US Sponsored plan to de-populate developing countries

Por Gargantua 12/05/2003 às 12:14

BRAZIL LAUNCHES INQUIRY INTO
U.S. POPULATION ACTIVITIES
The charge: millions sterilised
to meet U.S. political objectives

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cia-drugs/message/4060

A U.S.-sponsored program that resulted in the sterilisation of
nearly half of Brazil's women has prompted a formal
congressional inquiry, sponsored by more than 165 legislators from
every
political party that is represented in the Brazilian
legislature. The investigation was initiated after information about
a
secret U.S. National Security Council memorandum on American
population control objectives in developing countries was published
in the Jornal de Brasilia, Hova do Povo (Rio de Janeiro),
Jornal do Brasil, and other major newspapers in early May.

That U.S. foreign policy document, officially known as National
Security Study Memorandum 200 or NSSM 200, detailed a plan to
target thirteen large de- veloping nations with intensive
efforts to promote population "policies'' that would allow the U.S.
to run massive birth control and sterilisation projects in those
countries.

Brazil, the study said, was placed on the list of thirteen
target nations because it "clearly dominates the continent [South
America] demographically,'' and its population was projected to
equal that of the United States by the turn of the century.
This, said the report which was jointly prepared for the National
Security Council (NSC) in 1974 by the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA), the Departments of State and Defence (DOD), and the
Agency for International Development (USAID), suggests "a
growing power status for Brazil in Latin America and on the world
scene over the next 25 years.''

The NSC report listed twelve other nations whose growth could
give them increased political influence, and which were also to
be targeted under the international population program. Those
are: Nigeria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Indonesia, Turkey,
Bangladesh, India, Thailand, the Philippines, Mexico and Colombia.

The document, which is over 200 pages in length, was written
after a proposed "world population plan of action'' was denounced
by large numbers of African and Latin America nations, by the
Vatican, and by the entire socialist bloc (with the exception of
Romania), during a UN population conference held in Bucharest
in 1974.

The formerly-classified strategy document was approved as an
integral part of American foreign policy in 1975 by Brent
Scowcroft, who served as then- President Gerald Ford's security
advisor. He occupies the same office today under George Bush.

Reports about the document, as well as about the Brazilian
inquiry, have since appeared in every part of Brazil and throughout
Central and South America.

Brazil's Ministry of Health, which had begun an investigation
into the sterilisation program even before the American
population strategy documents were disclosed, has revealed that 44
percent of all Brazilian women between the ages of 14 and 55 have
been permanently sterilised. The older women apparently had the
operation done when the program started, nearly two decades
ago. News reports charge that many of these women underwent the
operation without their knowledge or consent.

Benedita da Silva of the Workers Party (PT), who represents the
residents of impoverished sections of Rio de Janeiro known as
favelas, will head the legislative investigation. According to
some reports, as many as 90 percent of all Brazilian women of
African descent have been sterilised. If true, this would nearly
eliminate future generations of black people in Latin America's
largest nation. Brazil's black population is reported to be
second in size only to Nigeria's. At least half of Brazil's 154
million people are believed to be of African ancestry.

The sterilisation program in Brazil, like those just now
beginning in dozens of African nations, started as a relatively
small, "voluntary'' family planning campaign, which publicly
stressed spacing children rather than reducing population growth. It
quickly and quietly escalated, however, taking advantage of
unfavorable economic conditions -- themselves largely imposed
through the policies of the U.S. and other developed countries -- to
press for limitations in family size.

The massive sterilisation activities were mainly orchestrated
by BEMFAM, the Brazilian affiliate of the London-based
International Planned Parenthood Federation, according to news
reports.

Several private U.S. population contractors, operating with
funds from the U.S. Agency for International Development, are also
involved. These include the Pathfinder Fund, the Johns Hopkins
University Population Communication Services project, Family
Health International, the John Snow "Enterprise'' program, the
Program for the Introduction and Adaptation of Contraceptive
Technology (PIACT), and the Association for Voluntary Surgical
Contraceptive. All have current activities both in Brazil and in
numerous African nations. Some of the Brazilian programs funded
through these groups are subcontracted to BEMFAM, while other
projects are run by the USAID contractors through paid contacts
at Brazilian universities, family planning clinics, firms, and
individuals.

In recent years, Brazilian officials have begun to raise
objections to the level of population activities in their country. A
large shipment of condoms from USAID was held up in customs for
over a year and then seized by Brazilian agents as contraband,
according to a report released in late 1989 by the Office of
the Inspector General at USAID. The same report advised that
Brazilian authorities had complained that the level of U.S.
population assistance had become "overwhelming and unnecessary.''

Last summer, health officials began the investigation that
showed the incredibly high sterilisation rate. That information
coincided with the revelations about U.S. intentions to curb
births in developing countries.

Aside from advocating a strategy to contain the political
influence of large and rapidly growing developing countries, the
document stressed the need to maintain orderly, pro-U.S.
leadership in countries that supply "strategic and critical''
materials
needed for normal U.S. military and industrial operations. The
NSC report stated that the U.S. "will require large and
increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less
developed countries. That fact gives the U.S. enhanced interest in
the political, economic, and social stability of the supplying
countries. Wherever a lessening of population pressures through
reduced birth rates can increase the prospects for such
stability, population policy becomes relevant to resource supplies
and
to the economic interests of the United States.''

It advised, too, that the relatively young populations
characteristic of societies with high birthrates give momentum to
nationalist movements because young people can more easily be
persuaded to attack foreign investments and other influences seen as
"imperialistic.''

The document also detailed a strategy for persuading leaders in
the developing world to cooperate with the population program,
urging that various agencies of the United Nations, the U.S.
Information Agency, the World Bank, and USAID collaborate with
other industrial country donors to influence leaders of targeted
"LDCs'' [less-developed countries]. "We should give higher
priorities in our information programs world-wide for this area
[population control] and consider expansion of collaborative
arrangements with multilateral institutions in population education
programs,'' it said.

It warned, however, that there was a "danger that some LDC
leaders will see developed country pressures for family planning as
a form of economic or racial imperialism; this could well
create a serious backlash.'' The U.S., it added, "can help to
minimise charges of an imperialist motivation behind its support of
population activities by repeatedly asserting that such support
derives from a concern with (a) the right of the individual to
determine freely and responsibly their number and spacing of
children ... and (b) the fundamental social and economic
development of poor countries.'' It also recommended that U.S.
foreign
service and diplomatic personnel "be alert to opportunities for
expanding our assistance efforts and for demonstrating to their
leaders the consequences of rapid population growth and the
benefits of actions to reduce fertility.''

The secret document also noted that it is "vital'' that
officials avoid giving the impression of "an industrialised country
policy to keep their strength down'' because this could "create a
serious backlash adverse to the cause of population
stability.''

The study also suggested that, where diplomatic initiatives
fail to persuade leaders their populations should be reduced,
"mandatory programs may be needed and ... we should be considering
these possibilities now.'' Specific forms of coercion proposed
in the study were limited to food rationing and "taking account
of family planning performance'' in foreign assistance
payments.

The document further advised that in countries where leaders
had raised strong objections to population control plans --
specifically including Brazil, Nigeria, and Ethiopia -- population
funds "would have to come from other donors and/or from private
and international organisations,'' although these groups would
receive contributions from USAID. In other words, at least in
those countries, the U.S. planned to conceal its funding of such
"private'' population activities.

Nations in Asia and Latin America took most of the pressure in
the early 1970s, largely because African leaders were strongly
opposed to population control. But by the early 1980s, the
World Bank had revised its guidelines for funding consumable
supplies, and began promoting population reduction projects as an
integral part of development loans in Africa and as a condition
for credit.

Today, most African nations have adopted formal policies that
state birthrates are "too high.'' While such official statements
do not necessarily translate into actions, they nonetheless
open the door to further diplomatic maneuvers and pressure tactics
by foreign governments and international lending agencies.
Eventually, such pressure is intended to bring about the kind of
coercive "family planning'' programs in Africa were enacted in
India (and which are credited, at least in part, with the 1984
assassination of Indira Gandhi) and those now under investigation
in Brazil.

Still, there are several African nations that have not yet even
produced these formal policy statements: Mozambique, Somalia,
Angola, Tchad, Congo, Gabon, Libya, Sudan, Namibia, Benin,
Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, Guinee, Mali, Mauritania and Togo among
them. And in others, there are strict rules that make such
statements unenforceable by Western governments and their private
intermediaries; sterilisation, for example, is a criminal
offense in Ethiopia, according to a study of national policies done
by the UN several years ago.

The action of Brazil's legislature is an example of an
effective response that comes too late. Already about 25 million
Brazilian women have permanently, and, in many cases unwillingly,
been deprived of the capacity to bear children.

Said Heraclio Salles, one of Brazil's most respected
journalists and colum- nists: "They have given and are giving
millions of
women procedures that do not differ in their final objectives
from those employed by the nazis under the Hitler regime to
affect the removal of the Jewish population.''

COPYRIGHT U.S.A. 1991
BAOBAB PRESS

FROM THE UNITED NATIONS DATABASE

A U.S. $67 million program, funded by USAID and implemented by
the Pathfinder Fund, includes (among scores of others) a
"PAMPA'' project to implement "psycho-social assistance'' with
emphasis on "family planning'' in Sao Paulo, Brazil; a joint
Pathfinder- BEMFAM program to survey adult attitudes on birth control

and to sponsor a Latin American population conference; and a
program to "continue participation in the shaping of the national
discussion on population issues'' with an emphasis on the
impact of such discussions on Brazil's new Constitution. In Nigeria,
Pathfinder has an even larger number of current activities,
including the training of medical personnel to perform birth
control procedures in just about every state, as well as projects to
"improve knowledge, attitude and practice of family planning''
among both rural and urban women. It funneled approximately $2
million from USAID into a national family planning campaign in
Zimbabwe between 1987 and 1990, and has contributed large
amounts of money to similar projects in Kenya and Tanzania, with
smaller activities in several other African nations. The
Association for Voluntary Surgical Contraception (formerly Assn. for
Voluntary Sterilisation) conducts activities primarily to promote
methods that cause permanent infertility. It has U.S. $80
million in AID contracts, with numerous activities both in Brazil
and Nigeria; it has made several recent payments to universities,
hospitals and family planning associations in Ghana, Kenya,
Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Malawi, Burundi,
Zaire, Mali, Senegal, and Sierra Leone. The PIACT program funds
publications and media projects, as well as contraceptive
distribution networks in Brazil. It conducts similar activities in
about
a dozen African states.

Source: United Nations Population Fund Inventory of
Population Projects in
Developing Countries Around the World

This news release is based on published reports in Jornal de
Brasilia, Jornal do Brasil, Hova do Povo (Brazil), El Financiero,
El Dia Latinoamericano (Mexico), and other newspapers in
Brazil, Colombia and Mexico which appeared between 1 May 1991 and
mid-July. Information on the U.S. National Security Council
population memorandum is taken from the document itself, titled
"Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and
Overseas Interests,'' which is on file at the National Archives
in Washington, D.C. Other material comes from reference books
published by the U.S. government, the United Nations and the
World Bank. Permission to reprint, to translate, or to edit this
article is granted to editors and publishers. This news service
is sponsored entirely by private, voluntary donations, and no
compensation is requested or expected from users. For more
information about this story or about the Baobab Press, please
contact us at P. O. Box 43345, Washington, DC 20010--U.S.A.