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Horror on Gaza Beach: New York Times Photographer Witnesses Israeli Killing of 4 Palestinian Boys
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: A five-hour humanitarian truce has just ended in Gaza. The break was requested by the United Nations to allow residents of the Gaza Strip to gather supplies and repair damage following 10 days of attacks by Israel. The death toll in Gaza has reached at least 227, mostly civilians. One Israeli has died since the attack began. There are reports today of a new ceasefire agreement between Israel and Gaza, but details remain unclear.
AMY GOODMAN: On Wednesday, an Israeli gunboat shelled a beach, killing four boys who were playing there. The boys were all between the ages of nine and 11 and from the same extended family. Seven other adults and children were wounded in the strike. The scene was witnessed by a number of international journalists, including France 24 correspondent Gallagher Fenwick.
GALLAGHER FENWICK: We witnessed the incident. The first strike occurred, and we went out onto our balcony. You have to understand that this happened right in front of the hotels on the Gaza beachfront where most of the international media are staying, so there were very many witnesses of this incident. As I mentioned, there was a first very loud strike that hit a structure that is right on the Gaza port. So, many people looking out onto there. And after that first strike happened, we saw four very young children running away from the point of impact on a completely empty beach, so very clearly visible from a distance. And that’s why—that’s when, excuse me, there was a second strike that obviously hit the other children, so leaving four children dead on that beach—a very shocking incident given that, again, these children were clearly simply playing around and were very, very clearly visible from a distance.
AMY GOODMAN: Ashraf al-Qidra of the Gaza Health Ministry condemned the attack on the four children—[Ismail] Mohammed Bakr, age nine; Ahed Bakr, age 10; Zakaria Bakr, age 10; and Mohammed Bakr, age 11.
ASHRAF AL-QIDRA: [translated] The Zionist occupation committed a new crime against the Palestinian civilian population and the children who were playing near the Gaza port, which led to the death of four children, who died on the spot. In addition, the fifth is now clinically dead. Their ages vary from 10 to 12 years old. Medical teams are still in the area looking to evacuate the dead and wounded from the site that was completely destroyed. A large number of injuries arrived to Shifa Medical Center.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: On Wednesday, President Obama said he was, quote, "heartbroken" by the deaths of civilians in Gaza, but he maintained Israel had a right to defend itself.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Israel has a right to defend itself from rocket attacks that terrorize the Israeli people. There’s no country on Earth that can be expected to live under a daily barrage of rockets. Over the next 24 hours, we’ll continue to stay in close contact with our friends and parties in the region, and we will use all of our diplomatic resources and relationships to support efforts of closing a deal on a ceasefire.
AMY GOODMAN: We go now to Gaza City, where we’re joined by Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous. Sharif, can you tell us what happened yesterday? Tell us what happened on the beach.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, Amy, as you heard, these four young boys, aged between nine and 11, were playing on a pier just jutting out into the sea, right in front of the Deira Hotel, which houses many foreign correspondents. There were more than four; there were eight kids, actually, playing. And apparently a naval gunboat fired on them. One of them was killed, and the rest of the children began to run. I visited the site today. There’s a lot of rubble and twisted metal where the initial hit came. About 20 or 30 yards away from that, while the children were running, which seems to indicate that an adjustment was made to give a direct hit on these children, they were hit. I spoke to a witness, a fisherman who was right there, who said the kids were blown apart. One landed about 20 meters from the other two. They were all killed. Mohammed was 11 years old; Zakaria, nine; Ismail, 11; and Ahed was nine—all from the Bakr family. They’re all cousins.
And there was four others who were injured. Two of them are in hospital. I spoke to one of them today. He said he was—they were just playing on the beach, and that they go to the beach every day. They come from a family of fishermen. And he said he was right next to his cousin Mohammed when the strike hit, and he somehow managed to survive. Another one is suffering deep psychological trauma. His name is Younis. He’s suffering deep shock from what happened.
So, and we spoke—I also met with the mother today of Mohammed, the 11-year-old who was killed. She said he was a child that loved the sea. He had seven—he has seven sisters. His father ruined his back about 10 years ago fishing, and they were waiting for him to grow and become the family breadwinner. And there was just deep, deep tragedy and sorrow in the house. So, you know, this is just some of the stories of people who are killed in Gaza. As we know, it’s almost 50 children have been killed over this 10-day bombardment, and close to 230 people overall have been killed.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Sharif—
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: As you mentioned earlier, we’re just approaching now the—go ahead.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Sharif, I just wanted to interrupt you. We also have on the phone with us Tyler Hicks, the New York Times photographer who was there on the scene when the children were killed. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Tyler Hicks.
TYLER HICKS: Thank you.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah. You wrote a firsthand account in the Times today of what you saw. Could you tell us, in your own words?
TYLER HICKS: Yes, actually, my hotel room overlooks the beach. I have a perfect view of that area that was actually hit yesterday. I had been out working for most of the day. This happened in the late afternoon. And I just, you know, heard a loud explosion, a big crack right outside the window. I immediately looked outside, with my—my driver was here with me. And I could see just this part of the port, this jetty that goes out into the water, just outside my window, with a small structure, really just like a little shack, that had just been hit by a bomb. And at that time, I could just see one child running away from that into the open sand. I knew that there was a strong possibility that there would be injuries or even deaths because of this, and I quickly started to grab my cameras, my protective flak jacket, when another second explosion happened outside about 30 seconds after the first one. When I looked back out, that very boy that I had seen running was then lifeless, killed on the beach in the open, and along with three other boys who were playing with him.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Tyler Hicks, prior to these attacks, had there been any shelling going on in that area or any missiles that you could see or rockets being fired?
TYLER HICKS: Not in that area. I mean, the whole—all of Gaza has, you know, rockets, all kind—it’s hard to tell exactly what these are, whether they’re mortars, rockets from a jet, from a drone. Unless you’re able to do the forensics and really know about those things, you can’t really tell exactly what it was. One thing we know is it’s coming from Israel.
This particular area is just—it’s a quiet little strand of beach, sometimes a few fishermen out there with nets trying to catch just small bait fish, occasionally a few children. We learned later that these kids had actually been warned by their families not to play on the beach because it’s an open area. But they would be no reason—now, this isn’t a military area. It’s a place that this part of the beach has hotels that are frequented by journalists. It’s not a place that Hamas would be gathering—certainly not this little shack that’s out on the seawall. There would be no reason that people would be out there in the sweltering sun having some kind of meeting that would be attacked.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Tyler Hicks, as you’ve been covering this, it was—the Israeli military used the words "this was a tragic outcome" when their missile from the ship hit the children. They didn’t say "tragic mistake." They said "tragic outcome." Can you explain, from covering this situation for a while now?
TYLER HICKS: Yeah, I mean, they have a very sophisticated military, and they can see what’s going on, whether it’s from a drone, from a ship. I mean, they know what they’re hitting. And it’s pretty hard—in my opinion, would be—to mistake grown men and, you know, Hamas militants, at that, for children no more than four feet high wearing beach clothes, scattering from this initial explosion. I mean, in my opinion, it would be pretty obvious, especially given the 30-second window between the first explosion and the second that killed three of the four. One was actually killed by that first bomb. But that 30 seconds should be enough to assess whether or not those are children or civilians or actual Hamas militants.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Sharif Abdel Kouddous, I’d like to go back to you for a moment. This temporary lull in the fighting, the talk of another possible truce, could you talk about that?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, as you mentioned, this five-hour ceasefire expired just as we went to air. The streets are already emptying out, as I speak. But earlier today, they were crowded for the first time in 10 days, thousands of people going to market to buy much-needed food and water, and just to see each other after these 10 days of bombardment. Banks and ATMs, there were massive queues outside for people trying to withdraw money. And I expect that it will go back to Gaza, you know, returning to kind of being more of a ghost town, to being quiet, except for these sounds of war that are everywhere—the incessant buzzing of drones overhead, loud booms from warships, the screech of F-16s and the constant blasts of missiles raining down.
And they’ve hit so many homes. I mean, there’s destruction almost around every corner. You see all these two-, three-story concrete buildings completely buckled under, their insides spilled out into the streets, people’s belongings. They hit many graveyards, which are open spaces, where I guess the Israeli military believes rockets are being fired from. But the driver that I’m working with here said, "The Israelis are even trying to kill the dead."
And there’s also thousands of people that have been displaced, many from Beit Lahiya in the north, who came after the Israeli military dropped leaflets warning of attacks. They’re crammed into these U.N.-run schools. It’s very, very hot. It’s very humid. There’s usually somewhere between 10 to 20 people, families crammed into one room, many of them sleeping on the floor. They don’t have enough mattresses to go around. They have very little food and clean water. And many people have said, as well as Hamas officials that I’ve spoken to, that they feel abandoned by the international community, that this is going on and has been allowed to go on. They’re asking for people to intervene and for this to stop.
AMY GOODMAN: Sharif, you’ve just come from Egypt, and I was wondering if you can talk about these ceasefire agreements. The first one, it’s been reported, there was a secret conversation, phone conversation over the weekend, between General—the president of Egypt, el-Sisi, and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Hamas says they weren’t consulted on this. Can you talk about the significance of this in this next ceasefire?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi apparently did have this secret phone call with Benjamin Netanyahu, the first time he’s spoken to Netanyahu since being inaugurated president in early July. This was apparently at the urging of Kerry, according to a report in Ha’aretz. I think, you know, this is—the difference between the last president that Sisi ousted, Mohamed Morsi, was that the Muslim Brotherhood had close ties with Hamas. During the 2012 assault, Mohamed Morsi sent in his prime minister, Hesham Qandil, into Gaza during the bombardment, which the people of Gaza here—I came to cover that, as well—said was a great show of solidarity. Other leaders came in after that, including the Turkish prime minister Erdogan. And so, he was really toasted for brokering a ceasefire.
And I think Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is trying to restore Egypt’s historic role as a broker between Israel and Palestine, but, in this instance, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has engaged in a severe clampdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, the ally of Hamas, and has constantly vilified and demonized Hamas as trying to collude with the Brotherhood to overthrow the military in Egypt and overthrow the state. And so, they have destroyed hundreds of tunnels that link between Gaza and Egypt, in the interim. And this ceasefire agreement that was negotiated—I just spoke with a Hamas official, who confirmed that they were not consulted whatsoever. They learned about the ceasefire agreement from the media when it was reported. So, you now, I think this was a move to try and restore Egypt as being seen as a possible broker, but also to marginalize Hamas as a political movement.
There’s talk of a new ceasefire. The details aren’t apparent yet. But everyone wants the shelling and the bombing to stop.
AMY GOODMAN: Is there reports of a ground invasion, a possibility, of the Israeli troops lined up on the Gaza border?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: We keep hearing different reports. There was an unnamed Israeli military official who spoke with foreign correspondents yesterday—it was reported by The New York Times and The Washington Post and other papers—that was saying, as each day passes, a ground invasion becomes more likely, saying it was very, very possible. If that happens, then we can only imagine that the level of violence will only go up.
AMY GOODMAN: Sharif, we want to thank you for being with us. Please be safe. Sharif Abdel Kouddous, Democracy Now! correspondent, reporting from Gaza. I also want to thank Tyler Hicks, the Pulitzer Prize-winning staff photographer at The New York Times, wrote the firsthand account of witnessing the attack on the four boys today on the Gaza beach. We’ll link to that report at democracynow.org. Tyler Hicks is also the photographer who worked with Anthony Shadid, the New York Times reporter who died as he was leaving Libya [sic]. Tyler Hicks carried him over the border. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow—when he was leaving Syria, that is. This is Democracy Now! We’ll be back in a minute.
Nobel Economist Joseph Stiglitz Hails New BRICS Bank Challenging U.S.-Dominated World Bank & IMF
A group of five countries has launched its own development bank to challenge the U.S.-dominated World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Leaders from the so-called BRICS countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — unveiled the New Development Bank at a summit in the Brazilian city of Fortaleza. The bank will be headquartered in Shanghai. Together, BRICS countries account for 25 percent of global GDP and 40 percent of the world’s population. To discuss this development, we are joined by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, a professor at Columbia University and the World Bank’s former chief economist. "It’s very important in many ways," Stiglitz says of the New Development Bank’s founding. "This is adding to the flow of money that will go to finance infrastructure, adaptation to climate change — all the needs that are so evident in the poorest countries. It [also] reflects a fundamental change in global economic and political power. The BRICS countries today are richer than the advanced countries were when the World Bank and the IMF were founded. We’re in a different world — but the old institutions haven’t kept up."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: A group of five countries have launched their own development bank to challenge the United States-dominated World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Leaders from the so-called BRICS countries—Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa—unveiled the New Development Bank at a summit in Brazil. The bank will be headquartered in Shanghai. Chinese President Xi Jinping said the agreement would have far-reaching benefits for BRICS members and other developing nations.
PRESIDENT XI JINPING: [translated] Through the concerted effort from all sides, we have managed to reach a consensus in the creation of the BRICS development bank today. This is the result of the significant implications and far reach of BRICS cooperation and is therefore the political will of BRICS nations for common development. This will not only help increase the voice of BRICS nations in terms of international finance, but, more importantly, will bring benefits to all the people in the BRICS countries and for all peoples in developing countries.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Chinese President Xi Jinping. Together, BRICS countries account for 25 percent of global GDP and 40 percent of the world’s population.
For more, we’re joined now by Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, professor at Columbia University, author of numerous books. His new book is called Creating a Learning Society: A New Approach to Growth, Development, and Social Progress.
We welcome you to Democracy Now!
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Good to be here.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the significance of this bank.
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Oh, it’s very, very important, in many ways. First, the need globally for more investment—in the developing countries, especially—is in the order of magnitude of trillions, couple trillion dollars a year. And the existing institutions just don’t have enough resources. They have enough for 2, 3, 4 percent. So, this is adding to the flow of money that will go to finance infrastructure, adaptation to climate change—all the needs that are so evident in the poorest countries.
Secondly, it reflects a fundamental change in global economic and political power, that one of the ideas behind this is that the BRICS countries today are richer than the advanced countries were when the World Bank and the IMF were founded. We’re in a different world. At the same time, the world hasn’t kept up. The old institutions have not kept up. You know, the G-20 talked about and agreed on a change in the governance of the IMF and the World Bank, which were set back in 1944—there have been some revisions—but the U.S. Congress refuses to follow along with the agreement. The administration failed to go along with what was widely understood as the basic notion that, you know, in the 21st century the heads of these institutions should be chosen on the basis of merit, not just because you’re an American. And yet, the U.S. effectively reneged on that agreement. So, this new institution reflects the disparity and the democratic deficiency in the global governance and is trying to restart, to rethink that.
Finally, there have been a lot of changes in the global economy. And a new institution reflects the broader set of mandates, the new concerns, the new sets of instruments that can be used, the new financial instruments, and the broader governance. Realizing the deficiencies in the old system of governance, hopefully, this new institution will spur the existing institutions to reform. And, you know, it’s not just competition. It’s really trying to get more resources to the developing countries in ways that are consistent with their interests and needs.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And the importance of countries like China, which obviously has huge monetary reserves, and Brazil, which had developed its own development bank now for several years, their being key players in this new financial organization?
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Very much. And that illustrates, as you say, a couple interesting points. China has reserves in excess of $3 trillion. So, one of the things is that it needs to use those reserves better than just putting them into U.S. Treasury bills. You know, my colleagues in China say that’s like putting meat in a refrigerator and then pulling out the plug, because the real value of the money put in U.S. Treasury bills is declining. So they say, "We need better uses for those funds," certainly better uses than using those funds to build, say, shoddy homes in the middle of the Nevada desert. You know, there are real social needs, and those funds haven’t been used for those purposes.
At the same time, Brazil has—the BNDES is a huge development bank, bigger than the World Bank. People don’t realize this, but Brazil has actually shown how a single country can create a very effective development bank. So, there’s a learning going on. And this notion of how you create an effective development bank, that actually promotes real development without all the conditionality and all the trappings around the old institutions, is going to be an important part of the contribution that Brazil is going to make.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And how has that bank functioned differently, let’s say, than other development banks in the North?
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Well, we don’t know yet, because it’s just getting started. The agreement—it’s been several years underway. The discussions began about three years ago, and then they made a commitment, and then they—you know, they’ve been working on it very steadily. What was big about this agreement was—there was a little worry that there would be conflicts of the interests. You know, everybody wanted the headquarters, the president. Would there be enough political cohesion, solidarity, to make a deal? Answer was, there was. So, what it is really saying is that in spite of all of the differences, the emerging markets can work together, in a way more effectively than some of the advanced countries can work together.
AMY GOODMAN: Joe Stiglitz, you’re the former chief economist of the World bank. What’s your assessment of the World Bank under the tenure of Jim Yong Kim, who is the former Dartmouth president? We just passed the second anniversary of his tenure there.
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Well, it’s still too soon to say.
AMY GOODMAN: When it comes to issues of debt and other issues.
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: You know, because it takes a while for somebody to get in charge of the bank and to—you know, it’s like a big ship, and you’re trying to shift it. I think there’s a broad concern that he brings certain very positive strengths to the bank—a focus on health and other social issues—but successful development will have to continue to have a focus on some of the old issues. So, you know, you have to grow. And he has a little bit less experience in the fundamentals of economic growth. I think he has probably more sensitivity to some of the problems that have plagued these international financial institutions in the past, the high conditionality. But he faces a governance problem. And that’s what this issue is about, a governance problem, where the head of the World Bank is chosen by the U.S., even though the U.S. is not playing the economic role and the leadership role that it did at one time. And we all believe in democracy, but a democracy says it shouldn’t be just assigned to one country.
One of the interesting aspects of the discussions that I’ve heard is, you know, during the East Asia crisis, one of the senior, very senior U.S. Treasury officials said, "What are you complaining about, about our telling countries what to do? He who pays the piper calls the tune." And what I hear now is the developing countries, emerging markets, China and the other countries, saying, "We’re paying the tune. We’re the big players now. We have the resources. We’re where the reserves are. And yet, you don’t want to let us play even a fair share in the role, reflecting the size of our contributions in the economy, in trade." And so, that’s one of the real grievances—I think valid grievances. And it’s hard for an institution where the governance is so out of tune with current economic and political realities to be as effective as it could be.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to ask you about a subject we just had on—were discussing in an earlier segment: immigration and this whole issue of the world economy and financial systems. You have the contradiction that, on the one hand, globalization is breaking down barriers to capital everywhere, and yet, in the advanced countries especially, you have the growth of anti-immigrant movements, not just in the United States, but in Europe, in England and in Holland. And so you have a situation where there’s an effort to erect barriers to labor and to the free flow of labor. And the impact of these kinds of debates—just a few days ago, you had Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and Sheldon Adelson, a conservative Republican, all blasting Congress for not being able to achieve some kind of comprehensive immigration reform. The impact of this on the world economy?
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Well, I think there are a couple of aspects of this that one has to appreciate. On the one hand, it’s absolutely true that free mobility of labor would have an impact on global incomes that is an order of magnitude greater than the free mobility of capital. So, the agenda that the U.S. has pursued, that free mobility of capital, has been driven not by on the grounds of global economic efficiency. It’s really special interests. It’s the banks that wanted this. On the other hand, both the movement of capital and labor can have disturbing effects. You know, we saw how free mobility of capital, short-term capital, especially, going in and out, can cause crises. We also know that migration of labor has—social adjustment processes have to occur. One of the real concerns, increasing concern, say, in a country like the United States, is that—how do you share the benefits of globalization? And there are wages are driving—been driven down. You know, the median income, income in the middle, of the United States today is lower than it was a quarter century ago. Median income of a full-time male worker is lower than it was 40 years ago. Productivity of workers has gone up over 100 percent in, say, the last 40 years—
AMY GOODMAN: We have 15 seconds.
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: —but wages are down by 7 percent.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to have to continue this conversation off air, and then we will post it at democracynow.org. I also want to ask you about the Trans-Pacific Partnership—you talk about it being on the wrong side of globalization—your assessment of President Obama when it comes to the growing gap in inequality in this country. Joe Stiglitz is the Nobel Prize-winning economist, professor at Columbia University, former chief economist of the World Bank. He is author of many books; his latest, Creating a Learning Society: A New Approach to Growth, Development, and Social Progress.
That does it for our show. I’ll be speaking at the Mark Twain House in Hartford, Connecticut, Monday, July 21st, at 7:00 p.m.; in Martha’s Vineyard, Saturday, July 26, 7:00 p.m. at Katharine Cornell Auditorium in Vineyard Haven. Check out democracynow.org.
U.S. Turns Back on Child Migrants After Its Policies in Guatemala, Honduras Sowed Seeds of Crisis
As tens of thousands of children cross the U.S. border fleeing violence in their native Central American home countries, we look at the historical roots of the crisis. The United States has a long and sadly bloody history of destabilizing democratic governments in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador — the very countries that are now the sources of this latest migration wave. This week saw the first planeload of children deported to Honduras since President Obama vowed to speed up the removal of more than 57,000 youth who have fled to the United States from Central America in recent months. The group of 38 deportees included 21 children between the ages of 18 months and 15 years, along with 17 female family members. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the experience of Cordova and others should demonstrate to Central Americans that "they will not be welcomed to this country with open arms."
But U.S. funding and foreign policy has long shaped the lives of Central Americans. June 28 marked the fifth anniversary of the military coup that deposed democratically elected Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, which the United States did not oppose. For analysis, we are joined by University of California-Santa Cruz Professor Dana Frank, who argues it was the coup — more than drug trafficking and gangs — that opened the doors to the violence in Honduras and unleashed an ongoing wave of state-sponsored repression. We are also joined by human rights activist and lawyer Jennifer Harbury from Weslaco, Texas, about five miles from the U.S.-Mexico border. Harbury’s husband, Efraín Bámaca Velásquez, a guerrilla commander, a Mayan comandante and guerrilla, was disappeared after he was captured by the Guatemalan army in the 1980s. Harbury is the author of "Searching for Everardo: A Story of Love, War, and the CIA in Guatemala" and has spent decades pressing for classified information on her husband’s case.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: This week saw the first planeload of children deported to Honduras since President Obama vowed to speed up the removal of more than 57,000 youths who’ve fled to the United States from Central America in recent months. The group of 38 deportees included 21 children between the ages of 18 months and 15 years, along with 17 female family members.
Among them was Victoria Cordova, who came to the United States with her nine-year-old daughter. They were captured at the U.S.-Mexico border after a 25-day journey and are now back in San Pedro Sula, the city with the highest murder rate in the world. Last month, children in Honduras were murdered at a rate of more than one per day. Cordova described her ordeal to reporters.
VICTORIA CORDOVA: [translated] I don’t have any work. It’s been four months without work. This is a part of what motivated me to go—the poverty, the situation here, this insecurity we live through. We see children nearby who are very young, 12 and 13 years old, and they drug themselves. It’s terrible to live like this. Here we live a life where you can’t even call the police, because they are controlled by the gangs.
When we crossed the river and they trapped us, we didn’t think. We had some hope. And then, when we arrived in McAllen, we were on the floor. There was dust. There were a lot of people there, and I was there for various hours. They call it an ice box, because it’s very cold there. We were there for two days. They took us to El Paso, Texas, on a plane, and there in El Paso, Texas, we spent two days there sleeping on the ground, cold.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: On Tuesday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the experience of Cordova and others should demonstrate to Central Americans that, quote, "they will not be welcomed to this country with open arms."
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, Honduran officials called for an increase in U.S. aid to Central America. Honduran Foreign Minister Mireya Agüero called for a, quote, "mini-Marshall Plan," similar to the U.S. anti-drug programs in Colombia and Mexico.
AMY GOODMAN: In fact, U.S. funding and foreign policy has long shaped the lives of Central Americans. June 28th marked the fifth anniversary of the military coup that deposed the democratically elected Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya, which the U.S did not oppose. Our next guest argues it was the coup, more than drug trafficking and gangs, that opened the doors to the violence in Honduras and unleashed an ongoing wave of state-sponsored repression.
We’re joined right now by Dana Frank, professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz, an expert on human rights and U.S. policy in Honduras. She recently authored a piece titled "Who’s Responsible for the Flight of Honduran Children?" And in February, her article, "The Thugocracy Next Door," appeared in Politico magazine.
Dana Frank, welcome to Democracy Now!
DANA FRANK: Thanks a lot.
AMY GOODMAN: Thank you for joining us from the Stanford University studios. Explain what the background is for so many—and so many children—to be fleeing the violence in Honduras.
DANA FRANK: Yeah, I think, you know, we keep hearing the fact that people are fleeing gangs and violence, but there hasn’t been an analysis or discussion of why is there so much gang activity and violence in Honduras. And the answer is this tremendous criminality that the 2009 military coup opened the door to when it overthrew the democratically elected president, Manuel Zelaya. The coup, of course, itself was a criminal act, and it really opened the door for this spectacular corruption of the police and up-and-down, top-to-bottom of the government. And that, in turn, means it’s possible to kill anybody you want, practically, and nothing will happen to you. It’s widely documented that the police are overwhelmingly corrupt. Even a government official charged with cleaning up the police admitted last fall that 70 percent of the Honduran police are beyond saving. And you heard the woman, Ms. Cordova, say that the police themselves are tied in with organized crime and drug traffickers. So, when we talk about this violence, it’s really important to understand there’s almost no functioning criminal justice system and no political will at the top to do anything about this.
The president, the new president, Juan Orlando Hernández, who came into power in January, himself was a major backer of the criminal coup when he was the president—was head of a key committee in the Honduran Congress at the time, and a year and a half ago, as president of the Honduran Congress, illegally overthrew part of the Supreme Court, and he illegally was part of naming a new attorney general loyal to him last summer, named to an illegal five-year term. And he’s built his campaign not around cleaning up the police, but a new military police that is expanding this militarization of Honduran society, and that military police itself is committing serious human rights abuses, including, recently in May, beating up and jailing the most prominent advocate for children in Honduras.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Dana Frank, I remember being in San Pedro Sula back in the early 1990s. I mean, not only was the level of corruption incredibly high among the police forces, but there were—the military was out in the streets constantly patrolling. It’s also one of the poorest countries in all of the Americas. You’ve also referred to the impact of the CAFTA deal on Honduras and on the poverty of the country.
DANA FRANK: Oh, yeah, certainly, it’s not like there was ever a golden age in Honduras. But, you know, as Senator Tim Kaine said in a hearing for the new ambassador of Honduras, that Hondurans are saying that the level of militarization, as well—he said the level of military repression and terror there is worse than it was in the early 1980s at the height of the U.S.-funded Contra war in Nicaragua that Honduras was the base for. So we need to talk about, relatively, this is even more terrifying than then, which is really saying a lot.
Yeah, when we talk about the fleeing gangs and violence, it’s also this tremendous poverty. And poverty doesn’t just happen. It, itself, is a direct result of policies of both the Honduran government and the U.S. government, including privatizations, mass layoffs of government workers, and a new—in Honduras, a new law, that’s now made permanent, that breaks up full-time jobs and makes them part-time and ineligible for unionization, living wage and the national health service. And a lot of these economic policies are driven by U.S.-funded lending organizations like the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, which itself is funding the corrupt Honduran police. The Central American Free Trade Agreement is the other piece of this. Like NAFTA did for the U.S. and Mexico, it opens the door to this open competition between small producers in agriculture in Honduras, small manufacturers, and jobs are disappearing as a result of that.
So, with this poverty that we’re seeing that people are fleeing, it’s not like people are like, "Let’s go have the American dream." There are almost no jobs for young people. Their parents know it. And we’re talking about starving to death—that’s the alternative—or being driven into gangs with tremendous sexual violence. And it’s a very, very tragic situation here. But it’s not like it tragically just happened. It’s a direct result of very conscious policies by the U.S. and Honduran governments.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Frank, I wanted to go to this issue of U.S. responsibility and turn to former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, who was ousted five years ago. We got a chance to sit down with him in 2011 at his home in Tegucigalpa. I had just flown in with him. This was after the coup when a new president was chosen. And his family flew back from Nicaragua to Honduras. It was the first time that he was at his home for several years.
MANUEL ZELAYA: [translated] The U.S. State Department has always denied, and they continue to deny, any ties with the coup d’état. Nevertheless, all of the proof incriminates the U.S. government. And all of the actions that were taken by the de facto regime, or the golpista regime, which are those who carried out the coup, and it is to make favor of the industrial policies and the military policies and the financial policies of the United States in Honduras.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya. Professor Dana Frank, he strongly felt that the U.S. was involved with the coup. What evidence is there for that?
DANA FRANK: Well, the biggest evidence we have is that his plane stopped at the air force base at Palmerola, known as Soto Cano Air Force Base now, which is a joint U.S. and Honduran base. That plane could not have stopped there without U.S. permission. We don’t have the big smoking guns. We certainly have the behavior of the U.S. State Department and the White House after the coup, which was to legitimate the coup government as an equal partner to Zelaya—in fact, as a superior partner. They never denounced the spectacular repression after the coup. And they treated Zelaya like a bad child for trying to return to his own country. They recognized—they announced that they would recognize the outcome of the illegitimate November elections after that, even before the votes were counted. And it was clearly they wanted the whole situation to go away.
I mean, they clearly—Zelaya was, in many ways, the weakest domino of all the center-left and left governments that had come to power in Latin America in the previous 15 years. And it was a message to all those other governments that we will back coups, and we will overthrow you, as well. The U.S. then supported President Lobo, the outcome of that November 2009 election, and made up this fiction that it was a government of national reconciliation, and, ever since, has been turning a blind eye, for the most part, to the spectacular human rights abuses, including killings by state security forces and really spectacular lack of political will to deal with corruption at the very top of the government. And the U.S. keeps acting like this is just a hunky-dory government that we should be working with as a partner.
You know, I found it tremendously chilling to be reading newspaper reports and media reports of that planeload of children that came back to Honduras and the U.S. working with the Honduran government, welcoming those children with open arms, when the government itself is countenancing this problem. The government itself, you know, beat—has countenanced the beating up of the leading independent children’s activist in the country. The government itself doesn’t have the political will to clean up the police. So, what does it mean that we’re working with this partner to help these Honduran children?
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We’re also joined by Jennifer Harbury, a human rights activist and lawyer based in Weslaco, Texas, near the U.S.-Mexico border. Her husband, Efraín Bámaca Velásquez, a Mayan guerrilla commander, disappeared after he was captured by the Guatemalan army in the 1980s. She’s the author of Searching for Everardo: A Story of Love, War, and the CIA in Guatemala and has spent decades pressing for declassified information on her husband’s case.
Welcome, Jennifer Harbury.
JENNIFER HARBURY: Thank you very much. I’m glad to be with you.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Talk to us about the—as we’ve been discussing Honduras, many of the children are also coming from Guatemala. And again, some of that history of U.S. involvement in Guatemala, especially in recent years.
JENNIFER HARBURY: Yes. We’ve been horrified by the thought of sending any of these children back, since, by international and domestic law, they qualify as refugees, almost all of them.
I can certainly talk about the Guatemalan counterpart to what Dana was just discussing. We talk sometimes about maybe the solution is to send more funding—as she was saying, a new Marshall Plan—to Central American countries. But that’s in fact going to pour gasoline on the fire, especially in Guatemala, where a number of former and current top officials in the military are in fact the drug lords. Some of them have left the military; some are still in. They got involved in the drug trade while the wars were going on and they had airstrips that were valuable to the Colombian drug lords. They became very wealthy that way and now have what are called parallel structures. And they organize, arm and train the gangs themselves to do their dirty work.
For example, the Zeta cartel that terrorize the border strip where I live now, which is almost down to Brownsville—I’m 10 miles from the Rio Grande—the Zetas are one of the most feared cartels anywhere, totally brutal. They were armed, trained and organized by the Guatemalan military special forces, called the Kaibiles, who, of course, in turn, were armed, trained, organized, etc., by the United States intelligence networks, and trained many of them at the School of the Americas. Another example is Julio Roberto Alpirez, a colonel, one of many high-level military officials, who is on the DEA corrupt officer list, but because he also worked as a paid CIA informant, no one has ever been able to go after him. So, much like Honduras, we have one of the highest murder rates in the world. The femicide rate is something like 10 times higher than that in Juárez.
As these refugees pour into the United States, we’re taking all kinds of measures to justify sending them back and claiming they’re not refugees. But the way we’re doing that is to expedite or rush them through proceedings so quickly that they can’t really tell their stories. And, of course, they have no legal advice. And basically turns on whether or not a 10-year-old child, when confronted with a Border Patrol agent, or young mother confronted with a Border Patrol agent, is able and willing to say, "I’m asking for political asylum. I’m in danger of persecution or abuse at the hands of the drug lords and the gangs." And all of those people know, if they ever say those words, they’re going to be dead when they go back home. It’s the death penalty to squeal, basically, on the gangs and the drug lords in any way. So, without a lawyer, within days, they’re going to be headed home under expedited proceedings.
And this is a violation of international law and also U.S. domestic law. If they qualify for asylum or treatment under the Convention Against Torture, if they’re in danger of being harmed in this way by people who either are government officials or who are acting without the local governments being able or "willing," quote-unquote, to protect the population, then these people are refugees. They cannot be sent back. And sweeping them under the rug and getting them out of the country so fast that they can’t tell their stories or get any legal advice is a double violation of humanitarian law, and it’s something we’re going to be answering for for a long time. We’re certainly not proud of having turned back the boatload of Jews to Nazi Germany, but at least we didn’t sail out on the high seas, board the ships and throw people overboard. These are children. These are refugees. We have to let them in.
There are many kinds of programs that we can put into action that would deal with the situation well, in the same way we’ve done before. We can do deferred action, deferred enforcement, temporary protected status. We’ve done those things for Honduras and Haiti. It would let people stay for a year or two and then have the danger in their homelands reconsidered. Meanwhile, they can work and support themselves. It would relieve the backup in the court. There’s many alternatives. We’re choosing to pretend that they’re not refugees, and send them home in violation of the law.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to have to leave it there, but we thank you both very much for being with us. We’ll link to both of your work.
Jennifer Harbury, human rights activist and lawyer, we’re speaking to her right near the border in Weslaco, Texas, near the Mexico border. Her husband, Efraín Bámaca Velásquez, a Mayan guerrilla commander, disappeared after he was captured by the Guatemalan army in the 1980s. He was tortured. He was murdered. And those involved with his killing were trained by the United States, and specifically the Central Intelligence Agency.
Dana Frank, we thank you for being with us from Stanford University’s studios, professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz, expert on U.S. policy in Honduras. We’ll link to your piece, "Who’s Responsible for the Flight of Honduran Children?" as well as the other one, "The Thugocracy Next Door," which appeared in Politico magazine.
This is Democracy Now! When we come back, the Pulitzer Prize-winning economist Joe Stiglitz. Stay with us.
Headlines:
•Egypt Proposes New Ceasefire; Strikes Resume After 5-Hour Pause
Israel says it is considering a new ceasefire proposal from Egypt that would take effect on Friday. There is no word yet from Hamas, which rejected the last proposal on the grounds its leaders were never consulted and the terms would have allowed for the continued siege of Gaza and for Israeli bombardment at will. The first ceasefire proposal was unveiled days after a previously undisclosed secret phone call between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. The news of a fresh proposal comes just as a five-hour humanitarian pause has ended. The United Nations asked for the break to let Gazans receive supplies and repair damage following 10 days of Israeli bombings. As the brief truce took effect, Israel says it killed eight militants trying to tunnel their way into southern Israel. Three Palestinians were killed in a separate Israeli strike just before the pause began.
•Israeli Bombing Kills 4 Boys on Gaza Beach
The death toll in Gaza has reached at least 227, mostly civilians, including around 50 children. One Israeli has died since the attack began. On Wednesday, an Israeli gunboat shelled a beach, killing four boys who were kicking around a soccer ball. The boys were all between the ages of nine and 11 and from the same extended family. They were killed as they ran away from an initial blast, suggesting they may have been targeted intentionally.
•Obama Admin Faults Hamas for Palestinian Civilian Deaths
In Washington, State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki called Palestinian civilian deaths "absolutely tragic" but blamed Hamas for the casualties, saying: "They’re putting their own people at risk by continuing to escalate the situation on the ground." In his first public comments on the Gaza assault, President Obama also lamented the mass killings of Palestinians but defended Israel’s attacks by saying they are in self-defense.
•Palestinian American Beaten by Israeli Forces Returns to U.S.
A Florida teenager whose beating by Israeli forces was caught on video this month has returned to the United States. Tariq Abu Khdeir says he was watching demonstrations in East Jerusalem when he was seized. The video shows him lying on the ground as the officers repeatedly beat him with batons. He was left with facial bruises and severely swollen eyes and lips. Tariq was a cousin of Mohammed Abu Khdeir, the Palestinian teen kidnapped and burned alive in an apparent revenge attack for the killings of three teenage Israeli settlers. Moments after landing in Tampa Wednesday night, Tariq urged supporters to remember his cousin and the dozens of Palestinian children killed in the ongoing Israeli assault on Gaza.
Tariq Abu Khdeir: "There is one main thing that I wanted to say, which is that you only know my story because I am an American, but I hope you will all also remember my cousin, a 16-year-old Palestinian named Mohammed Abu Khdeir. … I want to ask you all to please remember my cousin Mohammed and the 36 kids that died in Gaza over the past several days. They have names like mine. I hope the violence will stop for their sake. No child, whether they are Palestinian or Israeli, deserves to die that way. I am so glad to be back home again."
•U.S. Widens Russia Sanctions over Ukraine
The Obama administration has expanded U.S. sanctions on Russia in the latest round of a standoff over Ukraine. Speaking at the White House, President Obama said Russia has failed to drop military support for pro-Russian separatists.
President Obama: "Given its continued provocations in Ukraine, today I have approved a new set of sanctions on some of Russia’s largest companies and financial institutions. Along with our allies, with whom I have been coordinating closely the last several days and weeks, I’ve repeatedly made it clear that Russia must halt the flow of weapons and fighters across the border into Ukraine, that Russia must urge separatists to release their hostages and support a ceasefire, that Russia needs to pursue internationally mediated talks and agree to meaningful monitors on the border."
The new sanctions are the most extensive on Russia to date, with targets including the state-controlled energy giants Gazprom and Rosneft. Ukraine has seen continued violence in recent weeks, with the U.S.-backed Kiev government launching major attacks on Russian-leaning southeastern areas.
•Obama Suggests Extension for Iran Nuclear Talks
President Obama has suggested he will approve an extension of Iranian nuclear talks before Sunday’s deadline for an agreement. After a briefing from Secretary of State John Kerry, Obama noted significant progress but said key gaps remain.
President Obama: "Over the last six months, Iran has met its commitments under the interim deal we reached last year, halting the progress of its nuclear program, allowing more inspections and rolling back its most dangerous stockpile of nuclear material. … But as we approach a deadline of July 20 under the interim deal, there are still some significant gaps between the international community and Iran, and we have more work to do. So, over the next few days, we’ll continue consulting with Congress, and our team will continue discussions with Iran and our partners, as we determine whether additional time is necessary to extend our negotiations."
•Federal Judge Strikes Down Death Penalty over "Arbitrary" Executions
A federal judge has struck down the death penalty in California on the grounds sentences are carried out in an "arbitrary" and "random" manner. In his ruling, Judge Cormac Carney wrote the state’s system "[is] so plagued by inordinate delay that the death sentence is actually carried out against only a trivial few of those sentenced to death." Carney said the delays and unpredictable outcomes amount to "cruel and unusual punishment." Hundreds of prisoners are on California’s death row, but no executions have been carried out since 2006, when a federal judge ruled against lethal injections.
•Assange Lawyers to Appeal Swedish Court Ruling Upholding Warrant
A Swedish court has upheld the arrest warrant that’s kept WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange confined in Ecuador’s London Embassy for over two years. Assange is wanted in Sweden for questioning on allegations of sexual misconduct, though no charges have been filed. Assange’s attorneys had petitioned for the warrant to be withdrawn, arguing it cannot be enforced while Assange is in the embassy and Swedish prosecutors refuse to question him in London. But the motion was dismissed on Wednesday without explanation. Defense attorney Tholmas Olsson vowed to appeal.
Tholmas Olsson: "We will appeal against this decision. We don’t agree with the district court in their judgment of the need to overrule this decision about custody. We can’t accept that this situation is [continuing]. ... I think that legally we have very strong arguments, but this case has many dimensions, and it was probably a very difficult decision for the court to take. We waited several hours for it. But we are hopeful for the appeal."
Wednesday’s hearing marked the first formal legal debate over Assange’s status since he took refuge in June 2012.
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