Human Rights

On June 19th, the U.S. Supreme Court announced a decision that amounts to a slap in the face of the democracy movement in Burma and its supporters in the U.S. The decision stings for a moment, but it does not gravely injure the movement, nor will it stop its progress. Read More

A surprise encounter in the Congressional office of Georgia Representative Cynthia McKinney today brought the vice president of Occidental Petroleum face to face with the president of the U'wa indigenous people who are fighting the company's oil drilling on their traditional land in Colombia. Read More

Oil services provider Baker Hughes has become the latest United States firm to pull out of Burma, human rights campaigners and the firm's local partner said Wednesday. Read More

Tearing a page from the anti-apartheid movement, the two drew up legislation that penalized companies with ties to Burma when those firms competed for Massachusetts state contracts. Using the draft of an anti-apartheid bill, they crossed out South Africa and inserted Burma. Two years later, the measure became law. Read More

Alejandro and Adrian are two of 14,322 children who work illegally on the streets of this city of 20 million people, according to the first survey Mexico City has conducted on the trend. Mexican law prohibits children younger than 14 from working. According to Isabel Molina, director of the federal System for the Whole Development of the Family, officials completed the study, supported by UNICEF, in order to draft policies to resolve the problem. Read More

Warren M. Anderson, chairman of the Union Carbide Corporation during the 1984 chemical disaster at Bhopal, India, has apparently gone into hiding to avoid a summons to appear in a Manhattan federal court as part of civil proceedings against him and the company, say lawyers who have hired a private investigator to locate Mr. Anderson. Read More

California Attorney General Bill Lockyer plunged into a crowd of 45 protesters on Saturday, debating them on whether he should revoke the corporate charter of the Unocal Corporation as they demanded. The group had gathered in front of Loyola Law School in Los Angeles where Lockyer was scheduled to deliver a speech. Read More

A senior scientist at Greenpeace issued a report today criticizing serious flaws in an Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry report on dioxin contamination in the predominantly African American town of Mossville, La. Read More

In a major boost for the forces of economic globalisation, US President Bill Clinton has decided to back multinational corporations in a key court challenge to a Massachusetts law designed to promote democracy in Burma. Read More

Ten African American children are visiting Washington, D.C. this week, but they did not come to see the usual tourist attractions. They are here to illustrate the dangerous legacy of hazardous wastes, contaminated manufacturing sites, and polluting industries, placed predominantly in poor, non-White communities. Read More