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Wednesday, April 4, 2012 - 5A

The Michigan Daily - michigandailycomWednesday, April 4, 2012 - 5A

Coup leader in Mali scorns
international condemnation

Free Syrian Army fighters stand on alert after hearing gunfire in a neighborhood of Damascus, Syria on Sunday.
A week ahead of cease fire,
Syria troops begin pull out

Sanogo calls for
constitutional
convention
BAMAKO, Mali (AP) - The
day after an embargo was placed
on Mali, the soldier who led a
recent coup said yesterday that
he agrees with restoring consti-
tutional order, but first Mali's ills
need to be addressed by holding
a national convention which will
decide on the bestway forward.
With Capt. Amadou Haya
Sanogo refusing to step down,
surrounding nations have
imposed severe financial sanc-
tions on Mali, includingthe clos-
ing of the country's borders and
the freezing of its account at the
regional central bank.
The embargo went into effect
overnight Monday, after Sanogo
failed to meet the 72-hour dead-
line imposed by the Economic
Community of West African
States, or ECOWAS, which had
demanded he hand power to
civilians immediately.
In his first comments since the
sanctions were imposed, Sanogo
invited Malians to join him at a
convention tomorrow - a con-
vention hehad earlier announced
would decide on the type of tran-
sitional body will govern Mali,
before new elections are held.
"Yes to the return to a con-

stitutional order, but with a new
Mali. Our Mali is sick in the
depths of her being ... To this
effect, we invite the entire politi-
cal class and all the actors of
society to come without excep-
tion to the national convention,"
Sanogo said.
"We dare hope that our fathers
at ECOWAS will take note of the
decisions and conclusions of
this convention, with the end of
liberating the country from this
impasse."
Mali's neighbors are hoping
the embargo will economically
suffocate the junta. Until that
happens, it's likely to cause great
strain to Mali's population of
over 15 million.
As the borders closed over-
night, panicking Malians holding
jerrycanslinedup outside gas sta-
tions. The nation - roughly twice
the size of France - imports all of
its fuel, which is trucked in from
neighboring Ivory Coast and
Senegal, both located on Africa's
Atlantic Coast.
The country's electricity grid
is also expected to falter. April is
one of the hottest months of the
year in Mali, and the hydropow-
er system is unable to carry the
load because of low water levels.
Fuel is used in the hot months to
run diesel generators.
Mali's president was sent into
hiding on March 21when agroup
of disgruntled soldiers mutinied

at a military base located around
10 kilometers (6 miles) from the
presidential palace, and then
marched on the seat of govern-
ment. In a matter of hours, they
had succeeded in reversing more
than two decades of democracy.
Rebels fighting a three-month-
old insurgency took advantage of
the power vacuum and have since
effectively wrested control of the
northern half of the country.
The United States, France and
the European Union immediate-
lycutallbutessentialhumanitar-
ian aid to the country. Yesterday,
State Department spokeswoman
Victoria Nuland said the U.S.
remained "deeply concerned"
about Mali's crisis and that Sano-
go must immediately release his
"illegitimate grip on Mali and its
people."
The Economic Community of
West African States, represent-
ing six of the eight countries that
border Mali has been uncharac-
teristically harsh in its condem-
nation of the coup.
An official in neighboring
Ivory Coast, whose president is
the current chair of the regional
body, said that the bloc will not
budge in its views until Sanogo
returns power to civilians. The
official, who could not be named
because he was not authorized
to speak about the negotiations,
added that the junta has not yet
felt the bite of the sanctions.

Withdrawal will be
complete by April,
10 deadline
BEIRUT (AP) - Syrian troops
began pulling out yesterday from
some calm cities and headed
back to their bases a week ahead
of a deadline to implement an
international cease-fire plan, a
government official said.
The claim could not imme-
diately be verified and activ-
ists near the capital Damascus
denied troops were leaving
their area. They said the day the
regime forces withdraw from
streets, Syria will witness mas-
sive protests that will overthrow
the government.
"Forces began withdrawing
to outside calm cities and are
returning to their bases, while in
tense areas, they are pulling out
to the outskirts," the government
official told The Associated Press
in Damascus without saying
when the withdrawal began. He
spoke on condition of anonymity
because he was not authorized to
talk to the media.
President Bashar Assad agreed
just days ago to an April 10 dead-
line to implement international
envoy Kofi Annan's truce plan. It
requires regime forces to with-
draw from towns and cities and
observe a cease-fire. Rebel fight-
ers are to immediately follow by
ceasing violence.
Khaled al-Omar, an activist in
the Damascus suburb of Saqba,
denied that any withdrawal was
under way in his area.
"This is impossible. I can see

a checkpoint from my window,"
he said via Skype, adding the
regime forces were still in the
main square.
Earlier in the day, opposi-
tion activists charged that the
regime was racing to crush
opponents ahead of the cease-
fire deadline by carrying out
intense raids, arrests and shell-
ing yesterday.
Opposition activists have
blasted Annan's plan as too
little, too late and are particu-
larly angry that it does not call
for Assad to leave power - the
central demand of the uprising.
They suspect Assad will manipu-
late the plan and use it to stall for
time while his forces continue to
crack down.
"He thinks he can win more
time to take control of all Syr-
ian cities," activist Adel al-Omari
said by phone from the southern
town of Dael, where regime forc-
es have been torching activists'
homes since they raided on Mon-
day. "This won't happen, because
as soon as he withdraws his
tanks from the cities, the people
will come out and push to topple
the regime."
Western leaders have cau-
tiously accepted the April 10
deadline while pointing out that
Assad has broken previous prom-
ises and insisting the regime
must be judged by its actions.
Also yesterday, Amnesty
International said people are
still being arrested across Syria,
including 13 students who were
beaten at their school in the
Damascus suburb of Daraya.
The organization said it
received the names of 232 indi-

viduals, including 17 children,
who were reported to have been
killed since Syria agreed to the
plan on March 27.
"The evidence shows that
Assad's supposed agreement
to the Annan plan is having no
impact on the ground," said
Suzanne Nossel, executive direc-
tor of Amnesty International
USA.
She said the government must
release thousands of prisoners,
stop arrests and halt violence
"Otherwise, the only conclu-
sion we can draw is that Syria
has made empty promises once
more," Nossel said.
Russia's Foreign Ministry
said yesterday that Syria had
informed its close ally Moscow
that it has started implementing
the plan. The ministry's state-
ment did not say which troops -
if any - had been withdrawn or
provide further details. It called
on rebel forces to follow suit.
The Syrian government has
not commented publicly on the
April 10 deadline. It has accept-
ed other peace plans in recent
months only to ignore them on
the ground. An Arab League
effort that included sending in
monitors to promote a cease-fire
collapsed in violence in Novem-
ber.
It also remains unclear
whether rebel forces fighting
government troops under the
banner of the Free Syrian Army
would respect a cease-fire. Doz-
ens of local militias in different
parts of the country have only
loose links to each other and to
their official leadership in Tur-
key.


Francois Hollande shakes hands with supporters after his campaign meeting in Montpellier, southern France, last Thursday.
French Socialist candidate calls
for 75 percent tax on the rich


New U.N. report finds 2.4 million
human trafficking victims globally

Document cites
poor training for
* law enforcement as
exacerbating issue
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -
The U.N. crime-fighting office
said yesterday that 2.4 million
people across the globe are vic-
tims of human trafficking at any
one time, and 80 percent of them
are being exploited as sexual
slaves.
Yuri Fedotov, the head of the
U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime,
told a daylong General Assembly
meeting on trafficking that 17
percent are trafficked to perform
forced labor, including in homes
and sweat shops.
He said $32 billion is being
earned every year by unscrupu-
lous criminals running human
trafficking networks, and two
out of every three victims are
women.
Fighting these criminals "is a
challenge of extraordinary pro-
portions," Fedotov said.
"At any one time, 2.4 mil-
lion people suffer the misery of
this humiliating and degrading
crime," he said.
According to Fedotov's Vien-
na-based office, only one out of
100 victims of trafficking is ever
rescued.
Fedotov called for coordi-
nated local, regional and inter-
national responses that balance

"progressive and proactive law
enforcement" with actions that
combat "the market forces driv-
ing human trafficking in many
destination countries."
Michelle Bachelet, who heads
the new U.N. agency promot-
ing women's rights and gender
equality called UN Women, said
"it's difficult to think of a crime
more hideous and shocking than
human trafficking. Yet, it is one
of the fastest growing and lucra-
tive crimes."
Actress Mira Sorvino, the
U.N. goodwill ambassador
against human trafficking, told
the meeting that "modern day
slavery is bested only by the ille-
gal drug trade for profitability,"
but very little money and politi-
cal will is being spent to combat
trafficking.
"Transnational organized
crime groups are addinghumans
to their product lists," she said.
"Satellites reveal the same
routes moving them as arms and
drugs."
Sorvino said there is a lack
of strong legislation and police
training to combat trafficking.
Even in the United States "only
10 percent of police stations have
any protocol to deal with traf-
ficking," she said.
M. Cherif Bassiouni, an emer-
itus law professor at DePaul
University in Chicago, said to
applause that "there is no human
rights subject on which govern-
ments have said so much but
done so little."

Laws in most of the world
criminalize prostitutes and
other victims of trafficking but
almost never criminalize the
perpetrators "without whom
that crime could not be per-
formed," he said.
Bassiouni said the figure of 2.4
million people trafficked at any
time is not reflective of the over-
all problem because "at the end
of 10 years you will have a signif-
icantly larger number who have
gone through the experience."
He urged a global reassess-
ment of "who is a victim and
who is a criminal" and called for
criminalizing not only those on
the demand side using trafficked
women, children and men, but
all those in the chain of supply-
ing trafficking victims.
In addition, Bassiouni said,
"we must change attitudes of
male-dominated police depart-
ments throughout the world who
place this type of a crime at the
lowest level of their law enforce-
ment priorities."
General Assembly President
Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser and
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
urged donors to contribute to a
new trust fund aimed at helping
victims of human trafficking.
At the start of the meeting,
Fedotov said the U.N. Voluntary
Trust Fund for Victims of Traf-
ficking had pledges of around $1
million but just $47,000 in con-
tributions, and he urged those
who offered money to send their
checks.

Hollande and
Sarkozy close in
polls as voting
approaches
PARIS (AP) - French presi-
dential candidate Francois
Hollande, leading in polls but
lacking in ideas that stick in
voters' minds, finally dropped
a bombshell: As president, he
would levy a 75 percent tax on
anyone who makes more than
1 million ($1.33 million) a year.
The flashy idea from the nor-
mally bland Socialist proved
wildly popular, fanning hostil-
ity toward executive salaries
and forcing President Nicolas
Sarkozy to defend his ostenta-
tious friendships with the rich.
It also unleashed debate in the
French press about whether the
wealthy would decamp for gen-
tler tax pastures.
As much as France likes
the plan, it does not seem to
have assured Hollande's vic-
tory, which, just three weeks
before the first round of voting,
is growing more uncertain as
Sarkozy reaps the benefits of
projecting presidential mettle
following France's shooting
attacks.
Polls put the two men neck-
and-neck in the first round
April 22, and show Sarkozy
gaining on Hollande for the
decisive runoff May 6.
Centrist candidate Francois
Bayrou has dismissed the plan
as absurd - contending that
when all was added up, the top
bracket would be taxed at near-
ly 100 percent. Many econo-
mists are also scratching their

heads over the tax - seeing it
as dangerous at worst and inef-
fective at best - and even Hol-
lande admits it's not meant to
balance the budget.
Still, the "Fouquet'shtax" -
so named by some in the press
after the tony restaurant where
Sarkozy celebrated his 2007
presidential win - is riding and
in part fueling a resurgence of
the French left. The tax-the-
rich proposal has garnered as
much as 65 percent approval in
some polls.
All that has helped Hollande,
often perceived as amiable but
uninspiring, to distinguish
himself from his main oppo-
nent, said Jean-Daniel Levy, a
pollster and political analyst.
"Nicolas Sarkozy has a dou-
ble difficulty: On the one hand,
he is perceived as a president
who is close to the rich, which
is not a good sign in France.
And he is also seen as a presi-
dent who oversaw inegalitarian
policies," he said. The tax, he
added, "allows Francois Hol-
lande to take control again and
to paint a negative portrait of
Nicolas Sarkozy."
But there is a danger that
Hollande hit the nerve too well.
Many voters have swept
right past Hollande and into
the camp of far-left candidate
Jean-Luc Melenchon, who has
electrified voters with calls for
a new French revolution and
who some polls say will come
in third or fourth in the first
round of elections. That could
bleed support away from Hol-
lande in the first round, depriv-
ing him of crucial momentum
going into the second one.
Antipathy for the rich is
widespread in France, where

wealth is meant to be discreet
and climbing the social ladder
to build yourself a mansion isn't
a common narrative.
Hollande himself once
famously declared "I do not
like the rich" - a statement that
only boosted his political stand-
ing among those who think
wealth should be redistributed
instead of accumulated.
Following his 75-percent
tax announcement, front
pages treated the rich like
some strange, migrating spe-
cies, declaring that they would
decamp to Belgium if the tax
was put in place. One presiden-
tial candidate, Dominique de
Villepin, himself quite wealthy,
warned France not to "kill
the goose that lays the golden
eggs."
While there is some anec-
dotal evidence to suggest the
wealthy are eyeing the border,
tax lawyer Sandra Hazan said
there's nothing new in rich
people fleeing France. But they
don't pull up the stakes simply
because taxes are high.
"The problem is not the
level of taxation you suffer,"
said Hazan, who heads the tax
department at law firm Salans.
"The problem is when you can-
not anticipate how much you
will be paying."
The French tax code has
long been unpredictable, she
said, but it has become even
more so in recent months. As
Sarkozy's administration has
tried to keep a series of budget
targets that are central to his
credibility and reassure mar-
kets that France can manage
its debt, the number of changes
to tax law have come fast and
furious.

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