BB FANS

Disgraced and vilified, Suharto dies aged 86 Independent

Obama seizes clear South Carolina victory



From Leonard Doyle in Columbia, South Carolina


Barack Obama won a resounding victory over Hillary Clinton in a bitterly fought South Carolina Democratic primary last night. Taking more than twice as many votes his rival for the White House, it was a stunning victory that up-ended predictions about the Democratic nomination process.

Black and white voters came out in droves to repudiate the much criticised race-baiting tactics of former President Bill Clinton. As a result Mr Obama is now level pegging with Mrs Clinton and his strong victory should restore the flagging spirits of his idealistic young supporters. The final result gave Mr Obama had 55 percent of the vote, Mrs. Clinton 27 percent, and Mr Edwards 18 per cent.

The stage is now set for a fight across 22 states on 5 February or Super Tuesday, as it is known. But the battle to win the party’s presidential nomination is expected to rumble on for several more months at least.

Speaking to a jubilant crowd Mr Obama gave one of his most powerful speeches of his campaign. "Tonight, the cynics who believed that what began in the snows of Iowa was just an illusion were told a different story by the good people of South Carolina," he said. "After four great contests in every corner of this country, we have the most votes, the most delegates and the most diverse coalition of Americans we’ve seen in a long, long time."

Supporters interrupted his speech with chants of "Yes, we can!" and "Race doesn't matter!"

Mr Obama told supporters that there were huge challenges ahead and in a nod to the ugly squabbling that has taken place with the Clinton campaign he said, "This is our chance to end it once and for all."

"We are up against decades of bitter partisanship that cause politicians to demonize their opponents instead of coming together,’ he said. ‘It’s the kind of partisanship where you’re not even allowed to say that a Republican had an idea — even if it’s one you never agreed with. That kind of politics is bad for our party, it’s bad for our country."

In South Carolina Mr Obama captured more than twice as many votes as Mrs Clinton, totally 55 per cent of the vote against her 27 per cent. It’s the first time in any if the four primary contests that a candidate has carried more than 50 per cent of the vote making the Obama victory all the more decisive.

"This election is about the past versus the future," Mr Obama told euphoric supporters, "It’s about whether we settle for the same divisions and distractions and drama that passes for politics today, or whether we reach for a politics of common sense and innovation — a shared sacrifice and shared prosperity."

In the end his victory was a repudiation of efforts to use Mr Obama’s race was a wedge issue in the election. Mr Obama attracted a wide majority of black support and one-quarter of white voters who rejected those tactics.

The turnout was a record 530,000 people, almost 100,000 more than in the Republican primary a week ago and raising the prospect that Iowa could go Democratic if Mr Obama is the nominee in the general election.

South Carolina was selected by Democratic leaders to hold one of the opening contests in the nominating season to add racial and geographic diversity to the traditional opening states of Iowa and New Hampshire.

The campaign now spreads out to include California and New York, which account for large numbers of delegates and are costly to operate in. Mrs Clinton is already ahead in these states and she has indicated that he hopes to attract votes in Florida, which holds a ‘beauty contest’ primary on Tuesday. Stripped of its delegates for trying to vote earlier than permitted the candidates have agreed not to campaign there.

As soon as the polls were closed, Mrs. Clinton flew out to Tennessee to hold an evening campaign rally desperate to get the defeat in South Carolina behind her. Mr Clinton also made a hasty exit, heading to Independence Missouri, to carry on campaigning. Until his outbursts, which were seen as denigrating the Mr Obama, South Carolina’s black community looked on Mr Clinton with great affection. That now seems to have changed.

It was left to Mr Clinton, continuing his prominent role in the campaign, to give the concession speech. He said, "Hillary congratulated him, and I congratulate him. Now we go to Feb. 5, when millions of Americans can finally get into the act."

The third place finish for John Edwards, has thrown his candidacy into doubt. A son of South Carolina who won the state in 2004, he failed even to capture second place. He could now become a king-maker between Mr Obama and Mrs. Clinton, earning himself a promise of a prominent place in a new Democratic administration.

Mr Obama had to build an organisation from scratch in the state, because he was locked out by the Democratic establishment, which backed Mrs Clinton. Black women, some 80 percent giving their support, propelled his victory in particular. Some black women said they were offended by Mrs Clinton’s harsh attack on Mr Obama in Monday’s debate

Now that Mr Obama has won in Iowa and South Carolina and Mrs Clinton in New Hampshire and Nevada. The expectation is that the fight for the nomination will not end on 5 February but continues for several months.
Independent

Turkey divided over headscarf ban decision

By Nicholas Birch in Istanbul
Monday, 28 January 2008

A small square of coloured material returns to the centre of Turkey's political stage this week as the government prepares to end the controversial headscarf ban.

The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has its roots in political Islam, has been under intense pressure from its conservative supporters to abolish the ban since it first came to power in 2002. And now it has struck a deal with a right-wing nationalist party over the issue.

The two parties meet in the capital Ankara today to fine-tune changes, and analysts expect the package to be put to a parliamentary vote this week. Together, they have enough votes to change the constitution.

In the past the move would have been vetoed by the President, but the man in the high office is now Abdullah Gul, the former AKP foreign minister, whose selection last year sparked snap elections and a simmering political crisis.

He appears certain to back the move. "Universities should not be places of political controversy," he said ahead of today's meeting. "Beliefs should be practiced freely." Polls suggest most Turks agree with him.

For a vocal minority, though, the headscarf is direct challenge to Western lifestyles, a symbol of ignorance and backwardness. When 500,000 secularists marched in Ankara and Istanbul in spring last year to protest against the government's plans to elect Mr Gul president, and the army issued coup threats on its web-site, it was in part because his wife covers her head.

The ban is based on a ruling made by the Constitutional Court in 1989 but has only been vigorously enforced during the clamp-down on political Islam that followed the 1997 military-led expulsion of an Islamist party from power. It is widely seen as unjust.

"All citizens should have equal rights," said Ayla Kerimoglu, the spokeswoman for Hazar, an Istanbul-based group that provides educational services to veiled women. "Instead, we're made to feel like strangers in our own country."

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the ban is that it leaves considerable leeway for university rectors. While a few turn a blind eye to covered girls, some even ban students who try to sidestep the ban by putting wigs on when they arrive on campus. In 2005, a university in the north-eastern city of Erzurum sparked a furore when guards refused to allow headscarf-wearing mothers to attend their children's graduation ceremony.

But supporters of the ban remain adamant. The planned constitutional amendment is part of "a trend towards religious dictatorship", said Sabih Kanadoglu, a former supreme court chief prosecutor. The head of a secularist opposition party, Deniz Baykal, predicted "a major constitutional crisis".

The Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has rejected claims that his party was seeking to erode secular traditions. "We have a society in which those who cover up and those who do not both defend the democratic and secular state," he said on Saturday.

Independent

Jubilant Obama wins Kennedys' endorsement


By Leonard Doyle in Columbia, South Carolina

Barack Obama took his re-energised campaign for the Democratic nomination across the Deep South yesterday after crushing Hillary Clinton in a racially polarised primary in South Carolina.

Adding to the renewed momentum was an emotional endorsement from the daughter of John F Kennedy, a president whose memory is revered across political lines, who said Mr Obama could inspire Americans in the same way her father once had.

"I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them," Caroline Kennedy wrote in The New York Times. "But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president – not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans."

That endorsement will be echoed by her uncle today as Senator Edward Kennedy announces his backing for the man who has emerged battle-hardened but victorious from South Carolina. Senator Kennedy, whose endorsement carries immense weight among Democrats, had vowed to stay out of the nomination but was swayed, his associates said, by the bitter tone of the contest.

The two campaigns are now preparing to do battle across 22 states on 5 February or "Super Tuesday". If he is to vanquish the formidable Clinton machine, Mr Obama will need to generate momentum as the pace of the election steps up over the next eight days.

His supporters defiantly chanted "race doesn't matter" into the early hours of yesterday morning, mocking the attempts of the Clinton campaign to characterise his campaign as a black phenomenon. But Mr Obama's share of the white vote in South Carolina was 24 per cent which is lower than in Iowa or New Hampshire. This is raising questions about the coming contests where he will not be able to rely on a heavy African-American turnout to coast to victory as in South Carolina.

His campaign dismisses such concerns, saying he exceeded expectations among white voters in a contest where race became an issue.

Mr Obama emerged battle hardened after the Clinton campaign threw everything including the race card, at him. Seeing the support he was getting in South Carolina, the Clintons tried to undercut the swelling enthusiasm around the US for his outsider campaign, which seeks to toss out the status quo in Washington and start over.

"We are up against conventional thinking that says your ability to lead as president comes from longevity in Washington or proximity to the White House," Mr Obama said.

"But we know that real leadership is about candour, and judgement, and the ability to rally Americans from all walks of life around a common purpose – a higher purpose."

Even on election day Mr Clinton was comparing Mr Obama to the populist Jesse Jackson whose black empowerment presidential campaign twice won him the South Carolina primary but never a wider mandate.

Mrs Clinton's hardball strategy has not only exploded in her hands, it has brought attention back to the psychodramas of the Clinton White House years, her relationship with Bill Clinton and the political divisiveness which propelled the Republicans to capture Congress for 12 years. Unwelcome attention is also returning to the dynastic ambitions of the Clintons.

But black voters, especially woman, were offended by the harsh tone of the campaign, especially Mrs Clinton's efforts to cut Mr Obama down to size on a televised debate last Monday. They turned out in droves to support Mr Obama, ensuring that he captured 55 per cent of the vote, more than twice Mrs Clinton's 27 per cent.

"Southern women do not like to see our men humiliated in public and she got downright dirty," said Paulette Priester-Nieves, queuing to see Mr Obama's victory speech. "That's when she lost my support."

More poignant were the words of Annie Bennett, 86, who remembers hearing tales of slave life in South Carolina from her grandmother. She recalled long hours of grinding work and an overwhelming sense of helplessness. "Just think of how far we've come," Ms Bennett said. Grandmother said I had no choices in my life. Now, I have a choice to vote for an African-American for president."

Ms Bennett spent months organising for the Obama campaign. "I like the way [Mr Obama] talks about bringing all Americans together," she said. "Maybe this young man is the someone who can do it. We've got a ways to go."

The election was also a disappointment for John Edwards, who is from South Carolina but could only finish third with 18 per cent. His campaign is now uncertain, although he has vowed to continue to the Democratic Convention in August.

Mrs Clinton is confronted with a growing feeling that she is running a hollow campaign allowing her husband to take the lead on the campaign trail as he did again on Saturday night in Independence, Missouri. Her reliance on Mr Clinton to get the message out is also eating in to her message to women that her candidacy is a pioneering attempt to break through the glass ceiling.

James Clyburn, the influential black Democratic congressman from South Carolina who stayed neutral, reflected that it was really a test of Mr Obama's mettle: "If he ends up winning the nomination, he will definitely face an onslaught of attacks this fall, and he may look back on South Carolina as the place that toughened him up."
Independent

A nation in turmoil
Kenya: 'They killed our people, so now we will do likewise' Independent

Russia's most famous - and glamorous - female bodyguard killed as her Porsche is carjacked in Moscow Mail

Afghan senate endorses death sentence

Afghanistan's senate has endorsed the death sentence imposed by a court on reporter and journalism student Perwiz Kambakhsh. The senate (aka the House of Elders) also criticised international pressure on behalf of the journalist whose "crime" was to download material from the internet that is said to question the role of women in Islam. The appeal procedure is not yet over, however. Mediaguardian

Edwards abandons White House race

John Edwards turned to politics after a career as a lawyer
Democrat John Edwards has left the race for the White House after failing to win any of the party nomination contests held so far.

Mr Edwards, 54, publicly announced the end to his second White House bid on a visit to New Orleans.

He lost Iowa's caucuses, came third in New Hampshire, admitted getting his "butt kicked" in Nevada, and came third in his native South Carolina.

In the Republican field, Rudy Giuliani is also expected to drop out later.

The ex-New York Mayor, who came a distant third in Florida's primary on Tuesday, is expected to back John McCain, said two of his allies, New York congressman Peter King and Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno.

Wife's cancer

The remaining Republican candidates will go head-to-head on Wednesday at a televised debate in Simi Valley, California.

Correspondents say the Democratic and Republican races will now be left with a pair of realistic contenders apiece.

On the Republican side, the two front-runners are Arizona Senator McCain, who won in Florida, and ex-Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.


JOHN EDWARDS
Elizabeth Edwards (L) with John Edwards
Born 1953 in Seneca, South Carolina; mill worker's son
Personal-injury lawyer 1977-1998
US senator for North Carolina 1999-2005
First ran for White House 2004 - wanted to reform healthcare and scrap Bush tax cuts for rich
Lost nomination to John Kerry; became his running mate
Married to Elizabeth Edwards with three surviving children

Profile: John Edwards

Mr Edwards told supporters in New Orleans, where he launched his latest White House bid in 2006: "It's time for me to step aside so that history can blaze its path.

"We do not know who will take the final steps to [the White House] but what we do know is that the Democratic Party will make history."

He did not endorse either of the two current Democratic front-runners: New York Senator and former First Lady Hillary Clinton or Illinois Senator Barack Obama.

But he said he had spoken to both of them by telephone and had received their assurances that they would place the fight against poverty at the centre of their campaigns.

Mr Edwards's wife Elizabeth announced last year her breast cancer had returned, but an Edwards aide told CNN television his reasons for dropping out had nothing to do with her health.

The BBC's Vincent Dowd in Washington says if Mr Edwards urges his supporters towards either of the two main Democrat contenders, that could be an important influence in the race.

Mr Edwards received 14% of the Democratic vote in the Florida primary - although that contest was largely symbolic after an internal party row.

He also fought for his party's nomination in 2004, losing out to John Kerry, but ran a strong enough second in the race to stand on the vice-presidential ticket.

The remaining candidates are focused on Super Tuesday next week, when 24 states hold nominating contests.

BBC

srael probe finds war 'failure'

Israel has waited for Winograd's findings since late in 2006
Israel's 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon was a "large and serious" failure, according to an Israeli government-appointed inquiry.

Military and political leaders had no clear strategy, which meant Israel was "dragged" into an inconclusive ground operation in Lebanon, the report said.

PM Ehud Olmert has insisted he will not step down despite the findings.

However, public pressure could grow on partners in his governing coalition to pull out, analysts say.


Israel was dragged into a ground operation only after the political and diplomatic timetable prevented its effective completion
Winograd statement

Hostilities broke out in July 2006, when Hezbollah fighters captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross border raid that left three other soldiers dead.

In the conflict that followed, more than 1,000 Lebanese died, mostly civilians, along with 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers, but the captured soldiers have still not been freed.

Completion prevented

The report said Israel could have taken two courses - a quick, devastating blow against Hezbollah or a sustained ground operation - but failed to decide on either.

"The fact Israel went to war before it decided which option to select, and without an exit strategy... constituted serious failures, which affected the whole war," report chairman Eliyahu Winograd said.


Israeli troops leave Lebanon, 14 August 2006

Day-by-day: Lebanon crisis
Israel's post-war unease
Analysis: Key Lebanon report
"As a result, Israel did not stop after its early military achievements, and was dragged into a ground operation only after the political and diplomatic timetable prevented its effective completion," he added.

The report is highly critical of military commanders, especially in the ground forces.

"All in all, the IDF [Israeli army] failed, especially because of the conduct of the high command and the ground forces, to provide an effective military response to the challenge posed to it by the war in Lebanon," retired senior judge Mr Winograd said.

There has been considerable interest among Israelis about a last-minute ground offensive in the hours before a UN-brokered ceasefire, in which 33 Israeli soldiers were killed.

The report said the engagement did not improve Israel's position and there were "serious failings" in army command.

However, Mr Olmert acted in what was "the interest of the state of Israel", as it appeared at the time, when he authorised the offensive.

Repairs

The report recommends "systematic and profound" changes in thinking in the political and military leaderships if Israel is to face up to future challenges.

Israel cannot survive without the belief that it has "the political and military leadership, military capabilities, and social robustness" to deter aggressors, the report says.

Mr Olmert's aides said the criticism in the report was not as harsh as they had been preparing for.

"The prime minister and the government take responsibility and will make repairs," his cabinet secretary, Oved Yehezkel, said.

In Beirut, a Hezbollah spokesman said the report vindicated everything the Shia Muslim militant and political organisation had said before.

"Israel failed completely in achieving its goals and the Israeli army suffered a military defeat at the hands of Hezbollah," Hussein Rahal said.

BBC

Xbox fan pummelled toddler daughter to death after she knocked over his console Mail

Gandhi's ashes scattered at sea as India pays homage 60 years after assassination Mail

US envoy says violence in Kenya is ethnic cleansing


Xan Rice in Nairobi


The top United States diplomat for Africa has described the violence in parts of Kenya since the disputed presidential election as "clear ethnic cleansing".

Jendayi Frazer, US assistant secretary of state, said that the mass displacement of civilians in the Rift Valley was part of an "organised effort". About 150,000 people were chased from their homes in January, most of them from president Mwai Kibaki's Kikuyu ethnic group. The perpetrators were mainly Kalenjins, who have a historic claim to the land.


"The aim originally was not to kill, it was to cleanse, it was to push them [Kikuyus] out of the region," said Frazer, who visited Kenya this month to kick-start mediation efforts involving Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga, a Luo. "It was clear ethnic cleansing in the Rift Valley."

But Frazer, who was accused by the Kenyan authorities in newspaper and radio advertisements last week of "a partisan, emotional and personalised campaign against president Kibaki", rejected government claims that genocide was occurring. She also spoke of how the cycle was now being reversed, with Kikuyus chasing Kalenjins and Luos out of Rift Valley towns such as Naivasha and Nakuru over the weekend.

The US considers Kenya a valuable ally in fighting terrorism in the Horn of Africa, and gives the country more than $700m (£352m) a year. The money, mostly used to combat and treat Aids and other diseases, goes directly to the people, making any cuts in funding unlikely even if a swift political solution is not found.

Frazer, who was in Addis Ababa where she will attend an African Union summit today, said the ethnic violence that has seen more than 850 people killed had "gone too far". But yesterday it was still going on. In Kikuyu, on the western outskirts of Nairobi, a mob of Kikuyu men tried to evict a few hundred Luos from a government forestry centre where they work. The operation was pre-planned, with leaflets distributed in the town on Tuesday warning of imminent trouble, and schoolchildren told to stay at home.

The issue of land distribution will be a key factor in mediation efforts chaired by Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary general, who has opened talks between the government and opposition.

Immediately after independence, president Jomo Kenyatta encouraged Kikuyus to settle on fertile Rift Valley property given up by British colonials, instead of returning it to the Kalenjins and Maasais from whom it had been seized. Resentment against the Kikuyus has simmered ever since.

A source close to Annan said that there was recognition that "an awful amount of settlement land used by the Kikuyus in the Rift Valley especially needs to be redistributed using some sort of orderly transaction, perhaps similar to what is happening in South Africa".

guardian

Schwarzenegger endorses John McCain


Dan Glaister in Simi Valley, California





Republican frontrunner John McCain snagged his second high-profile endorsement in 24 hours when it emerged during last night's presidential debate that California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will come out for the Arizona senator.

The news came shortly after former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani announced that he was ending his campaign and would support McCain on the campaign trail.

Schwarzenegger is expected to announce his support for McCain following a joint appearance by the two in Los Angeles later today.


The debate, the final Republican face-off before Super Tuesday next week, saw the two leading candidates, McCain and former Massachusetts senator Mitt Romney, sparring over the economy, their respective records, the war in Iraq and who could claim to be the most conservative.

The liveliest exchanges came towards the end of the debate when attention turned to Iraq and the allegation by McCain that Romney had expressed support for a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq.

Talking across each other as CNN anchor Anderson Cooper tried to intervene, the two candidates gave expression to the tight race that awaits in next week's primaries.

At one point Romney interrupted McCain to chide him with the words: "How is it that you're the expert on what my position is?

"Why do you insist on not using the actual quote? If this was a question it could have been raised in April or May."

McCain responded with an added barb: "I raised the question many times," he said, "of whether you have the experience to lead this country and I will continue to raise it."

Romney's charge that McCain's attacks were "Washington-style old politics" also met a stern rebuttal from McCain, who countered that, "Your negative ads, my friend, have set the tone for this campaign."

Although the exchanges did not become as heated as the sparring between the Democratic nominees in recent weeks, it served to enliven what might otherwise have been an anodyne rehearsal of policy positions.

The tiff between McCain and Romney left the other two candidates on the stage feeling distinctly left out. Mike Huckabee, in particular, expressed his feeling of exclusion, telling moderators, "I didn't come here to umpire a ball game between these two."

When talk turned to the conservative credentials of the candidates, Huckabee pitched in to point out that he could match and possibly better both McCain and Romney.

"This is a two-man race," he said. "There's another guy down here on the far right of the table. You want to talk conservative credentials? If we're going to talk conservatism I'd like to be in on the discussion."

But that discussion too was dominated by the two leading candidates, with Romney accusing McCain of being outside the conservative mainstream.

"He's a good Republican," Romney said of McCain. "I wouldn't question those credentials at all, but there are a number of pieces of legislation where his views are outside of the mainstream ... of conservative Republican thought ... If you get endorsed by the New York Times, you're not a mainstream conservative."

McCain replied that he had also been endorsed by two newspapers in Romney's home town "who know you best".

Unlike most other Republican debates, the words Hillary Clinton were not uttered. Instead, unsurprisingly given the venue, the candidates and their interlocutors mentioned the name of Ronald Reagan with remarkable regularity.

McCain noted several times that he was a "foot soldier of the Reagan revolution", and it took Huckabee to bring the discussion down to earth.

Asked to comment on President Reagan's appointment of abortion rights supporter Sandra Day O'Connor to the Supreme Court, Huckabee replied: "I'm not going to come to the Ronald Reagan library and say anything about Ronald Reagan. I'm not that stupid."

Guardian

Iran bans public executions amid death sentence boom




Iran's judiciary chief moved to curb the increasingly common spectacle of public executions yesterday by banning the practice, except in cases approved by him. Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, a moderate conservative cleric tipped by some as a future potential supreme leader, said the death penalty should be carried out behind closed doors, and barred the publication of television footage or photographs of executions.

"Carrying out executions in public is only possible with the agreement of the judiciary chief and based on social necessities. The punishment of execution ... should not be carried out or publicised in a way that would create psychological tensions for the society, especially the young," a spokesman for the judiciary, Alireza Jamshidi, said.


While executions will likely continue behind closed doors, the order was interpreted as an effort to ensure that capital punishment takes place beyond the scrutiny of the outside world. It follows a dramatic rise in public hangings, coinciding with a general increase in the use of the death penalty. Around 300 executions were carried out last year, compared with less than 200 the previous year.

Sixty men convicted of a range of capital offences, including murder, rape and drug trafficking have been hanged from cranes in public since last July, in scenes usually witnessed by large crowds. Several executions have been screened on state television, including one on Monday of two men convicted of raping and murdering several women in the central city of Arak. Armed robbery, apostasy, drug trafficking and homosexuality are also punishable by death in the Islamic republic.

In another instance, two men convicted of assassinating a hardline judge, Hassan Moghaddas, were executed in front of the judiciary headquarters in central Tehran last July, within view of numerous office blocks and several foreign embassies.

Public executions have generally been applied to crimes that provoked public outrage, but critics say their increasing frequency has been intended to intimidate political opponents.

Human rights groups say Iran carries out more executions than any other country, apart from China. Its use of the death penalty has been criticised by the EU.

It is not the first time that Shahroudi has intervened to tone down Iran's draconian laws, but some of his previous rulings have been ignored. A man was stoned to death for adultery last July, just three weeks after Shahroudi had ordered his execution to be halted. Last month, another man was hanged after being convicted of a rape allegedly committed when he was 13, despite the judiciary chief having ordered a stay of execution after his accusers withdrew the charges.

The cleric was behind moves two years ago to open the doors to Iran's notorious Evin prison to international media. And in 2004, he ordered a ban on the use of torture in obtaining confessions - a decision widely seen as the first public acknowledgment of the practice of torture in Iran.
guardian

Video of one girls story with this link...

For an impoverished beauty queen, a stark choice: sex work or no work


Women's media campaign in Nicaragua overturns crackdown on brothels across capital


Rory Carroll in Managua


What Natasha does on the bed in the dingy room with flaking orange paint so shames her she cannot bring herself to use the word. She calls it "so and so" and sells it here from midday to midnight, six days a week.

On a very good day she makes £45. With each 30-minute session earning £2.50 that works out at 18 different men, many drunk, some violent. She tries to forget the very good days.


"I don't want to be with a strange man who wants to kiss your whole body. Some suck you up and leave red marks. It's ugly." Natasha shuddered. "Ugly, ugly, ugly."

Three years ago she won two beauty contests and was runner-up in another two, including Miss Best Legs, on Nicaragua's impoverished Caribbean coast. With dreams of modelling she boarded a bus for the distant capital, Managua.

But Nicaragua has not fully recovered from its 1980s war and remains the second-poorest country in the Americas after Haiti. Economic necessity kills many dreams.

Now 19, she is a veteran of Salvadoreño, a bar and brothel in a tough barrio known as Costa Rica. The days pass in a miasma of beer, sweat and perfume. "I would not wish my worst enemy to be here," she said. "This is the worst thing you can do."

Not quite, it turns out. There is an even worse alternative: doing nothing. Two months ago police raids shut brothels across the city, expelled clients and sent sex workers home. The leftwing Sandinista government billed the crackdown as a socially progressive effort to protect women from exploitation.

The would-be beneficiaries did not see it that way. Their work, however ghastly, was a ticket out of poverty.

Dozens of prostitutes from Salvadoreño led a revolt against what they said was a violation of rights. Emerging from the shadows of their trade, they went public and mounted an unprecedented media campaign to overturn the ban. Astonished by the protests, the authorities relented and within a week the women were back at work.

"It was just before Christmas and we badly needed money for our families," said Carolina Hacks, 23, another worker at Salvadoreño. "But then we always need money, we're the breadwinners for our children and parents."

The Managua-based Central American Health Institute, a non-governmental organisation which funds medical treatment and disease prevention and is known by its Spanish initials ICAS, welcomed the end of the crackdown.

"That sort of repression drives the trade further underground and makes the women less accessible to us," said Zoyla Segura, a health worker. "This protest was something positive because it showed an awareness of their rights."

Profiting from the earnings of prostitution is illegal but authorities have long turned a blind eye to the bars, massage parlours and strip clubs which employ most of the city's estimated 1,500 sex workers.

Salvadoreño, a courtyard of plastic tables where men drink knee-high bottles of beer, has been operating for 35 years. Traders wander in, hawking snacks, baby clothes and pirated DVDs. Everything is for sale, including the waitresses who provide "servicios" in the seven bedrooms adjacent to the bar.

Sex costs £3.25, of which 75p goes to the business and the rest is pocketed by the prostitute, said Marta Lorena, the manager. "We have 25 chicas working here. It's good money for them and for us."

Though she has gained weight from sipping endless sodas Natasha, who did not want her surname published, retains beauty pageant glamour and is the most sought-after chica. Her earnings support her mother, aunt and younger brother in Bluefields, a sleepy, humid town which feels more Jamaican than Nicaraguan. Even on a quiet day she earns more than a doctor or teacher. On Sunday, her day off, she studies banking at a university, but graduation is at least five years away.

The relative privacy of the work is a consolation. "There are bars where you dance naked and you're touched up courtesy of the house." Natasha has declined work at more upmarket brothels which pay more for a session but have a lower turnover.

"For now this is my life," she said, gesturing to the rumpled bed, bare light-bulb and cracked walls. When a client is especially repellent she urges him to hurry up. If one turns violent she shouts and bar staff come to her aid.

"Three years and I'm still not used to it. You can imagine what it was like on my first day. I'd just had one boyfriend before coming here."

By chance last year the ex-boyfriend visited the bar and spotted her. "I was so ashamed. I ran out and cried and cried. I hope never to see him again." Other men from Bluefields have also recognised her.

"I don't care if the whole of my town knows I'm here but not my family, not my mum. I told her I'm married and that my husband gives me the money.

"That's a lie."

guardian