Indianapolis Recorder, Indianapolis, Marion County, 7 September 2001 — Page 7

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BRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2001

THE INDIANAPOLIS RECORDER

PAGE A7

National News

Ghana business confab slated for D.C. (NNPA) — A one-day conference on doing business in the West African nation of Ghana is scheduled to take place Sept. 29 at the Ghanaian embassy in Washington, D.C.

Conference participants include James Thomas, president of the National Association of Black State Legislators, Charles V ancey, president of the Boston City Council and Ghanaian Minister of Finance Yaw Osafo-Maafo. : Scheduled workshops will include topics such as how to grow in a global economy, tourism in Ghana and health care investments in the nation. The meeting was organized to examine the promotion of economic growth of Ghana and as a tourist attraction showing “the friendly face of West Africa,” said conference organizers, members of the "Let’s Go, Ghana” foundation, in a statement. African-American tourism to Ghana has dramatically expanded ip recent years, organizers said.

Black man sentenced for running modern-day slavery ring (NNPA) — A federal judge in Florida recently sentenced a Black man who ran a slavery ring to four years in prison, plus three years of outside confinement. Michael Allen Lee, 43, physically abused the homeless Afri-can-American men he recruited off of the streets of several cities to work for him from sunup to sundown in the state’s citrus fields. Prosecutors charged Lee would promise good pay to his workers, but deduct substantial amounts fot small amounts of food and deteriorated housing for shelter. The employees, who worked and lived in unsanitary conditions and were threatened with beatings if they attempted to leave, were only paid an average $10 a day, up to five times less than the industry standard. The case is the latest in the growing trend of “modern-day slavery” rackets, in which poor people, including people of color, are placed

in involuntary servitude in serviceeconomy jobs. Norman Wilson, pioneering Black reporter, dead at 57 (NNPA) — Norman Wilson, a pioneering Black reporter who wrbte for The Baltimore AfroAmerican before becoming one of the first Black editorial writers ft>r The Baltimore Sun, has died of a heart attack. He was 57. Wilson, who spent nearly 30 years at The Baltimore Sun and its now-defunct afternoon paper, The Baltimore Evening Sun, since 1993 served as night metropolitan editor. He had been a general assignment reporter, assistant city editor, and statehouse reporter. He began writing editorials for The Evening Sun in 1981. The Harlem native began his journalism career at The Afro in 1971. He was hired by The Evening Sun as a reporter the following year.

Reporter says U.S. misled the world on Rwanda

By LISA V1VES murdered some 800,000 Tutsi and

politically moderate Hutu. It was

NEW YORK (GIN) — An in- ithe fastest, most efficient killing vestigative reporter has docu- spree of the 20th century, mented new evidence supporting The story came to light in horthe theory that the U.S. misled the rific detail a few years later, in a world about the information it had series in The New Yorker magaat the time of the mass killings zine. Author Philip Gourevitch taking place in Rwanda in 1994 recounted the story of the genoand knowingly passed up count- cideandthe world’s failure to stop less opportunities to stop it. it. His piece provoked a response Writing in the September issue from then President Bill Clinton, of The Atlantic Monthly, author whoexpressed surprise and shock. Samantha Power culls damning Copies of Gourevitch’s articles evidence from her interviews with were sent to second-term National scores of U.S. officials and others Security Adviser Sandy Berger in decision-making positions. She with confused, angry, searching also based her piece "Bystanders queries in the margins. “Is what to Genocide” on an analysis of he’s saying true?” Clinton wrote newly declassified docurnems. with 4-thick black felt-tip pen be“The story of U.S. policjyJj^y^' t#avily underlined paragraphs, the genocide in Rwanda is not a “How did this happen?” he asked, story of willful complicity with adding, “I want to get to the bottom evil.U.S.officialsdidnotsitaround of this.” and conspire to allow genocide to But, as Power finds, the happen,” writes Power in this president’s urgency and outrage month’s Atlantic. “But whatever were oddly timed. As the terror in tfieir convictions about ‘never Rwanda had unfolded,Clinton had again,’ many ofthem did sit around, shown virtually no interest in stopand they most certainly did allow ping the genocide, and his admingenocide to happen.” istration had stood by as the death The mass killings, now called tollroseintothehundredsofthou“agenocide” took place in the Cen- sands. tral African nation of Rwanda over Could the U.S. have done more (he course of 100 days in 1994. The for the Rwandans at the time of the government of the Hutu people and killings. Power asks. Did the presifts extremist allies very nearly sue- dent really not know about the deeded in exterminating the genocide, as his marginalia sugcountry’s Tutsi minority. Using gested? Who were the people in firearms, machetes and a variety of his administration who made the garden tools, Hutu militiamen, sol- life-and-death decisions that dicdiers and ordinary citizens brutally tated U.S. policy? Why did they

decide (or decide not to decide) as they did? Were any voices inside or outside the U.S. government demanding that the U.S. do more? If so, why weren’t they heeded? And most crucial, what could the U.S. have done to save lives? Prior to Power’s reporting, it was generally accepted that U.S. inaction on the Rwandan genocide was due to a lack of information, or that regardless of what it knew there was nothing useful to be done. Power took that assumption to senior, mid-level and junior State Department, Defense Department and National Security officials during her three-year investigation. She pursued it, additionally, with dozens of Rwandan, European, and IJ.ft. officials and with peacekeepers, journalists and nongovernmental workers in Rwanda. Significantly, classified documents relevant to her research were finally made available by the National Security Archive (www.nsarchive.org) a nonprofit organization that uses the Freedom of Information Act to secure the release of classified U.S. documents. The once-secret documentation provides a clearer picture than was previously possible of the interplay among people, motives, and events, Powers found. It reveals the U.S. government knew enough about the genocide early on to save lives, but passed up countless opportunities to intervene.

Winnie Mandela says, ‘21 st century will be for Africa’

Leaders, representatives discuss race and reparations By RAOUL DENNIS NNPA Managing Editor • WASHINGTON—On the second day of energetic andkigh-spir-|ted talks and planning, \Africans imd African Americans sat alongside Dalits, Japanese, South Ameritans and Caribbeans, Latinos and Scores of others determining the issues and language they will use ip bringing reparations before the U.N. World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Kenophobia and Related Intolerince on Friday when tb confer:nce officially began. As thousands of participating delegates gathered from over 30 countries, Winnie Mandela, former wife of former South African PresiI lent Nelson Mandela, gave a brief jut rousing speech to nearly 150 >eople attending the African/Afri:an descendants comm i ssion where ijvery facet of the reparations issue was reviewed. | After thanking attendees for the decades of support that the world Community gave South African in ihe dismantling of the apartheid system — a primary topic at the first two world conferences in 1978

and 1983 — she offered her thoughts on the conference and the future. “The 21st century will be for Africa,” she exclaimed to the rousing crowd. Mandela then discussed the roles and struggles of women in the present and future stages of the movement. Mandela drove home her view tharthe struggle did not end with South Africa’s independence, but simply gained a turning point. Although not a scheduled speaker in an event intended as a training session, she was urged by those in attendance to speak, the NNPA learned. “People wanted to hear from her,” explained former director of Amnesty International Julianne Traylor, who was in attendance in Durban. “It was incredible because she was sitting in the back of the room and then she was acknowledged and there was nearly a stampede.” Some in Durban said the excitement about Winnie Mandela’s presence was not just a spontaneous, isolated response of the representatives, but a symbolic reflection of the mood at WCAR. At varying points, representatives stood and told their stories of victimization. Each spoke as much for a nation of people as for him or herself in recanting patterns of violence and institutionalized discrimination. “It was so powerful tonight to see people from African descent

working together trying to flush out the language on reparations,” said Amnesty International representative Tonya McClary. “You have Black people from all over the world talking about how to address the world court on the issue of reparations. Good things will come out of this.” Representatives also discussed the way history has been written, the Middle Passage and the notion of a possible tribunal for nations that practiced slavery, similar to the Nuremberg trials investigating Nazi war criminals after World War II. The commission will complete its proposal and submit it to the’ formal governmental meeting leaders Sept. 7. "The governments will take note of the document. They will receive it,” said Traylor when asked if she thought the proposals will be taken seriously by world leaders. “What they do with it is another matter. They will pick and choose what they want to take from it. But what we always say in the human rights struggle is that we have the power to educate and sway public opinion. Once they knqw what we have done here in Durban, they can use that against their oppressors.’’ Traylor and others at the conference believe that spotlighting injustice and racism are key steps to ending it.

Infant mortality rates down

By ELECTRONIC URBAN REPORT From 1989 to 1997, there was a 30 percent decrease in the death rate of premature infants in the United States — but only among whites, new study findings show. Among black infants, the death rate decreased by only 14 percent. Researchers report whites also exhibited the greatest improvement in overall infant mortality rates — 34 percent vs. 24 percent among Blacks, the findings indicate. The reason for the discrepancy between Blacks and whites is unknown. but it may largely be due to access to care, particularly to neonatal intensive care units, study lead author Dr. Kitaw Demissie of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, specu-

lated in an interview with Reuters | cadm , p Ivd i clol ,,| inliinl d , illh . ^ ea ^ - also varied widel\ between Blacks "Blacks have less access to those and uhllcs | )om j Ssk s team , c kinds of services in comparison to por , s in lhc Nl|lJ ^ 1WK . (l| ,| K . whites," he said. "We have to do American Journal oi I pidemiol. more ... to narrow that gap." 0 g N Demissie's findings are based Aj nonj , u h„ 0s . (hc raU . |11C . on an analysis of data obtained term births increased more'th.,n Ifrom the National Center lor perecni.but pre-iermbirihsaiiione Health Statistics in Maryland. Blacks decreased 7 perccni. Rates of premature delivery, a

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