THE OFFICIAL WEB SITE OF THE MADISON TIMES WEEKLY NEWSPAPER

Compiled By Heidi M. Pascual

• Whistleblowers pay a heavy price

LONDON (IPS/GIN) — Manik Chandra Saha, a journalist and social activist in Bangladesh, was killed in January this year after a long campaign exposing corruption. But his campaign could have made a difference.

The Bangladesh government is currently considering a new law to protect whistleblowers —       individuals who expose         corruption.

And it helps that Saha has been short-listed posthumously for an award to be presented in Kenya in October this year by Transparency International (TI), an independent organization campaigning to expose corruption and to support others who expose it.

"The awards are encouraging investigation and research into corruption," said Sarah Tyler from the TI office in Berlin. "And they are helping raise awareness. We receive hundreds of e-mails from people raising questions, saying that without such awareness many of these people will continue to live in a hidden world."

The TI awards seek "to reward activists that bring significant improvement to checking corruption, not simply to those who have passed away, or who make a lot of noise."

But of the eight short-listed for the award this year, three have been short-listed posthumously.

Among these is Hasan Balikçi, a Turkish electrical engineer for the state-owned company, Turkey Electric Distribution A.S. (TEDAS), who was murdered in September 2001. Balikçi rooted out people responsible for stealing billions of dollars from the company. His death prompted the strengthening of laws regulating corrupt activities in this sector.

People in the local TI chapter had said that short-listing him would help pressure the government to take anti-corruption demands into consideration, Tyler said.

Dr. Milica Bisic from Bosnia and Herzegovina, professor of economics at the University of Belgrade and former head of the tax administration in Republika Srpska, the Serb part of Bosnia-Herzegovina, has been short-listed for taking on corruption in the taxation system. TI was told that short-listing Dr. Bisic last year could have helped push through reforms, Tyler said.

The TI integrity awards committee selected the eight short-listed individuals out of a total of 30 candidates, nominated from every continent. The committee is made up of 11 prominent anti-corruption campaigners from around the word, and includes former TI integrity award winner and investigating magistrate in the Elf-Aquitaine oil corruption case in France, Eva Joly.

"Corruption blights poor and rich countries alike and too often we forget the efforts made by individuals on the ground to root out the corrupt," TI chairman Peter Eigen said in a statement announcing the short-listed candidates. "The tide is changing and today we increasingly see that intolerance towards thieving public officials is growing worldwide."

A final announcement of the winners is due Sept. 12. The winners will be recognized at an awards ceremony in October 2004 in Nairobi. — Sanjay Suri  

• Guarani Indians fight to keep ancestral land

GENEVA (IPS/GIN) — The Guaraní community of Tentayapi, in southern Bolivia, one of the last bastions of the indigenous group's traditional way of life, is fighting to keep a foreign oil company out of its ancestral territory.

One of the community's leaders, Saúl Carayury, told the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations, meeting this week in Geneva, that Maxus Energy, a subsidiary of the Spanish-Argentine firm Repsol-YPF based in Spain, intends to explore and drill for hydrocarbons on communally owned indigenous land in Tentayapi.

Bolivia's national law on agrarian reform, enacted in 1996, created a new form of rural property that recognizes the communal rights of indigenous peoples over land they have traditionally inhabited, known as Ancestral Community Lands.

The Tentayapi community is opposed to the oil company operating on its land because "we know that it will bring with it formal education, which leads to the loss of our cultural identity," Carayury told IPS (Inter Press Service).

In the case of other communities in Bolivia living in areas that have been granted in concession to foreign oil companies, native lifestyles and cultures have been heavily and negatively affected by environmental damage, said the indigenous leader.

Foreign oil companies including Repsol-YPF were granted contracts to exploit Bolivia's abundant natural gas reserves — the second-largest in South America after Venezuela — under the partial privatization of the industry carried out since the mid-1990s.

But the Guaraní Indians in Tentayapi, some 60 families totalling around 380 people, have decided to put up a fight to keep oil firms out and are attempting to block access to Maxus Energy, Carayury told the Working Group.

Through that decision, the Guaraní are exercising their rights as an indigenous community, as recognized by the Bolivian constitution and by the national law that ratified International Labor Organization (ILO) convention 169 on the rights of native peoples.

Tentayapi — which means "the last people" — is one of the last bulwarks of the Guaraní cultural traditions, said Carayury. The local residents, proud of never having fallen captive to Spanish conquistadors or invaders, have maintained their traditional form of government, headed by a community assembly. For generations, the Tentayapi community has fought to defend its identity and culture against outside pressures, Carayury said.

 — Gustavo Capdevila

END OF INTERNATIONAL NEWS