To me she was simply Corazon. A great lady with tremendous courage.

From the New York Times:

Corazon C. Aquino of the Philippines, who was swept into office on a wave of “people power” in 1986 and then faced down half a dozen coup attempts in six years as president, died Saturday in Manila, her son said. She was 76.

Her son, Senator Benigno S. Aquino III, known as Noynoy, said in a statement that she died at 3:18 a.m. She learned she had advanced colon cancer last year and had been hospitalized in Manila for more than a month, he said. The cancer had spread to other organs, he added, and she was too weak to continue chemotherapy.

Demure but radiant in her familiar yellow dress, Mrs. Aquino brought hope to the Philippines as a presidential candidate, then led its difficult transition to democracy from 20 years of autocratic rule under her predecessor, Ferdinand E. Marcos.

That initial triumph of popular will — after a fraudulent election in which Mr. Marcos claimed victory, though most people believed Mrs. Aquino had won — was a high point in modern Philippine history, and it offered a model for nonviolent uprisings that has been repeated often in other countries.

But it also set a difficult precedent in the Philippines, where people nostalgic for their shining moment continue to see mass movements as an acceptable, if unconstitutional, answer to the difficulties of a flawed democratic system.

Since Mrs. Aquino left office in 1992, the Philippines has had two electoral transfers of presidential power and two attempts at replicating “people power,” including one that succeeded in removing a democratically elected president, Joseph Estrada, in 2001.

Mrs. Aquino spent the decades after her presidency as the fading conscience of her country, supporting social causes and, in her last years, joining street protests calling for the resignation of the current president, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

An observant Roman Catholic who sometimes retreated to convents for contemplation, she attributed much of her success to a divine will. She also said she sought guidance from the spirit of her late husband, Benigno S. Aquino Jr., who had been a chief challenger to Mr. Marcos. His assassination in 1983 fueled the opposition against Mr. Marcos and made his widow a popular figure.

“What on earth do I know about being president?” Mrs. Aquino said in an interview in December 1985, after a rally opening her election campaign.

But that was beside the point. For many Filipinos, she embodied a hope of becoming a better nation and a prouder people.

“The only thing I can really offer the Filipino people is my sincerity,” she said in the interview.

It was what they hungered for, and what she delivered as president. Although often criticized as an indecisive and ineffectual leader, Mrs. Aquino combined passivity and stubbornness and an unexpected shrewdness to hold firm against powerful opponents from both the right and the left.

Her survival in office was one of her chief accomplishments. She was succeeded by Fidel V. Ramos, whose challenge to Mr. Marcos was a catalyst for the uprising in 1986 and whose support as Mrs. Aquino’s military chief was crucial to her in quelling coup attempts.

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A court in Myanmar has delayed its verdict in the trial of detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

More on today’s news from the UK Independent:

A Burmese court has postponed its verdict in the trial of the opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, her lawyer said yesterday.

Ms Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who has spent 14 of the past 20 years in detention, is charged under Section 22 of a law protecting the state from “subversive elements”. A guilty verdict was widely expected yesterday. “The judge adjourned the trial until 11 August. He didn’t elaborate on the reason why,” said Nyan Win, a lawyer for the veteran pro-democracy leader. A diplomatic source who attended the proceedings said the verdict was delayed “because of the need to interpret legal terms relating to the 1974 constitution”. The charges stem from a bizarre incident in May, when an American intruder, John Yettaw, swam across Lake Inya to Ms Suu Kyi’s home, where he stayed uninvited for two days.

Prosecutors said this breached the terms of her house arrest. Mr Yettaw told the court in May that he was “sent by God” to warn Ms Suu Kyi she was going to be assassinated. Mr Win said Ms Suu Kyi was cheerful during yesterday’s brief court session and told him the adjournment was “typical”.

Benjamin Zawacki, a Burma specialist at the human rights group Amnesty International, said the repeated adjournments were orchestrated by Burma’s ruling military junta to make the court appear fair and impartial. “It is very suspicious, since most courts wouldn’t take this long,” he said. “We knew the verdict was decided long ago. This is clearly political and not legal.”

A Western diplomat in Rangoon said the junta could be stalling as a result of international condemnation of the trial. “The regime wants to take its time because of the mounting pressure it is under,” the diplomat said. “They are being attacked from all fronts and they have a lot of things to consider.”

Ms Suu Kyi’s legal team has argued that she should be acquitted because the law she is charged under was part of the 1974 constitution, which is no longer in use. The prosecution, however, says the charges are relevant because the 1974 constitution was still in force when Ms Suu Kyi’s latest period of house arrest commenced in 2003.

The courts routinely favour the junta, which has ruled Burma with an iron hand since a 1962 coup. Verdicts were also postponed for Mr Yettaw and two women who live with Ms Suu Kyi and who face charges similar to hers. Ms Suu Kyi faces five years in prison if found guilty. Mr Yettaw is charged with immigration offences and for the municipal violation of swimming in a non-swimming area.

Burma could improve ties with America, which has long imposed sanctions on the country, if it released Ms Suu Kyi, the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said at a regional security forum in Thailand last month.

But neither Western sanctions nor a strategy of engagement by Burma’s neighbours in South-east Asia has achieved much over the years. Burma occupies a strategic place between the Asian powers India and China and both have been reluctant to apply pressure on the generals.

Opponents of Burma’s military government say the trial is an attempt to keep Ms Suu Kyi in detention before and during elections next year, which they say will be a sham intended to legitimise the regime.

Democracy for Burma is an organization dedicated to promoting democracy in Burma. Learn more on Myanmar by visiting their website.

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Susan Chira, foreign editor of The New York Times, and Gideon Rose, managing editor of Foreign Affairs Magazine, join Martin Savidge to discuss the week’s top stories: Continuing turbulence in Iran and this weeks U.S. talks with both Israel and China.

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p>The US Senate Foreign Relations wants the Obama Administration to create a comprehensive strategy for Sudan. Senators are pushing for a plan prior to the 2011 referendum, that they say, could break the country apart. Such is the folly of Senators. There is no compelling reason to hold the Sudan together other than to facilitate the exploitation of the country’s vast mineral wealth and to not offend Arab interests. The other argument is that it would spur secessionist pressures elsewhere. While that can’t be denied, the costs of forging nations out of unwilling populations are not insignificant.

The Southern Sudan is scheduled to hold an independence referendum on whether or not it should remain as a part of the Sudan sometime before March 2011. This is part of the 2005 Naivasha Agreement between the central government in Khartoum and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army that brought a cessation in a bloody 22 year long civil war that has left hundreds of thousands dead and millions displaced. The Southern Sudan is approximately 45% of the country.

The US has historically been against redefining colonial borders in Africa and Asia. It has long been my thesis that these borders, drawn of European whim and fancy, contribute to instability across the world. Artificial states, and the Sudan is a prime example, are inherently unstable, and it is my view that the interests of peace and development are better served when borders reflect the wishes of their inhabitants.

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In Arizona, an eight-year-old girl — an immigrant from the west African nation of Liberia — was allegedly raped by four Liberian boys two weeks ago. It caused outrage in the U.S. and far beyond, partly because the girls parents blamed her for bringing shame to the family.

Tania Bernath, a researcher for Amnesty International, joins Martin Savidge to discuss efforts to combat rape and sexual violence in Liberia and other post-conflict countries, as well as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s scheduled visit to Africa next week.

As Nicholas Kristof recently wrote in the New York Times:

In Liberia, sexual predation during the civil war was “normal.” One major survey found that 75 percent of women had been raped — mostly gang-raped, with many suffering internal injuries. The incidence of rape has dropped since then but is still numbingly high. An International Rescue Committee survey in 2007 found that about 12 percent of girls aged 17 and under acknowledged having been sexually abused in some way in the previous 18 months. Then there is the age of the victims. Of the 275 new sexual violence cases treated between January and April by Doctors Without Borders in Liberia, 28 percent involve children aged 4 or younger, and 33 percent involve children aged 5 through 12.

One organization working with victims of sexual assault is the Liberia Crisis Center for Abused Women and Children, a non-profit organization that offers support and services to both rural and urban areas of Liberia. Liberia Crisis Center for Abused Women and Children, Inc. was founded out of concern for the increasing forms of violence, especially rape and sexual abuse, against women and girls in Liberia since the civil war in 1989. Another organization that works in Liberia and elsewhere with victims of rape is the French group Doctors without Borders.

More from IRIN News:

It was a shock for me when I was raped,” the lithe 15-year-old girl said with tears running down her face. “The man called and asked me to help him wash his clothes. After doing the washing, he told me to clean up his bedroom and while doing that he jumped on me, tore off my clothes and began raping me.”

Explaining her ordeal to IRIN, the girl, who did not want to be named or identified in any way, said the man raped her four months ago. The case was reported to the local court, but has yet to be heard.

The girl said she bled for three weeks after the incident and still feels pain. She has a medical certificate confirming that she was raped. But the man has fled the community since her parents took the case to court, and the girl said she has little hope of seeing him face justice.

“I have not seen him around since he raped me and we have not heard anything from the police as to what efforts they are making to arrest him,” she said. “I need justice,” she said, tears flowing again, as her 60-year-old grandmother took her hand. The girl was eight when her father was killed in Liberia’s 13-year civil war.

Her brutal experience is not an anomaly in post-conflict Liberia: it is the norm. Government officials, aid workers and community leaders said attacks like this happen every day, most without even raising comment let alone making the newspapers.

But as Liberia rebuilds its infrastructure and society after a war in which armed rebels and child soldiers murdered, raped and looted their way round the country with impunity, women are starting to step forward to talk about attacks, and report their attackers to the authorities.

According to the results of a government survey in 10 of Liberia’s 15 counties for the period 2005-2006, 92 percent of the 1,600 women interviewed said they had experienced some form of sexual violence, including rape.

Annie Jones Demen, Liberia’s deputy Gender Affairs minister and coordinator of a gender-based violence taskforce, told IRIN on Friday: “We now have more reports on sexual and gender-based violence. Survivors of sexual violence now feel safe to come out to say they were raped.”

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Cocaine producing countries in Latin America have been using Brazil as a transit nation for illegal drug trading.

Having the most direct routes to Europe in Latin America, Sao Paolo’s international airport has become a major point for drug trafficking.

Al Jazeera’s Gabriel Elizondo spent a day with undercover federal police agents at the city’s international airport.

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On this edition of 101 East, we speak to Commodore Frank Bainimarama, Fiji’s prime minister, and ask: what is the future of democracy in Fiji?

For more background, here is an April 2009 report from Voice of America:

As Fiji’s armed forces tighten their grip over the troubled South Pacific archipelago, there are warnings the country risks further international isolation and economic hardship. The Melanesian nation is in turmoil after a court ruled the military government illegal, prompting the president to abandon the constitution and dismiss the judiciary.

Harmony is a distant dream for Fiji’s 800,000 people. In another turbulent period in a troubled country, the military commander, Commodore Frank Bainimarama, has extended his control.

Judges Outlaw Military Government

Senior judges last week declared his military administration, which came to power in a bloodless coup in 2006, illegal. The ruling prompted President Ratu Josefa Iloilo to fire the judiciary and scrap the constitution. The radical measures allowed the president to create what he calls a “new order”, reinstating the military government with even greater authority.

Commodore Bainimarama was installed as interim prime minister for five years and elections could be even further away.

Disaster Awaits Fiji

Professor Helen Ware from Australia’s University of New England thinks Fiji is heading for disaster.

“Basically, the country’s about to fall off a cliff. They’re going to be in an impossible situation, they don’t have a constitution, they don’t have any form of legally constituted government nor any obvious way of getting themselves back onto the straight and narrow without having elections, which they are saying they are not going to do for the next five years,” she said.

Commodore Bainimarama says the judges who ruled against him were biased and had deliberately set out to destabilize the country.

“It was interesting to all that watched the judgment that the judges could come up with a 52- page judgment in 24 hours. I asked around and most of the people who are familiar with that type of judgment said that it is obvious that they made that decision long before they got to Fiji,” he said.

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Human rights organisations are accusing Cambodia’s government of discriminating against a group of families infected with HIV/AIDS forced to move to a newly constructed “AIDS Village” outside of the capital, Phnom Penh.

Health organisations say the government has essentially created a pariah community.

Al Jazeera’s Steve Chao reports. More from United Press International:

Cambodia’s moves to relocate families with AIDS and the HIV virus to a ramshackle “colony” is inhumane, human rights groups say.

The groups say 20 families were forced last week to move from Phnom Penh to a collection of makeshift metal sheds at Tuol Sambo on the outskirts of the city that lack running water, further stigmatizing the victims, CNN reported Tuesday.

“By bundling people living with HIV together into second-rate housing, far from medical facilities, support services and jobs, the government has created a de facto AIDS colony,” Shiba Phurailatpam of the Asia-Pacific Network of People Living With HIV told the U.S. broadcaster.

“We are deeply disturbed by the Cambodian authorities’ creation of a de facto AIDS colony at Tuol Sambo,” Human Right Watch wrote in a letter to Cambodian Prime Minister Samdech Hun Sen. “Tuol Sambo is far away from the jobs, medical facilities and support services that had been available to residents in the city.”

CNN said HRW’s letter was signed by more than 100 global HIV/AIDS and social justice organizations.

If you care to help, the Assistance Fund of Cambodia is a non-profit charity organization founded to address the problems AIDS, physical deformities and illiteracy. Another worthwhile organization is the Salvation Centre of Cambodia (SCC), a Cambodian non-profit and non-government organization (NGO) established in 1994 to respond to the urgent need of Cambodian people for education, care and support relating to HIV/AIDS. SCC works with Buddhist monks to implement HIV/AIDS prevention and care activities and has been able to improve the lives of many people infected with and affected by HIV/AIDS, especially orphans and vulnerable children.

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A new UN report says the number of civilians killed in Afghanistan has jumped by 24 per cent compared to last year.

It says while car and roadside bombs used by the Taliban and other fighters are the biggest overall killers of civilians, airstrikes are the main cause of civilian deaths by coalition forces.

James Bays reports from Kabul for Al Jazeera. Highlights, or more accurately lowlights, from the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) report:

As the conflict intensifies and spreads, it is taking an increasingly heavy toll on civilians, as the growing civilian death toll registered by UNAMA Human Rights each year since 2007 indicates.

In the first six months of 2009, UNAMA recorded 1013 civilian deaths, compared with 818 for the same period in 2008, and 684 in 2007. This represents an increase of 24% of civilian casualties in the first six months of 2009 as compared to the same period in 2008.

Operations carried out by pro-government forces (PGF) have resulted in a growing number of civilian casualties since 2007. Whereas the overall proportion of civilian deaths attributed to the PGF has declined in recent years, mainly due to concerted mitigation efforts, the actual number of civilian deaths continues to increase.

The Government of Afghanistan (GoA) and its allies, in attempting to quell the insurgency and responding to insurgent activity within civilian areas, are also conducting more operations in areas where civilians reside. These factors have resulted in a rising toll in terms of civilian deaths and injuries and destruction of infrastructure, including homes and assets, which are essential for survival and the maintenance of livelihoods.

. . . airstrikes remain responsible for the largest percentage of civilian deaths attributed to PGF during the first six months of 2009. UNAMA Human Rights recorded 40 incidents of airstrikes since the beginning of 2009 in which 200 civilians reportedly lost their lives. Implementation of search and seizure operations (including night time raids) are also of concern, and there have been reports of a number of joint Afghan and international military forces operations in which excessive use of force has allegedly resulted in civilian deaths.

Increased AGE activity, including a new “Operation Victory” announced bythe Taliban leadership, in response to the troop surge being implemented by the US Administration, and the Presidential and Provincial Council elections scheduled for 20 August, raise the prospect of a further intensification of the conflict in Afghanistan. Given the pattern of the conflict so far, further significant civilian casualties in the coming months are likely.

Airstrikes are used mainly during operations carried out on specific targets or when called upon during “troops in contact” (TIC) situations with insurgents. UNAMA Human Rights has found that there were less civilian casualties from ‘pre-planned’ airstrikes than in TIC situations. Although usually focusing on a pre-determined target, such as a mid to high level Taliban commander, there have been instances where pre-planned airstrikes have been carried out on targets located among high concentrations of civilians and have claimed civilian lives.

The risk to civilians is exacerbated by the use of heavy tonnage ordnances within tightly settled civilian areas. Civilians are also at risk from airstrikes when IMF and ANSF convoys are ambushed on roads or in civilian areas and when civilians are mistakenly identified as, or infiltrated by, AGEs, often when traveling in vehicles or in large groups

There is a strong feeling of anger and disappointment among the Afghan general public engendered by the civilian casualty toll arising from operations conducted by PGF, in particular those caused by airstrikes, which is undermining support for the continued presence of the international military forces, and the international community generally. Following several incidents, there have been public demonstrations (whether spontaneous or orchestrated) such as that which followed the Bala Baluk incident on 4 May 2009.

…[C]oncerns have been raised that US Forces Afghanistan have made wide-ranging allegations, through press statements, concerning AGE tactics, as occurred in the wake of the Bala Baluk airstrikes (4 May 2009). Such statements were later found to have been incorrect, particularly the suggestion that insurgents had deliberately killed civilians in an attempt to pass these deaths off as a crime by international military forces. In a subsequent investigation, the US military acknowledged that they had breached internal US military guidelines regarding the use of air power.

The story from the New York Times below the fold. (more…)

Police in Iran have cracked down on mourners who were gathering to remember the victims of last month’s post-election violence.

Thousands took to the streets to honour Neda Aga Soltan who came to represent the protesters struggle for democracy when she was shot dead by authorities.

Al Jazeera’s Roza Ibragimova reports from Tehran.

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