The Commonwealth Update

An Authoritative, nation-by-nation review of events across the Commonwealth, with an update now published six times a year in an issue of The Round Table.

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From 2008, the review is being written by Oren Gruenbaum, the Commonwealth Update editor, and currently Senior Sub-Editor at The Guardian in the UK

In 2007, the review was written by Judith Soal, a journalist who has worked extensively in South Africa and is currently deputy night editor at The Guardian in the UK.

Until 2007 the review was written by Derek Ingram, who was the Founding Editor of Gemini News Service until 1993, and is the author of a number of books about the Commonwealth and is active in the CJA, CPU, CHRI and the RCS, as well as a member of the Moot.

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Commonwealth Update - Issue 406

Oren Gruenbaum

ABSTRACT
The Maldives led efforts by small nations to secure a global binding climate change agreement at the Copenhagen summit. The Commonwealth heads of government meeting was held in Trinidad and Tobago. President Umaru Yar'Adua's six-week absence for medical treatment caused a crisis in Nigeria. The International Criminal Court's prosecutor sought to indict Kenyan ministers over post-election violence in 2007. Australia's right-wing opposition Liberal Party deposed its leader in a revolt over a cross-party climate change bill. Canada's prime minister, Stephen Harper, prorogued parliament.

AFRICA

Nigeria
President Umaru Yar'Adua's six-week absence for medical treatment prompted widespread calls for his resignation, claiming a 'vacuum of leadership'. Some demanded proof he was alive, amid allegations that Yar'Adua's allies forged his signature on the budget. The president, who has kidney and heart problems, phoned the BBC to quash rumours that he was near death amid speculation that a power struggle had begun in the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP). A court eventually ruled that the vice-president, Goodluck Jonathan, could act for Yar'Adua without a formal transfer of power.

A former student in London, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was overpowered while trying to detonate hidden explosives on a transatlantic flight on Christmas Day. Abdulmutallab, from Katsina state, had allegedly been trained by an al-Qaida affiliate in Yemen. His father, Umaru Abdulmutallab, former chairman of Nigeria's oldest bank, FirstBank, had apparently warned the US embassy and the Nigerian Intelligence Agency of his son's drift into extremism.

At least 38 people died in clashes between Islamist militants called Kala Kato and security forces in the northern city of Bauchi, months after an uprising by the Boko Haram Islamists was crushed, leaving more than 700 people dead. Kala Kato uprisings in Kano in 1980 and in Yola in 1992 claimed thousands of lives. Meanwhile, at least 30 people were killed in clashes between herders and farmers in central Nasarawa state, following weeks of tensions in the 'Middle Belt', where rival ethnic groups often clash over land.

The European Commission pledged $1bn aid to tackle corruption, promote electoral reform, human rights and peace in the oil-rich Niger delta. Militants of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) said its fighters carried out a 'warning strike' on an oil pipeline because the government was using Yar'Adua's absence to stall negotiations under an amnesty that promised huge reforms and an audit of the delta's oil wealth. Mend said: 'A situation where the future of the Niger delta is tied to the health and wellbeing of one man is unacceptable.' Meanwhile, a Dutch court ruled that it could hear a case brought by four Nigerian farmers against Royal Dutch Shell for alleged negligence by Shell Nigeria over oil spills.

Nasir el-Rufai, a former minister close to ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo and currently in the US, challenged moves to arrest him over the alleged embezzling of $246m of government funds. Meanwhile, a judge quashed 170 corruption charges against former Delta state governor James Ibori. A Swiss court ordered the seizure of $350m in assets from the son of Nigeria's ex-ruler Sani Abacha after a 10-year investigation. An election tribunal ruled the 2007 election of an influential PDP senator, Iyiola Omisore, was rigged. Omisore was acquitted of involvement in the murder of the justice minister Bola Ige in 2004. A top PDP politician was sentenced to two-and-half years for corruption; Olabode George was accused of inflating contracts and abusing public funds worth $500m when he ran the ports authority.

Police were guilty of a shocking level of extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances, Amnesty International said after a three-year inquiry. A hospital in Enugu told the BBC it needed mass burials to cope with the number of corpses brought in by police.

Kenya
Ministers on both sides of the coalition government accused of crimes against humanity in the post-election violence could be indicted in The Hague by July, the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced. The ICC prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, failed to obtain permission from President Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga, the prime minister, to prosecute leading suspects and now wants a unilateral investigation, arguing that ministers have enjoyed total impunity. The state-funded Kenyan National Commission on Human Rights alleged that Kalenjin and Kikuyu ministers and MPs incited, organised and funded militia groups. After a peace accord brokered by the former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, Kibaki and Odinga pledged to try those responsible but their efforts were half-hearted, and a frustrated Annan handed a list of suspects to Ocampo.

A draft constitution was published that puts the prime minister in charge of day-to-day government with the president as nominal head of state. A new constitution was agreed under the peace deal ending the bloody riots after the 2007 election, which left 1,300 people dead. Also proposed is a plan to decentralise power from Nairobi to the regions.

The British government froze funding for free primary education until fraud allegations over a missing $1m were investigated and barred more than 20 Kenyans accused of corruption from the UK. The high commissioner, Rob Macaire, said the ban was a last resort, noting that no senior Kenyan official had ever been convicted of corruption. Amid much speculation, the attorney-general, Amos Wako, admitted being the unnamed official banned from the US for 'defamatory reasons'.

Several thousand people who settled illegally in the Mau forest-Kenya's largest water catchment basin-left their homes as evictions of 30,000 families began to end rampant environmental degradation in the Rift valley. A quarter of the 400,000-hectare forest has been lost since the 1990s when Daniel arap Moi's government grabbed the land and allowed supporters to settle.

Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi signed a common market treaty allowing free movement of goods and 120 million people across the East African Community from July.

Four rare Northern White rhinos were flown from a Czech zoo in a bid to save the species from extinction. No white rhinos remain in the wild and the four animals have produced no offspring after 24 years in captivity.

Zimbabwe (Left Commonwealth, 2003)
After 29 years in power, President Robert Mugabe was re-elected in December as leader of the ruling Zanu-PF at a depleted party congress in the capital, Harare. Officials struggled to raise funds for the five-yearly convention. Mugabe, 85, who has already been endorsed for elections in 2013, attacked factionalism in the Zimbabwe African Union-Patriotic Front, saying the party was 'eating itself up'. The congress appointed John Nkomo, an ally of the defence minister Emmerson Mnangagwa, to succeed the veteran vice-president, Joseph Msika, who died in August. Mnangagwa is opposed by Joice and Solomon Mujuru, former armed forces chief, with both factions hoping to succeed Mugabe after his death.

Child welfare experts said the breakdown of Zimbabwean society had led to an epidemic of child abuse, the BBC reported. One Harare clinic alone said it had treated nearly 30,000 girls and boys in four years, averaging 20 a day. David Coltart, the Movement for Democratic Change education minister, said: 'A third of households in Zimbabwe have been broken up as a result of the economic chaos. But the social welfare department has all but collapsed.' One human rights organisation, the Girl Child Network, said 10 girls reported rape a day and 10 more probably remained silent. The youngest known victim was a baby of one day; the oldest was a woman aged 93.

The diamond trade's regulatory body failed to oust Zimbabwe at the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme's (KPCS) meeting in November. The rights group Global Witness said it was dismayed that the KPCS did not suspend Zimbabwe despite evidence of killings and rapes in the Chiadzwa diamond fields. However, the Rapaport company has banned Zimbabwean diamonds because of human rights violations. The mines minister, Obert Mpofu, told state-run media that Zimbabwe had complied with 90% of demands made by the trade watchdog and said it was pulling out troops.

The unity government's first budget predicted 7% growth next year after 10 years of sharp contraction. Tendai Biti, finance minister, said the stratospheric inflation would fall to single figures because hard currencies, such as the US dollar, had replaced the Zimbabwean dollar. Biti said government revenues rose from $4m in March to $90m in June.

Roy Bennett, an aide to the prime minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, pleaded not guilty to terrorism charges. The white former farmer was held in February for allegedly possessing illegal weapons for a coup. Bennett had been due to be sworn in as deputy agriculture minister when he was arrested. The Swiss multinational Nestlé suspended operations at its dairy plant, citing harassment, after police arrested managers and forced the company to accept milk from a farm seized by Mugabe's wife, Grace.

South Africa
Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, the most unpopular minister since apartheid, died aged 69. 'Dr Beetroot', as the former health minister was known for her advocating fruit and vegetables to cure AIDS, was in office, despite repeated scandals, for nine years, thanks to the support of President Thabo Mbeki. She lost the confidence of the health sector by helping reduce life expectancy in South Africa to 49 years as AIDS-related fatalities doubled deaths. She refused to allow nevirapine, which helps prevent transmission of HIV, to be given to pregnant women, and blocked US funding for anti-retrovirals. Meanwhile, President Jacob Zuma said he would take an HIV test as he reversed policy by saying all HIV-positive babies would now be treated. A third of South Africa's children could lose one or both parents to AIDS by 2015.

The country got a third first lady when Zuma married his third wife, Thobeka Mabhija. Zuma, 67, is also expected to take a fourth wife. A previous wife, Kate Mantsho, who killed herself in 2000, described her marriage to Zuma as '24 years of hell' in a suicide note. Meanwhile, the Mail & Guardian newspaper said taxpayers would pay R65m ($9m) to expand Zuma's home in one of the country's poorest regions.

A survey found the ideal of the 'rainbow nation' was fading with fewer than half of South Africans believing race relations had improved since apartheid. One in four never spoke to different races and two in five found other races 'untrustworthy'.

The debate about a possible 'shoot-to-kill' policy by police, encouraged by the government, was fuelled when a Johannesburg officer shot dead a three-year-old boy after mistaking a piece of pipe for a gun.

Namibia
Opposition parties launched a court challenge over November's election. President Hifikepunye Pohamba and his South-West Africa People's Organisation party won about 75% of the vote. The BBC said nine of 14 opposition parties want a recount, claiming 180,000 out of 1.1 million registered voters did not exist, constituencies and voters had been listed twice and some who were too young to vote. African observers pronounced the elections as largely free and fair.

Britain's new generation of nuclear power plants could destroy the Namib desert and create millions of tonnes of extra greenhouse gas emissions a year, the Observer reported. Rössing Uranium, a subsidiary of the British mining giant Rio Tinto, and the French state-owned company Areva are expanding mining into the Namib-Naukluft national park. At least 20 other mining companies from the UK, Canada, Russia, China, Japan, South Korea have also been given licences to prospect in the park and six new mines are planned. The mines will be open pits up to 200 metres deep, with waste heaps, acid plants and huge slurry ponds extending over hundreds of square kilometres. The mines would consume more than 75% of the water supplied by the state utility and create mountains of radioactive sand. A coal-fired power station will be built to provide electricity for the mines. 'Large areas of the desert will be inevitably devastated', said the Namibian environment group Earthlife. Areva claimed its mines would later be restored to wilderness.

Sierra Leone
A woman went to court demanding a new election after she was barred from running for district chief because of her gender. Officials said tradition prevented Elizabeth Sogbo-Torto, daughter of a paramount chief, from standing as a candidate. Men of the traditionalist Poro secret society then stoned her convoy when she returned home.

President Ernest Bai Koroma sacked two ministers, health minister Sheku Tijan Koroma and Leonard Balogun Koroma. The health minister has been charged with illegally awarding contracts. Corruption is seen as a cause of the civil war in the 1990s. A group of parents accused a charity, Help a Needy Child International, of sending more than 30 children abroad for adoption without consent during the war.

Ghana
A South Korean firm, STX, is to build 200,000 homes in Ghana at a cost of $10bn. Seoul said: 'Korea [has a] lack of natural resources and thus is keeping an eye on the African continent, just as developed nations and China are fiercely doing so, to secure natural resources.'

The government said it would not revoke last year's heavily criticised sale of state-owned Ghana Telecom to the UK mobile phone operator Vodafone. A leaked official review decided the sale by the previous government was illegal and recommended renegotiating it as the $900m price was far below Ghana Telecom's value. Ghana Telecom's debts meant only $270m was actually realised.

Malawi
The first gay couple to marry in Malawi faced a humiliating medical examination to prove they had had sex. Tiwonge Chimbalanga and Steven Monjeza face 14 years in prison if found guilty of 'unnatural practices'.

A one-year-old child died after earthquakes in Karonga and six people were hospitalised.

Tanzania
Many African states are too small to exist independently, the Sudan-born mobile phone magnate Mo Ibrahim told a conference attended by President Jakaya Kikwete. Ibrahim said it was a 'fallacy' that 53 small African countries could compete with China, India, Europe and the US without economic integration and said many African states were 'not viable'. 'We need scale and we need that now.'

Four Tanzanians face hanging for killing an albino man last year for body parts used in witchcraft. Three others have already been sentenced to death for albino murders.

The famous snows of Kilimanjaro, which cap Africa's highest mountain, are melting so fast they could be gone within two decades, according to a study that found a layer of ice up to five metres thick had melted in the last century. Scientists blame global warming rather than local weather changes.

Uganda
An MP's plan to introduce the death penalty for 'aggravated homosexuality' caused outrage around the world but David Bahati claimed he was only trying to criminalise child abusers. He said: 'You can't tell me that people are born gays. It is foreign influence.' Bahati's bill, which is expected to become law by February, makes homosexuality punishable by death and extends laws to make it illegal to talk or write about homosexuality, and obliges people to inform the authorities about gay people.

The army said it had killed another Lord's Resistance Army commander, Bok Abudema, in the Central African Republic. Ugandan forces have been operating across borders for a year in pursuit of the LRA, which the UN said had killed about 1,200 civilians between 2008 and 2009.

The Buganda kingdom rejected a new land law passed after heated debate in parliament. The new law gives tenants more rights to resist eviction. Some welcome it as modernising land tenure but others see it as a political move ahead of elections.

Zambia
Chansa Kabwela, news editor of the Post newspaper, was acquitted of pornography charges after sending pictures of a woman giving birth in the car park of Lusaka's main hospital to politicians and women's groups. The mother was turned away from two clinics during a nurses' strike and the baby died. President Rupiah Banda called the photographs 'pornographic' but as the Post has pursued the government over corruption, many assumed the case was political.

Mozambique
Amnesty International said police had killed 46 civilians since 2006 but were rarely brought to justice.

Seychelles
Several cargo ships were seized by Somali pirates in Seychelles' waters but at least one group of suspected pirates had to be released by the Dutch warship that had captured them when the Seychelles refused to prosecute them.

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ASIA

Maldives
President Mohamed Nasheed led desperate efforts by small island nations to secure a binding agreement on curbing carbon emissions at the UN climate conference in Copenhagen. At least 50 of the Maldives' 200 inhabited islands, which are at most two metres above sea level, are suffering erosion. Nasheed spoke for many when he expressed bitter disappointment at the weak final accord. 'Anything above 1.5 degrees, the Maldives and many small islands and low-lying islands would vanish', said Nasheed. 'We tried very hard during the course of the last two days to have 1.5 degrees in the document... this was blatantly obstructed by big-emitting countries.

'There are many big developing countries that do not need an agreement. They would rather go with business as usual.'

Weeks before Copenhagen, Nasheed convened a new 11-nation forum of countries most at risk from climate change-Kiribati Bangladesh, Barbados, Bhutan, Ghana, Kenya, Nepal, Rwanda, Tanzania and Vietnam and the Maldives-and signed the Bandos Island declaration, pledging to move to a low-carbon future and calling for rich countries to do more to halt climate change.

The eventual compromise at Copenhagen had no legally binding agreement, set a 2C target, committed just $100bn a year by 2020 for developing countries and backed away from international monitoring.

Sri Lanka
UN experts were accused of bias after they concluded that a video showing the summary executions of Tamil prisoners was authentic. Philip Alston, a UN human rights investigator, said the footage-reported in Commonwealth Update 404-was probably real and called for a war crimes inquiry. Mahinda Samarasinghe, human rights minister, said: 'He is on a crusade.'

General Sarath Fonseka, the just-retired army chief, said he would stand for election against President Mahinda Rajapaksa. Fifteen opposition parties endorsed the general. Fonseka, who led the assault against the Tamil rebels but later broke with the government, told the pro-opposition Sunday Leader that three Tamil Tiger rebel leaders who tried to surrender during the bloody climax of the civil war in May were shot and killed on the orders of brothers of the president: the defence minister, Gothabaya Rajapaksa, and Basil Rajapaksa. The Rajapaksas had assured the rebels of safe conduct through intermediaries but troops opened fire when they approached government lines, Fonseka said. Faced by government denials and threats of legal action, Fonseka later retracted his claims. Fonseka accused the president of being a dictator for curtailing media freedom and not resettling refugees. He pledged to abolish the executive presidency and return power to parliament within six months and curb corruption.

The government announced that Tamils interned in camps in the north since the war could leave-130,000 of the 300,000 people detained remain in camps. After resisting international pressure to free the detainees for months, the move was seen as courting the Tamil vote because the Sinhalese electorate is split between Rajapaksa and Fonseka. Fonseka, meanwhile, pledged an amnesty for former Tamil militants.

Bangladesh
Nearly 50 separatist rebels from north-east India were arrested by security forces and handed over to Indian authorities, including four leaders of the United Liberation Front of Asom (Ulfa), among them its chairman, Arabinda Rajkhowa. India accuses Ulfa of waging a proxy war on behalf of Pakistan's and Bangladesh's intelligence services. Nearly 200 fighters from rebel groups in Assam and Tripura have fled the crackdown and some have surrendered. Ulfa rebels have fought for a separate Assamese homeland since 1979 with at least 10,000 people killed in the insurgency. In January Sheikh Hasina was due to make a state visit to India amid hopes of agreements on security co-operation, purchasing electricity from India and creating transport links across the 4,100km border. Economic integration with India could raise Bangladesh's economic growth rate from 6% to 8%, the Bangladesh Enterprise Institute, a Dhaka thinktank, estimates. Police arrested a suspected leader of the Pakistan-based militants Lashkar-e-Taib, bringing to seven the number held in Bangladesh for links to the group. Police believe the Indian and Pakistani suspects were plotting attacks on the US and Indian embassies in Dhaka.

The courts martial began of border guards accused of mutinying and killing dozens of army officers last year. Nearly 4,000 other border guards also face trial. Five ex-army officers face the death penalty after losing a final appeal for murdering Bangladesh's independence leader and first president, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, father of the current prime minister, Hasina Wajed, in 1975.

Hong Kong (Left Commonwealth, 1997)
More than 9,000 protesters marched to demand that Beijing grant the universal vote promised when Britain handed Hong Kong over to Chinese control in 1997. Five pro-democracy legislators were set to resign to turn the ensuing elections into a referendum on democracy. Currently, half the legislative council is elected by popular vote and the rest by special interest groups.

A former leader of the 1989 pro-democracy movement and US resident went on trial in China. Zhou Yongjun was handed over by the Hong Kong authorities, accused of fraud, but friends say he is being punished for human rights activism.

China began constructing a 50km bridge to link Guangdong, China's manufacturing hub, with Hong Kong and Macau. When completed by 2016, officials say it will be the world's 'longest sea-crossing bridge'.

India
The leaked report of a 17-year inquiry into the demolition by a mob of Ayodhya's Babri Masjid mosque in1992 blamed leaders of the main opposition party, the Hindu fundamentalist BJP, including its current leader, LK Advani, and the former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. Some 2,000 people died in riots across India after the mosque was demolished.

Andhra Pradesh was paralysed by strikes and protests by campaigners for a new state, Telangana. More than 100,000 security personnel were deployed as transport, schools and businesses shut down. In December, the government agreed to the new state, prompting 20 Andhra Pradesh ministers to resign in protest, but then reversed the decision. Supporters went on hunger strike. The campaign for Telangana has lasted decades, with advocates claiming the region's development was neglected in favour of southern Andhra Pradesh. The governor of Andhra Pradesh, ND Tiwari, 84, resigned after television news aired pictures purporting to show him having sex with three women.

The apparent success of the Telangana campaign has encouraged Nepali-speaking Gorkhas in Darjeeling, led by the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha, to demand a state separate from West Bengal. Meanwhile, militants in Indian-administered Kashmir killed four paramilitaries and injured a fifth, although India said about 30,000 troops had been withdrawn from Kashmir as rebel attacks decrease. About 200 Maoists attacked a school in Bihar, which they claim is used by the government to house troops fighting them. More than 40 schools have been attacked in the past year in Bihar and Jharkhand. Separately, rebels in Orissa blew up a phone mast and burned buses.

Paresh Barua, head of the military wing of the United Liberation Front of Assam (Ulfa), said he would talk to the government if it set no pre-conditions. At least four people were killed in a suspected Ulfa bomb attack in an Assamese market near an army base. A similar explosion hit the Assam town of Nalbari a month before, immediately after two top Ulfa leaders-Sashadhar Choudhury and Chitrabon Hazarika-were arrested in Bangladesh. On the Burmese border, nine separatists were killed in Manipur, where 11 rebel groups are fighting for independence. Six belonged to the Peoples Revolutionary Party of Kangleipak (Prepak) and three to the Kanglei Yana Kan Lup.

Russia agreed to build four nuclear reactors and increase atomic fuel exports. Meanwhile, a disgruntled employee may have deliberately put radioactive material into drinking water at the Kaiga atomic power plant, while at the Bhabha atomic research centre near Mumbai, two scientists died in a fire. Groundwater near the site of the world's worst chemical industrial accident in Bhopal is still toxic and poisoning residents 25 years after a gas leak there killed 5,000 people, two studies revealed. Delhi's Centre for Science and the Environment said water found two miles from the factory contained pesticides at levels 40 times higher than the Indian safety standard and the UK-based Bhopal Medical Appeal found one carcinogen, carbon tetrafluoride, present at 2,400 times the World Health Organisation's guidelines.

The supreme court asked the government to consider whether it might legalise prostitution if it was unable to curb it effectively. It said legalisation would help monitor the trade and rehabilitate sex workers. Mumbai's deputy police commissioner and his assistant were among several police officers suspended for allegedly attending a party thrown by a notorious crime boss, Chhota Rajan. In Delhi, the mayor admitted the city had been paying $43m a year in salaries to 20,853-or one in six-non-existent 'ghost workers'.

India's economy grew at a faster-than-expected rate of 7.9% in the third quarter, boosted by government stimulus spending. However, a government study found one in three Indians lives below the poverty line, with the number of poor in cities decreasing but rising in villages. Over 40% of rural people survive on a per capita expenditure of 447 rupees ($9.60) a month. Meanwhile, the number of billionaires in India has almost doubled since last year. Despite the global recession, there are now 52 billionaires, from 27 last year.

India doubled its funding for the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi to $344m amid concerns that facilities will not be ready in time.

Delhi airport stirred controversy because of a 16-metre-high statue of Buddha being built at a temple at the end of the new 10bn rupee runway, which pilots have become reluctant to use.

Malaysia
Three churches in the capital, Kuala Lumpur, were attacked with firebombs, causing extensive damage to one, as Muslims pledged to prevent Christians from using the word 'Allah'. Many Malay Muslims, who make up 60% of the multiracial country's population, are incensed by a recent high court decision overturning a ban on Catholics using Allah as a translation for God in the Malay-language edition of the Herald newspaper. Only Christian indigenous tribes in remote Sabah and Sarawak read the particular edition and have always referred to God as 'Allah'.

A court ruled that Anwar Ibrahim, leader of the opposition and former deputy premier, must face trial for sodomy again. Meanwhile, Anwar won a defamation suit against the government-linked New Straits Times Press, claiming that a 2002 article examining his ties to a US thinktank made him appear an unprincipled and disloyal 'American agent'.

The body of Teoh Beng Hock, an opposition activist, was exhumed for an autopsy after a pathologist said there was an 80% chance he had been murdered. Teoh was said to have killed himself by jumping from the Anti-Corruption Commission, where he was being questioned.

Fifty-two unmarried couples could face charges of sexual misconduct and jail terms after being caught in hotel rooms by Islamic morality police, who raided cheap hotels on New Year's Day in Selangor. Under sharia, they face two years' prison.

Pakistan
President Asif Zardari handed control of the nuclear arsenal to the prime minister, Yusuf Raza Gilani, in a move seen as a sop to Zardari's critics, as an amnesty protecting him and others from possible prosecution on corruption charges expired. The supreme court struck down the amnesty for politicians, reopening corruption cases against hundreds of people, including top federal and provincial ministers as well as Zardari. The National Accountability Bureau, the top anti-corruption agency, said it was reopening hundreds of cases and had asked the interior ministry to stop 248 people from leaving the country. The interior minister, Rehman Malik, was named as one by local media.

Although many Pakistanis apparently blame the violence on India or the United States, in the latest attacks by Islamist militants retaliating against an army offensive in South Waziristan and an earlier one in Swat, more than 400 people have been killed and 840 injured in explosions in Peshawar, capital of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). Recent attacks include a Pakistan Taliban suicide bomber who killed 101 people watching a volleyball match in Shah Hasan Khan. A strike closed down Karachi in protest at a suicide attack on a Shia procession there, which killed 45 people, and a suicide bomber also attacked Shias in Kashmir, killing five. A gun and bomb attack on the ISI intelligence agency in Multan killed at least 12. At least 49 people were killed when a crowded Lahore market was bombed and an attack during Friday prayers on a mosque in Rawalpindi killed at least 40 people. Maulana Fazlullah, founder of the Swat Taliban, escaped to Afghanistan and told the BBC he was planning new attacks on Pakistani forces. Meanwhile, the army captured the strategic town of Ladha in South Waziristan.

The supreme court said Pakistan's 300,000 'hijras', or eunuchs, must be allowed to identify themselves as a distinct gender to ensure their rights. A court ordered that two men have their noses and ears cut off, after they did the same to a woman they abducted when she rejected a marriage proposal.

The BBC reported growing resentment and separatism in Baluchistan, Pakistan's largest but poorest and least inhabited province. Years of little development in the mineral-rich province have fuelled support for the Baloch National Front, Balochistan Republican Party and Balochistan Liberation Army and even appeals to India.

Senior clerics and leaders of religious parties were hospitalised after eating poisoned sweetmeats before a government conference marshalling moderate Muslim leaders against the Islamists.

Singapore
Amnesty International called on Singapore to protect freedom of expression after the Far Eastern Economic Review magazine agreed to pay S$405,000 ($290,000) for allegedly defaming the prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, and his father, Singapore's founding leader Lee Kuan Yew, in a 2006 article based on an interview with Chee Soon Juan, an opposition politician. The press watchdog Reporters without Borders ranked Singapore as 133rd out of 175 countries in its annual press freedom index.

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EUROPE

United Kingdom
Just months before an election is due, another plot by disgruntled Labour Party MPs attempted to topple Gordon Brown. The conspiracy collapsed when senior cabinet ministers slowly expressed support for the prime minister. Cathy Ashton, a little-known Labour minister, was named as the European Union's first foreign affairs chief-a role established under the Lisbon treaty-in a move condemned as a timid choice that owed more to compromise and political manoeuvring. David Miliband, the foreign secretary, ruled himself out as a candidate, reviving speculation of a leadership challenge against Brown.

The chancellor of the exchequer, Alistair Darling, said spending cuts would be the 'toughest we have had for 20 years' if the Labour Party continued in office, the Times reported. The UK faces a budget deficit of £178bn ($285bn). Bankers face a 50% tax on their bonuses amid public anger at a perceived 'business-as-usual' attitude in the financial sector but lower-paid workers will also pay more tax.

The official Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war found that the UK had no influence over US strategy, did not plan for the aftermath and misunderstood Iraqi society. In a BBC interview, the former prime minister Tony Blair, who will testify soon, said he believed it would still have been right to oust Saddam Hussein even if Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction-the ostensible justification for the war.

A political sex scandal broke in Northern Ireland, threatening to wreck the Stormont power-sharing deal between Unionists and Republicans. Iris Robinson, 60, an MP, wife of Northern Ireland's first minister and a Christian fundamentalist, admitted to an extramarital affair with a 19-year-old and faces allegations of financial impropriety over helping her former lover start a business.

Britain was gripped by the coldest spell for 30 years, with heavy snowfalls, temperatures dropping to -22C and 25 deaths.

Cyprus
Britain renewed an offer to hand over half of its sovereign territory in Cyprus to facilitate a peace deal, the UN said. Britain controls 3% of the territory of Cyprus, which was a UK colony until 1960 and has been divided between Greek and Turkish Cypriots since 1974.

AMERICAS

Trinidad and Tobago
The biennial Commonwealth heads of government meeting (CHOGM) was held in Port of Spain and was dominated by the issue of climate change as it was held just before the UN Copenhagen summit. It agreed a $22.5bn climate change fund to promote low-carbon development and adaptation in developing countries, to be funded by developed Commonwealth members and France. Nicolas Sarkozy became the first French president to attend a CHOGM. The UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, and the Danish prime minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, also attended. The Commonwealth admitted Rwanda as the 54th member-the second after Mozambique without ties to Britain-despite criticism of human rights failures by, among others, the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative.

The Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) was strengthened, with the power to investigate all breaches of the Harare Declaration. Sri Lanka was blocked by Britain and Australia from hosting the next CHOGM in protest at Colombo's treatment of Tamils last year. Australia will instead host the 2011 meeting. Britain won support for its proposal to readmit Zimbabwe to the Commonwealth if reforms were implemented.

Canada
There were protests against the decision-for the second time in as many years-by Stephen Harper, prime minister of a Conservative minority government, to prorogue Parliament until March, instead of returning after its Christmas break in January. Prorogation disbands all committees in both houses and kills all government bills, no matter how near approval. Opponents said it was to prevent embarrassing scrutiny of the government's apparent complicity in the torture of detainees in Afghanistan. A letter condemning the prorogation and calling for electoral reform was signed by 132 academics and a Facebook campaign attracted 150,000 protesters.

Montreal's mayor, Gerald Tremblay, narrowly won a third term despite allegations that his administration had issued contracts to building companies with Mafia ties. A new civic party grabbed 25% of the vote.

Belize
Dean Barrow, the prime minister, warned the UK opposition leader David Cameron that relations with its key central American ally, where Britain has a military base, would be damaged if Lord Ashcroft was given a government post after the election, the Observer reported. Barrow called the billionaire Conservative Party deputy chairman a 'relentless foe' and said a 'state of war' existed. Ashcroft has been involved in a bitter legal dispute with the government since Barrow came to power last year and nationalised Telemedia, a local media giant formerly owned by Ashcroft.

Dominica
Seven men were freed after 23 years in prison for ordering the army to execute the prime minister Maurice Bishop in 1983. The men, including Bishop's deputy Bernard Coard, considered Bishop's socialism too moderate. Four other ministers were also killed in the coup, which was crushed when US forces invaded. The men were sentenced to death in 1986 but the Privy Council in London repealed the death sentence in 2007.

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PACIFIC

Australia
The right-wing opposition Liberal Party elected a new leader. Tony Abbott replaced Malcolm Turnbull after a party revolt over his compromise with the ruling Labor Party on a carbon-emissions-trading bill. The bill was then rejected in the Senate, setting Australia up for a possible early election on the issue, which the prime minister, Kevin Rudd, calls the 'the great moral challenge of our generation'. Nick Minchin, the Liberals' Senate leader, recently dismissed action against climate change as a communist plot to 'deindustrialise the western world'. However, the Australian Industry Group, representing big business, endorsed the Rudd-Turnbull deal.

The partially burnt remains of an Indian farm labourer were found on a rural road near Sydney days after another Indian student was knifed to death. The deaths follow a spate of attacks last year on Indian students in Melbourne and Sydney that culminated in street protests and riots. Australia denied the attacks were racially motivated.

An official report raised the prospect of banning citizens from coastal regions-where 80% of Australians live-at risk of rising seas. The report, by a parliamentary climate change committee, said A$150bn ($140bn) of property was at risk from rising sea levels and more frequent storms.

Northern Territory officials plan a mass cull of 6,000 wild camels, which converged on the town of Docker River in search of water as the 15-year drought continues.

Fiji (Fully Suspended)
Commonwealth leaders at CHOGM called on Fiji's interim government to 'commit itself to a credible, inclusive and time-bound political dialogue towards the restoration of constitutional civilian democracy' and expressed 'deep concern at the further deterioration of the situation in the Fiji islands with regard to the adherence to the fundamental Commonwealth values … [and] ongoing restrictions on human rights including freedom of speech and assembly'. They also defended a decision to suspend Fiji from the Commonwealth Games.

At least three people were killed as Cyclone Mick ripped through Fiji's main island of Viti Levu, causing severe flooding. Power was cut, forcing 4,000 people into shelters.

Kiribati
President Anote Tong is warming to the idea of a floating island, Fiji's Islands Business reported. Tong believes Kiribati's 94,000 people may become climate refugees. The floating island concept was mooted by Japan's Shimizu Corporation at the 2009 Pacific Islands Leaders Meeting. The 'Green Float' envisions an artificial circular island 3,000 metres across that floats on the sea near the equator. The island supports a 1,000-metre tower combining homes, commercial space and vegetation factories.

Nauru
The atoll nation of 11,320 citizens recognised the republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which broke away from Georgia after the latter's war with Russia last year. Kommersant newspaper said Russia offered Nauru $50m in aid if Nauru established relations with the two Russian-backed territories, which have only been recognised by Venezuela and Nicaragua. Nauru previously took money to recognise the independence of Kosovo and Taiwan. From 2001 until last year Nauru was paid by Australia to take in asylum-seekers.

New Zealand
Transparency International ranked New Zealand as the world's least corrupt country in its annual Corruption Perceptions Index. Unemployment hit its highest level in nine years as the central bank warned of a slow recovery.

Papua New Guinea
The government is investigating allegations of corruption linked to REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) and carbon trading, which allows countries to be paid for reducing emissions from deforestation. The Rights and Resources Initiative noted: 'Villagers are being threatened at gunpoint to hand over their carbon rights to "carbon cowboys"'. The government has closed the Office of Climate Change & Environmental Sustainability and criminal investigations are underway over the issuance of carbon certificates.

Darwinian natural selection could help halt human 'mad cow disease', scientists said after finding a tribe impervious to a related fatal brain disorder. The tribe developed strong genetic resistance after an epidemic of kuru, a CJD-like disease spread by cannibalism. Until the practice was banned in the 1950s, women and children ate dead relatives as a mark of respect at 'mortuary feasts'.

Solomon Islands
Two earthquakes-one of 7.2 magnitude-followed by a three-metre-high tsunami destroyed 200 homes on one island, leaving a third of the population homeless.

Tonga
A commission recommended that the monarch should be stripped of most of his political powers and that all MPs should be elected. Pro-democracy riots in 2006 were followed by official assurances that islanders would be allowed more say in running their country. King George Tupou V and a group of hereditary aristocrats control parliament, where less than a third of MPs are directly elected.

Tuvalu
Tuvalu forced a delay in the UN climate change negotiations in Copenhagen when it proposed a new protocol forcing deeper global emission cuts but making other developing countries also make cuts. The proposal was supported by other small island states but opposed by 15 countries, including China, Saudi Arabia and India, and ultimately rejected by the summit. Environmentalists demonstrated outside the meeting, chanting: 'Tuvalu is the new deal.'

Vanuatu
The prime minister was stripped of his position and parliamentary seat because of an administrative error. Edward Natapei, who was at CHOGM, missed three sittings without formally explaining his absence to the speaker and by law forfeited his seat.

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GENERAL

Commonwealth News
Small developing countries will see their agriculture, fisheries, forestry and tourism sectors badly hit by climate change, according to a new study conducted by the Commonwealth Secretariat and the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development.

Shridath 'Sonny' Ramphal, former Commonwealth secretary-general, used a lecture to the Commonwealth Legal Forum to urge reform of Caribbean judicial structures. Backing the new Caribbean court of justice, he called on Commonwealth countries to drop their right of appeal to the UK's centuries-old Privy Council, warning that failure to do so would leave them 'loitering on the doorstep of colonialism'.

An all-women Commonwealth team from Brunei, Cyprus, India, New Zealand, Singapore and the UK completed an epic journey to the South Pole, skiing some 900km in 38 days.

Writing in the Guardian, Peter Tatchell, veteran gay rights campaigner, accused the Commonwealth of failing to defend lesbian and gay rights. 'Of the 53 Commonwealth member states, more than 40 still criminalise same-sex relations', he said. 'Inaction is de facto collusion with victimisation.'

All Commonwealth countries should face a democracy 'health check' at least every two years, a report commissioned by the Commonwealth Policy Studies Unit and Electoral Reform International Services says. Democracy in the Commonwealth argues that a series of problematic polls, notably in Kenya and Zimbabwe, has reinforced doubts about the role of elections in resolving deep-seated problems of political transition.

Commonwealth Publications - http://publications.thecommonwealth.org/

  • Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting 2009, ISBN 978-0-9563722-3-9
  • Christina Hajdu and Purna Sen, Child Rights in the Commonwealth: 20 Years of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, ISBN 978-1-84929-011-1
  • Janet Strachan, Malena Sell and Moustapha Kamal Gueye, Trade, Climate Change and Sustainable Development: Key Issues for Small States, Least Developed Countries and Vulnerable Economies, ISBN 978-0-85092-881-5

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