Congressman George Santos is in even more trouble after reports surfaced about an alleged incident where he may have stolen puppies from an Amish dog breeder. 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: Congressman George Santos is in even more trouble after […]
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.
Democrats in Massachusetts have a proposal for prison inmates: Give up your internal organs and we’ll reduce your sentence. 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: Okay. Democrats in Massachusetts have a proposal for prison inmates. That is give up your internal […]
America’s Lawyer E39: Ron DeSantis could end up being sued by high school students for blocking an AP African American studies class. We’ll explain why the move to block the class could hurt DeSantis’ political ambitions. DirecTV dumped the conservative news channel Newsmax, and now they could face the wrath of Congress. And Democrats in […]
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.
Only by means of intense deceit does the U.S. Government allege that it and its allies are ‘democratic’ and that the countries that they impose sanctions against and overthrow (or try to overthrow) in coups and invasions are not. Irrespective of whether some of the countries that the U.S. Government targets for overthrow are or are not dictatorships, America itself certainly is, and it has the world’s highest percentage of its population living in prison — which might suffice alone to qualify America as being a police-state — and perhaps the worst one.
Some of America’s allies are among the world’s best-known dictatorships, such as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain; and such cases as those, alone, demonstrate without any doubt, that America’s many sanctions and coups and invasions have nothing to do with democracy versus dictatorship, but are pure PR in order to fool the gullible throughout the world to believe the U.S. Government’s lies to the effect that these aggressions against so many countries (such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Guatemala, Chile, Iran, Libya, Indonesia and so many others) are decent or even nobly intentioned, when the fact is that America is simply the world’s worst police-state, and is lying in order to deceive the global public to believe that it’s instead the global champion of democracy and of freedom. All of America’s foreign policies are justified wholly or partly on the basis of lies. Is it not by now clear that the time is long-since past when anyone should continue to accept that intensely deceitful regime’s lies and its constant aggressions?
What kind of international leadership is it that the world’s most powerful country — a country such as this — is any longer allowed to lie and claim that it represents democracy and freedom while the countries that it sanctions and coups and invades represent the opposite? When will a profoundly corrupt Government such as this, become condemned by a majority of the nations in the U.N. General Assembly — instead of for the UNGA members to continue to cower in fear of it and so to refrain from saying what is by now manifestly the case: that “This Emperor has no clothes”?
If hypocrisy is the worst sin, then can there any longer remain doubt as to which of the world’s Governments is the the world’s worst sinner? Would the world be better off to continue allowing such a Government to continue touting itself to be ‘the leader of the free world’ which is actually leading the world into what keeps getting closer to a World War Three against Russia and against China and against Iran; or, instead, for the countries of the world to state clearly and openly, that this fraud must now end, and that all of the global bully’s honors and privileges are founded on fraud, and must now cease?
After World War II ended, the U.S. regime slaughtered or assisted in slaughtering, between 1945 and 2007 (and not even counting more recently, such as in Syria and Yemen), “between 20 and 30 million people in wars and conflicts scattered over the world”. (This count also doesn’t include the numbers, such as in Iraq after the 1990 war, which died as a result of U.S.-initiated sanctions against countries that America’s billionaires wanted to bring under their control that weren’t yet under their control.)
As a consequence of the reality of post-1944 America’s being fascist-imperialist (and its consequent record of doing far more invasions and coups, and sanctions, than any other country does), overwhelmingly the highest percentage of people polled throughout the world on questions of which country poses the greatest or biggest threat to peace in the world say that that country is the United States. No other country comes even close.
When will the world speak out against the global bully? Has not the time yet come to do so?
The Indonesian military says a tribunal has sentenced an army major to life in prison for his involvement in the brutal murder of four Papuan civilians in the Mimika district.
Their mutilated bodies were found in August 2022.
Benar News reports that human rights activists and victims’ relatives welcomed the conviction of Major Helmanto Fransiskus Dakhi as progress in holding members of security forces accountable for abuses in West Papua.
“The defendant … was found guilty of premeditated murder,” Herman Taryaman, a spokesman for the Indonesian military command in Papua, told journalists.
The tribunal also dismissed Dakhi from the military.
Taryaman said four other soldiers charged in connection with the killings were being tried by a tribunal in the provincial capital of Jayapura.
A sixth military suspect died in December after falling ill, while police say four civilians were also facing trial in a civilian court.
Headless bodies Asia Pacific Report reported on 31 August 2021 that residents of Iwaka village in Mimika district had been shocked by the discovery of four sacks, each containing a headless and legless torso, in the village river.
Two other sacks were found separately, one containing four heads and the other eight legs. The sacks were weighted with stones.
A spokesman for the victims’ families, Aptoro Lokbere, said he was “satisfied” with the conviction and sentence.
Gustaf Kawer, an attorney for the victims’ families, said the life sentence for the major was a “brave” decision that should be emulated by military and civilian courts in similar cases.
Activists had said the violence degraded the dignity of indigenous Papuans amid allegations of ongoing rights abuses by government security forces in West Papua.
Dakhi is the third Indonesian Armed Forces member to be sentenced to life by a military court in a murder case since June.
Anger as MSG recruits Indonesians Meanwhile, the Melanesian Spearhead Group’s secretariat in Vanuatu has confirmed it has recruited two Indonesians.
The statement from the group came during a protest against the move in front of the secretariat by the Vanuatu Free West Papua Association.
The group’s director-general, Leonard Louma, said the agency was aiming to strengthen its capacity and this would include the recruitment of two Indonesian nationals, filling the roles of the private sector development officer and the manager of arts, culture and youth programme.
Louma said the secretariat had been directed to “re-prioritise” its activities and was now positioning itself to meet the demands and expectations of the leaders.
The Free West Papua Association said hiring the Indonesians made a mockery of the support Vanuatu had given West Papua for many years.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
A six-year old was arrested last week after shooting his teacher during class. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more. Transcript: *This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
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Indonesian anti-curruption authorities have arrested Papua Governor Lukas Enembe on allegations of bribery.
The Jakarta Globe called the arrest by the Corruption Eradication Commission in a restaurant in the provincial capital Jayapura yesterday as “dramatic” saying it came four months after he had been named a suspect.
The arrest led to his supporters attacking a police Mobile Brigade Unit where he was being held prior to being flown to Jakarta on a chartered flight.
Governor Lukas Enembe … his arrest led to his supporters attacking a police Mobile Brigade Unit. Image: West Papua Today
The newspaper said the two-term governor is accused of taking billions of rupiah in bribes from businessmen but has resisted arrest since the commission named him a suspect in September.
Indonesia’s Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre alleged Enembe made payments, amounting to US$39 million dollars, to overseas casinos.
Indonesia’s Chief Security Minister Mohammad Mahfud said in October that the central government had channelled billions of dollars in what was dubbed “autonomy funding” to Papua since 2001, with about half of that amount disbursed during Enembe’s term.
He claimed “nothing happened: the people remain poor and the officials continue their lavish lifestyle”.
Pacific Media Watch reports that Papua province is at the heart of the indigenous self-determination struggle in West Papua.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
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France’s highest court has revived French Polynesia’s largest corruption case, which had been closed almost more than three years ago.
Eight people, including former president Gaston Flosse, were given jail sentences by Tahiti’s criminal court in 2013 for their roles in a kickback scheme to secure public sector contracts from the OPT telecommunications company.
On appeal in 2015, the case was thrown out over a technicality. In 2019, judicial authorities in Tahiti dismissed efforts to revisit the matter, saying the statute of limitations applied in the affair.
However, the court in Paris has now annulled their decision, saying that the relevant texts had been misunderstood.
The alleged misuse of public funds centred on French businessman Hubert Haddad paying US$2 million in kickbacks over 12 years to Flosse and his party to get the OPT contracts.
During the investigations and trial, it was established that Flosse’s secretary Melba Ortas used to collect the money as regular cash payments from Haddad’s local company, and Flosse admitted disbursing the money for private expenses.
While investigations were underway in 2009, Flosse was jailed for three weeks.
Imprisoned for three months
Haddad, who had been arrested in France, was also imprisoned for three months in Tahiti as part of the investigations, but on paying a US$800,000 bail, he secured his release.
The former head of the OPT and Air Tahiti, Nui Geffry Salmon, spent six months in preventive detention until he was freed on US$120,000 bail.
At their trial in 2013, Flosse and Haddad were given five-year prison sentences and fined US$110,000, but they appealed.
Flosse’s lawyers failed, however, in their bid to get France’s highest court to move the appeal case away from Tahiti after claiming they wouldn’t get a fair trial.
The criminal court also ordered that the OPT be reimbursed US$5.6 million.
Four months after the verdict, Flosse was elected president and within months, the lawyer acting for the OPT, James Lau, was dismissed.
Lau noted that those convicted had taken over key aspects of the impending appeal trial, likening the case to a “mafia-style affair”.
Procedural errors
In the appeal court in 2015, the case was thrown out because of procedural errors by the prosecution.
Attempts by the prosecution to revisit the case were quashed in 2019 when the case was closed.
The lawyer acting for Flosse, Francois Quinquis, said the latest decision in Paris to allow the affair to be retested is no surprise as the court tried to save the case.
He told Tahiti-infos he wished the prosecution good luck as the decisions reached so far had made the affair inextricable.
Haddad’s lawyer said the case would end once there were no protagonists left.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) has condemned the phenomena of former corruption convicts becoming active again in political parties after serving their sentences.
However, it says this is not a new phenomenon in the world of politics.
ICW coordinator Agus Sunaryanto revealed several names of people who were caught up in corruption cases and who were now active again in political parties.
He cited names such as Andi Mallarangeng from the Democrat Party, who was indicted in the Hambalang sports complex case and released from prison in 2017.
Nazaruddin, also from the Democrat Party, was indicted in two cases — the 4.6 billion rupiah (NZ$4.65 million) bribery case involving the Wisma Atlet (Athletes Village), as well as graft and money laundering.
The latest is former United Development Party (PPP) chairperson Muhammad Romahurmuziy (Romy) who was indicted over receiving bribes for selling posts in the Ministry of Religious Affairs in 2019.
After being released from prison, Romahurmuziy was appointed as chairperson of the PPP’s Advisory Board.
“So (the phenomena of ex-corruptors becoming active again in political parties) is not just happening in the PPP. The Democrats are also like that, Nazaruddin and Andi Mallarangeng for example,” Sunaryanto told journalists.
‘Internal problem’
Sunaryanto said he suspected there was an “internal problem” in the political parties so that in the end they accepted former corruption convicts rejoining the party.
He also gave a flashback over the actions by the political parties when their members were indicted in corruption cases.
Sunaryanto said that the parties “fall over themselves publicly” in taking stern measures against corrupt members, such as dismissing them.
But these dismissals were just a political gimmick because party members could easily rejoin after they had served their sentences.
“I think there is a problem in the political parties. The political parties actually take good steps when [members] are declared suspects. Before, the Democrats immediately dismissed them [Nazaruddin and Mallarangeng], but then after they’re released, they come back in again. This is simply a political gimmick,” he added.
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What to make of it? History is filled with the deeds of blood-thirsty princes bold in ambition and feeble of mind. Massacres make the man, though there is often little to merit the person behind it. The Duke of Sussex seemingly wishes to add his name to that list. In what can only be described as one of his “Nazi uniform” moments, Prince Harry has revealed in his memoir Spare that he killed a number of Taliban fighters. (In the same memoir, the weak-willed royal blames his brother for the uniform idea, though not for organising the Afghan shooting party.)
The prince, wishing to show that he was no toy soldier or ceremonial ornament of the British Army, puts the number of deaths at 25. “It wasn’t a statistic that filled me with pride but nor did it make me ashamed.” He recalls being “plunged into the heat and confusion of battle”, and how he “didn’t think about those 25 people. You can’t kill people if you see them as people.” Doing so from the security of a murderous Apache helicopter certainly helps.
The prince continues to show that he is nothing if not unworldly. “In truth, you can’t hurt people if you see them as people. They were chess pieces off the board, bad guys eliminated before they kill good guys.” Then comes a bit of cod social theory. “They trained me to ‘other’ them and they trained me well.” A dash of Meghan; a smidgen of postcolonial theory.
There it is: the killer aware about his Instagram moment, the social media miasma, the influence of cheap Hollywood tat via Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex. He killed but was merely performing his duty as conditioned by the Establishment or, to put it another way, the army of his late grandmother.
The response from the Establishment was not one of praise. Adam Holloway MP, writing in The Spectator, did not find the statistic distasteful or troubling, but the fact that Prince Harry had mentioned it at all. Good soldiers did not publicise kills. “It’s not about macho codes. It’s about decency and respect for the lives you have taken.”
Retired British Army Colonel Tim Collins also seethed. “This is not how we behave in the Army,” he tut-tutted to Forces News, “it’s not how we think.” That’s Prince Harry’s point: more a doer than a thinker.
That doing involved, as Collins put it, “a tragic money-making scam to fund the lifestyle he can’t afford and someone else has chosen.” Harry had “badly let the side down. We don’t do notches on the rifle butt. We never did.”
Collins became something of a poster boy for revived wars of adventurism in the Middle East with his speech to the 1st Battalion The Royal Irish Regiment (1 R IRISH) battle group in March 2003. It was the eve of an international crime: the invasion of a sovereign country by colonial powers old and new. As with any such crimes, notably of vast scale, it was justified in the name of principle and duty, otherwise known as the civilisational imperative. “We go to liberate,” declared Collins with evangelical purpose, “not to conquer. We will not fly our flags in their country. We are entering Iraq to free a people and the only flag which will be flown in that ancient land is their own.”
In the Middle East, and elsewhere, such gifts of imposed freedom by armed missionaries tend to go off. In July last year, the BBC news program Panoramareported that, “SAS operatives in Afghanistan repeatedly killed detainees and unarmed men.” The report disturbed the amnesiac effect of two investigations by military police that saw no reason to pursue prosecutions. But the allegations were sufficiently publicised to prompt the launching of an independent statutory inquiry by the Ministry of Defence last December. “This will take into account the progress that has already been made across defence in holding our Armed Forces personnel to account for their actions, and the handling of allegations that were later found to have insufficient evidence for any prosecutions.”
Collins must also be aware that commencing a prosecution against British army personnel operating overseas for war crimes, let alone succeeding in one, is nigh impossible. It’s all marvellous to claim that the armed forces play by the book and operate to the sweet chords of justice, but it is rather easier to do so behind sheets of protective glass and exemptions.
Australia, as one of Britain’s partners in military adventurism, has also done its bit to bloat the war crimes files in its tours of Afghanistan. The four-year long investigation culminating in the Brereton Report identified at least 39 alleged murders of captured Afghan troops and civilians, and cruel mistreatment of two more locals by SAS personnel. To date, however, the Office of the Special Investigator has made no referrals to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, a tardiness that is likely to be repeated by British counterparts.
The war criminality theme was bound to be picked up by Afghanistan’s Taliban officials. Anas Haqqani, a senior Taliban figure, suggested to the prince via Twitter that those he had slain “were not chess pieces, they were humans; they had families who were waiting for their return.” But astute enough to sense a public relations moment for his government, Haqqani heaped mock praise. “Among the killers of Afghans, not many have your decency to reveal their conscience and confess to their war crimes.”
In this whole affair, Prince Harry did perform one useful function. He removed the façade of decent soldiery, the mask of the supposedly noble liberator. On this occasion, it took a prince to tell the emperor he had no clothes. “The truth is what you’ve said,” continued Haqqani, “[o]ur innocent people were chess pieces to your soldiers, military and political leaders. Still, you were defeated in that ‘game’ of white & black ‘square’.”
We can certainly agree with Haqqani on one point: no tribunal will be chasing up the royal. “I don’t expect that the ICC [International Criminal Court] will summon you or the human rights activists will condemn you, because they are deaf and blind for you.” Some of that deafness and blindness might have been ameliorated.
