Award-winning journalist Mario Guevara, who had begun documenting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids, has been detained since his arrest at a protest on June 14 in DeKalb County, Georgia. Guevara has spent almost all of his detention in ICE custody, although he is authorized to live and work in the United States. He immigrated to the United States more than 20 years ago from El…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The ACLU on Thursday condemned President Donald Trump’s administration for refusing to participate in a United Nations mechanism “that calls for each UN member state to undergo a peer review of its human rights records.” The president’s decision to ditch the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) follows a February executive order withdrawing from various world bodies, including the United Nations…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
An immigrants rights group is demanding that California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and Attorney General Rob Bonta launch an investigation into the death of Carlos Montoya, a Guatemalan father who was fatally struck by a car on August 14 as he allegedly ran from federal agents who were abducting people outside a Home Depot in Monrovia, California. “The people of California have a right to know what…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific Correspondent French Pacific desk
French Minister for Overseas Manuel Valls has ended an extended seven-day visit to New Caledonia with mixed feelings.
On one hand, he said he was confident his “Bougival deal” for New Caledonia’s future is now “more advanced” after three sittings of a “drafting committee” made up of local politicians.
On the other hand, despite his efforts and a three-hour meeting on Tuesday before he returned to Paris, he could not convince the FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) — the main component of the pro-independence camp — to join the “Bougival” process.
The FLNKS recently warned against any attempt to “force” an agreement they were not part of, raising concerns about possible unrest similar to the riots that broke out in May 2024, causing 14 deaths and more than 2 billion euros (about NZ$3.8 billion) in material damage.
The unrest has crystallised around a constitutional reform bill that sought to change the rules of eligibility for voters at local provincial elections. The bill prompted fears among the Kanak community that it was seeking to “dissolve” indigenous votes.
But despite the FLNKS snub, all the other pro-independence and pro-France parties took part in the committee sessions, which are now believed to have produced a Constitutional Reform Bill.
That bill is due to be tabled in both France’s parliament chambers (the National Assembly and the Senate) and later before a special meeting of both houses (a “Congress” — a joint meeting of both Houses of Parliament).
Valls still upbeat
Speaking to local reporters just before leaving the French Pacific territory on Tuesday, Valls remained upbeat and adamant that despite the FLNKS snub, the Bougival process is now “better seated”.
“When I arrived in New Caledonia one week ago, many were wondering what would become of the Bougival accord we signed. Some said it was still-born. Today I’m going back with the feeling that the accord is comforted and that we have made considerable advances,” he said.
He pointed out that non-political players, such as the Great Traditional Indigenous Chiefs Customary Senate and the Economic and Social Council, also joined some of the “drafting” sessions to convey their respective input.
Valls hailed a “spirit of responsibility” and a “will to implement” the Bougival document, despite a more than three-hour meeting with a new delegation from FLNKS just hours before his departure on Tuesday.
The FLNKS still opposes the Bougival text their negotiators had initially signed, that was later denounced following pressure from their militant base, invoking a profound “incompatibility” of the text with the movement’s “full sovereignty” and “decolonisation” goals.
Also demands for this process to be completed before the next French Presidential elections, currently scheduled for April-May 2027.
The Bougival deal signed on July 12 near Paris was initially agreed to by all of New Caledonia’s political parties represented at the local parliament, the Congress. However, it was later denounced and rejected “in block” by the FLNKS.
Door ‘remains open’
Valls consistently stressed that his door “remains open” to the FLNKS throughout his week-long stay in New Caledonia. This was his fourth trip to the territory since he was appointed to the post by French Prime Minister François Bayrou in December 2024.
He pointed out that non-political players, such as the (Great Traditional Indigenous Chiefs) Customary Senate and the Economic and Social Council, also had joined some of the “drafting” sessions to convey their input.
In a statement after meeting with Valls, the FLNKS reiterated its categorical rejection” of the Bougival process while at the same time saying it was “ready to build an agreement on independence with all [political] partners”.
“I will continue working with them and I also invite FLNKS to discuss with the other political parties. I don’t want to strike a deal without the FLNKS, or against the FLNKS,” he told local public broadcaster NC 1ère on Tuesday.
He said the Bougival document was still in a “decolonisation process”.
‘Fresh talks’ in Paris
Valls repeated his open-door policy and told local media that he did not rule out meeting FLNKS president Christian Téin in Paris for “fresh talks” in the “next few days”.
Téin was released from jail mid-June 2025, but he remains barred from returning to New Caledonia as part of judicial controls imposed on him, pending his trial on criminal-related charges over the May 2024 riots.
At the time, Téin was the leader of a CCAT (field action coordinating cell) to mount a protest campaign against a Constitutional reform bill that was eventually scrapped.
The CCAT was set up late 2023 by one of the main components of the FLNKS, Union Calédonienne.
While he was serving a pre-trial jail term, in August 2024, Téin was elected president in absentia of the FLNKS.
As for FLNKS’s demand that they and no other party should be the sole representatives of the pro-independence movement, Valls said this was “impossible”.
“New Caledonia’s society is not only [made up of] FLNKS. There still exists a space for discussion, the opportunity has to be seized because New Caledonia’s society is waiting for an agreement”.
However, some political parties (including moderates such as Eveil Océanien (Pacific Islanders’ Awakening) and pro-France Calédonie Ensemble have expressed concern on the value of the Bougival process if it was to be pushed through despite the FLNKS non-participation.
Other pro-independent parties, the PALIKA (Kanak Liberation Party) and the UPM (Union Progressiste en Mélanésie), have distanced themselves from the FLNKS coalition they used to belong to.
They remain committed to their signature and are now working along the Bougival lines.
‘There won’t be another May 13’
Valls said the the situation is different now because an agreement exists, adding that the Bougival deal “is a comprehensive accord, not just on the electoral rules”.
On possible fresh unrest, the former prime minister said “this time, [the French State will not be taken by surprise. There won’t be another 13 May”.
He stressed during his visit that some 20 units (over 2000) of law enforcement personnel (gendarmerie, police) remain posted in New Caledonia.
“And there will be more if necessary”, Valls assured.
When the May 2024 riots broke out, the law enforcement numbers were significantly lower and it took several days before reinforcements from Paris eventually arrived in New Caledonia to restore law and order.
Very tight schedule
The Constitutional Reform Bill would cover a large spectrum of issues, including the creation, for the first time in France, of a “State of New Caledonia”, as well as a dual France/New Caledonia citizenship, all within the French Constitutional framework.
Two other documents — an organic law and a fundamental law (a de facto constitution) — are also being prepared for New Caledonia.
The organic law could come into force some time mid-October, if approved, and it would effectively postpone New Caledonia’s crucial provincial election to June 2026.
The plan was to have the freshly-produced text scrutinised by the French State Council, then approved by the French Cabinet on September 17.
Before the end of 2025, it would then be tabled before the French National Assembly, then the Senate, then the French special Congress sitting.
And before 28 February 2026, the same text would finally be put to the vote by way of a referendum for the people of New Caledonia.
French government to fall again?
Meanwhile, Valls is now facing another unfavourable political context: the announcement, on Monday, by his Prime Minister François Bayrou, to challenge France’s National Assembly MPs in a risky motion of confidence.
This, he said, was in direct relation to his Appropriation Bill (budget), which contains planned sweeping cuts of about 44 billion euros (NZ$87.4 billion) to tackle the “danger” of France further plunging into “over-indebtment”.
If the motion, tabled to be voted on September 8, reveals more defiance than confidence, then Bayrou and his cabinet (including Valls) fall.
In the face of urgent initial plans to have New Caledonia’s texts urgently tabled before French Parliament, Bayrou’s confidence vote is highly likely to further complicate New Caledonia’s political negotiations.
Pro-France leader and former French cabinet member Sonia Backès, who is also the leader of local pro-France Les Loyalistes party, however told local media she remained confident and that even if the Bayrou government fell on September 8, “there would still be a continuity”.
“But if this was to be followed by a dissolution of Parliament and snap elections, then, very clearly, this would impact on the whole New Caledonian process”, she said.
“The Bougival agreement will be implemented,” Valls said.
“And those who think that the fall of the French government would entail delays on its implementation schedule are mistaken, notwithstanding my personal situation which is not very important.
“I will keep a watch on New Caledonia’s interests.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
When I got the call, I was just leaving Magnolia Bar’s Summit at Tougaloo College. It was one of the courageous Ingalls Shipyard workers, whom I had the honor of representing in a race discrimination case. We were advised not to try to come back to the coast. Hurricane Katrina had touched down and the roads are blocked. Our clients packed up our hotel rooms and put our belongings in storage. What followed were harrowing calls and text messages, describing widespread loss of homes, deaths, evictions and injuries. The levies had broken! The sagging infrastructures gave way. Lives already hit hard from other storms and inequities, were once again embattled. It is no surprise that those who had very little to begin with, were the ones who were abandoned by the system.
The post Solidarity, Not Charity, End Jim Crow Recovery, Restore All Communities appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
When I got the call, I was just leaving Magnolia Bar’s Summit at Tougaloo College. It was one of the courageous Ingalls Shipyard workers, whom I had the honor of representing in a race discrimination case. We were advised not to try to come back to the coast. Hurricane Katrina had touched down and the roads are blocked. Our clients packed up our hotel rooms and put our belongings in storage. What followed were harrowing calls and text messages, describing widespread loss of homes, deaths, evictions and injuries. The levies had broken! The sagging infrastructures gave way. Lives already hit hard from other storms and inequities, were once again embattled. It is no surprise that those who had very little to begin with, were the ones who were abandoned by the system.
The post Solidarity, Not Charity, End Jim Crow Recovery, Restore All Communities appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
Is it not predictable that when segments of a population are harassed, marginalized and enslaved, they will eventually revolt? Does that not constitute a demand for justice?
According to American historian Herbert Aptheker, in North America from the 1600s to the end of the Civil War, there were at least 250 revolts each involving at least 10 enslaved persons.
The largest revolt of about 500 enslaved people took place in Louisiana in 1811. All of these rebels, widely cursed by those in power as threats, might better be remembered as America’s Black huddled masses, yearning to breathe free.
Throughout American history episodes of racist violence intensified when African Americans — and other people of color — made legitimate claims to full citizenship. In the twentieth century, given the right conditions, any of those incidents should have triggered a renewed civil rights movement, but for a variety of reasons, most did not.
The post Missing Links In Textbook History: The American Left Part III appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
Prime minister admits ‘systemic discrimination’ after thousands of girls and women fitted with IUDs without consent
Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, has apologised for the first time for the forced contraception scandal in which thousands of Greenlandic girls and women were fitted with contraceptive coils without their permission or knowledge.
Describing it as “systemic discrimination” against women and girls by the Danish healthcare system, Frederiksen said that because they were Greenlandic they were subjected to “both physical and psychological harm”.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
My friend Fausto Belo Ximenes, known as Nino, who has died suddenly aged 43, was one of the first Timorese country directors of a major humanitarian agency (Oxfam) in his home country of Timor-Leste.
Before Oxfam, Nino worked as a human rights officer with the UN (2001), as a legal researcher with a local NGO monitoring transitional justice (2002), as an adviser to the Timorese ministry of education (2012), as a senior access to justice manager on a USAID project (2013) and as a graduate researcher at Pembroke College, Oxford (2018).
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
ANALYSIS: By Peter Thompson, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington
The recent internal report on RNZ’s performance, variously described as “scathing” and “blunt” in news coverage, caused considerable debate about the state broadcaster’s performance and priorities — not all of it fair or well informed.
The report makes several operational recommendations, including addressing RNZ National’s declining audience share by targeting the 50+ age demographic and moving key programme productions from Wellington to Auckland.
But RNZ’s diminishing linear radio audience has to be understood in the context of its overall expansion of audience reach online, and audience trends across the radio sector in general.
Total audience engagement with RNZ content on third-party platforms (including social media, YouTube and content-sharing partners who are permitted to republish RNZ material) now exceeds the reach of its radio audience.
There has also been a steady but significant decline in the daily reach of linear radio overall. NZ On Air audience research shows that in 2014, 67 percent of New Zealanders listened to linear broadcast radio every day. A decade later, this had dropped to 42 percent.
RNZ National’s share of the total 15+ audience peaked at 12 percent in 2021, following the initial pandemic period. By 2024, this had declined to 7 percent, having been overtaken by Newstalk ZB on 8 percent (also down from 9 percent in 2021).
But using comparative audience reach and ratings data to gauge the performance of a public service media operator does not capture the quality or diversity of audience engagement, or the extent to which its charter obligations are being met.
Nor do audience data reflect the positive structural role RNZ plays in supporting other media through its content-sharing model, the Local Democracy Reporting scheme or its RNZ Pacific service.
Clashing priorities
Data provided by RNZ show the decline in RNZ National’s audience to be primarily in the 60+ age groups. How much that reflects recent efforts to appeal to a more diverse demographic through changed programming formats is unclear.
The RNZ report also suggests staff are uncertain about what audiences their programmes are aiming at. If so, this could explain the departure of some older listeners.
But that doesn’t necessarily support the report’s conclusion that RNZ National should stick to its radio knitting and double down on the 50+ audience, especially in Auckland, to compete with Newstalk ZB.
In fact, prioritising the 50+ audience at the expense of a broader appeal might reinforce RNZ’s brand image as a legacy service for older listeners — a prospect its commercial rivals would doubtless welcome.
Between 2007 and 2017, RNZ was subject to a funding freeze and was pressured by successive National-led governments to justify any claim for future increases with evidence of improved performance. Its Queenstown, Tauranga and Palmerston North offices all closed during this period of austerity.
In the 2017 budget, RNZ eventually received an extra NZ$11.4 million over four years. Its statement of intent that year acknowledged funding increases were premised on achieving a wider audience and that budgets needed to make “operational expenditure available for new online initiatives and updated technology”.
Given that expanding the online arm of RNZ would affect investment in its radio service, it would be surprising if operational priorities didn’t sometimes clash. While commercial broadcasters prioritise their most lucrative demographics, public service operators have the perennial challenge of providing something for everyone.
The risk of pleasing no one
The online reach of RNZ’s website and app is now comparable to the reach of its linear broadcasts. Critics might frame that as under-performance on the radio side, but it also shows audience reach has grown beyond the older-skewing linear radio demographic.
According to RNZ’s 2024 audience research, 80 percent of New Zealanders engage with its content every month. Meanwhile, amid growing concern about declining trust in news, RNZ ranked top in the 2025 JMAD survey on trust in media.
None of this supports the narrative of a failing legacy operator that has lost its way.
Some of the issues raised in the RNZ report may simply reflect the reality of modern media management: maintaining the character, quality and demographic appeal of existing radio services while trying to reach broader demographics on new platforms.
Meeting that challenge was perhaps made more realistic when the previous Labour government increased RNZ’s baseline funding by $25.7 million in 2023. So the current government’s recent decision to cut RNZ’s budget by $18 million over the next four years represents a real setback.
RNZ’s charter obliges it to serve a diverse range of audiences, something the data show it achieves with a broad cross-section across all platforms.
If it were to now prioritise the 50+ or even 60+ radio audience at the expense of expanding online services and audience diversification, there would likely be more criticism and calls for further defunding from the broadcaster’s political and commercial enemies.
Rather like the moral of Aesop’s fable about the man, the boy and the donkey, if RNZ is expected to please everyone, it runs the risk of pleasing no one.
Dr Peter Thompson is associate professor in media and communication, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
By Don Wiseman, RNZ Pacific senior journalist
The President of Bougainville, Ishmael Toroama, says he is not feeling the pressure as he seeks a second five-year term in office.
Bougainville goes to the polls next Thursday, September 4, with 404 candidates vying for 46 seats in the Parliament of the autonomous Papua New Guinea region.
Toroama is being challenged by six others — all men.
He spoke with RNZ Pacific as he continues campaigning in Central Bougainville.
Don Wiseman: Last time you and I spoke before an election, you had just been ushering a rock band around Bougainville. It’s a very different situation for you this time round.
Ishmael Toroama: Yes, indeed, it’s a totally different situation. But you know, principle never changes. Principles of everything, in terms of whatever we do, remain the same. But it changes as environment changes.
DW: What are your key planks going into this election? What are the most important things that you’re telling people?
‘Political independence’
IT: It’s what my government has done in the last five years.
I am telling them, firstly, of the political independence. Political independence has been agreed by the national constitution of Papua New Guinea, amendment on part 14, which gives the people of Bougainville the right to vote for independence referendum.
As our leaders at that time, while they were negotiating with late Kabui [first Bougainville President Joseph Kabui], they told the Papua New Guinea government that if you cannot change your constitution, then we will no longer sign a peace agreement that creates that opportunity for Papua New Guinea and Bougainville.
So what I’m telling them is it has been guaranteed by the national constitution, which created the amendment of part 14, the Organic Law on Peace Building, Bougainville Peace Agreement and the Constitution of the Autonomous Bougainville Government.
In all consultation, national constitution guarantees us to even the consultation, even through the definition of independence, which most Bougainvilleans have voted for, which has been defined by the national government, saying that it is a separate state apart from the state of Papua New Guinea.
And the United Nations must also verify that, and that is the definition which national government has given to the people of Bougainville before the actual voting happened. If you closely look at all consultation, the Bougainville Peace Agreement says after the referendum vote made by the people, the two governments will consult over the result.
What I’m telling my people is that as your fifth president in the fourth House of Representatives, we have made a consultation at Kokopo, Wabag, and in Moresby we signed the Era Kone Covenant. And latest is the Melanesian Relationship Agreement [signed at Burnham, New Zealand, in June this year].
Constitutional guarantee
Having said in order that constitutional guarantee as a guarantor guarantees the people’s right to vote for independence, that is what I’m telling them.
DW: Yes but you’re not carrying Port Moresby with you on this. Are you? You guys are not very much closer to resolution of this problem than you were five years ago.
IT: Well, that is in line with the consultation process. Whatever they say to me, I see that. It has been amended of the national constitution, then it gives us the opportunity whether the national government likes it or not.
It is a national constitution guarantee or the framework of the Bougainville Peace Agreement, and that is how I’m saying to them, whether we come into consultation, we have different views.
At least it is the constitutional guaranteed process censored by the National Constitution.
DW: There are people, including some running against you in this election, who are saying that your approach through these negotiations has been too strident, that you go into these meetings making bold statements beforehand and there’s no room to move, that you’re not giving room for negotiation.
Defining result
IT: If you look at all the consultation that we have consulted. You will look at the consultation which I am saying we are consulting over the result. The Bougainville Peace Agreement says that the consultation should be over the result.
And what is the result? It is the 97.7 percent and who has defined the 97.7 percent — it is the national government of Papua New Guinea.
I understand where they’re coming from, because if you want to retain a political power, you can make all sorts of arguments trying to say that President Toroama has not left room, [made] political spaces available.
But if you closely look at what the Bougainville Peace Agreement says, we are consulting over the result, whether these presidents or candidates are saying that I haven’t made a room.
You just look at every space that we have gone into. And a consultation, as per the Bougainville Peace Agreement, is over the result.
What is the result? It is the independence which people voted — 97.7 percent. We cannot deny the people’s power moving into the referendum saying that we want to govern ourselves. So yes, people’s power.
DW: Except you’re overlooking that that referendum is a non-binding referendum?
Where is it non-binding?
IT: Can you specifically say to me, can you give me a clause within the Bougainville Peace Agreement that it says it is a non-binding.
I’m asking you, you will not find any non-binding clause within the framework of the Peace Agreement. It has been cultivated in there by people that want to drive us away from the exact opposition of the people.
There is no clause within the political peace agreement that says non-binding. There is no clause.
DW: We’re here now, just a week out from the election. How will you go?
IT: I’m the kind of man that has process. They voted me for the last five years. And if the people wish to put me [back], the decision, the power to put people, it is democracy. They will vote for me.
If not, they can choose another president. I don’t get too much pressure, but because it has been described within the constitution of the autonomous government that a president can serve two terms, so that’s why I am running.
But I’m not in a pressure mood. I am all right.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
By Antony Loewenstein in Sydney
The grim facts should speak for themselves. Since 7 October 2023, Israel has deliberately killed an unprecedented number of Palestinian journalists in Gaza.
Those brave individuals are smeared as Hamas operatives and terrorists by Israel and its supporters.
But the real story behind this, beyond just Western racism and dehumanisation towards Arab reporters who don’t work for the corporate media in London or New York, is an Israeli military strategy to deliberately (and falsely) link Gazan journalists to Hamas.
The outlet +972 Magazine explains the plan:
“The Israeli military has operated a special unit called the ‘Legitimization Cell,’ tasked with gathering intelligence from Gaza that can bolster Israel’s image in the international media, according to three intelligence sources who spoke to +972 Magazine and Local Call and confirmed the unit’s existence.
“Established after October 7, the unit sought information on Hamas’ use of schools and hospitals for military purposes, and on failed rocket launches by armed Palestinian groups that harmed civilians in the enclave.
“It has also been assigned to identify Gaza-based journalists it could portray as undercover Hamas operatives, in an effort to blunt growing global outrage over Israel’s killing of reporters — the latest of whom was Al Jazeera journalist Anas Al-Sharif, killed in an Israeli airstrike this past week [august 10].
According to the sources, the Legitimisation Cell’s motivation was not security, but public relations. Driven by anger that Gaza-based reporters were “smearing [Israel’s] name in front of the world,” its members were eager to find a journalist they could link to Hamas and mark as a target, one source said.
As a journalist who’s visited and reported in Gaza since 2009, here’s a short film I made after my first trip, Palestinian journalists are some of the most heroic individuals on the planet. They have to navigate both Israeli attacks and threats and Western contempt for their craft.
I stand in solidarity with them. And so should you.
After the Israeli murder of Al Jazeera journalist Anas Al-Sharif on August 10, I spoke to Al Jazeera English about him and Israel’s deadly campaign:
Antony Loewenstein speaking on Al Jazeera English on 11 August 2025. Video: AJ
Antony Loewenstein interviewed by Al Jazeera on 11 August 2025. Video: AJ
Republished from the Substack of Antony Lowenstein, author of The Palestine Laboratory, with permission.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
Asia Pacific Report
The Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa has challenged the New Zealand government to support a move by Türkiye to vote to suspend Israeli membership of the United Nations.
Türkiye Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has told the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation in Riyadh that Israel should be suspended from the crucial meeting of the UN General Assembly next month, for its “genocidal aggression”.
PSNA co-chair John Minto said in a statement that New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters would have to take a stand on this issue.
“Cabinet should give him clear instructions to vote against Israeli war crimes and support Palestinian rights,” he said.
“Suspension of Israel will have a lot of backing from many countries horrified with the starvation and carnage in Gaza, and they want to do something effective, instead of just recognising Palestine as a state.
“Even if the US vetoes such a move in the Security Council, there is a precedent going back to 1974 when South Africa was suspended from the General Assembly because it practised apartheid.
“The General Assembly suspended a member then, and New Zealand should back such a move now.”
Original condition
Minto said Israel’s original condition in 1948 for joining the UN was that it allowed the 750,000 Palestinians it had expelled from Palestine to create Israel to return home.
“Israel won’t even talk about its obligations to let Palestinians return, and certainly never had any intention of allowing them to go home. Israel should pay a price for that, along with punishment for its genocide,” he said.
Minto said the escalation of the Israeli assault on Gaza called for immediate international action without waiting wait until the General Assembly debate next month.
“The Israeli ambassador in Wellington should be told to leave right now, because his government is openly committing war crimes.”
“We’ve just seen a famine declared in Gaza City. Aid is totally insufficient and deliberately so,” Minto said.
“Israel has called up its military reservists for the major assault it’s conducting on Gaza City to drive nearly a million of its inhabitants out.
“Israel’s latest dumping ground of choice is South Sudan, even though its government says it doesn’t want to have expelled Palestinians turn up there.”
“And we’ve had the news that Israel has once again killed journalists, who work for international news agencies, such as Reuters, Al Jazeera and NBC.”
“Netanyahu says it was a mistake. Who believes that?”
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
An Al Jazeera journalist who has documented Israel’s trail of atrocities for almost the past two years has condemned Western news agencies covering the war on Gaza as treating Palestinian reporters like “robots”.
“You see how Palestinian journalists are treated. There’s no protection when they are alive,” Hind Khoudary told Al Jazeera from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza.
“And after they are killed, no one even mentions them.”
She said today was a “very, very angry morning” after five journalists were killed yesterday among at least 21 people, including medical workers, at al-Nasser Medical Centre in Khan Younis in a “double tap” strike by the Israeli military.
The slain news professionals have been named as Hossam al-Masri, a freelance photographer for the Reuters news agency; Mariam Abu Daqqa, freelance journalist for The Independent and the Associated Press (AP); Moaz Abu Taha, correspondent for the American broadcasting network NBC; Mohamad Salama, press photographer for Al Jazeera; and Ahmed Abu Aziz, freelance journalist working for Middle East Eye and the Tunisian radio station Diwan FM, who died later from his injuries.
“Palestinian journalists do not know how to mourn their five colleagues and there’s a wave of anger at the international news agencies.
“Many news outlets [that the killed journalists worked for] did not even mention their contributors. The Reuters news agency did not mention in their headline their cameraman who had been working for them for months.
“In their article, they simply described him as a Reuters ‘contractor’.
‘Not mentioned’
As for Moaz Abu Taha [another journalist killed in the Nasser medical centre attack], not a single news organisation that he was working for said he was working for them,” she said.
“Palestinian journalists have been risking their lives for 23 months now, and after they are killed, they are not even mentioned in headlines.
“In the end, they are mentioned as ‘contractors’, as ‘freelancers’ – while, when they were alive, they were working 24/7 to produce, fix and document for these news outlets.
“This is how most Palestinian journalists feel — that we’re just being used as robots to report on what’s going on because there are no foreign journalists.
“We get killed and then everyone forgets about us.”
Gaza’s silenced voices. Video: Al Jazeera
RSF ‘fiercely condemns’ killings
The Paris-based media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) “fiercely condemned” the latest killings, saying they came after the murder of Khaled al-Madhoun on Saturday, 23 August 23.
This was a toll of six journalists killed in two days. It follows the killing of six other journalists two weeks ago on August 10.
According to RSF information, all were deliberately targeted. RSF again called for an emergency UN Security Council meeting to “end this massacre of journalists”.
Thibaut Bruttin, director-general of RSF, said: How far will the Israeli armed forces go in their gradual effort to eliminate information coming from Gaza? How long will they continue to defy international humanitarian law?
“The protection of journalists is guaranteed by international law, yet more than 200 of them have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza over the past two years.
“Ten years after the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2222, which protects journalists in times of conflict, the Israeli army is flouting its application.
“RSF calls for an emergency UN Security Council meeting to ensure this resolution is finally respected, and that concrete measures are taken to end impunity for crimes against journalists, protect Palestinian journalists, and open access to the Gaza Strip to all reporters.”
‘Suicide drone’
According to Al Jazeera, the first strike on the live broadcast post that killed Hossam al-Masri was carried out using a loitering munition — also known as a “suicide drone” — typically equipped with a camera and an explosive charge.
A Reuters article also confirmed the death of its contractor, Hussam al-Masri.
The second strike 8 minutes later targeted the hospital yet again after rescue teams and journalists had arrived.
The Al-Nasser complex is a well-known gathering place for displaced journalists in Gaza who, since October 2023, have been living in tents around the hospital to access information on injured and deceased patients, as well as available facilities.
Targeted Murder. This is what israeli nazis do.. pic.twitter.com/RL8mc1YCMW
— Ali (@MerruX) August 25, 2025
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
By Asiye Latife Yilmaz in Istanbul
Canadian photojournalist Valerie Zink has resigned after eight years with Reuters, criticising the news agency’s stance on Gaza as a “betrayal of journalists” and accusing it of “justifying and enabling” the killing of 245 journalists in the Palestinian enclave.
“At this point it’s become impossible for me to maintain a relationship with Reuters given its role in justifying and enabling the systematic assassination of 245 journalists in Gaza,” Zink said today via the US social media company X.
Zink said she worked as a Reuters stringer for eight years, with her photos published by many outlets, including The New York Times, Al Jazeera, and others worldwide.
She criticised Reuters’ reporting after the killing of Anas al-Sharif and an Al Jazeera crew in Gaza on August 10, accusing the agency of amplifying Israel’s “entirely baseless claim” that al-Sharif was a Hamas operative, which was “one of countless lies that media outlets like Reuters have dutifully repeated and dignified,” she said.
“I have valued the work that I brought to Reuters over the past eight years, but at this point I can’t conceive of wearing this press pass with anything but deep shame and grief,” Zink said.
Zink also emphasised that the agency’s willingness to “perpetuate Israel’s propaganda” had not spared their own reporters from Israel’s genocide.
“I don’t know what it means to begin to honour the courage and sacrifice of journalists in Gaza, the bravest and best to ever live, but going forward I will direct whatever contributions I have to offer with that front of mind,” Zink highlighted, reflecting on the courage of Gaza’s journalists.
“I owe my colleagues in Palestine at least this much, and so much more,” she added.
I can’t in good conscience continue to work for Reuters given their betrayal of journalists in Gaza and culpability in the assassination of 245 our colleagues. pic.twitter.com/WO6tjHqDIU
— Valerie Zink (@valeriezink) August 26, 2025
‘Double tap’ strike
Referring to the killing of six more journalists, including Reuters cameraman Hossam Al-Masri, in Israel’s Monday attack on the al-Nasser hospital in Gaza, Zink said: “It was what’s known as a ‘double tap’ strike, in which Israel bombs a civilian target like a school or hospital; waits for medics, rescue teams, and journalists to arrive; and then strikes again.”
Zink underlined that Western media was directly culpable for creating the conditions for these events, quoting Jeremy Scahill of Drop Down News, who said major outlets — from The New York Times to Reuters — had served as “a conveyor belt for Israeli propaganda,” sanitising war crimes, dehumanising victims, and abandoning both their colleagues and their commitment to true and ethical reporting.
She said Western media outlets, by “repeating Israel’s genocidal fabrications without determining if they have any credibility” and abandoning basic journalistic responsibility, have enabled the killing of more journalists in Gaza in two years than in major global conflicts combined, while also contributing to the suffering of the population.
The new fatalities among the media personnel in Gaza brought the number of Palestinian journalists killed in Israeli attacks since October 2023 to 246.
Israel has killed more than 62,700 Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023. The military campaign has devastated the enclave, which is facing famine.
Last November, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for its war on the enclave.
Republished from Anadolu Ajansi.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific correspondent French Pacific desk
French Prime Minister François Bayrou’s surprise announcement yesterday that he will call for a parliamentary confidence vote in his government is set to further complicate protracted talks in New Caledonia on the French territory’s political future.
The announcement comes as French Minister for Overseas Manuel Valls has extended his stay in New Caledonia, where he has supervised a “drafting committee” to translate a “Bougival Accord” signed in July to set the path for major political reforms for New Caledonia.
In a surprise and “risky” announcement yesterday, Bayrou said a confidence vote in his government would take place on September 8.
He said this was in direct relation to his budget, which contains planned sweeping cuts of around 44 billion euros (NZ$87.6 billion) to tackle the “danger” of France plunging further into “over-indebtedness”.
“Yes it’s risky, but it’s even riskier not to do anything,” he told a press conference.
According to article 49.1 of the French Constitution, if a majority of parties votes in defiance, then Bayou and his minority government automatically fall.
Reacting to the announcement, parties ranging from far right, far left to the Greens have already indicated they would express defiance towards Bayrou and his cabinet.
‘End of the government’
Far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party chief Jordan Bardella said Bayrou, by calling for the vote, had effectively announced “the end of his government”.
Radical left France Unbowed (La France Insoumise) also said the vote would mark the end of the government.
This will place the Socialist MPs, whose votes could make the difference, in a crucial position.
Socialist party spokesman MP Arthur Delaporte, deplored Bayrou for remaining “deaf to the demands of the French” and appeared to remain “quite stubborn”.
“I don’t see how we could vote the confidence,” Delaporte told reporters.
To further compound the situation in France, a national “block everything” strike has been called on September 12, with the active support and backing from the far left parties and a number of trade unions.
Valls is still in New Caledonia, after he extended his stay twice and is now set to fly back to Paris later today.
Bid for FLNKS talks
The extension was an attempt to resume talks with the pro-independence FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front), which has attended none of the three sessions of the “drafting committee” on August 21, 23 and 35.
Talks within the committee were reported to be not only legal (with the help of a team of French high officials, including constitutionalists, but also highly political.
Valls announced a last-ditch session today with FLNKS before he flies back to Paris.
All of the other parties, both pro-independence and pro-France, took part in the committee sessions, which is now believed to have produced a Constitutional reform Bill that was to be tabled at both France’s Parliament chambers (the National Assembly and the Senate) and later before a special meeting of both houses (a “Congress”).
The Constitutional Bill would cover a large spectrum of issues, including the creation, for the first time in France, of a “State of New Caledonia”, as well as a dual France/New Caledonia citizenship.
Two other documents, an organic law and a fundamental law (a de facto constitution) are also being prepared for New Caledonia.
The Bougival deal signed on July 12 near Paris was initially agreed to by all of New Caledonia’s political parties represented at the local Parliament, the Congress.
Rejected ‘in block’
But it was later denounced and rejected “in block” by the FLNKS.
Valls has consistently stressed that his door “remains open” to the FLNKS.
Several local parties across the political chessboard (including the Wallisian-based Eveil Océanien and moderate pro-France Calédonie Ensemble) have already expressed doubts as to whether the implementation of the Bougival deal could carry any value if they had taken place without the FLNKS.
In the face of urgent initial plans to have New Caledonia’s texts urgently tabled before French Parliament, Bayrou’s confidence challenge is highly likely to further complicate New Caledonia’s political negotiations.
The plan was to have the freshly-produced text scrutinised by the French State Council, then approved by the French Cabinet on September 17.
Before the end of 2025, it would then be tabled before the French National Assembly, then the Senate, then the French special Congress sitting.
And before 28 February 2026, the same text would finally be put to the vote by way of a referendum for the people of New Caledonia.
Pro-France leader and former French cabinet member Sonia Backès however told local media she remained confident that even if the Bayrou government fell on September 8, “there would still be a continuity”.
“But if this was to be followed by a dissolution of Parliament (and snap elections), then, very clearly, this would impact on the whole (New Caledonian) process,” she said.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
Earlier this month an Australian-based Uyghur group launched legal action against Kmart in the federal court. The case has put the retailer’s supply chain under scrutiny for potential links to forced labour in China’s Xinjiang province.
Nour Haydar speaks with senior reporter Ben Doherty about the legal action against Kmart and the warnings that Australia could become a dumping ground for products linked to forced labour
Read more:
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
A media studies analyst has condemned the latest deadly attack by Israel on journalists in Gaza and challenged Western media over the carnage, asking “where is the outrage” and international solidarity?
Four journalists were reported to have been assassinated among 20 people killed in the air strike on the al-Nasser Medical Centre in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis.
The others killed were first responders and medical staff, said the Gaza Health Ministry.
Dr Mohamad Elmasry, media studies professor at Qatar’s Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, told Al Jazeera in an interview he was “at a loss for words” over the latest attack.
Earlier this month, four Al Jazeera journalists and two other media people were among seven killed on August 10 in what the Israeli military admitted was a targeted attack.
“Israel has been at war with journalism and journalists from the very beginning of the war,” Elmasry told Al Jazeera. “They’re not hiding it. They’re very open about this.
“But the question that I have is, where are the international journalists?
‘Where is Western media?’
“Where is The New York Times? Where is CNN? Where are the major mainstream Western news outlets?
“Because when Charlie Hebdo [a French satirical magazine based in Paris] journalists were killed in 2015, that caused global outrage for months.
“It was a major story in every single Western news outlet. And I applauded journalists for coming to the aid of their colleagues. But now, where is the outrage?”
The Gaza Media Office said the death toll of Palestinian journalists in Gaza had risen to 246 and identified latest casualties as:
Hossam al-Masri – photojournalist with Reuters news agency
Mohammed Salama – photojournalist with Al Jazeera
Mariam Abu Daqa – journalist with several media outlets including The Independent Arabic and US news agency Associated Press
Moaz Abu Taha – journalist with NBC network
In a statement when announcing that the death toll from the al-Nasser hospital attack had risen to 20, the Gaza Health Ministry said:
“The [Israeli] occupation forces’ targeting of the hospital today and the killing of medical personnel, journalists, and civil defence personnel is a continuation of the systematic destruction of the health system and the continuation of genocide.
“It is a message of defiance to the entire world and to all values of humanity and justice.”
‘Killed in line of duty’
The UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, posted on X after the Israeli strikes killed the journalists and members of Gaza’s civil defence:
“Rescuers killed in line of duty. Scenes like this unfold every moment in Gaza, often unseen, largely undocumented,” she wrote.
“I beg states: how much more must be witnessed before you act to stop this carnage?
“Break the blockade. Impose an arms embargo. Impose sanctions.”
Her remarks came after she shared a video appearing to show a second Israeli air strike during a live broadcast on Al-Ghad TV — just minutes after the first attack on al-Nasser hospital.
Albanese later gave an interview, renewing her call for sanctions on Israel.
BREAKING
Scenes like this unfold every moment in Gaza, often unseen, largely undocumented. I beg STATES: how much more must be witnessed before you act to stop this carnage?
Break the blockade
— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) August 25, 2025
One of Al Jazeera’s reporters described working with hospitals as a base.
Deprived of electricity, internet
Hind Khoudary, reporting from Deir el-Balah in Gaza, said: “I’m one of the Palestinian journalists reporting from hospitals.
“We are in a two-year war where we have been deprived of electricity and internet, so Palestinian journalists are using these services at hospitals to continue reporting.
“We are also following news of wounded Palestinians, funerals, and malnutrition cases, as these are always transferred to hospitals.
“That is why Palestinian journalists are making hospitals their base and end up being attacked.”
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
COMMENTARY: By Greg Barns
If it were China or Russia, the imposition of sanctions and threats of harm to prosecutors and judges of the International Criminal Court would be front page news in Australia- and in New Zealand.
The Australian’s headline writers and columnists, for example, would be apoplectic. Prime Minister Albanese, Attorney-General Michelle Rowland and Foreign Minister Penny Wong would issue the strongest possible warnings to those countries about consequences.
But, of course, that’s not happening because instead it is the US that is seeking to put the lives and well-being of the ICC’s staff in danger, the reasons the ICC has rightly issued arrest warrants against undoubted war criminals and genocide enablers such as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant.
Last week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, purely a slavish appendage of the worst US president on record, Donald Trump, announced sanctions on two judges and two prosecutors at the ICC.
Rubio issued a statement calling the ICC “a national security threat that has been an instrument for lawfare” against the US and Israel. A statement that, no doubt, war criminals around the world will be applauding.
These are not the first attacks on the ICC.
In February this year, Trump issued an order that said the US “will impose tangible and significant consequences on those responsible for the ICC’s transgressions, some of which may include the blocking of property and assets, as well as the suspension of entry into the US of ICC officials, employees, and agents, as well as their immediate family members, as their entry into our nation would be detrimental to the interests of the US”.
The ICC was established in 2002 to administer the Rome Statute, the international law that governs war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and other crimes.
Leading atrocity nations
Australia is a signatory, but the US and Israel have not signed up in the case of the former, and failed to ratify in the case of the latter, because they are, of course, leading nations when it comes to committing atrocities overseas and — in the case of Israel — within its own borders, through what many scholars say is a policy of apartheid inflicted on Arab Israelis.
So, despite the relatively muted interest in Australia today at the latest outrage against the international order by the corrupt thugs in the Trump Administration, what should the Albanese government do?
Trump’s shielding of Netanyahu and his advisers from criminal proceedings through sanctions and threats to members of the court is akin to both aiding and abetting crimes under the Rome Statute and clearly threatening judges, prosecutors and court officials.
This means Australia should make it very clear, in very public terms, that this nation will not stand for conduct by a so-called ally, which is clearly running a protection racket.
Australia has long joined with the US and other allies in imposing sanctions on regimes around the world.
When it comes to Washington, those days are over.
Sarah Dehm of UTS and Jessica Whyte of the University of New South Wales, writing in The Conversation in December last year, referenced Trump and Rubio’s thuggery towards the ICC among other sanctions outrages, and observed correctly that “Australian sanctions law and decision-making be reoriented towards recognising core principles of international law, including the right of all people to self-determination”.
A ‘trigger mechanism’
Dehm and Whyte argued this “could be done through ‘a trigger mechanism’ that automatically implements sanctions in accordance with decisions of the International Court of Justice concerning serious violations and abuses of human rights”.
What the Albanese government could do immediately is make it abundantly clear that any person subject to an ICC arrest warrant would be detained if they set foot in Australia. This would obviously include Netanyahu and Gallant.
And further, that Australia stands to contribute to protection for any ICC personnel.
Not only that, but given the Rome Statute is incorporated into domestic law in Australia via the Commonwealth Criminal Code, a warning should be given by Attorney-General Rowland that any person suspected of breaches of the Rome Statute could be prosecuted under Australian law if they visit this country.
What Australia could also do is make it mandatory, rather than discretionary, for the attorney-general to issue an arrest warrant if Netanyahu and others subject to ICC warrants came to this country.
As Oxford international law scholar, Australian Dane Luo, has observed, while Foreign Minister Wong has said in relation to the Netanyahu and Gallant warrants that “Australia will act consistently with our obligations under international law and our approach will be informed by international law, not by politics”, this should not be taken as an indication that Rowland would have them arrested.
The Trump administration must be told clearly Australia will not harbour international criminals. And while we are at it, tell Washington we are imposing economic, cultural, educational and other sanctions on Israel.
Greg Barns SC is a former national president of the Australian Lawyers Alliance. This article was first published by Pearls and Irritations : John Menadue’s public poiicy journal.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
COMMENTARY: By Asofou So’o
Although seven political parties have officially registered to contest Samoa’s general election this Friday, three have been politically visible through their campaign activities and are likely to share among them the biggest slice of the Parliament’s 51 seats.
The question on everyone’s lips is: which one of them will win enough seats to form the next government without the assistance of possible coalition partners?
The three main political parties are the Human Rights Protection Party (HRPP), the Fa’atuatua i le Atua Samoa ua Tasi (FAST) party and Sāmoa United Party (SUP), under the leadership of Tuila’epa Sa’ilele Malielegaoi (Tuila’epa), La’aulialemalietoa Leuatea Polata’ivao Schmidt (La’auli) and Fiamē Naomi Mata’afa (Fiamē) respectively.
La’auli and Fiamē were both long-serving members of the HRPP until their defection from that party when Tuila’epa was prime minister to form the FAST party before the last general election in April 2021.
Fiamē and La’auli became the leader and president of the FAST party respectively while Tuila’epa continued his parliamentary career as the leader of the opposition following the election.
A falling-out between La’auli and Fiamē in January 2025 resulted in the break-up of the FAST into two factions with Fiamē and the 14 ministers of cabinet of her caretaker government establishing the SUP following the official dissolution of Parliament on June 3.
La’auli, now leader of the FAST party, has retained the support of the remaining 19 FAST members of Parliament.
First to publicise manifesto
HRPP was the first political party to publicise its campaign manifesto, launched on June 23. Its promises include:
The FAST party’s manifesto, launched on July 12, reflects a strong focus on social welfare and economic revitalisation. It promises:
FAST’s signature campaign promise in the last general election was giving each electoral constituency one million tala for them to use however they wanted. That amount will increase to two million tala this time around.
Officially registered on 30 May 2025 and launched on June 5, the SUP launched its campaign manifesto on July 15. It promises:
‘People first’ party
SUP is promoting itself as a people-first party focused on continuity and ongoing reform.
The three main parties are following the practice established by the FAST party in the last general elections in 2021 where all party election candidates and their supporters tour the island group to meet with constituencies and publicise their manifestos.
As part of this process, the HRPP has been branding various FAST claims from last general election as disinformation.
It had been claimed, for example, that the HRPP was moving to cede ownership of Samoan customary land to Chinese people, that the HRPP presided over a huge government deficit and that, as Prime Minister, Tuila’epa was using public funds to send his children overseas on government scholarships.
At the HRPP rallies, Tuila’epa did not mince words in labelling La’auli a persistent liar, asserting that La’auli had been involved in several questionable and unauthorised dealings during the three-year life of the last FAST government, and that La’auli alone was responsible for the break-up of the FAST party when he refused to step down from cabinet following the Ministry of Police’s lawsuit against him in relation to the death of a young man on the eve of FAST general election victory in 2021.
Fiamē, equally, blames La’auli for the unsuccessful completion of the FAST government’s parliamentary term when he refused to step down from cabinet following the Ministry of Police’s lawsuit against him.
Convened caucus meeting
After refusing to step down, La’auli convened a FAST party caucus meeting at which a resolution was passed to terminate the party membership of Fiamē and four other ministers of her cabinet. The split between Fiamē and La’auli culminated in the defeat of Fiamē’s budget and the abrupt dissolution of Parliament.
HRPP said at their rallies that, should they win government, they would pass a law to prohibit roadshows as they do not want “outsiders” influencing constituencies’ voting preferences.
Furthermore, these road shows are costly in terms of resources and time, and are socially divisive.
Instead, they prefer the traditional method of choosing members of Parliament where political parties restrict themselves to compiling manifestos, leaving constituencies to choose their own preferred representatives in Parliament.
Given that the HRPP was the first political party to publicise its manifesto, they probably have a valid point in suggesting that other political parties, in particular the FAST party and SUP, have not come up with original ideas and have instead replicated or added to what the HRPP has taken some time to put together in its manifesto.
Given the political visibility achieved by the HRPP, FAST and SUP through their campaign road shows and their full use of the media, it is to be expected that collectively they will win the most seats.
Furthermore, owing to the FAST party’s turbulent history, HRPP is probably the front-runner, followed by FAST, then SUP. It is unlikely that the smaller parties will win any seats; likewise the independents.
Enough seats main question
The main question is whether HRPP will have enough seats to form a new government in its own right. Coalition government does not seem to work in Samoa’s political landscape.
The SNDP/CDP coalition in the 1985-1988 government and the last FAST quasi-coalition government of 2021-2025 (FAST depended on the support of an independent as well as pre-election alliances with other parties to form government) all saw governments fail to deliver on their election manifestos and provide needed public services.
Perhaps a larger question is how the three parties might fund their extravagant campaign promises.
The HRPP leadership is confident it will be able to deliver on the main promises in its manifesto — compiled and costed by the HRPP Campaign Committee, consisting of former Government ministries and corporations CEOs (Finance, Custom and Inland Revenue, National Provident Fund, Electoral Commissioner, President of the Land and Titles) and a former senior employee of the Attorney-General’s Office — within 100 days of assuming government.
The other two main parties, FAST and SUP, are equally confident.
The public will have to wait and see whether the campaign promises of their preferred party will be realised. Right now, they are more interested in whether their preferred party will get across the line.
Dr Asofou So’o was the founding professor of Samoan studies at the National University of Samoa from 2004 before being appointed as vice-chancellor and president of the university from 2009 to 2019. He is currently working as a consultant. This article was first published by ANU’s Development Blog and is republished under a Creative Commons licence.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon is condemning Israel’s E1 settlement plan for the occupied West Bank, despite New Zealand not signing a joint statement on the matter.
Twenty-seven countries, including the UK and Australia, have condemned Israel’s plans to build an illegal settlement east of Jerusalem.
The countries have said the plan would “make a two-state solution impossible by dividing any Palestinian state and restricting Palestinian access to Jerusalem”.
Luxon said he fully agreed with the statement.
“That is something [signing the stement]I would address to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, but there are a lot of joint statements that we try and align with, often at short notice, to make sure we are putting volume and voice to our position,” he said.
“Irrespective of that, we are very, very concerned about what is happening in the West Bank, particularly the E1 settlement programme.
“We have believed for a long time that those settlements are illegal.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
By Pip Hinman and Alex Bainbridge of Green Left
More than 200,000 people took the streets across Australia on Saturday in a national day of action demanding that the Labor government sanctions Israel and stops the two-way arms trade.
It comes after 300,000 people marched, in driving rain, across Sydney Harbour Bridge on August 3 to demand the same.
Palestine solidarity groups across the country are coordinating their plans as Israel’s illegal deliberate starvation policy is delivering its expected results.
Protests were organised in more than 40 cities and towns– a first in nearly two years since the genocidal war began.
At least 50,000 rallied on Gadigal Country/Sydney, 10,000 in Nipaluna/Hobart, 50,000 in Magan-djin/Brisbane, 100,000 in Naarm/Melbourne, 10,000 in Kaurna Yerta/Adelaide, 15,000 in Boorloo/Perth, 600 in the Blue Mountains, 500 in Bathurst, 5000 in Muloobinba/Newcastle, 1600 in Gimuy/Cairns and 700 in Djilang/Geelong.
Sydney’s turnout for Australia’s nationwide protests against Israeli genocide. Video: GreenLeft
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
By Alifereti Sakiasi in Suva
West Papuan journalist Victor Mambor has vowed not to be silenced despite years of threats, harassment and even a bomb attack on his home.
The 51-year-old founder and editor-in-chief of Jubi, West Papua’s leading media outlet, was in Fiji this week, where he spoke exclusively to The Fiji Times about his fight to expose human rights abuses.
“Despite them bombing my home and office with molotov bombs, I am still doing journalism today because my people are hurting — and I won’t stop,” Mambor said.
In January 2023, an improvised explosive device detonated outside his home in Jayapura in what he describes as a “terror” attack.
Police later closed the case citing “lack of evidence”.
He was in Suva on Tuesday night as Jubi Media Papua, in collaboration with University of the South Pacific Journalism and PANG, screened its documentary Pepera 1969: A Democratic Integration?
“I believe good journalism is journalism that makes society better,” he said.
Republished from The Fiji Times with permission.
Victor Mambor: ‘I need to do better for my people and my land.’ Video: The Fiji Times
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific correspondent French Pacific desk
A newly established “drafting committee” held its inaugural meeting in Nouméa this week, aiming to translate the Bougival agreement — signed by New Caledonian political parties in Paris last month — into a legal and constitutional form.
However, the first sitting of the committee on Thursday took place without one of the main pro-independence parties, the FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front), which chose to stay out of the talks.
Visiting French Minister for Overseas Manuel Valls, who was in New Caledonia until the weekend, met a delegation of the FLNKS on Wednesday for more than two hours to try and convince them to participate.
The FLNKS earlier announced a “block rejection” of the deal signed in Bougival because it regarded the text as “incompatible” with the party’s objectives and a “lure” in terms of self-determination and full sovereignty.
The deal outlines a roadmap for New Caledonia’s political future.
It is a compromise blueprint signed by New Caledonia’s parties from across the political spectrum and provides a vision for a “State” of New Caledonia, a dual French-New Caledonian citizenship, as well as a short-term transfer of such powers as foreign affairs from France to New Caledonia.
Even though FLNKS delegates initially signed the document in Bougival on July 12, their party later denounced the agreement and said its negotiators had no mandate to do so.
On Wednesday, as part of a round-up of talks with most political parties represented at the New Caledonian Congress, Valls held a separate meeting with a new delegation from FLNKS officials in Nouméa, in a last-ditch bid to convince them to take part in the “drafting committee” session.
‘Serene but firm’, says FLNKS
The FLNKS described the talks with Valls as “serene but firm”.
The FLNKS is demanding a “Kanaky Agreement” to be concluded before 24 September 2025 and a fully effective sovereignty process to be achieved before the next French Presidential elections in April 2027.
It also wants the provincial elections, initially scheduled to take place no later than November 30, to be maintained at this date, instead of being postponed once again to mid-2026 under the Bougival prescriptions.
But they were nowhere to be seen on Thursday, when the drafting group was installed.
Valls also spoke to New Caledonia’s chiefly (customary) Senate to dispel any misconception that the Bougival deal would be a setback in terms of recognition of the Indigenous Kanak identity and place in New Caledonia.
He said the Bougival pact was a “historic opportunity” for them to seize “because there is no other credible alternative”.
Indigenous recognition
The minister stressed that. even though this Indigenous recognition may be perceived as less emphatic in the Bougival document, the same text also clearly stipulated that all previous agreements and accords, including the 1998 Nouméa Accord which devoted significant chapters to the Kanak issue and recognition, were still fully in force.
And that if needed, amendments could still be made to the Bougival text to make this even more explicit.
The chiefs were present at the opening session of the committee on Thursday.
So was a delegation of mayors of New Caledonia, who expressed deep concerns about New Caledonia’s current situation, 15 months after the riots that broke out in New Caledonia mid-May 2024, causing 14 deaths, more than 2 billion euros (NZ$3.8 billion) in material damages and thousands of jobless due to the destruction of hundreds of businesses.
New Caledonia’s gross domestic product (GDP) is estimated to have dropped by 10 to 15 percent over the past 15 months.
As part of the post-riot ongoing trauma, New Caledonia is currently facing an acute shortage in the medical sector personnel — many of them have left following security issues related to the riots, gravely affecting the provision of essential and emergency services both in the capital Nouméa and in rural areas.
Who turned up?
Apart from the absent FLNKS, two other significant components of the pro-independence movement, former FLNKS moderate members Union Nationale pour l’Indépendance (UNI), consisting of PALIKA (Kanak Liberation Party) and UPM (Union Progressiste en Mélanésie) were also part of the new drafting committee participants.
UNI leaders said earlier they had signed the Bougival document because they believe even though it does not provide a short-term independence for New Caledonia, this could be gradually achieved in the middle run.
PALIKA and UPM, in a de facto split, distanced themselves from the FLNKS in August 2024 and have since abstained from taking part in the FLNKS political bureau.
On the side of those who wish New Caledonia to remain part of France (pro-France), all of its representative parties, who also signed the Bougival document, were present at the inaugural session of the drafting committee.
This includes Les Loyalistes, Le Rassemblement-LR, Calédonie Ensemble and Wallisian-based “kingmaker” party Eveil Océanien.
After the first session on Thursday, pro-France politicians described the talks as “constructive” on everyone’s part.
‘My door remains wide open’
But there are also concerns as to whether such sessions (the next one is scheduled for Saturday) can viably and credibly carry on without the FLNKS taking part.
“We just can’t force this or try to achieve things without consensus,” Eveil Océanien leader Milakulo Tukumuli told local media on Thursday.
Since Valls arrived in New Caledonia (on his fifth trip since he took office late 2024) this week, he has mentioned the FLNKS issue, saying his door remained “wide open”.
“I am well aware of the FLNKS position. But we have to keep going”, he told the drafting committee on Thursday.
The “drafting” work set in motion will have to focus in formulating, with the help of a team of French officials (legalists and constitutionalists), a series of documents which all trickle down from the Bougival general agreement so as to translate it in relevant and appropriate terms.
Some of the most urgent steps to be taken include formalising the postponement of the provincial elections to mid-2026, in the form of an “organic law”.
Among other things, the “organic law” is supposed to define the way that key powers should be transferred from France to New Caledonia, including following a vote by the local Congress with a required majority of 36 MPs (over two thirds), the rules on the exercise of the power of foreign affairs “while respecting France’s international commitments and fundamental interests”
Tabled in French Parliament
The text would be tabled to the French Parliament for approval, first before the Senate’s Law Committee on 17 September 2025 and then for debate on 23 September 2025. It would also need to follow a similar process before the other Parliament chamber, the National Assembly, before it can be finally endorsed by December 2025.
And before that, the French State Council is also supposed to rule on the conformity of the Constitutional Amendment Bill and whether it can be tabled before a Cabinet meeting on 17 September 2025.
Another crucial text to be drafted is a Constitutional amendment Bill that would modify the description of New Caledonia, wherever it occurs in the French Constitution (mostly in its Title XIII), into the “State of New Caledonia”.
The modification would translate the concepts described in the Bougival Agreement but would not cancel any previous contents from the 1998 Nouméa Accord, especially in relation to its Preamble in terms of “founding principles related to the Kanak identity and (New Caledonia’s) economic and social development”.
In the same spirit, every paragraph of the Nouméa Accord which does not contradict the Bougival text would remain fully valid.
The new Constitutional amendment project is also making provisions for a referendum to be held in New Caledonia no later than 28 February 2026, when the local population will be asked to endorse the Bougival text.
Another relevant instrument to be formulated is the “Fundamental Law” for New Caledonia, to be later endorsed by New Caledonia’s local Congress.
The “Fundamental Law”, a de facto Constitution, is supposed to focus on such notions and definitions as New Caledonia “identity signs” (flag, anthem, motto), a “charter of New Caledonia values, as well as the rules of eligibility to acquire New Caledonia’s nationality and a “Code of Citizenship”.
Valls said he was aware the time frame for all these texts was “constrained”, but that it was a matter of “urgency”.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
Two New Zealand Palestinians, Rana Hamida and Youssef Sammour, left Auckland today to join the massive new Global Sumud Flotilla determined to break Israel’s starvation blockade of the besieged enclave. Here, two journalists report on the Asia-Pacific stake in the initiative.
Ellie Aben in Manila and Sheany Yasuko Lai in Jakarta
Asia-Pacific activists are preparing to set sail with the Global Sumud Flotilla, an international fleet from 44 countries aiming to reach Gaza by sea to break Israel’s blockade of food and medical aid.
They have banded together under the Sumud Nusantara initiative, a coalition of activists from Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Maldives, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Pakistan, to join the global flotilla movement that will begin launching convoys from August 31.
Sumud Nusantara is part of the GSF, a coordinated, nonviolent fleet comprising mostly small vessels carrying humanitarian aid, which will first leave Spanish ports for the Gaza Strip, followed by more convoys from Tunisia and other countries in early September.
The international coalition is set to become the largest coordinated civilian maritime mission ever undertaken to Gaza.
“This movement comes at a very crucial time, as we know how things are in Gaza with the lack of food entering the strip that they are not only suffering from the impacts of war but also from starvation,” Indonesian journalist Nurhadis said ahead of his trip.
“Israel is using starvation as a weapon to wipe out Palestinians in Gaza. This is why we continue to state that what Israel is doing is genocide.”
Since October 2023, Israel has killed more than 62,000 Palestinians and injured over 157,000 more.
Gaza famine declared
As Tel Aviv continued to systematically obstruct food and aid from entering the enclave, a UN-backed global hunger monitor — the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification — declared famine in Gaza on Friday, estimating that more than 514,000 people are suffering from it.
Nurhadis is part of a group of activists from across Indonesia joining the GSF, which aims to “break Israel’s illegal blockade and draw attention to international complicity in the face of the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people.”
“We continue to try through this Global Sumud Flotilla action, hoping that the entire world, whether it’s governments or the people and other members of society, will pressure Israel to open its blockade in Palestine,” he said.
“This is just beyond the threshold of humanity. Israel is not treating Palestinians in Gaza as human beings and the world must not keep silent. This is what we are trying to highlight with this global convoy.”
The GSF is a people-powered movement that aims to help end the genocide in Gaza, said Rifa Berliana Arifin, Indonesia country director for the Sumud Nusantara initiative and executive committee member of the Jakarta-based Aqsa Working Group.
“Indonesia is participating because this is a huge movement. A movement that aspires to resolve and end the blockade through non-traditional means.
“We’ve seen how ineffective diplomatic, political approaches have been, because the genocide in Gaza has yet to end.
‘People power’ movement
“This people-power movement is aimed at putting an end to that,” Arifin said.
“This is a non-violent mission . . . Even though they are headed to Gaza, they are boarding boats that have no weapons . . . They are simply bringing themselves . . . for the world to see.”
As the Sumud Nusantara initiative is led by Malaysia, activists were gathering this weekend in Kuala Lumpur, where a ceremonial send-off for the regional convoy is scheduled to take place on Sunday, led by Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim.
One of them is Philippine activist Drieza Lininding, leader of civil society group Moro Consensus Group, who is hoping that the Global Sumud Flotilla will inspire others in the Catholic-majority nation to show their support for Palestine.
“We are appealing to all our Filipino brothers and sisters, Muslims or Christians, to support the Palestinian cause because this issue is not only about religion, but also about humanity. Gaza has now become the moral compass of the world,” he said.
“Everybody is seeing the genocide and the starvation happening in Gaza, and you don’t need to be a Muslim to side with the Palestinians.
“It is very clear: if you want to be on the right side of history, support all programmes and activities to free Palestine . . . It is very important that as Filipinos we show our solidarity.”
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
COMMENTARY: By Richard David Hames
So here we are, 2025, and Israel has finally achieved what no terrorist group, no hostile neighbour, no antisemitic tyrant ever could: it has become the most dangerous country on earth — for its own people.
Not because of rockets or boycotts, but because its government has decided that the only way to secure the future is to annihilate everyone else’s.
The Zionist project — once sold as a miraculous refuge for a persecuted people — now stands revealed as a 70‑year experiment in ethnic cleansing, wrapped in biblical entitlement and armed with American money.
The current phase? Bulldozers in the West Bank, tanks in Gaza, and a prime minister whose personal survival depends on keeping his citizens permanently terrified and morally anesthetised.
Netanyahu and his coalition of zealots have at last clarified Israel’s mission statement: kill or expel two million Palestinians, and call it “security.”
Reduce Gaza to rubble, herd the survivors into tents, and then — here’s the punchline — offer them “resettlement packages” in Libya or South Sudan, as though genocide could be rebranded as humanitarian outsourcing.
And the world? Still dithering over whether to call this behaviour “problematic.” As if sanctions and isolation are reserved only for the unlucky states without lobbyists in Washington or friends in European parliaments.
Israel is begging to be treated as a pariah, but we keep dressing it up as a partner.
The most awkward truth of all: Jews in the diaspora now face a choice. Condemn this grotesque betrayal of Jewish history, or keep defending the indefensible until Israel itself becomes the nightmare prophecy it was meant to escape.
Richard David Hames is an American philosopher-activist, strategic adviser, entrepreneur and mentor and he publishes The Hames Report on Substack.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
My subheading could have been:
Writing for Survival, Sanity and Soldiering On
…Sterncastle Publishing in Lincoln County Brings Voices Who Have Been in the Shadows into the Book World
From California to Iraq and Falluja to Antigua, to local politics and now the wounded warrior runs a small publishing house on the Oregon Coast, highlighting BIPOC, LGBTQA+ and veteran writers, Don Gomez is making small waves in the small “p” publishing world.
My interview with him ran on my KYAQ FM 91.7 FM show, Finding Fringe.
Listen here for a compelling story of Don who was a kid in California, had some rough and tumble years being pegged a “spic,” even though that racist term goes only for people of Mexican heritage. His family goes back to the 1850s in Colorado, Spaniards.
He ran for Lincoln County commissioner, but lost:
He runs Sterncastle Publishing here in Newport, Oregon:
Addiction ran in his family, and he had his juvenile offending “lifestyle,” but listen to the interview and how he is on a mission, former Marine and all.
Don talked about veteran writing workshops in San Diego, and he talked about dudes he knew who were not US citizens, but were military vets, rounded up and deported, man.
Even back to the Korean “war,” dudes would write their stories, their remembrances, memoirs, what have you, and it was as if many weights were lifted off their backs and hearts.
“They actually looked different after going through the writing workshop.”
Alienation. Brown in a White Man’s Stolen Land.
I’m writing this because my buddy called right after the interview of Don aired on KYAQ 91.7 FM, kyaq.org.
He said it was my best interview he’s heard so far on my Oregon Coast show, Finding Fringe. Who would have thought?
Kelly called, talked to my wife Monica (alias), we had laughs, and he didn’t realize Monica is Latina, or Hispanic in that weird descriptor.
In fact, here is one of Monica’s worker friends, from Lisa’s old days doing the day and night labor staffing: From a short-lived gig with a Portland paper, called, my column that is, Finding Fringe!
The reality is that Don had people he worked with who were not US Citizens, but who “served” in the US’s various branches of the military and they STILL got deported (by the Obama Regime).
*****
Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas recently led a trip to Tijuana, Mexico, to meet with U.S. veterans who have been deported. Six other Democratic lawmakers joined Castro to tour the Deported Veterans Support House, also known as “the bunker.”
The bunker was founded by Hector Barajas, who served six years in the U.S. Army as a paratrooper. As a veteran, Barajas was deported to Mexico after serving time for a felony of firing a gun into a vehicle. Barajas served two years from 2001 to 2003 and was deported once he was released. “I’ve got to take personal responsibility of what I put myself into, but I already paid my debt to society and I don’t think I should have to pay twice for it,” Barajas said.
Although the deportation of veterans dates to 2013 under President Barack Obama, Democrats now are trying to cash in on Trump’s hard anti-immigration views and policies to make a political statement and present their own legislation to address the issue.
Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-N.M.) calls the deportation a “life sentence.” As chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, she is familiar with the immigration issue and is working to help these veterans reunite with their families in the U.S.
“They just want to come home and see their children, their spouses and their parents,” Grisham added.
After leaving the military, Hector Barajas-Varela said he struggled with mental health issues and began to spiral into a life of addiction. He served a prison term from 2001 to 2003 and spent another year in immigration detention.
He remembers his first deportation as unceremonious. He wasn’t provided with information, and he doesn’t remember signing any paperwork.
“I don’t even remember like anybody saying, ‘Welcome to Mexico,’” he said. “A gate opened up, and that was it.”
Six months later, he sneaked back into the U.S. and tried to start over. He began a relationship and had a daughter.
“The second time that I was deported was very difficult because I had finally a family and a daughter,” Barajas-Varela said. “Missing my daughter was really difficult.”
Adjusting to life in Mexico was a challenge. Barajas-Varela said he became depressed and again slipped into addiction. He spent six months on the street before he began to pick up the pieces.
In 2013, he converted his home into what would become the Bunker.
You know, snakes are fast, but alligators are much — we’re going to teach them how to run away from an alligator, OK, if they escape prison. How to run away: Don’t run in a straight line. Run like this. And you know what? Your chances go up about 1%, OK? Not a good thing. …
You have a lot of bodyguards, you have a lot of cops, that are in the form of alligators. You don’t have to pay them so much. But I wouldn’t want to run through the Everglades for long. It will keep people where they’re supposed to be. This is a very important thing. — Trump
*****
Don and his things he carries. Below, Veta and Ms. Yount, who will be on my August 27 show:
Okay, more on the dirty country of deportati0n:
Haeder’s piece to illustrate some ground-truthing!
Iglesia de Colima in Colima, Mexico. Enrique’s father was a migrant worker, who worked in the United States on farms. He’d return to Colima a few months a year, where his wife, Enrique’s mom, raised 10 kids.
An American story of working undocumented
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
— Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus”
“Citizenship to me is more than a piece of paper. Citizenship is also about character. I am an American. We’re just waiting for our country to recognize it.”
— Jose Antonio Vargas
Forget the rhetoric from the Obama Camp (“Deporter in Chief”) or the Trump Klan (“All Mexicans are Rapists and Murderers”). Go all the way back through this country’s history — and we find every treaty with Indigenous peoples broken and every piece of ancestral holy land defiled by the nation’s first “illegal aliens.”
Better yet, to counter those misanthropic and racist lines, how about, “We are all illegal aliens.”
It was a bumper sticker created by a group I was working with, Annunciation House, and an offshoot, Solidarity with the Americas.
That was El Paso, 1980, under another racist president, Ronald Reagan, and his team of war mongers — supporting, training and outfitting death squads throughout Central and South America.
There are so many pivotal moments in this country’s racist history, and now amidst lockdown, massive forced unemployment and frayed safety nets, people of color remain the people on the lower rungs of society.
Even so, those from Mexico and Central America are farther down the North American proverbial pecking order. However, without Latinx workers — as well as those from Asian countries and coming from the African continent — the U.S. in many ways would come to a halt.
“We are all illegal aliens!” bumper stickers were an act of collective solidarity against deportations and denied political asylum. As well as recognition of the original peoples of Turtle Island (a name Algonquian- and Iroquoian-speaking peoples use for North America) who never gave anyone papers to come to this continent.
Narrative frames
I’ll call him Enrique because using his real name will get him into trouble. I met him through a very good friend, who once worked at a staffing agency where she hired this fellow and so many other reliable, hard-working men and women who also were undocumented.
She asked to be called Monica. What she’s seen in the staffing arena for 20 years is many variations on a theme with people trying to make ends meet.
“I’ve seen some incredible fake documents. There are a few artists in Portland who can replicate Social Security cards and immigration IDs. In many jobs, I have helped hard workers get jobs without having to be not only humiliated, but denied work and reported to immigration.”
[This photo of Enrique was taken when he was a child still living in Colima, Mexico.]
Enrique is a 50-year-old born in the Mexican state of Colima but was raised in nearby Michoacán. He crossed the borderline more than 32 years ago.
In the 1980s, I was a reporter for the El Paso Herald-Post, and part of one six-month period I crisscrossed Mexico, hitting all 32 of Mexico’s official states and the Districto Federal while reporting on tourism, trade, culture and other aspects as a foil against the blanket warnings by then U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, John Gavin, that most of Mexico was a dangerous place.
I love Colima and Michoacán. I have known many “Enrique’s” in my life in Mexico and as a journalist and teacher in El Paso, Texas and Las Cruces, N.M.
After Enrique wound through Mexico and crossed the Rio Grande, he ended up briefly in Seattle, where his uncle, a police officer, wasn’t much help. He soon after set roots in Gresham.
He loves Gresham and considers himself an Oregonian. He’s been a forklift operator for more than 15 years, working for several logistics and warehousing companies in Portland.
In two months as the pandemic took hold, things changed dramatically and dangerously. Especially for our undocumented brothers and sisters.
Desperate times call for desperate measures?
“I put in a new engine in that truck. I have owned it for 28 years. I did all the work on it,” he said, with tears welling up. He is proud of this vehicle.
For Enrique, the Mazda was a lifeline, shuttling him to and from warehouse forklifting jobs. He used it on weekends for landscaping gigs, for fruit picking in Yakima and Hood River and for hauling produce back to Gresham to sell.
He called up my friend Monica, and he was frantic. Nothing like this has ever happened to him. He has auto insurance, but has been driving with an expired license for three years. He told us that every day, every time he parks the truck, he checks tire pressure, all the lights, anything that might give a police officer an excuse to stop him.
Having that truck ripped off meant he had to report the incident to Gresham police.
He ended up getting the truck back. A few things were ripped off, but he got it back in running shape.
Things spiraled down from there, once he got back to the Gresham warehouse where he had worked three years as a forklift driver. The manager told Enrique his job had been eliminated because of COVID-19 work reduction. It turns out, however, the job was actually made available for the manager’s brother-in-law.
A quick note on my omissions: Monica said disclosing her real name, the staffing company’s name and the name of the warehouse where Enrique worked in this article would not be a problem for her. “But,” she said, “I am concerned that if ICE read the story, saw my name, saw the staffing company’s name, saw the name of the warehouse where we had a staffing contract with, then all bets would be off for undocumented workers and their families. I believe ICE would do a forced audit of both the staffing company and the warehouse.”
Enrique’s case is not a rare undocumented story for Oregon.
I talked with Ana Maria Mejia, from Madras, whose husband, Moisés, was deported this January after being in the country since 2005. Ana and Moisés are raising four children. Ana is Mexican-American, U.S. born. She’s got a college class load in early childhood development, and her Head Start gig has moved remotely to her small trailer in Madras.
She chats daily with her husband who is staying with his mother in El Salvador. He is keeping his head down because gangs there are going after everyone, even strait-laced guys like Moisés.
I reached out to Ana to ask about resources I could relay to Enrique — an immigration lawyer, other employment opportunities. Ana knows the routine with ICE. She and Moisés have spent thousands of dollars trying to get legal status for Moisés.
Even though Ana doesn’t know Enrique, she said that in Madras, several farms are hiring and have some accommodations for housing. Cabbage, lettuce and other crops still need tending and harvested.
She said she’d give Enrique names of people to call.
‘We all are illegal aliens!’
That uncle has since passed away in Mexico.
Enrique applied for other jobs. One was as a forklift driver at UPS. He said he was never asked whether he was OK with a pre-employment background check. But the company ran one before ever interviewing him anyway.
What UPS found was the date of birth he gave them did not match the date of birth for the Social Security card he had.
It was an old card for a deceased uncle.
Enrique didn’t know about the background check until he attempted to get another gig through the same staffing company, which had connected him with jobs for 17 years. The agency told him it was shutting him out based on information about his documents UPS had shared with it when it ran an unauthorized background check.
I’ve sought legal opinions on Enrique’s circumstances, and from people I have talked with, it would appear this is both an unethical and illegal decision.
One of those people, lawyer Micah Fargey out of Beaverton, said Enrique had little chance of getting any recourse from this labor issue. He said, “Enrique should just move on.” He said opening an Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries complaint might be one avenue, but Fargey has worked on clients’ BOLI complaints in the past with no positive result.
Monica told me that if she had still been working at the staffing agency, she would have gone directly to corporate offices and petitioned directly with the human resources department. She told me she had done that many times, putting undocumented people back on the payroll.
Enrique never gave UPS permission to release results of a background check to any person or any company.
Now he needs a labor attorney to get him reinstated into the staffing agency. Maybe it’s a $200 six-line letter from a lawyer explaining the illegality of using another company’s background check as grounds for not hiring.
Enrique has now contacted two attorneys with the help of his former boss, Monica. An attorney with Bailey Immigration law office in Portland indicated Enrique’s is likely a case of both “targeting” a Mexican worker and of an unauthorized background check.
This is an economic thing, stupid!
At $15 an hour, working 40-plus hours a week at this one logistics warehouse, he made more than $90,000 over a three-year period. That was taxed. unemployment insurance was taken out, as well as Social Security taxes.
Enrique never files for refunds because he doesn’t have a Social Security card matching his name. He wants to stay under the radar.
He’s been in this country a long time, so for example, just looking at 15 years working as a forklift driver, we can think about the raw numbers: He’s made upwards of $450,000. No tax refunds from the IRS, no “kicker refunds” from Oregon.
He’s never received food stamps, and he has no children in his household, so no free schooling, no temporary assistance for families in need.
What he did receive from capitalism were 12- and 14-hour days moving boxes, crates and materials for multibillion-dollar companies, at unsustainable wages.
A preamble to others
Our job was to make sure their coursework articulated from one community college to the next.
That was in the 1980s and 1990s. Many recriminations came crashing in on me as a writer, journalist and teacher: “How can we have all these programs for these illegals?” “How can you justify all this support for these kids whose parents broke the law and crossed in the U.S.?” And, “Why are you helping them and not us?”
I find these questions easy to answer. Just go down the aisles of a grocery store — look at the produce picked and packaged by undocumented immigrants. Know that the meat and poultry these naysayers’ families gobble up, and all those packaged goods, are butchered and packaged in many cases by so-called “illegals.”
In El Paso, I was a journalist, faculty member and activist. By night, I helped several groups with my specially outfitted Datsun pickup bring people from Juarez to El Paso to several way stations, or so-called safe houses.
If my editors had found out about this, or even my so-called liberal English department chairs, the proverbial pink slip would have been dropped onto me instantly.
Enrique’s story is an American story. In these fascist times, in these times of complete government failure, and under the dark cloud of Gestapo-like policing, every single move an undocumented human being makes has to be strategic, stealth and under the radar.
One man’s tribulations are another woman’s PTSD
Just a few months before this new gig at the printer, Monica recalls, tears flowing, her first staffing gig at the Fresh Del Monte Produce food processing plant in Portland. It was the day after ICE went in through the ceilings and took away more than 160 workers. They were driven off in blue ICE vans.
Many were from Mexico. “The agents crashed into the offices, and basically it looked like a war zone when I showed up the next day. That was my first day on the job,” she said.
Toil, wet limbs, cold working conditions — that’s our fruit and vegetable cutting trade. Monica said that all the personal protective equipment like aprons, rubberized long sleeves and gloves ended up destroyed or went missing.
“The manager, who drove a Porsche Cayenne to work, basically vanished a few days after the ICE raid. I was left to my own devices. I had to cut out the head and arms of large Glad bags for them. It was humiliating.”
While she attempted to find 80 temporary workers for the three shifts at the Fresh Del Monte plant, every day mothers, children, husbands and wives of the workers who were carted off showed up wanting to know of their loved ones’ whereabouts and well-being.
“Not one of the people that were taken by ICE — and some had papers but not on them at work — came back to work at Del Monte,” she said.
While talking about Enrique, Monica recalls her own Mexican roots, though she jokingly states she’s pale-skinned and speaks no Spanish.
“I feel as if I have a duty to my people. The saddest part of that Del Monte episode was a couple, Paula and Cero; older, but good workers. The trash bag I had to use for protective apron went to Paula’s feet. Both of them just smiled and thanked me.”
We all are illegal aliens
Monica’s eyes tear up again. “Here I thought I put them somewhere safe. Both were doing well. Both were full-time employees. One day we got a call from the HR over there. Something had happened. “
Paula spoke no English, and Cero very little. But they loved working at United Salad, even the demanding, cold food production area.
It turned out that where the time card machine had been placed, there was blind spot, and one day while clocking out, Paula was hit head-on by a forklift. She ended flat on her back, head to concrete. She never spoke after that, and she passed away three months later in a care facility.
She had no broken bones, but the brain injury was enough to end her life. “Cero went to Mexico with Paula to bury her. Cero never came back to the United States.”
Printing companies, restaurants, construction sites, packaging, manufacturing, food handling operations, meat factories and any other places where one might read in the news about large groups of workers not only exposed to coronavirus, but infected with COVID-19, are worksites where guys like Enrique and couples like Cero and Paula make a living.
Enrique is 50, and he is a hard worker. For years he had rented an apartment in his own name. He never had to live in a tent or his truck for long periods of time. For five years he’s been renting rooms from family, and other times he is couch surfing.
He has several brothers and sisters in Washington and Idaho. Many in his family also are undocumented, but most have better forms of ID to make it through the system. Having a spouse and children helps stave off depression and loneliness.
Enrique is depressed about his situation.
He described to us better days: He used to DJ at parties and weddings. He loves landscaping. He learned how to fish in Oregon.
Enrique began working a new job recently, for a parts distribution warehouse. He had to miss a day of his new job in order to testify against the person who stole his truck. He needed that income, plus it’s a new position, and many times these companies frown on taking days off, even for court. Luckily he could appear via webinar, which meant he no longer had to worry about exposing himself to ICE by going to court.
The wall is the closing of the American mind, heart
In any case, the reality is we have Guatemalans in Lincoln County, where I reside, who are so disenfranchised that they need help getting basics like rice, beans and masa. Many speak Indigenous languages, and many are so afraid of any bureaucracy they never seek help. Some have children in the Lincoln County school system.
The reality is Enrique has no rights in the country — in the state — where he has set down roots, has been law-abiding and has contributed to both his community and the companies that have exploited his labor.
If we believe “we all are illegal aliens,” then we might understand how now our government and both major political parties treat us as “less than” human and in fact disenfranchise us no matter our legal status. We are seeing huge bailouts for large corporations. We see huge profits gobbled up by Jeff Bezos and other billionaires.
Yet, the people I work with in the nonprofit program I am running in Lincoln and Jefferson counties are poor, are in a paranoid state, have lost jobs on the coast — many are cooks, in hospitality and work in retail.
Most are American born, but in many ways, they, too, are treated as suspect, just as those who are Mexican and without papers. Many have no ability to get driver’s licenses, and many have no way to get housing because of past evictions. Many have unresolved fines and debts.
“We are all illegal aliens” in the eyes of the rich and the patriarchs.
The post Semper Fidelis: Always Faithful to Social and Racial Justice first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Date pushed back to October amid concerns over redacted drawings in plans for 20,000-sq-metre complex
Ministers have delayed a decision on whether to grant planning permission to a proposed Chinese “super-embassy” in London amid concerns about redacted drawings in the building’s plans.
The deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, was due to make a decision on 9 September but has pushed this back to 21 October, saying more time is needed to consider the plans for the development, which would occupy a sprawling 20,000 sq metres (5 acres) at Royal Mint Court in east London.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
Three media spokespeople addressed the 98th week of New Zealand solidarity rallies for Palestine in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland today, criticising the quality of news reporting about the world’s biggest genocide crisis this century.
Speakers at other locations around the country also condemned what they said was biased media coverage.
The critics said they were affirming their humanity in solidarity with the people of Palestine as the United Nations this week officially declared a man-made famine in Gaza because of Israel’s weaponisation of starvation against the besieged enclave with 2 million population.
More than 62,000 Palestinians have been killed in the 22 months of conflict – mostly women and children.
One of the major criticisms was that the New Zealand media has consistently framed the series of massacres as a “war” between Israel and Hamas instead of a military land grab based on ethnic cleansing and genocide.
The first speaker, Mick Hall, a former news agency journalist who is currently an independent political columnist, said the way news media had covered these crimes had “undoubtedly affected public opinion”.
“As Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza devolved into a full-blown genocide, our media continued to frame Israel’s attack on Gaza as a war against Hamas, while they uncritically recorded Western leaders’ claims that Israel was exercising a ‘right of self-defence’,” he said.
NZ media lacking context
New Zealand news outlets continued to “present an ahistorical account of what has transpired since October 7, shorn of context, ignoring Israel’s history of occupation, of colonial violence against the Palestinian people”.
“An implicit understanding that violence and ethnic cleansing forms part of the organisational DNA of Zionism should have shaped how news stories were framed and presented over the past 22 months.
“Instead, newsroom leaders took their lead from our politicians, from the foreign policy positions from those in Washington and other aligned centres of power.”
Hall said newsrooms had not taken a “neutral position” — “nor are they attempting to keep us informed in any meaningful sense”.
“They failed to robustly document the type of evidence of genocide now before the International Court of Justice.
“By wilfully declining to adjudicate between contested claims of Israel and its victims, they failed to meet the informational needs of democratic citizenship in a most profound way.
“They lowered the standard of news, instead of upholding it, as they so sanctimoniously tell us.”
Evans slams media ‘apologists’
Award-winning New Zealand cartoonist Malcolm Evans congratulated the crowd of about 300 protesters for “being on the right side of history”.
“As we remember more than 240 journalists, camera and media people, murdered, assassinated, by Zionist Israel — who they were and the principles they stood for we should not forget our own media,” he said.
“The media which, contrary to the principles they claim to stand for, tried to tell us Zionist Israeli genocide was justified.”
“Whatever your understanding of the conflict in Palestine, which has brought you here today and for these past many months, it won’t have come first from the mainstream media.
“It wasn’t our reporters living in a tent in Gaza whose lives, hopes and dreams were blasted into oblivion because they exposed Zionist Israel’s evil intent.
“The reporters whose witness to Zionist Israel’s war crimes sparked your outrage were not from the ranks of Western media apologists.”
Describing the mainstream media as “pimps for propaganda”, Evans said that in any “decent world” he would not be standing there — instead the New Zealand journalists organisation would be, “expressing solidarity with their murdered Middle Eastern colleagues”.
Palestinian journalists owed debt
David Robie, author and editor of Asia Pacific Report, said the world owed a huge debt to the Palestinian journalists in Gaza.
“Although global media freedom groups have conflicting death toll numbers, it is generally accepted that more than 270 journalists and media workers have been killed — many of them deliberately targeted by the IDF [Israeli Defence Force], even killing their families as well.”
Dr Robie stressed that the Palestinian journalist death toll had eclipsed that of the combined media deaths of the American Civil War, First and Second World Wars, Korean War, Vietnam War, Cambodian War, Yugoslavia Wars, Afghan War, and the ongoing Ukraine War.
“The Palestinian death toll of journalists is greater than the combined death toll of all these other wars,” he said. “This is shocking and shameful.”
He pointed out that when Palestinian reporter Anas al-Sharif was assassinated on August 10, his entire television crew was also wiped out ahead of the Israeli invasion of Gaza City — “eliminating the witnesses, that’s what Israel does”.
Six journalists died that day in an air strike, four of them from Al Jazeera, which is banned in Israel.
Dr Robie also referred to “disturbing reports” about the existence of an IDF military unit — the so-called “legitimisation cell” — tasked with smearing and targeting journalists in Gaza with fake information.
He condemned the New Zealand media for republishing some of these “counter-narratives” without question.
“This is shameful because news editors know that they are dealing with an Israeli government with a history of lying and disinformation; a government that is on trial with the International Court of Justice for ‘plausible genocide’; and a prime minister wanted on an International Criminal Court arrest warrant to answer charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity,” he said.
“Why would you treat this government as a credible source without scrutiny?”
Mock media cemetery
The protest included a mock pavement cemetery with about 20 “bodies” of murdered journalists and blue “press” protective vests, and placards declaring “Killing journalists is killing the truth”, “Genocide: Zionism’s final solution” and “Zionism shames Jewish tradition”.
The demonstrators marched around Te Komititanga Square, pausing at strategic moments as Palestinians read out the names of the hundreds of killed Gazan journalists to pay tribute to their courage and sacrifice.
Last year, the Gazan journalists were collectively awarded the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize for their “courage and commitment to freedom of expression”.
In Ōtautahi Christchurch today, one of the speakers at the Palestine solidarity rally there was author and journalist Saige England, who called on journalists to “speak the truth on Gaza”.
“The truth of a genocide carried out by bombs and snipers, and now there is another weapon — slow starvation, mutilation by hunger,” she said.
“The truth is a statement by Israel that journalists are ‘the enemy’. Israel says journalists are the enemy, what does that tell you?
“Why? Because it has carried out invasions, apartheid and genocide for decades.”
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
Israel’s ongoing occupation of the Palestinian territory has seen countless devastating human rights violations, but few are as pervasive and enduring as the widespread imprisonment of Palestinians.
In East Jerusalem and the West Bank, a region already marked by a long history of occupation and dispossession, the detention of Palestinians by Israeli authorities reflects a calculated strategy of control and intimidation, a tactic systematically used to suppress political activism, resistance, and dissent. As of 22 August 2025, 10,800 Palestinians – excluding those from Gaza who have been forcibly disappeared – remain in the Israeli occupation’s jails, a figure that represents an ongoing campaign of occupation and repression that profoundly affects Palestinian families and communities.
Since 1967, an estimated one million Palestinians have passed through Israeli occupation detention centres – equivalent to roughly 20% of the Palestinian population. The sheer volume underscores that imprisonment has been normalised as a key instrument of Israeli military and political policy.
Dr. Samah Jabr is a psychiatrist, former head of mental health with the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Health, and author of a new book titled Radiance in Pain and Resilience: The Reverberation of Palestinian Historical Trauma.
She said that detention of an individual has far reaching consequences on families, and society in general:
When someone is taken prisoner by the occupation, the punishment does not stop at the individual. Families are torn apart, children grow up with absence and uncertainty, sometimes they have to grow up faster, to fill the void of an absent father or brother, and the entire communities live with fear and grief. The policy of mass imprisonment is a deliberate strategy to intimidate, control and destroy Palestinian society, to weaken its social fabric, and to transmit trauma across generations. It aims to not only silence individuals, but to erode the resilience of the Palestinian community as it struggles for liberation and freedom.
The occupation enforces a system of apartheid against all Palestinians living under its effective control, and this includes the legal system. While Israeli citizens and the hundreds of thousands of illegal colonial Jewish settlers in the West Bank are subjected to Israeli civilian law, which is governed by an international humanitarian justice standard, this is not the case for Palestinians and their children, who have far fewer rights and protections.
Instead, they are subjected to more than 1,800 military orders, which govern nearly every aspect of their lives, and have been in place for almost 60 years. The occupation’s police and soldiers are there to enforce these orders, which are justified under the premise of ‘state security’ and act as a legal code, criminalizing activities deemed a threat to the occupation’s control, such as movement, political expression, association, and protests.
When Palestinians are arrested for violating a military order, they are prosecuted in a military court, which are exclusively run by military personnel and active duty soldiers, and have been criticised by international legal experts, the United Nations, and human rights organisations for lacking transparency and not providing fair trials.
These courts remain at the heart of the occupation’s regime of repression and control, and although international law states that civilians must never be brought before military courts, Israel persists in being the only country in the world that automatically and systematically prosecutes children in them.
General director of Defense for Children International -Palestine (DCIP) Khaled Quzmar has worked for more than thirty years as a defense lawyer, representing many child prisoners inside the Israeli military courts. He said that while Israeli civilian law is governed by an international humanitarian justice standard, Palestinians have no rights, and are also not guaranteed a fair trial:
According to the Israeli court statistics, and from my own experience as a lawyer, I can say that the conviction rate in a military court is around 99.9 percent.
War on Want works to end global poverty and challenges human rights abuses by corporations and governments. According to War on Want’s senior campaigner for Palestine Neil Sammonds, the UK is deeply complicit in Israel’s military court system. He said that:
The UK government and UK-based corporations are supporting Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian land – which underpins Israel’s unjust ‘need’ to lock up and abuse huge numbers of Palestinian people. The UK has also had, for decades, a close military, security, political and legal relationship with Israel, and senior members of the UK and Israeli legal systems have also had regular exchanges on learnings. Although there is clear evidence of Israel’s widespread, systematic torture and ill-treatment of Palestinians in its military court system, including the torture of children, our government has done next to nothing to stop Israel’s abuses. This country could use its considerable leverage to hold Israel to account for its unjust military court system – but it simply chooses not to.
Legislative changes from November 2024 have lowered the age of criminal responsibility for those Palestinians under Israeli military law in the occupied West Bank to 12-years-old. This means Palestinian children aged 12 and above can be arrested, prosecuted, and imprisoned and, although strictly prohibited under international law, courts are now able to sentence Palestinian children as young as 12 to life in prison for crimes labeled as ‘terrorism’, even if committed as part of a protest or unrest.
UN experts have expressed alarm at these new measures. While Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem, are subject to Israeli civilian law, the minimum age of criminal responsibility is also 12 years old. The majority of children are arrested either because of stone throwing – which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years, or expressing support for Hamas, solidarity with Gaza, or inciting against the Israeli occupation by posting, sharing or interacting on social media.
According to Quzmar, it is common for children as young as six or seven to be arrested during a raid on a house in the middle of the night, and interrogated for hours by the Israeli military, before being released.
There are more than 3613 Palestinians, including women and children, being held in Israeli prisons under administrative detention, meaning they have been arrested and imprisonment without charge or trial, and also without any upper time limit.
The evidence against them is kept secret, with even their lawyers barred from seeing it. Because only the Israeli judge and Israeli prosecutor have access to the files, which are used to justify the continued detention, it is impossible for a defendant and their lawyer to mount a proper defense.
For this reason, this practice is considered a violation of international law but, according to Quzmar, about 40% of cases involve children being held under administrative detention. He said that:
In the past, we used to have no more than 10 cases a year, but now the cases are even more than 150.
Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem has described the Israeli prison system as “a network of torture camps”. It has never treated Palestinians well, but since October 2023, conditions for these detainees have deteriorated dramatically, reaching unprecedented and systematic levels of abuse and neglect. Under international law, this ill-treatment is not only fundamentally illegal but is also considered torture.
Not only has the occupation thrown a huge number of Palestinian citizens – including politicians, social media activists, journalists, and former released prisoners – into detention centres, but testimonies from released prisoners, along with numerous reports, detail systematic torture, severe beatings, humiliation, and mistreatment at the hands of Israeli military and prison officials. There have also been numerous deaths in custody attributed to torture and medical neglect.
It is the far-right National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is directly responsible for the police and the Israel Prison Service, and personally oversees the torture operations that the prisoners are subjected to. He has a history of extreme and provocative rhetoric against Palestinians, has publicly called for executing Palestinian detainees by shooting them in the head, and has demanded legislation to impose the death penalty on Palestinian prisoners accused of violence against Israelis. He has also actively worked to worsen the conditions of Palestinian prisoners, saying in a statement on X on July 1:
Since I took office as Minister of National Security, one of the highest goals I set for myself was to exacerbate the conditions of ‘terrorists’ in prisons and reduce their rights to a minimum.
Ben-Gvir said he implemented the reforms by reducing the conditions of the ‘terrorists’ to a minimum, saying:
We stopped financial deposits, canceled the canteens, removed electrical appliances from cells, stopped outdoor walks, significantly reduced the time spent in bathrooms and stopped the lenient menu which was converted to a simple menu. In short, we completely stopped the summer camp conditions.
Ben-Gvir’s solution to overcrowding in the prisons, is to “legislate the death penalty for ‘terrorists’’.
The Palestinian Prisoner’s Club (PPC) is a prominent Palestinian NGO, founded in 1993 by former prisoners. It advocates for the rights of thousands of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons by providing legal support, documenting conditions, and offering assistance to detainees’ families.
The Club also raises awareness about prisoner issues nationally and internationally, making it a key voice on matters concerning Palestinian detainees and their treatment. It has warned of an escalating health crisis and systematic crimes against these Palestinian political prisoners.
Abdallah Alzighari is the President of the Palestinian Prisoner’s Club. He said that:
Since the 7th of October, 2023, we have documented the arrest of more than 18,500 Palestinian citizens from the West Bank and Jerusalem. Hundreds of prisoners are sick, and they have provided shocking testimonies about the deprivation of their most basic human rights. There is no dignity, no respect, and absolutely no medical care for the prisoners inside the detention centres. In addition, there are thousands from the Gaza Strip, for whom we were unable to obtain accurate numbers due to the nature of their arrests and the severe policy of enforced disappearance they face, with very little information being disclosed about them.
Based on statistics and our monitoring, we have also documented the martyrdom of approximately 300 Palestinians since the beginning of the Israeli occupation in 1967. However, during the past 22 months – since the start of this war of extermination – we have documented 76 Palestinians who were killed inside Israeli occupation prisons due to the crimes of starvation, medical neglect, and brutal assaults to which prisoners are subjected to.
There figures are just for those Palestinians we know about, but there are more. We strongly believe – based on testimonies from released prisoners and detainees from the Gaza Strip – that the occupation has executed dozens of prisoners inside Israeli detention camps, specifically in the camps established after the beginning of the genocide in Gaza but, until now, the occupation has not disclosed their identities.
In March, 17-year-old Walid Khalid Abdullah Ahmad collapsed and died in the yard of the prison in which he was incarcerated and, according to Defense for Children International – Palestine, his autopsy indicated that he had been systematically starved and abused for months until he finally collapsed, struck his head, and died.
The report, which was conducted in Tel Aviv, also states he suffered from “extreme, likely prolonged malnutrition”, and that he likely suffered from an inflamed colon, leading to frequent diarrhoea and severe dehydration. Walid had also been suffering from scabies – a dangerous skin disease if left untreated – since October, which he caught shortly after being admitted to the prison. And, in December, he had also reported head trauma and a severe lack of food available to detainees.
Walid was in good health when he was arrested at the end of September, 2024, and had wanted to play for the Palestinian national football team, but was unable to do so due to barriers enforced by the occupation – which now continues to prolong his family’s suffering, by refusing to hand over Walid’s body, and not even permitting them to see it.
Quzmar said:
I’ve never heard of behaviour like this happening anywhere else in the world, but what happened to Walid could happen at any minute to any one of the hundreds of Palestinian children in detention, because they are all living in the same situation. The child was not even convicted in the court, or sentenced. In the past, children were arrested, but their rights – for food, medical health and treatment, and sometimes even education, were offered. But now, prisoners are starving inside the prison, and medical treatment is denied. If the child gets sick and needs medicine, no one cares. These things are happening inside Israeli prisons with all prisoners, regardless of age, and it is a war crime. While children are denied these rights, Israel considers this to be saving the security of the area, in order to let the Israelis live in peace.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has been conducting visits to Palestinian detainees held in Israeli places of detention since 1968, and over this long period, it has facilitated millions of family visits for the detainees and engaged in monitoring their treatment and conditions, to make sure there are no violations of international humanitarian law.
But since October 2023, the occupation has imposed a blanket ban on ICRC visits, raising serious concerns about the treatment of Palestinians detainees, while also suspending all family visits, including those for children.
Quzmar said lawyer visits have also become extremely difficult to arrange:
In the past, I used to arrange a visit within a few hours. Now, the minimum time I need is one month, to arrange the visit. Often the Israeli police now announce an emergency situation in the prison, and the lawyer then has to immediately leave, and rearrange another visit in the future. This is now happening with all the lawyers.
A new report, titled Enduring Hell: Gaza Detainees Face Severe Israeli Torture and Terror Behind Bars, by the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS), and the Commission of Detainees Affairs and Ex-Detainees’ Affairs, state those abducted from the occupied Gaza Strip are enduring even worse levels of torture and abuse than other Palestinian detainees.
Since the start of its genocidal campaign of forced displacement and ethnic cleansing, Israeli occupation forces have detained thousands of civilians from across the Gaza Strip – including women, children, older people, the wounded, as well as health workers, and journalists. Between late July and mid-August, testimonies were obtained – under strict conditions – by lawyers during visits to detainees in the underground ‘Rakevet’ section of Ramla Prison, and the ’Sde Teiman’ military camp – both notorious for systematic torture and medical abuse of Palestinians arrested from occupied Gaza.
All detainees who were visited confirmed they are suffering from extreme hunger, while the overcrowded prison system has actively contributed to the spread of infections and diseases, such as scabies, by depriving detainees of basic hygiene, sanitation and medical care. The testimonies also reveal systematic torture-beatings and finger-breaking, sexual assault, along with total isolation-detainees are denied sunlight and allowed out to the yard every other day for 20 minutes, handcuffed and forced to keep their heads down.
In addition to the abuses mentioned in these briefings, there are also multiple credible reports and testimonies indicating serious sexual violence, including rape and brutal abuse, committed against Palestinian detainees in Israeli detention facilities such as Sde Teiman detention camp.
These reports describe detainees being subjected to rape, sexual assault with objects, and horrific torture methods by Israeli guards and soldiers. Many victims have suffered severe injuries, and died from this abuse. According to the briefings, 46 of the 76 martyred political prisoners identified, since October 2023, were people arrested from Gaza.
Ramy Abdu is assistant professor of law and finance, founder and chairman of Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. He described to the Canary, the undignified, abusive treatment endured by all Palestinians detained by the occupation, but said the following is systematic practice for those detained from Gaza:
The very first moment any Palestinian is arrested, they are forced to strip completely, and undergo a humiliating thorough search, often involving police dogs. Afterwards, the detainee is blindfolded, restrained, given prison clothing, and assigned a number for future identification, before being transferred to an interrogation centre. The treatment is extremely degrading, with detainees deprived of their most basic legal and human rights, including access to food, water, sanitation facilities and personal hygiene items. Even knowing the time or date is considered prohibited under the prison authorities’ regulations.
The occupation also continues to commit the crime of enforced disappearance against large numbers of Palestinian citizens abducted from Gaza, refusing to disclose their identities or locations of detention.
Quzmar said there are hundreds of missing youth, and about two weeks ago he started receiving calls from concerned families in Gaza who had lost their children. He currently has a list of 11 he is trying to locate. Once the parents have checked at the hospitals, the cemetery, asked everyone, and found nothing, they then contact the ICRC. If the ICRC has no information, these people are then given the numbers of lawyers, and Quzmar’s number if they have missing children.
He will then try to provide information as to their child’s whereabouts – is he alive in prison, or has he been killed? There is now a lot of bureaucracy involved, and it could take Quzmar months to get an answer from the Israeli authorities – if he gets an answer at all – but if he is told there is no information about the person, the case is then considered to be a disappearance.
He said:
There are two scenarios. The Israeli army raids a neighbourhood – which are not buildings any more, but tents. Sometimes they also raid schools, that are now used as shelter for civilians. They ask everyone from the age of 14 up to 60 or 70, to get out. They then force them to take off their clothes, just leaving them in their underwear, and put them in trucks without saying anything to the families where they are taking them. But, also, everyday we see children going to the GHF sites, and waiting for food, and then the Israeli army is shooting everywhere, people run from the place and family members go missing. I have also received calls from families in Syria, saying the Israeli army arrested or took their child from the field, even when they were outside taking care of the animals in the mountains. Really, I feel this time, more than any time before, I feel hopeless, and how can I give hope to the families of these missing children when I don’t trust the army to give me the right answer, if any answer at all.
There are currently 49 female political prisoners detained by the Israeli occupation. According to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society this number includes two abducted from Gaza, two minors, and two pregnant women.
Rima Balawi, who is eight months pregnant and nearing delivery, was arrested in February on allegations of ‘incitement’ via social media – a claim which is increasingly being used as a broad justification to expand detentions and surveillance, says the PPS.
Recent documentation by rights organisations has revealed unprecedented violations against the women, starting from their arrest, through interrogation and transfer to their current detention in Damon prison. In the first half of this month (August), Damon administration carried out four violent crackdowns against the Palestinian female prisoners. During these raids, prison forces assaulted detainees, and in two incidents, gas and police dogs were used.
According to the PPS, these assaults are part of a systematic, ongoing policy that has intensified since the start of the genocide in Gaza. Female prisoners suffer from the same conditions as male detainees: systematic torture, humiliation, sexual violence and solitary confinement, while also enduring medical denial, neglect and starvation, although many require specialised medical care, including Fidaa Assaf, who has cancer. Female detainees are also denied visits from their children and the rest of their family.
Since October 2023, there have been more than 570 arrests among Palestinian women and girls, some of whom are illegally taken hostage – arrested although they are not suspected of any wrong doing – and are used by the Israeli occupation forces solely as a means of pressuring relatives to turn themselves in. This tactic is routinely used by the occupation, even with children.
Alzighari said:
The Israeli occupation violates all international agreements and laws related to the rights of prisoners, specifically the third and fourth Geneva Conventions [concerned with prisoners of war, and the protection of civilians in time of war, respectively]. The prisoners are living through a form of hell, subjected to the most brutal forms of torture on a daily basis, in the absence of all forms of human rights and legal oversight.
The reality of Palestinian imprisonment under Israeli occupation reveals a deep and ongoing crisis of human rights and dignity. Behind the statistics are thousands of shattered families, children robbed of their childhoods, and communities scarred by trauma that spans generations.
Yet, during this relentless repression, the voices of Palestinian prisoners, advocates, and human rights defenders persist in demanding justice and accountability. Their struggle calls on the international community to recognise and act against these grave injustices, to uphold human rights, and to support a future where all Palestinians can live free from fear, oppression, and imprisonment.
The road to peace and reconciliation will only be possible when these crimes are acknowledged and remedied, and the humanity of every individual is respected.
Featured image and additional images supplied
By Charlie Jaay
This post was originally published on Canary.
