FRANCE

FRANCE
Le Monde, Paris, Sept. 10: This time, doubt is forbidden: as shown by the Le Monde inquiry carried out by the researchers in the National Statistic and Economic Study Institute (Insee), and the National Demographic Institute (Ined), Summer 2003 has been the bloodiest since 1946, the year Insee started to collect monthly death statistics. At least 54,070 people died in France in August 2003, against 40,000 normally.
This shows the importance of the sanitary crisis, which occurred in the country considered by the World Health Organization to be equipped with the best health system in the world up 'til now.
Slaughter
The way France has handled this slaughter is hard to comprehend: the only official choosing to stand down - the director general of health, professor Lucien Abenhaim - is spared by the report that highlights that the National Health Department (DGS) is "exhausted in its search for information." On the other hand, neither the officials of the National Health Surveillance Institute, censured by the report, nor the health minister, Jean-Francois Mattei, have deemed it necessary to acknowledge responsibility and resign.
SOUTH AFRICA
The Star, Johannesburg, Sept. 10: "Give us our land back!" was the resounding message yesterday from the indigenous peoples representatives taking part in the World Parks Congress.
Noting that indigenous communities had been evicted and dispossessed throughout the world to make way for national parks and nature reserves, members of the delegation said it was not possible for them to move sacred sites such as mountains where a community leader had given his life in defense of his people.
Rights holders
A 13-point Indigenous Peoples Declaration to the congress said indigenous people should not be seen as mere "stakeholders" but as rights holders.
SWEDEN
Dagens Nyheter, Stockholm, Sept. 10: The importance of calling dictators to account for what they've done is much bigger than the possible difficulties.
The many turnabouts in the case of Chile's former president, Augusto Pinochet, was an example of how justice eventually catches up with oppressors. It showed that the respect of human rights in earnest has become an international issue and that not even heads of state can order their own territories about without being put on notice.
Better country
One could have wished for more, one could have wished that Pinochet really was put on trial. The developments must in all likelihood have benefited Chile, too. The fact that the former dictator, sick and weak, was charged was a picture as good as any of Chile being a new and better country than under the tyranny of the military junta.