is not legally recognized by the Iranian government.

But he has paid a high price for his involvement in the union.

Because of his trade-union activities, Osanlu has been subjected to pressure by the Iranian authorities, who have detained, summoned him to court, and jailed him several times over the last 18 months.

Osanlu was first detained in December 2005 for organizing a protest action by bus drivers complaining of low pay. He then spent about seven months in Tehran's notorious Evin prison with almost no contact to the outside world.

In January 2006, bus drivers and union activists planned a strike to call for his release and also press for other demands, including a pay increase. But on the eve of the planned strike the Iranian government preemptively detained hundreds ofbus drivers and several members of the union's executive committee.

In July 2006, dozens of rights activists in Iran and elsewhere went on a three-day hunger strike to call for his unconditional release as well as the release of other Iranian citizens who are held because of their peaceful activities or opinions not tolerated by Iranian officials.

Activists said they decided to highlight Osanlu's case as a symbol of Iran's workers' movement, which is under increasing state pressure.

Several human rights groups, including Amnesty International, also called for his release.

Many Iranian rights activists and intellectuals issued a statement in his support.

Osanlu was finally freed in the summer of 2006 after posting a bail of about $165,000.

However, state pressure on him continued.

Osanlu was detained by officials several times, including in November 2006,


when he was taken away from a Tehran street by plainclothes security agents who were reportedly from Iran's Intelligence Ministry.

He was put on trial in February 2007.

Charges brought against Osanlu included "engaging in publicity against Iran's government" and acting against domestic security.

He however told Radio Farda that authorities have turned a "simple trade union and workers' case" into a "security matter."

His July 10 abduction set off alarms among human rights groups and organizations defending union rights.

Two days later officials told his family that he is jailed in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison.

The reason for his rearrest and jailing is not clear.

But some observers believe it could be because of his recent trip to Europe. During his visit, Osanlu described the government's pressure and harassment against him and other workers.

Osanluwas quoted, however, as saying that he will not be intimidated.

Radio Farda Journalist Covers Stories Tehran Tries To Suppress

By Ron Synovitz

Radio Farda's Roozbeh Bolhari

July 12, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- An Iranian journalist who joined Radio Farda in Prague 18 months ago says he has more freedom to cover stories about Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's economic policies than journalists who remain in Iran.

It was about 6:30 in the evening on July 10 when Radio Farda broadcaster Roozbeh Bolhari received a call on his mobile phone in his Prague office.

The caller was in Tehran -- a labor activist from the Syndicate Workers of Tehran Bus Company who was concerned about the fate of the union's director, Mansur Osanlu.

"Ahmadinejad's government is putting more pressure on Iranian media to prevent them from covering


the economic problems in Iran, or even from covering strikes by workers there," Bolhari says.

Less than an hour earlier, the caller explained, Osanlu had been abducted from a public bus less than 200 meters from his home. The abductors were four armed men in plainclothes who claimed they were police officers arresting a thief.

Osanlu pleaded for help from other passengers, shouting out his name and his role as the leader of a genuinely independent trade union -- a labor organization that the Iranian government refuses to recognize. Four witnesses on the bus reported the abduction to police and to Osanlu's family.

Bolhari knew Osanlu from his work covering economic issues in Iran. He quickly confirmed the abduction with phone calls to Osanlu's wife and other members of the independenttrade union.

Iranian police were treating the case as a "criminal" investigation -- a classification that Bolhari says could allow them to later deny any government involvement.

Soon, Radio Farda's story was being broadcast into Iran -- one of the first reports by any of the world's media about the case.

Experienced Eye

The 44-year-old Bolhari has been working at Radio Farda's Prague offices for the past 18 months.

Before that, he worked for 17 years as a journalist inside Iran -- including work for the official "Iran" newspaper under reformist President Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005), and as an economic correspondent and international news editor for about a dozen reformist newspapers that all were shut down by Iran's conservative judiciary.

Bolhari says government intimidation and censorship against journalists in Iran makes it harder to report


on the country's economic problems from inside the country than from abroad. He says that's because President Ahmadinejad's administration suppresses reports about perceived failures of economic policy.

"This is a big problem in Iran," Bolhari explains. "Thousands of workers have been dismissed in recent years, and they also have been fired from their jobs because of the economic crisis in Iran and the economic policies of Ahmadinejad's government."

"Ahmadinejad's government is putting more pressure on Iranian media to prevent them from covering the economic problems in Iran, or even from covering strikes by workers there," Bolhari says. "The government is suppressing these stories, filtering information and blocking information altogether."

Official Fear?

Bolhari says that as a broadcaster with Radio Farda, he has been able to report on several recent strikes in Iranof Osanlu also is an example of Ahmadinejad's government using intimidation and harassment to prevent ordinary Iranians from going into the streets to protest their worsening economic situation.

In the past, the Iranian government has detained hundreds of drivers from Osanlu's union to prevent them from carrying out planned strikes. Osanlu also has been imprisoned three times for his role as a leader of an independent union.

Osanlu also told Bolhari in interviews that he has faced beatings and harassment from Iranian security agents because of his work.

His family and friends had sought to find out where he was. But all the authorities they contacted denied they were holding him.

Ebrahim Madadi, the deputy director of Osanlu's union, spoke to Radio Farda shortly after the incident.

"In the continuation of our search


we -- Osanlu's wife, brother, and me -- went to the Narmak police station and from there we went to the public safety police and to a revolutionary court on Moalem Street," Madadi said. "Unfortunately we didn't obtain any news [about Osanlu]."

The situation had led to growing concern about the fate of the union leader.

Finally, on July 12, an official from Evin prison informed Osanlu’s family that he is jailed there.

Osanlu’s wife told Radio Farda that officials admitted that her husband was being held in Evin only after she and her relatives gathered in front of the prison for several hours and insisted on being given information about his whereabouts.

She said: "Finally the guards made a phone call and sent me inside. I spoke to someone on theleader Mansur Osanlu in London last month

In recent months dozens of workers and union activists who participated in protest actions have been harassed, detained, summoned to court, and even jailed.

Radio Farda reports that on July 10, 11 workers who had participated in a May 1 protest were put on trial by a court in Sanandaj, in Kurdistan Province.

Two more workers are due to be tried by the same court on July 14.

Meanwhile, the website of Iran's ILNA news agency -- which had been under government pressure because of its coverage of workers protests -- was blocked on July 11.

The move by the country's judiciary came after it allowed ILNA to resume operations following a weeklong suspension of the agency and the appointment of a new director.

An unnamed judge


was quoted by Iranian media as saying the decision to block the website followed "many complaints."

(Radio Farda contributed to this report.)

Iran: Official Word Of Stoning Heightens Concern Over Condemned Mother

By Golnaz Esfandiari

Opponents of the practice say this photo shows the grisly sentence being imposed decades ago in Iran

July 10, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- Iran's judiciary today confirmed that a man convicted of adultery has been stoned to death in a northern province west of the capital, Tehran.

Jafar Kiani was stoned to death in a small village in the province of Qazvin. He was in his late 40s and had spent the last decade in prison after the adultery conviction.

He is the latest casualty of strict Islamic laws as applied since Iran's Islamic revolution in 1979.

The grim sentence came despitewith Iran's international commitment -- and moreover [the head of Iran's judiciary] has issued several rulings that stoning sentences should not be carried out," Ebadi said.

Scant Protection

Judiciary spokesman Jamshidi claimed today that the policy on stoning has not changed, but he added that judges can act independently.

The stonings of Kiani and his partner, Mokarameh Ebrahimi, had been scheduled to take place on June 21. But they were delayed in the face of Iranian and international protests.

On June 20, a judiciary official was quoted by Iran's Fars News Agency as saying that the stoning sentence in Takestan had been suspended. That announcement was welcomed by human rights activists, who have repeatedly called on Iran to remove stoning as a form of punishment from its books. (Read Iran's law on


convicted along with Kiani and is apparently still in prison.

"It is very worrying that the sentence was carried out despite all the protests from all over the world that were heard by the judiciary and Iran's authorities," Vahdati said. "We've been [informed] that both of them were supposed to be stoned but that since Women's Day was celebrated last week in Iran, Mokarameh [Ebrahimi] was not stoned. But it appears that she is also due to be stoned."

The judiciary spokesman has described Ebrahimi's sentence as still "halted."

The Stop Forever Stoning Campaign reports that Ebrahimi and Kiani were arrested 11 years ago while living in what was described as an adulterous relationship. Together they have two children who are believed to live in prison with their condemned mother.

Judiciary Power

Accordingdo their best to prevent another stoning being carried out secretly."

It is unclear how many stoning sentences have been issued or carried out since the five-year-old moratorium was declared.

Reports in late 2006 suggested that at least two people had been stoned to death earlier in the year and at least eight women faced stoning sentences.

Before today, Iranian officials had denied that any stonings had taken place since 2002. The statements on Kiani's stoning appear to mark the first instance of such an execution being confirmed by Iranian authorities.

Activists who are campaigning for stoning to be abolished in Iran say that Kiani's stoning last week was carried out in public by local officials and security forces. They say only a small number of villagers participated.


new area of the law and were hopeful that a life based on rights would supplant a life based on a pathology of charity, misfortune and physical and mental limitations.

However, the new Act restricted its protection to persons with physical disabilities and only applied in the area of employment. Persons with mental disabilities were conspicuously absent from this limited protection. Moreover, persons with physical or mental disabilities were nowhere to be seen in other areas of the Act including access to goods, services and facilities. According to some observers, such restrictions may have been, in part, linked to a lack of knowledge and understanding about disabilities among government officials at that time.

For example, the Coalition of Provincial Organizations of the Handicapped (now known as the Council of Canadiansbelow illustrates that complaints based on the ground of disability consistently far outrank other grounds of discrimination such as sex.

This table illustrates the total number of cases and percentage of total cases citing disability as the ground of discrimination received by the Canadian Human Rights Commission between 2002 and 2006 as seen in the annual reports. Note that disability is cited as the highest ground of complaint in each year. The disability figures are compared to the percentage of cases citing sex, the second highest ground of complaint received by the Commission, during the same time period. Rates citing disability as the ground of discrimination more than double those citing sex.

Reporting Year

Total number of signed complaints received by the CHRC

Number of cases where disability is cited as ground


notice also appeared in the Abilities magazine and in A Voice of Our Own—the CCD newsletter. CCD received a significant number of responses to its notice.

The criteria used to select those for interviews were based on:

That the issue in question fell within the jurisdiction of the Canadian Human Rights Act,

That she/he had had actual contact with the Commission, and

That the matter had occurred with in the past 5 years.

Unfortunately, many of the people who responded did not meet the specified criteria and thus were rejected. Due to limited resources, both time and funds, CCD was not able to engage in another round of solicitations. Consequently, CCD was only able to interview five people who had recent contact with the Commission. In this report, these persons have been assignedfor an offence for which a pardon has been granted.

Unlike criminal law, the Act is not designed to render punitive consequences. The overall purpose of the Act is remedial in nature and aimed at eliminating discrimination so that all persons living in Canada can participate fully and equally in society. From time to time its purpose has been amended to reflect the progress of human rights development. For example, during the mid 90s its purpose was amended to include the recognition of the duty to accommodate.

Initially when the Act was proclaimed its purpose was to eliminate direct or intentional forms of discrimination. As long as an employer or service provider did not intend to discriminate, there was no violation of the Act. Essentially, this approach promoted a formalistic


human rights through research, policy development and strategic initiatives. It also supplies internal support by providing advice on legal and policy matters and gathering and analyzeing statistics in support of research, policy development and management decision-making. In addition, the Knowledge Centre assumes responsibility for regulatory affairs, which includes the development of regulations and guidelines related to both the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Employment Equity Act. The Commission's participation at the United Nations in the development of an international convention on the rights of persons with disabilities is an example of a project undertaken by the Knowledge Centre.

I. Current Organizational Structure of the Commission

Set out below is a verbal and visual depiction of the Commission's current organizational structure.

The Chief Commissioner heads the organization, which is made upof four different branches. The Commission members and the Secretary General report directly to the Chief Commissioner. The Secretary General is supported by the following branches:

Dispute Resolution

Discrimination Prevention

Knowledge Centre

Corporate Management, and

Corporate Secretary.

The Dispute Resolution Branch is supported by the following units:

Early Resolution and Alternative Dispute Resolution Services

Investigations, and

Litigation Services.

The Discrimination Prevention Branch includes:

Regional Offices

Employment Equity Compliance Division

Prevention Initiatives and Liaison Division, and

Communications Division.

The Knowledge Centre includes:

Research and Statistical Analysis Division

Policy and Regulatory Affairs Division

National Aboriginal Program, and

Strategic Initiatives.

The Corporate Management Branch and Corporate Secretary are supported by:

IV. ANALYSIS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

It is too soon and beyond the scope of this report to carry out an official assessment of the effectiveness of the changes currently being implemented by the Commission. On its face, the new business model appears to offer


Commission to get rid of complaints, ignore the broader implications of some complaints, and fail to challenge the most prevalent and persistent patterns of inequality in Canadian society. In dollar and time terms, from a government perspective, this may appear efficient. However, permitting discrimination to be inadequately addressed is a false economy, and it corrodes the public belief in government's commitment to justice and human rights."[27]

As indicated at the outset of this report, historically human rights commissions have served as a beacon of hope and inspiration for persons with disabilities that Canada is interested in and committed to courageously and tenaciously challenging social and economic barriers and seeking justice and recognition of their equality rights. Human rights are more than routine government policies. They are quasi-constitutional and demandthus has no obligation to cover the costs incurred by complainants who bring forward complaints of discrimination. The complaint made to the Canadian Transportation Agency regarding VIA Rail's failure to make newly purchased rail cars accessible to persons who use wheelchairs nearly bankrupted CCD. Owing to the complexity of the case and the numerous appeals, it was necessary for CCD to retain legal counsel and experts in the field of accessible design of rail cars, which cost several hundreds of thousands of dollars, all of which had to be borne by CCD. CCD was successful in securing a positive ruling from the Supreme Court of Canada which stated that the Agency is mandated and obligated to ensure that the nation's human rights principles are respected by service providers


as the "Convention".[40] It is assumed that Canada will continue with this initiative by ratifying the Convention in the near future.

Article 33.2 of the Convention tasks national institutions, such as the Commission, with the role of "promoting, protecting and monitoring the implementation" of the Convention at the domestic level.

At the signing ceremony, the Commission speaking as the Chair of the International Coordinating Committee of National Human Rights Institutions (ICC) pledged that it and the other members of the ICC would take the steps necessary to give life to the Convention.[41]

This is an encouraging and promising announcement for persons with disabilities living in Canada. Unlike the Canadian Human Rights Act, the Convention spells out a wide range of specific rights to which persons with disabilities are entitled including thefails to convince him, believing it is some species of stork (the sharper-eyed Roxton is inclined to agree it is not a stork but has no clue what it really is), until a night-time encounter when it flies down and is seen by all at close range, as it steals the companions' dinner. After this, Summerlee apologises to Challenger.  The cliffs to the plateau itself prove to be apparently unscalable, but an adjacent pinnacle turns out to be climbable, and moreover, has a tall tree which can be cut down and used as a bridge, which allows the four explorers to cross to the plateau. However, they are almost immediately trapped on it, thanks to the treachery of one of their luggage-porters, Gomez: who, as it turns


expedition's campfire.
 A 50-foot-long black snake was seen by the expedition.

Creatures outside the Plateau
Jararaca
Agouti
Tapir
Jaguar

References in other works

The idea of prehistoric animals surviving into the present day was not new, but had already been introduced by Jules Verne in Journey to the Center of the Earth. In that book, published in 1864, the creatures live under the earth in and around a subterranean sea.
In 1915, the Russian scientist Vladimir Obruchev produced his own version of the "lost world" theme in the novel Plutonia, which places the dinosaurs and other Jurassic species in a fictional space inside the hollow Earth connected to the surface via an opening in the Russian Far North.

In 1916, Edgar Rice Burroughs published The Land That Time Forgot, his version of The Lost World where lostCivil Rights Movement History

Mississippi Freedom Summer Events

Photos

[ Terminology — Various authors use either "Freedom Summer" or "Summer Project" or both interchangeably. This book uses "Summer Project" to refer specifically to the project organized and led by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO). We use "Freedom Summer" to refer to the totality of all Movement efforts in Mississippi over the summer of 1964, including the efforts of medical, religious, and legal organizations (see Organizational Structure of Freedom Summer for details). In this discussion, we use the term "volunteer" to refer to those from out of state who came to Mississippi for Freedom Summer, though of course, the many thousands of Black Mississippians who participated were also unpaid volunteers. ]

See also:

Mississippi Summer Project

Photos

See


use that power to block civil rights legislation, prevent the federal government from defending racial minorities, and halt any national program or reform that might benefit the poor and working class regardless of race.

As the new year of 1964 begins, everyone in the South, Black and white, understand that when Afro-Americans demand the vote they are defying a century of oppression — and that a cry for the vote is actually a demand for social and political equality with whites.

For three hard years the Mississippi Freedom Movement has been trying to register Black voters against the adamant opposition of the white power- structure, the vicious terrorism of the Ku Klux Klan, and the economic warfare of the White Citizens Council. Blacks who try to register still face intimidation,taken against the politically well-connected officials who violate the law and flout the court rulings. Nor is there any relief in sight because LBJ has stripped out any meaningful voting rights protection from the draft Civil Rights bill being debated by Congress.

While most of the national media covers dramatic, photogenic events such as the Freedom Rides and the Birmingham marches they either ignore the issue of Black voting rights or relegate coverage to small articles on the back pages — leaving most Americans unaware of the brutal political realities of the Deep South.

The Dilemma

By November of 1963, Movement activists in Mississippi are exhausted, frustrated, and discouraged. Their efforts and strategies have built a movement — but not increased the number of Black voters. But movements move, if one


strategy fails you try another. Something new is needed, something dramatic, something bold.

Structurally, the Mississippi Movement is led by COFO, the coalition of SNCC, CORE, NAACP, and SCLC. But CORE's attention and resources are primarily focused on the North, particularly at this time around protests at the New York World's Fair, and much of their small southern staff is concentrated in Louisiana. SCLC's participation in COFO is small, and its attention is on St. Augustine, Florida and the state of Alabama. The NAACP national leadership is mainly interested in legal cases and they are uneasy with the growing radicalization and militance of the young organizers of SNCC and CORE. SNCC provides most of the COFO staff, and with VEP funds cut off, SNCC is now shouldering most ofargument that, "If we're trying to break down segregation, we can't segregate ourselves."

The debate continues at COFO's meeting in December, ending with a tentative agreement for a very limited summer project of no more than 100 white students. At the end of December 1963, SNCC's Executive Committee weighs the pros and cons at length. The motion they adopt — " To obtain the right for all citizens of Mississippi to vote, using as many people as necessary to obtain that end " — implies a large project with many northern whites.

The final decision comes down to the January COFO meeting held in Hattiesburg after Freedom Day which itself becomes an argument for the summer project. The presence of white clergymen on the line at the Forrest County courthouse


Mississippi. The Summer Project — which grows and expands into Freedom Summer — is on.

Pulling it Together

Though the mass media seems to believe that Freedom Movement events simply occur spontaneously, in real life careful planning is essential and where planning is absent failure results. By March, the basic structure of Freedom Summer is coming into focus — recruitment and training of volunteers, voter registration, building the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), challenging Mississippi's all-white delegation at the Democratic Party convention in Atlantic City, Freedom Schools, community centers, and legal support. But as always, the devil is in the details and some of the issues are thorny.

Finances. The Freedom Movement is always starved for funds, and with the loss of VEP grants the financial situation is desperate. The originalMarch on Washington, and with growing media attention on the upcoming Summer Project, liberal pundits such as Theodore White and Arthur Schlesinger step up their attacks on SNCC, and SNCC's association with "Reds," while conservatives such as Evans & Novak allege that SNCC has been "penetrated" by "subversive elements." The FBI's COINTELPRO operation increasingly focuses on SNCC, working to isolate it and destroy its funding base. A favorite tactic is to plant smear stories in the media. One example is the The New York Times article titled, " Hoover Says Reds Exploit Negroes ," which runs shortly before the start of Freedom Summer. Hoover is enraged when Lewis responds with "The Director of the FBI should spend less time turning over logs looking for the Red Menace and


Victor Rabinowitz have been in the forefront of the struggle throughout the South. SNCC refuses to abandon its "body on the line" principle, and NLG lawyers provide legal services throughout the summer — as do NAACP lawyers.

"What If?" Controversies. No one really knows what to expect. In a very real sense the Summer Project is a huge leap of faith into the unknown — "jumping off a cliff and learning to fly on the way down" — as one SNCC activist put it. Inevitably, there are long, intense discussions about hypothetical "what if" situations. What if, for example, the daughter of a U.S. Senator is arrested, who decides when she is bailed out? The Movement? The daughter? Her father? If she's arrested with local Blacks, must everyone bereleased together? What happens if her father pulls strings to spring her while the local folk languish in jail? How do you weigh their safety and suffering against the political value and media attention of continued incarceration?

As it turns out, when actual events on the ground pose these kind of questions they are answered on the basis of the specific circumstances at that time and place, rather than abstract theories and principles. And for the most part, the summer volunteers prove to be courageous and committed, standing in solidarity with Mississippi Blacks regardless of their parents' fears, desires or demands.

Mississippi Girds for Armageddon

Mississippi's white power-structure and local media react to Freedom Summer as if they face invasion by another "War of Northern Aggression" (their term for what the


rest of the nation knows as the "Civil War"). Amid rhetoric about "..savage blacks and their Communist masters," and the absolute necessity of, "...the strict segregation of the races controlled by Christian Anglo-Saxon white men, the only race that can build and maintain just and stable government," the Klan issues its own warning — on a single night crosses are burned in 64 of the state's 82 counties. Some of the churches that had agreed to host Freedom Schools are firebombed. In many cases, shortly before buildings are burned their fire insurance policies are suddenly canceled by their white insurance agents — a typical example of the Ku Klux Klan and White Citizen Council working in tandem.

The state legislature passes laws outlawing Freedom Schools, allowing officials to declarerebuffs them as subversives and Communist dupes.

Desperate for someone to hear their pleas, the delegation holds a conference at the National Theater, addressing a volunteer panel of writers, educators, and lawyers, along with several hundred ordinary citizens. Fannie Lou Hamer describes the brutal police beating in Winona MS, Mrs. Allen testifies about the recent murder of her husband, a boy of 14 tells of police brutality against peaceful pickets, and SNCC worker Jimmy Travis talks of being shot in Greenwood and asks for federal marshals to protect voter registration workers. Legal scholars describe the statutes allowing — in fact, requiring — the federal government to enforce the law, make arrests, and protect the rights of voters. The transcript is sent to President Johnson and Attorney General Robert Kennedy.


interaction (to say nothing of sex) between their daughters and Black men. In tenor with the times and to avoid legal repercussions from litigious fathers and mothers, SNCC requires that female volunteers under the age of 21 provide written consent from their parents — many of whom outright refuse. Male volunteers are not required to obtain parental permission.

The number of male and female students who want to participate but whose parents prevent them from applying is unknown, but at least a quarter of those who do apply and later withdraw do so because of parental opposition (lack of money is the major cause). But there's a rebellious wind beginning to stir among America's youth, and many Summer Project participants go to Mississippi in open and wrenching defiance ofto say that in the summer of 1964 the very best of America came to Mississippi to confront and challenge the very worst.

The average age of Summer Project volunteers recruited by COFO is 21 (though a few are well into adulthood including at least one veteran of the Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War). Depending on how you count the volunteers, roughly 85-90% of them are white, the remaining 10-15% are Black with a few Latinos and Asians. Most of them are from middle and upper-middle class families, and the majority (57%) are from the top 30 universities in the nation (123 are from Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and Princeton alone). Almost half (48%) are already members of a Freedom Movement organization (mostly CORE or Friends of SNCC),


21% actively participate in a religious group, and 14% belong to leftist or Socialist organizations. Not surprisingly, the graduate student and professional volunteers recruited by supporting organizations for legal, medical, and religious duties are older, and among them are even fewer Blacks.

But focusing on the out-of-state volunteers — their numbers and who they are — can give the false impression that they are the central element of Freedom Summer. Nothing could be farther from the truth. It is Black Mississippians who are the heart and soul of Freedom Summer — the local activists who provide leadership and guidance, the youth who canvas and help teach in Freedom Schools, the Freedom School students, the Citizenship School teachers, the families who feed and house outside volunteers, the people who registerFDP voters in their homes and shops and churches, the men who guard the Freedom Houses at night, the people who drive workers around the county, the ministers and deacons who open their churches, and of course the courageous men and women who risk their lives and livelihood by trying to register to vote at the courthouse. They too are unpaid volunteers, and they number in the many thousands, far more than the northerners.

Volunteer Orientation. Two orientations for Summer Project volunteers are funded and coordinated by the National Council of Churches (NCC). Berea College in Kentucky agrees to host the sessions, but they back out when faced with angry denunciations from southern alumni and trustees. Western College for Women in Oxford, Ohio (today, part of Miami University) steps


up with an offer to use their campus.

The first of the week-long sessions for roughly 300 volunteers begins June 13, the second session commences June 20. Most of those attending the June 13 orientation are assigned to voter registration and building the MFDP, most of those at the second are to be Freedom School teachers or work in the community centers. Roughly 150 volunteer lawyers and law students, from the National Lawyers Guild and other organizations also participate, as do clergy recruited by the NCC. About 100 SNCC and 40 CORE staff members and local activists provide most of the training, along with guest speakers such as Bayard Rustin, James Lawson, and Vincent Harding (see Freedom Summer Orientation Briefing).

COFO Project Director Bob Moses tells them:

Don't come to Mississippiof course all white and probably felt real discomfort in our black presence. The press also really contributed to this 'racial difference' in their own inimitable way by making it immediately clear what story they had come to report. What and who, so far as they were concerned, represented the real importance of the event. — Kwame Ture. [1]

The Disappearance of Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman. The first group of volunteers leave Ohio and go down into Mississippi on June 20th. On the following day three of them, including one summer volunteer, disappear. See Lynching of Chaney, Schwerner & Goodman.

Word arrives in Oxford where the second orientation session is underway:

There was an interruption then at a side entrance: three or four staff members had come in and were whispering


agitatedly. One of them walked over to the stage and sprang up to whisper to Moses who bent on his knees to hear. In a moment he was alone again. Still crouched, he gazed at the floor at his feet, unconscious of us. Time passed. When he stood and spoke, he was somewhere else; it was simply that he was obliged to say something, but his voice was automatic. "Yesterday morning, three of our people left Meridian, Mississippi to investigate a church-burning in Neshoba County. They haven't come back and we haven't had any word from them.... [3]

In the days that follow, hope wars with dread, hope that the missing are held in captivity but still alive, against the growing certainty that they have been lynched. Anxious parentscall or come in person, urging, pleading, begging, their sons and daughters to come home and not go to Mississippi. A few leave, a few under the age of 21 are forced against their will to quit. But most hold fast.

On the last night of the second orientation, Bob Moses addresses the volunteers and tells them: "The kids are dead." When he finishes speaking the auditorium is deathly silent. Then a woman raises her voice in song, "They say that freedom, is a constant struggle..." The next morning the second wave of volunteers board the buses to go down into Mississippi.

10 Weeks That Shake Mississippi

See Organizational Structure of Freedom Summer for information on the component groups active in Mississippi in the summer of 1964.

The volunteers arrive in Mississippi


on June 20th and June 27th. To the extent that they encounter whites, they are greeted with suspicion and outright hostility. But they feel welcomed — even loved — by the Black communities they become part of.

But the volunteers, white and Black both, soon discover that the Black community is split. Many local Afro-Americans eagerly await their arrival and the support they bring. As Holly Springs resident Rita Walker put it in Meeting the Freedom Workers, "I always pictured them coming in a bus with "FREEDOM" written on it. I would meet with some of my friends, and we would go up to the bus station and wait for them so that we could welcome them in." Others, however, fear white retaliation if they even speak to awhich functions as command post, press room, administrative center, personnel department, bursar, supply depot, emergency first-aid station and basic training camp for volunteers who missed the Oxford orientation. A hand-lettered sign declares: No one would dare bomb this office and end all the confusion . The office is also a terminus for COFO's Wide Area Telephone Service (WATS). Volunteers monitor the life-saving WATS line around the clock, recording incidents of violence and arrest, dispatching lawyers and doctors, notifying press and Justice Department, and compiling the daily "WATS Report."

[ >WATS service was a forerunner of "800" numbers which did not yet exist in 1964. ]

For the duration of the Summer Project, SNCC's national office temporarily moves from Atlanta to Greenwood. For three months, this office on Avenue N becomes


any Freedom Summer activities. Though media attention is on the danger to white volunteers, the risks taken by local activists and those who open their homes are far greater. To defy the white power-structure by publicly standing for the Freedom Movement, or to break the segregation taboo by inviting whites — including young white women — into a Afro-American home, are irrevocable steps of enormous courage. The volunteers are scheduled to leave at the end of the summer, but local Blacks will bear the consequences for the rest of their lives. And white retaliation is swift and brutal — churches are burned, people are fired and evicted, there are arrests, beatings, and shootings that continue long after the summer ends.

Each project is led by a project director. Allform and take the so-called "literacy test" also run the risk of economic retaliation organized by the White Citizens Councils. The unofficial, MFDP "freedom registration" is symbolic, but far less dangerous because it is done within the Movement and the Black community. Building the MFDP. This requires learning and teaching the rules and procedures of electoral parties and then organizing precinct, county, district, and state-level MFDP bodies in strict accordance with the official rules of the national Democratic Party. Blacks who take an active role in the party and assume leadership positions in the organization run increased risk of white retaliation. (MFDP Challenge to the Democratic Convention)

This requires learning and teaching the rules and procedures of electoral parties and then organizing precinct, county, district, and state-level MFDP bodies


in strict accordance with the official rules of the national Democratic Party. Blacks who take an active role in the party and assume leadership positions in the organization run increased risk of white retaliation. (MFDP Challenge to the Democratic Convention) Freedom Schools. Most projects operate a Freedom School taught by volunteers. Mississippi's segregated school system is designed to keep Blacks in their proper place as determined by the "southern way of life" — subservient, low-paid, and isolated. The Freedom Schools challenge that regime, beginning a process of opening up new worlds of thought and possibility for Black children. Yet it is difficult to say who learns more, the Freedom School students or their volunteer teachers.

Most projects operate a Freedom School taught by volunteers. Mississippi's segregated school system isdesigned to keep Blacks in their proper place as determined by the "southern way of life" — subservient, low-paid, and isolated. The Freedom Schools challenge that regime, beginning a process of opening up new worlds of thought and possibility for Black children. Yet it is difficult to say who learns more, the Freedom School students or their volunteer teachers. Community Centers. Many projects open community centers that provide cultural and educational programs for the Black community, including political organization, adult-literacy courses staffed by Citizenship School teachers, health-education classes taught by MCHR volunteers, vocational training centers, and live theater shows by the Free Southern Theater. Libraries of books donated by northern sympathizers are established to serve communities who have been denied access to the state's publicly-funded but "white-only" libraries.

Many


projects open community centers that provide cultural and educational programs for the Black community, including political organization, adult-literacy courses staffed by Citizenship School teachers, health-education classes taught by MCHR volunteers, vocational training centers, and live theater shows by the Free Southern Theater. Libraries of books donated by northern sympathizers are established to serve communities who have been denied access to the state's publicly-funded but "white-only" libraries. Letters. A strategic objective of the Summer Project is to raise national awareness of southern realities, demand federal action, and mobilize political support for the MFDP. All volunteers are urged to write frequent letters to family, friends, teachers, and ministers about the Freedom Movement and their experiences. Many volunteers arrange to have their letters published in local newspapers, school or church bulletins,as its director, was a true reflection of the "beloved community." This project became a fervent, collective spirit born out of the hearts of many caring, committed, and diverse individuals. The unsurpassable sense of love and hope among us created such an unbreakable bond that for one brief period of history the "band of brothers (and sisters)," the "circle of trust" felt invincible, even in the face of relentlessly imminent danger. Never has any experience paralleled the intense exhilaration and passion that we felt for our work, the local people and one another. — Cleveland Sellers. [5]

The social revolution. The Freedom Movement as a whole, and within it the Summer Project, is about more than just voter registration or education. It is at heart a social revolution. A


revolution that defies fear, throws off enforced subservience, asserts dignity and rejects externally-imposed inferiority. A social revolution that demands an equal share of economic and political power. A social revolution that abolishes old relations, and forges new personal, political, and social identities.

Social revolutions are not made from manifestos or political analyses, but rather by people fundamentally altering their view of themselves and their place in society. Such revolutions are not imposed by leaders from above, but rather are nurtured from below. Nor are social revolutions accomplished in a single summer. The social revolution transforming the South neither began, nor ended, with Freedom Summer.

Today's commentary and analysis of the movement often miss the crucial point that, in addition to challenging the white power-structure, the movement also demanded that Blackof a Mississippi town, founded the U.S. China People's Friendship Association, received a Masters degree from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and was awarded a MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Fellowship grant in 1992. ]

By definition, social revolutions run deep, deep down to the very bottom. The worst poverty and fiercest oppression is found among the plantation sharecroppers and farm laborers who endure semi-slavery on the vast feudal domains of the richest and most powerful cotton planters. Often they are forbidden contact with the outside world, terrorized by unrestrained physical and sexual violence of white foremen, forced to subsist on over-priced, shoddy goods at the company store — not even paid in money but rather working off constantly increasing debt. Yet by 1964, the Freedom Movement's social revolution has reached down


Sweeney. July 9, Vicksburg. Young Freedom School students stoned while walking to class. July 10, Hattiesburg. Klansmen attack Rabbi Arthur Lelyveld with steel pipes. He and two other summer volunteers hospitalized with injuries. July 11, Canton. Firebomb thrown at Freedom House. July 11, Vicksburg. Black cafe that served white volunteers bombed. July 11, Browning. Missionary Baptist Church destroyed by fire. July 12, Jackson. White man attacks Black woman at Greyhound depot. After being treated for injuries, she is arrested for "Disturbing the Peace." Her attacker is not charged. July 12, Natchez. Jerusalem Baptist and Bethel Methodist Churches burned to the ground.

And from the same period, the following reports of police harassment and abuse:

July 6, Itta Bena. Police seize a civil rights worker and disappear him, triggering a searchby SNCC and federal agents. July 7, Greenwood. Six local students and three volunteers arrested for peacefully picketing. July 8, Hattiesburg. Rev. Robert Beech of National Council of Churches arrested on felony charges because his checking account is briefly overdrawn. July 8, Columbus. Three volunteers arrested for "trespass" after stopping at a gas station to buy cold soft drinks. July 9, Clarksdale. Cops spray cleaning chemicals on two Black girls inside the courthouse. A volunteer arrested for taking a photo of the incident. July 9, Gulfport. Four volunteers arrested on anti-picketing charges as they escort Blacks to courthouse for voter registration attempt. July 10, Greenwood. A cop overhears a SNCC staff member tell another activist: "We've got to get some damn organization in our office." The SNCC organizer


is arrested and jailed for "Public Profanity."

COFO's assumption that the mass media and federal government will swiftly respond to attacks on white volunteers proves correct. The disappearance of Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman is headline news and lead story across the nation. Reporters flock to the state and the DOJ springs into frenzied action. But the strategy of using white students to bring attention and protection to all Movement participants — white and Black — fails.

For the most part, both the media and the federal government are only interested in attacks and threats against the white volunteers. A massive federal search is launched to find the missing men, and President Johnson meets with the parents of the two white activists at the White House. When white activists are beatenKathy Dahl, the project's nurse, inside to check on him. Even though the hospital had not provided extensive medical treatment to Charlie, the chief of police was trying to put him under arrest for vehicular homicide. Immediately Ivanhoe asked Kathy to work on getting Charlie to a Memphis hospital. Kathy, in her authoritative voice, said that Charlie was in need of immediate attention and if he didn't get to Memphis quickly he may die. The police chief was reluctant to let Charlie go. More negotiations were required for the sheriff to finally release Charlie, who was driven to Memphis and then flown to Chicago. Charlie maintained that he was lying on the ground immediately following the wreck, some white men walked over to him and said, "Stay still


And with that roll comes burdens of responsibility for their own lives and safety — and that of others.

From class background, academic or organizational experience, and general familiarity with the power manipulations and media-hype of American politics- as-usual, many volunteers are familiar with traditional styles of leadership based on social position, organizational title, personal prestige, intellectual brilliance, verbal rhetoric and calculated image enhancement. Nor are they unfamiliar with the posturing and domination, political maneuvering, self-aggrandizement, ego-gratification, and sexual-predation that so often characterizes the exercise of leadership in the halls of power, corporate offices, and groves of academia.

But by their example, many of the SNCC and CORE staff who head the projects provide the volunteers with a new model of leadership that is profoundly different from the American norm.for themselves on the promise of providing benefits to their constituents. But an organizer's goal is to find and nurture leaders among the local folk who will build their own organizations and achieve a share of political power for themselves — thereby allowing the organizer to move on to some other community to repeat the process. At least in theory. In practical reality over the long run, that concept proves difficult to achieve, but in 1964, field secretaries of the Southern Freedom Movement are doing their level best to live up to that ideal.

Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) of SNCC is project director for the 2nd Congressional district in the Mississippi Delta, and therefore an acknowledged leader by necessity. From that perspective, he later described the demands placed on


but staff and volunteers languishing in jail cells can't canvas or organize and diverting desperately need funds to bail them out weakens the central effort.

But after passage of the Act, young Blacks across the state are eager to defy segregation and exercise their new rights. They want to "spit in the eye" of white racists by integrating hamburger joints and movie theaters. Three years of Movement activity have filled them with courage and now they believe the law is on their side.

Whites, however, are already enraged by the mere existence of Freedom Summer and further inflamed by Johnson signing the Act. In Greenwood and other communities, carloads of armed thugs prowl the streets looking for trouble, some are members of the Sheriff's posse, some are outright Klan. Oneof these "auxiliary" deputies is Byron De la Beckwith, and everyone in Leflore County, Black and white, know that he murdered murdered Medgar Evers.

The question is thrashed out in meeting after meeting. The majority of SNCC staff agree with Bob Moses that they have to remain disciplined, stick to the plan, and not let themselves or the Movement become distracted. But some staff and some summer volunteers argue that it was the sit-ins and Freedom Rides of the early 1960s that sparked and energized the Movement and that if the Civil Rights Act is not tested and enforced immediately it will wither away and become just another unenforced law. By and large, adults in the community agree that now is not the time for integrating lunch counters. But


movies, touching off a new front in the struggle. There are arrests and beatings and shootings. SNCC staff and summer volunteers have to be shifted from voter registration and MFDP organizing to raising bail money and keeping protests disciplined, focused, and nonviolent.

Martha Lamb is the Registrar of Voters for Leflore County. She is notorious for her refusal to register Afro-Americans. To dramatize her violation of Black voting rights and pressure her to obey federal law, federal court rulings, and the U.S. Constitution, July 16 is declared "Freedom Day" in Greenwood. For more than a week there are mass meetings and house-to-house canvassing to urge Black citizens to sign up as members in the MFDP and then attempt to register at the courthouse en masse on Freedom Day. Tosupport those trying to register, and call attention to the denial of basic human rights in Mississippi, Black students eager for direct action are asked to peacefully picket the courthouse in violation of the state's anti-picketing law — it is certain they will be arrested. Most of the summer volunteers also want to join the line, but if everyone is in jail the main work of the project halts, so only a limited number are chosen.

On July 16, the line of Black adults waiting to register stretches down the courthouse steps and around the corner. No more than three are allowed into the courthouse at a time. The line crawls forward at a snail's pace — most will never even reach the door. A swarm of local and


voter registration, building the MFDP, Freedom Schools, and community organizing continues.

Internal Tensions.

Fear, exhaustion, heat, the passion and depth of commitment, cultural differences of wealth & poverty, black & white, north & south, urban & rural, and the enormous gap between hope and reality, all combine to create an emotional pressure cooker that intensifies inherent conflicts of race, gender, and class. As the weeks pass, the strains increase, "Fear can't become a habit," writes one volunteer — but it can, and it has.

Race. The deepest tensions are around race. Most of the white volunteers are fervently committed to the ideal of an inter-racial "beloved community." But the habits and assumptions of white superiority are deeply ingrained and often manifest despite their best intentions. In the pressure of events, someof the white volunteers fail to understand that their skills, training, and confidence are the product of privilege. In their eagerness, they sometimes push Blacks aside. Then they are bewildered and hurt when Black staff members verbally slap them down.

After three years of Mississippi's blood and brutality, and three years of failure on the part of liberal white America and the federal government to live up their professed ideals and oft-stated promises, some of SNCC and CORE's Black staff no longer see inter-racial brotherhood, integration, or appeals to white liberalism as a viable strategy for ending the nightmare of racism, segregation, exploitation, and powerlessness. They find it hard to trust any whites, even the summer volunteers working beside them. Some of them are moving towards Black pride, Black


among some of the white women volunteers. In 1964, the term "sexism" has not yet come into wide use, and compared to issues of race there is little articulation and even less discussion about discrimination against women in the broader society, women's roles and treatment within the Movement, or inequality and abuse in personal interactions between women and men. One woman later said: "Sexism was not something that ... had been made conscious to me at the time, but looking back on [Freedom Summer], that's ... what it was."

Some SNCC staff view the presence of white women volunteers as a mixed blessing.

Not through any fault of the women's, but because of the deeply ingrained, almost psychotic Southern male attitudes about 'white womanhood.' This was cause for real concern,is far higher than in other Freedom Movement organizations such as CORE, SCLC, and the NAACP.

See Women & Men in the Freedom Movement for a more extensive discussion of these issues.

Class. Issues and tensions rooted in class are examined the least and only rarely discussed. After a generation of red-baiting and McCarthyism, concepts of class division, class oppression, class consciousness, and class warfare are the taboo topics of American politics (as to some extent they still are today). In 1964, awareness of such issues has barely begun to stir. Most of the white volunteers are from the middle and upper-classes, but aspects of class are often overlooked, or interpreted solely as Black-white issues — or as North-South or urban-rural cultural differences.

Class divisions also exist within the local Black


bib overalls and a white T-shirt underneath, became the symbol of SNCC. And it was practical. It fit our lifestyle of sleeping on sofas and floors and walking miles and miles of dusty back roads. It also identified us with the people we were working with — farmers and poor people. — John Lewis. [2]

For more information on Freedom Summer:

Books: Mississippi Movement

Web:

Mississippi Movement & MFDP A Discussion

Freedom Summer

Freedom Schools

Mississippi Movement

Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party

Freedom Summer Digital Collection (Wisconsin Historical Society)

Documents:

Freedom Summer & Freedom Schools

Articles by Freedom Summer Participants

Letters From Freedom Summer Participants

Lynching of Chaney, Schwerner & Goodman (June)

CORE field secretaries Mickey and Rita Schwerner arrive in Meridian at the beginning of 1964. Meridian is the seat of Lauderdale County and the center of CORE organizing in east-central Mississippi. Alongwith local CORE leader James Chaney of Meridian, they meet frequently with Freedom Movement supporters in adjacent Neshoba County, and Mt. Zion Church in the unincorporated Longdale community agrees to host a Freedom School for the upcoming Summer Project. On the evening of June 16, while CORE staff is in Ohio for the orientation of the summer volunteers, Klansmen attack the church, beat members of the congregation, and burn the building.

On Saturday, June 20, Schwerner and Chaney return to Meridian with the first wave of volunteers. They enter a state where press and political leaders from the Governor on down are whipping up a frenzy of hate and violence among the white population. Instead of countering their incitements, FBI Director Hoover tells white Mississippi, "We will not wet-nurse


troublemakers."

The next day, Schwerner, Chaney, and summer volunteer Andy Goodman, drive up to Neshoba County to meet with local Blacks about the church burning. Sheriff's deputy Cecil Price — who is also a member of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan — stops them for "speeding" (their car is well known to both cops and Klan as a CORE vehicle). But instead of issuing a ticket to the driver, he arrests all three men, incarcerating them in the county jail in Philadelphia. None of them are allowed to make any phone calls. While the three are held incommunicado, Price contacts his KKK associates and the Klan gathers. They arrange with Sheriff Lawrence Rainey to release the civil rights workers once an ambush has been set upon the road back to Meridian.

Search procedures are initiated at the Meridian CORE office when the three miss their check-in time. Summer volunteer Louise Hermey, on her first day in Mississippi, begins calling jails and hospitals. The Neshoba County jail denies all knowledge of the three, though in fact they are being held there. The SNCC office is notified, and Mary King alerts the FBI and Justice Department — who show little interest. Had the federal government bestirred itself during the five hours Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman are held in jail, the Sheriff might have hesitated before turning them over to Klan lynch mob. But the Feds do nothing (as usual).

Around 10:30pm, when the Klan is ready and Price is positioned on the road in his squad car,


Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman are released from jail and told to "get out of town." As they drive the dark road towards Meridian, Price pulls them over with his police siren. He then turns them over to the Klan murder squad. They are taken to an isolated spot where James Chaney is savagely beaten and all three are shot to death. In the early morning hours of Monday, June 22nd, their bodies are buried in an earthen dam on the property of wealthy landowner Olen Burrage. Their car is driven into Bogue Chitto swamp and set on fire.

By Tuesday, the story of their disappearance is on the front page of the New York Times and the burned out car is discovered in the swamp. Now Lyndon Johnson andthe federal government suddenly wake up — two white men (and a colored kid too) are missing, probably murdered. The FBI and military search teams are ordered into action. LBJ meets with the parents of Goodman and Schwerner who have come to Washington from New York to plead for federal action. Johnson assures them that "everything possible" is being done. In Mississippi, Chaney's mother waits for word of her son. There is no White House invitation for her.

Secure in their certainty that bodies buried beneath an earthen dam can never be found, Mississippi officials claim it is all a hoax, a Communist plot to stir up sympathy for agitators, and that the missing men are hiding in Mexico. Or, as Mississippi Governor Paul Johnson tells reporters: "Those boys


are in Cuba."

The Freedom Movement, of course, knows different, and the murders hit hard. Like most Freedom Movement activists, the three are young — one is a native Mississippian, one a staff field secretary, and one a summer volunteer — and all those who are putting their bodies on the line know that next time it could be them. Protests and sit-ins are mounted at federal buildings around the country — New York, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco — and speaking for the Goodman family, attorney Martin Popper tells the press: "The murder of the boys is the first interracial lynching in the history of the United States."

The number of FBI agents assigned to Mississippi is increased ten-fold, from 15 to 150, and for the first time an FBIHerbert Oarsby, is found wearing a CORE T-shirt. The remains of five other Black men are never identified. But none of the bodies are those of the missing white men, and both the media and the FBI quickly loose interest in them. (Forty-three years later, in 2007, a Klansmen is convicted in the Moore and Dee murders after Jackson Free Press and Canadian Broadcast Corporation reporters locate the killer and uncover new evidence. Their stories prod the Justice Department to finally reopen the case.)

In Neshoba County, a paid informant directs the FBI to the dam where the three are buried, and their bodies are recovered on August 4th. Rita Schwerner tells the press, "My husband, Michael Schwerner, did not die in vain. If he and Andrew Goodman had


been Negroes, the world would have taken little notice of their deaths. After all, the slaying of a Negro in Mississippi is not news. It is only because my husband and Andrew Goodman were white that the national alarm has been sounded."

At his eulogy for James Chaney, CORE leader Dave Dennis voices the rage, anguish, and turmoil of Movement veterans and summer volunteers alike:

I want to talk about right now the living dead that we have right among our midst, not only in the state of Mississippi but throughout the nation. Those are the people who don't care, those who do care but don't have the guts enough to stand up for it, and those people busy up in Washington and other places using my freedom and myare recovered, their families ask Freedom Movement attorneys Arthur Kinoy and William Kunstler to ensure that the legally-required autopsies be done correctly and reported accurately. They ask that MCHR doctors be allowed to inspect the bodies and observe the procedure. But when Movement doctors Charles Goodrich and Alfred Kogon attempt to do so, they are blocked by the cops — Mississippi officials refuse to allow access to anyone representing the Freedom Movement or the families.

The autopsy results are not released to the public, but mysterious leaks to the press imply that the three men were shot but not tortured or mutilated. The MCHR suspects a cover-up. They ask Dr. David Spain, a respected New York pathologist to inspect the bodies. State officials try to block a second autopsy,


parties from Democrat to Republican, but regardless of party they show no interest at all in investigating or prosecuting murder cases involving Movement-related killings in Mississippi or anywhere else.

But Black communities in the South do not forget, they know who the murderers are. Voter registration rises, Blacks are elected to office and begin to gain a share of political power. In both North and South a new generation of young activists, attorneys, journalists, and community leaders begin to demand belated justice. Journalist Jerry Mitchell of the Jackson Clarion-Ledger plays a key role in reawakening public interest in cases long buried by political expediency — he finds witnesses, uncovers concealed evidence, and locates suspects. As the 20th Century fades into history and the new century begins, public pressure forcesSouthern politicians and prosecutors to reopen old cases. Byron De La Beckwith is convicted for assassinating Medgar Evers and dies in prison in 2001. Two of the Birmingham church bombers are also sent to prison.

In 2001, former Neshoba County Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price begins to cooperate with state authorities who have reopened the Chaney, Schwerner, Goodman case. He suddenly dies in a mysterious "accident." In June of 2005, a Neshoba County jury convicts Edgar Ray Killen for manslaughter in the lynching of the three civil rights workers. He is sentenced to 60 years in prison. But as of 2008, activists continue to demand that charges be brought against the other murderers who still remain free despite a finding by the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court that:

There is ample —


adults. To one degree or another, the NAACP, CORE, SCLC, and SNCC are all involved in teaching adult literacy, political education, and how to pass the various literacy tests, with the largest and most sustained effort coming from thousands of SCLC's Citizenship School teachers.

But as more and more young people become active in the Freedom Movement, student-oriented educational activities begin to emerge and evolve. When more than a hundred Black high school students in McComb are expelled from school in 1961 for Movement activities, SNCC briefly establishes "Nonviolent High" to carry on their education. In Greenwood, the SNCC office is just down the street from the Black high school and SNCC field secretaries begin teaching impromptu after-school classes in 1962 and '63.

The need is self-evident. On average, theover which more fundamental arguments about the nature of a good society would be debated. "As the population becomes increasingly pluralistic," Rittel and Webber predicted, "inter-group differences are likely to be reflected as inter-group rivalries of a zero-sum sort...the expert is also the player in a political game, seeking to promote his private vision of goodness over others."

The four decades that have followed have proven the two urban planners prescient. Polarization has intensified, our expert class has dramatically expanded in size, and wicked problems have proliferated. Partisan experts produce mountains of studies supporting radically different understandings of problems like crime that are endlessly contested. Old problems like poverty become more complex in a society where most everyone has enough to eat but access to opportunity remains grossly unequal.


them with money from student fees, mandatory fees paid by students, not from state funding, she said.

"Jersey Shore," which ran from 2009 to 2012, focused on the escapades of a group of young Italian-Americans at a shore house. Snooki's housemates included The Situation, Pauly D and JWoww.

Snooki wrote in her book "Strong is the New Sexy" that Christie's expression was "full of hate" after she introduced herself in 2013 when they were on the boardwalk in Seaside Heights. She has called the portly governor a bully and ridiculed his weight.

Many colleges struggle with tight budgets, and some have drawn sharp criticism for paying hefty speaking fees.

Last year The Associated Press asked 20 public universities with notable speakers to provide costs for their graduation speakers since 2015, including speakingkitchen area:

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Dave and Krista are a couple from the Pacific Northwest that led overwhelmingly busy lives. As her son Hayden was graduating high school, and daughter Korynn wrapping up college, they realized it was time to slow down. Life was going far too fast . They wanted to take the time to enjoy stress free living with their eight year old son Quinn.Having visited Hush Valley Lodge as guests in January of 2016, they decided this would be the exact change they needed.In the pursuit of happiness, they partnered with Jo, Peter, Molly, Gary and Dan to make this dream a reality, and are currently the stewards of the magic that is Hush


act occur in the victim's residence and that it be accompanied by the threatened or actual use of a deadly weapon. He denies that he used a knife, and that the length of the ordeal and the fact of two penetrations are aggravating circumstances. Falling also disputes that he showed no remorse or acceptance of responsibility for his act. Finally, he asserts that the court's description of the rape as callous, cruel, and depraved is a mere conclusion and cannot justify an exceptional sentence. Falling does not dispute that the rape occurred in the victim's bedroom, that he penetrated the victim more than once, and that before, during, and after the rape Falling threatened to kill the victim if she did not cooperate or if she notified theissue that, let's say, involves taxpayer dollars, like a sports stadium? The advertisers get upset because whereas before, they were allowed to influence coverage, and now they're not. Or, editorial caves in and doesn't cover the issue fairly for fear of upsetting the advertiser.

Gannett used to be concerned over the perception of its coverage in addition to its pursuit of the almighty dollar. Now, they don't give a damn.

Mr. Beusse needs to bone up on his USAT Sports history. Perhaps a call to former USAT Sports Editor Gene Policinski might help jog Beusse's memory about the newspaper's story on the outing of the late Arthur Ashe in 1993. Never upset anyone? That's the kind of generalization USAT sports would never make. So it's a shame that the new


boss would.

Out of respect for the late Arthur Ashe and USAT's reporting, I should clarify my use of the word"outing." Ashe had AIDS as the result of a blood transfusion during his heart bypass surgery. He did not choose the timing of USAT's story, so he made his announcement based on the newspaper's impending story. The timing of the story, given the great respect people held for Ashe, created some anger with the newspaper. But Gene Policinski, now director of the First Amendment Center in Nashville, always maintained that the newspaper proceeded responsibly. Frank Deford of Sports Illustrated countered, saying that a number of reporters close to Ashe, including Deford, knew about Ashe's condition and chose not to make the revelation out of respect for him.

Having 'special sections'crime and more. And did you know that through the Library you have access to a range of digitised files from the FBI?

FBI Files in Archives Unbound

Through the Library’s subscription to Archives Unbound (an enormous digital primary source database) you have access to over 20 collections of digitised material direct from the FBI, covering over 70 years of American history. You’ll spot some famous cases and names within these but possibly also some less known. However, between them they provide a fascinating insight into the political, cultural and social climate of the United States in the 20th century.

FBI File: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were a nondescript couple accused in 1950 by the U.S. government of operating a Soviet spy network and giving the Soviet Union


plans for the atomic bomb. The trial of the Rosenbergs, which began in March 6, 1951, became a political event of greater importance than any damage they may have done to the United States. It was one of the most controversial trials of the 20th century. Their guilt and the harshness of their sentences continue to be vigorously debated to this day. Continue reading →

On Tuesday 30th January we’ll be holding a Discovery Day event in the Main Library where representatives from 3 publishers of digitised primary source collections and our very own Centre for Research Collections will be on hand to help you navigate through and find useful material in the huge range of primary sources you have access to at the Library.

The University of Edinburgh holdsaccessed via the Primary Source database list.

This is part of an occasional series highlighting some of the online resources available at the Library that will be of interest to students and staff in History, Classics and Archaeology.

While previous posts in this series have looked at groups of online primary source collections, in this post I wanted to highlight resources that give you access to film and moving images, including films, documentaries, TV programmes, public information films, archival film footage, cinema newsreels, advertising, home movies, etc.

Film provides a fascinating insight into the past through documentary, archival and amateur film footage and a deliberately constructed historical world through feature films. However, using film as ‘historical evidence’ is far from straightforward; specific skills are required to understand the complexities of the


students.

At present the Library has access to 9 collections from Archives Unbound, primarily covering topics and events from the twentieth century with one exception. Descriptions of these collections comes from the Archives Unbound site. Continue reading →

This is the first in an occasional series highlighting some of the online resources available at the Library that will be of interest to students and staff in History, Classics and Archaeology.

The Digital National Security Archive (DNSA) from ProQuest gives you access to a vast collection of important declassified U.S. government documents. This provides valuable primary source material central to U.S. foreign and military policy since 1945 and helps advance research in history, politics and international relations.

Within DNSA are collections that cover U.S. policy towards critical world events, including their military, intelligence,atmosphere was buzzing and footfall appeared to be on the up.

Here are 4 year old Connor’s highlights of the Saturday:

The Grinch ~ The Grinch is on trend again this festive season with the new animated movie having landed on the big screen. I was already a fan of the original film starring the incomparable Jim Carrey, however the smallest member of our family is now taking an active interest in the character. You can imagine his excitement when early in his comic con experience he was confronted with a giant snow globe featuring the miserly green creature! The queues were never too long for this festive treat which meant we were clambering in beside the Grinch and getting covered in snowflake-like paper on both days of the con.


catered for too. From commercial to rarer items, if you have a Christmas list from a geek, Comic Con is the place to shop at.

Do you want to see what all the buzz is about? Then why not check out MCM’s website and book tickets for one of their many awesome events next year: MCM Comic Con

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Sixties Gold landed at Symphony Hall, Birmingham last night and it was an exceptional evening to bear witness to. As a number of amazing singers and instrumentalists who mostly made their names in the swinging sixties took to the stage to play their signature tunes and number one hits to an enthusiastic crowd. The venue was in the most part populated by the fans who heard these popular tracks thedesign, Bobbi Brown Cosmetics will launch three new services, exclusive to John Lewis & Partners, Oxford Street.

To celebrate the launch of this innovative new space, the esteemed Bobbi Brown Pro Artists made guest appearances during the month of October, giving customers the opportunity to book personalised makeup lessons and receive bespoke tip and tricks based on their beauty needs.

We are excited to report from The National Television Awards in January with our glam new looks courtesy of Bobbi Brown make-up!


(Darwin, Northern Territory) started broadcasting in 1971, both named after the base city.

Although radio programs could be distributed nationally by landline, television relay facilities were not in place until the early 1960s. This meant that news bulletins had to be sent to each capital city by teleprinter, to be prepared and presented separately in each city, with filmed materials copied manually and sent to each state. Other television programs at the time included the popular Six O'Clock Rock hosted by Johnny O'Keefe, Mr. Squiggle, as well as operas and plays.

In 1973 New South Wales Rugby League boss Kevin Humphreys negotiated rugby league's first television deal with the ABC.
In 1975, colour television was permanently introduced into Australia after experimental colour broadcasts since 1967, and within a decade the ABCin vans, spirited down a side road into the actual prison building. Down in the basement was a complex of six "prefabricated" cells. "The cells were on springs, keeping them slightly off balance and causing disorientation among some detainees," report the AP's Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman.

Those cells were torture chambers for the world's most infamous terrorists. One resident was Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the architect of the 9/11 plot. In his month of detention, officials waterboarded him 183 times. Former government officials pinky-swore to the AP that Mohammed wasn't waterboarded at Bright Light, but detainees there "endured sleep deprivation and were doused with water, slapped or forced to stand in painful positions."

The AP reporters didn't just take its readers deep inside Bright Light through the clarity of their


writing. They built an interactive schematic of the prison, which you can explore here. Click on the icons, and street-view imagery pops up, allowing you to see what officials saw on their way to work. Satellite photography provided by GeoEye gives a bird's-eye view of the facility, while reporter Goldman narrates a tour through the basement prison, its back-gate entranceway, and the surrounding landscape "slightly north of the city center, maybe a 20 minute drive from the smaller of the two airports in Bucharest."

In July, Glenn Carle, a former CIA interrogator, told Danger Room about his time with a detainee he called CAPTUS in a similar secret CIA prison. He helped "psychologically dislocate" CAPTUS, he said: "Noise, temperature, one's sense of time, sleep, diet, light, darkness, physical freedom— the normal reference points for one's senses are all distorted."

But when the CIA felt CAPTUS was holding out on them, they shipped him off to a black site like Bright Light for much rougher treatment. Carle came to believe CAPTUS didn't actually have the information he was suspected of possessing, and was outright "innocent." The CIA unceremoniously freed him years later.

That won't happen to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who is now detained in Guantanamo Bay after President Bush moved him in 2006 and President Obama ordered the black sites shuttered in 2009. There has never been any accounting for torture in the war on terrorism; an inquiry by a federal prosecutor into alleged CIA torturers – not the officials who ordered them to torture – recently dropped 99


Diversity in Otolaryngology Residency Programs: A Survey of Otolaryngology Program Directors.
Objective As the population of the United States becomes increasingly racially and ethnically diverse, it is important that the medical profession reflect these changes. Otolaryngology has previously been identified as one of the surgical subspecialties with the smallest presence of those underrepresented in medicine. In the context of this study, the term underrepresented in medicine is defined as blacks, Latinos, Native American, and Native Hawaiians. The purpose of this study was to describe the current state of otolaryngology residency programs in terms of diversity of resident and faculty cohort, explore general interviewing practices, and investigate recruitment of underrepresented in medicine applicants. Study Design Survey via electronic questionnaire. Setting Academic otolaryngology residency programs. Subjects and Methods A 14-item surveyand female) participated in this study. First, a questionnaire in three parts was constructed. It included the following sections:

1\. Demographic information of participants and questions about their familiarity with the ADR center.

2\. Nineteen questions about the knowledge of nurses regarding drugs and their adverse effects.

3\. Seventeen questions related to the attitude of nurses towards pharmacovigilance.

After obtaining permission from the hospital authorities, questionnaires were distributed in all the hospital wards, through two steps.

In the first step, the extent of knowledge and attitude of nurses towards pharmacovigilance before the educational program were collected using the questionnaire. Three months after conducting the first step, nurses participated in an educational program held by the Iranian ADR center. In addition, hand-outs on ADR and means of its reporting were distributed in all the


wards. Two months after the educational program, the nurses were re-evaluated by the same questionnaire.

Results and Disscussion
=======================

In the first step, 90 filled questionnaires were obtained (74 women and 10 men). Six forms were omitted from the study, due to being uncompleted.

In the second step, 71 completed forms were obtained (59 women and 12 men).

Twelve nursing staff participated in the seminar (10 women and 2 men).The age of the nurses were between 20 and 54, and in terms of education, most participants had a bachelor's degree.

Talegheni Medical center has emergency, internal, women, obstetrics, radiology, ENT, hematology, orthopedics, dialysis, ICU, general surgery, heart, endocrine, digestion, psychology, NICU, CCU, vascular surgery and pediatrics wards.

The collected data were entered into the Excel software, and then analyzed with the SPSS statistical software. Followingcount each of rape, sexual assault by penetration, outrage of modesty and extortion.

A second sexual assault by penetration charge involving the girl, one count of cheating and three other extortion charges were taken into consideration.

The court heard that Shazwan had other victims.

On separate occasions in 2014, he snuck up on two couples behaving intimately at HDB staircases and recorded them on video.

After introducing himself as a police officer, he cheated one of his victims out of $200 in August that year and extorted cash totalling $1,720 from another the following month.

The court heard that on Oct 24, 2014, Shazwan tailed the 16-year-old couple to a staircase landing and photographed them having sex.

Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Sellakumaran Sellamuthoo said the girl had met her boyfriend after school at around


1.45pm that day and they went to a block of flats in the north-western part of Singapore.

They went to a staircase landing on the seventh storey where they got intimate and the girl performed oral sex on the boy.

FOLLOWED

Shazwan, who had followed the pair, spied on them from the eighth storey. He snapped two photographs of the couple.

When they were done, Shazwan came forward. He wore a lanyard displaying his police warrant card.

DPP Sellakumaran said he was also wearing a Jurong Police Division Headquarters polo T-shirt and a pair of blue police pants.

Shazwan took down the teenagers' particulars and told them they had committed an offence of "public nudity".

When the girl told him she did not want her parents to find out about the incident, he replied hewould help the pair, but at the risk of losing his job. He then engaged them for about an hour for a solution.

As a bargain, Shazwan suggested filming them having sex. The boy was against the idea, but Shazwan insisted it was their only option. Out of fear, the couple eventually gave in.

While filming the teenagers, Shazwan decided to join in and forced the girl to perform oral sex on him.

He then raped her.

Shazwan left the scene once he was done, but told the couple to stay put.

At around 5pm, he called the boy to tell him they could go home.

But he was not done.

THREAT

Two days later, Shazwan contacted the boy and asked for $40. He threatened him with the sexually explicit videos.

The teenager complied and transferred the


money over in two transactions.

Three days after her rape, the girl met her friends at school and started crying as she could not control herself any more.

DPP Sellakumaran said: "She disclosed the incident to her friends. Her friends managed to find the accused's identity through his Facebook profile and they encouraged her to make a police report.

"Later that day, the victim disclosed the matter to her family who then accompanied her to make a police report."

Shazwan was arrested hours later.

DPP Sellakumaran urged Judicial Commissioner (JC) Foo Chee Hock to sentence him to 18 years' jail with between 12 and 15 strokes of the cane.

He said: "Instead of upholding the law to protect life and property, the accused had lawlessly and brazenly abused his authority as a police officerask members of the public they approach for their identification.

Former police officers The New Paper spoke to said the officers can also search them for items like dangerous weapons.

Mr Davy Chan, who was a policeman between 1967 and 1979, said that the officer can touch areas such as the person's waist or thighs.

He added: "But note that only a female officer can touch a woman.

"Officers are also not allowed to tell the people they approach to strip."

Mr Joseph Tan, who served in the police force from 1985 to 1992, said police officers tend to approach people whom they think appear suspicious.

Members of the public then have to cooperate with the officers.

Mr Tan, who founded the Crime Library, a voluntary group that helps track missing people, said: "If somebody


Personal tools

House of Elros

The House of Elros was the line of descendants begun by Elros, the son of Eärendil and brother of Elrond. Due to his ancestry, he was counted as one of the Half-elven, and given the choice of the life of the Eldar or the Gift of Men. He chose to live as a mortal, but was granted an extraordinary lifespan of five hundred years. He passed his longevity on to the descendants of his House, though none enjoyed such a count of years as Elros himself.

Though Númenor and its Kings were no more, the House of Elros did not end in the Downfall. The Kings had been descended through Elros' great-great-grandson Meneldur, but another branch of the House also survived: the Lords of Andúnië, descendedfrom Meneldur's elder sister Silmariën. The line of the Lords of Andúnië continued down to Elendil and his sons Isildur and Anárion, and so was carried from Númenor to Middle-earth, surviving in the Kings of Arnor and of Gondor. Even at the time of the War of the Ring, some six thousand years after the death of its founder, there was still a living heir to the House of Elros: none other than Aragorn himself.

Contents

The Family Tree of the House of Elros

Showing the descendants of Elros Tar-Minyatur. All information in the tree is from the Unfinished Tales, either from the chart "The earlier generations of the Line of Elros"[2] or from "The Line of Elros: Kings of Númenor"[1] unless otherwise specified. The figures after the names are those


while yet in vigour of mind.

↑ Silmarien was the eldest child of Tar-Elendil but since the Sceptre by the law at that time went to the eldest male child, her brother Írimon became king.

Later Generations Notes

↑ Tar-Telperiën became the second ruling queen even though she had a brother; apparently the law of succession was of simple primogeniture. She was the first ruler to not surrender the Sceptre before death.

↑ Tar-Atanamir the Great was also called "the Unwilling" since he was the first king to refuse to lay down his life or to renounce the Sceptre.

↑ Herucalmo, the husband of Tar-Vanimeldë, took the sceptre upon her death, calling himself Tar-Anducal. He was not counted in the Line of Kings as the 17th ruler.

↑ Tar-Calmacil was the first to becalled (by the King's Men) by his name in Adûnaic: Ar-Belzagar.

↑ Ar-Adûnakhôr was the first to take the sceptre with an Adûnaic title (however, his name was inscribed in the Scrolls in Quenya as Tar-Herunúmen).

↑ Amandil sailed into the West to seek clemency for Númenor; he was never heard from again.

↑ Míriel should have been the fourth Ruling Queen, but upon the death of her father her cousin Pharazôn took her to wife against her will and usurped the sceptre. She died in the Downfall.

↑ Ar-Pharazôn seized the sceptre from Míriel. He died in the Downfall.


ZAMBOANGA, Philippines — Muslim rebels holding more than 100 people hostage in the southern Philippines exchanged gunfire with government troops Saturday despite efforts by the country’s vice president to arrange a cease-fire and end the six-day standoff.

The standoff began Monday when about 200 fighters from a Moro National Liberation Front rebel faction stormed several coastal communities in Zamboanga city and seized residents. The military says 22 people, including 15 rebels, have since been killed in sporadic clashes between the guerrillas and troops who have surrounded them.

Vice President Jejomar Binay said rebel leader Nur Misuari agreed to a truce late Friday by telephone, and he relayed the news to Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin, who has been helping deal with the crisis in Zamboanga city, a major port. Binay saidQuestion Time (Council)
President
The next item is Question Time (B6-0010/2008).
The following questions are addressed to the Council.
Subject: Immigration in the wake of the EU-Africa summit
Can the Council provide information on the measures proposed for adoption in order to implement the agreements reached at the recent summit held in Lisbon between the EU and the countries of Africa on the subject of immigration?
Janez Lenarčič
President-in-Office of the Council. - It was agreed at the EU-Africa summit held on 9 December last year in Lisbon to establish a strategic partnership which would encompass all areas and issues of mutual interest.
I would especially like to draw your attention to three important documents which were adopted at that summit: the Lisbon Declaration, the EU-Africa Joint Strategy and its First Action Plan. This First


Action Plan of the Joint Strategy establishes a partnership between Africa and the European Union in the supplementary fields of migration, mobility and employment.
The partnership between Africa and the European Union in the areas of migration, mobility and employment should ensure comprehensive responses to these issues with the specific aim of creating more and better jobs for Africans and better control of migration.
At the moment, the competent bodies of the Council are studying further measures that will need to be undertaken on the basis of the decisions of the Lisbon summit and on the basis of the EU-Africa Joint Strategy and its First Action Plan, including the partnership in the area of migration.
Manuel Medina Ortega
(ES) Madam President, the question is: what type of measures can be taken effectively,Commission on budgetary discipline and sound financial management has defined the financial framework for the European Union and the 27 Member States for the period between 2007 and 2013. This interinstitutional agreement was adopted in May. In July 2007 the legislative package on cohesion policy was adopted on the basis of that agreement. In short, after the enlargement in January 2007, there was no need for a reallocation of resources.
Claude Moraes
You spoke about the wider analysis of structural funding, but you may be aware that, last week, Eurostat published figures which showed which were the richest areas in the European Union and the richest cities. These included my own constituency of London, yet I live in a part of London which ranks among some of the poorest areas


labour relations issues and support the ideas of 'flexicurity' at work?
Janez Lenarčič
President-in-Office of the Council. - In December 2007, on the basis of comprehensive studies carried out by European institutions as well as social partners, the Committee adopted decisions on eight common principles relating to 'flexicurity'. Those principles were also confirmed by the European Council.
The Council noted in these decisions that the common principles should contribute to the implementation of the new cycle of the Lisbon Strategy. Recently, the Commission presented a proposal on integrated guidelines for 2008-2010. We can expect the Council to devote particular attention to flexicurity in the debates on this proposal, which have already started.
Responsibility for implementing the integrated guidelines will rest with the Member States. It is expected that, when reporting to theCouncil and the Commission on the implementation of those guidelines, they will refer to their regulations on flexicurity.
The Council is of the opinion that it is necessary to raise citizens' awareness of flexicurity policies and of the importance of those policies for reforming European economic and social models. Therefore, in its decision, the Council called on the Commission to instigate a public initiative to enable the relevant interest groups in the labour market to adopt the common principles more easily. The Council also asked the Commission to keep it regularly informed about the measures in question.
As regards the two important legislative proposals in the field of working conditions - I am talking about the Working Time Directive and the Temporary Employment Directive - the Slovenian Presidency is prepared


accept those principles, which were adopted in December last year.
At the same time, the Council called on the Commission to keep it informed of the relevant measures. The Council asked the Commission to act in a particular way, and we are now waiting for some feedback from the Commission.
Subject: EU mission to Chad
Will the Council make a statement on the EU's mission to Chad, and in particular on the present security situation on the ground? Will the Council give assurances that all necessary equipment for this difficult mission is available? How is the Council coordinating with the UN over the long-term situation in the region?
Janez Lenarčič
President-in-Office of the Council. - The process of shaping the forces for the European mission to Chad, which did not go so smoothly,was completed by 11 January this year to the extent that the commander was able to recommend commencement of the operation. On 28 January the Council confirmed the operation plan, the so-called 'o-plan', and adopted a decision on its commencement.
As we know, the Irish General Patrick Nash is commanding the operation. The force consists of 3 700 soldiers from 14 Member States. These forces are composed, equipped and trained to fulfil their mission satisfactorily in a difficult environment. Their rules on the use of force are strict and in line with the mandate laid down in Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter.
As we know, that mandate was given in Resolution 1778 of the United Nations Security Council. The European Union's operation, known as the EUFOR Chad-Central African


Republic operation, will be conducted for one year from the date of declaration of the initial operational capability and will be neutral and impartial.
Planning was executed from the outset in close cooperation with the United Nations. To ensure transparency, efficiency and the possibility of modifying the measures, appropriate coordination mechanisms have been established at all levels, in New York and Brussels, at operation headquarters in Paris and on the ground.
After recent clashes between government forces and Chadian rebel groups, the security situation in Chad is now more stable. The deployment of the EU mission is continuing and we expect EUFOR to reach its initial operational capability by mid-March.
Let me mention some decisions adopted by the Council at the last session on Monday, the day before yesterday. The CouncilChina in relation to Burma, how productive were Mr Fassino's recent meetings with China and other Asian nations?
In line with the GAERC conclusions of 15 October, the Council reaffirmed on 14 December that the EU stands ready to review, amend or further reinforce restrictive measures against the Government of Burma in the light of developments on the ground. What further restrictive measures would the Council consider (seeing as those presently in place are having somewhat of a minimal impact) and can the Council set a deadline for their implementation?
According to a recent fact-finding visit by the NGO CSW to the Thai-Burmese border, the number of people killed by the Burma Army in the crackdown on peaceful protests in September was far higher than official figures. Monks and civilians


who had fled Burma since September gave CSW first-hand accounts of the regime's brutality against the pro-democracy movement. CSW has found that hundreds may have been killed during the Burma protests, and forced labour and rape continue in ethnic areas. How does the Council respond to this report? According to the Council, the EU is determined to assist the people of Burma/Myanmar further on their path to democracy, security and prosperity. How does the Council propose to do so more specifically?
Janez Lenarčič
President-in-Office of the Council. - I should mention from the outset that on 6 November last year, the European Union High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, Javier Solana, appointed a Special Envoy for Burma/Myanmar to highlight the importance which the European Union attaches todemocratic change, reconciliation, improvement of human rights and development of the country.
Under this mandate, the Special Envoy, Mr Fassino, has asked for a meeting with the United Nations Special Adviser, Mr Gambari, and has also consulted the key partners of the European Union.
In November last year, in the margins of the EU-ASEAN Summit in Singapore, the Special Envoy met the representative of the ASEAN countries. In December he also went on his first mission to China. He met the representatives of Burma and its neighbours in Rome and during visits to the United Nations in Geneva and New York, and he will also be meeting their representatives in Brussels.
These consultations and political and diplomatic contacts made by our Special Representative will continue in the coming months. Particular attention