From ha2957ja@uscolo.edu Mon Mar 4 20:44:07 1996 Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 20:47:32 -0700 (MST) From: jammer To: Racial-Religious-EthnoNationalist Violence Studies Subject: Any comments!!!! This is an old review of a famous article..... If anyone has anything else on this issue, please forward it as some elaborate comments and analysis are required for a paper. Thanks Regards. Jamal Hashmi E-mail: ha2957ja@meteor.uscolo.edu Reply to: The Islamic Information & News Network Vol. 9 No. 2 Shawwal 14, 1416 Hijri March 4, 1996 ________________________________________________________________________________ Editor: Imran Mehdi Muslims@asuacad.bitnet ________________________________________________________________________________ 2. The Clash of civilisations or ......................... by Chandra Muzaffar ...... from Sanen Marshall from Sanen Marshall by Chandra Muzaffar The Clash of civilisations or camouflaging dominance ? The Clash of Civilisations or Camouflaging Dominance? by Chandra Muzaffar (Just World Trust - chandra@just.po.my) Like Francis Fukuyama's `End of History' published five years ago, Samuel Huntington's `The Clash of Civilisations?' (Foreign Affairs Summer 1993) is receiving a lot of publicity in the mainstream Western media. The reason is not hard to fathom. Both essays serve United States and Western foreign policy goals. TRIUMPH Sensing the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, Fukuyama predicted with exuberant confidence the inevitable triumph of Western liberal democracy and the free market. Their triumph would mark the acme of human achievement; after that there would be nothing else for civilisation to accomplish. Huntington, somewhat sobered by the ethnic turmoil in the old Yugoslavia and the economic crisis in parts of Eastern Europe and Russia, realises that Fukuyama's much heralded victory of the West is still some distance away. He has, therefore, chosen to warn his people of the threats, the challenges that loom on the horizon. The West should be prepared for the clash of civilisations, he says. REASONS The thesis he propounds is simple enough. "The Clash of Civilisations", he argues, "will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilisations will be the battle lines of the future". He cites six reasons - differences among civilisations are basic; cultural characteristics are less easily compromised; interactions among peoples of different civilisations are increasing in a negative way; modernisation is exacerbating religious fundamentalism; non-Western elites are becoming more indigenized; and economic regionalism is getting stronger through culture and religion - to explain why this is inevitable. In order to reinforce his argument, Huntington asserts that, "Over the centuries, differences among civilisations have generated the most prolonged and the most violent conflicts". He does not, however, provide empirical evidence to support his assertion. The truth is that cultural or religious or other civilisational differences have been one of many factors responsible for conflict in history. Territory and resources, wealth and property, power and status, individual personality and group interests have all contributed to war and violence. CRUSADES As a case in point, let us look at the crusades, often presented as a classic example of conflict between two religious civilisations. While the medieval Christian dream of crushing Moorish (Muslim) power and regaining control over Jerusalem was one of the main motivating forces behind the series of expeditions to the Holy Land, the desire to acquire the fabulous wealth of the Arab world, was also a major consideration. Intense rivalries among Christian princes who used the crusades to enhance their political power and manipulations of the crusades by the Church as it sought to maintain control over restive feudal principalities reveal that the crusades were not simple religious wars. Indeed, religion, culture and other such elements and symbols of what Huntington would regard as `civilisation identity' are sometimes manipulated to conceal and camouflage the naked pursuit of wealth or power - the real sources of many a conflict in human history. Huntington fails to take this obvious point into account. In his eagerness to emphasise the civilisational dimension, he ignores the complex web of causes which invariably influences any conflict. BOSNIAN CONFLICT A current conflict would further expose the superficiality of Huntington's analysis. Bosnia-Herzegovina - contrary to what Huntington suggests - is not a simple religious war among Orthodox Christian Serbs, Catholic Croats and Muslim Bosnians supported by their respective co-religionists in other parts of the world. Among the underlying causes are unjust power-structures associated with the demised Yugoslavia. The Serbs dominated politics and the armed forces but the economic, industrial and scientific strength of the republic came from the provinces of Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. This created tremendous resentment and antagonism among the non-Serb communities who saw themselves as second-class citizens. Serbian chauvinism which became more pronounced in the eighties aggravated the situation considerably. It was a combination of these and other factors which was largely responsible for the breakup of the republic and the conflagration which continues to this day. For outside powers too, like Britain, their response to the crisis has been shaped to a great extent by Machiavellian geopolitical and geoeconomic calculations. Britain is determined to ensure that Serbia is strong and powerful so that it can serve as a counterweight of sorts to Germany. A unified, economically robust Germany evokes deep-seated fears in London and, to a lesser extent, Paris about the balance of power in Europe. In the case of the United States, it is reluctant to put a stop to Serbian aggression because it has no special stake in Bosnia-Herzegovina. As it is often said, if Bosnia-Herzegovina had oil like Kuwait things would have been different. Besides, the US does not want to do anything that is inimical to the interests of Britain, its staunchest European ally. Though a variety of factors are at play in the Bosnian conflict, Serb leaders have tried to give the impression that Christianity, specifically Orthodox Christianity, is under siege from Islamic fundamentalism. Serbia, they say, is saving Christianity and Europe from Islam and the Muslims. Likewise, there are Muslims in other parts of Europe and elsewhere who oversimplify the conflict and present it as a `West versus Islam' war. It is a pity that Huntington does not realize that these attempts to interpret the Bosnian conflict in exclusive religious categories only serve to distort the truth. CREATIVE ENGAGEMENT But the problem is even more serious than that. By overplaying `the clash of civilisations' dimension, Huntington has, willy-nilly, ignored the creative, constructive interaction and engagement between civilisations. This is a much more perennial, more constant feature of civilisation than conflict per se. Civilisations adapt and adjust to one another. Absorption and synthesis, integration and assimilation are enduring characteristics in the interaction among civilisations. Nearly every civilisation which Huntington mentions in his analysis has engaged, most of the time, in peaceful intercourse - rather than violent confrontation - with other civilisations. Islam, for instance, through centuries of exchange with the West, laid the foundation for the growth of mathematics, science, medicine, agriculture, industry, architecture and so on in medieval Europe. Today, some of the leading ideas and institutions which have gained currency within the Muslim world whether in politics or in economics are imports from the West. Similarly, the interaction between Islam and Hinduism has not always been bloody. Islam impacted upon the architecture and law, the literature and attire of segments of the Hindu population just as Hinduism influenced Muslim mysticism, food and music. In fact, Muslim-Hindu exchanges produced a new, highly cosmopolitan language, Urdu, which for a long time was the main medium of communication within the upper classes of Northern Indian society. That different civilisations are not inherently prone to conflict is borne out by another salient feature which Huntington fails to highlight. Civilisations embody many similar values and ideals. At the philosophical level at least, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Sikhism and Taoism, among other world religions, share certain common perspectives on the relationship between the human being and his environment, the integrity of the community, the importance of the family, the significance of moral leadership and indeed the meaning and purpose of life. COMMON INTERESTS It is not just shared values and ideals. Civilisations, however different in certain respects, are quite capable of forging common interests and common aspirations. Huntington does not think so. He argues that "economic regionalism may succeed only when it is rooted in a common civilisation" quoting the example of the European Community with its shared European culture and Western Christianity. And yet there is the Association of Southeast Asian States (ASEAN) - a regional grouping which Huntington does not even mention in his essay. As a regional grouping, ASEAN encompasses at least 4 civilisation identities, to use Huntington's term - Buddhist (Thailand), Confucian (Singapore), Christian (The Philippines) and Muslim (Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia). The ability of the ASEAN states to stay together and evolve an identity of their own through twenty-five years of trial and tribulation is one of the great success stories in regional cooperation. ASEAN must surely baffle Huntington! UNIQUE Using the same irrational argument of culture and religion as the basis of economic cooperation, Huntington opines that, "Japan, in contrast, faces difficulties in creating a comparable economic entity in East Asia because Japan is a society and civilisation unique to itself. However strong the trade and investment links Japan may develop with other East Asian countries, its cultural differences with those countries inhibit and perhaps preclude its promoting regional economic integration like that in Europe and North America". This is sheer nonsense. It is not cultural differences which prevent Japan from taking the lead in forging a regional grouping in East Asia. Japan does not dare play such a role because that would anger the US. For a variety of reasons linked to its defeat in the Second World War, its post-war reconstruction, its security and political ties to the US and its economic relationship with that country, Japan has chosen to be subservient to the US in regional and global affairs. Japan knows that the US would regard any economic grouping which integrates the East Asian states as a direct challenge to its dominant power in the region. The United States' lukewarm, even hostile reaction to the proposed East Asia Economic Caucus (EAEC) is proof of this. Through economic integration, the EAEC or some such grouping could, in the future, develop into the world's most dynamic economic powerhouse. The US, to reiterate, will not tolerate such a development since it will jeopardise its position as the leader of each and every region of the world. It is this crucial point about the US and the West and their relationship to the rest of the world that Huntington refuses to focus upon, though he makes passing references to it. It is the US and Western dominance of the planet, and not the clash of civilisations, which is the root cause of global conflict. By magnifying this so-called `clash of civilisations', Huntington is trying to divert attention from Western dominance and control which has been disastrous for the whole of humankind. DOMINANCE Indeed, Huntington's mission is more than the mere diversion of attention; he wants to preserve, protect and perpetuate Western dominance. He sees a compelling reason for embarking upon this mission at this point in time. Western dominance is under threat from a "Confucian-Islam connection that has emerged to challenge Western interests, values and power". This, in fact, is the most mischievous - and the most dangerous - implication of Huntington's clash of civilisations. By evoking this fear of a Confucian-Islamic connection, he hopes to persuade the Western public, buffeted by unemployment and recession, to acquiesce with huge military budgets in the post cold-war era. He argues that China and certain Islamic countries are acquiring offensive and defensive weapons on a massive scale. Generally, it is the Islamic states which are buying weapons from China which in turn "is rapidly increasing its military spending". Huntington observes that, "A Confucian-Islamic military connection has thus come into being, designed to promote acquisition by its members of the weapons and weapons technology needed to counter the military power of the West". This is why the West, and the US in particular, should not, in Huntington's view, be "reducing its own military capabilities". FLAWS There are serious flaws in Huntington's argument. One, it is not true that the US has reduced its military capability. It may have cut down on foreign bases and conventional troops but it has, at the same time, enhanced its range of sophisticated weaponry. As a result, the US's armed might today is such that it enjoys total military hegemony over all nations and peoples. The Gulf War demonstrated the terrifying, devastating power of US weaponry. And, in the post cold war era, the US is the world's number one arms exporter. Arms sales to the South have increased compared to the late seventies and early eighties. In 1991 for instance, the US sold 59 billion dollars worth of arms to the South - a 25 billion increase from its 1989 sales. Two, though China is an important producer and exporter of arms, it is "the only major power whose military expenditure has consistently declined throughout the decade (the eighties)". This point is made by the highly respected Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) in its 1990 yearbook. In fact, since 1985, defence spending as a percentage of GNP has dropped from 3.6% to 3.2%, though the Chinese economy has grown enormously in the last few years. There is no doubt at all that the Chinese government is giving much more attention to economic development than to military modernisation. Encouraging foreign investments and forging trade links with its neighbours are more important to China than acquiring or exporting weapons. Three, most Muslim countries from the United Arab Emirates to Indonesia, from Egypt to Bangladesh, buy their weapons not from China but from the United States. At the end of 1990 for instance, Saudi Arabia signed a 21 billion dollar contract with the US which will allow the former to buy a whole range of sophisticated weapons from the latter. In September 1991, Kuwait signed a 10-year defence treaty with the US. Contrast this with Iran, the country which according to Huntington has bought nuclear technology from China in order to make nuclear weapons. Iran has been reducing its military expenditure since the end of the Iraq-Iran war so much so that it has one of the lowest military budgets in that volatile part of the world. Four, even if a handful of Muslim states have been buying weapons from China, it is absurd to suggest that a Confucian-Islamic connection has been established. On many global issues of great import to the Muslim world, China has failed to endorse the Muslim position. Bosnia-Herzegovina is a case in point. Neither did China support Arab and Muslim states on the crucial US initiated UN general assembly vote on Zionism in December 1991. In fact, China chose to recognise Israel last year, much to the chagrin of Muslim states like Iran, Iraq, Libya and Pakistan - which incidentally are all part of Huntington's Confucian-Islamic connection! Indeed, as an overall trend in the last 15 years or so, China has been moving closer to the West. The desire to modernise its economy, with the help of Western technology and know-how, is partly responsible for pushing China in that direction. If China has, on occasions, refused to take the side of the US and the West against countries like Iraq (on the use of force against her in the Gulf War) and Libya (on the imposition of air sanctions against her) it is because China is concerned about the UN being used to undermine what it regards as `the sovereignty of its member-states'. It fears the UN may be manipulated in the same way against her. The Confucian-Islamic connection then is a myth propagated by people like Huntington to justify increased US military spending in the post cold war era. WHY CONFUCIAN? It is quite conceivable that Huntington has chosen to target the Confucian and Islamic civilisations for certain other reasons too which are not explicitly stated in his essay. Like many other Western academics, commentators and policy analysts, Huntington, it appears, is also concerned about the economic ascendancy of the so-called Confucian communities such as "the People's Republic of China and Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and overseas Chinese communities in other Asian countries". He is of the view that, "If cultural commonality is a prerequisite for economic integration, the principal East Asian economic bloc of the future is likely to be centred on China. This bloc is, in fact, already coming into existence". The present dynamism and future potential of these `Confucian' economies has already set alarm bells ringing in various Western capitals. There are concerted attempts to thwart the economic growth and expansion of these economies. Huntington's warning to the West about the threat that Confucian China poses should be seen in that context - as yet another attempt to curb the rise of yet another non-Western economic competitor. WHY ISLAMIC? As far as the `Islamic threat' is concerned, it is something which Huntington and his kind would have no difficulty in selling to the West. For prejudice and antagonism towards Islam and Muslims is deeply embedded in the psyche of mainstream Western society. The rise of Islamic movements in different parts of the world determined to resist Western domination and control over Muslim territories and resources, Muslim cultures and communities, Muslim hearts and minds has provoked a new, powerful wave of negative emotions against the religion and its practitioners. That it is resistance to Western domination and control - and not some threat to the West as such - which is taking place within the Muslim world is a reality that is cleverly concealed from the general public. What Islamic movements are opposed to is the annexation and occupation of their lands (as in the case of Palestine and Lebanon), the usurpation of their rights over their own natural resource (as in the case of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Sheikhdoms) and the denigration of their religion (as it often happens in the mainstream Western media) by the powerful force of Western imperialism sometimes abetted by local elites. Islamic groups and individuals see their struggle as part of the still unfulfilled quest for self-determination and for genuine independence and sovereignty. But most Western academics and journalists, in concert with their policy-makers, refuse to grant any legitimacy to their struggle. Muslim resistance is portrayed as `an Islamic threat'. The violence that those who resist are sometimes forced to resort to in order to protect their integrity is equated with the violence of the aggressor who annexes land and massacres people. The victim is put on the same plane as his victimiser. In fact, sometimes one gets the impression that it is the victim who is blamed. Huntington seems to suggest this when he says, "In Eurasia the great historic fault lines between civilisations are once more aflame. This is particularly true along the boundaries of the crescent-shaped Islamic bloc of nations from the bulge of Africa to central Asia. Violence also occurs between Muslims, on the one hand, and Orthodox Serbs in the Balkans, Jews in Israel, Hindus in India, Buddhists in Burma and Catholics in the Philippines. Islam has bloody borders". The implication is that in all these instances it is Islam, it is the Muslims who are responsible for the spilling of blood. And yet anyone who has even an elementary knowledge of the various conflicts Huntington mentions will readily admit that more often than not it is the Muslims who have been bullied, bludgeoned and butchered. The truth, however, means very little to Huntington. He is only interested in projecting Islam in a pejorative manner. In a recent interview he has described it as "a militant religion" (New Perspectives Quarterly Vol. 10 #3 Summer 1993). In fact, the title of his essay, 'The Clash of Civilisations?' is, taken from Bernard Lewis' `The Roots of Muslim Rage', an essay which distorts the current Islamic resurgence and depicts it as an irrational threat to the Western heritage. Both Huntington and Lewis are `Islam baiters' in the tradition of earlier academics who were part of the West's cold war propaganda arsenal. Their role is to camouflage the suffering of, and the injustice done to, the victims of US and Western domination and control by creating and concocting new theories and novel paradigms about the conflict of cultures and the clash of civilisations. No, Huntington's `Clash of Civilisations?' will not conceal the real nature of the conflict. The victims - or at least some of the victims - know the truth. From coatesrd@casmail.muohio.edu Tue Mar 5 12:42:53 1996 5 Mar 96 14:32:03 -5 Date: Tue, 05 Mar 96 14:31:35 EST From: coatesrd@casmail.muohio.edu (Rodney Coates) Reply-To: coatesrd@casmail.muohio.edu (Rodney Coates) To: AFROAM-L@HARVARDA.HARVARD.EDU, psn@csf.colorado.edu, AFAM-L@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu, ABSLST-L@CMUVM.CSV.CMICH.EDU, revs@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Academic Racism: Info that should concern you As many of you are aware there is a renewed assalt on African Americans through "scholarship" and research as seen in the Violence Initiative, the publication of THE BELL CURVE, etc. What you are receiving is an article that is appearing in the March 1996 issue of PSYCH DISCOURSE--the monthly newsjournal of The Association of Black Psychologists. Please note that this article ends with a call for interdisciplinary communication and action to address the issues presented in the article. Thank you, Jackie Jackson IS UNETHICAL RESEARCH A WEAPON STILL IN USE AGAINST AFRICAN AMERICAN CHILDREN AND YOUTH? Jacquelyne F. Jackson, Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley Pamela Y. George, M.S. St. Mary's College of California We're afraid the answer is, yes! We want to alert ABPsi members to more information that leads to this conclusion, and propose that we redouble our efforts to deal with the situation effectively. We are especially concerned that the welfare of African American children and youth is being undermined to stop the development of future generations capable of grappling with the racism that has always plagued people of African descent in this country. The crux of the problem is large scale but low profile research with a hidden agenda of proving that we are "genetically defective" and/or "incurably pathological" ; this is research that sets the stage for so called "preventive interventions" that will be the "ultimate solution" to the problem that we pose for those who benefit from our oppression. Most of us see sensational headlines on racist "scholarship" such as the widely reported publication of Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray's The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (Hilliard, 1995). While we may have heard about secret research programs that got exposed such as the Violence Initiative (Bennett, 1993), we don't get enough specific information to know the extent to which such projects have been stopped if they have been stopped at all. We need to review our efforts to stop these kinds of attacks before they become fully developed because they are growing in number and variety. These unethical attacks are prime examples of what is addressed in the concept of Maafa. Maafa means a great disaster and misfortune of death and destruction beyond human convention and comprehension perpetrated against people of African descent. The slave trade is the classical example of Maafa. The critical feature of the Maafa is denial of the validity of African people's humanity accompanied by a collective and ever-present total disregard and disrespect for people of African descent and their right to exist. The Maafa gives license to the continual, systematic and organized process of spiritual and physical destruction of African people both individually and collectively (Nobles, 1994; Richards, 1980). The perpetual, comprehensive and systematic process of destruction can be seen in what is being done to our children and youth who are much more vulnerable to research abuse than most people in our communities realize. The long ugly history of IQ testing has kept many ABPSI members on guard so some of us weren't really surprised when the emphasis shifted from testing to establish intellectual inferiority to "diagnosing" to establish other kinds of disorders such as Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADD and ADHD). But the need to be on guard isn't confined to the issue of testing. ADHD has been linked to the Violence Initiative and the line of invisible warfare against young children that the combination represents has grown since ABPSI members first learned about it and our leadership protested it. What has not yet received our general membership's attention is that African American adolescents and young adults are in the line of fire from some new angles too. There is unethical research being implemented outside of the issue of violence proneness. Almost no one seems to be aware of recent "research" initiatives to exacerbate vulnerabilities of African American youth and stigmatize them as hopelessly damaged; sexually abused pregnant adolescents have become a target for such research. What follows are profiles on two separate large, multi-site studies, including brief histories and updates of them. They are concrete examples of what is being done to African American children and youth these days in the name of research. The Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Study and the Violence Initiative ABPSI has long monitored emerging educational and mental health diagnostic classifications with the prospect of disproportionate assignment of African Americans to devalued categories. Attention Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder is one such category that became more widely used in the 1970s and 1980s. Based on concern of prospective mislabeling of African American children Suzanne Randolph, as a past President of the Association of Black Psychologist, presented testimony to the 1991 Joint Senate and House Committee on Labor and Education on behalf of the Committee on Psychological Testing of the ABPSI (Randolph, 1991). The central position stated was that Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD)--sometimes called Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)--as delineated in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is a vague classification that encompasses many behaviors of normally active children. Consequently, the DSM definition of ADD as a combination of "inappropriate" behaviors predisposed professional child evaluators to use many personally biased criteria for deriving a diagnosis. ABPSI strongly recommended against approval of ADD as a new classification in the education codes pertaining to the handicapped. Shortly after this testimony, a widely publicized controversy developed involving federal governmental responses to the sharp escalation in violence among urban African American youth in the 1980s. The federal response became known as the Violence Initiative. In a meeting of the National Mental Health Advisory Council in February 1992 Dr. Frederick Goodwin, the director of the National Institute of Mental Health at the time, was quoted as suggesting that inner-city ghetto males were like jungle monkeys with regard to violent behavior. Shortly afterwards, the National Institutes of Health announced plans for a conference with the proposed title "Genetic Factors in Crime: Findings, Uses and Implications" that caused a storm of protest from African Americans including the Congressional Black Caucus that ultimately lead to the cancellation of the conference (Babington, 1992). Many African Americans felt that the Violence Initiative raised the specter of research with genocidal intent similar to that of the infamous unethical Tuskeegee study sponsored by the Public Health Service of untreated syphilis in African American men (i.e. the 1932-1972 study of low-income African American men in Alabama with syphilis who were observed for forty years and mislead to believe they were receiving treatment the whole time.) The controversy ensuing from the Violence Initiative was in fact so great that the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services appointed a blue ribbon panel of African Americans to review the entire departmental portfolio pertaining to violence prevention to determine the validity of allegations of inappropriate research spawned by the Violence Initiative. Key allegations were that the Department of Health and Human Services was sponsoring research attempting to establish a genetic factor accounting for a correlation of race and violent behavior and planning to target African American males between 5 and 9 years old to administer medications to control their behavior (Wheeler, 1992). The Secretary of Health and Human Services' Blue Ribbon Panel in Violence Prevention convened for three days in November and December 1992 . Dr. Maisha Bennett, the President of ABPSI at the time, was a member of this blue ribbon panel and the work group that reviewed the portfolio of the National Institute of Mental Health as represented by the DHHS staff. The DHHS staff did not inform the panel members about a large, five site study of ADHD in children that had begun in October 1992 that came to the attention of members of ABPSI and Maisha Bennett near the end of the meeting of the panel. The study entailed pharmacological and behavioral treatments of ADHD, and was especially concerned with co- morbid conditions and the role of SES in ADHD (Regier & Leshner, 1992; Richters, Arnold, Jensen, Abikoff, Conners, Greenhill, Hechtman, Hinshaw, Pelham, Swanson, 1995). Aware that conduct disorder is frequently considered a co-morbid disorder with ADHD, particularly in low income children, Maisha Bennett and some other panel members sought a more thorough review of the multi-site study and other studies involving invasive drug treatments of children (Bennett, 1993). They felt the three day meeting of the panel was inadequate to make a clear determination about the scope and purposes of the ADHD study. This request for an extension, however, was not granted. Rather, the DHHS staff maintained that federally supported research on ADHD involving medication was completely distinct from research on aggression, antisocial behavior, and violence (Jenifer, 1993). The Report of the Secretary's Blue Ribbon Panel on Violence Prevention (Jenifer, 1993), stated that no support for allegations of inappropriate research with children was found, but Maisha Bennett wrote a dissenting objection to this conclusion based in large part on her information on the multi-site study undertaken in 1992 on ADHD involving drug treatments (Bennett, 1993). Ultimately, the Report of the Secretary's Blue Ribbon Panel was suppressed, and few people who were not members of the panel ever saw it. Some member of the Association of Black Psychologists who are also members of the American Psychological Association (J.F. Jackson, M.H. Bennett, H. Dent, H. Fairchild, R. Jones, & P. Rhymer-Todman, personal communication, January 21, 1993) wrote an extended letter on the ethical infractions they believed were exhibited in the implementation of the ADHD study to an APA committee that was reviewing APA's guidelines on ethical conduct of research with human subjects. The letter focused on the need to extend the concept of informed consent to cover harm and potential harm to participants based on social group membership and means of assuring prospective minority research participants of protection from such harm. Specifically, the risk of group stigmatization as well as harm to the individual, as exemplified in the multi-site ADHD study, was the central issue. The letter authors maintained that researchers seeking to study minority community members, including researchers who are themselves members of the ethnic group(s) to be studied, should routinely seek proposal review and the advice of psychologists who are respected members of the community to be studied. One focus of such proposal review would be the study's potential for stigmatization of and detriment to the ethnic group as a whole as well as harm to individuals. They made additional proposals for cases of large studies involving samples presumed to be representative of ethnic minority communities. They proposed that civil rights and professional organizations representing the interests of racial and ethnic minority communities, with leadership and professions beyond psychology represented, review prospective studies for potential ethical conflicts , and that such review become a standard element of research prerequisites. They felt that government and institutional human subjects review boards had demonstrated incapability of providing assurance to minority subjects of protection from group stigmatization and personal harm, because of the history of government sponsorship of detrimental research. Their views were incorporated with additional recommendations of the Board of Directors of ABPsi soon after their letter was written (Bennett, 1993). ABPsi's position contrasts markedly with that of one Euro-American psychologist and human behavioral geneticist who advocates against attention to membership in an ethnic or other interest group as a basis for consideration of harmful or unfavorable consequences to research participants (Scarr, 1988). Although three years have lapsed since it was written, the ABPSI members' letter has not yet been substantively addressed by the APA committee charged with revising the guides and standards for ethical research on human subjects. Thus, the ethical issue embedded in the question of whether or not harm to a group should be considered in determining risks to participants in a research project has not been acknowledged by mainstream psychologists but it remains a pressing issue for African American interests. In spite of protests that stopped the conference that had been planned in 1993, a conference entitled "The Meaning and Significance of Research on Genetics and Criminal Behavior" took place on September 22 through 24, 1995 (Maass, 1995; Williams, 1995). Critics of the cancelled conference and a few African Americans were invited to participate, and the planning took place while the Congressional Black Caucus was preoccupied with the newly elected majority Republican Congress. Moreover, the genetics and crime conference was held at a remote Maryland location the same weekend as the annual political summit sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus. Even though a small group vigorously protested (Roush, 1995), the fact that the event was held added legitimacy to the presumption of a critical role of genetics in criminal behavior. Meanwhile, the scope of research on treatments for ADHD including pharmacological approaches has quietly expanded to include Department of Education funding. The multi-site cooperative study that was the focus of refusal to accept the portfolio presented to DHHS Secretary Sullivan's Blue Ribbon Panel has been expand to include Department of Education Funding, and the NIMH-DOE collaboration not only sets a precedent for joint ventures of those two agencies but adds an agency that had not previously been associated with Violence Initiative research. The African American community appears to be completely oblivious to these developments, and neither efforts to protect African American interests nor effective efforts to check or roll back such research have occurred. African American psychologists who are members of ABPSI continue to present concerns about research on ADHD and its relation to mislabeling and stigmatization of African American children, along with concerns about the lack of assurance that drug treatments for ADHD in children will not foster drug dependency in adolescence or adulthood (e.g. Dent, 1994). Their concerns are shared by those outside the African American community who are alarmed by the general tendency to use more than probably harmful medications and intrusive treatments to do no more than subdue emotionally distressed children (Breggin & Breggin 1994; Breggin & Breggin, 1993). These concerns also reflect longstanding questions about medication of African American children with behavior deemed unacceptable in school settings, and the role of less than fully informed consent in treatment and research in fostering maladaptive, stereotypical behavior in the African American community (Valentine, 1971; Banks, 1974). Many more African Americans, not only members of ABPsi, need to become informed on these issues and work collaboratively to protect African American children and youth. If this does not happen soon we might see problems in generations of youth in the near future that will dwarf the problems of violence, Black-on-Black homicide and drug dealing that we are witnessing today. Misrepresentation of Study Purposes and the Issue of Informed Consent: The Adolescent Sexual Abuse Study Although the general American public has been bombarded with the stereotype of African Americans as abusive and neglectful of their children, hard core empirical research has shown the opposite. When adjustments for social class were made, African Americans had a lower rate of child maltreatment than whites up to the 1980s (Garbarino and Ebata, 1983). Even national surveys of child maltreatment during the drug ravaged 1980s found no association whatsoever between race and child maltreatment for any type of child abuse or neglect (National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, 1988). Even so, there has been an increase in research using clients in public schools and clinics seeking to establish a causal connection between abuse and race in low-income groups. A recently undertaken study in California is one such study. Like many states, California sponsors service programs for adolescent mothers through community agencies that serve primarily low-income African American and Hispanic clients under the sponsorship of local and state public health agencies. There are 37 local agencies serving 5000 adolescent mothers in one network of service delivery sites referred to as the Adolescent Family Life Programs. In 1993, local agencies were directed by an office within the state Maternal and Child Health branch to administer an assessment to determine the extent of childhood and adolescents sexual abuse of the adolescent mothers served in the AFLP programs. Agencies were initially told that the assessment was to determine the need for specialized services for their clients and that it would be paired with staff training on how to provide more effective mental health services to clients with a history of abuse. When the assessment instrument was shown to one local agency and directives on its use were delivered, the agency psychologist--an ABPsi member --protested on the grounds that the assessment constituted a plan for egregious, unethical violation of clients' mental health and welfare. The professionals in the protesting agency asserted a longstanding desire for more attention to and therapeutic services for clients with a personal history of sexual abuse, but felt that the proposed assessment would traumatize rather than help abused clients ( P. George, personal communication, January 4, 1994). The crux of the complaint was an issue of informed consent. Minor aged clients would be induced to disclose personal experiences of sexual abuse that would lead to two highly probable negative consequences--psychological reliving of the abuse experiences without adequate therapeutic support and mandatory staff reporting to Child Protective Services resulting in unmanaged disruption of clients' relations with their families. Clients would not be alerted to these possibilities in advance and local agencies were not provided with additional resources that would enable them to avert expectable negative consequences of study participation for their clients. The assessment battery that was to be completed consisted of 11 pages including a standardized and copyrighted inventory (Fine & Boyer, 1993). It asked deeply probing questions about a wide range of things including diverse sexual practices that an adolescent client might have experienced along with specific questions about sexual experiences with particular family members and male partners, as well as questions about personal and abuser use of illegal substances. Developers of the instrument presented it to local agency staff as a needs assessment, not research, and acknowledged that research would require review of a human subjects panel. Rather, according to developers, the non-anonymous survey responses would become a part of responding clients' files at the agency and information from it would be entered into a statewide database of the Maternal and Child Health branch presumably available on an unrestricted basis for any uses the state offices might determine. The developers did, however, anticipate that disclosure of abuse might require staff reporting to Child Protective Services authorities, but deferred to local agency discretion on reporting requirements. The one page consent form attached to individual assessment forms informed prospective respondents that the survey would ask personal information about unwanted sexual experiences and stated that information on abuse would be reported, but it did not state to whom the information would be reported or what the consequences of reporting might be. Even though participation was to be presented as voluntary, local agency staff were urged to get every client to respond to the survey, including reluctant and hard-to-reach clients, and were encouraged to present the assessment battery during service delivery if such timing would facilitate client compliance with the request to complete the instrument. The state Maternal and Child Health branch sought to quash the protesting agency's refusal to participate in the assessment program as first presented and dissent from other AFLP agencies (R. Shah, personal communication, no exact date, 1994). Consequently, the dissenting psychologist brought the matter to the attention of ABPsi, her professional organization. After reviewing all materials connected with the case, the ABPsi Executive Board voted to oppose the assessment program as first presented to local agencies on grounds that it threatened the psychological well-being of vulnerable adolescent clients, it violated rights of informed consent, it failed to demonstrate plans for protection of human subjects, and it exhibited clinical and research incompetence on the part of the investigators (A. Jackson, personal communication, May 4, 1994). The board also offered to refer the investigators to African American psychologists in the membership of the organization for expertise and consultation to bolster the cultural, clinical, and research competence of the study designers. An inquiry was also filed with the Federal Office for the Protection from Research Risks, which solicited information from the California Health and Welfare Agency's Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects. After an extensive review including consultation with the Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects' attorney, the Committee determined several things (J.D. White, memorandum, August 5, 1994). First, the assessment was research not simply a needs assessment tool, because regulatory exemptions from Committee review for surveys did not apply for minors, who must have parental consent for participation, and because the assessment project involved more than minimal risk to targeted participants. Second, the assessment project was not and should not have been exempt from Committee review, but this presented problems because much of the data had already been collected by the time of the Committee's consideration and risks to subjects through assessment battery administration had already occurred. In this connection the Committee noted that the consent form was inadequate, but efforts to collect consent with an improved form would run the risk of inducing additional psychological stress in subjects. Moreover, the Committee noted that a statement in the original consent form assuring subjects that responses would be kept private was misleading because instances of abuse would be reported to Child Protective Services. Third, the Committee ruled that the project was suspended, that no new subjects could be enrolled, and that the data that had already been collected could not be used for publication in scientific journals. The administrative leadership of the state Maternal and Child Health branch was informed of these findings in writing (J.D. White, personal communication, August 15, 1994). Inexplicably, subsequent to the Committees findings and after the Maternal and Child Health administration had been informed of the Committee's findings, the local agency that lodged the original complaint about the assessment battery was directed to administer the survey to its clients by the Chief administrator of the Child and Adolescent Health section of the Maternal and Child Health branch because the assessment was a high priority of the branch (Melia, personal communication, no exact date, 1994). The chief administrator commented that the original assessment battery developers had collected data from 34 of the 37 AFLP agencies, that most had surveyed all of their clients, and that the assessment developers were engaged in analyzing the data for release. He noted that the findings would be used to develop projects for Violence Prevention Programs within the MCH branch. The protesting psychologist emphatically declined to participate and, among other comments, noted that the assessment had been formally suspended and that the MCH administrator appeared to be threatening the local agency's state financing to coerce compliance (P. George, personal communication, September 27, 1994). Ultimately, the protesting agency did prevail in that data were not collected. There are many ethical issues associated with this incident, the violation of principles of informed consent is but one of them. In light of the sequence of events, there are sociopolitical issues of deception in presenting the purposes of a study and of efforts to coerce involvement in a prohibited study that overshadow the initial issue of informed consent of individuals. What may have originally been an ill conceived, expedient attempt to execute an applied research project that would generate publishable results under the guise of an internal needs assessment evolved to become much more. The AFLP sexual abuse study stands out as a documented case of willful harm to African Americans through large scale research that sought publishable results that would both stigmatize African Americans and become a basis for interventions with questionable prospects for benefitting African American adolescents. A Three Step Action Plan to Counter Unethical Research 1) ABPSI could convene a symposium at the 1996 ABPSI convention in Chicago with not only Black Psychologists but other African American professionals and academics interested in the threat of unethical research with grave implications for our community. Nineteen ninety-six is a year for an African American super convention, where a number of African American professional organizations will be meeting simultaneously in the same city to facilitate communication between the groups. This presents an opportunity to address the issues in a broader arena, establish working relationships, and lay the groundwork for more effective follow-up. There are many facets of the general problem that could be addressed, the most obvious one is an interdisciplinary updating and information exchange on types of unethical research currently underway or on the drawing boards to begin to chart the scope of the problem. Other symposium topics could be the ABPsi Position Paper on the Violence Initiative (Association of Black Psychologists, 1995) and the recommendations of the ABPsi Board of Directors for dealing with it (Bennett, 1993). A panel of invited presenters could address these issues and highlight a range of issues including those that are most pressing to African-descent constituencies outside of ABPsi. They could also suggest avenues for more fully exploring issues after the presentation as well as developing follow-up actions. 2) The Journal of Black Psychology could plan a special issue on the topic, and issue a call for papers with encouragement of multidisciplinary submissions. Presenters at the symposium could be invited to submit articles that would supplement those selected through the review process from the general pool of submissions responding to the call. Overall, the purpose would be to expand the range of communication on the problem and create a well documented forum for discussion of issues and prospective lines of action. 3) Finally, an effort to devise a multidisciplinary action network could follow. If a coherent body of opinion emerged from the discussion forums described above, the foundation for establishing both defensive and proactive actions could be laid. Again, the ABPsi position paper and the recommendations of the ABPsi Board of Directors on the Violence Initiative could serve as models for developing a more comprehensive African American community- based action network to deal with the full range of large scale unethical research projects that are being perpetrated against African Americans. Overall, the time for ferreting out and investigating insidious research is overdue. The time for action to stop it is now if we want to protect ourselves and upcoming generations from research induced psychological, physical and political injuries that could decimate us. NOTES 1) Jacquelyne F. Jackson is a developmental psychologist and research associate who may be contacted by e-mail at JACKJO@UCLINK4.BERKELEY.EDU or by mail at: Institute of Human Development, University of California-Berkeley, 1203 Tolman Hall #1690, Berkeley, CA 94720. Pamela George is the Chairperson of the Bay Area Association of Black Psychologists, Director of Black Student Programs at St. Mary's College, and a part-time faculty person at San Francisco State University's Dept. of Black Studies. Her address is: Bay Area Association of Black Psychologists, P.O. BOX 21290, Oakland, CA 94620. 2) Newsletter articles, personal communications, and most unpublished materials cited in the case examples sections are available from Halford Fairchild, Ph.D., Editor of Psych Discourse Pitzer College 1050 N. Mills Avenue, Claremont CA 91711 for the at-cost charge of $5.00 for copying and mailing. Make check payable to The Association of Black Psychologists. REFERENCES Association of Black Psychologist (1995). A holistic view of American Violence: A position paper on the Federal Violence Initiative. Psych Discourse: ABPsi Newsjournal, 26(3), 8-13. Banks, W.M. (1974). Drugs, hyperactivity, and Black schoolchildren. Journal of Negro Education, 45(2), 150-160. Babington, C. (1992, September 5). U-md. cancels conference on genetic link to crime: NIH pulled funds over proposed conference. The Washington Post, pp. A1, A14. Bennett, M.H. (1993). President's message. Actions on the "Federal Violence Initiative". Psych Discourse: ABPsi Newsjournal, 24(2), 4-8. Breggin, P.R., & Breggin, G.R. (1994). The war against children. New York: St. Martin's Press. Breggin, P.R., & Breggin, G.R. (1993). The Center for the Study of Psychiatry update report. The Federal Violence Initiative: Threats to Black Children (and Others). Psych Discourse: ABPsi Newsjournal, 24(4), 8-11. Dent, H.E. (1994, October). Minority concerns: Information Dissemination/Research. Paper presented at the sixth annual meeting of Children with Attention Deficit Disorders (CH. A.D.D.), New York, NY. Fine, D., & Boyer, D. (1993). Orientation and procedures manual for AFLP prevention program Seattle WA: Center for Health Training. Garbarino, J., & Ebata, A. (1983). The significance of ethnic and cultural differences in child maltreatment. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 45(4), 773-783. Hilliard, A.G. (1995). Either a paradigm shift or no mental measurement. Psych Discourse: ABPsi Newsjournal, 26(10), 6-20. Jenifer, F.G. (1993, January 15). Report of the Secretary's blue ribbon panel on violence prevention, Washington DC: Department of Health and Human Services. Maass, P. (1995, September 22). Conference on genetics and crime gets second chance. Washington Post, p. B01. Nobles, W.W. (1994). President's Message. Healing the rupture and extending the splendor. Psych Discourse: ABPsi Newsjournal, 25(9), 8-13. Randolph, S. (1991, March/April). Testimony presented to the Joint Senate and House Committee on Labor and Education: Notes on the mislabeling of African American children. Psych Discourse: ABPsi Newsletter, 22(4), 6-8. Regier, D.A., & Leshner, A.I. (February, 1992). Request for Applications. Cooperative agreement for a multi-site multimodal treatment study of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)/attention-deficit disorder (ADD). (National Institute of Mental Health, MH-92-03). Washington DC: National Institute of Mental Health. Richards, D.M. (1980). Let the circle be unbroken: The implications of African spirituality in the Diaspora. Trenton NJ: The Red Sea Press. Roush, W. (1995). Conflic marks crime conference. Science, 269(5232), 1808. Scarr, S. (1988). Race and gender as psychological variables: Social and ethical issues. American Psychologist, 43(1), 56-59. Valentine, C.A. (1971). Deficit, difference, and bicultural models of Afro-American behavior. Harvard Educational Review, 41(2), 137-157. Wheeler, D.L. (1992, November 4). Ambitious federal plan for violence research runs up against fears of its misuse. The Chronicle of Higher Education, pp. A7, A9. Williams, J. (1995, January 29). Searching for bad seed. Will racists exploit the science of genetics and violence? Washington Post, p. C01. =========END FORWARDED MESSAGE========= "Only when lions have Historians will hunters cease being heroes." African Proverb UMOJA, Still in the struggle Rodney D. Coates Director of Black World Studies Associate Professor of Sociology Miami University Oxford, Ohio - 45056 PH: 513-5291235 From coatesrd@casmail.muohio.edu Wed Mar 6 15:35:16 1996 6 Mar 96 17:16:30 -5 Date: Wed, 06 Mar 96 17:15:56 EST From: coatesrd@casmail.muohio.edu (Rodney Coates) Reply-To: coatesrd@casmail.muohio.edu (Rodney Coates) To: psn@csf.colorado.edu, revs@csf.colorado.edu, ABSLST-L@CMUVM.CSV.CMICH.EDU, AFAM-L@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu, eero@sofi.su.se, AFROAM-L@HARVARDA.HARVARD.EDU Subject: [Fwd: Academic Racism: Info that should concern you] I think I fixed the problem: here is a copy of a letter and article Jackie asked me to foward: check it out: Rodney c. As many of you are aware there is a renewed assalt on African Americans through "scholarship" and research as seen in the Violence Initiative, the publication of THE BELL CURVE, etc. What you are receiving is an article that is appearing in the March 1996 issue of PSYCH DISCOURSE--the monthly newsjournal of The Association of Black Psychologists. Please note that this article ends with a call for interdisciplinary communication and action to address the issues presented in the article. Thank you, Jackie Jackson IS UNETHICAL RESEARCH A WEAPON STILL IN USE AGAINST AFRICAN AMERICAN CHILDREN AND YOUTH? Jacquelyne F. Jackson, Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley Pamela Y. George, M.S. St. Mary's College of California We're afraid the answer is, yes! We want to alert ABPsi members to more information that leads to this conclusion, and propose that we redouble our efforts to deal with the situation effectively. We are especially concerned that the welfare of African American children and youth is being undermined to stop the development of future generations capable of grappling with the racism that has always plagued people of African descent in this country. The crux of the problem is large scale but low profile research with a hidden agenda of proving that we are "genetically defective" and/or "incurably pathological" ; this is research that sets the stage for so called "preventive interventions" that will be the "ultimate solution" to the problem that we pose for those who benefit from our oppression. Most of us see sensational headlines on racist "scholarship" such as the widely reported publication of Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray's TheBell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (Hilliard,1995). While we may have heard about secret research programs that got exposed suchas the Violence Initiative (Bennett, 1993), we don't get enough specific information to know the extent to which such projects have been stopped if they have been stopped at all. We need to review our efforts to stop these kinds of attacks before they become fully developed because they are growing in number and variety. These unethical attacks are prime examples of what is addressed in the concept of Maafa. Maafa means a great disaster and misfortune of death and destruction beyond human convention and comprehension perpetrated against people of African descent. The slave trade is the classical example of Maafa. The critical feature of the Maafa is denial of the validity of African people's humanityaccompanied by a collective and ever-present total disregard and disrespect for people of African descent and their right to exist. The Maafa gives license to the continual, systematic and organized process ofspiritual and physical destruction of African people both individually and collectively (Nobles, 1994; Richards, 1980). The perpetual, comprehensive and systematic process of destruction can be seen in what is being done toourchildren and youth who are much more vulnerable to research abuse than most people in our communities realize. The long ugly history of IQ testing has kept many ABPSI members on guard so some of us weren't really surprised when the emphasis shifted from testing to establish intellectual inferiority to "diagnosing" to establish other kinds of disorders such as Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADD and ADHD). But the need to be on guard isn't confined to the issue of testing. ADHD has been linked to the Violence Initiative and the line of invisible warfare against young children that the combination represents has grown since ABPSI members first learned about it and our leadership protested it. What has not yet received our general membership's attention is that African American adolescents and young adults are in the line of fire from some new angles too. There is unethical research being implemented outside of the issue of violence proneness. Almost no one seems to be aware of recent "research" initiatives to exacerbate vulnerabilities ofAfrican American youth and stigmatize them as hopelessly damaged; sexually abused pregnant adolescents have become a target for such research. What follows are profiles on two separate large, multi-site studies, including brief histories and updates of them. They are concrete examples of what is being done to African American children and youth these days in the name of research. The Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Study and the Violence Initiative ABPSI has long monitored emerging educational and mental health diagnostic classifications with the prospect of disproportionate assignment of African Americans to devalued categories. Attention Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder is one such category that became more widely used in the 1970s and 1980s. Based on concern of prospective mislabeling of African American children Suzanne Randolph, as a past President of the Association of Black Psychologist, presented testimony to the 1991 Joint Senate and House Committee on Labor and Education on behalf of the Committee on Psychological Testing of the ABPSI (Randolph, 1991). The central position stated was that Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD)--sometimes called Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)--as delineated in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is a vague classification that encompasses many behaviors of normally active children. Consequently, the DSM definition of ADD as a combination of "inappropriate" behaviors predisposed professional child evaluators to use many personally biased criteria for deriving a diagnosis. ABPSI strongly recommended against approval of ADD as a new classificationin the education codes pertaining to the handicapped. Shortly after this testimony, a widely publicized controversy developed involving federal governmental responses to the sharp escalation in violence among urban African American youth in the 1980s. The federal response became known as the Violence Initiative. In a meeting of the National Mental Health Advisory Council in February 1992 Dr. Frederick Goodwin, the director of the National Institute of Mental Health at the time, was quoted as suggesting that inner-city ghetto males were like jungle monkeys with regard to violent behavior. Shortly afterwards, the National Institutes of Health announced plans for a conference with the proposed title "Genetic Factors in Crime: Findings, Uses and Implications" that caused a storm of protest from African Americans including the Congressional Black Caucus that ultimately lead to the cancellation of the conference (Babington, 1992). Many African Americans felt that the Violence Initiative raised the specter of research with genocidal intent similar to that of the infamous unethical Tuskeegee study sponsored by the Public Health Service of untreated syphilis in African American men (i.e. the 1932-1972 study of low-income African American men in Alabama with syphilis who were observed for forty ears and mislead to believe they were receiving treatment the whole time.) The controversy ensuing from the Violence Initiative was in fact so great that the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services appointed a blue ribbon panel of African Americans to review the entire departmental portfolio pertaining to violence prevention to determine the validity of allegations of inappropriate research spawned by the Violence Initiative. Key allegations were that the Department of Health and Human Services as sponsoring research attempting to establish a genetic factor accounting for a correlation of race and violent behavior and planning to target African American males between 5 and 9 years old to administer medications to control their behavior (Wheeler, 1992). The Secretary of Health and Human Services' Blue Ribbon Panel in Violence Prevention convened for three days in November and December 1992 . Dr. Maisha Bennett, the President of ABPSI at the time, was a member of this blue ribbon panel and the work group that reviewed the portfolio of the National Institute of Mental Health as represented by the DHHS staff. The DHHS staff did not inform the panel members about a large, five site study of ADHD in children that had begun in October 1992 that came to the attention of members of ABPSI and Maisha Bennett near the end of the meeting of the panel. The study entailed pharmacological and behavioral treatments of ADHD, and was especially concerned with co- morbid conditions and the role of SES in ADHD (Regier & Leshner, 1992; Richters, Arnold, Jensen, Abikoff, Conners, Greenhill, Hechtman, Hinshaw, Pelham, Swanson, 1995). Aware that conduct disorder is frequently considered a co-morbid disorder with ADHD, particularly in low income children, Maisha Bennett and some other panel members sought a more thorough review of the multi-site study and other studies involving invasive drug treatments of children (Bennett, 1993). They felt the three day meeting of the panel was inadequate to make a clear determination about the scope and purposes of the ADHD study. This request for an extension, however, was not granted. Rather, the DHHS staff maintained that federally supported research on ADHD involving medication was completely distinct from research on aggression, antisocial behavior, and violence (Jenifer, 1993). The Report of the Secretary's Blue Ribbon Panel on Violence Prevention (Jenifer, 1993), stated that no support for allegations of inappropriate research with children was found, but Maisha Bennett wrote a dissenting objection to this conclusion based in large part on her information on the multi-site study undertaken in 1992 on ADHD involving drug treatments (Bennett, 1993). Ultimately, the Report of the Secretary's Blue Ribbon Panel was suppressed, and few people who were not members of the panel ever saw it. Some member of the Association of Black Psychologists who are also members of the American Psychological Association (J.F. Jackson, M.H. Bennett, H. Dent, H. Fairchild, R. Jones, & P. Rhymer-Todman, personal communication, January 21, 1993) wrote an extended letter on the ethical infractions they believed were exhibited in the implementation of the ADHD study to an APA committee that was reviewing APA's guidelines on ethical conduct of research with human subjects. The letter focused on the need to extend the concept of informed consent to cover harm and potential harm to participants based on social group membership and means of assuring prospective minority research participants of protection from such harm. Specifically, the risk of group stigmatization as well as harm to the individual, as exemplified in the multi-site ADHD study, was the central issue. The letter authors maintained that researchers seeking to study minority community members, including researchers who are themselves members of the ethnic group(s) to be studied, should routinely seek proposal review and the advice of psychologists who are respected members of the community to be studied. One focus of such proposal review would be the study's potential for stigmatization of and detriment to the ethnic group as a whole as well as harm to individuals. They made additional proposals for cases of large studies involving samples presumed to be representative of ethnic minority communities. They proposed that civil rights and professional organizations representing the interests of racial and ethnic minority communities, with leadership and professions beyond psychology represented, review prospective studies for potential ethical conflicts , and that such review become a standard element of research prerequisites. They felt that government and institutional human subjects review boards had demonstrated incapability ofproviding assurance to minority subjects of protection from group stigmatization and personal harm, because of the history of government sponsorship of detrimental research. Their views were incorporated with additional recommendations of the Board of Directors of ABPsi soon after their letter was written (Bennett, 1993). ABPsi's position contrasts markedly with that of one Euro-American psychologist and human behavioral geneticist who advocates against attention to membership in an ethnic or other interest group as a basis for consideration of harmful or unfavorableconsequences to research participants (Scarr, 1988). Although three years have lapsed since it was written, the ABPSI members' letter has not yet been substantively addressed by the APA committee charged with revising the guides and standards for ethical research on human subjects. Thus, the ethical issue embedded in the question of whether or not harm to a group should be considered in determining risks to participants in a research project has not been acknowledged by mainstream psychologists but it remains a pressing issue for African American interests. In spite of protests that stopped the conference that had been planned in 1993, a conference entitled "The Meaning and Significance of Research on Genetics and Criminal Behavior" took place on September 22 through 24, 1995 (Maass, 1995; Williams, 1995). Critics of the cancelled conference and a few African Americans were invited to participate, and the planning took place while the Congressional Black Caucus was preoccupied with the newly elected majority Republican Congress. Moreover, the genetics and crime conference was held at a remote Maryland location the same weekend as the annual political summit sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus. Even though a small group vigorously protested (Roush, 1995), the fact that the event was held added legitimacy to the presumption of a critical role of genetics in criminal behavior. Meanwhile, the scope of resear ch on treatments for ADHD including pharmacological approaches has quietly expanded to include Department of Education funding. The multi-site cooperative study that was the focus of refusal to accept the portfolio presented to DHHS Secretary Sullivan's Blue Ribbon Panel has been expand to include Department of Education Funding, and the NIMH-DOE collaboration not only sets a precedent for joint ventures of those two agencies but adds an agency that had not previously been associated with Violence Initiative research. The African American community appears to be completely oblivious to these developments, and neither efforts to protect African American interests nor effective efforts to check or roll back such research have occurred. African American psychologists who are members of ABPSI continue to present concerns about research on ADHD and its relation to mislabeling and stigmatization of African American children, along with concerns about the lack of assurance that drug treatments for ADHD in children will not foster drug dependency in adolescence or adulthood (e.g. Dent, 1994). Their concerns are shared by those outside the African American community who are alarmed by the general tendency to use more than probably harmful medications and intrusive treatments to do no more than subdue emotionally distressed children (Breggin & Breggin 1994; Breggin & Breggin, 1993). These concerns also reflect longstanding questions about medication of African American children with behavior deemed unacceptable in school settings, and the role of less than fully informed consent in treatment and research in fostering maladaptive, stereotypical behavior in the African American community (Valentine, 1971; Banks, 1974). Many more African Americans, not only members of ABPsi, need to become informed on these issues and work collaboratively to protect African American children and youth. If this does not happen soon we might see problems in generations of youth in the near future that will dwarf the problems of violence, Black-on-Black homicide and drug dealing that we are witnessing today. Misrepresentation of Study Purposes and the Issue of Informed Consent: The Adolescent Sexual Abuse Study Although the general American public has been bombarded with the stereotype of African Americans as abusive and neglectful of their children, hard core empirical research has shown the opposite. When adjustments for social class were made, African Americans had a lower rate of child maltreatment than whites up to the 1980s (Garbarino and Ebata, 1983). Even national surveys of child maltreatment during the drug ravaged 1980s found no association whatsoever between race and child maltreatment for any type of child abuse or neglect (National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, 1988). Even so, there has been an increase in research using clients in public schools and clinics seeking to establish a causal connection between abuse and race in low-income groups. A recently undertaken study in California is one such study. Like many states, California sponsors service programs for adolescent mothers through community agencies that serve primarily low-income African American and Hispanic clients under the sponsorship of local and state public health agencies. There are 37 local agencies serving 5000 adolescent mothers in one network of service delivery sites referred to as the Adolescent Family Life Programs. In 1993, local agencies were directed by an office within the state Maternal and Child Health branch to administer an assessment to determine the extent of childhood and adolescents sexual abuse of the adolescent mothers served in the AFLP programs. Agencies were initially told that the assessment was to determine the need for specialized services for their clients and that it would be paired with staff training on how to provide more effective mental health services to clients with a history of abuse. When the assessment instrument was shown to one lo cal agency and directives on its use were delivered, the agency psychologist--an ABPsi member --protested on the grounds that the assessment constituted a plan for egregious, unethical violation of clients' mental health and welfare. The professionals in the protesting agency asserted a longstanding desire for more attention to and therapeutic services for clients with a personal history of sexual abuse, but felt that the proposed assessment would traumatize rather than help abused clients ( P. George, personal communication, January 4, 1994). The crux of the complaint was an issue of informed consent. Minor aged clients would be induced to disclose personal experiences of sexual abuse that would lead to two highly probable negative consequences--psychological reliving of the abuse experiences without adequate therapeutic support and mandatory staff reporting to Child Protective Services resulting in unmanaged disruption of clients' relations with their families. Clients would not be alerted to these possibilities in advance and local agencies were not provided with additional resources that would enable them to avert expectable negative consequences of study articipation for their clients. The assessment battery that was to be completed consisted of 11 pages including a standardized and copyrighted inventory (Fine & Boyer, 1993). It asked deeply probing questions about a wide range of things including diverse sexual practices that an adolescent client might have experienced along with specific questions about sexual experiences with particular family members and male partners, as well as questions about personal and abuser use of illegal substances. Developers of the instrument presented it to local agency staff as a needs assessment, not research, and acknowledged that research would require review of a human subjects panel. Rather, according to developers, the non-anonymous survey responses would become a part of responding clients' files at the agency and information from it would be entered into a statewide database of the Maternal and Child Health branch presumably available on an unrestricted basis for any uses the state offices might determine. The developers did, however, anticipate that disclosure of abuse might require staff reporting to Child Protective Services authorities, but deferred to local agency discretion on reporting requirements. The one page consent form attached to individual assessment forms informed prospective respondents that the survey would ask personal information about unwanted sexual experiences and stated that information on abuse would be reported, but it did not state to whom the information would be reported or what the consequences of reporting might be. Even though participation was to be presented as voluntary, local agency staff were urged to get every client to respond to the survey, including reluctant and hard-to-reach clients, and were encouraged to present the assessment battery during service delivery if such timing would facilitate client compliance with the request to complete the instrument. The state Maternal and Child Health branch sought to quash the protesting agency's refusal to participate in the assessment program as first presented and dissent from other AFLP agencies (R. Shah, personal communication, no exact date, 1994). Consequently, the dissenting psychologist brought the matter to the attention of ABPsi, her professional organization. After reviewing all materials connected with the case, the ABPsi Executive Board voted to oppose the assessment program as first presented to local agencies on grounds that it threatened the psychological well-being of vulnerable adolescent clients, it violated rights of informed consent, it failed to demonstrate plans for protection of human subjects, and it exhibited clinical and research incompetence on the part of the investigators (A. Jackson, personal communication, May 4, 1994). The board also offered to refer the investigators to African American psychologists in the membership of the organization for expertise and consultation to bolster the cultural, clinical, and research competence of the study designers. An inquiry was also filed with the Federal Office for the Protection from Research Risks, which solicited information from the California Health and Welfare Agency's Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects. After an extensive review including consultation with the Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects' attorney, the Committee determined several things (J.D. White, memorandum, August 5, 1994). First, the assessment was research not simply a needs assessment tool, because regulatory exemptions from Committee review for surveys did not apply for minors, who must have parental consent for participation, and because the assessment project involved more than minimal risk to targeted participants. Second, the assessment project was not and should not have been exempt from Committee review, but this presented problems because much of the data had already been collected by the time of the Committee's consideration and risks to subjects through assessment battery administration had already occurred. In this connection the Committee noted that the consent form was inadequate, but efforts to collect consent with an improved form would run the risk of inducing additional psychological stress in subjects. Moreover, the Committee noted that a statement in the original consent form assuring subjects that responses would be kept private was misleading because instances of abuse would be reported to Child Protective Services. Third, the Committee ruled that the project was suspended, that no new subjects could be enrolled, and that the data that had already been collected could not be used for publication in scientific journals. The administrative leadership of the state Maternal and Child Health branch was informed of these findings in writing (J.D. White, personal communication, August 15, 1994). Inexplicably, subsequent to the Committees findings and after the Maternal and Child Health administration had been informed of the Committee's findings, the local agency that lodged the original complaint about the assessment battery was directed to administer the survey to its clients by the Chief administrator of the Child and Adolescent Health section of the Maternal and Child Health branch because the assessment was a high priority of the branch (Melia, personal communication, no exact date, 1994). The chief administrator commented that the original assessment battery developers had collected data from 34 of the 37 AFLP agencies, that most had surveyed all of their clients, and that the assessment developers were engaged in analyzing the data for release. He noted that the findings would be used to develop projects for Violence Prevention Programs within the MCH branch. The protesting psychologist emphatically declined to participate and, among other comments, noted that the assessment had been formally suspended and that the MCH administrator appeared to be threatening the local agency's state financing to coerce compliance (P. George, personal communication, September 27, 1994). Ultimately, the protesting agency did prevail in that data were not collected. There are many ethical issues associated with this incident, the violation of principles of informed consent is but one of them. In light of the sequence of events, there are sociopolitical issues of deception in presenting the purposes of a study and of efforts to coerce involvement in a prohibited study that overshadow the initial issue of informed consent of individuals. What may have originally been an ill conceived, expedient attempt to execute an applied research project that would generate publishable results under the guise of an internal needs assessment evolved to become much more. The AFLP sexual abuse study stands out as a documented case of willful harm to African Americans through large scale research that sought publishable results that would both stigmatize African Americans and become a basis for interventions with questionable prospects for benefitting African American adolescents. A Three Step Action Plan to Counter Unethical Research 1) ABPSI could convene a symposium at the 1996 ABPSI convention in Chicago with not only Black Psychologists but other African American professionals and academics interested in the threat of unethical research with grave implications for our community. Nineteen ninety-six is a year for an African American super convention, where a number of African American professional organizations will be meeting simultaneously in the same city to facilitate communication between the groups. This presents an opportunity to address the issues in a broader arena, establish working relationships, and lay the groundwork for more effective follow-up. There are many facets of the general problem that could be addressed, the most obvious one is an interdisciplinary updating and information exchange on types of unethical research currently underway or on the drawing boards to begin to chart the scope of the problem. Other symposium topics could be the ABPsi Position Paper on the Violence Initiative (Association of Black Psychologists, 1995) and the recommendations of the ABPsi Board of Directors for dealing with it (Bennett, 1993). A panel of invited presenters could address these issues and highlight a range of issues including those that are most pressing to African-descent constituencies outside of ABPsi. They could also suggest avenues for more fully exploring issues after the presentation as well as developing follow-up actions. 2) The Journal of Black Psychology could plan a special issue on the topic, and issue a call for papers with encouragement of multidisciplinary submissions. Presenters at the symposium could be invited to submit articles that would supplement those selected through the review process from the general pool of submissions responding to the call. Overall, thepurpose would be to expand the range of communication on the problem and create a well documented forum for discussion of issues and prospective lines of action. 3) Finally, an effort to devise a multidisciplinary action network could follow. If a coherent body of opinion emerged from the discussion forums described above, the foundation for establishing both defensive and proactive actions could be laid. Again, the ABPsi position paper and the recommendations of the ABPsi Board of Directors on the Violence Initiative could serve as models for developing a more comprehensive African American community- based action network to deal with the full range of large scale unethical research projects that are being perpetrated against African Americans. Overall, the time for ferreting out and investigating insidious research is overdue. The time for action to stop it is now if we want to protect ourselves and upcoming generations from research induced psychological, physical and political injuries that could decimate us. NOTES 1) Jacquelyne F. Jackson is a developmental psychologist and research associate who may be contacted by e-mail at JACKJO@UCLINK4.BERKELEY.EDU or by mail at: Institute of Human Development, University of California-Berkeley, 1203 Tolman Hall #1690, Berkeley, CA 94720. Pamela George is the Chairperson of the Bay Area Association of Black Psychologists, Director of Black Student Programs at St. Mary's College, and a part-time faculty person at San Francisco State University's Dept. of Black Studies. Her address is: Bay Area Association of Black Psychologists, P.O. BOX 21290, Oakland, CA 94620. 2) Newsletter articles, personal communications, and most unpublished materials cited in the case examples sections are available from Halford Fairchild, Ph.D., Editor of Psych Discourse Pitzer College 1050 N. Mills Avenue, Claremont CA 91711 for the at-cost charge of $5.00 for copying and mailing. Make check payable to The Association of Black Psychologists. REFERENCES Association of Black Psychologist (1995). A holistic view of Amrerican Volence: A position paper on the Federal Violence Initiative. Psych Discourse: ABPsi Newsjournal, 26(3), 8-13. Banks, W.M. (1974). Drugs, hyperactivity, and Black schoolchildren Journal of Negro Education, 45(2), 150-160. Babington, C. (1992, September 5). U-md. cancels conference on genetic link to crime: NIH pulled funds over proposed conference. TheWashington Post, pp. A1, A14. Bennett, M.H. (1993). President's message. Actions on the "Federal Violence Initiative". Psych Discourse: ABPsi Newsjournal, 24(2), 4-8. Breggin, P.R., & Breggin, G.R. (1994). The war against children. New York: St. Martin's Press. Breggin, P.R., & Breggin, G.R. (1993). The Center for the Study of Psychiatry update report. The Federal Violence Initiative: Threats to Black Children (and Others). Psych Discourse: ABPsi Newsjournal, 24(4), 8-11. Dent, H.E. (1994, October). Minority concerns: Information Dissemination/Research. Paper presented at the sixth annual meeting of Children with Attention Deficit Disorders (CH. A.D.D.), New York, NY. Fine, D., & Boyer, D. (1993). Orientation and procedures manual for AFLP prevention program Seattle WA: Center for Health Training. Garbarino, J., & Ebata, A. (1983). The significance of ethnic and cultural differences in child maltreatment. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 45(4), 773-783. Hilliard, A.G. (1995). Either a paradigm shift or no mental measurement. Psych Discourse: ABPsi Newsjournal, 26(10), 6-20. Jenifer, F.G. (1993, January 15). Report of the Secretary's blue ribbon panel on violence prevention, Washington DC: Department of Health and Human Services. Maass, P. (1995, September 22). Conference on genetics and crime gets second chance. Washington Post, p. B01. Nobles, W.W. (1994). President's Message. Healing the rupture and extending the splendor. Psych Discourse: ABPsi Newsjournal, 25(9), 8-13. Randolph, S. (1991, March/April). Testimony presented to the Joint Senate and House Committee on Labor and Education: Notes on the mislabeling of African American children. Psych Discourse: ABPsi Newsletter, 22(4), 6-8. Regier, D.A., & Leshner, A.I. (February, 1992). Request for Applications. Cooperative agreement for a multi-site multimodal treatment study of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)/attention-deficit disorder (ADD). (National Institute of Mental Health, MH-92-03). Washington DC: National Institute of Mental Health. Richards, D.M. (1980). Let the circle be unbroken: The implications of African spirituality in the Diaspora. Trenton NJ: The Red Sea Press. Roush, W. (1995). Conflic marks crime conference. Science, 269(5232), 1808. Scarr, S. (1988). Race and gender as psychological variables: Social and ethical issues. American Psychologist, 43(1), 56-59. Valentine, C.A. (1971). Deficit, difference, and bicultural models of Afro-American behavior. Harvard Educational Review, 41(2), 137-157. Wheeler, D.L. (1992, November 4). Ambitious federal plan for violence research runs up against fears of its misuse. The Chronicle of Higher Education, pp. A7, A9. Williams, J. (1995, January 29). Searching for bad seed. Will racists exploit the science of genetics and violence? Washington Post, p. C01. =========END FORWARDED MESSAGE========= "Only when lions have Historians will hunters cease being heroes." African Proverb UMOJA, Still in the struggle Rodney D. Coates Director of Black World Studies Associate Professor of Sociology Miami University Oxford, Ohio - 45056 PH: 513-5291235 =========END FORWARDED MESSAGE========= From ha2957ja@uscolo.edu Fri Mar 8 11:37:02 1996 Date: Fri, 8 Mar 1996 11:40:18 -0700 (MST) From: jammer To: Racial-Religious-EthnoNationalist Violence Studies MSA-Net Subject: Does anyone know????? Does anyone knows what has happened to the MSA network at the address: msaosu@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu msanews-request@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu msanews@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu If anyone has any info, please I would deeply appreciate it as what happened to them. They were an excellent source of news and articles.. Regards Jamal Hashmi From ha2957ja@uscolo.edu Sun Mar 10 19:16:57 1996 Date: Sun, 10 Mar 1996 19:20:33 -0700 (MST) From: jammer To: Racial-Religious-EthnoNationalist Violence Studies Subject: The bombs (fwd) Hi everyone!!1 I got this from aanother list and thought they are interesting....Care to comment please..... ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 10 Mar 1996 16:46:59 -0500 (EST) From: Faraz Fareed Rabbani To: MSA-Net Subject: msa-net: (fwd) The bombs Hdate: Sunday 20 SHawwal 1416 A.H. Number: msa-net/10Mar96/21314 Bismillah Walhamdulillah Was Salaatu Was Salaam 'ala Rasulillah Assalamu alaikum, This is an intelligent question: From: zak@radiks.net (Tom Pastuszak) Newsgroups: soc.religion.islam Subject: The bombs Date: 6 Mar 1996 14:01:03 GMT al-salam alaikum, Car bombs, bus bombs, human bombs. Why aren't we talking about them? Why aren't we talking about Hamas? We may disagree, or may agree, but silence? Avoidance of these issues is not healthy. We should not shrug the task, and let slander pass. Perhaps we are afraid to let our views be known. Perhaps we have become accustomed to lying low. We should be talking about the bombs in Israel. Not about oral sex, not minutiae of the religion, not yet another Christian theory about Islam, the latest slam, the newest heresy. The bombs. Let us open the discussion: 1. Is Hamas justified in its actions? 2. Is Israel jusifified in its actions of destroying the homes of suicide bombers? 3. Is Palestine in a state of war with Israel, and is Israel in a state of war against Hamas - in essence, not based on recent public declarations. 4. What actions are justifiable and which are not, depending on the state of war? 5. Are there any Islamic justifications that can be used pro/con, both ir any in support or against the actions of Hamas? 6. How closely affiliated are the bombers with Hamas? 7. Etc. I open the floor for discussion, because the matter must be discussed. We cannot be silent. Tom Pastuszak -- Faraz Rabbani frabbani@epas.utoronto.ca "Whosoever diggeth a pit shall fall in it." ___________________________ frabbani@epas.utoronto.ca From united@antenna.nl Thu Mar 14 11:19:36 1996 Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 19:09:36 +0100 To: klasseka@oslonett.no, kletzand@ping.at, kscentrum@ecn.gn.apc.org, leandro@citel.upc.es, Lolapress@ipn-b.comlink.de, lreiner@amnesty.gn.apc.org, MALASKA@UTU.FI, margot@dds.nl, maria@aurora.eexi.gr, martin@blackbox.ping.at, mbel@cpik.kiev.ua, memorial@glas.apc.org, michele.galizia@gs-edi.admin.ch, migrant1@pi.net, mikee@blackbox.ping.at, Mike.Heiser@newham.gov.uk, miroslav.hristodulo@zamir-bg.ztn.apc.org, mts@ul.ici.ro, mizamir@antenna.nl, mnovickttt@igc.apc.org, mwill@nn.apc.org, nbk@dds.nl, nbusch@nn.apc.org, nelvdijk@xs4all.nl, news.united@zpok.hu, nfecunda@beuk.antenna.nl, nfjd@gaia.cl.sub.de, nn@nnmag.aps.nl, nscentre@gn.apc.org, odihrosc@sam.nask.com.pl, oebjr@blackbox.ping.at, oegj@blackbox.ping.at, pbme@antenna.nl, PDS-PV@ipn-b.comlink.de, Posch@EDVZ.UNI-Klagenfurt.ADA.AT, pressnow@pressnow.xs4all.nl, pring@ibm.net, prokes.miroslav@ecn.gn.apc.org, qcea@gn.apc.org, RADIO@3LANDBOX.BAWUE.cl.sub.de, raija.hanski@abo.fi, ranjak@interport.net, reflex@b612.anet.fr, refugium@refugium.antenna.nl, revs@csf.colorado.edu, RI-SUN_RI@ZAMIR-ZG.ZTN.APC.ORG, rok@P7.F66.N420.Z2.fidonet.org, romani@criss.sfos.ro, root@youth.nsu.nsk.su, roykr@oslonett.no From: united@antenna.nl (UNITED) Subject: research on detention UNITEDs Refugee Campaign R E S E A R C H O N D E T E N T I O N Dear friends, With this letter we would like to inform you on the latest developments within the Refugee Campaign, launched by UNITED in February 1995. Besides different other aspects of this Campaign (e.g. Commemoration of "Kristallnacht", Case of the refugees trapped in the Spanish enclave city Ceuta, Documentation of the dead refugees trying to enter Fortress Europe etc.), we have recently decided to raise the question of the detention centres in Europe. The existence of Fortress Europe produces not only endless number of deaths and tragic consequences in the lives of those ones desperately seeking safety, but also a restrictive system to protect "democracy" and "stability" in the countries of immigration. Detention centres are, of course, a very crucial point of this policy. Although "refugee or asylum seeker should not be detained" (UNHCR guidelines on detention of asylum seekers), unless "restrictions to the movements of refugees coming directly from a country of persecution are to be applied until their status is regularised or they obtain admission into another country" (Article 31 of the 1951 Convention), only superficial insight in the situation shows many irregularities. =46or instance, general rules like: detention should under no circumstances be used as a punitive or disciplinary measure; minors should not be detained at all; asylum seekers should be entitled to the minimum procedural guarantees (such as right to be informed, right to contact UNHCR Office etc.) exist mostly only on paper. Many detention centres are overcrowded, have no decent accommodation and professional staff etc. The very beginning of our research on detention made us believe that this issue needs a wider public's awareness. That is why we address ourselves to you in hope that you can help us in researching on the situation in the detention centres in your country. We enclosed hereby a list with information on some of the centres as a possible orientation in your work and the research questionnaire. Please keep us informed! You will receive completed list afterwards. Thanking you for your collaboration, I send my best wishes Saskia Daru - UNITED ****************************************************************************= **** European Research on Detention * PLEASE FILL IN ALL INFORMATION THAT YOU HAVE, (REGARDLESS OF HOW MANY QUESTIONS YOU CAN ANSWER) * SEND US PRESS CUTTINGS/MATERIALS YOU HAVE ON THIS SUBJECT. THANK YOU! * DISTRIBUTE THE QUESRTIONNAIRE TO OTHER GROUPS (Send all completed forms to UNITED, PB 413, NL-1000 AK Amsterdam, or by e-mail to united@antenna.nl) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------= ---- Name/place/country of detention centre : (by detention we understand any kind of "forced" detention in 'immigration'prisons, airports, harbours, deportation centres etc.) Capacity : (max./average number of detainees) Who is detained ? (illegals, transit, deportees=8A) Length of stay : (max./average) Where should protest be addressed to: Solidarity group who supports detainees of this centre: (address/tel./fax) Comments on general situation in detention centre : (this particular one and also additional information on the situation in your country) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------= ---- PLEASE FILL IN ALL INFORMATION THAT YOU HAVE, (REGARDLESS HOW MANY QUESTIONS YOU CAN ANSWER) AND SEND US PRESS CUTTINGS/MATERIALS YOU HAVE ON THIS SUBJECT. THANK YOU! ****************************************************************************= **** Below you find the information that we already have compiled. ****************************************************************************= **** COUNTRY; NAME / PLACE of detention centre; CAPACITY (max.) of the centre; WHO IS DETAINED? (illegals; transit; deportees...); LENGTH OF STAY (Average / Maximum); WHERE SHOULD PROTEST BE ADRESSED TO; SOLIDARITY GROUP SUPPORTING DETAINEES (name + tel nr.); COMMENTS ON GENERAL SITUATION IN DETENTION CENTRE ****************************************************************************= **** A; VIENNA - Airport Sondertransit;18; illegals, transit, deportees; Caritas:Container, no special police controle A; VIENNA - police prison; 300; illegals, transit, deportees; Asylkoordination Oesterreich (43-1-5321291) A; There are another 14 police prisons and 4 jails in Austria where detainees are kept B; Steenokkerzeel - Transitcentrum; 127BIS; Illegals, Rejected asylum-seekers, deportees; Aktiegroep Recht op vluchten (32-16-293079); people caught in razor-wire and thrown in isolation CH; Zuerich - Kloten; 300; Arrested by new law (difficult deportees); 12 months; 22 Cantonal depart. of justice & police; SFH Projektstelle Zwr (41-31-3707500) D; BUETZOW - Justizvollzugsanstalt; 50; Illegals, deportees; 50 days - 15 months; Inne- & Justizministerium des Landes; Diakonisches Werk (49-381-723208) D; BERLIN - K=F6penick Kruppstr. 15; 150; non-identified, deportees; Diakonisches Werk Treptow (49-30-2329977) D; BERLIN - Gothaerstr. D; BERLIN - Hans Beimlerstr. D ; Cortemark; biggest and most notorious asylum centre in Europe D; LEIPZIG; 30-40; Illegals, deportees; till 18 months; S=E4chsches Staatsministerium des Innern; Fluechtlingsrat Leipzig e.V. (49-341-4797522); prison (for prisoners avaiting trial) D; REGENSBURG D; KASSEL; till 18 months D; WUPPERTRAL D; GLASMOOR - Nord-Klein Westfalen D; HERNE - Ruhrgebied D; HAMBURG; Illegals D; HANNOVER; till 18 months D; KOELN; till 18 months D; OFFENBACH; till 18 months D; FRANKFURT - Gelnhausen; 350 (till 1000); Deportees; till 18 months D; BERLIN - Osterweg 71; Women; till 18 months D; DUESSELDORF - Airport; central detention place for Nordrhein-Westfalen D; DUESSELDORF - Gerresheim; 80; Illegals, Rejected asylum-seekers, Offenders...; 4 - 206 days D; NEUSS; 80; Illegals, Rejected asylum-seekers, Women; 4 weeks / 117 days D; MOERS; 144 (till 350); Rejected asylum-seekers D; GUETERSLOH; 88 (till 110); Offenders, deportees; 25 days D; BUEREN; 600; Illegals, Rejected asylum-seekers, Offenders...; up to a year; Wohlfahrtsverb=E4nde (Soc. benefit org.); Hilfe fuer Abschiebehaft Bueren (49-5251-730337); 6m wall, prevention on suicide - calming cells E; CEUTA (Moroccan enclave); 300; Deportees, war refugees, illegals; Interior ministry of Spain; SOS Racismo (34/43/423138), APDHA (34/5/4212122); UNITED has a separate dossier on this case E; MADRID - La Estrella; Illegals, deportees; 40 days; Government representative Pilar Lled-; APDHE (34-1-4023204); no beds, cellar... =46; PARIS (Orly Airport - Hotel Arcade); international zone =46; PARIS - Les Halles (police station); Metropolitan Paris Police Department; Eu. Com. for the Prevention of Torture... (CPT); bed hygienic and sanitair sit., police brutalities GB; Hull; AVID (Ass. of Visitors to Imigr. Detainees) GB; BIRMINGHAM - Winson Green GB; LEEDS GB; LONDON - Harmondsworth; 90; Deportees, asylum-seekers, transit...; over a year (aver. 4-6 months); Home Office; London Detainee Support Group (44/171/4773065) GB; OXFORD - Campsfield ; 200 (more than); Asylum-seekers, blacks... (immigration prison); till 15 months; Campaign to close Campsfield (44-1865-724452) GB; ROCHESTER (Kent) GB; PORTSMOUTH - Haslar GB; BRISTOL - Horfield H; Gyor; 500; Illegals, deportees; MLKO (36-1-1665570) LT; Olaine; 600 (per year); Illegals, deportees; prison NL; AMSTERDAM - Schiphol (border 'hospitium'); 120; Deportees (rejected asylum-seekers), transit, illegals ; till 6 months; IND (Immigrat. and natural. service); Autonoom Centrum (31-20-6126172); not enough prof. staf, use of informants, first in Europe NL; Tilburg - Willem II (prison); 288, till 7 months; Vluchtelingen Vrij, Centrum voor aktie en bezinning; underpayed work (=C4 27,50 /20h), 1h/week visit NL; Nieuwersluis (illegals prison) NL; Leeuwarden (illegals prison) NL; Ter Apel (deportation center); Deportees (diffucult cases), illegals, rejected asylum-seekers ; till 3 months; IND (Immigrat. and natural. service); Autonoom Centrum (s.a.); extra security/controle PL; LESZNOWOLA; 200; Illegals, deportees, first det. camp in Pl; surrounded by a 4 m wall P; Leixes; 140 (per year); Illegals (undocemented), transiters, clandestines, deportees; Portuguese law doesn't include NGO's in procedure; Portuguese autorities deny detention in harbour RO; TIMISOARA - Airport Otopani; Deportees (rejected asylum-seekers from WE, undocumented..); 5 months; Romanian Com. for Migration Problems; RO; APADOR-CH (40/1/3124528); excessive use of force, unregular meals... UNITED for Intercultural Action European network against nationalism, racism, fascism and in support of migrants and refugees Postbus 413 NL-1000 AK Amsterdam The Netherlands tel.no. +31-20-6834778 fax no. +31-20-6834582 e-mail united@antenna.nl ******************************************************** Europe-wide Action Week Against Racism 16-24 March 1996 O N E R A C E -- H U M A N R A C E Hundreds of actions in more than thirty countries... ******************************************************** From united@antenna.nl Tue Mar 19 10:05:05 1996 Date: Tue, 19 Mar 1996 17:50:52 +0100 To: united@antenna.nl From: united@antenna.nl (UNITED) Subject: media release Action Week --========================_14176770==_ Herewith we send you a MEDIA RELEASE of UNITED for Intercultural Action on the Europe-wide Action Week Against Racism With compliments, Saskia Daru. --========================_14176770==_ UNITED for Intercultural Action European network against nationalism, racism, fascism and in support of migrants and refugees PB 413, NL-1000 AK Amsterdam, phone +31-20-6834778, fax +31-20-6834582 e-mail united@antenna.nl ****************************************************************************** M E D I A R E L E A S E 20/03/96 (for section international news) ****************************************************************************** Europe-Wide Action Week Against Racism 16-24 March MASS DEMONSTRATIONS IN AMSTERDAM AND BRUSSELS Around 21 March the UN International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination thousands stand up against racism. National mass demonstrations are organised in Amsterdam (NL) on 23 March and Brussels (B) on 24 March. Around Europe hundreds of manifestations are being organised to commemorate this day. The Amsterdam demonstration is organised by Nederland Bekent Kleur and focuses on the new laws that make daily life more and more difficult for illegal immigrants in the Netherlands. More than 100 organisations demand 'No more racism and fascism. Equal rights now' in the Brussels demonstration, organised by Objektief 479.917. UNITED for Intercultural Action, the European network against racism, co-ordinates the fourth Europe-wide Action Week Against Racism from 16-24 March 1996. In February organisations from 40 European countries met during UNITED's conference in Prague. They confirmed to organise and mobilise for the Week using the slogan 'One Race - Human Race'. Many other organisations throughout Europe have already joined and sent information on their actions. More information will be collected permanently. UNITED, as well as co-ordinating the activities, will act as an information point, and has distributed 30,000 posters for the campaign. >From 16 to 24 March hundreds of activities are taking place around Europe: In Strasbourg the 'European Youth Campaign against Racism, Anti-Semitism, Xenophobia and Intolerance' and the International Federation of Journalists will focus their attention on the role of the media in the struggle against racism. In Wroclaw (PL) and Madrid (E) the walls of the city will be cleaned of racist slogans. In Stockholm (S) and in Athens (GR) film festivals are being organised. In St. Petersburg (RUS) and Lisbon (P) meetings on asylum and refugees are organised. In Kiev (UA), Vienna (A) and Thueringen (D) conferences are being held on questions around identity and the causes of racism. In France and Greece special projects are done on high schools. During this Europe-Wide Action Week Against Racism it is shown that there is still a majority of the people in Europe who oppose racial discrimination. The UN International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination was declared in October 26th 1966 by the General Assembly of the United Nations as a reaction to the murder of 70 demonstrators in Sharpeville, South Africa in 1960. ________________________end media release________________________ The complete list of activities (country by country) and all additional information can be obtained from UNITED. Contact Saskia Daru at UNITED for further information UNITED for Intercultural Action is with 370 organisations from 41 European countries the biggest European network against nationalism, racism, fascism and in support of migrants and refugees. --========================_14176770==_ ********************************************************* UNITED for Intercultural Action European network against nationalism, racism, fascism and in support of migrants and refugees Postbus 413 NL-1000 AK Amsterdam The Netherlands tel.no. +31-20-6834778 fax no. +31-20-6834582 e-mail united@antenna.nl ******************************************************** Europe-wide Action Week Against Racism 16-24 March 1996 O N E R A C E -- H U M A N R A C E Hundreds of actions in more than thirty countries... ******************************************************** --========================_14176770==_-- From spector@calumet.purdue.edu Wed Mar 20 12:35:13 1996 X-NUPop-Charset: English Date: Wed, 20 Mar 1996 13:32:51 -0600 (CST) From: "Alan Spector" Sender: spector@calumet.purdue.edu Reply-To: spector@calumet.purdue.edu To: revs@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Fw: ERaM: Disney's racist radio host >From Alan Spector, REVS editor/manager: The following appeared on another e-mail network. It has material that is of interest to REVS and PSN subscribers. Forwarded message follows ============================================================== From: Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting >From the upcoming April issue of EXTRA! Update, FAIR's newsletter: (A March 19 press release on this subject also follows.) DISNEY'S HOST PROMOTES "OUTSTANDING" RACISTS After FAIR criticized WABC talkshow host Bob Grant for his racial slurs and his promotion of white supremacist groups (EXTRA!, 1- 2/95; EXTRA! Update, 6/95), he toned down his rhetoric somewhat-- substituting codewords for overt racism. But we kept listening, because we knew it was just a matter of time before the old Bob Grant came out. We didn't have to wait long. On Jan. 26, 1996, Grant took to the airwaves to promote a conference sponsored by a group called American Renaissance. Here's what Grant--the most widely heard talkshow host in the New York City area--had to say: There is a group called the American Renaissance. The American Renaissance Conference is being held on May 25 through the 27th, and they say: "Race is still the American dilemma. The 'civil rights,' integrationist approach has brought none of its promised rewards. Is it time to rethink the assumptions of the past 40 years? Join us in Louisville, Ky. over Memorial Day weekend for a frank, uncensored exchange. Speakers will include: Dr. Samuel Francis, contributing editor of Chronicles; Professor Philippe Rushton, author of Race, Evolution and Behavior; Jared Taylor, author of Paved with Good Intentions; Professor Michael Levin, author of Why Race Matters; Lawrence Auster, author of The Path to National Suicide; and Rabbi Mayer Schiller, author of The Guilty Conscience of a Conservative." These are outstanding speakers and if I can, I'm going to take my microphone down there and tune in. Who are these "outstanding speakers" that Grant is so eager to hear? * Samuel Francis is a former Washington Times columnist (and an informal advisor to Pat Buchanan), who was fired from his job at the right-wing Times when his white supremacist views became publicized. Francis calls for whites to begin a "reconquest of the United States," which would involve "imposing adequate fertility controls on non-whites." He does not believe that non-whites deserve "the right to political equality, the right to vote, or the right to hold political office, let alone...the 'right' to attend the same schools, to serve on juries, to marry across racial lines." (American Renaissance newsletter, 3/95) * Philippe Rushton, a professor at the University of Western Ontario, conducts crank studies comparing cranial capacity with genital size. "It's a trade-off," Rushton explains, "more brain or more penis. You can't have everything." He claims that blacks and whites are separate sub-species with "different reproductive strategies": While whites typically "emphasize nurture rather than numbers of offspring," blacks generally "produce more children but...nurture each one less." (Rolling Stone, 10/20/94) * Michael Levin, a professor of psychology at the City University of New York, is a well-known advocate of eugenics who believes integration can never work: "The reason is two basically unalterable black characteristics: less intelligence and greater proneness to violence." (Rolling Stone, 10/20/94) * Lawrence Auster, author of The Path to National Suicide, argued at the 1994 American Renaissance conference that the "large and enduring differences in average intelligence between blacks and whites" ensure that "blacks on their own can never be expected to maintain a modern, democratic, civilized society," or "achieve collective economic equality and other kinds of parity with whites." (D'Souza, End of Racism) * Jared Taylor, aka Samuel Taylor, is the organizer who has brought these leading lights of the racist right together. Publisher of the newsletter American Renaissance, Taylor described himself as "racialist" and "white separatist" in an April 1995 interview with FAIR. "More and more whites are rediscovering what their ancestors took for granted: a natural preference for and loyalty to their own race," Taylor wrote in his newsletter (9-10/93). At the 1994 conference, which he also organized, Taylor urged whites to prepare for civil war: "When it happens...the divisions will be along racial lines," he said (D'Souza, The End of Racism). Grant has to be aware of who these people are, none of whom is "outstanding" for anything other than their racism. In 1993, a caller to Grant's show (4/26/93) praised American Renaissance, and quoted this passage from the newsletter: "When neighborhoods lose their white majorities, schools decay, crime increases, taxes rise, welfare proliferates, and what was once an outpost of civilization subsides into barbarism." Grant's response was to allow the caller to give out subscription information; Grant then noted that Taylor's publisher told him that "thanks to the Bob Grant program, the Jared Taylor book has become a success, albeit a modest success, in view of what it should have been. But nevertheless, they said that thanks to me, they are now able to say that they are successful." It's no mystery why Grant would boast that he's helping white supremacists succeed. It's somewhat more puzzling why the Walt Disney Co., which owns ABC, would want its flagship radio station to promote such views. If you want to let Disney chair Michael Eisner know what you think of Bob Grant's promotion of white supremacy, you can write to him at Walt Disney Studios, 500 S. Buena Vista St., Burbank, CA 91521, or call 818-560-1000 or fax 818-560-1930. Please send copies of your correspondence to Sam Husseini at FAIR, fair@fair.org *** A FAIR Press Release March 19, 1996 DERSHOWITZ WAS FIRED FOR TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT BOB GRANT: WABC's TOP HOST CONTINUES TO PROMOTE WHITE SUPREMACY Does Disney Approve of WABC's Censorship? WABC-AM pulled the plug on lawyer/talkshow host Alan Dershowitz after he called WABC's top host, Bob Grant, a racist and a bigot. "What he is saying about Bob is wrong, so I'm not going to tolerate that," WABC program director Phil Boyce told the press. But Dershowitz's charges against Grant are well-documented. As recently as Friday, March 15 -- three days before WABC canceled Dershowitz's show -- Grant was on the air praising a newsletter that preaches segregation, lynching and the genetic superiority of whites. "WABC can hardly claim that it's allowing Grant to promote racial bigotry in the name of free speech -- when, at the same time, it's censoring anyone who criticizes Grant's racism," FAIR executive director Jeff Cohen pointed out. The publication that Grant touted to his hundreds of thousands of listeners was American Renaissance, a newsletter published by self- described "racialist" Samuel Jared Taylor. "American Renaissance is dedicated to preserving the English language and preserving the Western culture," Grant declared. "I really don't see how this rates as a Klan-like organization." But "Klan-like" is exactly what American Renaissance is, as is obvious from a glance at any issue. In fact, the October 1995 issue featured an article that called lynching "a system of justice that was not, in all respects, inferior to the one we have today.... In lynching there was immediacy, finality, and in many cases direct participation: The victim or his bereaved could take personal vengeance." The publication also promotes apartheid as a policy for the United States: "Whites must choose between separation and oblivion," an article in the October 1994 issue declared. The racism of American Renaissance is frank and undisguised. The cover story in the February 1996 issue declared: "Today, the work of millennia is being undone as the less intelligent races not only outbreed the more intelligent but push their way into the homelands of the northern races." The cover story of the March 1996 issue claims: "In the white nations, low birthrates, non-white immigration, and miscegenation are weakening the gene pool." That Bob Grant understands the real message of American Renaissance is clear from his comments. After insisting that the publication did not claim Western culture had "no room for the input of others," Grant continued: But even if it did, even if it did, there is a valid premise for a discussion, the discussion being what we are, what kind of nation we are, and where do we go from here. What is a nation? A nation is not a crowd, a nation is not a group, a gang. Yugoslavia was not a nation, that's why we have the problems today in Yugoslavia. The Soviet Union was not a nation, that's why it fell apart. You don't see Norway falling apart; Norway's a nation. So I think it's at least, at least reasonable to entertain the idea that we should -- think on these things. Grant is alluding to a prominent theme in American Renaissance: The idea that nationality should be based on ethnicity, not on citizenship. "Tribes and nations have always understood instinctively that cohesion requires blood-kinship and shared history, and that membership is not open to all comers," the publication declared in its January 1996 issue. "White nations appear to have lost this primeval urge." Grant's racism -- exemplified by his references to black college students and churchgoers as "savages" and his description of Haitian immigrants as "sub-human infiltrators" -- is not simply a question of personal bile, but is part of a systematic ideology of white supremacy. Grant has in the past promoted conferences organized by American Renaissance (most recently on his January 26, 1996 show) and has allowed the phone numbers of American Renaissance and other white supremacist groups to be given out over the air. (See "Dial H for Hate," EXTRA! Update, June 1995; FAIR open letter to Phil Boyce, February 26, 1996.) But it is impossible to discuss this reality on WABC's airwaves, as Dershowitz's firing shows. Two years ago, columnist Jack Newfield was publicly banned from the station because he noted Grant's bigotry in print. (Columnist Linda Stasi had earlier been blacklisted for "excessively personal" criticisms of Rush Limbaugh.) FAIR points out that the ultimate responsibility for Grant's unchallenged racism rests with the Walt Disney Company, which recently purchased WABC along with the rest of the ABC network. Disney needs to explain why it allows its host to promote white supremacism during prime listening hours, while those who criticize this racist speech are censored. *** For more on FAIR, send a blank e-mail message to fair-info@fair.org Or visit our web site at www.fair.org/fair A good deal Grant's bigotry is documented at: www.fair.org/fair/wabc-hate.html fair@fair.org To subscribe to FAIR's magazine, EXTRA!, call 800-847-3993. From slein@e1m147.mpibpc.gwdg.de Tue Mar 26 04:11:15 1996 Date: Tue, 26 Mar 1996 12:11:22 +0100 To: revs@csf.colorado.edu From: slein@e1m147.mpibpc.gwdg.de (Stephan Leineweber) Subject: ZA firms involved in polit. violence? The following is forwarded from an Internet WWW page of 'Independent Online News Service', South Africa -------------------------Begin forwarded message------------------------------ Report says security firms are involved in political violence By Mondli Makhanya, Political Reporter National body of peace monitors accuses industry of harbouring elements involved in fomenting conflict and criminal behaviour The Government must urgently appoint a commission of inquiry into the private security industry with a view to overhauling and regulating it, says a report released today. The "Safety in Security" report commissioned by the Network for Independent Monitors (NIM) - a national body of peace monitors - accuses the security industry of harbouring elements involved in fomenting political violence and criminal behaviour. Researcher Sarah Blecher said the report would be given to the Ministry of Safety and Security, the parliamentary safety and security standing committee and other interested parties, and would be used to lobby for legislation to regulate the industry. The report comes just weeks after the ANC called for a similar probe into security companies. It had accused the security industry of possible involvement in the recent bugging scandals and in Third Force activity. Commissioned after the piling up of evidence of the involvement of security companies in the training and arming of private political armies, the report describes a security industry that has been deeply immersed in political violence and criminality in Gauteng and KwaZulu Natal for six years. Using its own investigations, evidence from the Goldstone Commission, court cases and media reports, the NIM concludes that private security companies were instrumental in giving back-up to the Inkatha Freedom Party and right-wing units involved in violence in the two provinces. Many of the security companies in operation today, the report alleges, were formed as front companies for the Department of Military Intelligence and the security police and were used to fight the former government's opponents. "It is believed that when the former government pulled the plug on the funding of such projects, many of the companies had developed a life of their own. Many of these companies make money from legitimate business practices aimed at destroying the government and ensuring that no lasting viable peace process in KwaZulu Natal ever gets off the ground," says the report. It calls on the Department of Military Intelligence, the SA National Defence Force and the SA Police Service to account for all security companies they set up as fronts, as a way of "cleaning the industry and ridding it of unwanted elements as well as opening up sinister networks for scrutiny". It proposes the setting up of an independent body under the Safety and Security Ministry to regulate the industry, close monitoring of security companies and their employees, the setting up of a transparent system of tendering for government contracts, and the drafting of new legislation governing the granting and use of firearms in the industry. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Published in The Star on March 22, 1996 All contents : © 1996. Independent Newspapers. All rights reserved. --------------------------End forwarded message------------------------------ From slein@e1m147.mpibpc.gwdg.de Wed Mar 27 12:11:23 1996 Date: Wed, 27 Mar 1996 20:11:29 +0100 To: revs@csf.colorado.edu From: slein@e1m147.mpibpc.gwdg.de (Stephan Leineweber) Subject: Sudan - Recent Background Reports -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sudan: Conflict and minorities The situation in Sudan today is critical. A devastating civil war continues and the Sudanese people are subject to gross human rights abuses, political and religious intolerance, forced relocations and hunger. The war is often portrayed as a battle between the Muslim North and Christian South. As MRG's timely Report demonstrates, this over-simplification dangerously obscures the real causes and nature of the conflict. It distorts Sudan's political history, inhibits an understanding of the plight of its peoples and hides the position of minority groups and women. 'Sudan: Conflict and minorities' provides a comprehensive understanding of the background and course of the civil war in Sudan. It closely examines the position of the country's minorities, including the discrimination faced by the Copts and the massacres of the Dinka and peoples of the Nuba Mountains. The Report places this repression within a clear, often neglected, historical context. MRG's Report discusses the potential for an end to the conflict. It makes a series of recommendations to be enacted immediately if Sudan and its peoples are to move towards a peaceful future. Series: Minority Rights Group Reports, ISSN 0305 6252, ISBN 1 897693 65 6 Publication Date: August 1995, A4, wirebound, 44pp Price: £5.40 - (£5.95/US$9.50 outside UK/Eire) Incl. P&P Contact: Minority Rights Group 379 Brixton Road, London SW9 7DE, United Kingdom Fax: +44(0)171 738 6265 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Children of Sudan - Slaves, Street Children and Child Soldiers - The children of Sudan - especially those living in the Southern Sudan and Nuba regions where civil war rages - rare frequently denied their basic rights. A child found running errands alone on a city street can be picked up without parental notification and placed for years in one of several closed government camps. In these camps, the state has assigned Arab names to non-Arab children, denying their right to identity, and it has forced labor, children captured in military raids have been used as household slaves where they are physically punished, forced to work long hours without pay, eat inferior food, and sleep on the floor. The army and government militias forcibly recruit underage boys, and the non-Muslims among them undergo involuntary religious training. The rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) has not cooperated with the United Nations Children's Fund family reunification project and continues to recruit minors. The rebel Southern Sudan Independence Army (SSIA) cooperated in family reunification, but did not stop underage recruitment, luring hundreds of boys long distances on the pretext of schooling. What they received instead was military training. When they were released and sent to a UN relief site, forty-seven boys died in late 1994, in part because SSIA soldiers stole their food rations. The report calls on the government of Sudan, the SPLA and the SSIA to cease underage recruitment and cooperate with family reunification programs. We also call on the government to undertake a rigorous national campaign to stamp out slavery and forced labor, and to end the practice of holding children in government camps. Published Date: September 1995, 111pp Price: £6.99 / US$10 (15% p&p UK and 25% p&p Europe and overseas) Contact: Human Rights Watch 33 Islington High Street, London N1 9LH, United Kingdom Fax: (0)171 713 1800 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From slein@e1m147.mpibpc.gwdg.de Thu Mar 28 13:58:09 1996 Date: Thu, 28 Mar 1996 21:58:14 +0100 To: revs@csf.colorado.edu From: slein@e1m147.mpibpc.gwdg.de (Stephan Leineweber) Subject: SLAVE TRADE IN THE SUDAN The following is part of a series of articles published on the Internet by the 'Coalition Against Slavery In Mauritania And Sudan' (CASMAS). < http://www.cc.columbia.edu/~slc11/ > The articles deal with the African's world view of the Arab and the problems that view poses for the African-American. "Those in the Black community who claim identification with Africa will be unable to rise to this historic occasion without the ability to access and process accurate information. It would also be beneficial if the Black community had leadership on the issue of slavery--the sad truth is that it does not. All the African-American leaders in this country--produce your own list if you desire--are hiding under their beds until this gunfight over the question of slavery is over. ..." "The point--Black leadership in both America and Africa is bankrupt. ..." SLAVE TRADE IN THE SUDAN: "Sudan is the Arabic word for "black" but only the southern part of the country is populated by black Africans who practice traditional religions or Christianity. In the southern Nile Basin the Dinka and Nuer tribes practice a semi-nomadic economy based on cattle raising. The Sudan is formerly a parliamentary democracy. From 1899 through 1955 it was ruled jointly by the British and the Egyptians as the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. Sudanese nationalism gradually redeveloped, and on January 1, 1956, Sudan became independent. Upon independence, civil war broke out between the black southerners and the Arab northerners who now ruled the country. This war lasted until 1972 and ended with the Addis Ababa accord. In 1989, Lt. General Omar Hassan Bashir and the Sudanese People's Armed Forces overthrew Sudan's democratic government and dissolved all political institutions. This new government and it's Popular Defense Force (PDF), is said to be controlled by a fund amentalist Islamic group called the National Islamic Front. This action set the stage for the second civil war when southerners, 6,000,000 people, saw their special constitutional status overthrown by the Arab government in Khartoum. Previously, the black south had its own regional parliament and government. Additional pressures were the Arabization and Islamization of the country, particularly the imposition since 1983 of Islamic law in the South. The people of the South, many of them Christians, feel this is oppressive and strongly resisted. Under the leadership of John Garang, the Sudanese People Liberation Army (SPLA) was formed. Garang, a former colonel in the Presidential Guard, is a Dinka and his movement has splintered along tribal lines. The civil war also led to the resurgence of the slave trade. The Sudan was once virtually rid of slavery, but "Time has spun backward since rebel leader John Garang rallied the African tribes of the country's fertile south against the country's Muslim elite" says Newsweek. ". . .The government counterinsurgency strategy has included arming the Arab tribespeople who live on the fault line between the Muslim north and the animist south. Consequently, there has been a resurgence of traditional raiding including slave taking, human-rights organization charge." Arab militias, armed by the Government, raid villages, mostly those of the Dinka tribe, shoot the men and enslave the women and children. These are kept as personal property or marched north and sold," wrote AASG's Jacobs and Athie in the New York Times (July 13, 94.) [and] "Many of the children are auctioned off." Corroborating this testimony is Gaspar Biro, a specially appointed United Nations human rights monitor, who returned from the Sudan in March to report that ". . .abducted children are often sent to camps that become 20th century slave markets. The price varies with supply. According to the London Economist (January 6, 90) in 1989, a woman or child could be bought for $90. In 1990, as the raids increased, the price fell to $15. .... From slein@e1m147.mpibpc.gwdg.de Fri Mar 29 11:42:35 1996 Date: Fri, 29 Mar 1996 19:42:48 +0100 To: revs@csf.colorado.edu From: slein@e1m147.mpibpc.gwdg.de (Stephan Leineweber) Subject: Former South African officers brought to trial Hello to all: On Sat, March 23 1996 an article appeared in a German local daily newspaper, which might be interesting information to REVS members. Here I try to translate the essential content: Magnus Malan, former South African Minister of Defence and ten of the most esteemed military leaders in the days of white minority government have been brought to trial. They are accused of being involved in massacres during the apartheid era. The suspicion is, that leading officers in the eighties had founded or at least tolerated those armed gangs which were later known as the notorious para-military 'Third Force'. The public prosecution refers directly to a raid on a cottage in KwaMakhuta (KwaZulu-Natal) in January 87, during which 13 Blacks were murdered (11 of them women and children) by a 'Third Force' squadron. Later it turned out that the assassination ostensibly was intended against an ANC-activist. He had lived in that house months before. The massacre set off a terrible wave of violence, which splashed over to the townships around Johannesburg in 1990. The fighting accelerated before the first free elections in April 1994. Magnus Malan protests his innocense. His strategy, he says, was necessary to combat the appetite of international communism. He had to act due to a state of war existing at that time. The spotlights are directed on Malan and his co-accused. But revelations might not spare their political tutors and colleagues of the apartheid era. "The accusation of the former Minister of Defence may have serious consequences for the current Government of National Unity. It's survival depends on nothing turning up at the trial which would criminalize the vice president Frederik Willem de Klerk and his National Party (NP)", says Paul van Zyl of the Johannesburg Violence Research Center. No event since the first free elections two years ago has roused more emotional turbulence in South African society. --- From spector@calumet.purdue.edu Sat Mar 30 15:06:03 1996 X-NUPop-Charset: English Date: Sat, 30 Mar 1996 16:04:08 -0600 (CST) From: "Alan Spector" Sender: spector@calumet.purdue.edu Reply-To: spector@calumet.purdue.edu Subject: Subject: Re: SLAVE TRADE IN THE SUDAN On Thu, 28 Mar 1996 21:58:14 +0100, Stephan Leineweber wrote: > > >The following is part of a series of articles published on the Internet >by the 'Coalition Against Slavery In Mauritania And Sudan' (CASMAS). > >< http://www.cc.columbia.edu/~slc11/ > > >The articles deal with the African's world view of the Arab and the problems >that view poses for the African-American. >snip..se in the Black community who claim identification with Africa will be >unable to rise to this historic occasion without the ability to access and >process accurate information. It would also be beneficial if the Black >community had leadership on the issue of slavery--the sad truth is that it >does not. All the African-American leaders in this country--produce your own >list if you desire--are hiding under their beds until this gunfight over the >question of slavery is over. ..." > >"The point--Black leadership in both America and Africa is bankrupt. ..." > What a racist, paternalistic and ignorant conclusion. Let me see if I get it, because whites are oppressing other whites in the former Yogo state then white leadership in Europe and America are at fault. Because Hitler abused jews, then all whites and particular white leaders the world over should bear the fault. Because IRA continues its bombing campaign, then Irish-American leadership are at fault for not condemning this..gee I hope Kennedy is listening. I could go on but i think the point has been made...don't you... umoja Only when lions have historians will hunters cease being heroes. African Proverb Without struggle there is no progress. Frederick Douglass The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed. Steven Biko yours in the struggle Rodney D. Coates Director of Black World Studies Associate Professor of Sociology Miami University Oxford, Ohio 45056 513 529-1235 email: coatesrd@casmail.muohio.edu From eero@sofi.su.se Sun Mar 31 10:31:43 1996 From: eero@sofi.su.se Date: Sun, 31 Mar 1996 18:30:15 EST To: revs@csf.colorado.edu Subject: collective guilt? To Rodney et al, I understand why you reacted the way you did to the Sudan posting, but I actually think that the examples you took up confirm that there's a core of truth to Stephan's argument. Irish-American leadership should indeed in my opinion be playing a stronger role than they have until now in getting the Northern Ireland peace talks back on track. The fact that the IRA derives a considerable portion of its funding from American sources would seem to indicate that there's need for such leadership and that the Irish-American commu- nity indeed bears part of the responsibility for the current situ- ation. In the same way, leadership elites in the countries which supported minority dictatorships have a special responsibility to take distance from this policy legacy--as indeed, I believe, African and African-American oppositional forces have a special responsibility to take a stand on long-standing civil conflicts, and violations of basic human rights in African countries. This for a simple political reason--I think that policy criticism from "within" the responsible leaders' own communities either in country or in diaspora is more difficult for either them or an interested public to dismiss. What do you all think? Eero C. P.S. Note that no notion of COLLECTIVE RACIAL guilt is being advo- cated here, just a notion of community responsibility which is in the last analysis binding on everybody who wants to advance the cause of justice.