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Women Top Drug Sellers
Cartago appears, according to a report by Channel
7 news, the leader for women who sell drugs. In the past three operatives by
the drug enformcement police, of the six people arrested to the sale of
illegal drugs, five were women.
The latest case is of a 52 year old woman identified as Díaz Chinchilla, who
appears to have been selling drugs from her home in Taras de Cartago, where
she lived with ther four children, three of whom are minors.
Authorities in their attempt to stop the sale of drugs are asking for help
and have set up a special telephone line 800 DROGA NO - 800 376 4866. The
number is toll free in Costa Rica and police say the call will dealt
confidentially and with anonymity.
13 Year
Old Victim of Gang Shooting
A 13 year old boy was the victim of what appears a
gang related shooting. The shooting occurred at about 9:30pm Saturday night
in Los Guidos de Desamaparados, south of San José.
The boy was identified as
Luis Eliseo Muñoz
González, was walking along the main road when one of
two men on a motorcycle shot González, who died on the way to the hospital.
According to witnesses, González had a heated discussion with the men on the
motorcycle, then the brother of the murder victim threw a stone at the
motorcycle, one of them returned a gunshot, hitting González in the neck. A
pirate taxi immediately took the boy to the nearby hospital, but it was too
late.
Police are investigating the shooting, believe to be linked to gang action.
Police Lay Murder
Charges
Police in Costa Rica have charged an 18-year-old with the murder
of Saint John teacher Brad Whipple.
Whipple was teaching English in San Jose, when he was robbed and killed by a
gang.
Two people have been convicted for their roles in the crime.
Police have now arrested the man believed to have stabbed Whipple.
Whipple's parents plan to travel to Costa Rica for the trial. It's been 18
months since their son's death.
11.215 Denied Entry to Costa Rica This Year
A recent report by immigration officials says that in the first
39 days of this year, 11.215 Nicaraguans were denied entry to Costa Rica.
Most tried to enter without a passport or visas, as required by new
immigration rules at the end of 2003.
Immigration officials also tell that in the same period 42 foreigners of
European, Asian and African origin were also denied entry.
The report continues that this year to date, 149 persons have been deported
for not having having passports or proper documentation or had overstayed
their visa period. North America nd and Europeans have 90 days legal stay in
the country, while most other nationals have 30 days.
Marco Badilla, director of immigration, said that of the 149 deportations,
123 were Nicaraguans, 9 Colombians and 4 Hondurans.
Director Badilla added that most of the denied entries occurred at various
border points, mostly in Peñas Blancas, the most active border point in the
northern part of the country, and 1.912 in Los Chiles. Both Peñas Blancas
and Los Chiles border with Nicaragua. At Juan Santamaria Airport in San
José, only 70 persons where denied entry.
Badilla said that the results are part of an effort of a joint effort by
immigration police and the Fuerza Publica, who are both strictly applying
immigration laws.
Badilla added that the large number of persons in Costa Rica without proper
documentation and subsequent expulsions is evidence that Costa Rica is
reception point for many who are in transit to other destinations, mainly
the U.S. and Canada.
No Water? Make Sure Your Water Bill is Paid.
The AyA - Instituto Costarricense de Acueductos y Alcantarillados
- the national water and sewage company has said that it will continue with
it's program to cut service to those who pay their water bills late. In the
bast year the insitute has recovered more than ¢2.000.000.000 colones in
payments.
This is due to a situation that for years the institute could not or for
other reasons did not collect water service payments on time. They allowed
customers, both commercial and residential, to run up large bills that could
not be paid, but still continued to give service.
In some cases, water bills would run for a year or more without payment and
water service were never cut. The situation got so bad, that the institution
became financially strapped and was left with no choice but to get tough
with it's customers.
In a recommendation by the ARESEP - the government body that regulates
public services and prices - the AyA began a program of cutting water
services to all customers who were late in their payments.
The program of shutting down water service continues today in the hope that
the AyA recover most of the ¢6.500.000.000 still owed to it by it's
customers. The program in in place from Monday to Thursday. On Fridays the
AyA work crews do not cut water service not wanting customers would have to
go all weekend without water.
According to Heibel Rodríguez, financial manager for the AyA, he assures
that any customer who has paid their water bill with have service cut until
such a time as their bill is up-to-date.
US, Agricultural Nations Try To Jump-Start Free-Trade Negotiation
The Cairns Group of 17 nations seeking an end to farm subsidies is meeting
here this week with the United States in a bid to revive stalled World Trade
Organization (WTO) negotiations.
US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, who last week said he urged WTO
members to eliminate farm subsidies, will be a special guest to the group's
26th ministerial meeting here from Monday to Wednesday.
Cairns decided to invite Zoellick after he sent a letter urging an end to
farm subsidies, Costa Rican diplomat Ronald Saborio said.
"The exact objective of the Cairns Group is to hear Zoellick's position
directly from him," he said.
The Cairns Group, founded in 1986, includes Argentina, Australia, Bolivia,
Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Indonesia, Malaysia,
New Zealand, Paraguay, the Philippines, South Africa, Thailand and Uruguay.
Saborio said there are signs that the WTO will emerge from the "impasse" it
reached last September in failed free-trade negotiations in Cancun, Mexico.
Trade talks, which began in Doha in 2001, fell apart in Cancun after
developing nations criticized US and EU farm subsidies. The round of
negotiations is scheduled to finish by year's end.
Cairns plans to draft a document calling for the end of farm subsidies and
access to markets, Saborio said.
WTO chief Supachai Panitchpakdi, who is also invited to San Jose, told La
Nacion newspaper here on Sunday: "There are still grave barriers that are
obstacles to trade, competition and economic effectiveness."
Farm subsidies of one billion dollars a day from the world's 30 most
industrialized countries are among the biggest hurdles to free trade, he
added.
Brazilian Agriculture Minister Roberto Rodrigues said he supports an
alliance between Cairns and the Group of 20, the organization of 20
developing countries that vehemently contested US and EU farm subsidies in
Cancun.
"The Group of Cairns' and the G20's concerns converge," Rodrigues said. "We
are seeking to come together for WTO negotiations on the opening of the
agriculture market."
Some of the G20 countries -- Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Indonesia,
Paraguay and the Philippines -- are members of the Cairns Group.
Rodrigues said the San Jose meeting could offer mixed results since
Australia recently signed a trade agreement with the United States.
"What we will hear from Australia during the meeting is very important for
the future of the (Cairns) Group," he said. "That's why I am interested in
an association with the G20."
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U.S. mulls political asylum for battered women
Immigration and human rights groups are hoping that a legal brief they have
submitted to U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft will persuade him to permit
women who have suffered severe domestic abuse in their homeland to receive
political asylum in the United States.
Briefs are due today in the asylum case of Rodi Alvarado, an immigrant to
the U.S. from Guatemala, who suffered repeated and nearly fatal beatings by
her husband, a soldier in the Guatemalan army, for more than ten years
before fleeing in 1995 to San Francisco, where she now lives. She contends
that if she were returned to Guatemala, her husband would almost certainly
track her down and that Guatemalan authorities were unwilling to provide her
with protection.
Rights groups are concerned that Ashcroft intends to limit asylum for women
fleeing gender-based persecution, a concern that was furthered when the
attorney general initially declined to accept briefs to help him decide the
matter a year ago. He reversed that decision last fall after 62 members of
Congress intervened. Ashcroft has not said when he intends to issue his
opinion.
The Alvarado case, which has been pending since the late 1990s, is
considered the key test of whether the George W. Bush administration will
offer asylum to women based on gender-related abuse, an increasingly
important issue in international refugee law.
Among the almost 100 groups that have signed the brief are the Lawyers
Committee for Human Rights (recently renamed Human Rights First), Amnesty
International, Human Rights Watch, the International Rescue Committee, as
well as a number of faith-based groups representing the Catholic Bishops,
Jewish congregations, the Presbyterian Church, and the National Association
of Evangelicals. In addition, almost 100 law professors have signed the
brief, drafted by the Harvard Law School Immigration and Refugee Clinic.
The case is the latest in an almost 20-year evolution that began with a 1985
opinion by the UN High Commission for Refugees that women who face abuse
arising from certain customs in their society — such as female genital
mutilation, honour killings or beatings by their mates — should constitute a
special group for asylum purposes. The opinion, however, was largely ignored
until the UN's 1993 World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna, which
focused attention on violence committed against women, including mass rape
in Bosnia.
Despite these innovations on the international level, U.S. immigration
judges continued to view claims of gender-based persecution — particularly
those of battered wives — skeptically, seeing their plight largely as
resulting from personal or family problems, rather than as stemming from
social and legal systems that protect their abusers.
In 1995 the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) issued new
guidelines calling on immigration officers to give more attention to the
social context in which an alleged persecution took place. But judges
continued to make inconsistent and contradictory rulings, as demonstrated by
the history of the Alvarado case.
The initial immigration judge in that case granted her asylum on the grounds
that she belonged to a persecuted social group defined as “Guatemalan women
who have been involved intimately with Guatemalan male companions, who
believe that women are to live under male domination.”
But that finding was reversed by a majority in a sharply divided, 15-member
Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), which decided in 1999 that Alvarado
could not win asylum because she had presented no evidence that her husband
threatened any other members of that social group besides herself. As such a
group did not exist, the majority found, she could not claim membership in
it.
Under U.S. law, a person can be granted asylum only if he or she establishes
a well-founded fear of persecution if returned home on account of five
protected areas: race, religion, nationality, political opinion or
membership in a particular social group. Thus, the essential difference
between the immigration judge and the appeals court majority was over the
question of whether battered women could qualify as members of the last
category.
As the Clinton administration prepared to leave office, Attorney General
Janet Reno overruled the BIA's decision and drafted new rules for
immigration judges. In particular, the rules stated that “certain forms of
domestic violence may constitute persecution, despite the fact that they
occur within familial or intimate relationship.” Moreover, such patterns of
violence are not private matters, but rather should be addressed when they
are supported by a legal system or social norms that condone or perpetuate
domestic violence.”
Under this test, the key issue was to be whether the victims of domestic
violence could obtain protection from their own government. If not, the case
for asylum as a member of a persecuted social group must be taken more
seriously.
Reno's draft regulations, however, never became final, and last March the
BIA informed Alvarado's attorneys at the Center for Gender and Refugee
Studies at the University of California's Hastings School of Law in San
Francisco, that Ashcroft had decided to formally review the case.
In addition to the rights and immigration groups, the Department of Homeland
Security is expected to file a brief. The National Organization for Women
(NOW) has also submitted a brief, while the conservative Concerned Women for
America (CWA) has sent a letter in support of the grant of asylum on the
grounds that turning Alvarado away “would be an act of pointless cruelty.”
Human Rights First says that a denial of asylum could have a major impact
not only on women immigrants fleeing domestic abuse, but also on other
gender-related asylum policy covering sexual trafficking and honour killing.
It said proposals for new regulations that have been circulating within the
Justice Department suggest a more restrictive approach.
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