Democracy Now! August 14, 1997

Chemical Weapons Incineration; NY Torture; US Policy and Africa
|(14 Minutes) Chemical Weapons Incineration The Pentagon is preparing to dispose of 60 million pounds of lethal chemical weapons. Army engineers want to burn the chemicals and have been testing incinerator tech. at a prototype facility at Johnston Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. GUEST: Graig Williams, the nat’l spokesperson of the Chemical Weapons Working Group, an int’l coalition advocating safe methods of chemical weapons disposal. GUEST: Mark Brown, an environmental activist and the former dir. of Greenpeace OR. (9 Minutes) New York Torture A 25-year-old NYPD officer was charged with assaulting and brutalizing a Haitian immigrant, Abner Louima (33). Louima alleges officers beat him in the squad car and in the bathroom in the precinct and subjected him to racial slurs and sodomized him. GUEST: Casilda Roper Simpson, atty. for Louima. GUEST: Richie Perez, of the National Congress for Puerto Rican Rights, and advocacy and research group based in NYC. (27 Minutes) US Policy and Africa The Clinton administration announced recently an initiative to create an all-African military force in Africa to intervene in regional crises. The Clinton administration’s entire policy towards Africa is being seriously questioned by human rights organizations and other organizations both in African and US. GUEST: Caleb Rossiter, dir. of Demilitarization for Democracy. GUEST: Dr. Sulayman Nyang, prof. in the Department of African Studies at Howard Univesity. GUEST: Peter Takirambudde, dir. Human Rights Watch/Africa