But while deputy Police Commissioner (chief of operations) Philip Mitna confirmed the incident to the newspaper, he said he could not comment further as he had not yet received the full report from his divisional commander.
RNZ Pacific’s PNG correspondent Scott Waide said police had not responded to his requests for comment.
Waide has spoken to a local health worker but has been unable to verify the information.
Second Bosavi hostage drama
Hela Governor Philip Undialu said such occurrences were common in the Mt Bosavi area, where gun smuggling, and a lot of other criminal activities took place.
Local media reported police were preparing a rescue mission, but it was unclear when this was to have happened.
In February, the PNG government admitted that 100,000 kina had been paid to kidnappers to release three hostages, including a New Zealander, who were also taken captive in the Mt Bosavi area in the Southern Highlands.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
Donald Trump has had one of his worst weeks ever, and things are going to continue to get worse for him as the Summer goes on. To make things worse for him, he now has even more Republican rivals entering the presidential race who aren’t afraid to take some serious shots at him and his […]
A bill introducing harsh penalties and extending the scope of a law applying to those who obstruct public places has been passed after an all-night sitting by the South Australian Legislative Council this week, reports veteran investigative journalist Wendy Bacon — herself twice imprisoned for free speech.
South Australia now joins New South Wales, Tasmania, Victoria and Queensland, states which have already passed anti-protest laws imposing severe penalties on people who engage in peaceful civil disobedience.
However, South Australia’s new law carries the harshest financial penalties in Australia.
Thirteen Upper House Labor and Liberal MPs voted for the Bill, opposed by two Green MPs and two SABest MPs. The government faced down the cross bench moves to hold an inquiry into the bill, to review it in a year, or add a defence of “reasonableness”.
The Summary Offences (Obstruction of Public Places) Amendment Bill 2023 was introduced into the House Assembly by Premier Peter Malinauskas the day after Extinction Rebellion protests were staged around the Australian Petroleum and Exploration Association (APPEA) annual conference on May 17.
The most dramatic of these protests was staged by 69-year-old Meme Thorne who abseiled off a city bridge causing delays and traffic to be diverted.
Meanwhile, the gas lobby APPEA which is financed by foreign fossil fuel companies has stopped publishing its (public) financial statements. Questions put for this story were ignored but we will append a response should one be available.
The APPEA conference is a major gathering of oil and gas companies that was bound to attract protests. Its membership covers 95 pecent of Australia’s oil and gas industry and many other companies who supply goods and services to fossil fuel industries.
The dramatic climate protest staged by 69-year-old Meme Thorne who abseiled off an Adelaide bridge last month. Video: The Independent
The principal sponsors of this year’s conference were corporate giants Exxon-Mobil and Woodside.
Since March, Extinction Rebellion South Australia has been openly planning protests to draw attention to scientific evidence showing that any expansion of fossil fuel industries risks massive global disruption and millions of deaths.
The new laws will not apply to those arrested last week, several of whom have already been sentenced under existing laws.
In fact, when SA Attorney-General Kyam Maher was asked about the protests on May 17 shortly after the abseiling incident, he told the Upper House that “there are substantial penalties for doing things that can impede or restrict things like emergency services. I know that (police) . . . have in the past and will continue to do, enforce the laws that we have.”
Sensing that something was in the wind, he said he would be open to suggestions from the opposition.
Fines up 66 times, prison sentence introduced That afternoon, SA Opposition Leader and Liberal David Speirs handed the government a draft bill. This was finalised by parliamentary counsel overnight and whipped through the Lower House on May 18, without debate or scrutiny.
It took 20 minutes from start to finish: as one Upper House MP said, it would take “longer to do a load of washing”.
While Malinauskas and Speirs thanked each other for their cooperation, some MPs had not seen the unpublished bill before they passed it.
The new law introduces maximum penalties of A$50,000 (66 times the previous maximum fine) or a prison sentence of three months.
The maximum fine was previously $750, and there was no prison penalty.
If emergency services (police, fire, ambulance) are called to a protest, those convicted can also be required to pay emergency service costs. The scope of the law has also been widened to include “indirect” obstruction of a public place.
This means that if you stage a protest and the police use 20 emergency vehicles to divert traffic, you could be found guilty under the new section and be liable for the costs.
Even people handing out pamphlets about vaping harm in front of a shop, or workers gathering on a footpath to demand better pay, could fall foul of the laws.
An SABest amendment to the original bill removing the word “reckless” restricts its scope to intentional acts.
The APPEA oil and gas conference in Adelaide last month triggered protests. Image: Extinction Rebellion/Michael West Media
Peter Malinauskus told Radio Fiveaa on Friday that the new laws aimed to deter “extremists” who protested “with impunity” by crowd sourcing funds to pay their fines.
In speaking about the laws, Malinaukas, Maher and their right-wing media supporters have made constant references to emergency services, and ambulances. But no evidence has emerged that ambulances were delayed.
The author contacted SA Ambulances to ask if any ambulances were held up on May 17, and if they were delayed, whether Thorne was told. SA Ambulance Services acknowledged the question but have not yet answered.
The old ambulance excuse Significantly, the SA Ambulance Employees Union has complained about the “alarming breadth” of the laws and reminded the Malinauskas government that in the lead-up to last year’s state election, Labor joined Greens, SABest and others in protests about ambulance ramping, which caused significant traffic delays.
The constant references to emergencies are reminiscent of similar references in NSW. When protesters Violet Coco and firefighter Alan Glover were arrested on the Sydney Harbour Bridge last year, police included a reference to an ambulance in a statement of facts.
The ambulance did not exist and the false statement was withdrawn but this did not stop then Labor Opposition leader, now NSW Premier Chris Minns repeating the allegation when continuing to support harsh penalties even after a judge had released Coco from prison.
It later emerged that the protesters had agreed to move if it was necessary to make way for an ambulance.
The new SA law places a lot of discretion in the hands of the SA police to decide how to use resources and assess costs. The SA Police Commissioner Grant Stevens left no doubt about his hostility to disruptive protests when he said in reference to last week’s abseiling incident, “The ropes are fully extended across the street. So we can’t, as much as we might like to, cut the rope and let them drop.”
In Parliament, Green MP Robert Simms condemned this statement, noting that it had not been withdrawn.
In court, the police prosecutor (as NSW prosecutors have often done) argued that Thorne, who has been arrested in previous protests, should be refused bail.
Her lawyer Claire O’Connor SC reminded that courts around the country had ruled bail could not be denied to protesters as a form of punishment.
Shock jocks, News Corp, back new laws She said that, at worst, her client faced a maximum fine of $1250 and three-month prison term if convicted — but added she intended to plead not guilty.
“You cannot isolate a particular group of offenders because of their motivation and treat them differently because of their beliefs,” she said. The magistrate granted Thorne bail until July.
For now the South Australian government has satisfied the radio shock jocks, Newscorp’s Adelaide Advertiser (which applauded the tough penalties), authoritarian elements in the SA police, and the Opposition.
But it has been well and truly wedged. After a fairly smooth first year in power, it now finds itself offside with a massive coalition of civil society, environmental groups, South Australian unions, the SA Law Society and the Council for Social Services, the Greens and SA Best.
In less than two weeks, Premier Malinkauskas’s new law was condemned by a full page advertisement in the Adelaide Advertiser that was signed by human rights, legal, civil society, environmental and activist organisations; faced two angry street rallies organised to demonstrate opposition to the laws; and was roundly criticised by a range of peak legal and human rights organisations.
Back to the past Worst of all from the government’s point of view, SA Unions accused Malinkaskas of trashing South Australia’s proud progressive history.
“South Australian union members have fought for over a century to improve our living standards and rights at work. It took just 22 minutes for the government to pass a Bill in the House of Assembly attacking our rights to take the industrial action that made that possible.
“Their Bill is a mess and must be stopped,” SA Unions stated in a post on their official Facebook page.
In hours long speeches during the night, Green MPs Robert Simms and Tammie Franks and SABest Frank Pangano and Connie Bonaros detailed the history of protests that have led to progressive changes, including in South Australia.
They read onto the parliamentary record letters from organisations condemning both the content and unprecedented manner in which the laws were passed as undermining democracy.
Their message was crystal clear — peaceful disobedience is at the heart of democracy and there can be no peaceful disobedience without disruption.
Simms wore a LGBTQI activist pin to remind people that as a gay man he would never have been able to become a politician if it was not for the disruptive US-based Stonewall Riots and the early Sydney Mardi Gras, in which police arrested scores of people.
Protest is about “disrupting routines, people are making a noise and getting attention of people in power . . . change is led by people who are on the street, not made by those who stand meekly by,” he told Parliament.
Simms read from a letter by Australian Lawyers for Human Rights president Kerry Weste, who wrote, “Without the right to assemble en masse, disturb and disrupt, to speak up against injustice we would not have the eight-hour working day, and women would not be able to vote.
“Protests encourage the development of an engaged and informed citizenry and strengthen representative democracy by enabling direct participation in public affairs. When we violate the right to peaceful protest we undermine our democracy.”
At the same time as it was thumbing its nose at many of its supporters, the South Australian government left no one in doubt about its support for the expansion of the gas industry.
SA Energy Minister Tom Koutsantonis told the APPEA conference, “We are thankful you are here.
“We are happy to a be recipient of APPEA’s largesse in the form of coming here more often,” Koutsantonis said. “The South Australian government is at your disposal, we are here to help and we are here to offer you a pathway to the future.”
‘Gas grovelling’ not well received This did not impress David Mejia-Canales, senior lawyer at the Human Rights Law Centre, whose words were also quoted in Parliament:
“Two days after the Malinauskas government told gas corporations that the state is at their service, the SA government is making good on its word by rushing through laws to limit the right of climate defenders and others to protest. Australia’s democracy is stronger when people protest on issues they care about
“This knee-jerk reaction by the South Australian government will undermine the ability of everyone in SA to exercise their right to peacefully protest, from young people marching for climate action to workers protesting for better conditions. The Legislative Council must reject this Bill.”
During his five-hour speech in the early hours of Wednesday, SA Best Frank Pangano told Parliament that he could not recall when a bill has “seen so much wholesale opposition from sections of the community who are informed, who know what law making is about.
“You have got a wide section of the community saying in unison, ‘you are wrong’ to the Premier, you actually got it wrong. But we are getting a tin ear.”
And it was not just the climate and human rights activists who were “getting the tin ear”: the SA Australian Law Society released a letter expressing “serious concerns with the manner in which the [bill] was rushed through the House of Assembly”.
It wrote, “This is not how good laws are made.
“Good laws undergo a process of consultation, scrutiny, and debate before being put to a vote. The public did not even have a chance to examine the wording of the Bill before it passed the House of Assembly.
“This is particularly worrying in circumstances where the proposed law in question affects a democratic right as fundamental as the right to protest, and drastically increases penalties for those convicted of an offence.”
The Law Society also sent a list of questions to the government which were not answered.
One of the last speeches in the early morning was by SABest MLC Connie Balaros who, wearing a t-shirt that read “Arrest me Pete”, vowed to continue to campaign against the laws and accused Labor MPs of betraying their members, the community and their own history.
No more baby steps. No more excuses. No more greenwashing. No more bottomless greed of the fossil fuel industry and its enablers.
Early this year, UN Secretary-General Antonio Gutierrez declared, “2023 is a year of reckoning. It must be a year of game-changing climate action.
“We need disruption to end the destruction. No more baby steps. No more excuses. No more greenwashing. No more bottomless greed of the fossil fuel industry and its enablers.”
Climate disasters mount Since he made that statement, climate scientists have reported that Antarctic ice is melting faster than anticipated. This week, there has been record-beating heat in eastern Canada and the United States, Botswana in Africa, and South East China.
Right now, unprecedented out-of-control wildfires are ravaging Canada.
An international force of 1200 firefighters including Australians have joined the Canadian military battling to bring fires under control. Extreme rain and floods displaced millions in Pakistan and thousands in Australia in 2022.
Recently, extreme rain caused rivers to break their banks in Italy, causing landslides and turning streets into rivers. Homelessness drags on for years as affected communities struggle to recover long after the media moves on.
Is it any wonder that some people don’t continue as if it is ‘business as usual’. Protesters in London invaded Shell’s annual conference last week and in Paris, climate activists were tear gassed at Total Energies AGM.
Is it any wonder that some people don’t continue as if it is “business as usual”. Protesters in London invaded Shell’s annual conference last week and in Paris, climate activists were tear gassed at Total Energies AGM.
In The Netherlands last weekend, 1500 protesters who blocked a motorway to call attention to the climate emergency were water-cannoned and arrested.
On Thursday, May 30, Rising Tide protesters pleaded guilty to entering enclosed lands and attempting to block a coal train in Newcastle earlier this year. They received fines of between $450 and $750, most of which will be covered by crowdfunding.
Three of them were Knitting Nannas, a group of older women who stage frequent protests.
This week the Knitting Nannas and others formed a human chain around NAB headquarters in Sydney. They called for NAB to stop funding fossil fuel projects, including the Whitehaven coal mine.
Knitting Nannas, Rising Tide Two Knitting Nannas have mounted a legal challenge in the NSW Supreme Court seeking a declaration that the NSW anti-protest laws are invalid because they violate the implied right to freedom of communication in the Australian constitution.
A similar action is already been considered in South Australia.
In this context, fossil fuel industry get togethers may no longer be seen as a PR and networking opportunity for government and companies.
Australian protesters will not be impressed by Federal and State Labor politicians reassurances that they have a right to protest, providing that they meekly follow established legal procedures that empower police and councils to give or refuse permission for assemblies at prearranged places and times and do not inconvenience anyone else.
Wendy Bacon is an investigative journalist who was professor of journalism at University of Technology Sydney (UTS). She worked for Fairfax, Channel Nine and SBS and has published in The Guardian, New Matilda, City Hub and Overland. She has a long history in promoting independent and alternative journalism.Republished from Michael West Media with permission from the author and MWM.
Transparency International Papua New Guinea has welcomed the conviction of lawyer Paul Paraka as the police confirm they are widening the investigation into the fraud case.
Transparency PNG spokesperson, Peter Aitsi, said the evidence outlined the complex structures that Paraka and others put together.
Significant case
He said it was a very significant case because of the amount of public money involved.
“And those are just the funds that have been identified within this case itself and paid to different parties as a result of Paraka’s activities.
“From a TI point of view we would encourage the agencies to continue to develop the evidence and if there are further charges to be laid against individuals then we would encourage them to ensure they uphold their duty and responsibility,” Aitsi said.
Paraka’s law firm, which he claimed was the biggest in the country, was engaged by the Attorney-General and Solicitor-General’s office in 2000, but this arrangement ceased in 2006.
However, from 2007 the state was still making payments to legal firms linked to Paraka.
Investigations have seesawed for 10 years and led to the replacement of the Attorney-General, the shutting down of the police fraud unit investigating the matter, and acccusations of politicians being involved.
Meanwhile, Paul Paraka threatened legal action amid claims the issues were simply administrative matters.
Police action Police Commissioner David Manning has confirmed an investigation into fraud, money laundering and misappropriation following Paraka’s conviction.
Manning said the Paraka case attracted significant national interest due to the huge amounts of public money involved in these corrupt dealings.
“The way and manner in which these funds were syphoned through the Department of Finance to various law firms, who would then transfer this money to Mr Paraka himself, has been the subject of public outrage,” he said.
Manning said police will continue to pursue, investigate, charge and arrest those involved, and to recoup all money lost in these illegal deals.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
— George Orwell
Let’s be clear about one thing: seditious conspiracy isn’t a real crime to anyone but the U.S. government.
To be convicted of seditious conspiracy, the charge levied against Stewart Rhodes who was sentenced to 18 years in prison for being the driving force behind the January 6 Capitol riots, one doesn’t have to engage in violence against the government, vandalize government property, or even trespass on property that the government has declared off-limits to the general public.
This is not about whether Rhodes deserves such a hefty sentence.
This is about the long-term ramifications of empowering the government to wage war on individuals whose political ideas and expression challenge the government’s power, reveal the government’s corruption, expose the government’s lies, and encourage the citizenry to push back against the government’s many injustices.
This is about criminalizing political expression in thoughts, words and deeds.
This is about how the government has used the events of Jan. 6 in order to justify further power grabs and acquire more authoritarian emergency powers.
This was never about so-called threats to democracy.
In fact, the history of this nation is populated by individuals whose rhetoric was aimed at fomenting civil unrest and revolution.
Indeed, by the government’s own definition, America’s founders were seditious conspirators based on the heavily charged rhetoric they used to birth the nation.
Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Marquis De Lafayette, and John Adams would certainly have been charged for suggesting that Americans should not only take up arms but be prepared to protect their liberties and defend themselves against the government should it violate their rights.
“What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take arms,” declared Jefferson. He also concluded that “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
“It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government,” insisted Paine.
“When the government violates the people’s rights,” Lafayette warned, “insurrection is, for the people and for each portion of the people, the most sacred of the rights and the most indispensable of duties.”
Adams cautioned, “A settled plan to deprive the people of all the benefits, blessings and ends of the contract, to subvert the fundamentals of the constitution, to deprive them of all share in making and executing laws, will justify a revolution.”
Had America’s founders feared revolutionary words and ideas, there would have been no First Amendment, which protects the right to political expression, even if that expression is anti-government.
No matter what one’s political persuasion might be, every American has a First Amendment right to protest government programs or policies with which they might disagree.
The right to disagree with and speak out against the government is the quintessential freedom.
Every individual has a right to speak truth to power—and foment change—using every nonviolent means available.
Unfortunately, the government is increasingly losing its tolerance for anyone whose political views could be perceived as critical or “anti-government.”
All of us are in danger.
In recent years, the government has used the phrase “domestic terrorist” interchangeably with “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” to describe anyone who might fall somewhere on a very broad spectrum of viewpoints that could be considered “dangerous.”
The ramifications are so far-reaching as to render almost every American with an opinion about the governmentor who knows someone with an opinion about the government an extremist in word, deed, thought or by association.
You see, the government doesn’t care if you or someone you know has a legitimate grievance. It doesn’t care if your criticisms are well-founded. And it certainly doesn’t care if you have a First Amendment right to speak truth to power.
What the government cares about is whether what you’re thinking or speaking or sharing or consuming as information has the potential to challenge its stranglehold on power.
Get ready for the next phase of the government’s war on thought crimes and truth-tellers.
For years now, the government has used all of the weapons in its vast arsenal—surveillance, threat assessments, fusion centers, pre-crime programs, hate crime laws, militarized police, lockdowns, martial law, etc.—to target potential enemies of the state based on their ideologies, behaviors, affiliations and other characteristics that might be deemed suspicious or dangerous.
For instance, if you believe in and exercise your rights under the Constitution (namely, your right to speak freely, worship freely, associate with like-minded individuals who share your political views, criticize the government, own a weapon, demand a warrant before being questioned or searched, or any other activity viewed as potentially anti-government, racist, bigoted, anarchic or sovereign), you could be at the top of the government’s terrorism watch list.
In other words, if you dare to subscribe to any views that are contrary to the government’s, you may well be suspected of being a domestic terrorist and treated accordingly.
There’s a whole spectrum of behaviors ranging from thought crimes and hate speech to whistleblowing that qualifies for persecution (and prosecution) by the Deep State.
Simply liking or sharing this article on Facebook, retweeting it on Twitter, or merely reading it or any other articles related to government wrongdoing, surveillance, police misconduct or civil liberties might be enough to get you categorized as a particular kind of person with particular kinds of interests that reflect a particular kind of mindset that might just lead you to engage in a particular kinds of activities and, therefore, puts you in the crosshairs of a government investigation as a potential troublemaker a.k.a. domestic extremist.
Chances are, as the Washington Post reports, you have already been assigned a color-coded threat score—green, yellow or red—so police are forewarned about your potential inclination to be a troublemaker depending on whether you’ve had a career in the military, posted a comment perceived as threatening on Facebook, suffer from a particular medical condition, or know someone who knows someone who might have committed a crime.
In other words, you might already be flagged as potentially anti-government in a government database somewhere—Main Core, for example—that identifies and tracks individuals who aren’t inclined to march in lockstep to the police state’s dictates.
As The Interceptreported, the FBI, CIA, NSA and other government agencies have increasingly invested in corporate surveillance technologies that can mine constitutionally protected speech on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in order to identify potential extremists and predict who might engage in future acts of anti-government behavior.
Where many Americans go wrong is in naively assuming that you have to be doing something illegal or harmful in order to be flagged and targeted for some form of intervention or detention.
And then at the other end of the spectrum there are those such as Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning, for example, who blow the whistle on government misconduct that is within the public’s right to know.
In true Orwellian fashion, the government would have us believe that it is Assange and Manning who are the real criminals for daring to expose the war machine’s seedy underbelly.
This is how the police state deals with those who challenge its chokehold on power.
This is also why the government fears a citizenry that thinks for itself: because a citizenry that thinks for itself is a citizenry that is informed, engaged and prepared to hold the government accountable to abiding by the rule of law, which translates to government transparency and accountability.
After all, we’re citizens, not subjects.
For those who don’t fully understand the distinction between the two and why transparency is so vital to a healthy constitutional government, Manning explains it well:
This is why the First Amendment is so critical. It gives the citizenry the right to speak freely, protest peacefully, expose government wrongdoing, and criticize the government without fear of arrest, isolation or any of the other punishments that have been meted out to whistleblowers such as Edwards Snowden, Assange and Manning.
The challenge is holding the government accountable to obeying the law.
A little over 50 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in United States v. Washington Post Co. to block the Nixon Administration’s attempts to use claims of national security to prevent the Washington Post and the New York Times from publishing secret Pentagon papers on how America went to war in Vietnam.
As Justice William O. Douglas remarked on the ruling, “The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.”
Fast forward to the present day, and we’re witnessing yet another showdown, this time between Assange and the Deep State, which pits the people’s right to know about government misconduct against the might of the military industrial complex.
Yet this isn’t merely about whether whistleblowers and journalists are part of a protected class under the Constitution. It’s a debate over how long “we the people” will remain a protected class under the Constitution.
Following the current trajectory, it won’t be long before anyone who believes in holding the government accountable is labeled an “extremist,” relegated to an underclass that doesn’t fit in, watched all the time, and rounded up when the government deems it necessary.
Fiji’s 2000 coup leader George Speight, who has been serving time in prison for more than 20 years, has applied for a presidential pardon so he can be released.
When questioned by Fijivillage News, Attorney-General and Chair of the Mercy Commission, Siromi Turaga confirmed that Speight had made an application and the consideration process was underway.
According to the 2013 Constitution, on the petition of any convicted person, the commission may recommend that the President exercise a power of mercy by granting a free or conditional pardon to a person convicted of an offence; remitting all or a part of a punishment.
The commission may dismiss a petition that it reasonably considers to be frivolous, vexatious or entirely without merit, but otherwise
must consider a report on the case prepared by the judge who presided at the trial; or the Chief Justice, if a report cannot be obtained from the presiding judge;
must consider any other information derived from the record of the case or elsewhere that is available to the Commission; and
may consider the views of the victims of the offence.
The Constitution states that the President must act in accordance with the recommendations of the commission.
Fijivillage News has received information that the process has gone through the Fiji Corrections Service, the case management process for George Speight has been done through the judiciary, the commission has had its meeting and a decision is expected from President Ratu Wiliame Katonivere.
Next batch release?
Based on the processes followed under the Constitution, Speight could be released in the next batch of people to be given mercy by the President.
Speight was arrested and taken into custody on 26 July 2000.
In February 2002, he was convicted of treason and sentenced to death — the sentence was later commuted to life in prison by the President.
George Speight led a small group of armed men to the Parliament complex in Veiuto on the morning of 19 May 2000, and seized then Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry and his government hostage.
The hostage crisis lasted for 56 days.
In 2020, the then Leader of Opposition, Ratu Naiqama Lalabalavu urged the President and the then government to also consider the release of prisoners like 2000 coup leader George Speight and Naitasiri high chief, Ratu Inoke Takiveikata.
When questioned by Fijivillage News, Ratu Naiqama said there were more than 3000 people that were charged and incarcerated in relation to the events of 2000, and all including George Speight should be released.
While speaking in Parliament at the time, Ratu Naiqama said this was not to create another coup but to take a step forward.
Vijay Narayan is news director of Fijivillage News. Republished with permission.
Papua New Guinea lawyer and businessman Paul Paraka has been found guilty of misappropriating K162 million (NZ$75 million) belonging to the state.
Criminal track judge Justice Teresa Berrigan, in a comprehensive and detailed judgment in 114 pages, found him guilty on all five charges laid against him by the state.
In summary, the state alleged that between 2007 and 2011 more than K162 million was paid by the Department of Finance to the ultimate benefit of the accused.
The money was paid to PKP nominees, a property investment company wholly owned and directed by Paraka or to the accounts of seven other law firms which were also named.
The money, according to the state, was paid through 65 cheques, ranging in value from about KI million to almost K5 million.
In every case, the law firms retained at least K30,000 to K50,000 and sometimes as much as K400,000 before almost immediately passing the proceeds on to PPL or PKP nominees.
In summary, cheques totalling the following sums were paid by the Department of Finance to PKP nominees and the seven law firms:
K30,300,000 in 2007;
K30,054,312.68 in 2008;
K14,480,672.28 in 2009;
K39,808,610 in 2010;
K47,608,300 in 2011.
Paraka, who represented himself during the trial, said in a short statement after the court’s verdict: “The decision was a shocker and I will file an appeal during the week.
“There was no hard evidence from [the] Finance Department; hard copies of payments to those law firms were not produced in evidence by the prosecution.”
Accused conduct’s ‘dishonest’
Justice Berrigan, in giving the background of the case in her judgment, said the case had a lengthy history in the National Court with a number of challenges by the accused, which were all refused culminating in this trial.
She concluded that the accused’s conduct was dishonest according to the “standards of honest and reasonable people”.
“Over a period of five years the accused procured another person or persons to apply to his own use and the use of others more than K162 million to which he was not entitled.
“I am satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that having regard to the intelligence, education and experience of the accused, and the lengths taken by him to disguise the payments, that he appreciated at the time that he procured others to apply the property to his use and that what he was doing was dishonest according to those standards.
“There is no other rational inference. If required, this would establish the guilt of the accused pursuant to s7(4) of the Criminal Code.”
Todagia Kelolais a PNG Post-Courier reporter. Republished with permission.
Are the voters responsible for the corruption in the country?
Papua New Guinea’s Health Minister and Member for Wabag, Dr Lino Tom, seems to think so and he is partly right in his public statement on the matter in the PNG Post-Courier last month.
Unlike in the past, when our people were more self-reliant and attended to their own problems or meet every community obligation on their own, the generation today vote in their Members of Parliament to fix their personal problems and not the country.
And that’s a fact.
Our people think that their MPs are automatic teller machines (ATMs), like the ones deployed by the commercial banks that dispatches cash on demand that they have abandoned our honourable and historical self-reliant way of life.
We agree with our Health Minister that MPs spend too much time and resources managing their voters than on projects and programmes in their electorates for public benefit and development of the country.
The office occupied by MPs does not restrict them to electoral duties only, but as legislators they also have a country to run, and their performances are badly affected when their time is taken up by minute matters from their voters.
On the flip side, the MPs have themselves to blame for creating the culture they are dealing with in the contemporary PNG we are living in.
The structural and legislative reforms to the governance and accountability mechanisms in the public service, combined with the funding of key government programmes that they themselves initiated for self-preservation, is fueling this culture of corruption.
Thus, the blame for corruption must be shared by the politicians too because they are in control of so much money that is going into the districts right now.
The root of corruption . . . “The blame for corruption must be shared by the politicians too because they are in control of so much money that is going into the districts right now.” Image: PNG Post-Courier screenshot APR
For instance, the District Development Authority (DDA), the District Service Improvement Programme (DSIP) and the Provincial Service Improvement Programme (PSIP) are all scams that have directly contributed to the unprecedented rise in the expectations and demands from the voters.
Under the DSIP and PSIP alone, K2.4 billion is channeled to the districts every year, controlled by the both the provincial governors and the open electorate members. That is a lot of cash. How else do you expect our people to behave?
Corruption is a very serious challenge confronting PNG at the moment and we agree with our good minister that our people must stop placing these demands on their MPs. Our people must return to our old ways and that is to work hard to enjoy better lives and meet our life goals.
However, to totally rid corruption in the public sector, we also have to abolish all government programmes that legitimise corruption.
In the current situation, the people are colluding with their Members of Parliament to plunder this nation of its hard-earned cash without putting any thing tangible on the ground to generate more money and to grow the economy.
Otherwise, if the MPs really want to retain their multibillion kina DSIP and PSIP and at the same time kill corruption, they have the solution on their hands.
They only have to apply the funds honestly in their electorates to empower our people to become financially independent so that they leave their MPs alone to focus on development and the economy.
That is the way to go and the most honourable way.
This PNG Post-Courier editorial was published under the title “Corruption- who is to blame?” on 24 May 2023. Republished with permission.
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The authorities in Indonesia’s Papua region say the search for a New Zealand pilot taken hostage by West Papua Liberation Movement freedom fighters more than two months ago has been extended.
Commissioner Rahmadani said several efforts have been carried out to rescue the pilot, including involving a negotiating team comprising community leaders, the publication reported.
However, the negotiation has not yielded any results.
The search now covers about 36,000 sq km.
Commissioner Rahmadani said the safety of Captain Merthens was the priority for his team.
In the video, which was sent to RNZ Pacific, Mehrtens was instructed to read a statement saying “no foreign pilots are to work and fly” into Highlands Papua until Papua was independent.
He made another demand for West Papua independence from Indonesia later in the statement.
Mehrtens was surrounded by more than a dozen people, some of them armed with weapons.
Previously, a TPNPB spokesperson said they were waiting for a response from the New Zealand government to negotiate the release of Mehrtens.
In February, United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) leader Benny Wenda called for the rebels to release Mehrtens.
He said he sympathised with the New Zealand people and Merhtens’ family but insisted the situation was a result of Indonesia’s refusal to allow the UN Human Rights Commissioner to visit Papua.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The West Papua Liberation Army says they would drop the key demand that Jakarta recognise the independence of the Papua region #WestPapua#nzpolhttps://t.co/I2Vd13w66G
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Progressive Brandon Johnson won the Chicago mayoral race on Tuesday, triumphing over conservative Democrat Paul Vallas in a victory that serves as a rebuke to Vallas’s “tough-on-crime” platform and shows that candidates running on left-wing platforms can win. Johnson, a former labor organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), defeated his well-financed opponent on a platform of supporting…
A rise in violence on Toronto’s transit system signals an urgent need to better support people struggling with homelessness, mental illness and addiction, says a forensic psychiatrist with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH).
“It’s that combination that is giving rise to this (violence),” said Dr. Sandy Simpson, chair in forensic psychiatry at CAMH and the University of Toronto,
“It’s really impossible to know how much each of those things is to blame. But it’s not a single issue,” he said.
More information is needed about the suspects accused in recent attacks against Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) passengers and employees to make that determination, he said.
But Simpson said drug addiction is likely a factor in some cases, especially crystal meth and crack. Unlike opioids, those drugs can be associated with violent acts.
Lack of social support for people who are living in poverty and who are homeless, as well as poor access to mental-health services for the people who need it most, are also big underlying problems that need to be addressed, Simpson said.
“Frankly, my top solution would be universal basic income,” he said.
“That would make a dramatic difference to the struggles that desperate people get into,” Simpson said.
Mental illness, drug use a factor
People “are sleeping on the TTC because there’s nowhere else to sleep and becoming intoxicated or irritable or in conflict with other people on the TTC because they have nowhere else to go and they’re feeling that the world is structured against them,” he said.
Untreated mental illness, drug use or both can confuse vulnerable people and make them perceive others as a threat, Simpson said.
Right now, the wait time for people in Toronto with serious mental illness to be treated by an Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) team is 10 to 12 months, he said.
Gord Tanner, general manager of shelter, support and housing for the City of Toronto, said more outreach workers are being hired to offer services to homeless people identified at certain TTC stations in the city.
Six employees wearing red winter coats bearing a Streets to Homes logo on the front and Outreach on the back are currently approaching people on trains, buses and streetcars to help them access a shelter bed, other housing or services such as applying for income support and identification, he said.
A feeling of hopelessness
Plans are underway to employ a total of 20 people by May to provide services 24 hours an day, seven days a week from funding in the city’s current budget, Tanner said.
“There’s been a couple of stations where we’ve seen people bedding down, and that is Union Station and Spadina Station, but there’s parts of the system that have had more people visibly sheltering over the course of the winter,” he said.
“Folks are just having a very hard time making ends meet and so access to income supports and to affordable housing is probably something we hear most often from individuals we work with throughout the shelter system and folks who might be on the street or using the transit system,” Tanner said.
“It’s a feeling of hopelessness that the staff relay to me with respect to the folks that they’re working with.”
Tanner said that since Jan. 1, outreach workers have connected and referred 226 people to shelters from various parts of the transit system but that long-term housing is needed.
“It’s not meant to be a panacea or the solution to the tragic incidents,” he said of the project.
Private security companies are currently holding Papua New Guinea together with the largest workforce of 29,445 and supporting the police in managing law and order issues.
There are only 6832 policemen and women serving the country currently, according to reports.
Internal Security Minister Peter Tsiamalili Jr told Parliament that the security industry in the country was one of the biggest supporters of law and order in helping to reduce crime by protecting life and property, including providing employment.
He said growth of the security industry had increased drastically after 16 years with a total number of licensed security companies recorded at 562, employing a total of 29,445 security guards.
Of these 562 companies, 15 were owned by foreigners.
This week the Royal PNG Constabulary announced that the constabulary would only get 560 best candidates from 13,039 applicants shortlisted out of 48,772 applications received from across the nation.
With the increase in law and order issues throughout the country and job scarcity currently faced, Minister Tsiamalili assured that the government was addressing this critically.
SIA established in 2006
The Security Industries Authority was established by the Security Protection Industries Act 2004 and it came into operation in 2006.
And by than it had registered 174 security companies that employed a total of 12,396 guards.
But after 16 years, as of December 2022, the total number of licensed security companies rose to 562 employing a total of 29,445 security guards.
“You will note that since 2006 till December 2022, the number of licensed security companies and the number of guards has been gradually increasing every year since 2006,” Minister Tsiamalili Jr said.
“The security industry is one of the industries in the law and justice sector that employs the largest workforce (29,445) and this security industry is supporting police and (managing) law and order issues in PNG.
“Security companies are supporting police help reduce crime by protecting life and property and also providing employment for many of our men and women, and more importantly supporting the economy, while police concentrate on investigating and arrest.”
Gorothy Kennethis a PNG Post-Courier reporter. Republished with permission.
The production and trafficking of methamphetamine (meth), cocaine and now heroin is on the rise with Pacific countries now becoming what many are calling the “Pacific drug highway”.
And Papua New Guinea has over three years seen a plane crash, a hotel laboratory, a shipment in postal services, arrival via a container ship, manufacturing in apartments and now a black flight — all to do with cocaine and meth.
Police have had Operation Weathers, Operation Saki Bomb — and now Operation Gepard.
From Operation Gepard, a pink duffle bank was stuffed into the nose of the flight from Bulolo filled with 17 packages of meth. These were transported across the border into Australia.
With the lack of border security, the country has fast become a transit point for the movement of illicit drugs into Australia.
Locals are becoming part of the movement of the drugs playing a key role in ensuring the drugs are hidden and then moved across the border.
Police Commissioner David Manning has on several occasions said “PNG is becoming a transit point for illicit and synthetic drugs”.
New law not implemented
His Deputy Commissioner of Police-Special Operations and acting Director-General of the Narcotics Office, Donald Yamasombi, says the laws under the new Controlled Substance Act 2021 have yet to be implemented.
In total, 337kg of methamphetamine have been found in the country, conveyed, or in possession of people in PNG — worth K164 million (about NZ$75 million)
And the laws? They have been passed but yet no one has been sentenced under the new Controlled Substance Act 2021 and Dangerous Drug (Amended) Act 2021 pertaining to the illicit drugs.
Now another 52kg has been allowed to leave the country and travel into outback Australia where five men were arrested by the Australian Federal Police (AFP).
Commissioner Manning said the positive outcome was a result of close collaboration between the Royal PNG Constabulary (RPNGC) and Australian law enforcement partners and air traffic control agencies.
He said the RPNGC, since working with the Australian authorities, have enabled a wider net to be cast, resulting in the apprehension of transnational offenders in PNG and across the Pacific.
“With our partners we are committed to make our pacific region a hostile and disruptive environment for the transnational criminal element,” Commissioner Manning said.
Strengthening drug laws
“We are also committed to strengthening our drug legislation to ensure that penalties reflect the severity of offending here in PNG.”
According to Minister for Transport and Civil Aviation, Walter Schnaubelt, the airplane was able to get into PNG airspace by flying low.
“When an aircraft is operated with a criminal intent, the pilots deliberately turn off the transponders to avoid detection by radar or ADS-B,” he said.
“If these surveillance tools are turned off, our systems cannot pick them up on the screen.
“Also they deliberately do not submit flight plans or talk to our controllers for the same reason (they don’t want us to see or know about their illegal operations).”
In PNG, after the arrest of the five in Australia, a 42-year-old male Chinese national was arrested at Lae airport last Wednesday.
In terms of investigations, the response has been swift. However, the investigations are prolonged and it becomes a forgotten topic.
Swept under the rug
It remains swept under the rug until judgment is passed and the suspects are charged and sentenced.
So far, only David John Cutmore has been sentenced to 18 years for his part in the black flight that crashed with 644kg of cocaine on board and he was charged under the old laws.
Another seven locals and expatriates are facing court for conveying and being in possession of methamphetamine since 2022.
In total, 18 persons of interest have been arrested or apprehended over their involvement in the methamphetamine trade.
For cocaine, only one person has been sentenced with another four still facing court.
Miriam Zarriga is a PNG Post-Courier journalist. Republished with permission.
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“The most important thing from my perspective is a strategic partnership — a partnership where the media should not be seen as the enemy or a nuisance.”
This was the view of the Communications Fiji Ltd news director and Fijian Media Association executive Vijay Narayan expressed at a media segment of the Police Consultative Session in Suva yesterday.
Narayan said the media and the police had the same goals and objectives “focusing on truth, integrity, accountability and transparency”.
He said the media was ready to have regular meetings with the senior command of Fiji’s Police Force, and also extended an invitation to the Acting Police Commissioner Juki Fong Chew and his senior officers to visit individual media outlets to understand their work.
Narayan said that at times there was a disconnect where the only time the media was called in was when police wanted to say something or maybe when there was a major issue at hand.
He said he remembered that the Crime Stoppers Board also included members of the media and media organisations.
He added that they “fought the fight together”.
Communications Fiji Ltd news director Vijay Narayan speaking at the police workshop. Video: Fijivillage
Police need ‘humanising’
Narayan encouraged police to engage more with the public through media conferences as the Police Force also needed to be “humanised”, and not just focus their message on posting to their social media page.
The CFL news director said that at times they might not be on the same page but the tough questions needed to be asked.
Fiji Sun’s investigative journalist Ivamere Nataro said some people she spoke to did not understand the work of the police and kept requesting frequent updates.
Nataro said that in this digital age, news spread faster on social media and if the police did not open up to the mainstream media, it was another thing that people looked at.
She said police needed to engage more with the community and show that they cared.
Commissioner agrees
While responding to the media, Acting Commissioner Chew said he agreed with what had been said, and moving forward the police would try to improve.
But Chew also gave an example of when a story had been published alleging that someone had been tortured.
He said the story was published and they did not know whether it was true or false.
When the matter was investigated, the issue just died out.
He said that if they manage to find that person, he or she would be taken to task for giving false information.
Krishneel Nair is a Fijivillage reporter. Republished with permission.
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The long-running row between the former Fiji government and the Suva-based regional University of the South Pacific (USP) has come back to haunt former Fiji Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama, who spent a night in a police cell on March 9 before appearing in court, charged with abuse of office.
Not only did the “USP saga”, as it came to be known, cause a major rift between Fiji and the other 12 USP-member countries, but it may have contributed to the narrow loss of Bainimarama’s FijiFirst Party (FFP) in the December 2022 election.
Bainimarama’s abuse of office charges included accusations of interfering with a police investigation into financial malpractices at USP. If convicted, he would face a maximum sentence of 17 years in jail.
But there are also serious questions about the future of the party that he co-founded, and which won successive elections in 2014 and 2018 on the back of his popularity.
A day before his indictment, there were surreal scenes at the Suva Central Police Station, as police officers marched an ashen-faced Bainimarama to his cell to spend the night before his court appearance the next morning.
This, under the full glare of live media coverage, with journalists tripping over themselves to take pictures of the former military strongman, who installed himself as prime minister after the 2006 coup and ruled for 16 years straight.
Arrested, detained and charged alongside Bainimarama was his once-powerful police chief, Sitiveni Qiliho, who managed a wry smile for the cameras. Both were released on a surety of F$10,000 (about NZ$7300) after pleading not guilty to the charges.
Shut down police investigation
It is alleged that in 2019, the duo “arbitrarily and in abuse of the authority of their respective offices” shut down a police investigation into alleged irregularities at USP when former vice-chancellor Rajesh Chandra was in charge.
Former Fiji prime minister Voreqe Bainimarama spent a night in a police cell on March 9 before appearing in court, charged with abuse of office. Image: The Interpreter/Pita Simpson/Getty Images
In November 2018, Chandra’s replacement, Professor Pal Ahluwalia, revealed large remuneration payments to certain USP senior staff, some running to hundreds of thousands of dollars. The Fiji government, unhappy with Ahluwalia’s attack on Chandra, counter-attacked by alleging irregularities in Ahluwalia’s own administration.
As the dispute escalated, the Fiji government suspended its annual grant to the USP in a bid to force an inquiry into its own allegations.
When an external audit by the NZ accountants BDO confirmed the original report’s findings, the USP executive committee, under the control of the then Fiji government appointees, suspended Ahluwalia in June 2020.
This was in defiance of the USP’s supreme decision-making body, the USP Council, which reinstated him within a week.
Samoa’s then Deputy Prime Minister Fiamē Naomi Mataʻafa (who is now prime minister, having won a heavily contested election of her own) said at the time that Ahluwalia’s suspension had been a “nonsense”.
The then Nauruan President Lionel Aingimea attacked a “small group” of Fiji officials for “hijacking” the 12-country regional university.
Students threatened boycott
The USP Students’ Association threatened a boycott of exams, while more than 500 signatures supporting the suspended vice-chancellor were collected and students protested across several of USP’s national campuses. All these events played out prominently in the regional news media as well as on social media platforms.
With Fiji’s national elections scheduled for the following year, the political toll was becoming obvious. However, Bainimarama’s government either did not see it, or did not care to see it.
Instead of backing off from what many saw as an unnecessary fight, it doubled down. In February 2021, around 15 government police and security personnel along with immigration officials staged a late-night raid on Professor Ahluwalia’s Suva home, detained him with his wife, Sandra Price, and put them in a car for the three-hour drive to Nadi International Airport where, deported, they were put on the first flight to Australia.
The move sent shockwaves in Fiji and the region.
To many, it looked like a government that had come to power in the name of a “clean-up campaign” against corruption was now indulging in a cover-up campaign instead. The USP saga became political fodder at opposition rallies, with one of their major campaign promises being to bring back Professor Ahluwalia and restore the unpaid Fiji government grant that stood at F$86 million (about NZ$62 million) at the time.
A month before the 2022 polls, a statement targeting the estimated 30,000 staff and student cohort at USP, their friends and families, urged them to vote against FijiFirst, which would go on to lose government by a single parliamentary vote to the tripartite coalition led by another former coup leader, Sitiveni Rabuka.
Albanese official visit
It was Rabuka who greeted Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on his first official visit to Fiji last week. During talks at the Australian-funded Blackrock military camp, Albanese reportedly secured Rabuka’s support for the AUKUS deal.
Australia is keen for stability in Fiji, which has not had a smooth transition of power since independence, with democratically elected governments removed by coups in 1987, 2000 and 2006. Any disturbance in Fiji has the potential to upset the delicate balance in the region as a whole.
For Bainimarama and his followers, there is much to rue. His claimed agenda — to build national unity and racial equality and to rid Fiji of corruption — earned widespread support in 2014.
His margin of victory was much narrower in 2018 but Bainimarama managed to secure a majority in Parliament to lead the nation again.
His electoral loss in 2022 was followed by a series of dramatic events, which first saw Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, his deputy in all but name, disqualified from holding his seat in Parliament.
Bainimarama went next, suspended for three years by Parliament’s privileges committee for a speech attacking head of state Ratu Wiliame Katonivere. He chose to resign as opposition leader.
Following his March 10 hearing, Bainimarama addressed the media and a few supporters outside court, adamant that he had served the country with “integrity” and with “the best interests” of all Fijians at heart. The former leader even managed to smile for the cameras while surrounded by a group of followers.
With nearly double the personal votes of the sitting PM Rabuka under Fiji’s proportional representation voting system, Bainimarama’s supporters still harboured some hope that he could return as the country’s leader one day.
However, his health is not the best. He is now out of Parliament and bogged down by legal troubles. Is the sun now setting on the era of Bainimarama and FijiFirst?
Dr Shailendra Bahadur Singh is a frequent contributor to Asia Pacific Report and is on the editorial board of the associated Pacific Journalism Review. This article was originally published by the Lowy Institute’s The Interpreter and is republished here with the author’s permission.
Papua New Guinea’s Internal Security Minister Peter Tsiamalili Jr says the Royal PNG Constabulary is “stretched” with only 5000 men and women serving the country of more than 9 million people.
“Now more than ever we need leadership, we are stretched as a force, we all know that — we only have 5000 men,” he said.
“Issues in Hela — we are making every effort to manage this.
“That is happening in Hela, and it’s across the country. I am asking for help. This issue did not happen overnight, this is a culmination of the neglect our force has faced in the last 10 to 15 years.
“I am having sleepless nights, ensuring we work with the operational side of police. We are looking at stronger laws to deter citizens of such criminal acts.”
The minister — who is in charge of both the police and correctional services — was speaking during Parliament when he was asked by Mul-Baiyer MP Jacob Maki and a supplementary question from Abau MP Sir Puka Temu.
As hundreds of thousands, throughout Israel, joined anti-government protests, questions began to arise regarding how this movement would affect, or possibly merge, into the wider struggle against the Israeli military occupation and apartheid in Palestine.
Pro-Palestine media outlets shared, with obvious excitement, news about statements made by Hollywood celebrities, the likes of Mark Ruffalo, about the need to “sanction the new hard right-wing government of (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu”.
Netanyahu, who sits at the heart of the current controversy and mass protests, struggled to find a single pilot for the flight carrying him to Rome on March 9 for a three-day visit with the Italian government. The reception for the Israeli leader in Italy was equally cold. Italian translator, Olga Dalia Padoa, reportedly refused to interpret Netanyahu’s speech, scheduled for March 9 at a Rome synagogue.
One can appreciate the need to strategically use the upheaval against Netanyahu’s far-right government to expose Israel’s fraudulent claim to true democracy, supposedly ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’. However, one has to be equally careful not to validate Israel’s inherently racist institutions that have been in existence for decades before Netanyahu arrived in power.
The Israeli Prime Minister has been embroiled in corruption cases for years. Though he remained popular, Netanyahu lost his position at the helm of Israeli politics in June 2021, following three bitterly-contested elections. Yet, he returned on December 29, 2022, this time with even more corrupt – even by Israel’s own definition – characters such as Aryeh Deri, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, the latter two currently serving as the ministers of finance and national security, respectively.
Each one of these characters had a different reason for joining the coalition. Smotrich and Ben Gvir’s agenda ranged from the annexation of illegal West Bank settlements to the deportation of Arab politicians considered ‘disloyal’ to the state.
Netanyahu, though a rightwing ideologue, is more concerned with personal ambitions: maintaining power as long as possible, while shielding himself and his family from legal problems. He simply wants to stay out of prison. To do so, he also needs to satisfy the dangerous demands of his allies, who have been given free rein to unleash army and settler violence against Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank, as has been the case in Huwwara, Nablus, Jenin and elsewhere.
But Netanyahu’s government, the most stable in years, has bigger goals than just “wiping out” Palestinian towns off the map. They want to alter the very judicial system that would allow them to transform Israeli society itself. The reform would grant the government control over judicial appointments by limiting the Israeli Supreme Court’s power to exercise judicial review.
The protests in Israel have very little to do with the Israeli occupation and apartheid, and are hardly concerned with Palestinian rights. They are led by many former Israeli leaders, the likes of former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, former minister Tzipi Livni and former prime minister and leader of the opposition, Yair Lapid. During the Naftali Bennett-Yair Lapid stint in power, between June 2021 and December 2022, hundreds of Palestinians were killed in the West Bank. 2022 was described by UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Tor Wennesland, as the “deadliest” in the West Bank since 2005. During that time, illegal Jewish settlements expanded rapidly, while Gaza was routinely bombed.
Yet, the Bennett-Lapid government faced little backlash from Israeli society for its bloody and illegal actions in Palestine. The Israeli Supreme Court, which has approved most of the government actions in Occupied Palestine, also faced little or no protests for certifying apartheid and validating the supposed legality of the Jewish colonies, all illegal under international law. The stamp of approval by the Supreme Court was also granted when Israel passed the Nation-State Law, identifying itself exclusively as a Jewish state, thus casting off the entirety of the Arab Muslim and Christian population which shares the same mass of land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
Rarely did the Israeli judicial system take the side of Palestinians, and when little ‘victories’ were recorded now and then, they hardly altered the overall reality. Though one can understand the desperation of those trying to fight against Israeli injustices using the country’s own ‘justice system’, such language has contributed to the confusion regarding what Israel’s ongoing protests mean for Palestinians.
In fact, this is not the first time that Israelis have gone out on the streets in large numbers. In August 2011, Israel experienced what some referred to as Israel’s own ‘Arab Spring’. But that, too, was a class struggle within clearly defined ideological boundaries and political interests that rarely overlapped with a parallel struggle for equality, justice and human rights.
Dual socio-economic struggles exist in many societies around the world, and conflating between them is not unprecedented. In the case of Israel, however, such confusion can be dangerous because the outcome of Israel’s protests, be it a success or failure, could spur unfounded optimism or demoralize those fighting for Palestinian freedom.
Though stark violations of international law, the arbitrary arrests, extrajudicial executions and the everyday framework. All of these acts are fully sanctioned by Israeli courts, including the country’s Supreme Court. This means that, even if Netanyahu fails to hegemonize the judicial system, Palestinian civilians will continue to be tried in military courts, which will carry out the routine of approving home demolition, illegal land seizure and the construction of settlements.
A proper engagement with the ongoing protests is to further expose how Tel Aviv utilizes the judicial system to maintain the illusion that Israel is a country of law and order, and that all the actions and violence in Palestine, however bloody and destructive, are fully justifiable according to the country’s legal framework.
Yes, Israel should be sanctioned, not because of Netanyahu’s attempt at co-opting the judiciary, but because the system of apartheid and regime of military occupation constitute complete disregard and utter violation of international law. Whether Israelis like it or not, international law is the only law that matters to an occupied and oppressed nation.
