Vesna Peric Zimonjic
BELGRADE, Jun 30 2009 (IPS) – The torture of drug addicts who had turned to the Serbian Orthodox Church for help has sent shock waves across the country.
The methods used at the Crna Reka monastery and its rehabilitation centre, some 300 kilometres southwest of capital Belgrade, had been secret for years until the weekly Vreme placed two cellphone videos made by a former patient on its website.
The videos show head priest Branislav Peranovic and an employee repeatedly beating patients with shovels, and kicking them inside a room decorated with icons. The patient who made videos told the weekly he witnessed at least 40 to 50 such beatings.
The authenticity of the videos was confirmed by Peranovic, who told Serbian media that the methods wer…
Mel Frykberg
BREJ, Gaza, Aug 5 2009 (IPS) – Tens of thousands of children in Gaza are still suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) following Israel s three-week bombing December- January.
Several crisis counselling teams run by international organisations and NGOs have been carrying out intervention programmes aimed at helping Gaza s most vulnerable put the pieces of their lives back together.
But these groups warn that while there has been some improvement in the collective psyche of Gaza s children, the long-term effects of war are now beginning to show, and unless the rights of Gazans are respected, the next generation s future will be hard to predict.
What is needed is sustained advocacy at a political level to ensure practical changes can b…
Analysis by Bankole Thompson*
DETROIT, Michigan, Aug 26 2009 (IPS) – The message machine of the Barack Obama administration appears to need oiling, as the U.S. president s push for a Sep. 15 deadline for a bipartisan deal on healthcare reform in the U.S. Congress continues to meet stiff resistance.
The debate is playing out like the battle of Armageddon between forces who want serious changes in the healthcare system to cover an estimated 47 million U.S. citizens without health insurance, and those with vested interests in preserving the status quo.
According to an analysis by Plunkett Research Ltd, total U.S. healthcare expenditures will increase from 2.39 trillion dollars in 2008 to 2.72 trillion dollars in 2010, with annual increases averaging about 7 percent.
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PHNOM PENH, Oct 28 2009 (IPS) – Mey Chamnan has learned the hard way about the global economic crisis. Both she and her husband were fired from their 50 U.S.-dollar a month jobs in a local garment factory after declining overseas orders caused huge job losses across Cambodia s garment industry.
FRESNO, California , Oct 21 2009 – They call it Tortilla Flats a haphazard cluster of tents and tarps sprawling across a sidewalk and a vacant lot smack in the middle of Fresno, a city of 500,000 in California s Central Valley.
The tent city, reminiscent of the Depression-era Hoovervilles depicted by author John Steinbeck in his classic novel The Grapes of Wrath , is home to a shifting population of about 70 homeless people.
That s where I met a couple named Kerry and John. They asked me not to use their last names. They live in a cramped two-person tent strewn with blankets and clothes. Both are native to the Valley. And both are now homeless for the first time in their lives.
Kerry was a preschool teacher until a year ago, when her world caved in. I got sick, she …
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Jan 21 2010 (IPS) – Last week, the price of a small can of rice was two dollars. On Tuesday, it cost Haitians 3.50 dollars. A gallon of cooking oil that cost 10 dollars only days ago now fetches 20 dollars.
Haitians displaced by the massive earthquake that devastated their country form a long line to wait for UN-distributed meals. Credit: UN Photo/Log…