Website Shows Socking Images of Wounded Mapuche Children
Powerful images of two Mapuche minors wounded by Chilean carabineros (police) during an eviction operation in an Araucania community have shocked public opinion.
The denunciation was posted on the Mapuche Werken.cl website, with images of numerous wounds caused by pellets to girl Fernanda Marillan, 12, and teen Fabian Llanca, 16, in their head, back and limbs while they were gathering information about several people detained.
Spokesman for the Temucuicui community, Mijael Carbone, denounced that the carabineros opened fire at close range with total disregard for the presence of elders, women and children.
According to reports, there are another three arrested girls who were also wounded.
In the opinion of Jesuit priest Pablo Castro, these incidents are serious and shameful. He said such things have been happening for a long time and have been denounced by human rights bodies.
He said there is a great historic, very complex debt to the Mapuche people that nobody wants to deal with.
French Peugeot Workers Stage Protest vs. Layoffs
Thousands of workers from the French consortium PSA Peugeot Citroen marched today to the headquarters of the group to reject the cut of thousands of jobs announced by the company to compensate a decline in sales.
Jean-Pierre Mercier, delegate of the General Workers’ Confederation (GWC), stated that the firm had greater profits last year and did not take measures to face a possible market fall as a consequence of the debt crisis.
Employees are not responsible for paying the bill, but rather the shareholders, who should tighten their belts, the union leader said.
According to the CGT representative, the PSA Peugeot Citroen has cut nearly 20,000 jobs throughout the country in the past 20 years, while its owners received bigger profits.
Delegates from the Aulnay-sous-Bois factory, threatened by the closure in 2014, and unionists from Rennes, where some 1,500 posts will be cut, participated in the protest.
The demonstration took place as a leadership council met within the building, located in the Avenue de La Grande Armee in Paris, to analyze a plan to reorganize the firm, aiming to save some $1.5 billion euros by 2015.
UN Chief to Personally Help Settle Greek-Macedonian Name Row
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on Wednesday that he would intervene personally to speed up the settling of the name row between Macedonia and Greece.
“We will invest maximum efforts in talks with Greek authorities. And I will personally try to contact (Greek) Prime Minister (Antonis) Samaras to help in the acceleration of the process,” Ban said after his meeting with Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov.
Macedonia and Greece has been mired in a 20-year-long name dispute. Athens claims that the name of Macedonia suggests its northern neighbor harbors territorial ambitions towards its northern province of the same name.
Greece has been asking its northern neighbor to change its name, saying otherwise it will continue to block its way to join the European Union and NATO, as it has already done.
Ban said immediately after the visit that he will send Matthew Nimetz, the special envoy on the Greek-Macedonian name dispute, to Greece to brief the Greek authorities over the talks held in Macedonia.
“It is unfortunate that two neighboring countries have not managed to fully use their potentials for regional cooperation, reconciliation and development. The UN will do everything in their power to facilitate the process,” said Ban.
Commenting on a 2011 ruling by the International Court of Justice that Greece had breached a 1995 interim accord between the two countries by blocking Macedonia’s entry into NATO, Ban said “we are aware of the International Court of Justice ruling and will take into account all aspects.”
Ban, who arrived in Macedonia on Tuesday for a two-day visit, has left for capital Skopje to continue his talks with Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski and the country’s parliament Speaker Trajko Veljanoski. He will give a speech to the Parliament.
Macedonia is still listed at the UN under the name of Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, under which it joined the UN in 1993 after it gained independence from former Yugoslavia in 1991.
Ban didn’t use the word “Macedonia” in his speech at the press conference with Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov.