Category: Crime

  • Fijivillage News

    A man has been charged with the rape and sexual assault of one of the Virgin Australia crew members in the early hours of New Year’s Day, near a nightclub in Martintar, Nadi.

    Police confirm he has been charged with one count of sexual assault and one count of rape.

    They say he is in custody and will appear in the Nadi Magistrates Court on Monday.

    Police have yet to charge anyone in relation to the robbery of another crew member.

    Meanwhile, the crew members have now returned to Australia.

    A female crew member, who was allegedly sexually assaulted near the club, flew back to Australia yesterday while her male colleague returned on Thursday after receiving treatment for facial wounds.

    Five other crew members remained in Fiji to assist the investigation, staying close to their hotel as directed by their airline’s headquarters.

    Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Tourism Viliame Gavoka said in an earlier statement that regrettably incidents like this could happen anywhere and Fiji was not immune.

    He reminded tourists to exercise caution in nightclub areas and late at night.

    Republished from Fijivillage News with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Pacific Media Watch

    Five Palestinian journalists have been killed in a new Israeli strike near a hospital in central Gaza after four reporters were killed last week, reports Al Jazeera citing authorities and media in the besieged enclave.

    The journalists from the Al-Quds Today channel were covering events near al-Awda Hospital, located in the Nuseirat refugee camp, when their broadcasting van was hit by an Israeli air strike.

    Footage from the scene circulating on social media shows a vehicle engulfed in flames.

    The video of the white-coloured van shows the word “press” in large red lettering across the back of the vehicle.

    The dead journalists have been named as Fadi Hassouna, Ibrahim al-Sheikh Ali, Mohammed al-Ladah, Faisal Abu al-Qumsan and Ayman al-Jadi.

    Al Jazeera’s Anas al-Sharif reports that Ayman al-Jadi had been waiting for his wife in front of the hospital while she was in labour to give birth to their first child.

    Civil defence teams retrieved the bodies of the victims and extinguished a fire at the scene, the Quds News Network said.

    Israel claims ‘targeted’ attack
    Israel’s military confirmed the strike.

    It claimed it had carried out a “targeted” attack against a vehicle carrying members of Islamic Jihad and that it would continue to take action against “terrorist organisations” in Gaza.

    “Prior to the attack, many steps were taken to reduce the chance of harming civilians, including the use of precision weapons, aerial observations, and additional intelligence information,” the military said in a post on X.

    The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) earlier this month condemned Israel’s killing of four Palestinian journalists in the space of a week, calling on the international community to hold the country accountable for its attacks against the media.

    The Paris-based media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) also condemned the killing of the journalists last week as a “continuation of the war crimes committed by Israel”.

    “On December 14 and 15, the Israeli army murdered three media professionals in northern Gaza and the central Gaza Strip,” RSF said in a statement.

    “Some of the few remaining reporters in the northern region, subjected to a ground invasion by Israeli forces, were recently forced to evacuate their homes.”

    RSF named three of the killed journalists as Al-Jazeera cameraman Ahmad al-Louh, a 39-year-old media worker who was was filming a report on the Palestinian Civil Defence in the Nuseirat camp when he was killed on December 15 by an air strike; Mohammed Balousha, a reporter for the Emirati channel Al-Mashhad who was mortally wounded by a targeted drone strike while reporting in the Sheikh Radwan district in northern Gaza, and correspondent Mohammed Jaber al-Qarinawi, 30, who was killed along with his wife and their three children by an isolated air strike — “a sign that his home had probably been targeted”.

    ‘Stark reminder’ on media attacks, says RSF
    RSF’s director of campaigns Rebecca Vincent said: “These latest killings are a stark reminder of the ongoing assault by Israeli forces against media professionals in northern Gaza, where the handful of journalists remaining are now at risk of disappearing altogether.

    “In parallel to ongoing attacks on media in central Gaza where displaced persons are now seeking refuge, this is a clear continuation of the Israeli authorities’ attempts to control the narrative on its war through any means possible.

    “We repeat in the strongest possible terms that targeting journalists is a war crime, and these atrocious attacks must stop. It is time for concrete action by other states — in particular Israel’s allies — to urge the Israeli government to immediately comply with international law.”

    Ninety-six percent of Gaza’s journalists have been forcibly evacuated from their homes, and 92 percent have lost essential reporting equipment, according to data from RSF’s local NGO partner, Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ).

    At least 141 journalists have been killed in Israel’s war in Gaza since October 7, 2023, according to the CPJ.

    However, other monitoring agencies put the death toll higher — the Gaza-based Government Media Office has documented 201 killings of journalists by Israel.

    Israel has continued a genocidal war on Gaza that has killed more than 45,000 people, most of them women and children, since a cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas on 7 October 2023.


    This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • New Delhi, December 20, 2024—Indian journalist Anand Mangnale is the target of an online smear campaign that began on December 5 when Nishikant Dubey, a parliament member with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), linked Mangnale to an effort to “derail” the Indian government through foreign funding in Parliament.

    “Investigative journalism is crucial for uncovering corruption and holding power to account,” said Beh Lih Yi, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator. “Efforts to discredit public interest reporting and target journalists through smear campaigns create a chilling effect on press freedom. CPJ urges the Indian ruling party BJP to respect journalists’ role in democracy and refrain from weaponizing their authority to intimidate the press.” 

    Mangnale, the South Asia regional editor at the investigative news outlet Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), is known for his reporting on alleged corporate malfeasance, financial irregularities, and corruption involving the Adani Group, one of India’s largest conglomerates.  

    The official BJP account on social media X amplified Dubey’s claims, alleging that Mangnale fundraised for the opposition party and gave “Chinese money” to a person accused of involvement in the 2020 Delhi riots.

    The BJP cited a report by French news outlet Mediapart in its claim; Mediapart refuted the allegations, saying the BJP “wrongly exploited” its report to discredit independent journalism.

    These developments come after the U.S. Justice Department indicted Gautam Adani, chairperson of the Adani Group, and his associates in November 2024 for allegedly bribing Indian officials to secure contracts and misleading U.S. investors about the company’s anti-corruption practices.

    Mangnale told CPJ that he anticipates these recent developments could trigger new legal cases or intensify existing ones against him.

    In May 2024, Indian authorities summoned Mangnale for questioning about alleged involvement in terrorism in connection to his work with Newsclick. Formal charges have not yet been filed. He was also among several high-profile journalists in India to be targeted with Pegasus spyware. 

    CPJ’s emailed requests seeking comments from Dubey and BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra did not receive a response.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.


  • This content originally appeared on Human Rights Watch and was authored by Human Rights Watch.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • New York, December 18, 2024—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns a Kyrgyzstan court’s decision upholding convictions against four journalists from anti-corruption investigative outlet Temirov Live, two of whom were sentenced to lengthy prison terms.

    On Wednesday, the Bishkek City Court upheld an October 10 first instance court decision sentencing Makhabat Tajibek kyzy to six years in prison, Azamat Ishenbekov to five years in prison, and reporter Aike Beishekeyeva and former reporter Aktilek Kaparov to three years of probation. Prosecutors did not appeal the acquittals of seven other current and former Temirov Live staff.

    “Temirov Live’s bold anti-corruption coverage has made it the Kyrgyz government’s number one target. By upholding the outrageous prison sentences against director Makhabat Tajibek kyzy and presenter Azamat Ishenbekov, Kyrgyz authorities are confirming that they have no response to the outlet’s reporting but repression,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Authorities in Kyrgyzstan should immediately release Tajibek kyzy and Ishenbekov, not contest their Supreme Court appeals and the appeals of journalists Aike Beishekeyeva and Aktilek Kaparov, and end their campaign against the independent press.”

    Temirov Live founder Bolot Temirov told CPJ from exile that the journalists plan to appeal their convictions to Kyrgyzstan’s Supreme Court.

    Kyrgyz police arrested 11 current and former staff of Temirov Live, a local partner of the global Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), in January on charges of calling for mass unrest, accusing the outlet of “indirectly” making such calls by “discrediting” authorities in their videos.

    Authorities previously deported Temirov, an international award-winning investigative reporter, and banned him from entering Kyrgyzstan for five years in retaliation for his work.

    In November, CPJ submitted a report on Kyrgyz authorities’ unprecedented crackdown on independent reporting under current President Sadyr Japarov to the United Nations Human Rights Council ahead of its 2025 Universal Periodic Review of the country’s human rights record.

    On Tuesday, Japarov accused U.S. Congress-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Kyrgyz service and “five or six other sites” of “using freedom of speech as a cover” to spread false information and warned them to “be careful” with their reporting on corruption.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • New York, December 17, 2024—Pakistani authorities must stop harassing broadcast journalist Harmeet Singh, who has been summoned to appear for questioning on December 24 to the Federal Investigation Agency’s (FIA) Cyber Crime Reporting Center in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on allegations he engaged in “negative rhetoric against state institutions,” according to a copy of the summons reviewed by CPJ and Singh, who spoke with CPJ.

    The FIA’s Cyber Crime Reporting Center in the capital Islamabad has also registered a first information report, which opens an investigation, against Singh, an anchor for local news outlet Such TV. The report accuses him of using his social media account to “propagate a misleading, concocted, and baseless campaign against state institutions and security agencies of Pakistan.” The allegations relate to Singh’s social media activity during November 2024 protests that he covered in Islamabad by supporters of jailed former prime minister Imran Khan, according to a copy of the report reviewed by CPJ.

    “Pakistan’s security agencies must immediately stop the harassment of journalist Harmeet Singh and allow him to work without intimidation,” said Beh Lih Yi, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator. “In 2024, journalists in Pakistan have faced unprecedented violence by both state and non-state actors. It is the government’s responsibility to put an end to this.”

    On Saturday, a special court in Islamabad granted Singh pre-arrest bail until December 21, in connection with the FIA complaint.

    Singh, one of Pakistan’s few Sikh journalists, has faced threats to his life in the past, especially after his brother was killed in a personal animosity case. He told CPJ that he believes the authorities’ efforts are an attempt to silence him and other journalists from reporting the on-the-ground realities in Pakistan.

    The targeting of Singh is part of a broader pattern of intimidation against journalists in Pakistan. On November 27, senior journalist Matiullah Jan was arrested on terrorism charges after reporting on protests by supporters of former prime minister Imran Khan.

    CPJ reached out to Pakistan Minister of Information Attaullah Tarar for comment but received no response.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Virtually all of the U.S. Government’s economic sanctions violate the U.N.’s Charter — and do it with impunity.

    No legal case exists justifying America’s hundreds of economic sanctions laws that have been passed by the U.S. Congress and signed by the U.S. President but not authorized by the U.N. — which latter entity is the sole organization that writes and issues international laws. The U.S. International Trade Commission’s August 1998 “Overview and Analysis of Current U.S. Unilateral Economic Sanctions” lists, on its “Table ES-1” 51 such sanctions-laws imposed by the U.S. Government during 1987-1998, which legally have validity only in the United States but which that Government enforces as-if these are international laws, though its doing so constitutes international aggression, which likewise violates international law — from the U.N. (which has no enforcement-power; Harry Truman made it that way). Among the countries that are named there to be controlled or punished are Palestine, Burma (Myanmar), Cuba, Afghanistan, Cambodia, India, Laos, North Korea, Pakistan, Tibet, China, Serbia, Montenegro, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, and others. Russia wasn’t added to the list until 2012, but, after that time, there have been so many anti-Russia sanctions laws passed by the U.S. Government so that when the Global Investigations Review issued on 13 November 2024 a study “Sanctions: the US Perspective”, they ignored the 2012 one, the Magnitsky Act, and started their list against Russia with Exec. Order 13662 issued by Obama on 20 March 2014, just a month after the U.S. coup that had installed a rabidly anti-Russian government in Ukraine, which started the long list of anti-Russia U.S. sanctions laws since.

    On December 16th, RT News headlined “Serbia announces talks with US and Russia on sanctions against oil major: The country’s president says the key goal of the upcoming talks will be to ensure energy security for his people”, and reported that,

    Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has announced plans to hold talks with the US and Russia this week to dispute Washington’s proposed sanctions against his country’s main oil and gas company, Naftne Industrije Srbije (NIS).

    NIS is predominantly owned by Russian state energy major Gazprom. In an interview with Serbian broadcaster Informer TV on Saturday, Vucic revealed that the US was set to slap sanctions on NIS due to its Russian ownership. He said Belgrade had received confirmation of these plans from Washington, and that the measures could take effect as of January 1, 2025.

    In a video address posted on Instagram on Sunday, Vucic reiterated that such plans exist, and said the matter had already been discussed with BIA, Serbia’s national security service.

    “We discussed what we managed to obtain as official information that sanctions will be imposed on NIS by the US and some other countries. We discussed how to act in this situation, how to react, and how to ensure the safety of Serbian citizens,” he stated, adding that the Serbian authorities plan to “initiate negotiations with the Americans, Russians and everyone else” as early as Monday. …

    This is typical of the aggressions that the U.S. Government carries out by means of illegal international sanctions instead of by illegal coups or by illegal invasions — all of which this regime does with impunity. This means that the U.N. — the only legitimate source of international war — is publicly exposed as being merely a talking-forum, no government at all that’s behind its ‘laws’ (which are meaningless as regards being applied to the U.S. Government). This is a gangster world-order now.

    The 271-page academic book Economic Sanctions in International Law and Practice, published in 2020, opens with a Preface, which says

    Part I is focused on generic legal considerations. Chapter 1 (Masahiko Asada) discusses the definition and legal justifications of economic sanctions. As exemplified by the ICJ suit recently brought by Iran against the United States, economic sanctions may possibly “violate” rules of international law applicable to their authors and targets. The chapter examines how the authors can legally justify their per se illegal sanctions. … Chapter 4 (Mirko Sossai) discusses the difficult question of legality of extraterritorial application of sanctions. Unlike UN sanctions, the imposition of autonomous

    sanctions may cause legal problems not only between the author and the target

    States but also between the author and third States. Controversy has centered on

    the legality of secondary sanctions applied by the United States on entities in

    other counties that have transactions with the entities under primary sanctions.

    The Introduction to Chapter 4 says:

    The application of secondary sanctions, targeting activities of non-US persons with no connection to the US, has proven highly controversial. Insofar as they constitute exercise of jurisdiction on an extraterritorial basis, they raise concerns from the viewpoint of international law, as they may violate, inter alia, the principle of nonintervention in the internal affairs of other States.6

    The European refusal to recognize the effects of this type of sanction is not a new phenomenon: the Blocking Regulation was originally approved in 1996-7 to counteract the effects of certain extraterritorial sanctions adopted by the US vis-à-vis Cuba, Libya, and Iran. At that time, similar initiatives were undertaken by Canada and Mexico.8 The purpose of this chapter is to offer an overview of the different generations of the US “extraterritorial sanctions,” with a focus on the different positions concerning their legality from an international law viewpoint.

    The Chapter proper says:

    If autonomous sanctions – either adopted by individual states or by regional organizations – coexist with UN sanctions, then a key question arises as to whether the former should be qualified as enforcement measures on the basis of UN sanctions or, rather, as additional measures, whose legality needs to be appreciated under general international law. In this second scenario, autonomous sanctions may be regarded as acts of retorsion if they constitute “unfriendly” conduct not inconsistent with any international obligation; if unlawful, they can be justified as countermeasures.

    Notice that it doesn’t place that word “justified” in skeptical form, as ‘justified’, but instead it presumes that the U.S. Government definitely ISN’T violating international law with these “autonomous [i.e., NOT authorized in international law] sanctions.” (This DESPITE the book’s Preface’s having acknowledged that these are “per se illegal sanctions”.) (FURTHERMORE, if “The chapter examines how the authors can legally justify their per se illegal sanctions,” then where does it do that? It doesn’t — it doesn’t even TRY to.)

    The Chapter focuses not on the U.S. Government’s sanctions against Russia, but mainly on President Trump’s withdrawal from Obama’s Iran nuclear deal or  JCPOA and his re-institution of anti-Iran sanctions, and it never gets around to, as the book’s Preface promised that it would, “discusses the difficult question of legality of extraterritorial application of sanctions. Unlike UN sanctions, …” The entire 271-page book ignores that question (‘the difficult question of legality of extraterritorial application of sanctions’). (And what’s ‘diffiicult’ about it is that since these are NOT U.N.-authorized sanctions they’re referring to, they’re per se illegal; and, so, this task isn’t “difficult” — it is logically IMPOSSIBLE.)

    They don’t want to deal with it, because they serve the U.S. regime. However, when the book uses in its Preface the phrase, referring to Chapter 1, “The chapter examines how the authors can legally justify their per se illegal sanctions,” it is already acknowledging that America’s sanctions that DON’T have U.N. authorization ARE, in fact (they call it “per se,” meaning, “in themselves”) ILLEGAL under international law. It’s the unspoken — and unspeakable — reality. Why does the book ignore this? For the same reason why the U.S. regime gets away with doing it: this is a mono-polar world order, NOT under the U.N. as being that “pole” (as FDR had been planning for the U.N. to be) but instead under the U.S. regime as being that “pole” (as Truman made it to be). And, so, of course, it is actually a world in which the enemy is, from the U.S. standpoint, the entire rest of the world, and, from the rest of the world’s standpoint, it is the U.S. Government itself. Every other Government must accommodate itself to the demands that are being made by the U.S. Government. The ones that don’t, become thereby targeted for “regime-change.” This is an international-gangster regime. It insists upon making every other country “a deal it cannot refuse.”

    The post America’s Gangster-Empire Destroying the U.N. first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • By Stefan Armbruster of BenarNews

    Pacific police chiefs have formally opened the headquarters and training center for a new stand-by, mutual assistance force in Australia to support countries during civil unrest, natural disasters and major events.

    The Pacific Policing Initiative was declared operational just 17 months after chiefs agreed in 2023 on the need to create a multinational unit, with US$270 million (A$400 million) in funding from Australia.

    The PPI comes as Australia and its allies are locked in a geostrategic contest for influence in the region with China, including over security and policing.

    Riots in Solomon Islands and violence in Papua New Guinea, the region’s increased exposure to climate change impacts, escalating transnational crime and securing a higher standing internationally for the Pacific’s forces were key drivers.

    PNG police commissioner David Manning (center) flanked by Vanuatu Police Commissioner Robson Iavro (left), Australian Federal Police commissioner Reece Kershaw (2nd right) and Australian Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus at the PPI launch, pictured on Dec. 10, 2024. [Stefan Armbruster/BenarNews]
    PNG Police Commissioner David Manning (centre) flanked by Vanuatu Police Commissioner Robson Iavro (left), Australian Federal Police commissioner Reece Kershaw (second right) and Australian Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus at the PPI launch on Tuesday. Image: BenarNews/Stefan Armbruster

    At a flag-raising ceremony in Brisbane on Tuesday, Papua New Guinea’s Police Commissioner David Manning hailed the PPI’s funding as an “unprecedented investment” in the region.

    “The PPI provides a clear, effective, and agile mechanism to which we can support our Pacific family in times of need to uphold the law and maintain order in security,” said Manning, who chairs the PPI design steering committee.

    He said issues in deploying foreign police throughout the region still needed to be resolved but the 22 member nations and territories were “close to completing the guiding legal framework around Pacific Island countries to be able to tap into this.”

    The constitutional difficulties of deploying foreign police are well known to Manning after PNG’s highest court ruled two decades ago that a deployment of Australian Federal Police there was illegal.

    “That incident alone has taught us many lessons,” he said, adding changes had been made to the Constitution and relevant legislation to receive assistance and also to deploy to other countries lawfully.

    Manning said no deployments of the Pacific Support Group had currently been requested by Pacific nations.

    Impetus for the PPI was a secretive policing and security deal Beijing signed with Solomon Islands in 2022 that caused alarm in Washington and Canberra.

    Several other Pacific nations — including Tonga, Samoa and Kiribati — also have policing arrangements with China to provide training and equipment. On Monday, Vanuatu received police boats and vehicles valued at US$4 million from Beijing.

    “I wouldn’t say it locks China out, all I’m saying is that we now have an opportunity to determine what is best for the Pacific,” Manning said.

    “Our countries in the Pacific have different approaches in terms of their relationship with China. I’m not brave enough to speak on their behalf, but as for us, it is purely policing.”

    Samoan Police Minister Lefau Harry Schuster on Tuesday also announced his country would be hosting the PPI’s third “center of excellence”, specialising in forensics, alongside ones in PNG and Fiji.

    He said the PPI will use the Samoan Police Academy built by China and opened in June.

    “We wanted it to be used not just for Samoa, but to open up for use by the region,” Schuster said in Brisbane.

    Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw said the PPI “symbolises our commitment as part of the Pacific region” and enhances the Pacific’s standing internationally.

    “Asia represents Australia and the Pacific at the moment at Interpol,” he said. “We want to show leadership in the region and we want a bit more status and recognition from Interpol.”

    Kershaw said “crime in our region is becoming more complex”, including large seizures of drug shipments.

    “The fact is that we’re able to work together in a seamless way and combat, say, transnational, serious and organized crime as a serious threat in our region.”

    “At the same time, we’ve all got domestic issues and I think we’re learning faster and better about how to deal with domestic issues and international issues at the same time.”

    Police ministers and chiefs from across the Pacific attended the launch of the PPI’s Pinkenba Hub, pictured on Dec. 10, 2024. [Stefan Armbruster/BenarNews]
    Police ministers and chiefs from across the Pacific attended the launch of the PPI’s Pinkenba Hub on Tuesday. Image: BenarNews/Stefan Armbruster

    Asked about tackling community policing of issues like gender-based violence, he said it was all part of the “complex” mix.

    The Australian and Samoan facilities complete the three arms of the PPI consisting of the Pacific Support Group, three regional training centers and the co-ordination hub in Brisbane.

    The Pinkenba centre in Brisbane will provide training — including public order management, investigations, close personal protection — and has accommodation for 140 people.

    Training began in July, with 30 officers from 11 nations who were deployed to Samoa to help with security during the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in October, the largest event the country has ever hosted.

    Schuster expressed surprise about how quickly the PPI was established and thanked Australia and the region for their support.

    “This is one initiative I’m very happy that we didn’t quite do it the Pacific way. [The] Pacific way takes time, a long time, we talk and talk and talk,” he joked.

    “So I look forward to an approach like this in the future, so that we do things first and then open it later.”

    This article is republished from BenarNews with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • President Joe Biden has pardoned his son, Hunter, after having repeatedly promised that he would not.  Biden justifies this act based upon his presumption (likely accurate) that Hunter’s denial of a plea deal was on account of political opposition from Trump Republicans.  Nevertheless, Hunter’s consideration for a lenient plea deal was undoubtedly influenced by his status (white privileged son of a prominent politician), whereas such leniency would be far less likely to be considered for a poor racial minority person guilty of similar crimes likewise motivated by the stresses of drug addiction.  Similar favoritism for family members manifested: with Bill Clinton’s pardon for his half-brother’s drug-crime conviction, and Donald Trump’s pardon for his son-in-law’s father’s conviction of tax evasion and witness-tampering.  Both Presidents Bush gave pardons to close political associates.  In fact, who does or does not receive leniency (including pardons) is determined almost entirely by class privilege or lack thereof.

    Abuse and impunity.

    Especially concerning, in the Hunter Biden case, is that said pardon preemptively covers all possible federal crimes with which Hunter could possibly be charged, if committed at any time during the past 11 years.  And there are unresolved questions concerning his shady business dealings during Joe Biden’s Vice-Presidency.  Moreover, unlike Biden, previous Presidents (including Trump) had (with the exception of the political crimes of one ex-President) always followed precedent by limiting their pardons to crimes for which the accused had been actually prosecuted.  Biden now sets a corrupt example which Trump will almost certainly copy as he (Trump) pardons those whose yet-to-be-charged crimes (including violent ones) were perpetrated by his supporters.

    Meanwhile, crimes perpetrated by Joe Biden and other US government decision-makers against people of color in other countries get, not lenient treatment, but absolute impunity.  Among their never-to-be-prosecuted crimes, Biden (and Harris) are full participants with the fascist settler-colonialist state in its genocidal mass murder, rooted in their de facto embrace of the proposition that Zionists are entitled to treat the resistant indigenous population of Palestine as white American expansionists had treated the indigenous nations of this continent.

    As for the liberal left, they (being more concerned over possibly somewhat increased repression of liberal dissent in the US than over actual US-backed fascist repression and mass murder elsewhere) shelved their anti-racism and anti-imperialism as they campaigned for the center right Harris-Walz-Cheney-Bolton ticket.  Left liberal fervor to elect the Democrat ticket was despite: Biden-Harris and other centrist Democrat politicians’ complicity in the existing domestic repression of pro-Palestine and other anti-imperialist dissent, as well as their decision to obstruct access to due process for most migrant and asylum-seeking people of color.  Thusly the liberal left has given its allegiance to centrist Democrat politicians, whose opposition to racism and repression is, like that of Trump, entirely expedient and selective.

    Will Biden provide clemency for US prisoners who are not of the privileged class?  Consider the US political prisoners, unjustly convicted in rigged political trials, victims who have languished for decades in US prisons!  As these were prosecuted on account of their having acted in opposition to the regime to which Biden et al are committed, it is very unlikely that Biden will pardon them.  Three current examples follow.

    [1] Extraordinary prosecution: Ricardo Palmera

    Context.  Colombia has been almost continuously torn apart by civil war since 1948 when Jorge Eliécer Gaitán (the populist Liberal Party candidate for President) was assassinated by a lone gunman.  As a proponent of land reform and with a history of advocacy for workers’ rights, Gaitán had incurred the enmity of the ruling elites and of US-based transnational capital.  At the time of his assassination, he was opposing the US project for the formation of the Organization of American States which would be a tool for facilitating US domination and for suppressing “Communist” influence in Latin America.  The assassination provoked armed civil conflict among political factions.  Eventually, rightwing forces gained control of the Liberal Party which then entered into a ruling coalition with the Conservative Party.  The conflict then evolved into one between:

    • the central government (controlled by the oligarch-dominated ruling coalition and relying upon police, armed forces, and right-wing paramilitaries); and
    • leftist guerrilla armies.

    The latter eventually consisted mainly of:

    • the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia [FARC] which had begun as an offshoot of the Colombian Communist Party, and
    • the National Liberation Army [ELN].

    Both sides in this civil war had engaged in practices which were widely condemned as human rights violations: the FARC for ransom kidnappings and extortions; the government (and its rightwing paramilitary death squads) for brutal repression, torture, and assassinations of peasant and labor leaders and other noncombatant left-leaning activists.  The two sides had sometimes engaged in peace talks.  While a negotiated truce was in effect from 1984 until 1987, leftist groups (including the FARC) formed the Patriotic Union [UP] to seek social and political reforms thru peaceful political processes.  In the 1986 elections UP candidates achieved victories in many of the local contests.  The ruling oligarchs became alarmed, and over the following years some 4,000 to 6,000 UP members (including its 1986 and 1990 Presidential candidates) were murdered (with near-universal impunity) by rightwing paramilitaries backed by oligarchs.  The US has actively intervened (since 1964) with material assistance to the armed forces of the central government.  In 2004 the US targeted FARC negotiator Ricardo Palmera.

    Ricardo Palmera (a.k.a. Simón Trinidad) had worked as a professor of economic history and had participated in the 1986 UP election campaign.  As the death squads assassinated leftist leaders and activists with impunity, Palmera decided (in 1987) to join the FARC.  He rose to a position of leadership and served as a negotiator for the FARC during the 1998 to 2002 peace process.  He went to Quito, Ecuador (in 2004 January) to meet with James Lemoyne, a United Nations special advisor on peace processes to facilitate a prisoner exchange.  At the behest of the CIA, the Ecuadoran government arrested Palmera and turned him over to the Colombian government, which then conspired with the US (which had no charges against him at the time) to invent a case for his extradition for trial in the US.

    The case.  The US DoJ [Dept of Justice] then subjected Palmera to four illegitimate trials on inappropriate charges.  Specifics follow.

    (1) The US misclassified FARC revolutionaries as “terrorists”; but, under international law captured participants in a revolutionary civil war are entitled to prisoner-of-war [POW] status.  By prosecuting Palmera for participation in the armed conflict, the US has violated his right to POW status.

    (2) The prosecution charged complicity in hostage-taking based on the FARC’s shoot-down and capture of three US contractors on a reconnaissance mission over FARC-held territory in 2003.  Thus, the prosecution misrepresented a legitimate act of war as being a crime.

    (3) Even if the capture and detention of the contractors were a crime, the US had no jurisdiction over the area where the event occurred.  Moreover, Palmera had no command authority over the relevant FARC forces or advance knowledge of their operations.

    (4) The prosecution charged complicity in “narco-trafficking”, but US government sources had determined: that, although it taxed operators profiting from cocaine production, the FARC did not engage in or control Colombian drug trafficking; and that, meanwhile, many of the rightwing paramilitaries opposed to the FARC were employed by the drug traffickers.  In four trials the DoJ was unable to get a conviction on this accusation.

    (5) In the first trial (2006) the jury deadlocked on all charges.  At its conclusion the judge illicitly questioned the jurors in order to obtain information to help the prosecution obtain convictions in the next trial.  Consequently, a new judge had to be found for the subsequent trials.

    (6) In the second trial the jury told the judge that they were at an impasse and unable to agree upon a verdict.  The judge required them to continue deliberations until, after another four days, they consented to a guilty verdict on one of five counts – conspiracy to hold three US citizens hostage.  However, there was no evidence of any act by Palmera that involved the capture or detention of the three US citizens.  Consequently, this conviction could only be a verdict of guilt-by-association.

    (7) The third and fourth trials on narco-trafficking charges ended with deadlocked juries, and the prosecution then dismissed those charges.

    (8) In 2008 Palmera was sentenced to 60 years in prison.  He has been held in solitary confinement with very limited access to his lawyer for nearly all of his 20 years in US detention.

    [2] Repressing resistance in the First Nations: Leonard Peltier

     Historical context.  The US government has a long history of atrocious abuse of the indigenous nations and their peoples throughout its territory.  These abuses include: genocidal wars, ethnic cleansings, coerced assimilation with suppression of the native languages and cultures, forcing their peoples into conditions of degrading poverty, imposition of fraudulent and inequitable treaties, subjugation as subordinate nations, routine violations of treaty rights, corrupt governance, theft of their land and resources thru outright seizures and thru imposition of inequitable leases to US capitalists, and so forth.

    In mid-20th century, Amerindian resistance grew and produced a number of activist organizations.  The American Indian Movement [AIM] (founded in 1968) adopted a militant posture and gained nationwide prominence.  The poverty and lack of opportunity on reservations had induced many Amerindians to move to urban areas where they concentrated in urban slums and suffered the afflictions common to other disadvantaged racial minorities.  AIM responded by starting remedial projects: health programs, education and job training programs, legal rights centers, and so forth.  In 1969 AIM joined Fred Hampton’s original revolutionary Rainbow Coalition.  During the next few years AIM brought public attention to Amerindian grievances thru participation in a series of militant protest actions including: the occupation of Alcatraz (1969—71), the Thanksgiving Day occupation of the replica Mayflower (1970), the occupation of Mount Rushmore (1971), a brief occupation of US Bureau of Indian Affairs [BIA] headquarters (1971), the “Trail of Broken Treaties” cross-country caravan and protest which included the occupation of the BIA offices (1972).  The US Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI] and DoJ decided that AIM was a “threat to national security” and set out to destroy it.

    Repression on the Pine Ridge Reservation.  Tribal members on the (Oglala Lakota) Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota had formed the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization [OSCRO]:

    • to seek justice for Oglala victims of racist attacks in neighboring off-reservation communities where the white perpetrators were routinely given impunity or biased leniency, even in murder cases; and
    • to seek reform of tribal government then ruled by a corrupt and autocratic tribal Chairman, Dick Wilson, who engaged in blatant favoritism, with respect to jobs and other benefits, for his relatives and cronies.

    In 1973 some tribal councilors brought misconduct charges against Wilson (who held the chairmanship from 1972 until 1976), and the tribal council then voted 11 to 7 to suspend him, but he managed to have his impeachment trial stopped.  Wilson had already organized his own private militia, Guardians of the Oglala Nation [GOONs], which he illegally paid with tribal funds and used to suppress his political opponents.  When several hundred Oglala gathered to protest the quashing of the impeachment trial, the BIA sent in a force of the US Marshals Service [USMS] to sustain Wilson’s position.

    A few days after the foiled impeachment trial, some 200 local protestors and AIM activists occupied the remote Reservation village of Wounded Knee (site of the 1890 massacre of over 200 Lakota men, women, and children by a trigger-happy US Cavalry Regiment).  Using the action to publicize Amerindian grievances, the occupiers demanded: the removal of Wilson, and negotiations to address US violation of its treaty obligations.  USMS, FBI, and other police cordoned the area thereby creating a standoff with frequent shooting from both sides.  After 71 days the occupiers ended the occupation and withdrew.  One FBI agent, two occupiers, and one visitor had been killed; and 13 individuals wounded.

    During and after the Wounded Knee siege, the Wilson regime and his GOONs intensified repression of his political opponents of whom more than 60 were killed during the following 3 years, while the Reservation’s homicide rate grew to 17 times the US average.  Meanwhile, the DoJ indicted 185 individuals for alleged crimes involving their actions in occupying Wounded Knee; these included: arson, theft, assault, and interfering with federal officers.  Numerous trials followed, the most prominent being the government’s 1974 show trial of AIM leaders, Dennis Banks and Russell Means.  This (8 ½ month) trial ended when the judge ruled that the prosecution had committed such egregious misconduct, including withholding of evidence and use of perjured witness testimony, that dismissal was the only appropriate outcome.  Nevertheless, the DoJ persisted in its persecution of AIM leaders.

    From the start of the conflict between Dick Wilson with his supporters and his opponents (including OSCRO and AIM), the federal agencies (BIA, FBI, USMS, and DoJ) naturally sided with the Wilson regime which leased tribal lands to nearby white ranchers and politically influential American capitalists under inequitable contracts deemed unfair to reservation residents.  The FBI provided Wilson’s GOONs with intelligence on AIM activists and other opponents of the Wilson regime and looked away while the GOONs assaulted, terrorized, and murdered Wilson’s critics.  The FBI also perpetrated warrantless no-knock assaults on homes as it used the Pine Ridge Reservation to train its first militarized commando (i.e. SWAT) teams.  Meanwhile, the FBI and DoJ targeted AIM members and supporters for prosecution on any and every possible charge.  This hostile environment created the tension which eventually erupted into the shootout at the Jumping Bull Ranch.  The DoJ ultimately obtained a fraudulent murder conviction against Leonard Peltier.

    Subject events.  In 1975 June 26, two FBI agents, Jack Coler and Ronald Williams, in unmarked cars were following a red pickup truck which they believed belonged to an Oglala alleged to have stolen a pair of cowboy boots.  As they entered the Jumping Bull Ranch (where several AIM members were camped) shots were fired, and a shootout then ensued between the feds and the AIM activists.  There were more than 30 people at the ranch including women, children, and other non-belligerents.  By the end of the confrontation, the ranch was surrounded by some 150 armed agents (FBI, BIA, local police, and GOONs).  Which side fired first is in dispute.  Casualties: the two FBI men were wounded by fire from the AIM side and then killed execution-style by person unknown; AIM member, Joe Stuntz, was killed by a government sniper.

    FBI investigators and DoJ prosecutors, embarrassed by their failures to obtain convictions of AIM leaders involved in the Wounded Knee occupation, responded by pursuing only prominent AIM members, the objective being to convict some AIM leaders on charges of having murdered the two FBI men.  For this purpose, they indicted three prominent AIM members who had participated in the shootout, namely: Leonard Peltier, Robert Robideau, and Darrelle Butler.

    Trials.  In September Butler and Robideau were arrested.  Peltier fled to Canada, where he was arrested and extradited to the US (1976 December).  While Peltier was not yet in custody, Robideau and Butler were tried and acquitted (1976 July, with Judge McManus presiding) when their jury concluded that, with the level of violence and government intimidation on the Reservation, they could plausibly claim to have acted in self-defense during the exchange of gunfire.

    Peltier was extradited and subjected to a rigged trial (in Fargo, ND in 1977) before an all-white jury which convicted him on two counts of first-degree murder.  The judge then sentenced him to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment.  The improprieties in the legal proceedings were as follows.

    (1) The FBI coerced one, Myrtle Poor Bear, to allege in a signed affidavit that she had been Peltier’s girlfriend and had seen him kill the two FBI men.  In fact, she had never met Peltier and was not present at the shootout.  The FBI then used this false affidavit to obtain Peltier’s extradition from Canada.

    (2) Ms Poor Bear recanted her allegations against Peltier, but the judge refused to permit the defense to present her as a witness (claiming: that she was too mentally unstable to provide competent testimony, and that exposure of the FBI’s extradition fraud would prejudice the jury against the prosecution).  The judge also refused to allow the defense to present evidence of other cases where the FBI had been rebuked for tampering with evidence and witnesses.

    (3) An FBI agent changed his story by testifying at trial that the vehicle, which the two agents had pursued and whose occupant had fired at them, was Peltier’s red and white van.  In fact, the two FBI agents had identified the pursued vehicle as a red pickup truck, and it was red pickup trucks which the FBI first sought and searched after the shootout.

    (4) The prosecution alleged at trial that the two FBI agents had been killed by Peltier’s AR-15 rifle.  The prosecution also asserted that Peltier’s AR-15 was the only one present, but it was later compelled to admit to the appellate judge that several other AR-15 rifles were present in the area and possibly present at the shootout.  An FBI ballistics expert testified that extractor marks on a shell casing found at the scene matched Peltier’s rifle; he also testified that a more accurate firing pin test had not been performed because of damage to Peltier’s gun.  Some years after Peltier’s conviction, a FOIA request produced documentation of a pre-trial FBI ballistics test on the firing pin which proved that the shell casing had not been fired by Peltier’s AR-15.  The DoJ had withheld this crucial exculpatory evidence from the defense during trial.

    (5) No trial witness identified Peltier as the person who killed the FBI men.  And during Peltier’s appeal (in 1986), the prosecution admitted that it had no real evidence to establish who fired the fatal shots.  Nevertheless, the appellate court refused to overturn the conviction based on the prosecutor’s new assertion that the jury had found Peltier guilty of “aiding and abetting” the murders, notwithstanding that the prosecution had never actually pursued that issue at trial.  Moreover, this allegation would have applied equally to Robideau and Butler, whose jury (having heard all of the defense case) had acquitted them.

    (6) Other apparent violations of Peltier’s rights to a fair trial include: the arbitrary and never-explained replacement of the originally assigned judge (McManus) by another judge (Benson) more disposed to exclude evidence favorable to the defendant, an undisclosed FBI pre-trial meeting with trial judge Benson, infiltration of FBI informants into the defense team, the presentation of coerced testimony by juvenile witnesses who had been intimidated by the FBI, and the DoJ use of tactics to frighten and bias the jury by always transporting them to and from court under escort by a SWAT team.

    Evaluation.  Many organizations and individuals have examined the case and concluded: that the DoJ and federal courts violated Peltier’s right to a fair trial, that he was targeted and convicted for his political associations, that the government has no evidence that he committed the murders for which he was convicted, and that he should be immediately released from prison.  These include: Amnesty International, the UN Commissioner for Human Rights, Robert F Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, National Lawyers Guild, Center for Constitutional Rights, European parliament, Belgian parliament, Italian parliament, several Nobel Prize winners, and many other well-known advocates for human rights.

    Frame-up in Milwaukee.  2 ½ years prior to the 1975 shoot-out, AIM activist Leonard Peltier, was sitting in a Milwaukee restaurant where 2 off duty cops (in 1972 November) picked a quarrel with him.  Then, as he was leaving, the same 2 cops jumped and beat Peltier.  They then arrested Peltier on a charge of attempted murder (of themselves) with what was later shown to be a nonfunctional gun.  Fearing that he would be killed or railroaded to prison on perjured police testimony, Peltier obtained release on bond and then fled.  In 1978, while in prison following his frame-up conviction for the premeditated murders of the two FBI agents, he was finally brought to trial on this “attempted murder” charge.  At trial the girlfriend of one of the two cops testified that her cop friend had shown her a photo of Peltier prior to the incident and had told her that “he was going to help the FBI get a big one”.  Thus, it became clear that the entire incident had been a set-up and fraud.  The prosecution’s case then collapsed, and the jury acquitted this “notorious AIM felon”.

    Sources

    [1] Wagner & Lynch PLLC: Wounded Knee – the Massacre, the Incident, & the Radical Lawyer (© 2023).

    [2] International Leonard Peltier Defense Committee: Facts (accessed 2024 Dec).

    [3] FOIA Documents – U.S. v Leonard Peltier (CR NO. C77-3003): Post-Trial Actions – Criminal (© 2015 Dec).

     [3] Criminalizing Muslim charities

    The Holy Land Foundation [HLF] was the largest Islamic charity in the US in 2000.  It distributed charity (food, clothing, healthcare services, et cetera) thru established local zakat [charity] committees in the Israeli-occupied territories of Palestine.  Because it provided charitable relief to victims of Israeli persecution, HLF was targeted first by American Zionists and then, at their behest, by the US government.

    Islam in Palestine.  90% of Palestinian Arabs are Muslim.  Naturally, they vary widely in their devotion to religious prescriptions.  Until the PLO’s capitulation and corruption cost it most of its popular sympathy, Hamas had the allegiance of only a small minority of Palestinian Muslims.  Hamas, which is a political and social force within Palestinian Muslim communities, was founded in 1987 as an offshoot of the (Islamist Egyptian) Muslim Brotherhood [MB].  Until 1987, MB in Palestine maintained peaceful relations with the Zionist state, and its leaders had met regularly with Israeli officials.  Because said MB was hostile to the secular and leftist Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO], the Israeli state: had happily encouraged the former as a potential alternative Palestinian leadership to that of the PLO, and had refrained from interfering when MB Islamists perpetrated violent attacks against secular groups aligned with the PLO.  However, violent Israeli repression impacted all Palestinians (including MB adherents) in the occupied territories; and overwhelming Palestinian support for the First Intifada (1987—93 civil disobedience campaign) finally induced Palestinian MB, reconstituted as Hamas, to embrace the resistance to Israeli occupation.  When Hamas responded to Israeli violence by forming a military arm to retaliate with its own violent counterattacks upon Israelis, the Zionist state branded it as a “terrorist” organization.  In 1995 the US accommodated its Israeli ally by also branding Hamas as a “terrorist” organization.

    Target.  Although a Hamas fundraiser, Musa Abu-Marzuk, had provided financial support at its founding (in 1989), HLF was not an affiliate of Hamas, and its actual activities had nothing to do with violent resistance to Zionist oppressions.  Nevertheless, Zionist groups targeted HLF with smears and demands for revocation of its tax-exemption.  HLF continued its charitable work until 2001, when the US government used the 9-11 Al-Qaeda attacks as pretext for a so-called “war on terror” which became largely an attack upon civil liberties with widespread targeting of (mostly innocent) Arab-American activists and US-based Islamic institutions.  One such target was HLF.  The federal government (in 2001 December): seized its assets, shut down its operations, and branded it as a “terrorist” organization.

    Prosecution.  In 2007 the DoJ brought the HLF and five of its principal officers (now known as the Holy Land Five) to trial on allegations of providing material support to a designated terrorist organization (meaning Hamas).  In this trial (which included violations of the defendants’ due process rights), the jury acquitted on some counts and deadlocked on the others.  A more egregiously rigged retrial in 2008 resulted in convictions on all remaining counts.  Specific violations of due process follow.

    (1) The prosecution contended that, by providing charity to needy Palestinians thru the local charity committees which the prosecution alleged were controlled by Hamas, HLF was bolstering Hamas’ popularity and thereby providing material support for “terrorism”.  Thus, the prosecution sought conviction of the accused based upon guilt-by-association.

    (2) The prosecution’s classification of the local charities as agents of “terrorism” was baseless.  The relevant facts: (1st) the local committees were independent entities devoted to charitable purposes, and their leaders included individuals with no ties to Hamas as well as those who were members or sympathizers with Hamas; (2nd) immediately after the US had listed Hamas as “terrorist”, HLF had sought advice from the federal government as to which, if any, of the charities were deemed unacceptable; (3rd) none of the charity committees was listed by the US as a terrorist organization; (4th) the US (thru its USAID program) had provided funding for many of the same local charity committees until 2006 (for five years after the HLF had been shut down); and (5th) the prosecution acknowledged that none of the funding of the charities was used for acts which the US deemed to be “terrorist”.

    (3) The prosecution was permitted, over defense objections, to present two unidentified Israeli state security agents as “expert” witnesses for the purpose of tying the charity committees to Hamas.  The anonymity of these “experts” prevented effective defense cross-examination to challenge their credentials and the validity of their assertions thereby violating the defendants’ 6th Amendment rights to confront and rebut their accusers.

    (4) In the retrial the only significant change in the prosecution’s presentation was its move to bolster its case by introducing additional “evidence” which consisted of untestable assertions, hearsay, and irrelevant material, all of which served only to prejudice the jury against the defendants.  The appeals court (in 2011): ruled this additional “evidence” inadmissible, then astonishingly asserted that its use did not affect the outcome, and finally refused to overturn the convictions.

    (Ω) The Holy Land Five are: Ghassan Elashi, Shukri Abu-Baker, Mufid Abdulqader, Abdulrahman Odeh, and Mohammad El-Mezain.  Their prison sentences were: 65 years for each of the first two, 20 years for the third, and 15 years for the remaining two.

    Source

    For more on Hamas, see Pierce, Charles: Gaza War: Palestine, Zionism, imperialism, Hamas, previous wars, atrocities. What are the relevant actual facts?.

     Conclusion

    For 3 reasons (their liberal capitalist indoctrination, their attachment to their own privileges and entitlements, and their dependency upon their capitalist campaign funders), governing centrist Democrat politicians are incapable of providing: equal justice in law enforcement, or consistent enforcement of the civil rights of opponents of their imperial and capital-serving policies.  Moreover, any concessions (reforms) which they offer, in support of greater social justice, will always be limited to what does not seriously impinge against the interests of powerful factions of the ruling class.

    The post Who Should Get a Presidential Pardon but Won’t! first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • By Repeka Nasiko in Suva

    Violence against children in Fiji is estimated to have cost the country F$460 million, or more than 4 percent of Fiji’s GDP a year, says new research highlighted on International Human Rights Day.

    This research was carried out jointly by UNICEF and Fiji’s Ministry of Women, Children and Social Protection.

    The study, Economic Costs of Violence Against Children in Fiji, has revealed that 81 percent of children aged between one and 14 years experience some form of violent discipline, 65 percent experience psychological aggression while 68 percent experience some form of physical punishment in their lifetime.

    The Economic Costs of Violence Against Children report
    The Economic Costs of Violence Against Children in Fiji report. Image: Unicef

    Endorsed by Minister for Women and Children Lynda Tabuya, the research explained how children in Fiji continued to experience abuse, neglect, exploitation and violence on a daily basis.

    “This not only affects their physical and mental health but also leads to challenges in education, social services and their overall quality of life,” the study found.

    “The long-term impacts are well documented. Children who suffer abuse are more likely to become violent adults, perpetuating a cycle that negatively impacts the economic wellbeing of families for generations.

    “Through this study, the total economic cost of violence against children in Fiji is estimated at $459.82 million, equivalent to 4.23 percent of GDP annually.

    “These costs include $19.33 million in direct medical costs, $14.96 million in direct non-medical costs, $140.41 million in indirect tangible costs and $285.12 million in indirect intangible costs.”

    The study showed that while significant, this large economic burden could be averted through targeted investments in interventions that prevent and respond to violence against children.

    In Parliament last week, Minister Tabuya had said the report provided a basis for their 2022 to 2027 Action Plan.

    “It provides a comprehensive analysis of the importance of investing in child protection, the socioeconomic costs of under-investment and an evaluation of government spending on preventing and responding to violence against children.”

    Republished from The Fiji Times with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Asia Pacific Report

    Amnesty International’s research has found sufficient basis to conclude that Israel has committed and is continuing to commit genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip, the organisation has revealed in a landmark new investigative report.

    The 294-page report documents how, during its military offensive launched in the wake of the deadly Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel on 7 October 2023, Israel has “unleashed hell and destruction on Palestinians in Gaza brazenly, continuously and with total impunity”.

    This 14-month military offensive was launched in the wake of the deadly Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel on 7 October 2023.

    An Amnesty International statement made along with releasing the investigation says that the Aotearoa New Zealand government “can and should take action”, for example:

    • Publicly recognise that Israeli authorities are committing the crime of genocide and commit to strong and sustained international action;
    • Ban imports from illegal settlements as well as investment in companies connected to maintaining the occupation; and
    • Do everything possible to facilitate Palestinian people seeking refuge to come to Aotearoa New Zealand and receive support.

    Lisa Woods, advocacy and movement building director at Amnesty International Aotearoa New Zealand, said: “This research and report demonstrate that Israel has carried out acts prohibited under the Genocide Convention, with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza.

    “It’s not enough to say ‘never again’. The New Zealand government has to publicly call this what it is — genocide.

    “We’re asking the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister to show leadership. New Zealand has a responsibility to act.”

    Ban illegal settlement products
    Woods said that in addition to acknowledging that this was genocide, the New Zealand government must ban products from the illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory — “and open the doors to Palestinians who are desperately seeking refuge.”

    Agnès Callamard, secretary-general of Amnesty International, said about the new report:

    "You feel like you are subhuman" - the Amnesty International genocide report
    “You feel like you are subhuman” – the Amnesty International genocide report. Image: AI screenshot APR

    “These acts include killings, causing serious bodily or mental harm and deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction.

    “Month after month, Israel has treated Palestinians in Gaza as a subhuman group unworthy of human rights and dignity, demonstrating its intent to physically destroy them.

    “Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community: this is genocide. It must stop now.”

    Callamard said that states that continued to transfer arms to Israel at this time must know they are “violating their obligation to prevent genocide and are at risk of becoming complicit in genocide”.

    She said that all states with influence over Israel, particularly key arms suppliers like the US and Germany — but also other EU member states, the UK and others — must act now to bring Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza to an immediate end.

    Population facing starvation
    Over the past two months the crisis has grown particularly acute in the North Gaza governorate, where a besieged population is facing starvation, displacement and annihilation amid relentless bombardment and suffocating restrictions on life-saving humanitarian aid, Callamard said.

    “Our research reveals that, for months, Israel has persisted in committing genocidal acts, fully aware of the irreparable harm it was inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza,” she said.

    “It continued to do so in defiance of countless warnings about the catastrophic humanitarian situation and of legally binding decisions from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordering Israel to take immediate measures to enable the provision of humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza.

    “Israel has repeatedly argued that its actions in Gaza are lawful and can be justified by its military goal to eradicate Hamas. But genocidal intent can co-exist alongside military goals and does not need to be Israel’s sole intent.”

    Amnesty International said in its statement that it had examined Israel’s acts in Gaza closely and in their totality, taking into account their recurrence and simultaneous occurrence, and both their immediate impact and their cumulative and mutually reinforcing consequences.

    The organisation considered the scale and severity of the casualties and destruction over time. It also analysed public statements by officials, finding that prohibited acts were often announced or called for in the first place by high-level officials in charge of the war efforts.

    “Taking into account  the pre-existing context of dispossession, apartheid and unlawful military occupation in which these acts have been committed, we could find only one reasonable conclusion: Israel’s intent is the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza, whether in parallel with, or as a means to achieve, its military goal of destroying Hamas,” Callamard said.

    Atrocities ‘can never justify Israel’s genocide’
    “The atrocity crimes committed on 7 October 2023 by Hamas and other armed groups against Israelis and victims of other nationalities, including deliberate mass killings and hostage-taking, can never justify Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.”

    According to the statement, international jurisprudence recognises that the perpetrator does not need to succeed in their attempts to destroy the protected group, either in whole or in part, for genocide to have been committed.

    The commission of prohibited acts with the intent to destroy the group, as such, was sufficient.

    The report examines in detail Israel’s violations in Gaza over nine months between 7 October 2023 and early July 2024.

    Amnesty International interviewed 212 people, including Palestinian victims and witnesses, local authorities in Gaza, healthcare workers, conducted fieldwork and analysed an extensive range of visual and digital evidence, including satellite imagery.

    It also analysed statements by senior Israeli government and military officials, and official Israeli bodies.

    On multiple occasions, the organisation shared its findings with the Israeli authorities but had received no substantive response at the time of publication.

    Unprecedented scale and magnitude
    The organisation said Israel’s actions following Hamas’s deadly attacks on 7 October 2023 had brought Gaza’s population to the brink of collapse.

    Its brutal military offensive had killed more than [44,000] Palestinians, including more than 13,300 children, and wounded or injured more than 97,000 others by 7 October 2024, many of them in direct or deliberately indiscriminate attacks, often wiping out entire multigenerational families.

    Israel had caused unprecedented destruction, which experts say occurred at a level and speed not seen in any other conflict in the 21st century, levelling entire cities and destroying critical infrastructure, agricultural land and cultural and religious sites, Amnesty International said.

    It thereby rendered large swathes of Gaza uninhabitable.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Asia Pacific Report

    New Zealand’s Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) has congratulated the Nelson City Council on its vote today to boycott companies which trade with illegal Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories.

    The city council (pop. 58,000) — New Zealand’s 15th-largest city — became the latest local body to change its procurement policy to exclude companies identified by the UN Human Rights Council as being complicit in the building and maintenance of illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land.

    “Nelson City Council is taking action while our national government is looking the other way”, PSNA chair John Minto said in a statement.

    “It is [Prime Minister] Christopher Luxon who should be ending all New Zealand dealings with companies involved in the illegal Israeli settlements.

    “Instead, our government is cowardly complicit with Israeli war crimes.”

    It is a war crime to move citizens onto land illegally occupied as Israel is doing.

    Nelson City Council joins Environment Canterbury and the Christchurch City Council — New Zealand’s second largest city — which both adopted this policy earlier this year.  Other local bodies are believed to be following.

    “We also congratulate local Palestine solidarity activists in Nelson who have organised and battled so well for this historic win today. They are the heroes behind this decision,”minto said.

    Minto said following the move by Nelson city representatives, “we are renewing our call for the government to act”.

    He again called for the government to:

    • Ban all imports from the illegal Israeli settlements;
    • Direct the Superfund, Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) and Kiwisaver providers to end their investments in all Israeli companies and other companies supporting the illegal Israeli settlements; and
    • Direct New Zealand government agencies to end procurement of goods or services from all Israeli companies and other companies supporting the illegal Israeli settlements.


    This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.


  • This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Asia Pacific Report

    Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has told a media conference Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would be arrested if he entered New Zealand

    “We support the ICC [the International Criminal Court],” Luxon said yesterday.

    “We believe in the international rules-based system, we support the ICC, and we would be obligated to do so.”

    The NZ prime minister’s comments followed the ICC announcing arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Israel’s former defence minister Yoav Gallant on allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the 13-month war on the besieged Gaza Strip that has killed more than 44,000 people — mostly women and children.

    Netanyahu and Gallant are now fugitives from global justice after the ICC issued the arrest warrants against them.

    Although Israel — and the US — does not recognise the authority of the ICC, the highest international criminal court, and Netanyahu and Gallant will not turn themselves in, the pair’s world has got a lot smaller.

    The Rome Statute, the treaty that established the ICC, includes 124 state parties across six continents.

    Legally bound
    Under the statute, countries that are part of the ICC are legally bound to enforce its arrest warrants, according to international human rights lawyer Jonathan Kuttab.

    “The law operates on the basis of a presumption that people will obey it. That’s how all laws are created,” Kuttab told Al Jazeera.

    “You expect everybody to respect the law. Those who don’t respect the law are themselves violating the law.”

    He added that there were early signs that countries would not ignore the court’s decision.

    Many of Israel’s allies — including several European Union countries — have committed to enforcing the arrest warrants.

    The ICC was set up in 2002 to prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and the crime of aggression when member states are unwilling or unable to do so themselves. It is based in The Hague in the Netherlands.

    The case at the ICC is separate from another legal battle Israel is waging at the top UN court, the International Court of Justice, in which South Africa accuses Israel of genocide, an allegation Israeli leaders deny.

    Here is a list of the countries where Netanyahu and Gallant could be detained after the ICC’s decision.

    A total of 124 countries are state parties to the Rome Statute
    A total of 124 countries are state parties to the Rome Statute, which founded the International Criminal Court. They include 29 nations from the Americas: Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay, and Venezuela. Map: CC AJ Lab

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.


  • This content originally appeared on The Grayzone and was authored by The Grayzone.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific correspondent French Pacific desk

    Figures for violence against women in New Caledonia have increased due to the post-riots crisis, according to local NGO SOS Violences president Anne-Marie Mestre.

    Mestre has told local news media that the recent upsurge was mainly due to the riots over independence that broke out on May 13, which resulted in a rising number of jobless people due to the destruction by arson and looting of more 600 businesses.

    She stressed that all ethnic communities in New Caledonia were affected by domestic violence and that the trend existed even before the riots-triggered crisis.

    New Caledonia’s domestic violence statistics are 2.5 times higher than in mainland France.

    In 2023, 3012 cases were reported in the French Pacific territory, a staggering increase of some 91 percent compared to 2019, the French Auditor-General’s office reported in its latest survey published in April 2024.

    New Caledonia’s curfew extended to December 2
    Meanwhile, New Caledonia’s curfew introduced after the rioting remains in place until December 2, according to the latest advisory from the French High Commission.

    The restrictions still include the curfew per se from midnight to 5am, and most notably the ban on transportation, possession and sale of firearms and ammunition.

    Public meetings remain banned in the Greater Nouméa Area and will be maintained until December 20, when the ban will be re-assessed with a possible relaxation just before Christmas.

    Although opening hours for the sale of alcohol have now returned to normal, the authorised quantity per person per day remains controlled — up to four litres of beer (under 10 percent alcohol), or two litres of wine (10 to 22 percent), or one litre of spirits (above 22 percent).

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • By Nacanieli Tuilevuka in Suva

    Some police officers are unable to effectively investigate cases of gender-based violence, claims Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre coordinator Shamima Ali.

    Ali said many officers lacked the training and knowledge to properly handle such cases, leading to significant challenges for victims seeking justice.

    “There is a lack of training that used to happen in Fiji before 2006, and we are facing this as a huge challenge,” Ali said.

    While speaking on issues of officers refusing to take statements of domestic violence victims, she said some officers refused to acknowledge cases of gender-based violence, despite the laws in place.

    “There are some officers who do not respond to it, and at times, the justice system does not support the interests of women.”

    She said if authorities did their job, men would be a bit more scared.

    “There’s a reluctance to address domestic violence because of the patriarchal mindset, and this attitude often comes from within the force itself.”

    In response, Police Commissioner Juki Fong Chew said the actions of a few were not representative of the way the organisation perceived cases of gender-based violence.

    “We have disciplinary measures in place to deal with officers as claimed by Ms Ali, and we encourage the sharing of information so that the officers can be dealt with,” he said.

    Fong Chew said these issues could be addressed promptly.

    Republished from The Fiji Times with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific correspondent French Pacific Desk

    New Caledonia’s Great Chief William Boarat has been found dead and police have arrested a 24-year-old man as investigations continue.

    Great Chief Boarat was found dead in the early hours of yesterday in circumstances described as involuntary homicide.

    Public prosecutor Yves Dupas said in a statement that initial findings on the crime scene in the village of Ouaco pointed to an initial assault from a 24-year-old man on a woman he was in a de facto relationship with.

    Chief Boarat, 66, who was present at the scene, reportedly tried to stop the man from hitting his partner in their village residence.

    The young man, believed to be under the influence of alcohol, is then reported to have grabbed a wooden post and hit the chief on the head.

    A medical team later found the old chief unconscious, with severe head wounds.

    Attempts to revive him proved unsuccessful.

    The suspect has been taken into custody, and investigations are ongoing.

    He faces charges of murder and assault against his de facto partner.

    Witnesses are also being questioned as part of the inquiry.

    A post-mortem has been ordered to further establish the exact cause of death.

    The Boarat clan is the main chiefly entity of the Koumac area, which itself belongs to the chiefly area of Hoot ma Waap (one of the eight chiefly areas represented in New Caledonia’s Customary Senate).

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Conservative leader says there needs to be a ‘plan not just a promise’ beyond leaving the ECHR

    William Hague has achieved a rare Tory election victory; he has won the contest to be Oxford University’s next chancellor.

    The university has released the figures for the final round of voting, where the winner emerged after the final five candidates were ranked using the alternative vote system. The runner up was Elish Angiolini, the lawyer and academic.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Asia Pacific Report

    A national New Zealand solidarity movement for Palestine has welcomed the International Criminal Court’s move to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, saying it is a “wake up call” for the coalition government.

    “The warrants mean for the first time Israeli leaders face accountability for war crimes which have been live-streamed on social media for the past 13 months” said national chair John Minto of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA).

    “We are waiting for our government to announce it will arrest Netanyahu and Gallant immediately if they set foot in Aotearoa New Zealand.”

    Many countries among the 124 members of the ICC have been quick to declare that they would honour the arrest obligations, among them Canada, France and Italy. Also the European Union’s foreign policy chief said all EU countries should abide by the ruling.

    “These decisions are binding on all states party to the Rome Statute, which includes all EU member states,” said Joseph Borrell.

    Both Israel and its key backer, United States, refuse to recognise the ICC jurisdiction.

    PSNA’s Minto said in a statement today: “It’s a breath of fresh air from the stultifying refusal of New Zealand and other Western governments to act against the perpetrators of industrial-scale slaughter of Palestinian civilians.

    “This ICC decision is a wake-up call for our government which can no longer stay silent.

    “New Zealand has been a staunch ally of the US/Israel throughout the past 13 months when it should have been a staunch defender of international law.

    “Unbelievably, our government still refuses to call for an immediate, permanent ceasefire and while it has condemned every act of Palestinian resistance, it has refused to condemn any of the egregious Israeli war crimes which are the subject of the arrest warrants.”

    In response to the ICC decision, New Zealand should immediately end support for Israel to continue its war crimes such as:

    • Suspend all satellite launches by Rocket lab for BlackSky Technology, Capella Space, and HawkEye 360. These companies provide imaging data used by Israeli for its targeting of civilian infrastructure in Gaza and Lebanon.
    • Suspend and independently investigate the export of crystal oscillators from Rakon Industries which end up in bombs used for war crimes in Gaza and Lebanon, and
    • Impose sanctions against Israel — they are also essential and the ICC decision can be the trigger.

    “New Zealand needs to act as we did when the ICC issued arrest warrants against Russian leader Vladimir Putin for the invasion of Ukraine” said Minto.

    “New Zealand imposed immediate and wide-ranging sanctions against Russia and must follow through with Israel.”

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Asia Pacific Report

    Independent US Senator Bernie Sanders says he supports the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif, saying “all launched indiscriminate attacks against civilians and caused unimaginable human suffering”.

    “If the world does not uphold international law, we will descend into further barbarism,” he said in a post on X, alongside a longer statement.

    “I agree with the ICC,” Sanders added.

    His statement mirrored global reaction in favour of the ICC indictments in contrast to most US and Israeli politicians who condemned the global legal move to see accountability for the repeated and continuous Israeli atrocities in the besieged enclave Gaza.

    On Wednesday, Sanders sought to block US supplies of offensive weapons to Israel but his draft law was heavily defeated.

    The defendants are now internationally wanted suspects and ICC member states are under legal obligation to arrest them. Neither the US nor Israel recognise ICC jurisdiction.

    The court said it had issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant for “crimes against humanity and war crimes committed from at least 8 October until at least 20 May, 2024” and which related to the use of starvation and the deliberate targeting of medical facilities.

    ‘Important precedent’
    Dr Francis Boyle, a professor of international law at the University of Illinois, called the ICC’s latest move a “very important precedent”.

    “In my opinion, if the ICC had prosecuted Israeli leaders after Operation Cast Lead . . .  maybe all of this could have been avoided, if prosecutions were initiated 15 years ago,” Boyle told Al Jazeera.

    Boyle said the Biden administration is guilty of “aiding and abetting Israeli war crimes, crimes against humanity, and outright genocide against the Palestinians”.

    He said this was a “far more serious genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza than was inflicted on the Bosnians,” referring to the timeframes of each genocide in comparison with the number of people killed.

    Israel is now “extending this to Lebanon, and it does appear the [occupied] West Bank is next in its sights,” Boyle said.

    “It’s a very serious situation.

    An international human rights lawyer, Michael Mansfield, described Israel is an “unjust state that has never respected the rule of law”.

    Israel was trying to “deflect responsibility” and its objective had been to destroy Gaza and make it “uninhabitable”, he said.

    Netanyahu would not end the war in Gaza, he said, until this objective was met.

    “If he ends the war, he is in trouble. He’s in trouble if he leaves the country … and if he stays in Israel . . . he’s awaiting prosecution there,” Mansfield said.

    The issuing of the ICC warrants “makes a difference to world opinion, because I don’t think that the regime in Israel have recognised the extent in which they are being isolated — morally isolated”, he said.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Democracy Now!

    NERMEEN SHAIKH: In The Hague, the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed during Israel’s assault on Gaza.

    In a statement, the ICC said the Israeli leaders had, “intentionally and knowingly deprived the civilian population in Gaza of objects indispensable to their survival, including food, water, and medicine and medical supplies, as well as fuel and electricity.”

    The ICC also issued an arrest warrant for Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif, although Israel’s military claims it killed Deif in a July airstrike.

    The ICC arrest warrants come a week after a UN special committee found Israel’s actions in Gaza since October 2023 are, “consistent with genocide,” including using starvation as a weapon of war and recklessly inflicting civilian casualties.

    AMY GOODMAN: In related news, on Wednesday, the United States vetoed a Gaza ceasefire resolution at the UN Security Council for the fourth time, and the US Senate rejected a resolution brought by Senator Bernie Sanders that sought to block the sale of US tank rounds, bomb kits and other lethal weapons to Israel. Nineteen senators supported blocking the arms.

    For more on all of this, we’re joined by Akbar Shahid Ahmed, senior diplomatic correspondent for HuffPost. His latest piece is “Exclusive: White House Says Democrats Who Oppose Weapons to Israel Are Aiding Hamas.”

    Ahmed, thank you so much for being with us. As you write your book on the Biden administration in Gaza called Crossing the Red Line, clearly the ICC has ruled that today by issuing arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as the former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.

    Can you talk about the significance of this move?

    AKBAR SHAHID AHMED: Yeah, Amy. This is just an absolutely huge development, and it’s significant for a number of reasons. It’s significant because the ICC has come out and amplified and affirmed the allegations of crimes against humanity, of war crimes. This is one more international body.

    These are . . . international charges with a great deal of respect. This is a court that most of the world is a member of. And they’re coming out and saying, “Look, we think there are reasonable grounds to believe that these major international red lines have been crossed by the Israelis.”

    What’s really important to remember is that this isn’t just a decision about Israel. By extension, it fundamentally is a decision about the United States, which has been the ultimate enabler of Israel’s offensives in Gaza and Lebanon, which are under consideration by the ICC.

    And even in this ICC statement today, they point out that in the situations where Israel has addressed concerns over what it describes as starvation as a method of warfare — right? — depriving civilians, Palestinians, of food, water and medical equipment, Israel has really only done so in an extremely arbitrary and, what the ICC judges call, conditional way in response to the US. So, fundamentally, Amy, what we’re seeing is the ICC is saying yet again that Israel and the US, as its major enabler and backer, are in the dark and will continue to be in the dark for years to come.

    This kind of adds to a broader picture in which there are now ICC warrants for the sitting Israeli prime minister and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, who remains a significant politician in Israel. Simultaneously, there’s the genocide case at the ICJ, the International Court of Justice, which is ongoing and will be ongoing for years to come.

    And there’s the Geneva Conventions conference underway next year regarding kind of similar issues — right? — violations of international law, laws of war and the Israeli grave abuses that are alleged. So, the US and Israel will be kind of on trial on the international stage for years to come.


    ‘Wanted for war crimes in Gaza.’        Video: Democracy Now!

    NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Akbar, would you say that this move is mostly a symbolic one? Because, as you pointed out, of course, most countries are members of the International Criminal Court, but in this instance, perhaps most importantly, neither Israel nor the US are.

    AKBAR SHAHID AHMED: Right, Nermeen. And that’s something that the ICC judges did get into today — right? — because Israel said, “Look, the International Criminal Court doesn’t have jurisdiction over us.” That said, the state of Palestine is a member of the court, and that’s why this becomes a relevant and interesting thing, because you’ve seen European nations recognise Palestine as a state. You’ve seen Palestine join the United Nations General Assembly over just last year.

    So, yes, while the US and Israel continue to reject international scrutiny by the ICC, by the ICJ, of Israel’s conduct in Gaza and the occupied West Bank and Lebanon, there’s a growing international push to kind of challenge that, right?

    And I think you will see the Biden administration and the incoming Trump administration assertively push back against the ICC. The Trump administration did actually target the ICC directly when President Trump was last in office, threatening to put sanctions on ICC officials. And we also know from reporting that the Israelis have spied on and threatened the ICC themselves, according to reporting by The Guardian. So, yes, there will be increased pressure.

    But I think we’re really in a place that no one thought we would be even a few months ago, right? I think even the prospect of the ICC prosecutor successfully getting these warrants issued, it was initially thought that would be quite quick. It’s taken a long time. The fact that judges were able to issue those warrants suggests that even though it’s an uphill battle to get this international scrutiny, there’s a real determination and clear will.

    And we’ve seen a lot of states turn around and say over 13 months, right? Since the October 7 attack by Hamas within Israel that did spark this current round of fighting, there have been calls to say, “We don’t want this to escalate,” right?

    The US’s allies, Western countries have said, “We want to resolve this. We don’t want you on trial. Can the US and Israel please change course?” And what you’ve seen is a defiance from Tel Aviv and from Washington to say, “Actually, no, we’re continuing these wars.”

    So, that does take it to a different forum to kind of change the policy.

    NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Akbar, could you also — while we’re looking at the way in which international organisations, multilateral ones, are responding to this, what about the latest vote at the Security Council and the fact that the US blocked it for the fourth time, a ceasefire vote?

    AKBAR SHAHID AHMED: It’s really striking at this point — right? — to see the Biden administration totally alone. And you see how this develops over the course of the war. Initially, the US was able to get Britain, even France, kind of abstaining, standing with them.

    And now, 13 months in, where conduct hasn’t changed, and you still have daily strikes that are killing dozens, sometimes over a hundred civilians, you have a mounting death toll of mostly women and children, the US is totally alone, where it’s shielding Israel on the world stage diplomatically.

    And this is really important to see in the context of the Biden administration as an outlier even among American presidents and administrations. When President Barack Obama was in office, after he was in the lame-duck period that Biden is in now, he actually did abstain at the UN Security Council and said, “You know what? Go ahead and pass a resolution that Israel doesn’t like,” because tacitly the US acknowledged there was a basis, there were credible grounds for that resolution, which in that instance was about Israeli settlement activity.

    Here, what you’re seeing from the Biden administration, even in their dying days — right? — two months to go, there’s an obstinacy, a defiance, and a real commitment to shielding Israel, even if they are totally alone against now their closest allies — Britain, France and everyone else on the Security Council.

    So, I think the context of that veto kind of presages whatever may come in the next two months in terms of the Biden administration allowing any UN scrutiny of the wars.

    AMY GOODMAN: Akbar, I want to play Palestine’s envoy to the United Nations, Majed Bamya, speaking yesterday.

    MAJED BAMYA: There is no right to mass killing of civilians. There is no right to starve an entire civilian population. There is no right to forcibly displace a people. And there is no right to annexation. This is what Israel is doing in Gaza. …

    Maybe for some, we have the wrong nationality, the wrong faith, the wrong skin color. But we are humans! And we should be treated as such. Is there a UN Charter for Israel that is different from the charter we all have? Tell us. Is there an international law for them, an international law for us? Do they have the right to kill, and the only right we have is to die?

    Republished under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States Licence.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • In August 2021, following the withdrawal of major U.S./NATO military forces from Afghanistan after two decades of occupation, Taliban forces took effective control over the country. In response, the United States seized the assets of Afghanistan’s central bank totaling around $7 billion. Half of that amount was transferred to the misleadingly named “Afghan Fund” in September 2022, a Swiss-based “charitable foundation” whose only role thus far has been to privately conceal and invest the funds without any concrete plans to return them, as confirmed by U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Thomas West. This runs contrary to popular demands by experts and humanitarian organizations who argue that a return of the funds is desperately needed now more than ever to help everyday Afghans.

    Afghan women do not have any representation on the board of the “Afghan Fund,” nor do they have any official say over whether the assets should be returned. The board of trustees includes: two men selected by the U.S. State Department, Anwar ul-Haq Ahady and Shah Mehrabi, the U.S. Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs Jay Shambaugh, and Swiss government official Ambassador Alexandra Baumann.

    According to a July 2024 press statement from the board of the “Afghan Fund,” some of the stolen assets may also be disbursed to the Asian Development Bank, an institution controlled by the United States, Japan, and Australia via majority shareholder status. While the funds are not returning to the Afghan people, this move shows that a process to return the funds to Afghanistan can begin immediately if the board members agree to do so. Regardless of whether the funds are in fact disbursed elsewhere over time, board members Ahady, Mehrabi, Shambaugh, and Baumann are all culpable in the forced starvation and impoverishment of tens of millions of Afghans – tantamount to the collective punishment of the Afghan people.

    According to a January 2024 written testimony by the U.S. Congress-established Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), the remaining $3.5 billion in sovereign funds held in the United States may eventually be transferred to the “Afghan Fund” depending on litigation filed by the families of 9/11 victims and other plaintiffs, while other funds held in Europe and the United Arab Emirates may also be added to the “Afghan Fund.” SIGAR found that none of the funds in the “Afghan Fund” as of early 2024 have been spent, are planned to be spent, or will ever be used to provide humanitarian or development assistance. Notably, while no disbursements have been made for the benefit of the Afghan people, portions of the over $340 million in interest that have been accrued from the stolen assets are being used to pay for the “Afghan Funds” operational and administrative costs.

    The sudden deprivation of access to its sovereign assets led to a sharp economic and financial crisis in Afghanistan in 2021, which a recent United Nations Development Program (UNDP) study found is disproportionately affecting women and children. The seizure of assets combined with both U.S. and UN sanctions – ostensibly only targeting the Taliban – have hurt ordinary Afghans and aid organizations, affirmed by US-aligned rights groups and media outlets. The same UNDP report found that 69% of Afghans “do not have adequate resources for basic subsistence living,” while an estimated 15.8 million Afghans – including nearly 8 million children – are expected to experience “acute food insecurity” throughout 2024.

    Clearly, the “Afghan Fund” – controlled by Western officials and Afghan compradors – has deliberately withheld billions from the suffering Afghan populace. It should be reiterated that a process to return these stolen funds, and in turn mitigate the U.S.-enabled humanitarian and economic crises plaguing Afghanistan, can and must begin right away. The following individuals have full power or influence over the release of the illegally stolen assets back to its rightful owners: the Afghan people.

    Jay Shambaugh

    Under Secretary of the U.S. Treasury for International Affairs

    • Visiting Associate Professor at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University
    • Former Consultant to the International Monetary Fund (2005, 2008, 2011-2013)
    • Former Director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution (2017-2020)
    • Former Member of the White House Council of Economic Advisors (2015-2017)
    • Former Chief Economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers (2009-2011)

    Alexandra Baumann

    Head of the Prosperity and Sustainability Division at the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs

    • Former Diplomatic Advisor of the Head of the Swiss Federal
    • Department of Finance
    • Previously worked in the Swiss Embassies in Chile and
    • Germany, and the Swiss Mission to the UN in New York

    Anwar ul-Haq Ahady

    Former government official, economic advisor and central banker to the U.S./NATO occupied Afghanistan

    • Former Minister of Commerce and Industry (2010-2013) and Minister of Agriculture (2020-2021)
    • Former Minister of Finance and Advisor of National Economy to the U.S./NATO-backed President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai (2004-2009)
    • Previously responsible for overseeing Afghanistan’s central bank, Da Afghanistan Bank (2002-2004)

    Shah Mehrabi

    Member of the Supreme Council of Da Afghanistan Bank

    • Professor of Economics at Montgomery College in Maryland
    • Former Senior Economic Advisor to previous Ministers of Finance under U.S./NATO occupied Afghanistan

    Thomas West

    U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Deputy Assistant Secretary

    • Former Vice President at a private global strategic advisory firm, the Cohen Group (2016-2021)
    • Former Special Advisor at the UN National Security Council to the U.S. Vice President for South Asia and the U.S. Director for Afghanistan and Pakistan (2012-2015)
    • Former U.S. State Department senior diplomat in Kunar Province, Afghanistan (2011-2012)
    • Former Special Assistant for South and Central Asia to the U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs (2008-2010)
    The post Who Control’s Afghanistan’s Stolen Assets: A Factsheet first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Former Fiji Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama has been released from prison, only six months into his 12 months sentence, the Fiji Corrections Service (FCS) said via a statement today.

    Bainimarama was jailed in May, alongside former police chief Sitiveni Qiliho, for perverting the cause of justice.

    “The Fiji Corrections Service confirms that former Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama has been granted early release as of today [Friday], in accordance with section 46(3) of the Corrections Act,” it said.

    “This decision follows a comprehensive review of his application, which was processed in line with the relevant legal provisions governing early release and supervised reintegration.”

    It said that the section 46(3) of the Corrections Act, allows for early release of inmates based on specific criteria that ensure both the security of the community and the facilitation of an inmates reintegration.

    “All requirements were rigorously assessed, including eligibility criteria, conditions for release, and supervisory measures in place, in accordance with the guidelines established under FCS regulations.”

    The FCS will continue to oversee Bainimarama’s reintegration to ensure compliance with all conditions associated with his early release.

    “This decision reflects the commitment of the FCS to uphold the principles of justice, rehabilitation, and reintegration, as stipulated by the Corrections Act.”

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • By Jairo Bolledo in Manila

    The Philippine Supreme Court has granted temporary protection to an environmental activist abducted in Pangasinan earlier this year.

    In its resolution dated September 9 — but only made public this week — the court granted Francisco “Eco” Dangla III’s petition for temporary protection, and prohibited the respondents, including high-ranking soldiers and police officers, to be near the activist’s location.

    “Furthermore, you, respondents, and all persons and entities acting and operating under your directions, instructions, and orders are PROHIBITED from entering within a radius of one kilometer of the person, places of residence, work, and present locations of petitioner and his immediate family,” the resolution read.

    The respondents are:

    • Philippine Army chief Lieutenant General Roy Galido
    • Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Police General Rommel Francisco Marbil
    • Brigadier General Gulliver Señires (in his capacity as 702nd Brigade commanding general Brigadier)
    • Ilocos Region police chief Police Brigadier General Lou Evangelista
    • Police Colonel Jeff Fanged (in his capacity as Pangasinan police chief)

    Aside from giving Dangla temporary protection, the court also granted his petition for writs of amparo and habeas data. A writ of amparo is a legal remedy, which is usually a protection order in the form of a restraining order.

    The writ of habeas data compels the government to destroy information that could cause harm.

    These extraordinary writs are usually invoked by activists and progressives in the Philippines as they face intimidation from the government and its forces.

    Dangla’s abduction
    Dangla and another activist, Joxelle Tiong, were abducted in Pangasinan last March 24.

    According to witnesses, they saw two men who were forced to board a vehicle in Barangay Polo, San Carlos City.

    The two activists, who who had been red-tagged for their advocacies, were serving as convenors of the Pangasinan People’s Strike for the Environment.

    They “vocally defended the people and ecosystems of Pangasinan against the harms of coal-fired power plants, nuclear power plants, incinerator plants, and offshore mining in Lingayen Gulf,” at the time of their abduction.

    Three days later, several groups announced that Dangla and Tiong were found safe, but that the two had gone through a “harrowing ordeal.”

    ‘Bruised but alive’: Missing environmental activists in Pangasinan found safe
    “Bruised but alive” . . . the environmental activists abducted in Pangasinan but found safe, Francisco ‘Eco’ Dangla III (left) and Joxelle ‘Jak’ Tiong. Image: Rappler

    The reality
    The protection given to Dangla is only temporary as the Court of Appeals still needs to conduct hearings on the petition. In other words, the Supreme Court only granted the writ, but the power to whether grant or deny Dangla the privilege of the writs of amparo and habeas data lies with the Court of Appeals.

    There have been instances where the appellate court granted activists the privilege of writ of amparo, like in the case of labour activists Loi Magbanua and Ador Juat, where the court issued permanent protection orders for them and their immediate families.

    Unfortunately, this was not the case for other activists, such as young environmentalists Jhed Tamano and Jonila Castro.

    The two were first reported missing by activist groups. Security forces later said they were “safe and sound” and that they had allegedly “voluntarily surrendered” to the military.

    However, Tamano and Castro went off-script during a press conference organised by the anti-insurgency task force and revealed that they were actually abducted.

    In February, the High Court granted the two temporary protection and their writs of amparo and habeas data petitions. However, the appellate court in August denied the protection order for Tamano and Castro.

    Associate Justice Emily San Gaspar-Gito fully dissented in the decision and said: “It would be uncharacteristic for the courts, especially this court, to simply fold their arms and ignore the palpable threats to petitioners’ life, liberty and security and just wait for the irreversible to happen to them.”

    Republished with permission from Rappler.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Pacific Media Watch

    Israel is the world’s second-worst offender after Haiti in letting the murder of journalists go unpunished, according to a new report from the Committee to Protect Journalists, reports Al Jazeera.

    According to the CPJ’s 2024 Global Impunity Index, released yesterday, Somalia, Syria and South Sudan round up the list of the top five countries allowing journalists’ killers to evade justice.

    “What’s clear from our index is that Israel is not committed to investigating or punishing those who have killed journalists . . .  Israel has deliberately targeted journalists for being journalists,” CPJ chief executive Jodie Ginsberg told Al Jazeera.

    She said that in some cases, Israel had announced the killings, claiming without evidence the reporters were “terrorists”.

    In others, like the killing of three Lebanese journalists last week, it was clear they were targeted since nothing else was in the area.

    The CPJ index also noted that globally, nobody was held accountable for 80 percent of cases related to the murder of journalists, and in at least 241 killings there had been evidence that the journalists were directly targeted for their work.

    Rise of criminal gangs
    The index — which was launched in 2008 — comprises 13 nations this year and includes both democracies and non-democratic governments.

    Haiti, which tops the list, has been challenged by the rise of criminal gangs, who played a role in destabilising the country’s administrative and judicial institutions, resulting in the murders of at least seven journalists remaining unresolved in the country, the index said.

    Meanwhile, Israel, which ranks second on the list, has appeared on the index for the first time since its inception.

    The CPJ said the country’s “failure to hold anyone to account in the targeted killing of five journalists in Gaza and Lebanon in a year of relentless war”, had resulted in its ranking on the index.

    While the press freedom NGO is investigating the killings of at least 10 journalists, the CPJ said the number of murdered journalists might still be higher, considering the scale of Israel’s war in Gaza and Lebanon.

    Israel ‘deliberately targeted journalists’
    At least 128 journalists and media workers are among the tens of thousands of people Israel has killed in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon over the past year — the deadliest time for journalists since the CPJ began to track the killings more than four decades ago.

    However, some media freedom watchdogs put the death toll higher. The Gaza Media Office lists 182 Palestinian journalists killed by Israel since 7 October 2023.

    The CPJ index also noted that Mexico has recorded the highest overall number of unpunished murders of journalists – 21 – during the index period and ranks eighth on the index because of its sizeable population.

    Asian countries like Afghanistan, Myanmar, Pakistan and the Philippines have been appearing on the index regularly since its inception.

    Calling on the international community to help journalists, Ginsberg said in a statement: “Murder is the ultimate weapon to silence journalists.”

    “Once impunity takes hold, it sends a clear message: that killing a journalist is acceptable and that those who continue reporting may face a similar fate.”

    Republished by Pacific Media Watch.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • By Grace Tinetali-Fiavaai, RNZ Pacific journalist

    Papua New Guinea police say 10 people have been tragically killed after a series of violent “revenge killings” along the Laiagam-Sirunki Highway in the Highlands province of Enga.

    The attacks, which occured last Friday and Monday, are believed to be connected to an unresolved death that took place in March earlier this year.

    Police said that gunmen from the Mulapin tribe ambushed a vehicle packed with passengers from the Sakare clan near Tambitanis Health Centre in Sirunki on October 11 at 8am.

    The vehicle, carrying a body, was fired upon in a surprise attack. A woman lost her life, several others sustained serious injuries, and the gunmen escaped.

    An hour later on the same day, the Sakare clan retaliated by shooting the driver and his passenger from close range. They reached a nearby hospital but succumbed to their injuries on arrival.

    The leadership of the Kunalin and Lyain tribes is urging restraint and for the clans not to resort to violence, police said.

    They have also called for the immediate surrender of suspects from both the Mulapin and Sakare tribes to law enforcement.

    Investigation into ‘root causes’
    Assistant Police Commissioner Joseph Tondop, who is responsible for the state of emergency in Enga, is calling for an investigation into the root causes of the recent conflict.

    “This sort of revenge killing is unheard of in the history of tribal conflicts in Enga Province where innocent people unrelated to the conflicts where killed,” he said.

    “All tribal clans taking part in the conflicts (Sakars, Mulapian, Kunalins, Myom and people form Kulapi 4 in Porgera) are all under the scope and ordered to refrain from further escalating the situation.”

    The investigative teams will start their work immediately, and individuals or groups found to be involved will be apprehended, he said.

    “This task force is given strict orders to carry out a thorough investigation, leaving no stone unturned.”

    RNZ Pacific’s correspondent in PNG, Scott Waide, said the public was frustrated that police were yet to make arrests.

    He said police found it difficult to deal with the clans and arrest people who were armed.

    Waide said people were reluctant to give up weapons because it gave them a sense of security in tribal conflicts.

    “It is a difficult situation that both lawmakers, citizens and police are in. The longer this drags on and guns are in the hands of ordinary people, killing will continue.”

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • By Miriam Zarriga in Port Moresby

    A deadly ambush unfolded in Enga province between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. last night, leaving multiple people dead after a bus was attacked by armed men.

    Police confirmed to the Post-Courier that bodies were found both inside the bus and scattered in nearby bushland. Men and women attempting to flee the gunfire were gunned down before they could get far.

    Witnesses reported that the bus, a public motor vehicle (PMV), was riddled with bullets during the ambush.

    Blood and bodies lay strewn across the area when a distress call alerted police at Surunki station to the tragic scene.

    The PMV was later escorted to Wabag General Hospital, where the bodies were removed. Hospital staff have warned that more victims may still arrive.

    Local MP Aimos Akem attributed the deaths to escalating violence linked to ongoing conflict in Porgera, saying it continues to take a heavy toll on the people of Lagaip.

    Republished from the PNG Post-Courier with permission.


    This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • America’s Lawyer E117: New York City mayor Eric Adams has been criminally indicted for a bribery and corruption scheme that spans more than half a decade – we’ll bring you all the details. Journalist Ken Klippenstein has been permanently suspended from Twitter for publishing documents that were received via a hack of the Trump campaign. […]

    The post New York Mayor Blames Biden For His Scandals appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.

    This post was originally published on The Ring of Fire.

  • New York, September 26, 2024—The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Kyrgyz authorities to drop the prosecution against 11 current and former staff of anti-corruption investigative outlet Temirov Live and release those in detention, after prosecutors on Thursday requested 6-year prison sentences for the journalists on charges of calling for mass unrest.

    “The conviction of even a single one of the 11 Temirov Live investigative journalists on such clearly contrived and retaliatory charges would deal a further severe blow to Kyrgyzstan’s international reputation,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Kyrgyz prosecutors should drop charges against 11 current and former members of Temirov Live, release those remaining in detention, and lift the travel bans against others. The government must stop its relentless campaign against the outlet and its founder, Bolot Temirov.”

    Kyrgyz police arrested the current and former Temirov Live staff during raids on the journalists’ homes and the outlet’s office on January 16. Four of the 11 journalists — Makhabat Tajibek kyzy, Aktilek Kaparov, Aike Beishekeyeva, and Azamat Ishenbekov — remain in detention. Jumabek Turdaliev has been released on a travel ban, while the other six — Sapar Akunbekov, Akyl Orozbekov, Tynystan Asypbekov, Saipidin Sultanaliev, Joodar Buzumov, and Maksat Tajibek uulu — were released under house arrest pending trial.

    A verdict in the case is expected October 3. Case materials reviewed by CPJ allege that videos by Temirov Live, a partner of global investigative network Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), and sister outlet Ait Ait Dese “discredit” the government and contain “indirect” and “subtextual” calls for mass unrest. Akmat Alagushev, lawyer for two of the journalists, told CPJ that the charges are “absurd,” saying that prosecutors’ resorting to the term “indirect calls,” which lacks basis in Kyrgyz legislation, shows that investigators were unable to find any actual calls for mass unrest in the outlets’ publications.

    Authorities deported Temirov in November 2022 and banned him from entering the country for five years in connection with his reporting.

    Since 2022, Kyrgyz authorities have launched an unprecedented crackdown on independent reporting in a country previously seen as a regional haven for the free press. A Russian-style “foreign agents” law approved in April could be used to target media outlets and press freedom groups.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.