The Battalion
Wednesday • June 11, 199?-
Residents caught in middle of Republic of Congo battles
REPUBLIC
OF CONGO
Brazzaville
O N G
o
L.- >
CAR.
'
mm
' Zaire R
1
CONGO
inshasa
200 miles
ANGOLA ——
200 km
BRAZZAVILLE, Republic of Congo (AP) —
Some fled down the Congo River on barges, ly
ing low to avoid bullets flying overhead. Oth
ers rushed through streets during lulls in gun
fire. One elderly woman, too frail to walk, was
pushed in a wheelbarrow.
Foreigners and local residents sought any
way possible to escape the fierce battle be
tween government troops and a private militia
Tuesday, the sixth day of fighting in the capital
of this Central African country.
Witnesses described gruesome scenes:
dead bodies strewn across streets littered with
spent shells and shattered glass; three victims
sprawled out of a bullet-riddled limousine near
the luxury Meridien Hotel.
As night fell, fighting escalated and the war
ring sides remained deadlocked on terms of ne
gotiation. The government hinted it would ask
French forces to intervene in its former colony.
Officials close to Gen. Denis Sassou-Ngues-
so, a former dictator backed by the 5,000-
strong Cobra militia, told Radio France-Info
that hundreds of people had been killed. The
toll was impossible to verify, but French troops
said they had counted at least a dozen civilian
dead each morning.
“We are lucky,’’ said a Russian diplomat
whose apartment exploded when a shell land
ed on a lower balcony. “If we had stayed in our
apartment, my wife and I would have died,” he
said on condition of anonymity.
Sassou-Nguesso and President Pascal Lis-
souba are longtime rivals. The former dictator
ruled for more than a decade until he was forced
to introduce political reforms in 1991. Elections
the next year installed Lissouba as president.
Clashes broke out Thursday when Lissouba,
fearing attempts to disrupt next month’s presi
dential elections, tried to disarm the Cobras.
Sassou-Nguesso said that for talks to begin,
the government had to admit that it had insti
gated the violence, not him.
In Paris, Foreign Minister Arsene Tsaty-
Mboungou insisted there be no preconditions
to talks — and suggested he might ask French
forces to come in.
“It would be for the French authorities to
decide the necessity of enforcing the legitima
cy and above all the consolidation of a demo
cratic regime in a country to which they are
connected,” he said.
A French military spokesman said inter
vention was out of the question.
“I would even go as far to say, that we try and
avoid fighting as much as possible,” said Alex
is Jaraud, the force’s spokesman in Brazzaville.
“While we go toward the zones containing
French citizens, if the group of (rebel) soldiers
is a big one, we go back.”
Omar Bongo, president of neighborij
Gabon — where many of the evacuees!
headed — was trying to get both sides|
the table.
The U.S. Defense Department has seij
about a dozen communication and secuif
specialists into the country to assess the da
gers faced by Americans remaining in Braz
zaville, a spokesman said Tuesday.
“It’s become quite dangerous,” spokesn
Kenneth Bacon said. There are about 60 Ami
icans in the city, he said.
A force of850 French troops on Tuesday ra
cued more civilians shaken by the fighting.!
A French military convoy drove fromthi
airport into Brazzaville to pick up peon
trapped in high-risk areas. It passed thol
sands of locals, their belongings piled at(
their heads as they fled south. One
woman was pushed in a wheelbarrow.
Report: Orphanage children were
used to test vaccines in Australia
The newspaper said the
children were put through
experiments for 25 years
MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Children in or
phanages were used to test experimental vaccines for
diphtheria and whooping cough for several decades
after World War II, a newspaper reported Tuesday.
But an infectious diseases expert said that the test
ing was necessary to save lives in orphanages, where
children lived in close quarters and contagious dis
eases were rampant.
“Many children’s lives were saved,” said Dr. David
Vaux of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical
Research at the University of Melbourne.
“I think the scientists, the medical profession
and the sisters running the orphanages could be
congratulated for doing their utmost to protect
their children.”
The Age newspaper in Melbourne reported Tues
day that children in orphanages and children’s homes
in the state of Victoria were put through such experi
ments for 25 years, until 1970.
In Canberra, the Democrats party said a federal
commission should investigate the testing. The Vic
toria state government also promised to investigate
the claims.
“It shouldn’t have happened then,” federal Health Minis
ter Michael Wooldridge said. “It couldn’t happen now.”
The Age quoted medical journals from the 1940s
and 1950s that described experiments carried out by
Commonwealth Serum Laboratories to test potential
vaccines for diphtheria and whooping cough.
Vaux said the vaccines were first tested on animals
for any toxic effects before being given to humans.
“At the time, there were all sorts of infectious epi
demics going through children, especially where chil
dren were crowded together,” Vaux said.
Many of the diseases either caused paralysis or
were lethal, he said.
“People were desperate at the time to try to prevent
these diseases from spreading and killing children,”
he said.
Malysian cows start wearing earrings
Reflectors will help prevent road accidents at nighi
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Cattle in
Malaysia are getting their ears pierced.
Red plastic reflectors, like those on bicy
cles in the United States, are now dangling
from the ears of cattle on the resort island of
Pulau Langkawi.
The ornaments are designed to prevent
road accidents at night.
“We feel it is very effective,” said Ferdaus
Mohd Abdullah, manager of a company that
makes safety equipment. “I don’t think any one
f !
else in the world is offering earrings for cows."|ji
Mechanization in rice fields has left maifei
cattle unemployed and untended. And acj'o
cording to the number of accidents they ha
caused, cattle appear to like sitting on thi
roads at night.
Ismail Abu of the Automobile Associati
thought the earrings were a good start, to
only a start.
“That takes care of the front of the cow. Bi
what about the back?” ►
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Plans
Continued from Page 1
Ongoing Coverage
Bernie Gessner, owner of Aggie Cleaners,
said the city has not considered the interests
of existing businesses in Northgate while
making renovation plans.
“The daytime businesses will be ill-
served,” Gessner said. “The paid-parking lot
may not affect the restaurants and bars be
cause people may spend three or four hours
in the bars.
But the daytime businesses, where peo
ple are in and out in 15 minutes, will be af
fected if their customers have to pay for
parking.”
Chris Penn, manager of Marooned Records,
said the city has not included local business
owners’ input in its revitalization plans.
“They’re really doing it (revitaliza
tion) without our opinion,” Penn said.
“I think they're more interested in at
tracting tourists.”
Continued from Page 1
“Do you tell whites you have to be more negative or tell
blacks you have to be more positive?” Newport said. “The
gulf is there but the question is how to deal with it.”
Some measurements seem to point toward an easing of
racism among whites.
In 1958, just 35 percent of whites said they could vote for
a well-qualified black presidential candidate. That same
year, 4 percent of whites approved of interracial marriage
and 80 percent of whites said they would leave if blacks
moved into their neighborhood “in great numbers.”
Now, 93 percent of whites say they could vote a black
person into the White House and 61 percent voice approval
of mixed marriages. Just 18 percent of the whites ques
tioned said they would flee a neighborhood if large num
bers of blacks moved in.
The poll focused on several broad areas including per
ceptions of race relations locally and nationally, the role of
government in addressing racial issues, measures of satis
faction and experiences with racism.
Among blacks, young males report far more discrimi
nation than any other segment of the population.
Asked whether they had been treated unfairly in the past
month in situations outside their homes, 45 percent of
blacks overall said they had been discriminated against.
That figure swelled to 70 percent when limited to black men
from the ages 18 through 34.
“Young black males face a different situation,” Newport said.
The study also seems to confirm the adage that Sunday
mornings in churchgoing America are when the nation’s
racial divide is the greatest. More than 70 percent of both
blacks and whites say they worship where most or all fel
low church members are of the same race as themselves.
A majority of both groups believe problems of race are
here to stay.
Asked if race relations will always be a problem in the
United States, 58 percent of blacks said yes. Among whites,
54 percent said race relations will always be a problem.
The poll was based on 18-minute telephone interviews
with 3,036 adults conducted between Jan. 4 and Feb. 28 and
had a margin of potential sampling error of plus or minus
3 percentage points.
Race poll
A look at how blacks and whites view
race relations in the United States:
H National ^ Blacks | j Whites
mmasm
Have they improved or gotten
worse over the last year?
Improved ■HMHHMHi 31 %
Remained same
Gotten worse MHHHHHI 29
Improved
Remained same
Gotten worse
Improved
Remained same
Gotten worse
I
31%
35%
31%
138%
29%
0 10% 20% 30% 40%
Will relations between blacks and
whites always be a problem?
60%-, 58%
50%-
40%
30%
20%-
10%-
0
55%
54%
42%
42%
/ I 1 /
m
SOURCE: The Gallup organization telephone survey
of 3,036 adults was conducted January 4 - February
28 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3
percentage points.
I
AP
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