- U.S.: Growing Problem Of Guantanamo Detainees
- Poisonous Fish -Something Fishy About them
Sports without Tobacco: Play it Clean, Play it safe
Keralamonitor.com May 31, 2002
Sports rejuvenates life. It ensures a healthy living. Sports promote a feeling of fraternity among people and communities and foster good relations between countries. Above all, sports are an occasion to get together and imbibe the virtues of sportsmanship and healthy competition, particularly among the youth. The health and social benefit of sports prompted the World Health Organisation (WHO) to declare physical activity as this year’s theme for World Health Day. Unfortunately, over the years tobacco has invaded the sporting arena through sponsorships. Therefore, the theme for this year’s World No-Tobacco Day is Tobacco Free Sports and the slogan is Play it Clean since sports are increasingly being misused as a medium to promote tobacco, particularly among the youth.
The invasion of tobacco has undermined the values and principles that sports represent. If sports symbolize good health, tobacco stands for exactly the opposite - disease and death. Tobacco kills more than four million people every year. It kills nearly half its long-term users!For the professional athlete, tobacco use lowers performance levels. Worse, a shining career in sports can actually end in cancer. For sportspersons, like others, tobacco use affects lung function, muscular strength, sleep patterns, and causes other health problems.
Unlike cancer and heart disease, which may take many years to develop, smoking can affect the respiratory system within a year or two, the extent of the damage depending on the duration of smoking and the number of cigarettes smoked.
Quitting can improve lung function and reduce other harmful effects of smoking. The longer a person smokes the greater the risk of irreversible damage. Just five years of smoking can cause lasting damage.
WHO and its partners are launching a campaign to clean sports of all forms of tobacco – its consumption , exposure to second-hand smoke, advertising, promotion and marketing.
As far as India is concerned, the Government has taken stringent legislative and administrative steps to dicourage the use of tobacco. Tobacco is used both for smoking and in smokeless form. The smoked forms of tobacco are bidi, cigarette, chillum and chutta . Smokeless forms of tobacco include khaini, gutkha, mainpuri tobacco, mawa and mishri. Cigarette smoking constitutes 13 per cent of the smoked tobacco consumption with bidi accounting for the major proportion. Pan masala was introduced in the Indian market in 1975 and pan masala containing tobacco is popularly known as gutka. There has been a tremendous surge in consumption of gutka in the country.
Based on the a survey, it is estimated that 18.4 crore (15 crore men and 3.4 crore women) use tobacco in some form or the other. It is estimated that 9.6 crore persons use tobacco in smokeless form whereas 11.2 crore smoke tobacco.
According to a few community-based surveys in India, it is estimated that 8 lakh deaths could be attributed to tobacco use. It is estimated that half of the long-term smokers will be eventually killed by the habit and of these half will die during the productive middle age.
Therefore, a strong need was felt to discourage the use of tobacco products. A comprehensive Bill was introduced in Parliament (Rajya Sabha) to discourage the use of tobacco products on March 07, 2001 and was referred to the Standing Committee on March 12, 2001 for examination. The Standing Committee returned the Bill in December 2001 with certain recommendations. It was decided by the Ministry of Health to accept all the recommendations and the file was sent to the Department of Legal Affairs and on receiving of their comments the file has been sent to the Department of Legislative Affairs for incorporating the suggestions.
The Salient features of the Bill include prohibition of advertisements of all tobacco products besides providing for its regulation in trade and commerce. Smoking has been made prohibited in public places and selling of tobacco products to persons below the age of 18 years has been banned. Indications of nicotine are a must on the packets. It has also made compulsory to indicate the warning against the use of tobacco on the package in English as well as in other Indian languages. A total ban has been placed on sponsoring of any sport/cultural events by cigarette and companies producing tobacco products.
Sub-Inspectors of Police or equivalent officers of State Food or Drug Administration of the Central/State Governments have been empowered to carry out the provisions of this legislation and confiscation of the goods in case of any violation. The owner of the goods, however, will be given the option to pay a fine in lieu of the confiscation, which should be equal to the value of the goods confiscated. A fine up to Rs. 200- has been imposed for minor offense relating to smoking in public places and sale of tobacco products to minors.
The Bill would be effective as far as the provisions regarding cigarettes are concerned, all over India. But for other tobacco products only to the UTs, Punjab, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and Goa. This is because other tobacco products (other than cigarettes) are in the State list and only these States have passed resolutions in their State legislatures undertaking to adopt a Central law in the matter. The other States could adopt the law pertaining to other tobacco products merely by passing a resolution in their legislature.
Instructions have been issued through the Cabinet Secretariat to prohibiting smoking in hospitals, dispensaries, educational institutions, conference rooms, domestic flights, AC sleeper coaches and suburban trains. Direct tobacco-related advertisements are prohibited on Doordarshan and All India Radio. The cable TV regulation Act has recently been amended prohibiting tobacco advertising on cable TV also. Under the rules, a warning "Chewing of Tobacco is injurious to health" has also been made mandatory. A number of States have introduced laws banning smoking in public places and advertisements in public places and public vehicles.
Keralamonitor.com May 31, 2002
Poisonous Fish -Something Fishy About them
O.N. Jaiswal*
The word "fish" usually brings to our minds, the silhouette of gentle and delicate creatures that mean no harm to anybody, at least not to the human beings. While Salmon, Tuna , Hilsa and many others have been an inseparable part of culinary traditions across the world, there are a few species of fish which are enlisted among the deadliest creatures in the world. They are loaded with toxins, ready to unleash on anyone who dares to intimidate them.
The temperate and tropical marine waters with extensive fringing reefs around Andaman and Nicobar Islands offer an ideal habitat for a large number of fish species - many of them ornamental and venomous in nature. More than one thousand marine organisms are known to be poisonous. About 500 species of marine fish constitute a major biological hazard to humans when the go diving, snorkeling, fishing. These fish are found in all seas and oceans but usually occur in large numbers around islands and coral reefs than along continental shores. Most fish can be consumed without any fear or ill effect on health but certain fish have long been known to cause illness or sometimes even death.
The term venomous is usually applied to those fish which have a definite venom apparatus capable of producing poison. One of the most serious and widespread forms of fish poisoning is caused by ciguatoxin of ciguatera fish, a complex nerve poison which often proves fatal. This form of poisoning is, however, related with food-chain relationship of this fish. Fish become poisonous when they feed upon noxious material such as toxic algae, dinoflagellates, fungus, invertebrates or other fish contaminated by the toxin. The common and immediate symptoms of the ciguatera poisoning are gastrointestinal disorder, diarrheoa, nausea, neurological and muscular weakness. Sometimes the infected person goes into coma and may die due to respiratory failure.
Fish poison or ‘ichthyosarcotoxism’ has been classified into several categories which include Clupeoid fish poisoning and Tetrodon fish poisoning. In Japan, a puffer called Fugu is quite popular, while the flesh of the fish is free of any poison and is edible, its liver, gonads, intestine and skin usually contain a toxin called tetrodotoxin, which causes an instant and painful death. Only specially trained and licensed chefs are allowed to prepare dishes out of "Fugu" in Japan. But still accidents do happen leading to deaths sometimes.
Other species of potentially hazardous fish are those which carry venom-injecting mechanism in them. About 200 such species like Sting Rays, Scorpion fish, Stone fish, Stargazers and Catfish are among others. These are an extreme danger to anyone probing the fish environment, especially divers, swimmers and fishermen. In one such incident, a fisherman died after being pierced in the throat by a venomous fish while fishing in the seas near Nicobar Islands.
The most viable way to evade fish poisoning is to adopt certain precautionary measures. Experts advise against consuming viscera of most of the fish, even non-poisonous. While consuming the edible flesh it is always better to soak the parts into fresh or salt water for at lease 30 minutes. Another important measure is to verify the edibility of a fish with local people or experts. Venomous fish which inflict wounds and inject poisons are to be treated with more caution as they are many times more dangerous than other groups. Utmost care must be taken while walking barefoot in shallow water especially in low tides. If attacked the wound should be washed and soaked in hot water for 30 to 60 minutes. Magnesium sulphate can also be added to the water and medical help should be rushed to the victim. The best way to deal with them is not to touch or disturb them in anyway but observe and admire their beauty from a safer distance --Port Blair with
Zoological Survey of India,Port Blair
U.S.: Growing Problem Of Guantanamo Detainees
(New York, May 30, 2002) As the U.S. administration prepares to send some 150 new detainees to Guantanamo Bay, Human Rights Watch warned that their legal status is growing more problematic by the day. In a letter sent this week to U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Human Rights Watch challenged plans that the Bush administration has floated to pursue troubling lines of prosecution or even to hold the detainees indefinitely without trial.
"The Bush administration cannot hold people indefinitely without charge or send them to countries where they might be tortured," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "As time goes by and the number of detainees grows, so does the pressure on the U.S. government to act."Roth said that the Bush administration has a legal obligation to determine the detainees' status in accordance with the Geneva Conventions, and then to launch criminal prosecutions where credible evidence exists. The Bush administration could reasonably prosecute some detainees at Guantanamo for conspiracy, so long as it does not define "conspiracy" too broadly.
With the imminent completion of new cells at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo and anticipated transfer of approximately 150 detainees from Afghanistan, the number of persons held at Guantanamo is expected to exceed 500.Human Rights Watch warned that the US administration had a responsibility not to transfer or repatriate detainees to countries where they may be at risk of torture. The U.S. government has not returned prisoners it captured in Afghanistan to China, for instance, and this policy needs to be applied more widely.
The points raised in the letter include:
- Despite President Bush's claim to be applying the "principles" of the Third Geneva Convention regulating prisoner-of-war (POW) status, the United States continues to violate the Geneva Conventions, particularly with respect to Taliban detainees. This shortsighted transgression sets a dangerous precedent that could come back to haunt U.S. and allied servicemembers who are captured by enemy forces in this or future wars. Washington's refusal to treat the detainees as POWs is perplexing because it would in no way inhibit legitimate U.S. efforts to interrogate or prosecute people who have participated in terrorist acts.
- There is no legal basis to treat as "battlefield detainees" suspects who are captured outside Afghanistan and have no direct relationship with the armed conflict. In such cases, the designation is a transparent effort to circumvent the requirement of international human rights law that these suspects be criminally charged or freed.
- New regulations address many of the faults in President Bush's proposed military commissions, but flaws remain, including the failure to provide appeal to a civilian court, such as the appeal allowed in courts-martial to the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. The lack of independent appeal allows the executive to serve as both prosecutor and judge, undermining public confidence in the proceedings and increasing the possibility of injustice.
- It could be appropriate to prosecute the Guantanamo detainees for the crime of conspiracy if a suspect can be shown to have joined a criminal enterprise knowing of its criminal purpose and with the intent of furthering its criminal objectives. But it would be dangerous to apply conspiracy theories too loosely. Given the variety of reasons that Afghans and foreigners joined the Taliban, membership in a criminal conspiracy should not be presumed from mere armed presence in Afghanistan.
- The Geneva Conventions permit many of the detainees to be held until the end of active hostilities. But at some stage the genuine armed conflict in Afghanistan will give way to a rhetorical war - more akin to law enforcement efforts against other criminal activity, such as drug trafficking or the mafia, that also involves potential loss of life. At that point, detention without criminal charges is no more appropriate for the Guantanamo detainees than it would be for a street-level drug dealer picked up in any American city. - The U.S. government has a duty to avoid transferring or assisting in the transfer of any detainee to a country where he risks torture. Violation of this duty carries criminal penalties enforceable in principle in any court worldwide.
