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	The World has Divided into Rich and Poor by Maude Barlow Council of Canadians / Blue Planet Project Canada   July 2010   As world leaders gathered for the G20 summit, leading civil society members met in Toronto to discuss the G20 agenda. Maude Barlow was one of the key speakers, she heads the Council of Canadians, the nation"s largest public advocacy organization, and is a founder of the Blue Planet Project.   Maude Barlow : On the eve of this G-20 gathering, let’s look at a few facts. Fact, the world has divided into rich and poor as at no time in our history. The richest 2% own more than half the household wealth in the world. The richest 10% hold 85% of total global assets and the bottom half of humanity owns less than 1% of the wealth in the world.   The three richest men in the world have more money than the poorest 48 countries. Fact, while those responsible for the 2008 global financial crisis were bailed out and even rewarded by the G-20 government’s gathering here, the International Labor Organization tells us that in 2009, 34 million people were added to the global unemployed, swelling those ranks to 239 million, the highest ever recorded. Another 200 million are at risk in precarious jobs and the World Bank tells us that at the end of 2010, another 64 million will have lost their jobs.   By 2030, more than half the population of the megacities of the Global South will be slumdwellers with no access to education, health care, water, or sanitation.   Fact, global climate change is rapidly advancing, claiming at least 300,000 lives and $125 billion in damages every year. Called the silent crisis, climate change is melting glaciers, eroding soil, causing freak and increasingly wild storms, displacing untold millions from rural communities to live in desperate poverty in peri-urban centers. Almost every victim lives in the Global South in communities not responsible for greenhouse gas emissions and not represented here at the summit.   The atmosphere has already warmed up a full degree in the last several decades and is on course to warm up another two degrees by 2100. In fact, half the tropical forests in the world, the lungs of our ecosystem, are gone. By 2030, at the present rate of extraction or so-called harvest, only 10% will be left standing. 90% of the big fish in the sea are gone, victim to wanton predatory fishing practice. Says a prominent scientist studying their demise, there is no blue frontier left.   Half the world’s wetlands, the kidneys of our ecosystem, have been destroyed in the 20th century. Species extinction is taking place at a rate 1,000 times greater than before humans existed. According to a Smithsonian science, we are headed toward of biodiversity deficit in which species and ecosystems will be destroyed at a rate faster than nature can replace them with new ones.   Fact, we are polluting our lakes, rivers and streams to death. Every day, two million tons of sewage and industrial agricultural waste are discharged into the world’s water. That’s the equivalent of the entire human population of 6.8 billion people. The amount of waste water produced annually is about six times more water than exists in all the rivers of the world. We are mining our ground water faster than we can replenish it, sucking it to grow water guzzling chemical-fed crops in deserts or to water thirsty cities who dump an astounding 700 trillion liters of land-based water into oceans every year as waste.   The global mining industry uses up another 800 trillion liters and fully one-third of global water withdrawals are now used to produce biofuels, enough water to feed the world.   Nearly three billion people on our planet do not have running water within a kilometer of their home and every eight seconds, somewhere in our world, a child is dying of waterborne disease.   The global water crisis is getting steadily worse with reports of countries from India to Pakistan to Yemen facing depletion. The World Bank says that by 2030, demand for water will outstrip supply by 40%. This may sound just like a statistic, but the suffering behind that is absolutely unspeakable.   Fact, knowing there will not be enough food and water for all in the near future, wealthy countries and global investment pension and hedge funds are buying up land and water, fields and forests in the Global South, that will have huge geopolitical ramifications. Rich countries faced by food shortages have already bought up an area in Africa alone more than twice the size of the United Kingdom.   Now I don’t think I exaggerate if I say that our world has never faced a greater set of threats and issues that it does today. Visit the related web page
	Justice Denied by Kuong Ly, Var Hong Ashe International Herald Tribune / Open Democracy Cambodia   Aug 2010   Justice Denied, by Kuong Ly. (IHT)   Last week, a U.N.-backed tribunal convicted Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, for war crimes in what was the first trial of a major Khmer Rouge figure. Many media reports portrayed the verdict in a positive light, but for survivors, victims and their families, there was nothing positive in this outcome.   An editorial in the International Herald Tribune (“Forgotten victims?” July 29) stated that while the sentence handed down by the tribunal may be disappointing, at least Duch was held to account for his war crimes. Unfortunately, “at least” isn’t good enough for me and for those who suffered from the murderous actions of the Khmer Rouge, especially after waiting 30 years for this verdict.   My mother and my late father both endured what are known as the “Killing Fields” of Cambodia. They lost their siblings, parents and home when Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge in April, 1975.   Somewhere between 1.7 and 2 million people — nearly a quarter of Cambodia’s population — were executed or died from disease, starvation and overwork. My family was forced to flee Cambodia and suffered in the poverty of refugee camps for almost a decade before making it to the United States, where we overcame tremendous obstacles in trying to rebuild our lives.   As I followed the trial of Duch and heard him take responsibility for directing the notorious prison, S-21, where more than 12,273 people were tortured and killed, I was confident the court would place him behind bars for life. But last week, he was given a 35-year sentence. Because Duch had served several years in prison while awaiting trial, and the Cambodian government infringed upon his rights while he was detained, his sentence was significantly reduced.   In the end, Duch was sentenced to no more than 19 years behind bars. That translates to one year for every 646 Cambodians he tortured and killed at S-21. This does not include the millions of Cambodians like my parents who suffered under the Khmer Rouge policies he helped implement. The feeling of injustice for me and many others stems from knowing that Duch may walk free at age 86.   Survivors, victims and their families have been asked to see the silver lining in Duch’s verdict. Impunity has finally been broken, many observers reason. A perpetrator of the Khmer Rouge regime was brought to justice by legal proceedings for the world to watch, they say. And in reducing Duch’s sentence by 16 years, some will argue, the tribunal was attempting demonstrate the rule of law and lead by example — in a country where thousands of citizens are illegally detained.   From the beginning, I harbored grave doubts about these legal proceedings. The U.N.-backed tribunal resulted from the lack of judicial independence in Cambodia. I was willing to look past the criticism and cynicism in hopes that a guilty verdict and a heavy punishment in Duch’s case would set a precedent for future international criminal cases. The international community, I reasoned, had an opportunity to deter other ruthless, oppressive regimes from committing genocide, war crimes and other crimes against humanity. But the tribunal failed to deliver a satisfactory verdict.   If the Duch verdict foreshadows the tribunal’s next case — the trial of the senior Khmer Rouge leaders Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Ieng Thirith and Khieu Samphan — there will be a decline in support from the Cambodian people — and perhaps the world community.   I will never forget how my late father was used like an ox to plow and till the land. Nor will I forget that my maternal grandfather, aunts, uncles and cousins were either starved to death, beaten to death, or disappeared.   No verdict will heal the pain. But for survivors, victims and their families, this verdict was simply not good enough. We may have to accept that the international community denied us — and those we lost — a sense of closure.   More than 12,273 people entered Duch’s S-21 prison and were tortured and killed. While Duch will be in prison for 19 years, the possibility remains that he may one day walk free. Is that justice?   * Kuong Ly is an L.L.M. candidate in International Human Rights Law at the University of Essex, where he is a British Marshall Scholar.   July 2010   Surviving the Khmer Rouge, by Var Hong Ashe.   On 17 April 1975, the Khmer Rouge began a terrible political experiment in Cambodia. It was to last for four years. Var Hong Ashe tells the epic story of how she survived it.   I was born and raised in the small south-east Asian country of Cambodia, and brought up in the town of Takeo, south of the capital Phnom Penh. Cambodia was then ruled by King Norodom Sihanouk, and in its first years of independence from French colonial rule. In March 1970, Sihanouk was overthrown in a coup led by General Lon Nol, who declared the country a republic seven months later. This, along with the encroachment of the war from neighbouring Vietnam, threw the country into civil war.   My family and social background was rather privileged. My parents lived a comfortable life. They always employed domestic help for household tasks, in the kitchen and even with raising the children. By 1975 I was married with two girls (4 years and 20 months old at the time). My husband worked for Unesco, and I was an English teacher in a Phnom Penh college.   On 17 April 1975, we applauded the parade of victorious Khmer Rouge soldiers in the streets of Phnom Penh. Everyone was so happy just thinking it was the end of the civil war, which had lasted for five years and had already created so much suffering. We could not have imagined what was to come.   A few hours later, our misery started. The Khmer Rouge ordered us to leave the city “for three hours only” and to carry nothing with us so that they could search the place for republican soldiers who had gone into hiding. This order applied to all towns and cities, small or large, throughout the country. Of course, people did what they were ordered to do.   I left my house with my mother (who was going blind for lack of essential care after an eye operation), my two daughters, three sisters and two brothers. My father and my husband were not with us, and I was to learn their fates only later. My father, a colonel and head of a regiment of 2,000 soldiers was at the frontline; the Khmer Rouge killed him along with his brother officers when they surrendered. My husband was in Paris during this period; the Khmer Rouge tricked him into returning to Cambodia, and killed him on his arrival.   Five hours passed, one day, two days, three days…. We realised by now that this was a trip without return. The Khmer Rouge fired machine-gun rounds in the air to force us to advance under the intense heat of the scorching sun (April is the hottest month of the year in Cambodia). The children cried of thirst and hunger; the elderly were exhausted; pregnant women gave birth on the roadside; young people broke into houses along the road – empty since their owners had been evacuated ahead of us – to seek food.   We saw unbearable scenes: the decaying corpses of those who had dared question the orders to leave or refused to satisfy the whims of the Khmer Rouge; old people who pleaded not to be left behind; children wailing, having lost their parents; the wounded who had been waiting for an operation and who were forced to leave the hospitals, hardly able to hold themselves upright, with their wounds still open. It was extremely painful and alarming..   * Visit the link to read the complete story. Visit the related web page
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