WHO To Meet Over Zika Concerns as Rio Olympic Games Approach
June 20, 2016 in 2016 Summer Olympics - Security Update
A World Health Organization (WHO) spokesman has disclosed that the WHO’s Emergency Committee on Zika will meet in the coming weeks in order to evaluate the risks tied to going on with the Olympic Games in Brazil in August. The meeting comes as the debate grows over the safety of holding the Olympics in the South American country amidst the ongoing Zika virus outbreak.
According to WHO spokesman Nyka Alexander, “the Emergency Committee meeting will consider the situation in Brazil, including the question of the Olympics,” noting that while the WHO will make risk assessments of a public health issue, it will ultimately be up to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to decide on holding the event in Rio de Janeiro, which is due to begin on 5 August. A spokesman for Rio 2016 has disclosed that officials are continuing to follow WHO recommendations on Zika.
Dr David Heymann, chairman of the WHO committee of independent experts, has disclosed that postponing the Rio Olympics over fears that it could speed the spread of the Zika virus would give a “false” sense of security because travellers are constantly going in and out of Brazil. WHO experts have also indicated that because it will be winter in Brazil when the Olympics begin, mosquitoes that carry the virus will be less abundant.
At the beginning of June, a public letter was signed by 150 public health experts and scientists calling for the Olympics to be delayed or moved over concerns that the Games could speed up the global spread of the Zika virus. However top US officials agreed with WHO experts that Zika did not pose enough of a risk to postpone or move the Olympics. According to Dr Tom Frieden, director of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, travel to the Olympics would represent less than one quarter of 1 percent of all travel to Zika-affected areas, adding that the risk was low except for pregnant women.
While athletes will have to make their own decisions as to whether to risk Zika for the potential globally of Olympic gold, some athletes have already withdrawn from the competition.
Hundreds Arrested in Northern Venezuela for Looting in Food Shortage
June 17, 2016 in VenezuelaVenezuelan police have arrested more than 400 people in the city of Cumana after street looting over food shortages. Over 100 shops were hit and at least one person died during the incidents. Another death was also reported in the state of Merida from unrest which is breaking out sporadically across the country. Local authorities said that these incidents were inspired by a right-wing faction within the country’s opposition.
Food and medicine are in short supply and street protests and lootings have increased drastically. According to the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence, a local monitoring group, more than 10 incidents of looting are occurring daily across the nation of 30 million people, which is suffering a deep recession and the world’s highest rate of inflation at 180%. Roberto Briceno Leon, director of the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence, said the lootings were going to continue because there was hunger. Briceno Leon also said that the government’s response was insufficient and politicized, so people were resorting to robbery.
Earlier this month, Venezuelan security forces fired teargas at protesters chanting “We want food!” near Caracas’ presidential palace. Hundreds of Venezuelans heading for Miraflores palace in downtown Caracas were met by National Guard and police who blocked a major road. President Nicolas Maduro had been scheduled to address a rally nearby.
Venezuela is also facing a severe electricity shortage. In April, President Nicolas Maduro decided to shorten the workweek to two days in an effort to save energy and electricity. El Guri dam, the country’s most important source of electricity, has record-low water levels.
Venezuela’s political opposition says President Nicolas Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chavez are to blame for failed economic policies. The opposition is pursuing a recall referendum this year in an effort to remove President Maduro from office. Last Tuesday, Venezuelan police fired rubber bullets and tear gas grenades at students from the public Central University of Venezuela in Caracas, who demonstrated in demand of a referendum on removing Maduro.
But the government says the shortages are part of an economic war being waged to drive President Nicolas Maduro from office. Government officials say there is not enough time this year to organise a referendum. To avoid the threat of unrest associated with long food lines, the government has assigned neighbourhood committees linked to the ruling socialist party to distribute food. The move has angered the opposition, who equate it to an attempt to force loyalty among Venezuelans.
Gang breakdown coincides with kidnapping rise in Mexican states
June 15, 2016 in MexicoA sudden spike in kidnapping in Guerrero and Baja California has coincided with the ongoing deterioration of the organised crime structures that dominate the two west Mexico states. According to statistics published by the NGO Observatorio Virtual, the kidnapping rate in Baja California and Guerrero ticked upward in the first three months of 2016.
This article was written by Patrick Corcoran for Insight Crime and is republished with permission. Please see the original here.
In Guerrero, the registered figure of 2.34 kidnappings per 100,000 residents is only a slight bump from the 2.27 registered last year, but it bucks a long-term trend, as Guerrero registered substantial declines in 2014 and 2015. The figure is the third-highest of any Mexican state this year, and nearly three times the national average of 0.80 per 100,000 residents.
The kidnappings reported by Observatorio Virtual are concentrated in a relatively small number of Guerrero’s municipalities, largely along the coast and in several small inland towns. Over the past 12 months, General Canuto A. Neri and Pedro Ascencio Alquisiras, both inland towns with populations under 7,000, saw kidnapping rates of 16.03 and 14.17 per 100,000 residents, respectively. Cualac, a comparably sized town near the state’s border with Oaxaca, registered a rate of 13.99. The figure for Chilpancingo, the state’s capital, was 7.49.
While the prevalence of the crime in these hotspots was more than enough to make Guerrero one of the nation’s most dangerous states for abductions, 48 of the state’s 81 municipalities reported no kidnappings at all.
In Baja California, Observatorio Virtual’s data indicates circumstances that are largely better than in Guerrero. The border state’s kidnapping rate for 2016 is 0.68 per 100,000 residents, just below the national average and 10th among the 32 Mexican states. This would seem to indicate a situation that is under control. However, the recent trend is more alarming. Baja California’s kidnapping rate has more than doubled in 2016, driven by a rash of abductions in Tijuana, the state’s largest city. The kidnapping rate in Tijuana over the first three months of 2016 has more than doubled compared to 2015.
Kidnapping statistics are notoriously difficult to track, as many victims, believing that a ransom payment without the involvement of the police is the safest way to secure freedom, have a powerful disincentive to reporting it. As a result, any official kidnapping statistics vastly understates the real figure. But assuming these statistics reflect a genuine trend, and they probably do, then there are a few different factors likely driving them, with one in particular standing out.
One key factor specific to both states is the years-long decline of the dominant criminal groups in each: the Beltrán Leyva Organization (BLO) in Guerrero and the Tijuana Cartel in Baja California. Both have suffered years of setbacks with captures and killings decimating the leadership that built the organisations.
The Arellano Félix family, which built the Tijuana Cartel out of an offshoot of the Guadalajara Cartel in the 1990s, has virtually ceased to operate. Founders Ramón and Benjamín Arellano Félix were killed and arrested, respectively, in 2002. After inheriting the operation, their brothers Javier and Eduardo were arrested in 2006 and 2008. Other relatives and subordinates have also taken up the reins, but none — including Enedina Arellano Félix, the sister of the founders and reputed leader today — have managed to restore the group to its prior influence.
The result has been a period of substantial reorganisation in Baja California. Reports have been somewhat contradictory, with some sources describing attempts by Arellano Félix veterans to recapture their influence, while more recently a government official indicated that the Jalisco Cartel was moving into the area. Whatever the case — and these two possibilities are not mutually exclusive — no single group has control of Baja California.
Similarly, the BLO, once a dominant force along Mexico‘s southern Pacific coast, has declined precipitously. The erstwhile boss of the family, Arturo Beltrán Leyva, was killed in 2009 in a shootout with security officials in Cuernavaca, a tourist haven betweenMexico City and Guerrero. His brother Alfredo was captured shortly before then in an arrest that sparked the group’s split from the Sinaloa Cartel, while Carlos was arrested shortly after. The last holdout, Héctor Beltrán Leyva, was arrested in 2014.
The disintegration of the BLO has spawned a tangled network of splinter groups, such as Guerreros Unidos, Independent Cartel of Acapulco, Los Ardillos, Los Rojos, and many others. Without a hegemonic actor organising these groups and divvying up responsibilities and profits, they have naturally come into conflict with each other, as well as other new actors tempted by the power vacuum.
The absence of a single controlling entity at the top of the local food chain has long contributed to the rise of small-time crime, from bank robbery and car theft to extortion and kidnapping.
There are different explanations for this phenomenon, which has manifested itself around the country. One is that the single hegemonic group is able to outlaw certain behaviors among local criminals, acting as a sort of underworld police. But when the hegemon loses its control, and the real police aren’t able to step in to adequately punish kidnapping or other such crimes, then criminal actors are free to pursue actions that were previously beyond the pale.
Another related explanation is that the big groups tend to have the readiest access to drug producers, whether South American cocaine or Mexican heroin, and the means to move major shipments. In effect, this means access to high profit margins. When a larger organization disintegrates, the revenues that come with trafficking substantial amounts of drugs dry up as well. As a result, the smaller cells that operate within the newly weakened group must find ways to replace their lost income, with extortion and kidnapping in particular emerging to take the place of drug shipments.
It remains to be seen if the recent uptick in Guerrero and Baja California is a blip or the beginning of a new trend, but the collapse of the BLO and the Tijuana Cartel has certainly created the conditions for kidnapping to continue to rise in these troubled states.
Liberia Outbreak Declared Over
June 15, 2016 in EbolaOn 9 June, the latest Ebola outbreak in Liberia, the last country still affected by the deadliest flare-up in history, was declared over.
Liberia effectively passed the World Health Organization (WHO) threshold of 42 days – twice the incubation period for the virus, since the last known patient tested negative for the second time. Last week, the WHO declared an end to the latest Ebola outbreak in Guinea, however it warned that a recurrence of the virus remained a threat as previous declarations announcing the end of Ebola flare-ups in West Africa have been followed by the emergence of new cases. While in late March, the WHO declared that the Ebola outbreak no longer constituted an international emergency, new cases emerged in Liberia just two days later.
The Ebola epidemic began in Guinea in December 2013 and killed more than 11,300 people. It devastated economies and health systems in the worst affected countries in West Africa and tested the world’s capacity to respond to a global health emergency. At its peak in 2014, the Ebola outbreak sparked anxiety about a possible global pandemic and led some governments to threaten or unilaterally enforce travel bans to and from the worst-affected countries. In all, the virus affected ten countries, including the United States and Spain, with more than 28,000 cases reported – virtually all in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
The WHO has drawn criticism for its delayed response to the Ebola crisis and its failure to identify the outbreak.
Detention of teacher union leaders sparked clashes between protesters and authorities in southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, tensions likely to remain high in coming weeks
June 14, 2016 in Mexico, UncategorizedClashes are likely to continue and intensify in coming weeks as CNTE protests take place across the country, particularly in the union’s stronghold states such as Oaxaca. As a key tourist hotspot those travelling to Oaxaca are likely to experience disruption to travel as protests block main entrances into and out of the city.
The CNTE was founded in 1979 as a dissident union to the mainstream SNTE and has since been particularly strong in poor southern rural states such as Oaxaca, Chiapas and Guerrero. They are strongly opposed to the government’s 2014 education reform. Despite constant pressure in the last two years the CNTE has refused to stand down to government demands to enact the education reform and are particularly concerned about losing their right to keep a seat at the table with government in determining how teachers are hired. They have constantly asked that the union be included as a partner on education, which the government has rejected.
Over the weekend federal forces detained the secretary general of the National Education Teacher’s Union (CNTE), Rubén Nuñez Ginez, in the state of México, as well as Francisco Villalobos, the leader of the Oaxacan Section 22 of the CNTE. Supporters of the CNTE are calling the detention a “kidnapping” by the state on political grounds. The Attorney General’s Office (PGR) claim that the two union leaders are being held for alleged money laundering, aggravated robbery and illicit enrichment.
The detentions underline the highly politicised nature of the government’s relation with the CNTE, who have maintained pressure on the government to negotiate the terms of the 2014 education reform, which they outright reject. While teacher protests are a regular occurrence in the capital Mexico City, particularly during school holidays, and in other major cities in the south, protesters have upped the ante since the arrests this weekend, constructing road blocks and preventing the federal authorities from entering Oaxaca state by the official highway.
Oaxaca
The CNTE is particularly strong in the poor southern state of Oaxaca, where the union believes rural teachers will be most affected by mass-lay offs and an education reform, which they argue does not respect local teaching practices in rural communities.
The government’s aggressive tactic to detain key leaders saw CNTE members and their families respond with vociferous opposition on Sunday, constructing more than 23 road blocks around Oaxaca city, and disrupting traffic from entering or leaving the city. Entrance and exit to Oaxaca airport and that of the beach town Puerto Escondido have been severely hampered by the roadblocks. The authorities have responded in a heavy handed manner attempting to clear the protesters, firing tear gas and further inciting tensions between both sides. On Sunday night and Monday night clashes took place between the authorities and protesters throughout Oaxaca city.
The Oaxaca faction Section 22 of the CNTE has maintained a strong protest movement against the government’s education reform in recent years and at key times – often in the school holidays – the teachers erect makeshift camps in major squares or outside government buildings in protest against the government’s refusal to negotiate on the terms of the reform. Throughout May authorities did not respond to the growing protests and road blocks in the city, likely because they did not want to threaten stability for the major PRI party ahead of the June 5 state election. However, with the PRI winning the state again, the authorities are now more likely to respond in a heavy-handed manner.
As such, tensions are expected to remain extremely strained in the coming weeks with regular clashes unless the government offers an avenue for dialogue or releases the detainees.
The education reform has been a highly contentious element of President Enrique Peña Nieto’s reform agenda. During the June state elections the governing PRI party suffered a series of defeats and the two-year old left-wing group MORENA, led by the charismatic Andrés Manuel Lopéz Obrador (AMLO) – formerly head of the PRD – made significant strides, notably in Oaxaca. AMLO has come out in support of the protesting teachers, which is likely to intensify the political debate around the education debate. However, with government unlikely to open new routes for dialogue with the CNTE, more disruption and potential violence is likely in the weeks ahead.
