On March 15, a U.N. investigative commission presented the Fowler Report to the U.N. Security Council. The document names several governments and individuals in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East that are responsible for violating the U.N. sanctions against the Angolan rebel group UNITA. Some of the culprits: Bulgaria, The Ukraine, Gabon, Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda, The Congo, The Republic of Congo, Togo, Burkina Faso, and the Ivory Coast. Naturally, the report goes into detail implicating individuals and governments in Africa and Eastern Europe, because they're easy and obvious targets for criticism. For example, it tells how Togo's President Gnassingbe Eyadema has become Jonas Savimbi's main patron by taking diamonds in payment for allowing Savimbi's family to live in Togo, and for forging certificates for weapons shipments to UNITA. But the report backs away from naming the worst offender: De Beers, the South African diamond company owned by London's Anglo-American Corporation, which controls almost three-quarters of the world's trade in uncut diamonds. Instead, the report gives the diamond markets in Antwerp, Belgium, a gentle scolding. Antwerp, the largest market in the world for uncut diamonds, has "extremely lax controls and regulations"--which is probably the best thing you could say about the place. At least one Antwerp trader openly trained diamond merchants who worked exclusively for UNITA. A Canadian non-governmental organization, Partnership Africa-Canada, claims that Belgium imported more than 31 million carats of diamonds from Liberia between 1994 and 1998, but Liberia's official domestic production of diamonds during that same period was only 150,000 carats. Ivory Coast, too, exports 1.5 million carats per year to the markets in Antwerp, but its domestic diamond mines were all shut down over 10 years ago. And one of the South African diamond merchants named in the Fowler Report, Ronnie de Decker, openly admits that he sold many parcels of UNITA diamonds (worth about $4 to $5 million each) to De Beers.--Maria Tomchick

Protests greeted President Clinton's trip to India last week. Even though the Indian government banned any demonstrations during his stay, at least 2,000 members of four left-wing parties shouting "Clinton Go Back!" marched in New Delhi toward the American Center, where Clinton met with Indian President Atal Behari Vajpayee. They burned Clinton in effigy, and 300 to 400 were arrested by police. The protesters openly contrasted the government crackdown on demonstrations in India to the WTO meeting in Seattle, where protesters were allowed to protest visiting foreign dignitaries (at least for one day). Meanwhile, in Calcutta, the capital of the state of West Bengal, the ruling Communist Party has posted "The Anti-Imperialist Charter of the Indian People" on its website, run from its offices on Ho Chi Minh Street. And over on Lenin Street, another radical left-wing group, the Socialist Unity Center of India (SUCI), declared March 23 "Anti-Imperialist Day." Said one SUCI member: "The (federal) government is going whole hog to welcome such a chieftain of imperialism!"--M.T.

Last year Amnesty International condemned the Thai prison system for its harsh treatment of inmates and overcrowded conditions. On Saturday, March 18, about 600 teenage boys escaped from a juvenile detention center in Bangkok, Thailand. The boys marched through the streets waving sticks, metal bars, and bottles, protesting cruel treatment at the center. The boys were often beaten with canes and shovels for minor infractions. Police attempted to round them up with tear gas and fire hoses. After six hours, the protest ended when officials backed down and allowed 1,000 of the inmates at the detention center to go home to their families on a five-day leave. The next day, 400 boys broke out of a different detention center--this time they didn't stick around to protest, but ran as far away as possible. Said one boy: "We watched the incident on TV last night and wondered why we were not entitled to a five-days leave." Over 230 of the boys remained at large. On Monday, the following day, another 50 boys broke out of a third center. Then again, on Tuesday, March 21, about 200 more boys escaped in a fourth incident. More than 40 remained at large, with about a dozen of them confiscating a truck to make their escape. Bangkok's youth detention centers often hold three times more inmates than they should. Most of the teenage boys have been arrested and held for drug use; Bangkok is near the "Golden Triangle" drug-producing region.--M.T.