A recent cash payment by Papua New Guinea for the release of three hostages held captive by armed gunmen in Southern Highlands province has set a “dangerous precedent”, says the opposition.
Deputy opposition leader Douglas Tomuriesa said in a statement that the Marape government had set a bad precedent in allowing ransom money to be paid to the kidnappers for the release of the three hostages late last month instead of eliminating the gunmen.
The shadow treasurer said that thankfully the three captives had been set free without any harm but he expressed sadness that such a bad precedent had been set for the country which was likely to spur similar hostage-taking incidents in future.
How the Post-Courier’s front page reported the release of the hostages on February 27. Image: PNG Post-Courier screenshot APR
Tomuriesa said since the hostages were now free, Police Commissioner David Manning must ensure that the culprits would be brought to justice and face the full force of the law.
He said it was “shameful” that the Prime Minister had contradicted his Police Commissioner by initially denying that any ransom had been paid.
“I now demand the Prime Minister tell the truth and reveal the actual amount of ransom paid to the criminals and why a third party was involved,” Tomuriesa said.
One of three women captives was released on February 23 while the other two were released with Australia-based New Zealand academic Professor Bryce Barker on February 26 after K100,000 (NZ$46,000) had been paid, according to one news report.
“If all the government can do is pay ransom to terrorists, then PNG can forget about promoting tourism and foreign investment in the country as investors will view the country as too dangerous.
“By very quickly resorting to allowing payment of ransom money, the government has now realised that the PNG police and military are very ill-equipped to deal with a dangerous hostage-taking situation.
“The whole country will remain at risk unless the gunmen are made to surrender all their guns, including the high-powered machines stolen from the PNG Defence Force armoury.”
Tomuriesa said the government must now seek specialised training and assistance from friendly countries like Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, or the United States to establish and train a special task force for the PNG police and military.
The special force would need to be capable of undertaking search and rescue operations should similar hostage-taking situations arise in future.
Republished from the PNG Post-Courier with permission.
For more than 100 years, institutions have been popping up in America promising to put troubled teens back on the right track. But all too often these teens end up being subjected to what can only be described as torture in these institutions. Mike Papantonio is joined by mass torts attorney Caleb Cunningham from the […]
“Reconsider travel” to Mexico, asks USA Today (10/2/22)? Cancun has a relatively high homicide rate, but it’s 24% lower than Baltimore’s, which we haven’t seen the paper warning tourists away from. Cozumel, meanwhile, has a homicide rate lower than 38 major US cities.
Planning a trip to Mexico? If you read the news these days, you would think that Americans ought to be terrified of the popular tourist destination.
Headlines abound like “Killing of Artist Brothers Shatters Mexico City’s Veneer of Safety” (Guardian, 12/23/22) and “Reconsider Travel? Safety Experts Talk Violence in Mexico Tourist Spots” (USA Today, 10/2/22).
Of course, a headline isn’t the text of an article, but it’s frequently all readers see, and their constant repetition about the alleged dangers posed by simply being in Mexico is disturbing.
Most recently, you might have seen a version of “US Issues Strongest Possible ‘Do Not Travel’ Warning for Mexico Ahead of Spring Break” (LA’s Fox 11, 2/9/23) in a local news report headline. But read down to just the first line, and you’ll see that the warning is for only six of Mexico’s 31 states, not for the entire country—nor does it apply to Mexico City, by far the country’s largest metropolis, which is in its own federal district.
Nonetheless, the article goes on to say, “Other countries that are under the same highest-level travel warning include Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, Ukraine, North Korea and Syria.”
Take a breath, Fox 11.
One of the most-visited countries
AP (via ABC, 2/21/23) offers news you can use, if you’re a Playa del Carmen bar inspector.
Isolated incidents, like the murder of a US resident in Zacatecas (CBS News, 1/25/23) and the possible extortion and death under mysterious circumstances of a US lawyer near Tijuana, described in the Fox 11 article above, do happen, particularly in the parts of the country where cartel violence is out of control.
But this must be placed in context. Mexico is a country—yes, one with social violence—that is consistently among the most visited in the world, in large part due to US tourists. The country had 32 million visitors in 2021, which was down from a pre-pandemic high of 45 million.
While they’re often happy to produce click-bait headlines that spark fear in potential travelers, many corporate media outlets seem less interested in giving those readers any sense of what level of risk the average tourist visiting a popular Mexican tourist destination might actually face.
Consider the article, “Bar Employees Stabbed Inspectors at Mexico Resort” (AP, 2/21/23). The AP devotes four of seven paragraphs to providing context, which offer that Playa del Carmen “has long had a reputation for rough and dangerous bars,” “has long had a problem with illicit business,” and has been the site of two shooting attacks in the last five years, at least one of which killed tourists.
That emphasis certainly suggests that tourists to Playa del Carmen ought to be worried about being shot while there. The article does not offer the context that Playa del Carmen is in the state of Quintana Roo, which the State Department puts in the same travel advisory category as France. Or that according to the US State Department, four US tourists were murdered there in 2021 (the last full year for which there’s data)—out of some 4.8 million visitors from the States that year, making homicide on a trip there literally less than a one in a million chance.
Spring break crime crisis
Fox News(2/21/23) paired a report about increased police patrols in Playa del Carmen with video of a Polish tourist climbing an off-limits pyramid in Chichen Itza, in a different state.
Fox News (2/21/23), predictably, went even further, offering, “Mexican Beach Town Announces Major Crackdown Amid Country’s Crime Crisis Ahead of Spring Break.”
In case you miss the point about the ginned-up crisis, and whom it purportedly affects, the article was paired with a video of a white European tourist, climbing the steps of a Mayan pyramid in a totally different state, who was heckled and took a few cheap shots while being escorted out for breaking the rules.
Yet, as tourism advice website TravelLemming.com (1/19/23) notes in a much more balanced piece, “Playa del Carmen is, overall, a relatively safe place to visit.” The piece focuses as much on Covid, water contamination and crocodiles as it does on cartels.
Where it does talk about violence, it does so in measured and specific terms:
In general, unless you’re using drugs, purchasing drugs or are involved with people who are affiliated with cartels, chances are you won’t be the victim of a cartel-related incident.
As scary as France
Carlos Vilalte, a geographer of crime based in Mexico City, says that although there are no official statistics kept of crimes against tourists, he has “no knowledge of tourists being particularly targeted for crime, either in tourist locations, or anywhere else.” He notes, though, that they might be affected “collaterally.”
This is because there is violence in Mexico–a lot in some places, often fueled by drug consumption in the United States. Several cities, like Tijuana, are among the most dangerous in the world that are not in a literal war zone. “Organized crime is a serious issue in Mexico,” says Vilalte.
The Louisville Courier Journal (8/25/22) offers “Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula” as a “refreshing alternative” to Cancun—which is on Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula (though not in the state of Yucatan).
But roughly three-fifths of the country’s states are under the first (“Exercise normal precautions”) or second (“Exercise increased caution”) levels of the State Department’s system for alerting US travelers to possible danger. These areas, according to the government’s system, are as safe as or safer than France and Spain (both of which carry warnings about “terrorism and civil unrest”).
You wouldn’t know that from headlines about the Riviera Maya like “US Tourists Beware: Popular Mexico Getaway Plagued by Drug Cartel Intimidation and Violence” (Courier Journal, 8/25/22), or the Fox News article mentioned above, which says:
“Violent crime and gang activity are widespread,” the [State Department] warning said of one area. “Most homicides are targeted assassinations against members of criminal organizations.”
This would be terrifying if you were planning to travel to the resort town, if you didn’t know better—or read down to the end, where even Fox News is forced to admit, “The state of Quintana Roo where Playa del Carmen is located is not included on the State Department’s ‘do not travel’ list.”
It’s a xenophobic double standard: You’d be hard pressed to find a US media outlet suggesting foreign tourists should beware of visiting our own country because of social violence in New Orleans or St. Louis, or even Dallas or Portland, Oregon, all of which now have higher murder rates than Mexico City.
Several teachers from a Papua New Guinean school in Porgera, Enga province, are now being investigated by police after they allegedly instigated the torture, burning and interrogation of four women over sorcery accusations on the campus.
The four women who worked as cleaners at the school were attacked after one of the teachers died suddenly last week.
According to Enga police commander acting Superintendent George Kakas, the women had been seen chatting with the teacher last week before he collapsed an hour after being seen with the women.
PPC Kakas said the women were then forced into the home of the deceased teacher and interrogated for 11 hours by the colleagues of the deceased and his relatives.
“Last week the teacher collapsed. He was believed to have conversed in a casual meeting with women earlier on in the day and collapsed in the afternoon,” Superintendent Kakas said.
“Relatives and some teachers and public servants accused the four women of practising sorcery and taking out the deceased’s heart.
“They were taken into the teacher’s house and brutally tortured with bush knives, axes and iron rods from about 5pm that evening until 4am the next day when they were rescued by security force members consisting of Porgera police and PNG Defence Force soldiers.
Relatives barred police
“When police tried to have a look at the body of the deceased, his relatives refused to let police near the body, saying that ‘the glasman was seeing the body and that the teacher was still alive’.
Glasmen are men who claim to be able to identify and accuse women of sorcery.
“I commend the work of the police station commander Porgera, Inspector Martin Kelei, who led the team to the teacher’s house after a tip-off and rescued [the tortured women].
“They were all driven safely to Wabag hospital where they are now undergoing treatment. I immediately instructed my OIC CID Wabag to do a postmortem on the body.
“The next day they confirmed the teacher died of a massive heart attack.”
Superintendent Kakas said: “There you have it. It’s a confirmed heart attack, and the ladies were falsely accused, tortured and nearly killed.
“We know the identities of the key instigators of the torture of the four women and are working to apprehend them.
“I will make it my personal business to ensure these perpetrators are arrested and charged.
I have an investigation team working on that through my OIC [officer in charge] sorcery accusation-related violence unit here in Wabag.”
Republished from the PNG Post-Courier with permission.
More information has been revealed about how a major banking CEO helped Jeffrey Epstein with his illicit activities. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more. Transcript: *This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos. Mike Papantonio: More information’s been revealed about how a major banking CEO helped Jeffrey Epstein with his illicit activities […]
The three local female researchers who were kidnapped with Australia-based New Zealand professor Bryce Barker are being kept in a safe house and banned from speaking to news media.
According to their families, the women were being kept in an undisclosed location for their safety with their mobile phones taken away from them by authorities.
The family also told The National that they had also been restricted from talking to the media as well.
The online photo from Prime Minister James Marape’s Facebook post . . . Professor Bryce Barker and another released hostage. Image: PM James Marape FB
The female researchers were doing field work with Professor Barker researching the history of human migration to Australia in a remote part of Mt Bosavi, Southern Highlands, when they were kidnapped on February 19 and held hostage for seven days.
Their captors were reported to have sought a K3.5 million (NZ$1.6 million) ransom.
One of the women was released on Thursday while the other two were released with Professor Bryce on Sunday afternoon after K100,000 (NZ$46,000) had been paid.
Made available by third parties
However, Internal Security Minister Peter Tsiamalili Jr clarified that the money was made available by third parties to assist with intelligence gathering and to support the negotiators, who secured the release of the hostages.
“In the course of these briefings, it was agreed that the state could not be the party to negotiate a financial settlement, as it recognised the risk of setting a precedent,” he said.
“It is important that members of the public understand the sensitive nature of what occurred in what was an act of terrorism and that the government was not directly involved with the negotiations.
“Negotiations were deliberately undertaken by third parties, through an agreed operational strategy, so as to not compromise the state’s position on law enforcement.”
Meanwhile, 16 of the kidnappers have been identified and their pictures have been provided to police.
Marape said that phase one of the process was completed and a combined PNG Defence Force (PNGDF) and police investigations would continue.
‘No stone left unturned’
“No stone will be left unturned, all those involved will be arrested and charged accordingly and will face the full force of the law,” he said.
Tsiamalili added that security forces would continue to work to bring those involved in the kidnapping case to justice.
“The full weight of the law will be brought to bear on the captors,” he said.
“The actions of the hostage takers were abhorrent, causing significant distress to the captives and their families.
“We will not tolerate those who seek to take the law into their own hands, and all necessary resources will be deployed to ensure that those responsible face the full weight of the law and are held to account.”
Rebecca Kukuis a reporter with The National. Republished with permission.
Whether the mask is labeled fascism, democracy, or dictatorship of the proletariat, our great adversary remains the apparatus—the bureaucracy, the police, the military.
It’s hard to say whether we’re dealing with a kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves), a kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled career politicians, corporations and thieves that panders to the worst vices in our nature and has little regard for the rights of American citizens), or if we’ve gone straight to an idiocracy.
A Massachusetts law prohibits drivers from letting their cars idle for more than five minutes on penalty of a $100 fine ($500 for repeat offenders), even in the winter. You can also be fined $20 or a month in jail for scaring pigeons.
This overbearing Nanny State despotism is what happens when government representatives (those elected and appointed to work for us) adopt the authoritarian notion that the government knows best and therefore must control, regulate and dictate almost everything about the citizenry’s public, private and professional lives.
The government’s bureaucratic attempts at muscle-flexing by way of overregulation and overcriminalization have reached such outrageous limits that federal and state governments now require on penalty of a fine that individuals apply for permission before they can grow exotic orchids, host elaborate dinner parties, gather friends in one’s home for Bible studies, give coffee to the homeless, let their kids manage a lemonade stand, keep chickens as pets, or braid someone’s hair, as ludicrous as that may seem.
This is what happens when bureaucrats run the show, and the rule of law becomes little more than a cattle prod for forcing the citizenry to march in lockstep with the government.
Overregulation is just the other side of the coin to overcriminalization, that phenomenon in which everything is rendered illegal and everyone becomes a lawbreaker.
As policy analyst Michael Van Beek warns, the problem with overcriminalization is that there are so many laws at the federal, state and local levels—that we can’t possibly know them all.
“It’s also impossible to enforce all these laws. Instead, law enforcement officials must choose which ones are important and which are not. The result is that they pick the laws Americans really must follow, because they’re the ones deciding which laws really matter,” concludes Van Beek. “Federal, state and local regulations — rules created by unelected government bureaucrats — carry the same force of law and can turn you into a criminal if you violate any one of them… if we violate these rules, we could be prosecuted as criminals. No matter how antiquated or ridiculous, they still carry the full force of the law. By letting so many of these sit around, just waiting to be used against us, we increase the power of law enforcement, which has lots of options to charge people with legal and regulatory violations.”
This is the police state’s superpower: it has been vested with the authority to make our lives a bureaucratic hell.
However, the consequences are all too serious for those whose lives become grist for the police state’s mill. A few years back, police raided barber shops in minority communities, resulting in barbers being handcuffed in front of customers, and their shops searched without warrants. All of this was purportedly done in an effort to make sure that the barbers’ licensing paperwork was up to snuff.
In this way, America has gone from being a beacon of freedom to a locked down nation. And “we the people,” sold on the idea that safety, security and material comforts are preferable to freedom, have allowed the government to pave over the Constitution in order to erect a concentration camp.
We labor today under the weight of countless tyrannies, large and small, carried out in the so-called name of the national good by an elite class of governmental and corporate officials who are largely insulated from the ill effects of their actions.
We increasingly find ourselves badgered, bullied and browbeaten into bearing the brunt of their arrogance, paying the price for their greed, suffering the backlash for their militarism, agonizing as a result of their inaction, feigning ignorance about their backroom dealings, overlooking their incompetence, turning a blind eye to their misdeeds, cowering from their heavy-handed tactics, and blindly hoping for change that never comes.
The overt signs of the despotism exercised by the increasingly authoritarian regime that passes itself off as the United States government (and its corporate partners in crime) are all around us: censorship, criminalizing, shadow banning and de-platforming of individuals who express ideas that are politically incorrect or unpopular; warrantless surveillance of Americans’ movements and communications; SWAT team raids of Americans’ homes; shootings of unarmed citizens by police; harsh punishments meted out to schoolchildren in the name of zero tolerance; community-wide lockdowns and health mandates that strip Americans of their freedom of movement and bodily integrity; armed drones taking to the skies domestically; endless wars; out-of-control spending; militarized police; roadside strip searches; privatized prisons with a profit incentive for jailing Americans; fusion centers that spy on, collect and disseminate data on Americans’ private transactions; and militarized agencies with stockpiles of ammunition, to name some of the most appalling.
Yet as egregious as these incursions on our rights may be, it’s the endless, petty tyrannies—the heavy-handed, punitive-laden dictates inflicted by a self-righteous, Big-Brother-Knows-Best bureaucracy on an overtaxed, overregulated, and underrepresented populace—that illustrate so clearly the degree to which “we the people” are viewed as incapable of common sense, moral judgment, fairness, and intelligence, not to mention lacking a basic understanding of how to stay alive, raise a family, or be part of a functioning community.
In exchange for the promise of an end to global pandemics, lower taxes, lower crime rates, safe streets, safe schools, blight-free neighborhoods, and readily accessible technology, health care, water, food and power, we’ve opened the door to lockdowns, militarized police, government surveillance, asset forfeiture, school zero tolerance policies, license plate readers, red light cameras, SWAT team raids, health care mandates, overcriminalization, overregulation and government corruption.
In the end, such bargains always turn sour.
We relied on the government to help us safely navigate national emergencies (terrorism, natural disasters, global pandemics, etc.) only to find ourselves forced to relinquish our freedoms on the altar of national security, yet we’re no safer (or healthier) than before.
We wanted criminals taken off the streets, and we didn’t want to have to pay for their incarceration. What we’ve gotten is a nation that boasts the highest incarceration rate in the world, with more than 2.3 million people locked up, many of them doing time for relatively minor, nonviolent crimes, and a private prison industry fueling the drive for more inmates, who are forced to provide corporations with cheap labor.
A special report by CNBC breaks down the national numbers:
One out of 100 American adults is behind bars — while a stunning one out of 32 is on probation, parole or in prison. This reliance on mass incarceration has created a thriving prison economy. The states and the federal government spend about $74 billion a year on corrections, and nearly 800,000 people work in the industry.
According to the Washington Post, these funds have been used to buy guns, armored cars, electronic surveillance gear, “luxury vehicles, travel and a clown named Sparkles.” Police seminars advise officers to use their “department wish list when deciding which assets to seize” and, in particular, go after flat screen TVs, cash and nice cars.
In Florida, where police are no strangers to asset forfeiture, Florida police have been carrying out “reverse” sting operations, where they pose as drug dealers to lure buyers with promises of cheap cocaine, then bust them, and seize their cash and cars. Over the course of a year, police in one small Florida town seized close to $6 million using these entrapment schemes.
We fell for the government’s promise of safer roads, only to find ourselves caught in a tangle of profit-driven red light cameras, which ticket unsuspecting drivers in the so-called name of road safety while ostensibly fattening the coffers of local and state governments. Despite widespread public opposition, corruption and systemic malfunctions, these cameras—used in 24 states and Washington, DC—are particularly popular with municipalities, which look to them as an easy means of extra cash.
One small Florida town, population 8,000, generates a million dollars a year in fines from these cameras. Building on the profit-incentive schemes, the cameras’ manufacturers are also pushing speed cameras and school bus cameras, both of which result in heft fines for violators who speed or try to go around school buses.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, this is what happens when the American people get duped, deceived, double-crossed, cheated, lied to, swindled and conned into believing that the government and its army of bureaucrats—the people we appointed to safeguard our freedoms—actually have our best interests at heart.
The problem with these devil’s bargains is that there is always a catch, always a price to pay for whatever it is we valued so highly as to barter away our most precious possessions.
We’ve bartered away our right to self-governance, self-defense, privacy, autonomy and that most important right of all: the right to tell the government to “leave me the hell alone.”
Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister James Marape has revealed that about K100,000 (about NZ$46,000) was paid to the kidnappers for the release of the three remaining hostages in the Bosavi mountains in the Southern Highlands province at the weekend.
The three hostages, an Australian-resident New Zealand professor and his two female colleagues, were set free yesterday.
In a news conference today, Prime Minister Marape clarified that the money was given through community leaders for the release of the hostages.
”There was no K3.5 million paid [NZ$1.6 million — the original kidnappers’ demand]. The liaison money exchanged was K100,000 paid through the community leaders for a liaison to take place.
“The demand was very high and they maintained it all the way through, but we had to break the ice and ensure the safe return of the captives,” said Marape.
On February 20, the United Nations Security Council approved a statement, described in the media as a ‘watered-down’ version of an earlier draft resolution which would have demanded that Israel “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory.”
The intrigues that led to the scrapping of what was meant to be a binding resolution will be the subject of a future article. For now, however, I would like to reflect on the fact that the so-called international community’s relationship with the Palestinian struggle has always attempted to ‘water down’ a horrific reality.
While we often rage against statements made by US politicians who, like former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, refuse to even acknowledge that Israel is occupying Palestine in the first place, we tend to forget that many of us are, somehow, involved in the watering down of the Palestinian reality, as well.
While reports by B’tselem, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, dubbing Israel an ‘apartheid state’, are welcome additions to a growing political discourse making similar claims, one must ask: why did it take decades for these conclusions to be drawn now? And what is the moral and legal justification for ‘watering down’ Israel’s apartheid reality for all of these years, considering that Israel has, from the moment of its inception – and even before – been an apartheid entity?
The ‘watering-down’, however, goes much deeper than this, as if there is a conspiracy not to describe the reality of Palestine and the Palestinian people by its proper names: war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, apartheid and more.
I have spent half my life living in, and interacting with, western societies while lobbying for solidarity with Palestinians, and for holding Israel accountable for its ongoing crimes against the Palestinian people. Every step of the way, in every society, and on every platform, there has always been pushback, even by Palestine’s own supporters.
Whether motivated by blind ‘love’ for Israel or by guilt over historical crimes against the Jewish people, or over the fear of ‘rocking the boat’, offending the sensibilities of western societies, or outright retaliation by pro-Israeli supporters, the outcome tends to be the same: if not unconditional support for Israel, then, certainly ‘watered-down’ statements on the tragic reality of the Palestinians.
Naturally, a watered-down version of the truth is not the truth at all. Worse, it is unlikely to lead to any resolute moral stances or meaningful political actions. If, indeed, watering down the truth was of any value, Palestine would have been freed a long time ago. Not only is this not the case, but there also remains a true deficit of knowledge regarding the root causes, nature and consequences of the daily Israeli crimes in Palestine.
Admittedly, the quisling Palestinian leadership exemplified in the Palestinian Authority, has played a significant role in watering down our understanding of Israel’s ongoing crimes. In fact, the ‘watered-down’ statement at the UN would not have replaced the binding resolution if it were not for the consent of the PA. However, in many Palestinian spaces in which the PA holds no political sway whatsoever, we continue to seek a watered-down understanding of Palestine.
Almost every day, somewhere in the world, a Palestinian or a pro-Palestinian speaker, author, artist or activist is being disinvited from a conference, a meeting, a workshop or an academic engagement for failing to water down his or her take on Palestine.
While fear of repercussions – the denial of funding, smear campaigns, or loss of position – often serves as the logic behind the constant watering down, sometimes pro-Palestine groups and media organizations walk into the ‘watered-down’ trap of their own accords.
To protect themselves from smear campaigns, government meddling or even legal action, some pro-Palestine organizations often seek affiliation with ‘reputable’ people from mainstream backgrounds, politicians or ex-politicians, well-known figures or celebrities to portray an image of moderation. Yet, knowingly or unwittingly, with time, they begin to moderate their own message so as not to lose the hard-earned support in mainstream society. In doing so, instead of speaking truth to power, these groups begin to develop a political discourse that only guarantees their own survival and nothing more.
In the Prison Notebooks, anti-Fascist Italian intellectual Antonio Gramsci urged us to create a broad “cultural front” to establish our own version of cultural hegemony. However, Gramsci never advocated the watering down of radical discourse in the first place. He merely wanted to expand the power of the radical discourse to reach a much wider audience, as a starting point for a fundamental shift in society. In the case of Palestine, however, we tend to do the opposite: instead of maintaining the integrity of the truth, we tend to make it less truthful so that it may appear more palatable.
While creative in making their messages more relatable to a wider audience, the Zionists rarely water down their actual language. To the contrary, the Zionist discourse is uncompromising in its violent and racist nature which, ultimately, contributes to the erasure of Palestinians as a people with history, culture, real grievances and rights.
The same is true in the case of the pro-Ukraine and anti-Russian propaganda plaguing western media around the clock. In this case, there is rarely any deviation from the message, regarding who is the victim and who is the perpetrator.
Historically, anti-colonial movements, from Africa to everywhere else, hardly watered down their approach to colonialism, neither in the language nor in the forms of resistance. Palestinians, on the other hand, subsist in this watered-down duplicitous reality simply because the West’s allegiance to Israel makes the truthful depiction of the Palestinian struggle too ‘radical’ to sustain. This approach is not only morally problematic but also ahistorical and impractical.
Ahistorical and impractical because half-truths, or watered-down truths, never lead to justice and never affect a lasting change. Perhaps a starting point of how we escape the ‘watered-down’ trap we find ourselves in, is to reflect on these words by one of the greatest engaged intellectuals in recent history, Malcolm X:
I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.
The truth, in its most simple and innate form, is the only objective we should continue to relentlessly pursue until Palestine and her people are finally free.
Two countries. A common border. Two hostage crises. But the responses of both Asia-Pacific nations have been like chalk and cheese.
On February 7, a militant cell of the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB), the armed wing of the Free Papua Organisation (OPM) — a fragmented organisation that been fighting for freedom for their Melanesian homeland from Indonesian rule for more than half a century — seized a Susi Air plane at the remote highlands airstrip of Paro, torched it and kidnapped the New Zealand pilot.
It was a desperate ploy by the rebels to attract attention to their struggle, ignored by the world, especially by their South Pacific near neighbours Australia and New Zealand.
Many critics deplore the hypocrisy of the region which reacts with concern over the Russian invasion and war against Ukraine a year ago at the weekend and also a perceived threat from China, while closing a blind eye to the plight of the West Papuans – the only actual war happening in the Pacific.
Phillip Mehrtens, the New Zealand pilot taken hostage at Paro, and his torched aircraft. Image: Jubi News
But they also want the United Nations involved and they reject the “sham referendum” conducted with 1025 handpicked voters that endorsed Indonesian annexation in 1969.
Twelve days later, a group of armed men in the neighbouring country of Papua New Guinea seized a research party of four led by an Australian-based New Zealand archaeology professor Bryce Barker of the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) — along with three Papua New Guinean women, programme coordinator Cathy Alex, Jemina Haro and PhD student Teppsy Beni — as hostages in the Mount Bosavi mountains on the Southern Highlands-Hela provincial border.
The good news is that the professor, Haro and Beni have now been freed safely after a complex operation involving negotiations, a big security deployment involving both police and military, and with the backing of Australian and New Zealand officials. Programme coordinator Cathy Alex had been freed earlier on Wednesday.
PNG Prime Minister James Marape shared this photo on Facebook of Professor Bryce Barker and one of his research colleagues after their release. Image: PM James Marape/FB
Prime Minister James Marape announced their release on his Facebook page, thanking Police Commissioner David Manning, the police force, military, leaders and community involved.
“We apologise to the families of those taken as hostages for ransom. It took us a while but the last three [captives] has [sic] been successfully returned through covert operations with no $K3.5m paid.
“To criminals, there is no profit in crime. We thank God that life was protected.”
How the PNG Post-Courier reported the kidnap on Tuesday’s front page. Image: Jim Marbrook/APR/PC screenshot
Ransom demanded
The kidnappers had demanded a ransom, as much as K3.5 million (NZ$1.6 million), according to one of PNG’s two daily newspapers, the Post-Courier, and Police Commissioner David Manning declared: “At the end of the day, we’re dealing with a criminal gang with no other established motive but greed.”
A “colonisation” map of Papua New Guinea and West Papua. Image: File
It was a coincidence that these hostage dramas were happening in Papua New Guinea and West Papua in the same time frame, but the contrast between how the Indonesian and PNG authorities have tackled the crises is salutary.
Jakarta was immediately poised to mount a special forces operation to “rescue” the 37-year-old pilot, which undoubtedly would have triggered a bloody outcome as happened in 1996 with another West Papuan hostage emergency at Mapenduma in the Highlands.
That year nine hostages were eventually freed, but two Indonesian students were killed in crossfire, and eight OPM guerrillas were killed and two captured. Six days earlier another rescue bid had ended in disaster when an Indonesian military helicopter crashed killing all five soldiers on board.
Reprisals were also taken against Papuan villagers suspected of assisting the rebels.
This month, only intervention by New Zealand diplomats, according to the ABC quoting Indonesian Security Minister Mahfud Mahmodin, prevented a bloody rescue bid by Indonesian special forces because they requested that there be no acts of violence to free its NZ citizen.
Mahmodin said Indonesian authorities would instead negotiate with the rebels to free the pilot. There is still hope that there will be a peaceful resolution, as in Papua New Guinea.
PNG sought negotiation
In the PNG hostage case, police and authorities had sought to de-escalate the crisis from the start and to negotiate the freedom of the hostages in the traditional “Melanesian way” with local villager go-betweens while buying time to set up their security operation.
The gang of between 13 and 21 armed men released one of the women researchers — Cathy Alex on Wednesday, reportedly to carry demands from the kidnappers.
PNG’s Police Commissioner David Manning .. . “We are working to negotiate an outcome, it is our intent to ensure the safe release of all and their safe return to their families.” Image: Jim Marbrook/Post-Courier screenshot APR
But the Papua New Guinean police were under no illusions about the tough action needed if negotiation failed with the gang which had terrorised the region for some months.
While Commissioner Manning made it clear that police had a special operations unit ready in reserve to use “lethal force” if necessary, he warned the gunmen they “can release their captives and they will be treated fairly through the criminal justice system, but failure to comply and resisting arrest could cost these criminals their lives”.
Now after the release of the hostages Commissioner Manning says: “We still have some unfinished business and we hope to resolve that within a reasonable timeframe.”
Earlier in the week, while Prime Minister Marape was in Fiji for the Pacific Islands Forum “unity” summit, he appealed to the hostage takers to free their captives, saying the identities of 13 captors were known — and “you have no place to hide”.
Deputy Opposition Leader Douglas Tomuriesa flagged a wider problem in Papua New Guinea by highlighting the fact that warlords and armed bandits posed a threat to the country’s national security.
“Warlords and armed bandits are very dangerous and . . . must be destroyed,” he said. “Police and the military are simply outgunned and outnumbered.”
‘Open’ media in PNG
Another major difference between the Indonesian and Papua New Guinea responses to the hostage dramas was the relatively “open” news media and extensive coverage in Port Moresby while the reporting across the border was mostly in Jakarta media with the narrative carefully managed to minimise the “independence” issue and the demands of the freedom fighters.
Media coverage in Jayapura was limited but with local news groups such as Jubi TV making their reportage far more nuanced.
West Papuan kidnap rebel leader Egianus Kogoya . . . “There are those who regard him as a Papuan hero and there are those who view him as a criminal.” Image: TPNPB
An Asia Pacific Report correspondent, Yamin Kogoya, has highlighted the pilot kidnapping from a West Papuan perspective and with background on the rebel leader Egianus Kogoya. (Note: Yamin’s last name represents the extended Kogoya clan across the Highlands – the largest clan group in West Papua, but it is not the family of the rebel leader).
“There are those who regard Egianus Kogoya as a Papuan hero and there are those who view him as a criminal,” he wrote.
“It is essential that we understand how concepts of morality, justice, and peace function in a world where one group oppresses another.
“A good person is not necessarily right, and a person who is right is not necessarily good. A hero’s journey is often filled with betrayal, rejection, error, tragedy, and compassion.
“Whenever a figure such as Egianus Kogoya emerges, people tend to make moral judgments without necessarily understanding the larger story.
‘Heroic figures’
“And heroic figures themselves have their own notions of morality and virtue, which are not always accepted by societal moralities.”
He also points out that there are “no happy monks or saints, nor are there happy revolutionary leaders”.
“Patrice Émery Lumumba, Thomas Sankara, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Malcom X, Ho Chi Minh, Marcus Garvey, Steve Biko, Arnold Aap and the many others are all deeply unfortunate on a human level.”
Indonesian security forces on patrol guarding roads around Sinakma, Wamena District, after last week’s rioting. Image: Jubi News
Last week, a riot in Wamena in the mountainous Highlands erupted over rumours about the abduction of a preschool child who was taken to a police station along with the alleged kidnapper. When protesters began throwing stones at the police station, Indonesian security forces shot dead nine people and wounded 14.
West Papua breakthrough
Meanwhile, headlines over the pilot kidnapping and the Wamena riot have overshadowed a remarkable diplomatic breakthrough in Fiji by Benny Wenda, president of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), a group that is waging a peaceful and diplomatic struggle for self-determination and justice for Papuans.
West Papua leader Benny Wenda (left) shaking hands with Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka . . . a remarkable diplomatic breakthrough. Image: @slrabuka
Wenda met new Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka, the original 1987 coup leader, who was narrowly elected the country’s leader last December and is ushering in a host of more open policies after 16 years of authoritarian rule.
The West Papuan leader won a pledge from Rabuka that he would support the independence campaigners to become full members of the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG), while also warning that they needed to be careful about “sovereignty issues”.
Under the FijiFirst government led by Voreqe Bainimarama, Fiji had been one of the countries that blocked the West Papuans in their previous bids in 2015 and 2019.
The MSG bloc includes Fiji, the FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) representing New Caledonia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, traditionally the strongest supporter of the Papuans.
Indonesia surprisingly became an associate member in 2015, a move that a former Vanuatu prime minister, Joe Natuman, has admitted was “a mistake”.
However, many West Papuan supporters and commentators long for the day when Australia and New Zealand also shed their hypocrisy and step up to back self-determination for the Indonesian-ruled Melanesian region.
A New Zealand professor and his two Papua New Guinean colleagues have been released from captivity, more than a week after being kidnapped by an armed gang.
Archaeologist Professor Bryce Barker, who now lives in Australia and works with the University of Southern Queensland (USQ), was held alongside fellow members of his research team.
They were doing fieldwork in a remote part of PNG’s Highlands when they were taken by a criminal gang from Hela Province who demanded a ransom for their freedom.
Their release brings to an end days of negotiations, and a complex security operation involving PNG police and defence personnel, in consultation with the Australian and New Zealand governments.
Prime Minister James Marape announced their release on his Facebook page, thanking Police Commissioner David Manning, the police force, military, leaders and community involved.
“We apologise to the families of those taken as hostages for ransom. It took us a whole but the last three [captives] has [sic] been successfully returned through covert operations with no $K3.5m paid.
“To criminals, there is no profit in crime. We thank God that life was protected.”
Mahuta praises the release
Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta praised the release on Twitter, welcoming their safe return.
Aotearoa New Zealand welcomes the safe release of hostages in PNG including a NZer. Tenkiu tru for your leadership and cooperation governments of PNG and Australia . #tatoutatou
The ABC named the released fellow members of his research team as Cathy Alex (set free earlier), Jemina Haro and PhD student Teppsy Beni.
The ABC reported that on February 12, Barker had shared a picture of his arrival in PNG’s capital on social media, captioning it simply “Port Moresby”.
‘Welcome to Port Moresby’
His friend Cathy Alex, a highly regarded local programme coordinator, replied: “Welcome to PNG”.
The two would soon be reuniting and heading into the country’s highlands as part of an ongoing archaeological research program with the University of Southern Queensland (USQ).
In a statement released to the ABC, USQ vice-chancellor Geraldine Mackenzie said the university was relieved to hear their much-loved colleague and his research team had been released.
“Professor Barker and his research team were in Papua New Guinea undertaking archaeological research,” Ms Mackenzie said.
“Bryce is a highly regarded archaeologist and a valued colleague at USQ and in the wider archaeological community. He has many years experience in undertaking research in PNG.
“Our deepest thanks go to the governments of Papua New Guinea, Australia and New Zealand, and the many people who worked tirelessly during this extremely difficult and sensitive time to secure their release.”
New Zealand police report that the number of people cited as uncontactable following Cyclone Gabrielle has dropped to eight — down from 13 on Friday night.
Some of those were people who, “for a variety of reasons, do not engage with authorities”, police said in a statement.
However, getting in touch with them remained a priority and all avenues were being explored to try and locate them.
Thousands had been reported as uncontactable after the cyclone caused widespread destruction across the North Island.
Monitoring crimes in storm-hit communities Police said that in the 24 hours to 7pm on Saturday, 534 prevention activities had been carried out in the Eastern District, including reassurance patrols and proactive engagements with storm-hit communities.
Twenty-four people had been arrested for a variety of offences, including burglary, car theft, serious assault, and disorder.
Fourteen of the arrests were in Hawke’s Bay, police said, and 10 were in Tai Rāwhiti.
An investigation into an incident in which a police patrol car was damaged in Wairoa around 10.30pm last night was ongoing.
Police said a headlight on the patrol car was damaged after they responded to a breach of the peace in Churchill Avenue.
Three people were arrested when they attempted to leave the address and a firearm was seized, police said.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
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The Post-Courier has exclusively been advised of the release of one of the women held captive by armed men in the Bosavi mountains, Southern Highlands.
Police Commissioner David Manning confirmed with the newspaper that the woman was released yesterday afternoon with authorities working to bring her home.
“The release of one of the Papua New Guinean women is a positive outcome, and negotiations continue for the safe release of the remaining two women and the New Zealand professor,” he said.
Papua New Guinean security forces have been authorised to use the full force of the law to secure the four captives being held hostage by an armed gang in Bosavi, Nipa-Kutubu, Southern Highlands province since Sunday.
Police Commissioner David Manning said the abductors were being offered “a way out”.
Manning described the gang as having no “established motive but greed”.
“We are working to negotiate an outcome, it is our intent to ensure the safe release of all and their safe return to their families. However, we also have contingencies if negotiations fail,” he said.
“It is in everyone’s interest to ensure we progress this effort as responsibly and safely as possible.”
The four captive researchers are reported to be an Australian anthropology professor, a three women — a New Zealander and two PNG researchers.
“We have taken into consideration all factors and possible outcomes, we remain committed to ensuring a successful outcome,” said Commissioner Manning.
“We are satisfied with the amount of information that we are receiving, pointing us as to the area where they are kept and the identity of their captors.
‘Treated fairly’
“They can release their captives and they will be treated fairly through the criminal justice system, but failure to comply and resisting arrest could cost these criminals their lives.
“The full force of the law will be used to immobilise and apprehend the criminals,” Commissioner Manning said.
“Our specialised security force personnel will use whatever means necessary against the criminals, up to and including the use of lethal force, in order to provide for the safety and security of the people being held.”
Hela Governor Philip Undialu has called upon the captors of the four hostages to release them as they entered the second day of captivity.
In a response to questions by the Post-Courier, Governor Undialu said: “The location of the hostages is like two days’ walk from Komo with no communication network.
“The only access we have now is through a missionary based at Bosavi connected via a satellite phone.
“I have asked the LLG president, ward members and community leaders of Komo to find who’s missing in the community after speculation that some Komo youths are involved.
‘Act of terrorism’
“At this stage we do not have the identities of the individuals. Whatever the case maybe, no one has any right to abduct, kidnap, hold them hostage and ask for cash payment.
“This is an act of terrorism, like we hear of in other countries. Law enforcement agencies must take this seriously and deal with such crimes appropriately.”
His response comes after police said the armed men were allegedly from Komo in Hela.
He said that the situation was being closely monitored by the government.
Prime Minister James Marape, who is in Suva for the Pacific Islands Forum “unity” summit, has also confirmed that security personnel were monitoring the situation.
Across the nation, many people in the country have condemned the actions of the 21 men who are holding the four researchers hostage.
Republished from the PNG Post-Courier with permission.
An Australian-based anthropology professor and three Papua New Guinean women researchers are being held captive inside the jungles of the Southern Highlands after they were kidnapped at gunpoint in Fogoma’iu village in the Bosavi LLG.
Four local guides who were also seized were told to jump into the Hegigio river after being released by their captors after they were held for a few hours on Sunday morning.
A local villager (name withheld) spoke exclusively to the Post-Courier last night saying that the other four hostages – three of them reportedly from the University of Papua New Guinea — had been moved a further 10km inland.
“The number of the gang members have now risen from 15 to 21 with the inclusion of another six men joining the group,” the villager said.
“The group remains adamant that their request for K3.5 million (NZ$1.6 million) remains before the hostages are released.”
The four who were released told locals in harrowing detail how after their release how their arms and legs had been bound with the professor threatened at gunpoint.
Fogoma’iu villagers said on Sunday morning at 2am that the home the research team were sleeping in at their village, a few kilometres from Mt Bosavi, was surrounded by several armed men.
Early hours
The group was taken away in the early hours of the morning.
Deputy Police Commissioner Philip Mitna said the armed criminals, reportedly from Komo in Hela province, were returning from Kamusi when they had sighted the victims and taken them hostage.
On Sunday morning, Prime Minister James Marape met with PNG’s Security Council and was briefed about the kidnapping and ransom demand of the group.
“This is the first time a ransom is attached to a hostage situation like this and I will make further statements in due time,” said Deputy Commissioner Mitna.
“This is the very first time and we are treating this very, very seriously; we don’t want it to be a precedent for the future. We are working with authorities concerned, at the moment the government is staying out of this picture in terms of negotiating on the ground.”
The Australian and New Zealand High Commissions in Port Moresby have both stated they were “aware of this situation but for privacy reasons no further information will be provided”.
In a short reply to questions by the Post-Courier, the PNG Defence Force said: “Yes, PNGDF is fully aware of it. Since, it’s within the context of operations, no comments/statement will be disclosed.”
Logging camp raids
The Post-Courier has uncovered that the armed group — now numbering 21 — had tried in two separate attempts to rob two logging sites in the Middle Fly area earlier this month.
However, both attempts were unsuccessful. The group left Middle Fly and trekked 101km into Southern Highlans Province where it is alleged they came across the group of researchers.
Government and Security Council negotiators are continuing their communication with the armed men in a bid to secure their release.
Both ABC News and the PNG Post-Courier have chosen not to name the captives given the sensitivity over this hostage situation.
Republished from the PNG Post-Courierwith permission.
An armed group has taken an Australian professor and three colleagues hostage in a remote region of Papua New Guinea, reports ABC Pacific.
The ABC’s Port Moresby correspondent Natalie Whiting reported that the professor and colleagues were in the Highlands region doing field study when they were taken hostage.
As well as the Australian academic, the group included a Papua New Guinean programme coordinator and two University of PNG graduates.
PNG Prime Minister James Marape told reporters in Port Moresby today there were “running conversations” between PNG authorities and the kidnappers, the ABC report said.
“I just want to inform the families of those taken hostage that we have been at work and contact has been made with people in the bush,” he said, according to the ABC report.
“We’ve got police and military on stand-by to assist. But, in the first instance, we want those criminals to release those who are held in captivity.
“We have been keeping this under close wraps because of the sensitivity and the need for us to get our friends [who were] captured, get them alive and safe.”
The ABC reported that it had chosen not to name the kidnapped Australian at this stage and had asked Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) for comment.
NZ hostage pilot Earlier this month, in a separate incident across the border a group of West Papuan rebels fighting for independence in the western half of Papua New Guinea island seized a New Zealand pilot as a hostage on February 7.
Philip Mehrtens, the New Zealand pilot taken hostage at Paro, and his aircraft set on fire. Image: Jubi News
They also set fire to his Susi Air plane at the remote highlands airstrip of Paro near Nduga.
Indonesian authorities have sent a negotiation team to make contact with the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) group led by Egianus Kogoya group to seek the release of the 37-year-old pilot Philip Mehrtens.
The rebels were demanding negotiations with the Indonesian government for independence for the Melanesian region.
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When Stefania Maurizi first received a call from WikiLeaks in 2009, she had little clue how drastically her life was about to change. 14 years later, the revelations from WikiLeaks about the extent of US surveillance, espionage, extrajudicial killing, and corruption have rippled across the world. Within the US, however, they are often downplayed or outright ignored. Stefania Maurizi joins The Chris HedgesReport to share her insider perspective on one of the centuries biggest stories, as well as her encyclopedic knowledge of the horrific truths revealed in WikiLeaks’ hundreds of thousands of leaked files.
Studio: Cameron Granadino, David Hebden
Audio Post-Production: Tommy Harron
Transcript The following is a rush transcription and may contain errors. An updated version will be made available as soon as possible.
Chris Hedges: Julian Assange and WikiLeaks have carried out the most important investigative journalism of our generation, revealing to the public the inner workings of power through the release of luminous documents. No other news organization has come close. This information has exposed the crimes, lies, and fraud of the powerful, sparking the judicial lynching of Assange who awaits extradition to the US in a high security prison in London. It allowed people across the globe to understand what their governments are doing behind their backs. In this show, we will speak with the Italian investigative journalist, Stefania Maurizi, author of Secret Power: WikiLeaks and Its Enemies, about some of the most important information provided to the public by WikiLeaks. These include the US War logs from Afghanistan and Iraq, a cash of 250,000 diplomatic cables and 800 Guantanamo Bay detainee assessment briefs, along with the 2007 collateral murder video in which US helicopter pilots banter as they gunned down civilians, including children and two Reuters journalists in a Baghdad street.
They include the 70,000 hacked emails copied from the accounts of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, that exposed the sleazy and corrupt world of the Clintons, including the donation of millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the $657,000 that Goldman Sachs paid to Hillary Clinton to give talks, a sum so large, it can only be considered a bribe and her dishonesty, telling the public she would work for financial reform while privately assuring Wall Street she would protect their interests. The cash of leaked emails showed that the Clinton campaign interfered in the Republican primaries to ensure that Donald Trump was the Republican nominee, assuming he would be the easiest candidate to defeat. They exposed Clinton’s advanced knowledge of questions in a primary debate and a role as the principal architect of the war in Libya, a war she believed would burnish her credentials as a presidential candidate.
Joining me to discuss these and other revelations and their importance is Stefania Maurizi, who is an investigative journalist. She is the only international reporter who has worked on the entirety of the WikiLeaks secret trove of leaked documents. So why don’t we begin actually with a phone call you get in the middle of the night. It’s in the book. And I’ll let you take it from there. And you have one hour. So they call you, what, at two in the morning or something? Go ahead.
Stefania Maurizi: Yes, yes. So first of all, thank you for having me, Chris. And I like your idea to discuss the very first time I work as a media partner with WikiLeaks. It was back in 2009 and WikiLeaks was not as famous as after the release of bombshells like the collateral murder video. And it was a tiny little known media organization. And I was looking at them at least since 2008 when one of my sources, journalistic sources, suddenly stopped talking to me. And it was at the point that I realized I needed better source protection because the old-fashioned techniques that basically are still at work in these days in newsroom, the use of mobile phones, emails, are no longer suitable in these days where heavy surveillance is the rule. So it was at that point that I realized that I needed good source protection. And since I’m a mathematician, for me, it was natural to look at cryptography as a tool to protect sources.
And at that time, there was only one media organization in the world using cryptography systematically. And that media organization was not the New York Times. It was not The Guardian. It was not the Washington Post. It was a tiny media organization founded by Julian Assange, WikiLeaks. And so I started looking at this work, but I had no contacts. I was just looking at them and the kind of documents they were publishing and I was deeply, deeply impressed. And I was deeply impressed, first of all, for the kind of very sensitive document they were able to get. But also, because of the courage. They were very courageous people because, for example, when they published the Guantanamo Manual and the Pentagon asked them to remove the document from their website, they said no. And in those days, it was not really common to have a media organization saying no to the Pentagon. Quite the opposite. After the 9/11, we had media reporting whatever the intelligence organizations were telling them with very few exception, of course.
And so I looked at them, but I didn’t know them. I was deeply interested in them in the work and learning from them. So it was that night in July 2009, that suddenly, they contacted me. They had my contacts because I had approached them and it was in the middle of the night and I was sleeping. And it was very sticky and hot. And the last thing I wanted to do was to wake up and answering my phone. But my phone kept ringing. So at the end, I woke up and I was told, “This is WikiLeaks.” And I could barely understand what was going on. I mean, I was sleeping. And I understood that I had to rush to my computer and download the file because I had an hour, just an hour, to download the file. And after an hour, they would remove it because others could download it.
So I went to the computer, I downloaded the file, and I started listening. It was an audio file. And it was very interesting audio file about the garbage crisis in Naples in 2009. Basically, Naples was drowning into garbage, into trash. And we had these images of Naples drowning in trash, which basically hit the headlines all around the world. So it was a conversation, a secretly recorded conversation by some people who had a conversation with a counselor discussing the alleged role of the Italian Secret Services in this garbage crisis. As many people don’t realize that garbage is a really important resource for mafia for the mafias. They are trafficking this trash. So this counselor was discussing the alleged state mafia deals behind this crisis. And without WikiLeaks, this information would’ve probably never surfaced.
I remember the morning after I called the counselor and I verified the files. WikiLeaks had done its own verification process, which, for me, was really important, because it confirmed that WikiLeaks was working as a media organization. It didn’t just put online whatever it received. It did its own verification process. And then, of course, it was trying to do its verification process in parallel with other journalists, because of course, no newsroom has the technical and journalistic skills to verify whatever it receives. And even traditional media often partner to verify and publish information with an impact. So for me, it was really important that they wanted to verify this information to establish whether it was genuine and to understand the local context. They didn’t just put on the internet whatever they received.
And I verified in parallel with them. And there was no doubts. The file was genuine. And at the time, I was working for the Italian leading news magazine, L’Espresso, which had done important work on the garbage crisis and the role of the mafias and so on. So I was even able to put in the context of this information. And that was the first time I work as a media partner with WikiLeaks before the collateral murder. And after that, basically after something like six months, WikiLeaks published the collateral murder video. And they, of course, became so famous, so well known all around the world. And since then, I basically never stopped working on the WikiLeaks secret documents. I have worked on the full documentation and I have worked on this case for the last 13 years.
But you have to realize that while I had no problems, I had some intimidation. And if you want, we can discuss what kind of intimidation. I was physically attacked in Rome, stolen important documentation. I was physically [inaudible 00:10:46] inside the Ecuadorian Embassy and I had several intimidation, but I was never put in prison. I was never arrested. Whereas for Julian, he has never gained known freedom. This is also one of the reason I’m so focused on this case because it’s like your editors tell you to go out with a colleague and your colleague falls out of a cliff. And you don’t abandon it. You don’t abandon him. You try to call people for help. You try to make people realize that this person is in danger. His life hangs in balance. And this is what also I’m trying to do. In addition to this, I have been litigating my FOI case to obtain the full documentation on Julian Assange and WikiLeaks for the last seven years, which has been very, very intense.
Chris Hedges: So this leak essentially tied the intelligence services, the Italian intelligence services, to the mafia in Naples. Would that be a summation of what you found out?
Stefania Maurizi: Yeah. I mean, there was a kind of negotiation according to the source, according to the counselor discussing this crisis. There was a kind of negotiation between the state and the mafia about this crisis.
Chris Hedges: I think this is something lost on many US viewers and readers, and that is the impact that WikiLeaks has had in countries, not just Italy, but Tunisia and Haiti. Maybe you can talk about the impact in Tunisia, the impact in Haiti. Because suddenly, countries around the globe were able to see not only what their governments were doing, but the interference, especially in Haiti, of the US embassy in attempt to crush a drive to raise the minimum wage, which, I can’t remember what it is, $2 an hour or something. But talk a little bit about the global impact these revelations had.
Stefania Maurizi: Well, of course, for the first time, if you are referring to the Afghan war logs, Iraq war logs, or the cables, all these files allowed for the first time to access to this information which was secret. So I mean, there was no way to obtain this information unless you got a copy after 25 years, 30 years, maybe 40 years when no one care anymore. Maybe the historians, the professional historians, care at that point, but it was no longer relevant for the public opinion to take informed decisions, of course.
So that was the explosive part of this secret documentation. For the first time, we got access to secret information about how the Afghan war work, about the Iraq war, about the US diplomacy and their deals, their pressure, the political pressure, their crimes behind the scene. And we could get access as facts were still very relevant, not after 20 or 30 years or 40 years. And we could get access without the reductions. Because when you require request these documents using freedom of information. You often got completely redacted documents to an extent that they are useless. As a journalist or as a citizen, they have are of little use. So this information was really game changing, really allowed to take the public opinion, the decision they need. The information they need to take informed decision as citizens.
Chris Hedges: I want to ask you about the 706,910 secret files of the Afghan wars. Before I do, just briefly tell us the importance of WikiLeaks in the Arab Spring and Tunisia and the importance of WikiLeaks in terms of Haiti. Those are two good examples of the impact WikiLeaks had.
Stefania Maurizi: Yes, of course. I mean, when it comes to the WikiLeaks cables, for the first time, the citizens of these countries were information restricted, are unavailable. They could access the French assessment about their regimes by the US diplomacy. And while publicly the US diplomacy was conducting diplomacy as business as usual, but in the secrecy of their correspondence, they were absolutely not diplomatic at all about these regimes. So for the first time, this population could look at the reality of the regime and were vindicated. And this made them to react to this kind of information and to try to oppose their regime, to try to change their regime. And this is why Amnesty International has credited WikiLeaks and WikiLeaks cables with having an important role in the Arab Spring in these countries, of course.
Chris Hedges: And Haiti, because it also exposed US interference in Haiti. I mean-
Stefania Maurizi: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Chris Hedges: I mean, a very concerted effort on the part of the US government to crush the labor movement, to break the movement to raise the minimum wage because they are all those sweatshops-
Stefania Maurizi: Of course.
Chris Hedges: Which are owned by US corporations.
Stefania Maurizi: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. And I mean, even if in the case of other countries, they didn’t unleash a revolution, they still unleash real important political awareness about the political interference, about the kind of crimes exposed by these documents, which could not be denied at this point, the kind of human rights violations, the kind of political pressure to grant impunity, for example, to the CIA. In the WikiLeaks cables, we got evidence, indisputable evidence, about political pressure on Italian authorities to grant impunity to the CIA agents responsible for the extraordinary rendition of Abu Amar. And of course, we could imagine that kind of political pressure. We could imagine that kind of political interference. Of course we could. But it is one matter to imagine. It is another matter to get evidence and to get their names and to get the conversation. That’s why these documents are important. And in fact, no one denied. No one even tried to file a libel case and say, “This is not true.”
Chris Hedges: Let’s talk about that.
Stefania Maurizi: They never said it.
Chris Hedges: This is 2003. The CIA kidnaps Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr in Milan.
Stefania Maurizi: Yep.
Chris Hedges: And because of WikiLeaks, they are finally 26, I think, people charged. But talk about what that exposed.
Stefania Maurizi: Yeah, yeah. Basically the CIA kidnapped this Egyptian citizen who had asked for asylum to Italy and was under investigation for international terrorism. So the Italian prosecutors in Milan suddenly had their person under investigation, which basically had vanished. They could not find where he had ended up. And they were very brilliant. And using phone metadata, the Italian prosecutors were able to basically identify 26 American citizens, almost all of them CIA agents, responsible for this kidnapping. Kidnapping in the middle of the day at the noontime on the 17th, February 2003. And they were bright. The Italian prosecutors were absolutely bright. They were able to identify them and to acquire evidence of this kidnapping and the role of the CIA and how this rendition works, how Abu Amar had been transferred to the US base Aviano where the US stores nuclear weapons in Italy, because as you probably know, Italy is the European country with the highest number of US nuclear weapons on its soil, and the only European country with two nuclear bases.
And one of these is Aviano where Abu Amar was transferred. And then he was transferred to Egypt and brutally tortured. And so our prosecutors were brilliant to identify the 26 Americans and to charge them. They were charged and they were put on trial in Absentia because in Italy, you can put people on trial even if they are not available on the Italian soil, because of course, they have left Italy immediately after the kidnapping. And they were able to get final sentences for all of them between six years and nine years in prison. However, none of them spent a single day in prison. Why? Because basically six justice minister, both on the left and on the right, both progressive and conservatives, basically refused to forward the arrest warrant to the US. They refused to send the arrest warrant to the US.
And so at the end of the day, Italy, the only country which, we were very proud that our prosecutor had been able to carry out justice in this case, at the end of the day, Italy ended up condemned by the European Court of Human Rights. Why? Because we had grant impunity to these CIA agents and none of them went to prison. So we could have imagined that there was some kind of political pressure on our politicians because our prosecutors and our judges had done everything to arrest them. To identify them, arrest them, and to sentence them. So it was not the Italian justice problem. The Italian justice had worked perfectly. They had been efficient and absolutely independent from our judges and prosecutors. The problem were the politicians because, as the cables revealed, the US diplomacy was aware that there was no way to force the prosecutors and the judges to stop their investigation because the Italian prosecutor are drastically independent. The US diplomacy rights, they are fiercely independent.
So since they could not put pressure on the prosecutors and on the judges, they put pressure on the politicians. Because at the end of the day, extraditions, even in our cases of extradition, at the end of the day, and that’s really important to understand in the case of Julian Assange. Extradition is a political process. It is a process where you have politicians acting, allowing or denying extradition. So the US knew that they could put pressure on the politicians, even they were unable to put pressure on the prosecutors and the judges. So they put pressure on the politicians, on all of them from the [inaudible 00:23:47] who was in their government, Romano Prodi, leftist government, to the [inaudible 00:23:59] who is today, is basically the president of the Italian Senate in these days with the Maloney government. So they put pressure on all of them, and basically, our Italian politicians basically refused to forward the arrest warrant to the US.
As a result, none of these people ended up in prison. None of these people basically have spent a single day in prison. And without the WikiLeaks documents, as I said, we could have imagined, but we could never have obtained the evidence, the solid evidence, the names, what they had discussed. And these cables are tremendously important to obtain this evidence of political pressure to grant impunity to the CIA.
Chris Hedges: Let’s talk about the Afghan war logs and the Iraq War logs. The Iraq War logs has 391,832 secret files. Afghan war logs, 76,910 secret files. What did they reveal?
Stefania Maurizi: They’re amazing document. Let me say, I worked so much on these documents. They are reports from the field, from the theater of war authored by the soldiers who were there. And basically, they provide a snapshot of the war. Whatever happened on the theater of war from January 2004 to December 2009. So six years of war described without any filter, without any propaganda. So at that point, you could see the war as it is on the entire theater of war and you could compare what the propaganda machine was telling to the public and what was really happening. And that’s the real value of this document. The value, of course, is what they reveal. The number of civilians, innocent civilians who were killed and the secret units like Taskforce 373. But the value here is that, for the first time, we could see these wars as they were as they were happening. Not after 30 years, after 40 years.
And never before, with the exception of the Pentagon Papers leaked by Daniel Ellsworth, never before it had been possible to look at the war as it is ongoing and having this access to secret information about what was going on. These are tremendously important document, and to this day, they remain the only source. If you take the Afghan war logs, for example, they remain the only public source about the killing, extra judicial killing. And the only source about the innocent civilians kill before 2007. I asked the UN mission in Afghanistan, which basically compiles the statistics. And they said, “There are no reliable data. With the exception of these gang war logs, there are no reliable data about civilian deaths before 2007.” So these documents are tremendously important. And we keep consulting them. We keep accessing them for our journalistic work.
As for the Iraq War logs, it’s the same. You have access to these secret reports on the war in Afghanistan as it was happening between January 2004 and December 2009, six years of wars. And you could compare the propaganda to what was actually happening. And reputable organizations like the Iraq Body Count was able to discover and to document 15,000 civilian deaths never accounted before. These are not statistics. These are human beings. These are human beings. So these documents are tremendously important. And they remain the only public source about these two wars.
Chris Hedges: Well, they exposed the lies that had been repeatedly told about the war.
Stefania Maurizi: Absolutely.
Chris Hedges: That on the one hand, these are internal communications about the reality and the public statements bore little resemblance to their own reporting.
Stefania Maurizi: ep. Like Taskforce 373, which was completely unknown. It was a secret unit. And the value of this document is that we discovered the involvement of the secret unit never disclosed before and how they uncovered this information, how the propaganda had avoided mentioning these special units and the brutality of their operations, of course.
Chris Hedges: Great. That was Stefania Maurizi, author of Secret Power: WikiLeaks and Its Enemies. I want to thank the Real News Network and its production team, Cameron Granadino, Adam Coley, David Hebden, and Kayla Rivera. You can find me at chrishedges.substack.com.
Speaker 4: And the Chris Hedges Report gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material with Chris and his guest.
Chris Hedges: I want to ask you about the Guantanamo files because those are also extremely important in exposing the fact, and the authors of those internal documents knew it, that many of the people in Guantanamo were completely innocent of any crime. But these were really, really important documents. Can you talk about them?
Stefania Maurizi: Yes. These documents are very important. For the first time, we had the reports on 765 and detainees in Guantanamo, almost all of them basically. Because from the very beginning, 780 people have been detained in Guantanamo. So we had records about almost all of them. And so we could know, for the first time, the reason why they were transferred to Guantanamo. Why? And some of the reasons were completely nonsense, completely absurd decision to transfer these people to Guantanamo. It was made, in many situation, because of the bounty. They were literally sold to the US without any criteria. At least 22 of them were minors, were children basically. And what is relevant about this file is that these documents provide evidence of the lies of the Bush administration, which had sustained publicly that Guantanamo was detention camp for the worst of the worst, the most dangerous people in the world. Basically, the most dangerous terrorists in the world which represented an extraordinary and threat to the humankind.
As a result, we started going through these files and we discovered that basically at least 150 were completely innocent. At least. But even the 220 detainees, which were basically labeled as dangerous terrorists. Well, the narrative was suspicious because many of them were there because of some informant who were completely unreliable who had sold them for a variety of reasons. For example, because they had experienced brutal tortures or because they assault them for getting some [inaudible 00:33:24] or some personal gain. So it was kind of deconstructing, exposing the full lies on these detainees. And there were some terrible stories on these files. Even if there was no description of tortures, you could understand the absurdity of why they have been transferred to Guantanamo and the absurdity of their detention. Many of them had been cleared and they were still there. They are still there actually.
Let’s talk, for example, about [Ahmed Rabbani 00:34:08]. He was sold to the US as a dangerous terrorist, and he was tortured for 540 days in a CIA black site in Afghanistan because he had been mistaken. There was a problem with his identity. And when the actual terrorist US thought he was, Ahmed Rabbani was killed by a US drone strike, at that point, it was clear that Ahmed Rabbani was not that dangerous terrorist. But he’s still there, still in Guantanamo. And in the last 10 years, he has been on a hunger strike and is basically around 36 kilos. He has experienced only brutality, terror, and abuses. He has a son who was born when he was captured, when he was sold to the US. He has never met or known him, and he’s still in Guantanamo. Not charged, not accuse of anything. He’s still there after more than 20 years basically.
So these files basically exposed the lies about the worst of the worst. They were not the worst. With very few exception, they were definitely not the worst of the worst. And the abuses been simply horrific, absolutely horrific. And WikiLeaks on Guantanamo had been exposing the atrocities of Guantanamo from the very beginning. I remember the first time I look at WikiLeaks, they had exposed the Guantanamo Manual about the procedures used by the Guantanamo Task Force. And the procedures were basically exposing, once again, the lies of the Bush administration because the administration had basically declared that they were accessible to the International Red Cross Committee, whereas the Manual revealed that not all of them were accessible to the International Red Cross Committee. So there were some detainees who were out of reach of the International Red Cross Committee. So they were probably abused and they were probably tortured. They were tortured and abused in a horrific way.
Chris Hedges: Let’s talk about what you’ve endured. Many people who have worked with WikiLeaks have had their electronics stolen. If they visited Julian in the embassy, we now know that UC Global copied everything on their phones or computers. Julian had his computer stolen in transit to London. But you also have experienced this. Can you speak about that?
Stefania Maurizi: Yes. Let me tell you that that happened, the precise moment actually. It happened in 2007 in, actually, I know even the day it happened. It was 29th, December 2017. And I went to London. And I went to London because a month before, I had discovered something really important. Basically, I had been fighting to get the full documentation on Julian Assange of WikiLeaks in Sweden, in the US, in the UK, and Australia. And it all started when he was under investigation in Sweden because he was trapped in this limbo where he was not charged with rape, but he was neither charged … Basically the investigation rape was dropped. So after five years of this limbo, this paralysis, legal and diplomatic paralysis. Because the paralysis was both legal, because this investigation remained opened with no solution, no charges, no case dropped. And it was also diplomatic because when he exhausted all legal option, he basically took refuge in the embassy and asked for asylum.
So at that point there was a paralysis. So there was a quagmire, which was both legal and diplomatic. So in 2015, after five years of this paralysis, an Italian prosecutor told me, “Why this investigation doesn’t make any progress?” And I told him, “It doesn’t make any problems because the Swedish prosecutor don’t want to go to London to question him and to decide whether to charge him for rape or whether to drop the case.” And the prosecutor told me, “It doesn’t make sense to me because we Italian prosecutor traveled to Brazil to question very dangerous mafia people. So why the Swedish prosecutor cannot fly to London to question him and to decide whether to charge him for rape? You should discover why.” And I had no sources inside the Swedish prosecution authorities. So the only option for me was to file an FY request in Sweden.
And I filed it and I immediately got the documents. I had no idea why they provided this documentation. I tend to believe that maybe someone had disagreed with this managing of the Swedish investigation. In any case, the documents I obtained were very, very important because they revealed that it was the Crown Prosecution service, the UK Crown Prosecution Service, who had told to the Swedish prosecutor, “Don’t come here in London to question him. Question him only after extraditing him.” And Julian, of course, was not opposing the possibility of being questioned. He offered to be questioned in every possible way inside the embassy, via video link. All these interrogation technique are certainly legitimate, [inaudible 00:40:54] legal for the Swedish law.
So it was the UK Crown prosecution service. Why I stress this point? I stress this point because the UK Crown Prosecution Services, the very same agency which, to the Iran, the extradition to the US. So the very same agency which was in charge of the extradition to Sweden is the Crown Prosecution Service, which, in these days, in charge of the extradition to the US. Because the US is acting through the Crown Prosecution Service. So I discovered that it was the Crown Prosecution Service who told the Swedish prosecutor, “Don’t come here.” And I discovered that in 2013, the Swedish prosecutors wanted to drop the extradition case, whereas the UK authorities were not in favor. And I discovered that the Crown Prosecution Service destroyed key documents about this case. They destroyed key documents. And in the last five years, I discovered this in November 2017. In the last five years, they have refused to provide any information what they destroyed exactly, on whose instruction, and why and all this information.
So I discovered this in November 2017, and I went to the embassy. I wanted to discuss this with Julian Asange. I could have never have imagined what was going on behind the scene. Basically, as soon as I arrived to the embassy in December 2017, my backpack was seized. It was confiscated. And it was the first time. I have visited Julian Asange in the embassy many, many times from the very beginning since 2012. And I had always been allowed to bring my backpack, my notes, and so on. But that day, they confiscated … The guards, the security guards inside the embassy, confiscated my backpack. And I tried to protest. I tried to say, “Why is this happening?” But basically, they confiscated the backpack. And two years later, I discovered what was going on. Basically, they had accessed all my devices, the USB sticks. I had very important documentation. Fortunately, it was encrypted. And I hope whoever did it, they were not able to decrypt it and to access the information. They opened my phones in two. They unscrew it and they extracted the sym card and they took pictures of everything.
They were filming us. They were recording us, recording our conversation. And we discovered this only after, in 2019, two years after this fact happened. And fortunately, they took this picture. So today, we have evidence and I filed a criminal complaint against these companies, this security company, which was basically providing the security for the embassy, but apparently had started working for the CIA. And apparently the CIA was getting everything, was getting the materials from the lawyers of Julian Assange, which of course, makes you ask yourself, “How can he ever get a fair trial considering that the CIA and the US authorities are now aware of his legal arguments and legal evidence and so on?” He will never, ever have a fair trial. It’s not just a matter of the Espionage Act, which doesn’t allow any fair trial. It is also because of these espionage activities that basically allowed the US authorities to acquire information on his legal strategies, his legal evidence, and so on.
So they acquired the evidence, the legal conversation. They acquired the information about his health, about his doctors, when the doctors were visiting. They have accessed these videos of his doctors visiting him. And everything is fully available on this video. And they access our conversation with Julian Assange. When I obtained these files, I had no doubts that I had to file a criminal complaint because these are the kind of things you expect in a dictatorship. We know that in authoritarian countries, they do these kind of things against journalists, against lawyers, against politicians. So you don’t expect these kind of things in the heart of Europe, in the heart of London, the country which prides itself with democracy, press freedom. So I had no doubts that I had to file a criminal complaint, and I did. And I hope we will get evidence and we will get the final sentence against these people because these are extremely serious facts, which should never have happened in a democracy where you have press freedom, which claim to have pressed freedom.
Chris Hedges: Great. That was Stefania Maurizi, author of Secret Power: WikiLeaks and Its Enemies.
Recently, Maryland swore in its first Black governor, Wes Moore, in a “historic” ceremony cemented with a tearful introduction by Oprah Winfrey and a hand on Frederick Douglass’ Bible. The Black elite flocked to fill the rooms of the inauguration to witness the third elected Black governor in U.S. history. Yet, this “first Black” gubernatorial win is history repeating itself.
African/Black communities have witnessed “first Blacks” consistently continuing over-policing, surveillance, criminalization and austerity policies.
As Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) member organization Ujima People’s Progress Party understands,
The Black middle-class’ allegiance to capitalism, and not Black liberation, has largely led the Black political leadership class to function as a comprador misleadership class over the Black majority of working peoples on behalf of the capitalist parties, and political machines they are members of.
For nearly a century, radical African/Black people have criticized elements of the African/Black community as being designed to serve as buffers to ruling class elements. Whether discerned as “neocolonial,” “the comprador class,” or “the Black Misleadership Class,” this sector has evaded accountability to the masses of African/Black people, while using their Black identity as cover for self-serving opportunism.
Moore first became famous for his 2010 bestselling memoir, The Other Wes Moore, an inspirational story of two boys with the same name and ties to Baltimore City. In interviews, Moore is depicted as a Black boy from an economically struggling background who became formally educated, rising to become a U.S. military veteran, and thus a socioeconomically developed Black man. The framing of his “life story,” as told through the book, not only helps manufacture an Obama-like image, politically. But in juxtaposition to the “other Wes Moore,” it leaves room to question how this narrative will affect his policies.
It remains unclear if Moore had been raised in Baltimore City. Yet, as the backdrop of Moore’s life story, the city has been central to his platform on crime. The Public Safety and Criminal Justice page on wesmoore.com states, “Violent crime is on the rise across Maryland and people are dying in our streets.” The solutions presented, however, will be nothing short of a plan to continue what former Governor Larry Hogan started in his campaign to “refund the police,” which increased resources for state law enforcement agencies following the 2020 uprisings.
Citing an “ineffectiveness of leadership,” Moore ignores that not only is Baltimore City already occupied with an array of federally funded police directives, it has just received an additional $7.9 million in federal funds to “fight crime.” This funding is a part of the Biden administration’s $350 million American Rescue plan to “fund the police,” as he enthusiastically announced in his 2022 State of the Union address. Unsurprisingly, in 2022, 1,192 people were killed by police, exceeding any other year in U.S. history. Also, Moore has ignored the existing consent decree issued in 2017, acknowledging the Baltimore Police Department (BPD) engaged in a pattern and practice of conduct that violated the First, Fourth, and Fourteenth amendments to the United States Constitution, and specific provisions of federal statutory law.
“The BPD has access to the Department of Defense (DOD) 1033 program budget. They also train with the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) through the ‘deadly exchange program’ and continue to receive federal agents through Trump’s 2020 Operation Relentless Pursuit policy,” says Petros Bein, member of the Baltimore City Wide Alliance of the Black Alliance For Peace (BAP-Baltimore). “This is in addition to the approved privatized policing for universities, like Johns Hopkins, engulfing Black communities.”
These continued failed approaches to “crime” have only proven that added resources, as well as changes in policy or the law, will not contribute to public safety. Moore cannot “rebuild and strengthen relationships between communities and law enforcement agencies” by “increasing accountability and transparency” in a city in which the police department constantly violates its consent decree. Nor should funding community-policing initiatives that “recruit diverse officers that reflect the diversity of communities they serve” be taken seriously. The recent death of Tyre Nichols in Memphis, Tennessee (a city also operating under Operation Relentless Pursuit) has been the most illuminating example of the fallacy of Black faces occupying these spaces to the benefit of the African/Black community.
Policies that address crime in an over-policed city cannot be presented in the abstract. As the country celebrates a “first Black” governor, Maryland continues to imprison more African/Black people, per capita, than any other state. Moore needs to provide more specifics to explain what will be done and how this builds or departs from existing efforts to return control of the Baltimore City Police Department from the federal government to Baltimore City.
“Wes Moore’s connections with Mayor [Brandon] Scott’s office and the city design/city planning committee will shape or harm what’s happening in Baltimore. With no control over the city’s policing, Moore’s decisions directly affect the most marginalized of us,” acknowledges BAP-Baltimore core member, Kimya Nuru Dennis.
The Democratic Party has been able to depict Moore as a trusting solution for Maryland, in general, and for African/Black people, specifically. His socioeconomic status, as well as that of his donors, indicates to BAP-Baltimore what will undoubtedly shape whose voices matter most in prioritizing health, education, and safety-based policies and laws.
The lack of equitable housing that causes displacement, as well as food deserts, and low wages, have been pressing issues in Maryland. African/Black elected officials have not resolved the economic and social crisis facing the African/Black working class of Baltimore City. Instead, their lack of solutions have resulted in the overt criminalization and over-policing of African/Black communities. Police are constantly and consistently well-funded and well-resourced. BAP-Baltimore understands police are used to enforce the status quo of white power and colonial control over the lives of African/Black and other oppressed nations of people. This comes as the city has increasingly privatized and priced out our people. More police funding, while ignoring the causes of crime, cannot resolve the ongoing dilemma facing the African/Black working class in Baltimore City.
A researcher at Human Rights Watch in Jakarta is calling for the immediate release of the six hostages — including a New Zealand pilot — being held by a rebel group in Indonesia’s Papua region.
The rebels in Highlands Papua are threatening to execute Susi Air pilot Phillip Mehrtens if their demands are not met.
The West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) has posted an ultimatum on social media demanding Jakarta negotiate with them over independence for the region.
“Pilot is still alive and he will be held hostage for negotiations with Jakarta, if Jakarta is obstinate, then the pilot will be executed,” the statement read.
“We will take the New Zealand citizen pilot as hostage and we are waiting for accountability from the Australian government, the New Zealand government, the European Union governments, and the United Nations, because for 60 years these countries have supported Indonesia to kill Indigenous Papuans.”
Researcher Andreas Harsono knows the main spokesperson of the rebel group, Sebby Sambom, after decades of research in the field.
Personal appeal
He made a call to him personally to let the hostages go.
“I call on this group to immediately release all of the hostages including the pilot — it is a crime to kidnap anyone including this pilot,” he told RNZ Pacific.
“I do not know how to measure the seriousness of such a threat but this is a hostage situation, things could be out of control. So the best way is to negotiate and ask them to release the pilot.”
Human rights researcher Andreas Harsono . . . “The best way is to negotiate and ask [the rebels] to release the pilot.” Image: Human Rights Watch/RNZ Pacific
Harsono noted the difficulties for New Zealand attempting to negotiate with the group, particularly given their demands.
“I don’t think it is easy or even internationally accepted to pressure the New Zealand government to negotiate for West Papuan independence from Indonesia,” he said.
“It is way too complicated for any country in the world, including New Zealand, to negotiate the independence of this particular territory. But, of course, the Papuan people have suffered a lot and the Indonesian government should do more to end impunity and human rights abuses in West Papua.
“But this is a hostage situation. The most important thing is to call on this group to immediately and unconditionally release all of the hostages, including the New Zealand pilot.”
Very remote region
Harsono said he did not know whether the passengers had been taken hostage, nor did he know if they were indigenous Papuans.
“The area is very remote, only certain people go there, mainly construction workers, and there were killings against Indonesian workers back in 2018,” he said.
Indonesian authorities say they are facing difficulties locating Merhtens because of the lack of telecommunications facilities in Paro district and the absence of any Indonesian military or police post in the area.
Jubi News quotes Papua Police spokesperson Ignatius Benny Ady Prabowo, saying they were continuing to track the whereabouts of Mehrtens and were preparing to go to Paro district.
He said that before the burning of the plane, rumours had been circulating that a rebel group had threatened 15 construction workers who were building a health centre in the district.
New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Chris Hipkins, told Radio New Zealand: “The New Zealand embassy in Indonesia is working on the case.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Indonesian security forces do not know the whereabouts of the New Zealand pilot taken hostage by the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) on Tuesday,
Captain Philip Mehrtens, a pilot for Susi Air, was taken hostage following the burning of his aircraft in Paro district, Nduga regency, in a rugged part of Indonesian-ruled Papua province on Tuesday.
One of the obstacles in finding Mehrtens is the lack of telecommunications facilities in Paro and there is no Indonesian military post in the area, says a police spokesperson.
Papua Police spokesperson Senior Commander Benny Prabowo said security forces continued to track the whereabouts of the pilot.
According to Commander Prabowo, the Nduga police were preparing to go to Paro district.
“Until now, the investigation is still being carried out by the police assisted by the Cartenz Peace Task Force,” he said.
Earlier on Tuesday, a Susi Air aircraft was burned after landing in Paro district.
The local leader of the TPNPB Ndugama-Derakma, Egianus Kogeya, said the plane was burned by his men. Kogeya also stated that his group had captured and held Captain Mehrtens hostage.
Preceded by threats Benny said that before the burning of the plane, rumours had been circulating since Saturday that the TPNPB had threatened 15 construction workers who were building a health center in Paro district.
Commander Prabowo said the Nduga police had received a report from the Nduga regent who said the construction workers were questioned by TPNPB because they did not have complete identities.
“We got information that 15 people had left Paro district and headed to Mapenduma. But their whereabouts are still being investigated by the Cartenz Peace Task Force,” he explained.
Commander Prabowo hoped that the public would entrust the handling of the hostage case to the police.
“Telecommunication access there is still very limited, so there is very little information. I hope all parties will be patient,” he said.
The TPNPB rebels are fighting for independence in West Papua and say they will not release the pilot until their demands are met.
Republished from Jubi with permission.
The hijacked Susi Air aircraft . . . reportedly shortly before the Papuan rebels set fire to it. Image: Papuan media
An Indonesian human rights researcher has condemned the Papuan rebels who have taken a New Zealand pilot hostage and gone into hiding in a remote mountainous region.
Andreas Harsono of Human Rights Watch urged the rebels to release the pilot, named as Captain Philip Mehrtens of the Indonesian airline Susi Air.
Diplomatic efforts were underway today to try to secure the release of Captain Mehrtens.
He was the sole pilot when his Susi Air plane with five passengers was captured by the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) rebels who torched the aircraft after it landed at Paro airstrip near Nduga yesterday.
The rebels, fighting for independence in the Melanesian region of Papua, say that his life is at stake, and dependent on negotiations with Jakarta.
Julian Assange is still facing extradition and charges of violating the Espionage Act for exposing the US military’s war crimes. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more. Transcript: *This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos. Mike Papantonio: Julian Assange is still facing extradition and charges of violating the Espionage Act for exposing […]
Airstrikes ordered against civilian targets, destruction of thousands of buildings, millions displaced, nearly 3000 civilians murdered, more than 13,000 jailed, the country’s independent media banished, and the country locked in a deadly nationwide civil war. Myanmar civilians now ask what else must happen before they receive international support in line with Ukraine, writes Phil Thornton.
SPECIAL REPORT:By Phil Thornton
In the two years since Myanmar’s military seized power from the country’s elected lawmakers it has waged a war of terror against its citizens — members of the Civil Disobedience Movement, artists, poets, actors, politicians, health workers, student leaders, public servants, workers, and journalists.
The military-appointed State Administration Council amended laws to punish anyone critical of its illegal coup or the military. International standards of freedoms — speech, expression, assembly, and association were “criminalised”.
The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma), reported as of 30 January 2023, the military killed 2901 people and arrested another 17,492 (of which 282 were children), with 13,719 people still in detention.
One hundred and forty three people have been sentenced to death and four have been executed since the military’s coup on 1 February 2021. Of those arrested, 176 were journalists and as many as 62 are still in jail or police detention.
The Committee to Protect Journalists ranks Myanmar as the world’s second-highest jailers of journalists. Fear of attacks, harassment, intimidation, censorship, detainment, and threats of assassination for their reporting has driven journalists and media workers underground or to try to reach safety in neighbouring countries.
Journalist Ye Htun Oo has been arrested, tortured, received death threats, and is now forced to seek safety outside of Myanmar. Ye Htun spoke to the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) of his torture, jailing and why he felt he had no choice, but to leave Myanmar for the insecurity of a journalist in exile.
They came for me in the morning “I started as a journalist in 2007 but quit after two years because of the difficulty of working under the military. I continued to work, writing stories and poetry. In 2009 I restarted work as a freelance video and documentary maker.”
Ye Htu said making money from journalism in Myanmar had never been easy.
“I was lucky if I made 300,000 kyat a month (about NZ$460) — it was a lot of work, writing, editing, interviewing and filming.”
Ye Htun’s hands, fingers and thin frame twist and turn as he takes time to return to the darkness of the early morning when woken by police and military knocking on his front door.
“It was 2 am, the morning of 9 October 2021. We were all asleep. The knocking on the door was firm but gentle. I opened the door. Men from the police and the military’s special media investigation unit stood there — no uniforms. They’d come to arrest me.”
Ye Htun links the visit of the police and army to his friend’s arrest the day before.
“He had my number on his phone and when questioned told them I was a journalist. I hadn’t written anything for a while. The only reason they arrested me was because I was identified as a journalist — it was enough for them. The military unit has a list of journalists who they want to control, arrest, jail or contain.”
Ye Htun explains how easy it is for journalists to be arrested.
“When they arrest people…if they find a reference to a journalist or a phone number it’s enough to put you on their list.”
After the coup, Ye Htun continued to report.
“I was not being paid, moving around, staying in different places, following the protests. I was taking photos. I took a photo of citizens arresting police and it was published. This causes problems for the people in the photo. It also caused some people to regard me and journalists as informers — we were now in a hard place, not knowing what or who we could photograph. I decided to stop reporting and made the decision to move home. That’s when they came and arrested me.”
In the early morning before sunrise, the police and military removed Ye Htun from his home and family and took him to a detention cell inside a military barracks.
“They took all my equipment — computer, cameras, phone, and hard disks. The men who arrested and took me to the barracks left and others took over. Their tone changed. I was accused of being a PDF (People’s Defence Force militia).
“Ye Htun describes how the ‘politeness’ of his captors soon evaporated, and the danger soon became a brutal reality. They started to beat me with kicks, fists, sticks and rubber batons. They just kept beating me, no questions. I was put in foot chains — ankle braces.”
The beating of Ye Htun would continue for 25 days and the uncertainty and hurt still shows in his eyes, as he drags up the details he’s now determined to share.
“I was interrogated by an army captain who ordered me to show all my articles — there was little to show. They made me kneel on small stones and beat me on the body — never the head as they said, ‘they needed it intact for me to answer their questions’”.
Ye Htun explained it wasn’t just his assigned interrogators who beat or tortured him.
“Drunk soldiers came regularly to spit, insult or threaten me with their guns or knives.”
Scared, feared for his life
Ye Htun is quick to acknowledge he was scared and feared for his life.
“I was terrified. No one knew where I was. I knew my family would be worried. Everyone knows of people being arrested and then their dead, broken bodies, missing vital organs, being returned to grieving families.”
After 25 days of torture, Ye Htun was transferred to a police jail.
“They accused me of sending messages they had ‘faked’ and placed on my phone. I was sentenced to two years jail on 3rd November — I had no lawyer, no representative.”
Ye Htun spoke to political prisoners during his time in jail and concluded many were behind bars on false charges.
“Most political prisoners are there because of fake accusations. There’s no proper rule of law — the military has turned the whole country into a prison.”
Ye Htun served over a year and five months of his sentence and was one of six journalists released in an amnesty from Pyay Jail on 4 January 2023.
Not finished torturing
Any respite Ye Htun or his family received from his release was short-lived, as it became apparent the military was not yet finished torturing him. He was forced to sign a declaration that if he was rearrested he would be expected to serve his existing sentence plus any new ones, and he received death threats.
Soon after his release, the threats to his family were made.
“I was messaged on Facebook and on other social media apps. The messages said, ‘don’t go out alone…keep your family and wife away from us…’ their treats continued every two or three days.”
Ye Htun and his family have good cause to be concerned about the threats made against them. Several pro-military militias have openly declared on social media their intention against those opposed to the military’s control of the country.
A pro-military militia, Thwe Thauk Apwe (Blood Brothers), specialise in violent killings designed to terrorise.
Frontier Magazine reported in May 2022 that Thwe Thauk Apwe had murdered 14 members of the National League of Democracy political party in two weeks. The militia uses social media to boast of its gruesome killings and to threaten its targets — those opposed to military rule — PDF units, members of political parties, CDM members, independent media outlets and journalists.
Ye Htun said fears for his wife and children’s safety forced him to leave Myanmar.
“I couldn’t keep putting them at risk because I’m a journalist. I will continue to work, but I know I can’t do it in Myanmar until this military regime is removed.”
Air strikes target civilians – where’s the UN? Award-winning documentary maker and artist, Sai Kyaw Khaing, dismayed at the lack of coverage by international and regional media on the impacts of Myanmar’s military aerial strikes on civilian targets, decided to make the arduous trip to the country’s northwest to find out.
In the two years since the military regime took illegal control of the country’s political infrastructure, Myanmar is now engaged in a brutal, countrywide civil war.
Civilian and political opposition to the military coup saw the formation of People Defence Force units under the banner of the National Unity Government established in April 2021 by members of Parliament elected at the 2020 elections and outlawed by the military after its coup.
Thousands of young people took up arms and joined PDF units, trained by Ethnic Armed Organisations, to defend villages and civilians and fight the military regime. The regime vastly outnumbered and outmuscled the PDFs and EAOs with its military hardware — tanks, heavy artillery, helicopter gunships and fighter jets.
Sai Kyaw contacted a number of international media outlets with his plans to travel deep inside the conflict zone to document how displaced people were coping with the airstrikes and burning of their villages and crops.
Sai Kyaw said it was telling that he has yet to receive a single response of interest from any of the media he approached.
“What’s happening in Myanmar is being ignored, unlike the conflict in Ukraine. Most of the international media, if they do report on Myanmar, want an ‘expert’ to front their stories, even better if it’s one of their own, a Westerner.”
Deadly strike impact
Sai Kyaw explains why what is happening on the ground needs to be explained — the impacts of the deadly airstrikes on the lives of unarmed villagers.
“My objective is to talk to local people. How can they plant or harvest their crops during the intense fighting? How can they educate their kids or get medical help?
“Thousands of houses, schools, hospitals, churches, temples, and mosques have been targeted and destroyed — how are the people managing to live?”
Sai Kyaw put up his own money to finance his trip to a neighbouring country where he then made contact with people prepared to help him get to northwestern Myanmar, which was under intense attacks from the military regime.
“It took four days by motorbike on unlit mountain dirt tracks that turned to deep mud when it rained. We also had to avoid numerous military checkpoints, military informers, and spies.”
Sai Kyaw said that after reaching his destination, meeting with villagers, and witnessing their response to the constant artillery and aerial bombardments, their resilience astounded him.
“These people rely on each other, when they’re bombed from their homes, people who still have a house rally around and offer shelter. They don’t have weapons to fight back, but they organise checkpoints managed by men and women.”
Sai Kyaw said being unable to predict when an airstrike would happen took its toll on villagers.
Clinics, schools bombed “You don’t know when they’re going to attack — day or night — clinics, schools, places of worship — are bombed. These are not military targets — they don’t care who they kill.”
Sai Kyaw witnessed an aerial bombing and has the before and after film footage that shows the destruction. Rows of neat houses, complete with walls intact before the air strike are left after the attack with holes a car could drive through.
“The unpredictable and indiscriminate attacks mean villagers are unable to harvest their crops or plant next season’s rice paddies.”
Sai Kyaw is concerned that the lack of aid getting to the people in need of shelter, clothing, food, and medicine will cause a large-scale humanitarian crisis.
“There’s no sign of international aid getting to the people. If there’s a genuine desire to help the people, international aid groups can do it by making contact with local community groups. It seems some of these big international aid donors are reluctant to move from their city bases in case they upset the military’s SAC [State Administration Council].”
At the time of writing Sai Kyaw Khaing has yet to receive a reply from any of the international media he contacted.
It’s the economy stupid A veteran Myanmar journalist, Kyaw Kyaw*, covered a wide range of stories for more than 15 years, including business, investment, and trade. He told IFJ he was concerned the ban on independent media, arrests of journalists, gags and access restrictions on sources meant many important stories went unreported.
“The military banning of independent media is a serious threat to our freedom of speech. The military-controlled state media can’t be relied on. It’s well documented, it’s mainly no news or fake news overseen by the military’s Department of Propaganda.”
Kyaw lists the stories that he explains are in critical need of being reported — the cost of consumer goods, the collapse of the local currency, impact on wages, lack of education and health care, brain drain as people flee the country, crops destroyed and unharvested and impact on next year’s yield.
Kyaw is quick to add details to his list.
“People can’t leave the country fast enough. There are more sellers than buyers of cars and houses. Crime is on the rise as workers’ real wages fall below the poverty line. Garment workers earned 4800 kyat, the minimum daily rate before the military’s coup. The kyat was around 1200 to the US dollar — about four dollars. Two years after the coup the kyat is around 2800 — workers’ daily wage has dropped to half, about US$2 a day.”
Kyaw Kyaw’s critique is compelling as he explains the cost of everyday consumer goods and the impact on households.
“Before the coup in 2021, rice cost a household, 32,000 kyat for around 45kg. It is now selling at 65,000 kyat and rising. Cooking oil sold at 3,000 kyat for 1.6kg now sells for over double, 8,000kyat.
“It’s the same with fish, chicken, fuel, and medicine – family planning implants have almost doubled in cost from 25,000 kyat to now selling at 45,000 kyat.”
Humanitarian crisis potential
Kyaw is dismayed that the media outside the country are not covering stories that have a huge impact on people’s daily struggle to feed and care for their families and have the real potential for a massive humanitarian crisis in the near future.
“The focus is on the revolution, tallies of dead soldiers, politics — all important, but journalists and local and international media need to report on the hidden costs of the military’s coup. Local media outlets need to find solutions to better cover these issues.”
Kyaw stresses international governments and institutions — ASEAN, UK, US, China, and India — need to stop talking and take real steps to remove and curb the military’s destruction of the country.
“In two years, they displaced over a million people, destroyed thousands of houses and religious buildings, attacked schools and hospitals — killing students and civilians — what is the UNSC waiting for?”
An independent think tank, the Institute for Strategy and Policy – Myanmar, and the UN agency for refugees confirm Kyaws Kyaw’s claims.The Institute for Strategy and Policy reports “at least 28,419 homes and buildings were torched or destroyed…in the aftermath of the coup between 1 February 2021, and 15 July 2022.”
The UN agency responsible for refugees, the UNHCR, estimates the number of displaced people in Myanmar is a staggering 1,574,400. Since the military coup and up to January 23, the number was 1,244,000 people displaced.
While the world’s media and governments focus their attention and military aid on Ukraine, Myanmar’s people continue to ask why their plight continues to be ignored.
Phil Thornton is a journalist and senior adviser to the International Federation of Journalists in Southeast Asia. This article was first published by the IFJ Asia-Pacific blog and is republished with the author’s permission. Thornton is also a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.
*Name has been changed as requested for security concerns.
welcomes the safe release of hostages in PNG including a NZer. Tenkiu tru for your leadership and cooperation governments of PNG 
and Australia 
. 
