As reported around today’s papers, the hysteria of the swine flu crisis may finally be subsiding. The New York Times writes that “While the disease has continued to spread across the United States and around the world, it is far less deadly than initially feared. And in Mexico, where the outbreak apparently had its origins, new cases have begun to ebb.” Dr. Richard Besser, acting director of the Center for Disease Control, said Monday that school closings were not effective in curbing the spread of the flu but rather simply telling sick students to stay home and healthy ones to wash their hands and cover their mouths with their sleeves when they sneeze would be enough for now. However, such statements of calm appear to be unheard in other parts of the world. In a different report, the NYT writes that in China, for example, authorities continue to force even healthy resident Mexicans and Mexican travelers into quarantine, and “Mexicans say they have been typecast as disease carriers and subjected to humiliating treatment.” Some healthy travelers have even been whisked from their hotel rooms in the middle of the night for testing, say Mexican consular officials. Mexican diplomats were also upset that four Latin American nations — Argentina, Peru, Ecuador and Cuba — suspended flights from Mexico in response to the flu outbreak last week. And the Los Angeles Times reports from Oaxaca, Mexico on how local newspaper and health workers seem to have detected the unique nature of the H1N1 virus affecting residents there earlier than national health officials. A small town newspaper wrote that a community in Oaxaca faced a deadly “atypical pneumonia” one week before an emergency had been declared. And the LAT argues that “Oaxaca…illustrated the important role of a grass-roots healthcare network in rugged, remote terrain with scattered migrant populations.”
In the Washington Post this morning, a report on human rights promotion in the Obama era and how some activists are disappointed with President Obama’s new approach to diplomacy--which includes reaching out to world leaders with poor human rights records. In what is a very rare bit of praise, or at least neutral support, for the Bush era approach to democracy and human rights promotion, Jennifer Windsor, executive director of Freedom House says “there are some good people in the [Obama] administration, but the instinct of abandoning everything President Bush has stood for has done a disservice.” Before visiting China in February, Sec. of State Hillary Clinton said that pressing China on human rights “can't interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis.” On Latin America, Lorna Craner, former Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights under Bush, argues: “I am finding these guys [in Obama administration] very reactive and not creative. You can't just offer hope to Castro, Chávez and Mubarak.” “You have to offer hope to others” toiling in those countries for greater liberties.
The Miami Herald writes on Cuba, taking a look back 30 years when operating trips to the island for Cuban Americans was once a very risky job. The piece looks at the murder of Carlos Muniz Varela, a 26-year-old Cuban exile killed in Puerto Rico in 1979, shortly after opening the first approved travel agency for Cuban Americans. The murder, suspected of being carried out by anti-Castro Cuban Americans, was never resolved, but the paper writes that today perceptions seem to have changed. Now, “customers sit in a row of chairs edged up against the window,” says the MH. “It's no longer a dirty little secret.” Today, with President Obama’s removal of travel limitations for Cuban Americans to visit the island, “if you meet the criteria [as a travel operator], you cannot be denied. There isn't a quota,” writes the paper.
And in the Wall Street Journal, at the nexus of Cuba and human rights, the paper reports that closing Guantanamo Bay may not be as easy as once thought. House Democrats on Monday rebuffed President Obama’s request for $80 million to begin shutting down the detention camps there, with House Appropriations Chair David Obey (D-WI) complaining that the administration has not yet developed a clear plan to wind down operations at Guantanamo and relocate the detainees, either abroad or in the U.S. “When they have a plan, they're welcome to come back and talk to us,” Obey said. The provision was part of broader war spending legislation needed to continue funding for the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In other news, a piece in the MH that I missed last week tells the bizarre story of an externality of crime and violence in Guatemala: a booming funeral “industry.” “The rising body count in Guatemala City, fueled by gang violence and rampant crime, has been great for the funeral business,” the MH writes. And increased competition has forced some funeral parlor owners to battle for clients at crime scenes, hospitals and the morgue. Guatemalans have even created a nickname for those seeking dead bodies to sustain their funeral businesses: calaqueros, as in someone who searches for calacas or skeletons.
From Paraguay, an AP report in the MH writes that a former dictatorship-era official considered a brutal torturer by human rights groups made a surprise return to Paraguay. Minister Sabino Montanaro, the country’s interior minister under ex-dictator Alfredo Stroessner, arrived in Asuncion early Friday after nearly two decades of self-imposed exile in Honduras. He faces six pending trials for the disappearance and killings of government opponents in the 1970s and 1980s but now, at the age of 86, suffers fractured hip, Parkinson's disease, a form of pneumonia and arteriosclerosis. A judge said he would order an examination of Montanaro’s mental state to see if he is capable of appearing in court.
On the continuing investigation into the mysterious assassination plot in Bolivia, Reuters writes in the NYT that Marcelo Sosa, the lead prosecutor in the investigation, said Monday that a person linked to the group of men killed in the raid last month claims anti-Morales leader, businessman Branko Marinkovic, and the Santa Cruz’s right-wing governor, Ruben Costas, offered financial aid to the alleged assassination plotters.
And, finally, a letter to the editor in the WaPo about the paper’s April 28 report on the Chevron case in Ecuador last week comes to the oil giant’s defense. The letter writer says the paper omitted a key component of the case: President Rafael Correa's “permanent campaign” style of governing. The writer, from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, says “Chevron is correct to argue that it won't be treated fairly as long as Mr. Correa runs Ecuador. In fact, fewer and fewer firms will.”
Image: cagle.msnbc.com
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