carry a title most newspapers, including this one, would find unfit to print. The work is called "On Bull - - - - ."

The opening paragraph of the 67-page essay is a model of reason and composition, repeatedly disrupted by that single obscenity:

"One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much [bull]. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize [bull] and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern, nor attracted much sustained inquiry."

Breaking news from Georgie Le Pen and his band of merry thieves!

Bush urges renewal of Patriot Act
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush on Monday urged Congress to reauthorize the USA Patriot Act, the Justice Department's widely criticized anti-terrorism law.

"We must not allow the passage of time or the illusion of safety to weaken our resolve in this new war" on terrorism, Bush said at a swearing-in ceremony for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales at the Justice Department.

The president also argued that the Senate must give his nominees for the federal bench up-or-down votes without delay to fill vacancies in the courts.

The Patriot Act, passed in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, bolstered FBI surveillance and law-enforcement powers in terror cases, increased use of material witness warrants to hold suspects incommunicado for months, and allowed secret proceedings in immigration cases.

Civil liberties groups and privacy advocates lambasted the law because they said it undermines freedom. But Bush said the act "has been vital to our success in tracking terrorists and disrupting their plans."

He noted that many key elements of the law are set to expire at the end of the year and said Congress must act quickly to renew it.

The Patriot Act was pushed by Gonzales' predecessor, John Ashcroft, who was in the audience as Gonzales took his oath from Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

Bush lauded Ashcroft's tireless efforts to make America safer as he oversaw a drop in violent crime besides his counterterrorism work.

Gonzales, who served as White House counsel during the last four years, said he would be a part of Bush's team but his first allegiance will be to the Constitution.

"I am confident that in the days and years ahead we in the department will work together tirelessly to address terrorism and other threats to our nation and to confront injustice with integrity and devotion to our highest ideals," Gonzales said.

In Congo War, Even Peacekeepers Add to Horror

December 18, 2004
By MARC LACEY

BUNIA, Congo, Dec. 16 - In the corner of the tent where she
says a soldier forced himself on her, Helen, a frail fifth
grader with big eyes and skinny legs, remembers seeing a
blue helmet.

The United Nations peacekeeper who tore off her clothes had
used a cup of milk to lure her close, she said in her
high-pitched voice, fidgeting as she spoke. It was her
favorite drink, she said, but one her family could rarely
afford. "I was so happy," she said.

After she gulped it down, the foreign soldier pulled Helen,
a 12-year-old, into bed, she said. About an hour later, he
gave her a dollar, put a finger to his lips and pushed her
out of his tent, she said.

In this same eastern outpost, another United Nations
peacekeeper, unable to communicate with a 13-year-old
Swahili-speaking girl who walked past him, held up a cookie
and gestured for her to draw near. As the girl, Solange,
who recounted the incident with tears in her eyes the other
day, reached for the cookie, the soldier reached for her.
She, too, said she was raped.

The United Nations said recently that it had uncovered 150
allegations of sexual abuse committed by United Nations
peacekeepers stationed in Congo, many of them here in Bunia
where the population has already suffered horrendous
atrocities committed by local fighters. The raping of women
and girls is an all-too-common tactic in the war raging in
Congo's eastern jungles involving numerous militia groups.
In Bunia, a program run by Unicef has treated 2,000 victims
of sexual violence in recent months. But it is not just the
militia members who have been preying on the women. So,
too, local women say, have some of the soldiers brought in
to keep the peace.

The United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, said
recently that there was "clear evidence that acts of gross
misconduct have taken place" in the United Nations mission
in Congo, which began in early 2000 and is known by its
French acronym, Monuc. Mr. Annan added, "This is a shameful
thing for the United Nations to have to say, and I am
absolutely outraged by it."

The number of cases may be impossible for United Nations
investigators to determine precisely. Helen and Solange
said in recent interviews that they had not told their
stories even to their parents, never mind to United Nations
officials. Rape carries a heavy stigma here, both girls
made clear. They told their stories when approached by a
reporter.

"I didn't tell my mother because she would beat me," said a
grim-faced Solange, starring at the ground. Solange, a
sixth-grade dropout, said she had no interest in visiting a
health clinic or seeing one of the psychologists that
Unicef has paid for to counsel the many rape victims in and
around Bunia. If she seeks help, the girl said, her mother
might find out.

Helen's mother is dead, and Helen did not dare tell her
father for fear of a beating. She said she knew he would
blame her for going near the soldiers in the first place
and might even throw her out of the house.

Helen did go on her own to a health clinic soon after the
assault because she said she hurt between her legs. The
health worker gave her something to drink, which she paid
for with the same dollar that the soldier had given her,
she said.

"I was so afraid when he took my clothes off," Helen said,
fidgeting with her dirty T-shirt. "I was quiet. I didn't
say anything."

The allegations leveled against United Nations personnel in
Congo include sex with underage partners, sex with
prostitutes and rape, an internal United Nations
investigation has found. Investigators said they found
evidence that United Nations peacekeepers and civilian
workers paid $1 to $3 for sex or bartered sexual relations
for food or promises of employment. A confidential report
prepared by Prince Zeid Raad al-Hussein, Jordan's
ambassador to the United Nations, and dated Nov. 8, says
the exploitation "appears to be significant, widespread and
ongoing."

Violators described in the investigation, which continues,
appear to come from around the globe. Fifty countries are
represented among the 1,000 civilian employees and 10,800
soldiers who make up the United Nations mission in Congo.
Already, a French civilian has been accused of having sex
with a girl, though it is unclear where that case stands,
and two Tunisian peacekeepers have been sent home, where
the local authorities will decide whether to punish them.

The United Nations report details allegations of sexual
misconduct by peacekeepers from Nepal, Pakistan, Morocco,
Tunisia, South Africa and Uruguay, and lists incidents in
which some soldiers tried to obstruct investigators.

When they arrive for duty, peacekeepers are presented with
the United Nations code of conduct, which forbids "any
exchange of money, employment, goods or services for sex."

The home countries are responsible for punishing any of
their military personnel who violate the code while taking
part in a United Nations peacekeeping mission.

The United Nations, which has had previous scandals in
missions in Cambodia and Bosnia, also warns the soldiers
against sexual contact with girls under 18, even though the
law in Congo permits sex with girls as young as 14.

The United Nations policy says that mistakenly believing
someone is older "cannot be considered a defense." The
youth of Helen and Solange cannot be mistaken. They said
they were abused while selling bananas and avocados to
soldiers. Each girl said she was among the girls and women
who have flocked to the camps that peacekeepers have set up
around Bunia. These two girls walked from tent to tent with
fruit balanced on their heads, using gestures to make
deals.

Helen would sell her fruit for 10 francs apiece, or a few
cents, and would earn about $1 a day. She would give the
money to her older sister.

Solange would trade her fruit for the small containers of
milk issued to soldiers. She would then sell the milk in
town, making about $1.50 a day. She used the money to help
her family buy food.

Some of the girls and women who have entered the
peacekeepers' camps concede that they had
less-than-innocent intentions.

Judith and Saidati, both 15 and sexually experienced with
Congolese boys, acknowledged that they were looking for
foreign boyfriends as they sold their fruit.

The girls, who have the same father, said in a recent
interview that they both found French boyfriends first,
when the French Army controlled Bunia last year. Then they
each found soldiers from Nepal, one of the countries
supplying peacekeepers to the United Nations mission. After
that, the girls spent time with soldiers from Morocco, who
make up the bulk of the force now patrolling Bunia.

The girls said they each stuck to one soldier apiece and
switched to new ones only when their boyfriends were
transferred out. Each time they had sex, the soldiers gave
them $5, they said. Sometimes, they got other gifts, too,
they said.

One day, however, after their latest boyfriends had gone, a
social worker visited them and told them of the dangers of
having sex with soldiers. The woman sat them down and told
them about AIDS and the other sexually transmitted diseases
they might get. "She told us not to go anywhere near the
soldiers," said Judith, who like the other girls agreed to
be identified only by her first name. "She said we're still
young and they might make our lives short."

The two half sisters said the social worker's words
frightened them, and they said they had not had any
boyfriends for the last few months. But they also
acknowledged that fewer Moroccan soldiers were
propositioning them, reducing their temptation. The
soldiers' new commander is keeping a closer eye on them,
the girls said. "They want to come to us but their chief is
watching them," Judith said.

Judith and Saidati said they wanted the soldiers to remain
in Bunia for many years. The girls said the United Nations
troops had succeeded in stabilizing the town, which was a
war zone just over a year ago. The foreigners also have
much more money to spend than local boys, the girls said.

"I like them," said Judith, smiling coyly.

"They treat us
so nice," added Saidati, who was beaming.

But the two younger girls, Helen and Solange, were far more
sober when they spoke of the foreign troops. They said they
stopped selling fruit at the military camp immediately
after they were attacked and had never been back. They said
they had trouble sleeping at night and could not forget
what the soldiers did to them.

"Whenever I see one of them, I remember what happened,"
said Helen, who lives near a military checkpoint operated
by soldiers wearing blue helmets just like the one she
remembers seeing in the tent. "I'm afraid of them."

US Interrogation Rules

US Interrogation Rules
Originally uploaded by jwaverka.

nativity scene

2_21_120804_nativity_scene
Originally uploaded by jwaverka.

Left to right: wax representations of Samuel L. Jackson, Hugh Grant, Graham Norton, David and Victoria Beckham, Tony Blair, Prince Philip and President Bush. The angel is played by a wax figure of Kylie Minogue.

August 2004: Liberty Street, NY, NY

I have seen this film. Very powerful, very moving...they have a forthcoming report of their recommendations and findings. Please look out for it.
---------------
"I am tremendously proud to announce the launch of Witness to Truth: A Video Report and Recommendations from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Sierra Leone at www.witness.org. As many of you will recall, I traveled to Sierra Leone with my family in November of last year to produce this film on behalf of the TRC, and it was embargoed until the TRC delivered its written report and film to the President of Sierra Leone last month.

"Witness to Truth," marks the first time that video has been used by a TRC to raise public awareness of its findings and recommendations. It highlights the key causes and consequences of the war, and encourages civil society in Sierra Leone and beyond to hold the government accountable for implementing the binding recommendations issued by the TRC.

For those of you in the New York area, I will participate in a screening and panel discussion of "Witness to Truth" on Friday December 10th, International Human Rights Day, at NYU's School of Law, Tishman Auditorium, Vanderbilt Hall, 40 Washington Square South, from 6:30 - 8pm. The event is free and open to the public."

www.witness.org