On Monday 9 December, a cabinet minster confirmed there are no plans to let Shamima Begum return to the UK. Meanwhile, the government is re-assessing the terror group of Abu Mohammed al Jolani, former member of al Qaeda:
Wait so Al Jolani who is on record massacring rural villagers in Syria because they didn’t want an ISIS caliphate gets his terrorist groups designation ‘re-assessed’ but Shamima Begum can’t come home? https://t.co/y5AyQjMUH6
Shamima Begum was trafficked from the UK aged 15 to marry an ISIS fighter. Now, she finds herself stranded in a Syrian Refugee camp, surrounded by chaos after terrorist group HTS ousted Bashar al-Assad.
So Shamima Begum, trafficked as a child and now it turns out those trafficking her were actually allied forces heroes. So will she get a heroine’s welcome home?
During Sky News’s reporting, they labelled Abu Mohammed al Jolani as a ‘rebel leader’. Both the US and Russia have labelled him a terrorist, and the US still has a $10m bounty on his head. He was fundamental in Hayat Tahrir al Sham’s (HTS) offensive which toppled the dictatorship in Syria.
HTS, previously known as the Nusra Front, is a former wing of al Qaeda, and before that the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) – and also briefly ISIS itself. Estimates suggest they have around 3,000 troops. Yet the UK government has said it could remove HTS from its list of banned terror organisations.
Wow. His terrorism is cured. It’s a Christmas miracle.
Al Jolani has spent years trying to distance himself from al Qaeda and his hardcore jihadi extremist views. He claims to now embrace ‘pluralism and tolerance’:
Just watched the CNN interview with ex-Syrian Al Qaeda leader turned pretend statesman Mohammed Al Jolani where he promises to be fair to all sects and build institutions that respect diversity, all while lying that he never killed civilians or destroyed homes.
So why are the western media presenting Al Jolani as ‘reformed’ when he is a literal terrorist? Meanwhile, the UK government are leaving Shamima Begum to rot in a refugee camp – a girl that left the UK as a 15-year-old to marry an adult ISIS fighter:
Can someone please explain how being groomed by ISIS as a teenager was enough to banish Shamima begum from the UK but Jolani is being interviewed on CNN claiming his terrorist isis identity was ‘just a phase’ and now he’s not a terrorist anymore? And we’re meant to believe him?
When Shamima Begum left the UK, a man named Mohammed al-Rashed met het at an Istanbul bus station. Since then, British police have admitted that he was acting as an informant for Canada’s CSIS spy agency:
So Shamima Begum, a British Bangladeshi citizen who was groomed by Canadian intelligence, is what now?
It was also acknowledged that her school, Tower Hamlets council, and the Met Police all failed and therefore effectively contributed to Begum’s trafficking. Despite this, the UK government are still classing her as a terrorist and stopping her from returning to the UK:
Seems a bit hypocritical that UK Govt continues to deny Shamima Begum citizenship after going to join a terrorist organisation, but the UK Government is now going to lift the terror designation of that same organisation in order to have diplomatic relations with it.
I’m all confused, is ISIS now our friend, if it is can Shamima Begum please be forgiven and allowed to come home?
— Lisa Woman of a Certain Age Tucker-Clemens (@TuckerClemens) December 9, 2024
Maybe if Shamima Begum leads a coup, the UK might let her back in?
Now that we, as a nation, support Islamic terrorists in the wake of the Syrian coup, shouldn’t we be allowing Shamima Begum to return to the UK with open arms? Or am I missing the point? pic.twitter.com/xzFQDdQRRy
— Mannie Quinn & The Mighty Hornets (@MannieMighty1) December 8, 2024
Richard Madeley who in 2021 compared Shamima Begum to the Hitler Youth and wanted to hang her…now says Syrias “rebels” are ok …What an establishment hypocrite#gmb
According to the UK government – ‘our enemy’s enemy is our friend’. That is of course, unless they’re a Brown woman, then fuck them.
The UK’s Tory government were nothing short of callous and racist for stripping her of her citizenship, effectively making her stateless.
Now, the Labour Party government saying they’ll reassess an organisation that’s rife with human rights abuses, purely because it’s politically convenient, is nothing short of hypocritical. Refusing to reconsider her citizenship because she joined a terrorist organisation as a child – thanks to a Canadian asset grooming her – is truly disgusting.
Donald Trump campaigned on the promise of carrying out the mass detention and deportation of immigrants.
President Joe Biden spent most of his term widening the government’s ability to incarcerate and deport people; inflating the Immigration and Customs Enforcement budget by millions; increasing the number of beds in prisons; and expanding the use of private prisons, some of which have been plagued with poor living conditions and allegations of sexual assault and abuse. In this past fiscal year, Biden has deported more than 700,000 people — the most within a single year since 2010, which were largely in response to a major increase in people crossing the border during his term.
Trump is inheriting these boosts to the deportation infrastructure as he looks to fulfill his promises of deporting 1 million people each year with 10,000 new Border Patrol agents and help from the military and local law enforcement. He has announced former ICE director and architect of family separation policy Tom Homan as his “border czar”; Stephen Miller, who previously oversaw both family separation and the Muslim travel ban, will return to be deputy chief of staff for policy as well as Trump’s homeland security adviser.
With less than 50 days until his inauguration, immigrant community groups and rights activists are taking his word for it and bracing for the worst. They face drastically different conditions for organizing, depending on their state and local governments, but share some common struggles: lack of funding and public support compared to Trump’s first term in office, and potential burnout from previous fights against deportation.
Less Funding, More Fatigue
In the initial days after Trump’s first election in 2016, people poured into the streets to protest against Trump’s anti-immigrant threats and his promise to build a border wall.
“And that was connected to a lot of attention, both from philanthropy, as well as from elected officials,” said Shiu-Ming Cheer, deputy director of immigrant and racial justice at the California Immigrant Policy Center. “There’s still definitely interest in defending immigrant communities. But I don’t feel like there’s the same sort of renewed resistance that we saw at the end of 2016 — I hope that changes.”
Cheer said that leading up to this year’s election, organizers across California expressed concern that there wouldn’t be enough money to go around to fund organizations that assist immigrants through the turmoil of a second Trump presidency. Most grants from foundations last just one or two years, she said, which doesn’t give immigrant rights groups enough runway to build and plan for the future.
“I generally sense more fatigue this time, and maybe people are just tired or depressed,” Cheer said. Many people who anchored the fight against Trump’s anti-immigrant policies the first time around have since left the movement, taking with them valuable knowledge and experience built during Trump’s first term.
Among those who have remained in the fight is Lorena Quiroz, a Jackson, Mississippi-based organizer who was among the first to offer aid in August 2019 when ICE tore through six different poultry plants across central Mississippi in a massive raid operation, detaining 680 immigrant workers. After the raid, immigrant rights groups in the region received an injection of much-needed philanthropic funding. From that moment, Quiroz founded the nonprofit Immigrant Alliance for Justice and Equity. She noted that this time around, fundraising has been more difficult. She said several funders have reached out to Quiroz since the election, saying that they are thinking about her, but have yet to offer donations.
In recent months, her organization has been preparing the community for similar operations, drawing on practices from the past five years. But she said she’s worried about whether her group, which has a small team of six staff, and others in the region will have the capacity to handle another surge in ICE detainments. And she’s aware she’s not the only organization in need of more resources.
“Every state needs help, some more than others. In Texas, they’ve already attacked nonprofits and worker centers — the whole nation is on fire right now,” Quiroz said. “So knowing that, I feel guilty, like, who do I ask for help?”
Anti-Immigrant Movement
Over the past four years, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s Operation Lonestar has detained more than 500,000 immigrants over the past four years. Abbott has also exploited immigrants as political pawns, bussing more than 100,000 people to Democratic-led cities such as New York, D.C., and Chicago to draw attention to an increase of people crossing the U.S.–Mexico border (crossings at the southern border have since fallen, following stricter policies from the Mexican government and Biden administration).
Abbott has also cracked down on nonprofit organizations supporting immigrant communities in Texas. Attorney General Ken Paxton is investigating immigrant aid organizations for allegedly assisting people cross the border illegally in an attempt to close down the aid groups. In August, Paxton sued a longtime Houston-based immigrant rights group, FIEL Houston, for making statements on social media that referred to Trump as “El Hijo Del Diablo,” (son of the Devil) and called Abbott “a violent racist fascist man,” according to the Houston Chronicle. The state’s lawsuit seeks to dissolve the nonprofit.
“We have to be careful in what we do, and how we do it, and how we say it.”
“We have to be careful in what we do, and how we do it, and how we say it, because the governor is using every tool in their power to destroy nonprofit organizations that are supporting the community,” said José Palma, who lives near Houston and is the coordinator of the National Temporary Protected Status Alliance. His group seeks to preserve the TPS program, which currently allows nearly 1.2 million people who have fled armed conflicts or natural disasters to remain in the U.S., and pushes for legislation that would grant TPS holders a path to citizenship.
Both Trump and Vice President-elect Sen. JD Vance have committed to ending the TPS program, which applies to people from 16 countries, including Venezuela, Haiti, El Salvador, Ukraine, Afghanistan, and Honduras. When Trump tried to end TPS during his first term, Palma, who himself is a TPS holder from El Salvador, was a part of organizing around a lawsuit that delayed the administration’s efforts.
Palma says activists are ready to again defend against Trump’s attacks. He has spent the last year preparing organizers and other TPS holders in the event of mass deportations. But this time, Palma has also noticed less funding coming in compared to 2016. In addition, he said he has noticed more members of the immigrant community in Texas expressing fear of the increasingly restrictive policies, which has made people more hesitant to step out and organize.
“The community is a little more afraid to go to the streets and take direct action as I have seen in some other places,” Palma said. He contrasted it with Massachusetts, where he had lived for 25 years before moving to Texas several years ago. Democratic Gov. Maura Healey said she would refuse Trump’s attempts to deputize state police for detaining immigrants and committed to pursuing litigation and executive orders to protect its immigrant communities. Meanwhile, days after the election, officials in Texas offered the oncoming Trump administration a 1,400-acre ranch to build a detention facility where authorities can incarcerate thousands of immigrants as a final stop before deportation.
“The anxiety for sure is bigger — I’ve heard from some of my friends that are afraid even just to come for vacation during the holiday season to Texas because Texas is seen as one of the pioneers of the anti-immigrant movement right now,” Palma added.
Crackdowns Already Happening
In states like Mississippi, which have little to no legal protections for its undocumented immigrant community, such detentions people fear are already happening.
Days before Trump’s reelection, as both presidential candidates were drumming up crackdowns on immigration, Quiroz noticed an increase in local law enforcement arresting undocumented people and handing them over to ICE. Although no agencies in the state have official agreements with ICE under its 287(g) program, police in Mississippi frequently collaborate with the immigration authority.
In one case in late November, a young man who was undocumented was detained by police in Meridian for driving without a license, Quiroz said. Mississippi does not allow undocumented immigrants to apply for a driver’s license. The man was released with a citation to pay a fine. But when he went to a police station to pay the fine, officers arrested the man and kept him in custody under a two-day “ICE hold” before federal authorities would later pick him up.
Adams County Correctional Center in Natchez, a private prison run by CoreCivic and the state’s largest immigration detention center, held around 1,400 people throughout most of 2024. But at the end of October, a week from the election, the private prison’s average daily population shot up by more than 500, bringing to the total to 2,067 incarcerated individuals — the largest population across all immigration detention facilities in the nation, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a Syracuse University database of government enforcement agencies.
While it’s unclear what accounted for the specific jump in the number of people detained at Adams in October, the increase echoed the ICE raids of 2019. On the first day of school that year, ICE tore through six different poultry plants across the state, detaining 680 immigrant workers, many of them young parents. Children returned home from school empty homes. Some toddlers and babies were in daycare, left without anyone to pick them up.
Sending out a press release, Quiroz rallied organizations from across the region into Mississippi. She helped coordinate care for the children as assistance began to pour in from local churches. Then came the challenge of tracking down those arrested by ICE who were scattered at jails and prisons throughout the state. “We had no idea where people were, or where they were taken,” Quiroz recalled.
A network of organizers, community members, and legal workers spent the next several weeks going door to door, figuring out who was taken, where they were incarcerated, and how many family members at home were affected by the arrests. At the end of each day, the groups would report their findings, building a database and support network. Volunteer attorneys hustled to try and secure their release. Many of those detained were eventually deported or faced criminal charges in the U.S., including the use of false identity documents and unlawfully entering the country. Families scrambled to figure out child custody arrangements. For some couples that weren’t married, getting access to financial records proved difficult.
Families, whether separated or remaining together under ICE supervision and the threat of future detainments, are still processing the trauma from the mass raids, Quiroz said.
Who’s Willing to Get Arrested?
State and local governments can still do more to prepare. Los Angeles passed a sanctuary city ordinance earlier this month, which prohibits local law enforcement from collaborating with ICE, but a number of Democratic-led cities and states across the country have yet to put such measures in place.
Biden spent much of his term expanding the immigration and detention apparatus, boosting ICE funding and deporting record numbers of immigrants during the past four years. But he could still protect some immigrants before he leaves office. The TPS Alliance is demanding that Biden renew the TPS program for an additional 18 months before he leaves office. Additionally, the American Civil Liberties Union has called on Biden to use the lame-duck session to halt the expansions of ICE facilities and to close private prisons with known histories of abuse and neglect.
Regardless of what may come, immigrant rights groups are preparing their communities for Trump’s new policies.
Palma, like Quiroz, helped start his community organization to defend against the attacks on immigrants of Trump’s first term in office.
Trump initially attempted to end TPS in 2017: Palma worried that he and his wife, who is also a TPS holder like Palma, would have to leave the U.S. with their young children, or that he would lose his driver’s license and be unable to drive his kids to soccer practice, school, or church. But the fear also drew him closer to fellow TPS holders. He began calling his friends and neighbors to form a committee of TPS holders who would advocate for the program, train other community members of their rights, but also help each other should the program be eliminated and they face potential deportation.
“The idea is to be in a community, to be in a group and to not be alone — sometimes we see people, they are afraid and they just hide themselves. We have to be organized, in case something happens to one of your neighbors or family members, they will know at least where to look for help,” Palma said.
His group is now carrying out multiple trainings each week, and has trained thousands of immigrants and TPS holders since its founding. Since 2017, TPS committees have formed in places like Boston, Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, D.C., and cities in North Carolina and Virginia.
In Mississippi, Quiroz also has also led training sessions in recent months that have drawn dozens, educating individuals and families on their legal rights, such as refusing to open their door for an ICE officer unless they have a signed order from a judge.
After the 2019 raids, as ICE continued to remain a presence within the community, Quiroz and her organization turned to radical means of resistance. They sought volunteers to serve as block captains, which notify neighbors when ICE is conducting stops or raids at a given street corner, highway, or trailer park. The group also set up a hotline where people can call in the event of an encounter with an ICE agent. A network of allies, usually people with legal status, will show up and remind individuals of their rights.
In one instance, ICE followed a woman, a single mom with a teenage daughter, while driving home. Still inside her car, the woman called the hotline and an ally was able to show up, Quiroz recalled. The ally spoke to the ICE agent and learned the agent didn’t have a warrant to arrest her. The ally then urged the woman to stay inside her car. They waited until the agent eventually left.
However, ICE was able to detain and deport the woman. “Once they get you, they tend to target you, ’cause these towns are so small,” she said.
Quiroz’s group also offered legal observers to accompany community members who are under ICE supervision and must check in regularly with the agency. While an observer went with one man to his appointment, an ICE agent told the observer he wasn’t allowed inside the office and went on to detain the man. Quiroz and a group of about 10 people showed up with signs and protested outside the office, demanding the man’s release. When agents tried to leave, one of the protesters laid on the road, blocking the main exit. Agents were able to leave through a backdoor with the man who was eventually deported.
“We can only educate and plan, and then we ask people, what are they willing to do — whenever we have a public action, we ask who’s willing to get arrested,” Quiroz said. “And there’s always at least one or two people. Once we ask that, ‘Well, are you willing to stand in front of the floor? Are you willing to create a chain around the person?’” The idea is that even if ICE eventually detains and deports them, any delay would allow family members to prepare for their absence, getting documents prepared and living arrangements ready.
Quiroz is in the process of building out a similar rapid response network ahead of January. “I have to put this plan together — I’m talking to you from things I’ve discussed with community and learning best practices from last time,” Quiroz said, “Or not even best practices, just like whatever the hell worked, because it was a mess.”
The Paris-based global media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders has condemned the assassination of Cambodian investigative environmental journalist Chhoeung Chheng who has died from his wounds.
He was shot by an illegal logger last week while investigating unlawful deforestation in the country’s northwest.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has urged the Cambodian government make sure this crime does not go unpunished, and to take concrete measures to protect journalists.
On 7 December 2024, journalist Chhoeung Chheng died in a hospital in Siem Reap, a city in northeastern Cambodia, from wounds suffered during an attack two days prior, RSF said in a statement.
The 63-year-old reporter, who worked for the online media Kampuchea Aphivath, had been shot in the abdomen while reporting on illegal logging in the Boeung Per nature reserve.
Local media report that the suspect admitted to shooting the journalist after being photographed twice while transporting illegally logged timber.
“This murder is appalling and demands a strong response. We call on Cambodian authorities to ensure that all parties responsible for the attack are severely punished,” Cédric Alviani, RSF’s Asia-Pacific bureau director in Taipei.
“We also urge the Cambodian government to take concrete actions to end violence against journalists.”
Journalists face violence
Journalists covering illegal deforestation in Cambodia face frequent violence. In 2014, reporter Taing Try was shot dead while investigating links between security forces and the timber trade in the country’s south, reports RSF.
Press freedom in Cambodia has been steadily deteriorating since 2017, when former Prime Minister Hun Sen cracked down on independent media, forcing prominent outlets such as Voice of Democracy to shut down. The government revoked the outlet’s licence in February 2023.
One year into his rule, Prime Minister Hun Manet appears to be perpetuating the media crackdown started by his father, Hun Sen, reports RSF.
Having fallen nine places in two years, Cambodia is now ranked 151st out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2024 World Press Freedom Index, placing it in the category of nations where threats to press freedom are deemed “very serious”.
Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.
On paper, Emil Bove is one of the better qualified people that President-elect Donald Trump wants for his next administration. Unlike Matt Gaetz, who was briefly floated to be U.S. attorney general, Bove has actual prosecutorial experience, which will come in handy if he’s confirmed as the Justice Department’s third-most-senior official.
But during his last stint as a supervising prosecutor, Bove oversaw a case that was so mired by prosecutorial misconduct that a judge diagnosed it an “institutional failure.”
For just over two years, Bove was one of two chiefs of the terrorism and international narcotics unit in the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office, as Trump highlighted in a statement last month. It was there that Bove supervised a case involving alleged evasion of sanctions, which a federal judge slammed as “marred by repeated failures to disclose exculpatory evidence.”
The government so thoroughly botched its constitutional obligation to turn over evidence that prosecutors asked the court to vacate a jury verdict. The defendant, Ali Sadr, had been convicted on multiple counts of evading sanctions against Iran.
“The supervising Unit Chiefs appear to have offered little in the way of supervision,” wrote then-District Court Judge Alison Nathan, who has since been elevated to the federal appellate bench, in 2021. A few months earlier, the judge noted “insufficient supervision” as a significant factor in the “disclosure-related issues that plagued the prosecution in this case.”
Nathan ultimately found there were “grave derelictions of prosecutorial responsibility” and “systemic” prosecutorial misconduct in the case, although it did not rise to the level of intentional misconduct.
Less than a year after the blistering ruling, Bove left the Justice Department for private practice, and he joined Trump’s legal team soon after. Bove helped lead Trump’s defense in multiple cases, including the New York hush-money case — in which the former president was convicted on all counts earlier this year — and the two federal cases brought by special counsel Jack Smith, which the Department of Justice dismissed after Trump won the election. Along with Bove, Trump announced he wants to appoint another of his attorneys on the cases, Todd Blanche, to a top DOJ post.
Reached by email, Bove declined to answer The Intercept’s questions.
“I understand you’re going to take a shot at me, and I’m not going to waste time arguing with you about the mischaracterizations in your email,” he wrote. Bove did not reply to subsequent requests to identify the purported mischaracterizations.
Some experts were concerned about what Bove’s shortcomings as a supervisor in the Sadr case might suggest about his future at the top of the DOJ supervisory chain.
“If Bove can’t manage to properly supervise a handful of prosecutors in a single case,” said Ben Gershman, a law professor and expert on prosecutorial ethics, “what does this portend for the proper functioning of the Justice Department if Bove is called upon to supervise the many, many thousands of prosecutors in a huge, sprawling government agency?”
The fact that a federal judge called out Bove and his unit co-chief at all is notable.
Courts often go to great lengths to avoid chastising prosecutors when they violate the Brady doctrine — named for a U.S. Supreme Court decision that requires the government to turn over certain evidence to defendants. As a recent study of hundreds of Brady doctrine decisions found, it’s even rarer for a judge to single out an offending prosecutor by name.
“It is rare for a prosecutor — no less a supervising prosecutor — to be called on the carpet for Brady problems,” said law professor Adam M. Gershowitz, one of the study’s authors.
But Nathan was extremely disturbed by how Bove’s team behaved, which she framed as a stark outlier in her near decade on the bench.
“This serious dereliction requires a serious response,” she wrote in a September 2020 ruling, after all charges against Sadr were dismissed.
“This serious dereliction requires a serious response.”
Nathan demanded detailed sworn affidavits from Bove and every other prosecutor involved. Given the “exceptional public interest” of airing out what happened, she later unsealed these materials, including text messages in which Bove wrote that one of his supervisees had told defense attorneys a “flat lie” about when the team discovered their error. (Bove later wrote in his affidavit, “In hindsight, I believe that is an unfair characterization.”)
The records show that the unit overlooked a document that undercut the case against Sadr until the middle of trial. Once the document came to light, rather than admit the error to the defense and the court, prosecutors working under Bove discussed how to “bury” it in a bundle of documents without flagging it as a new disclosure. (Bove himself was not part of these discussions, the court found, and only became aware of the undisclosed document after his team produced it.)
After Sadr’s defense attorneys caught on, the team would not cop to the violation, even as Bove texted privately about its “gravity.”
Instead, one of the prosecutors filed a letter to the court that misrepresented their actions. In court, Bove apologized but largely defended the team’s conduct, including the misleading letter, in statements that the judge deemed contradictory fingerpointing.
“The prosecutors — including the Unit Chiefs — dug themselves in deeper rather than squarely take responsibility for their past missteps,” Nathan wrote. She found that although Bove and his co-chief did not direct their team to mislead her, that did not absolve them entirely. “What the Unit Chiefs plainly did not do, however, was provide sufficient supervision to ensure the accuracy of the response to the Court,” she wrote.
“Judge Nathan’s observations may offer insight into how Mr. Bove tends to manage a prosecutorial team and that might be cause for concern,” said law professor Daniel Medwed.
Nathan found that the prosecutors’ pervasive errors in the case required “systemic solutions” from Justice Department leadership. She also urged the DOJ to refer the case to its Office of Professional Responsibility, which investigates misconduct claims against federal prosecutors.
OPR is notoriously opaque. Even when it determines prosecutors committed misconduct, the office typically publishes only an anonymized summary of its findings.
One such summary, published in 2023, does not name Bove or any other prosecutor but closely matches the details in the Sadr case, including the court’s findings and the circumstances behind a misleading court filing. It suggests OPR found no misconduct but that “the conduct of members of the trial team was flawed.”
American officials have discussed the merits of removing a $10m bounty on Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, whose rebel group swept into Damascus and toppled the government of Bashar al-Assad on Sunday, a senior Arab official briefed by the Americans told Middle East Eye.
Ahmed al-Sharaa, commonly known as Jolani, has been designated as a terrorist by the United States since 2013, while his organisation, HTS, was proscribed by the Trump administration in 2018 when a $10 million bounty was placed on his head.
For years, HTS lobbied to be delisted, but its pleas largely fell on deaf years with the group relegated to governing just a sliver of northwest Syria.
But the lightning blitz by the rebels, which saw Assad’s iron-grip rule end in spectacular fashion on Sunday, has since forced Washington to rethink how it engages with the former al-Qaeda affiliate.
The senior Arab official, who requested anonymity due to sensitivities surrounding the talks, told MEE that the discussions had divided officials in the Biden administration.
Meanwhile, when asked about the discussions, one Trump transition official disparaged the Biden administration.
Jolani, 42, gave a rousing victory speech in Damascus’ iconic Umayyad Mosque on Sunday and is widely expected to play a key role in Syria’s transition after 54 years of Assad family rule.
“Today, Syria is being purified,” Jolani told a crowd of supporters in Damascus, adding that “this victory is born from the people who have languished in prison, and the mujahideen (fighters) broke their chains”.
He said that under Assad, Syria had become a place for “Iranian ambitions, where sectarianism was rife,” in reference to Assad’s allies Iran and its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah.
The fact that the CNN journalist here had to wear a hijab to conduct this interview is everything you need to know about the new Islamist group taking over Syria. pic.twitter.com/05jH4GBzet
‘Saying the right things now’ Speaking several hours after the fall of Damascus, US President Joe Biden called the rebel takeover a “fundamental act of justice,” but cautioned it was “a moment of risk and uncertainty” for the Middle East.
“We will remain vigilant,” Biden said. “Make no mistake, some of the rebel groups that took down Assad have their own grim record of terrorism and human rights abuses,” adding that the groups are “saying the right things now.”
“But as they take on greater responsibility, we will assess not just their words, but their actions,” Biden said.
Later, a senior Biden administration official, when asked about contact with HTS leaders, said Washington was in contact with Syrian groups of all kinds.
The official, who was not authorised to publicly discuss the situation and spoke on condition of anonymity, also said the US was focused on ensuring chemical weapons in Assad’s military arsenal were secured.
Meanwhile, The New York Times reported that US intelligence agencies were in the process of evaluating Jolani, who it said had launched a “charm offensive” aimed at allaying concerns over his past affiliations.
Jolani was born to a family originally from the occupied Golan Heights and fought in the Iraq insurgency and served five years in an American-run prison in Iraq, before returning to Syria as the emissary of Islamic State founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
‘Charm offensive can be misleading’
“A charm offensive might mean that people are turning over a new leaf and they think differently than they used to so you should hear them out. On the other hand, you should be cautious because charm offensives can sometimes be misleading,” the US official said.
“We have to think about it. We have to watch their behaviour and we need to do some indirect messaging and see what comes of that,” the official added.
But, US President-elect Donald Trump, who will be entering office in just five weeks, has left few doubts where he stood on the conflict, saying Washington “should have nothing to do with it [Syria].”
In a social media post on Saturday, Trump wrote that Assad “lost” because “Russia and Iran are in a weakened state right now, one because of Ukraine and a bad economy, the other because of Israel and its fighting success”.
Trump used Assad’s fall as an opportunity to call for an end to the war in Ukraine, without mentioning the Syrian opposition or the Syrian allies of the US.
Israel has “seized” territory in Syrian-controlled areas of the Golan Heights, as its military warned Syrians living in five villages close to the Israeli-occupied portion of the strategic area to “stay home” https://t.co/NSkn6tTxIc
Jordan lobbies for Syrian Free Army Assad’s ousting has seen Nato-ally Turkey cement its status as the main outside power in Syria at the expense of a bruised and battered Iran and Russia.
But the US holds vast amounts of territory in Syria via its allies, who joined a race to replace the Assad regime as its soldiers abandoned villages and cities en masse.
The US backs rebels operating out of the al-Tanf desert outpost on the tri-border area of Jordan, Iraq and Syria.
The Syrian Free Army (SFA) went on the offensive as Assad’s regime collapsed taking control of the city of Palmyra.
The SFA works closely with the US and its financing is mainly run out of Jordan. The SFA also enjoys close ties to Jordanian intelligence.
A former Arab security official told MEE that Jordan’s King Abdullah II met with senior US officials in Washington DC last week and lobbied for continued support for the Syrian Free Army.
However, maintaining stability in post-Assad Syria will be key for Jordan as it looks to send back hundreds of thousands of refugees and ensure a power vacuum does not lead to more captagon crossing its border, the former official said.
900 US troops embedded with Kurds
In northeastern Syria, the US has roughly 900 troops embedded with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
Arab tribes linked to the SDF swept across the Euphrates River on Friday to take a wide swath of strategic towns, including Deir Ezzor and al-Bukamal. The latter is Syria’s strategic border crossing with Iraq.
The US support for the SDF is a sore point in its ties to Turkey, which views the SDF as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
The PKK has waged a decades-long guerrilla war in southern Turkey and is labelled a terrorist organisation by the US and the European Union.
Turkey’s concerns about the PKK led it to launch an invasion of Syria in 2016, with the aim of depriving Kurdish fighters of a quasi-state along its border. Two more military forays followed in 2018 and 2019.
The SDF is already being squeezed in the north with Turkish-backed rebels called the Syrian National Army entering the strategic city of Manbij.
During Syria’s more than decade long war, the US slapped sanctions on Assad’s government, enabled Israel to launch strikes on Iran inside Syria, and backed opposition groups that hold sway over around one-third of the country.
Republished from Middle East Eye under Creative Commons.
The Cook Islands has used its first-ever appearance at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to advocate for the “decolonisation” of international law.
While making an oral statement for an advisory opinion on the obligations of states regarding climate change, Auckland University senior lecturer Fuimaono Dr Dylan Asafo placed the blame on “our international legal system” for “the climate crisis we face today”.
He said major greenhouse gas emitters have relied “on these systems, and the institutions and fora they contain, like the annual COPs (Conference of Parties)” for many decades “to expand fossil fuel industries, increase their emissions and evade responsibility for the significant harms their emissions have caused.”
“In doing so, they have been able to maintain and grow the broader systems of domination that drive the climate crisis today — including imperialism, colonialism, racial capitalism, heteropatriarchy and ableism.”
Fuimaono called on nations to “dismantle these systems and imagine and build new ones capable of allowing everyone to live lives of joy and dignity, so that they are able to determine their own futures and destinies.”
He said the UN General Assembly’s request for an advisory opinion offers the ICJ “the most precious opportunity to interpret and advise on existing international law in its best possible light in order to empower all states and peoples to work together to decolonise international law and build a more equitable and just world for us all.”
The Cook Islands joined more than 100 other states and international organisations participating in the written and oral proceedings — the largest number of participants ever for an ICJ proceeding.
Fuimaono said the Cook Islands believes states should owe reparations to climate vulnerable countries if they fail to meet their adaptation and mitigation obligations, and the adverse effects to climate change lead to displacement, migration, and relocation.
The island nation’s delegation was led by its Foreign Affairs and Immigration director of the treaties, multilaterals and oceans division Sandrina Thondoo; foreign service officer Peka Fisher; and Fuimaono as external counsel.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
After two trials this week in Manchester, two Palestine Action activists remain steadfast in their resistance to complicity in genocide, despite having been handed ‘Guilty’ verdicts on criminal damage charges – all other charges against them having been dropped.
Palestine Action: trial number one in Manchester
On Monday 2 and Tuesday 3 December at Manchester Magistrates Court, Palestine Action activist Drew faced charges of aggravated trespass and criminal damage after a November 2023 occupation on the overhang of the Deansgate offices of Fisher German.
The action saw the site closed, the overhang occupied, Palestinian flags unfurled, and the building affixed with posters highlighting Fisher German’s complicity. At the time of the action, Fisher German were landlords for Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms firm. Fisher German leased Elbit the premises for their ‘UAV Engines’ drone factory – used to manufacture parts for Israel’s fleet of killer drones. A month after the action, the company announced they were cutting all ties with Elbit. The action reportedly cost Fisher German £40,000
In court, Drew gave testimony of the war crimes and Genocide being committed by Israel with Elbit weaponry, with his actions seeking to protect life by halting their supply of arms. Drew stated his belief that if Fisher German dropped Elbit Systems, this could save at least one life, and prevent the destruction of at least some homes, schools and hospitals.
He told of how workers inside the building had reacted positively to his protest, waving, and giving ‘thumbs-up’ signs. The judge eventually refused to accept that the action was necessary or reasonable in relation “to the events in Israel”, ruling that the damage, including Sellotape marks to windows, was ‘more than trivial’.
He found Drew guilty of Criminal Damage, and issued a £40 fine, with a further £700 in compensation and court costs. The Aggravated Trespass charge was dismissed earlier in the trial.
After the verdict, Drew stated:
I walked into court today not guilty, and will leave Friday, not guilty, regardless of the judge’s decision. As long as we are shutting down Israeli arms factories, and their partners, WE WILL NEVER BE GUILTY.
Trial number two
From Wednesday 4 December to Friday 6, Drew entered Minshull Street Crown Court, charged, along with co-Defendant Adam, with Criminal Damage, in relation to an action at Elbit Systems Ferranti factory in Oldham in February 2021.
After a relentless direct action campaign by Palestine Action, the Ferranti factory, which previously manufactured imaging technology for Israel’s killer drones, was shut down in 2022.
Despite their actions seeking, successfully, to halt Elbit’s production of weapons for genocide, the judge in the case had ruled before the trial commenced that the defendants would not be able to rely on any defences whatsoever.
Without defences, they could not introduce any evidence on the Gaza Genocide, Palestine, Elbit Systems, or indeed any of the reasons which led to them having to take action. The activists self-represented in their trial, and despite having no defences they entered Court “as the accusers, not the accused”.
The Court heard from Elbit’s former Safety and Security Co-ordinator at the site, who, from behind a screen, claimed to know little about either the company, or its work, but conceded they manufactured military drones.
In his evidence, Drew said that they had taken action after a long campaign of letters, petitions, and vigils. He said, “We had tried all avenues available to us.” Adam explained how they arrived at the site before any workers, so as to avoid harm or inconvenience to them. He said that the damage caused was not reckless, and that they were careful not to risk injuring anyone.
The Jury in the case were not able to reach a unanimous verdict, but returned a majority verdict finding the Defendants guilty of criminal damage on Friday afternoon. Their sentencing hearing is set for 31 January 2025
Palestine Action: their actions are necessary
These prosecutions took place at a time when the British state, hand-in hand with the Israeli government, and their arms manufacturers, are targeting activists trying to stop British complicity in the Gaza Genocide, by abusing terrorist legislation against those resisting Israel’s state terror regime.
Palestine Action currently has 22 political prisoners locked-up in British prisons, most of whom have not been convicted of any offence, with further prisoners incarcerated overseas.
A spokesperson for Palestine Action has stated:
These actions helped to see the end of Elbit in Oldham, and saw their Shenstone landlords cut ties. In the context of genocide in Gaza, fuelled with Elbit weaponry, the necessity of these actions is self-evident.
The leak of classified documents about preparations for an attack on Iran forced Israel to delay military action at a time of sky-high tensions in the Middle East, a federal prosecutor said as he sought to convince a judge to jail a CIA employee accused of violating the Espionage Act.
Instead, U.S. Magistrate Judge Ivan Davis placed Asif William Rahman on home detention and GPS monitoring at his father’s house before trial, in a case that grew even more mysterious after a Friday hearing.
Rahman, 34, is accused of the October leak of secret analyses of Israel’s preparations for a strike on Iran. Those analyses, which were based on satellite photos, included details of the missiles and planes that could be used in an attack.
The disclosures embarrassed U.S. officials who were caught spying on a purported ally and launched a leak hunt that ultimately landed on Rahman, who was arrested by the FBI in Cambodia on November 12. He had been posted to the U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh, legal filings show.
While prosecutors made no claims Rahman was working with a foreign government, they sought on Friday to keep him detained as a flight risk as he faces two counts of leaking documents. Instead, Davis allowed Rahman to go free while acknowledging that the government had what a prosecutor called “damning evidence.” The government said it would appeal that decision.
Neither prosecutors nor Rahman’s attorneys spoke to what may have motivated Rahman, a Cincinnati native and Yale University graduate who has served in the CIA since 2016. A trail of online records uncovered by The Intercept suggest that he was interested in social justice causes from a young age.
Delayed Strike
The most intriguing information revealed at Friday’s hearing may have been a federal prosecutor’s claim that when the documents surfaced on a pro-Iranian Telegram channel, they forced Israel to hold off on attacking Iran for an unspecified period of time.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Troy Edwards claimed that the leak forced Israel, although he did not identify it by name, to delay “kinetic action.”
The leaks first surfaced on social media on October 17, at a time when Israel was widely suspected of preparing to attack Iran in what U.S. officials dubbed a “tit-for-tat” sequence of strikes. Israel went ahead with the strikes October 28.
By that time, the Federal Bureau of Investigation was well into an investigation into the leaker’s identity.
The government contends that Rahman was trying to stay one step ahead of them. Three days after the leak, Edwards said in court, Rahman deleted 1.5 gigabytes of classified CIA data. It was information that he once had official access to, but that authorization expired four years ago. Rahman also “fortified” his mobile devices and computer, Edwards said.
The government says those efforts failed to throw agents off Rahman’s tracks. Prosecutors said that government data logs “revealed that only one user in the entire United States government accessed both Document 1 and Document 2 in the same format they appeared online between the time the documents were published on classified networks and the time the documents were posted on social media and also printed both of those documents: the defendant, Asif William Rahman.”
Arrest in Cambodia
Rahman’s arrest in Phnom Penh was first reported by the New York Times, which said that he was posted overseas while working for the CIA.
Edwards said that Rahman had what the prosecutor described as “pocket litter” when he was arrested by FBI agents, including a wad of paper with notes that included the words “contingencies,” “vacation mid-Nov?,” and “run.” Another paper contained a series of digits that the government is now working to decipher.
To the prosecutors, those notes suggested that Rahman was a flight risk. Rahman’s defense attorney, Amy Jeffress of the firm Arnold & Porter, said there was a more innocent explanation.
“He’s a runner,” Jeffress said. “I don’t know why anyone would write ‘run’ on a to-do list when they’re trying to run from the law.”
Davis, the magistrate judge, appeared to be swayed by Rahman’s lack of prior criminal history and his strong ties to the Washington, D.C., area. His father lives in Bethesda, Maryland, and property records suggest that Rahman’s wife lives in Vienna, Virginia.
In court, Jeffress pointed to the 11 relatives and supporters sitting behind her as evidence that Rahman would not attempt to flee.
Still, a government prosecutor raised concerns that Rahman could still cause further damage to U.S.–Israeli relations from the comfort of his father’s home on a leafy street in the well-to-do suburb.
Edwards said that regardless of whether he still had access to documents, Rahman undoubtedly had memories of classified information. To spread that, Edwards said, “all it takes is the snap of a finger and a click of a button.”
Under questioning from Davis, Edwards said the government did not know whether Rahman might still have access to secret electronic information stored elsewhere. Davis said he thought the government was short on concrete indications that Rahman might flee or leak more.
“I’m hearing a lot of ‘ifs’ and ‘coulds’ — which is all speculation,” he said.
Davis said he was satisfied by the family’s promises to restrict Rahman from access to any electronic devices that are not equipped with monitoring.
Prosecutors said they would appeal his release order to U.S. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles, a Joe Biden appointee.
Rahman appeared in court wearing a green jumpsuit and did not speak.
A Question of Motive
While neither prosecutors nor defense lawyers touched on the question of motive, Rahman’s prosecution on Espionage Act charges has already raised concerns for one civil liberties group.
That group, Defending Rights and Dissent, said last month that while Rahman’s motives were unclear, the fact that he was charged under the Espionage Act could have troubling implications.
“Rahman did not disclose the documents to a journalist — though, once released, the documents received widespread press coverage and were clearly in the public interest,” said the group. “Rahman may or may not have released the documents with the intent to promote public debate, but the Espionage Act makes no distinction between whistleblowers, spies, and those with alternative motives for disclosing national defense information.”
While court records give little information about Rahman besides his name and age, a trail of online material stretching back to his days as a teenager in Ohio can be found online.
Along with pursuits including Scrabble and running track, Rahman appeared to have an early interest in social justice causes.
At around 13 years old, Rahman and a group of classmates designed a website titled “Blood, Sweat and Tears: The Story of Child Labor.”
Two years later, Rahman alongside one of his sisters and other classmates, would go on to design another site entitled “A Dollar a Day: Finding Solutions to Poverty.” Both websites won the Oracle Foundation design competitions. Alongside that site, Rahman maintained a blog dedicated to exploring measures for alleviating poverty.
Among the class of 2009 at Indian Hill High School, Rahman was a hallmark of overachievement: an AP National Scholar, a National Merit Scholarship finalist, and class valedictorian. Rahman delivered the year’s commencement speech, noting that “Much awaits the Class of 2009 — success, certainly, but also unforeseen challenges.”
After high school, Rahman headed off to Yale, a local newspaper reported. During college, he served as a copy editor for the Yale Daily News. After graduation, Rahman became a fixed income broker at Morgan Stanley for two years, according to financial records. He graduated in three years, according to a defense filing.
Prosecutors said Friday that Rahman had joined the CIA by 2016, around the time when the trail of digital evidence about him begins petering out.
In 2019, Rahman was listed as the buyer on a house in Vienna, Virginia, about a 20-minute drive from the CIA headquarters building. One of the lenders was his father, Muhit Rahman.
Muhit Rahman, who declined comment, has worked as a private equity fund manager and founded a nonprofit called the Bangladesh Relief Fund, which has distributed funds in the South Asian country designed to alleviate poverty and address the ravages of recurrent flooding.
In a 2004 letter announcing his creation of the fund, the elder Rahman stated, “The images that I cannot shake off are not those of water, water as far as the eyes can see, nor of bodies and carcasses flowing rapidly by. They are of children rendered mute by suffering and more suffering.”
More recently he struck a similar note on a GoFundMe page created in February that aimed to raise money for Palestinian children.
Asking donors to chip in $26.20, or a dollar for each mile of a marathon he was going to run, Muhit Rahman said that the money was for “the silent children of Gaza.” He posted a picture of the singlet he wore while running the Tokyo Marathon, which included a Palestinian flag inscribed with the names of his donors. Nestled above the slogan “For the children — who are always innocent” was a partial name: Asif R.
Amnesty International’s research has found sufficient basis to conclude that Israel has committed and is continuing to commit genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip, the organisation has revealed in a landmark new investigative report.
The 294-page report documents how, during its military offensive launched in the wake of the deadly Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel on 7 October 2023, Israel has “unleashed hell and destruction on Palestinians in Gaza brazenly, continuously and with total impunity”.
An Amnesty International statement made along with releasing the investigation says that the Aotearoa New Zealand government “can and should take action”, for example:
Publicly recognise that Israeli authorities are committing the crime of genocide and commit to strong and sustained international action;
Ban imports from illegal settlements as well as investment in companies connected to maintaining the occupation; and
Do everything possible to facilitate Palestinian people seeking refuge to come to Aotearoa New Zealand and receive support.
Lisa Woods, advocacy and movement building director at Amnesty International Aotearoa New Zealand, said: “This research and report demonstrate that Israel has carried out acts prohibited under the Genocide Convention, with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza.
“It’s not enough to say ‘never again’. The New Zealand government has to publicly call this what it is — genocide.
“We’re asking the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister to show leadership. New Zealand has a responsibility to act.”
Ban illegal settlement products
Woods said that in addition to acknowledging that this was genocide, the New Zealand government must ban products from the illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory — “and open the doors to Palestinians who are desperately seeking refuge.”
Agnès Callamard, secretary-general of Amnesty International, said about the new report:
“These acts include killings, causing serious bodily or mental harm and deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction.
“Month after month, Israel has treated Palestinians in Gaza as a subhuman group unworthy of human rights and dignity, demonstrating its intent to physically destroy them.
“Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community: this is genocide. It must stop now.”
Callamard said that states that continued to transfer arms to Israel at this time must know they are “violating their obligation to prevent genocide and are at risk of becoming complicit in genocide”.
She said that all states with influence over Israel, particularly key arms suppliers like the US and Germany — but also other EU member states, the UK and others — must act now to bring Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza to an immediate end.
Population facing starvation
Over the past two months the crisis has grown particularly acute in the North Gaza governorate, where a besieged population is facing starvation, displacement and annihilation amid relentless bombardment and suffocating restrictions on life-saving humanitarian aid, Callamard said.
“Our research reveals that, for months, Israel has persisted in committing genocidal acts, fully aware of the irreparable harm it was inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza,” she said.
“It continued to do so in defiance of countless warnings about the catastrophic humanitarian situation and of legally binding decisions from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordering Israel to take immediate measures to enable the provision of humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza.
“Israel has repeatedly argued that its actions in Gaza are lawful and can be justified by its military goal to eradicate Hamas. But genocidal intent can co-exist alongside military goals and does not need to be Israel’s sole intent.”
Amnesty International said in its statement that it had examined Israel’s acts in Gaza closely and in their totality, taking into account their recurrence and simultaneous occurrence, and both their immediate impact and their cumulative and mutually reinforcing consequences.
The organisation considered the scale and severity of the casualties and destruction over time. It also analysed public statements by officials, finding that prohibited acts were often announced or called for in the first place by high-level officials in charge of the war efforts.
“Taking into account the pre-existing context of dispossession, apartheid and unlawful military occupation in which these acts have been committed, we could find only one reasonable conclusion: Israel’s intent is the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza, whether in parallel with, or as a means to achieve, its military goal of destroying Hamas,” Callamard said.
Atrocities ‘can never justify Israel’s genocide’
“The atrocity crimes committed on 7 October 2023 by Hamas and other armed groups against Israelis and victims of other nationalities, including deliberate mass killings and hostage-taking, can never justify Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.”
According to the statement, international jurisprudence recognises that the perpetrator does not need to succeed in their attempts to destroy the protected group, either in whole or in part, for genocide to have been committed.
The commission of prohibited acts with the intent to destroy the group, as such, was sufficient.
The report examines in detail Israel’s violations in Gaza over nine months between 7 October 2023 and early July 2024.
Amnesty International interviewed 212 people, including Palestinian victims and witnesses, local authorities in Gaza, healthcare workers, conducted fieldwork and analysed an extensive range of visual and digital evidence, including satellite imagery.
It also analysed statements by senior Israeli government and military officials, and official Israeli bodies.
On multiple occasions, the organisation shared its findings with the Israeli authorities but had received no substantive response at the time of publication.
Unprecedented scale and magnitude The organisation said Israel’s actions following Hamas’s deadly attacks on 7 October 2023 had brought Gaza’s population to the brink of collapse.
Its brutal military offensive had killed more than [44,000] Palestinians, including more than 13,300 children, and wounded or injured more than 97,000 others by 7 October 2024, many of them in direct or deliberately indiscriminate attacks, often wiping out entire multigenerational families.
Israel had caused unprecedented destruction, which experts say occurred at a level and speed not seen in any other conflict in the 21st century, levelling entire cities and destroying critical infrastructure, agricultural land and cultural and religious sites, Amnesty International said.
It thereby rendered large swathes of Gaza uninhabitable.
As a prelude to the 40th anniversary of the evacuation of Rongelap Islanders to Mejatto Island in Kwajalein in 1985, Radio New Zealand and ABC Radio Australia have produced a six-part podcast series that details the Rongelap story — in the context of The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior, the name of the series.
It is narrated by journalist James Nokise, and includes story telling from Rongelap Islanders as well as those who know about what became the last voyage of Greenpeace’s flagship.
It features a good deal of narrative around the late Rongelap Nitijela Member Jeton Anjain, the architect of the evacuation in 1985. For those who know the story of the 1954 Bravo hydrogen bomb test at Bikini, some of the narrative will be repetitive.
The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior podcast series logo. Image: ABC/RNZ
But the podcast offers some insight that may well be unknown to many. For example, the podcast lays to rest the unfounded US government criticism at the time that Greenpeace engineered the evacuation, manipulating unsuspecting islanders to leave Rongelap.
Through commentary of those in the room when the idea was hatched, this was Jeton’s vision and plan — the Rainbow Warrior was a vehicle that could assist in making it happen.
The narrator describes Jeton’s ongoing disbelief over repeated US government assurances of Rongelap’s safety. Indeed, though not a focus of the RNZ/ABC podcast, it was Rongelap’s self-evacuation that forced the US Congress to fund independent radiological studies of Rongelap Atoll that showed — surprise, surprise — that living on the atoll posed health risks and led to the US Congress establishing a $45 million Rongelap Resettlement Trust Fund.
Questions about the safety of the entirety of Rongelap Atoll linger today, bolstered by non-US government studies that have, over the past several years, pointed out a range of ongoing radiation contamination concerns.
The RNZ/ABC podcast dives into the 1954 Bravo hydrogen bomb test fallout exposure on Rongelap, their subsequent evacuation to Kwajalein, and later to Ejit Island for three years. It details their US-sponsored return in 1957 to Rongelap, one of the most radioactive locations in the world — by US government scientists’ own admission.
The narrative, that includes multiple interviews with people in the Marshall Islands, takes the listener through the experience Rongelap people have had since Bravo, including health problems and life in exile. It narrates possibly the first detailed piece of history about Jeton Anjain, the Rongelap leader who died of cancer in 1993, eight years after Rongelap people left their home atoll.
The podcast takes the listener into a room in Seattle, Washington, in 1984, where Greenpeace International leader Steve Sawyer met for the first time with Jeton and heard his plea for help to relocate Rongelap people using the Rainbow Warrior. The actual move from Rongelap to Mejatto in May 1985 — described in David Robie’s 1986 book Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior — is narrated through interviews and historical research.
The final episode of the podcast is heavily focused on the final leg of the Rainbow Warrior’s Pacific tour — a voyage cut short by French secret agents who bombed the Warrior while it was tied to the wharf in Auckland harbor, killing one crew member, Fernando Pereira.
It was Fernando’s photographs of the Rongelap evacuation that brought that chapter in the history of the Marshall Islands to life.
The Warrior was stopping to refuel and re-provision in Auckland prior to heading to the French nuclear testing zone in Moruroa Atoll. But that plan was quite literally bombed by the French government in one of the darkest moments of Pacific colonial history.
The six-part series is on YouTube and can be found by searching The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior.
Scientists conduct radiological surveys of nuclear test fallout A related story in this week’s edition of the Marshall Islands Journal.
“Considerable contamination remains,” wrote scientists Hart Rapaport and Ivana Nikolić Hughes in the Scientific American in 2022. “On islands such as Bikini, the average background gamma radiation is double the maximum value stipulated by an agreement between the governments of the Marshall Islands and the US, even without taking into account other exposure pathways.
“Our findings, based on gathered data, run contrary to the Department of Energy’s. One conclusion is clear: absent a renewed effort to clean radiation from Bikini, families forced from their homes may not be able to safely return until the radiation naturally diminishes over decades and centuries.”
They also raised concern about the level of strontium-90 present in various islands from which they have taken soil and other samples. They point out that US government studies do not address strontium-90.
This radionuclide “can cause leukemia and bone and bone marrow cancer and has long been a source of health concerns at nuclear disasters such as Chernobyl and Fukushima,” Rapaport and Hughes said.
“Despite this, the US government’s published data don’t speak to the presence of this dangerous nuclear isotope.”
Their studies have found “consistently high values” of strontium-90 in northern atolls.
“Although detecting this radioisotope in sediment does not neatly translate into contamination in soil or food, the finding suggests the possibility of danger to ecosystems and people,” they state. “More than that, cleaning up strontium 90 and other contaminants in the Marshall Islands is possible.”
The Columbia scientists’ recommendations for action are straightforward: “Congress should appropriate funds, and a research agency, such as the National Science Foundation, should initiate a call for proposals to fund independent research with three aims.
“We must first further understand the current radiological conditions across the Marshall Islands; second, explore new technologies and methods already in use for future cleanup activity; and, third, train Marshallese scientists, such as those working with the nation’s National Nuclear Commission, to rebuild trust on this issue.”
Giff Johnson is editor of the Marshall Islands Journal. His review of the Rainbow Warrior podcast series was first published by the Journal and is republished here with permission.
New Zealand’s Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) has congratulated the Nelson City Council on its vote today to boycott companies which trade with illegal Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories.
The city council (pop. 58,000) — New Zealand’s 15th-largest city — became the latest local body to change its procurement policy to exclude companies identified by the UN Human Rights Council as being complicit in the building and maintenance of illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land.
“It is [Prime Minister] Christopher Luxon who should be ending all New Zealand dealings with companies involved in the illegal Israeli settlements.
“Instead, our government is cowardly complicit with Israeli war crimes.”
It is a war crime to move citizens onto land illegally occupied as Israel is doing.
Nelson City Council joins Environment Canterbury and the Christchurch City Council — New Zealand’s second largest city — which both adopted this policy earlier this year. Other local bodies are believed to be following.
“We also congratulate local Palestine solidarity activists in Nelson who have organised and battled so well for this historic win today. They are the heroes behind this decision,”minto said.
Minto said following the move by Nelson city representatives, “we are renewing our call for the government to act”.
He again called for the government to:
Ban all imports from the illegal Israeli settlements;
Direct the Superfund, Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) and Kiwisaver providers to end their investments in all Israeli companies and other companies supporting the illegal Israeli settlements; and
Direct New Zealand government agencies to end procurement of goods or services from all Israeli companies and other companies supporting the illegal Israeli settlements.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
The UK’s prison system expansion programme has effectively been delayed thanks to the Tories. That’s the conclusion of a new, government-backed report. However, when the system is sending Just Stop Oil and Palestine Action activists to jail, as well as incarcerating people for tiny offenses and detaining people as so-called IPPs – is it any wonder?
The NAO report: damning for the UK prison system
HM Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) is the executive agency of the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) responsible for managing the prison service in England and Wales. The NAO last reported on the prison estate in 2020. It concluded that HMPPS was failing to meet its aims of providing a safe, secure and decent prison estate.
HMPPS was also facing a significant challenge to meet its commitment to deliver 13,400 additional prison places. The NAO highlighted that MoJ and HMPPS needed to resist taking a reactive approach to capacity pressures and to instead work with HM Treasury produce a long-term strategy to deliver a prison estate fit for purpose.
Since then, MoJ has increased the scale of its prison expansion plans from 13,400 to 20,000 additional places by the mid-2020s in response to projected increases in demand. HMPPS is delivering the additional places through a portfolio of prison capacity programmes (prison expansion portfolio), which includes a mix of building new prisons, expanding and refurbishing existing prisons, and installing temporary accommodation.
HMPPS has delivered 6,518 additional places between 2020 and September 2024, 278 of which are from additional crowding at four private prisons. Despite this, the prison estate has been operating at close to full capacity since autumn 2022, with many prisons severely crowded.
If prisons reach full capacity, there would be significant impacts on the wider criminal justice system. For example, courts would not be able to try cases where suspects may be given prison sentences. MoJ and HMPPS have had to implement various emergency measures, such as releasing prisoners early, to ensure that the criminal justice system continues to function.
Damning for the Tories
However, the NAO slammed what has happened since then – largely thanks to the Tories.
The current crisis in the prison estate is a consequence of previous governments’ failure to align criminal justice policies with funding for the prison estate, leading to reactive solutions which represent poor value for money. Policies such as introducing tougher sentences and increasing the number of police officers led to steep increases in expected demand for prison places. However, years of under-investment in maintaining the prison estate put MoJ and HMPPS in a weak position to respond to these increases.
HMPPS has therefore taken a reactive and expensive approach focused on building new places urgently at increased cost. Until there is greater coherence between the government’s wider policy agenda and funding for its prison estate, the current crisis position will not represent value for money.
HMPPS’s expansion plan was unrealistic and was not prioritised by the government, with resulting delays that have exacerbated the current crisis. MoJ’s central projection scenario shows demand for spaces exceeding capacity by 12,400 places by the end of 2027, even if current expansion projects are delivered to revised timelines.
Of course, when you lock up minor criminals on top of having successive out-of-control Tory governments – then this is what happens.
Stop locking people up in prison?
Instead of incarcerating people for small ‘offenses’, maybe government should consider alternatives.
Prison is an expensive response to minor offenses. Housing, feeding, and providing healthcare for inmates place a significant financial burden on public funds Studies show that alternative approaches, such as community service, probation, or fines, are far less costly while still holding offenders accountable. Redirecting resources from incarceration to rehabilitation programs or public services can yield greater societal benefits.
Prisons often expose individuals to an environment that fosters criminal behavior rather than deterring it. Minor offenders may interact with hardened criminals, leading to increased recidivism. Additionally, incarceration can disrupt employment, education, and family ties, leaving offenders worse off and less likely to reintegrate successfully into society upon release.
Research indicates that marginalised and racialised communities are disproportionately affected by incarceration for minor offenses. This perpetuates systemic inequalities and undermines trust in the justice system. Alternatives to prison can reduce these disparities and promote fairness.
Alternatives to incarceration, such as restorative justice programs, community service, and electronic monitoring, have shown promise in reducing recidivism rates and addressing the root causes of criminal behavior. These approaches focus on rehabilitation and making amends, fostering a more constructive resolution for offenders, victims, and society.
The UK prison system expansion: stop that, too
Overall, though, if government actually addressed the main driver of what the state calls ‘criminality’ – that is, rampant inequality, capitalism, and a society built on greed and envy – then maybe the need for prisons would evaporate altogether?
However, until such time then we have to work with what we have.
Sending individuals who commit minor offenses to prison often creates more problems than it solves. By focusing on alternative approaches that prioritise accountability, fairness, and rehabilitation, the justice system can promote public safety while reducing costs and inequities.
Reforming the approach to minor offenses is a crucial step toward a more effective and equitable criminal justice system. Oh, and so is ending the incarceration of peaceful protesters like those from Just Stop Oil and Palestine Action, too.
One of the major political developments in the United States that has got little attention in the wake of the Democrats’ astounding loss in the November 5 elections is the success of Arab American political organising.
A new generation of political activists has emerged that has earned representation in unprecedented numbers and impact for the 3.5-million-strong Arab-American community in elected and appointed political offices.
It also put Arab Americans on the electoral map for the first time by launching the Uncommitted movement during the Democratic primaries and making a foreign policy issue — Israel’s genocide in Gaza — a national moral issue.
The Democratic Party underestimated the power of this new generation and the intensity of citizen anger, which cost it dearly in the election.
What happened in the Arab American community is a vintage all-American tale. They, like other communities, started their pursuit of political impact as a low-profile immigrant group who became dynamic citizens after political developments threatened their wellbeing and motivated them to take action.
Arab American mobilisation traces its beginnings to small-scale participation in Jesse Jackson’s 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns for the Democratic Party. Jackson was the first serious presidential candidate to include Arab Americans as Democratic Party convention delegates, part of his Rainbow Coalition of:
“the white, the Hispanic, the Black, the Arab, the Jew, the woman, the Native American, the small farmer, the businessperson, the environmentalist, the peace activist, the young, the old, the lesbian, the gay, and the disabled [who] make up the American quilt”.
His campaign gave momentum to voter registration drives within the Arab American community, which continued in the following three decades.
Impact on outcomes
By 2020, nearly 90 percent of Arab Americans were registered to vote. By 2024, the Arab American voter block — in its expansive coalition with other groups — had grown large enough to impact on outcomes in critical swing states, especially Michigan and Pennsylvania.
The attacks of 9/11 and the subsequent backlash motivated Arab Americans even more to engage in meaningful politics. Many members of the community refused to live in fear, trying to avoid the intimidation and smears that had long kept their parents and grandparents subdued and quiescent politically.
As Omar Kurdi, founder of Arab Americans of Cleveland, told me, “We were no longer silent because we saw the dangers to us of being quiet and politically inactive. We refused to live in fear of politics.
“Since then, we have been proud, confident, and active in public. We no longer accept crumbs, but want our share of the pie, and we understand now how we can work for that.”
As a result, over the past two decades, Arab Americans have entered the public sphere and politics at all levels: from local, city, and county positions to state and federal ones.
Elected officials say they succeeded because their constituents knew and trusted them. Candidates who won state and national congressional seats — like Rashida Tlaib in Michigan — inspired hundreds of younger Arab Americans to enter the political fray.
Successful experiences in city politics educated newcomers on how they could impact decision-making, improve their own lives, and serve the entire community. They mastered locally the basics of politics, one Ohio activist told me, “like lobbying, bringing pressure, protesting, educating the public, achieving consensus, and creating coalitions based on shared values, problems, and goals”.
Coalesced into Uncommitted movement
All of this momentum, built up over the years, coalesced into the Uncommitted movement in 2024. As the Biden administration unconditionally supported Israel to carry out genocidal violence in Palestine and Lebanon, Arab-American activists moved to use their newfound leverage as voters in electoral politics.
They joined like-minded social justice activists from other groups that mainstream political parties had long taken for granted — including Muslim Americans, Blacks, Hispanics, youth, progressive Jews, churches, and unions — and sent a strong message during the primaries that they would not support Biden’s re-election bid unless he changed his position on Gaza.
The campaign hoped that tens of thousands of voters in the primaries would send the Democrats a big message by voting “uncommitted”, but in fact, hundreds of thousands of Democrats did so across half a dozen critical states.
These numbers were enough to send 30 Uncommitted delegates to the Democratic National Convention in August, where they could lobby their colleagues to shape the party’s national platform.
One activist involved in the process told me they convinced 320 of the other 5,000 delegates to support their demand for a party commitment to a Gaza ceasefire and arms embargo on Israel — not enough to change the party position, but enough to prove that working from inside the political system over time could move things in a better direction.
Intergenerational support and motivation were big factors in the success of the Uncommitted movement. Arab American Institute Executive Director Maya Berry, who has been involved in such activities for three decades, told me that Arab Americans were always in political positions, but in small numbers, so they had little impact.
However, they learned how the system works and provided valuable insights when the time came this year to act. She mentioned Abbas Alawiyeh as an example, who co-chairs the Uncommitted National Movement and worked as a congressional staffer for many years.
Defeat hotly debated
The Uncommitted movement’s precise contribution to the Democratic Party’s defeat is hotly debated right now. One activist told me the movement “placed Arab Americans at the centre of Democratic Party politics, led the progressives, helped Harris lose in swing states, and nationally brought attention to Gaza, divestment, and moral issues in ways we had never been able to do previously.”
All this occurs in uncharted territory, with no clarity if Arab Americans can influence both the Democratic and Republican parties who might now compete for their vote.
One Arab-American activist in his 30s added, “We are liberated from the Democrats who took us for granted, and we Arab Americans are now a swing vote officially.”
Other activists I spoke to thought the election experience could set the stage for a larger movement to counter the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, though that would require conquering the next hurdle of establishing Political Action Committees (PACs) and raising substantial funds.
That is a future possibility.
For now, it is important to recognise that a national-level Arab-American political effort has been born from the fires and devastation of the US-Israeli genocide in Palestine and Lebanon. Whether it can improve the wellbeing of Arab Americans and all Americans will be revealed in the years ahead.
Dr Rami G Khouri is a distinguished fellow at the American University of Beirut and a nonresident senior fellow at the Arab Center Washington. He is a journalist and book author with 50 years of experience covering the Middle East. This article was first published by Al Jazeera.
Australia’s government is being condemned by climate action groups for discouraging the International Court of Justice (ICJ) from ruling in favour of a court action brought by Vanuatu to determine legal consequences for states that fail to meet fossil reduction commitments.
In its submission before the ICJ at The Hague yesterday, Australia argued that climate action obligations under any legal framework should not extend beyond the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement.
It has prompted a backlash, with Greenpeace accusing Australia’s government of undermining the court case.
“I’m very disappointed,” said Vepaiamele Trief, a Ni-Van Save the Children Next Generation Youth Ambassador, who is present at The Hague.
“To go to the ICJ and completely go against what we are striving for, is very sad to see.
“As a close neighbour of the Pacific Islands, Australia has a duty to support us.”
RNZ Pacific reports Vanuatu’s special envoy to climate change says their case to the ICJ is based on the argument that those harming the climate are breaking international law.
Special Envoy Ralph Regenvanu told RNZ Morning Report they are not just talking about countries breaking climate law.
Republished from ABC Pacific Beat with permission.
Climate @CIJ_ICJ hearings day 1 recap: called for climate justice, self-determination & accountability talks of climate leadership but argues against binding human rights exposed polluters hiding behind the #ParisAgreement to dodge accountability.https://t.co/PB86XFpwzApic.twitter.com/KI1hOKAM0G
— Center for International Environmental Law (@ciel_tweets) December 3, 2024
In the early morning hours of November 7, more than 12 police officers showed up outside at an address in Springfield, Virginia, knocked, broke down the door, and raided the family home of two Palestinian American students at George Mason University.
University and Fairfax County police refused to show the family the warrant. One Fairfax County detective with the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force — cross-designated as a local and federal agent — was also present. The family and Mason faculty supporting them, however, believe they know what the FBI-led investigation was about: the young family members’ pro-Palestine activism.
Two of the Palestinian American family’s daughters attend George Mason. One is an undergraduate student and the co-president of Mason’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. The other is in a master’s program at Mason and a former president of the school’s SJP chapter.
“These students haven’t been accused of a criminal, civil, or student conduct violation, yet they have been banned from campus.”
The authorities told the family the raid was related to a spray-paint vandalism incident at George Mason’s campus in August — part of the widespread campus protests related to Israel’s war on Gaza. In September, the university police department put out flyers offering a $2,000 reward for information about the incident.
In short order, the school’s SJP chapter was suspended. Soon after, George Mason Police Chief Carl Rowan Jr. served the sisters with criminal trespass notices barring them from campus for four years — meaning that they can no longer continue their education.
“I’m worried for our students and I’m concerned for our schools,” said Ben Manski, the SJP chapter’s faculty adviser. “There are still no allegations and no charges that I’m aware of. Without those, we can’t have due process, we don’t know what is behind these actions, and we can’t know whether the public interest is being served or harmed.”
Dr. Alexander Monea, an associate professor of English at George Mason, questioned the school’s disciplinary process.
“These students haven’t been accused of a criminal, civil, or student conduct violation,” Monea said, “yet they have been banned from campus for four years, effectively expelling them from the university.”
“An Extension of State Power”
The severe moves against the family and the school’s SJP chapter are part of the latest wave of the crackdown against campus Palestine solidarity protests. As Israel’s war and demonstrations against it have dragged into a second year, the repression of Gaza protests continues to derail students’ education and ensnare them in disciplinary and court proceedings over activism on campus.
Police in Philadelphia conducted a similar raid in October, The Intercept reported, when authorities descended on the home of student leaders in the University of Pennsylvania’s pro-Palestine movement.
George Mason spokesperson Paola Duran declined to answer questions about the raid. “The university has no comment on matters of ongoing criminal investigations,” Duran said in a statement to The Intercept.
Fairfax County Police Department’s public affairs office told The Intercept the department only assisted with the case and that George Mason University and the FBI were the lead investigators and directed questions to them. FBI Washington field office spokesperson Lira Gallagher said the agency could not confirm or deny the existence of an investigation and directed questions to George Mason police. The Fairfax County Attorney and George Mason police did not respond to requests for comment.
Police used excessive violence in the raid in response to paint on the floor, said Bassam Haddad, a member of the George Mason faculty.
“Universities and university administrators have become an extension of state power, and we have now seen it firsthand in this case of a violent raid into the students’ home without any material evidence whatsoever,” said Haddad, a founding director of the Middle East and Islamic Studies Program at George Mason and an associate professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government.
“When they do things like this, it really does impact an entire community and an entire demographic at our school.”
It was not lost on George Mason students that the crackdown seemed to target the large number of Arab and Muslim students at the school.
“This repression has really been built up against multiple organizations on campus, especially with SJP, but really with any pro-Palestinian leaning organizations,” said a student representative of the George Mason University Coalition for Palestine, a campus organization, who asked for anonymity to avoid retaliation. “GMU has a huge Arab and Muslim population. When they do things like this, it really does impact an entire community and an entire demographic at our school.”
“This honestly has just been an attack, not only on Palestinian organizers and the movement in general, but also on free speech as well.”
SJP Suspension
When police arrived at the household last month, they forced the family to gather in the living room while they searched the house, according to two people familiar with the matter. Some family members were eventually released to attend work, but the rest remained while police conducted their six-hour search.
Police seized electronics from the residence, including phones and laptops, but made no arrests. At one point, police found antique firearms legally registered to the family’s son, a Mason alum and volunteer deputy chief firefighter.
Following the raid, authorities brought charges against the son related to the firearms. He litigated the charges and a Fairfax County Circuit Court judge dismissed them two weeks later.
“As a faculty senator, my colleagues asked me to raise a question to President Gregory Washington about the students’ family home being raided during a faculty senate meeting,” said Monea, the English professor. “He declined to share any information with the faculty senate at that time.”
Mason administrators sent an email to the SJP president the day after the raid announcing that the SJP chapter had been placed under an interim suspension. Since the daughter who currently leads SJP had her computer seized, however, she did not see the email until the following week.
No other SJP members nor Manski, the group’s faculty adviser, were made aware of the suspension until later last month. They finally found out when SJP members were told that a scheduled panel with the school chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People had been canceled due to the suspension.
The raid is part of the school’s increasing hostility toward activism against the war in Gaza, said Haddad, the faculty member supporting student activists. George Mason’s Board of Visitors — the school’s governing body — includes two appointments by Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin who currently work at the Heritage Foundation, which has called on the FBI to investigate campus protests against the war on Gaza.
“Have we become like the Soviet Union that we have been supposedly criticizing for decades, and now we continue to use as an example of overstretched power, corrupt power, and repressive and tyrannical power?” Haddad said. “Is this what we have become?”
In the early morning hours of November 7, more than 12 police officers showed up outside at an address in Springfield, Virginia, knocked, broke down the door, and raided the family home of two Palestinian American students at George Mason University.
University and Fairfax County police refused to show the family the warrant. One Fairfax County detective with the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force — cross-designated as a local and federal agent — was also present. The family and Mason faculty supporting them, however, believe they know what the FBI-led investigation was about: the young family members’ pro-Palestine activism.
Two of the Palestinian American family’s daughters attend George Mason. One is an undergraduate student and the co-president of Mason’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. The other is in a master’s program at Mason and a former president of the school’s SJP chapter.
“These students haven’t been accused of a criminal, civil, or student conduct violation, yet they have been banned from campus.”
The authorities told the family the raid was related to a spray-paint vandalism incident at George Mason’s campus in August — part of the widespread campus protests related to Israel’s war on Gaza. In September, the university police department put out flyers offering a $2,000 reward for information about the incident.
In short order, the school’s SJP chapter was suspended. Soon after, George Mason Police Chief Carl Rowan Jr. served the sisters with criminal trespass notices barring them from campus for four years — meaning that they can no longer continue their education.
“I’m worried for our students and I’m concerned for our schools,” said Ben Manski, the SJP chapter’s faculty adviser. “There are still no allegations and no charges that I’m aware of. Without those, we can’t have due process, we don’t know what is behind these actions, and we can’t know whether the public interest is being served or harmed.”
Dr. Alexander Monea, an associate professor of English at George Mason, questioned the school’s disciplinary process.
“These students haven’t been accused of a criminal, civil, or student conduct violation,” Monea said, “yet they have been banned from campus for four years, effectively expelling them from the university.”
“An Extension of State Power”
The severe moves against the family and the school’s SJP chapter are part of the latest wave of the crackdown against campus Palestine solidarity protests. As Israel’s war and demonstrations against it have dragged into a second year, the repression of Gaza protests continues to derail students’ education and ensnare them in disciplinary and court proceedings over activism on campus.
Police in Philadelphia conducted a similar raid in October, The Intercept reported, when authorities descended on the home of student leaders in the University of Pennsylvania’s pro-Palestine movement.
George Mason spokesperson Paola Duran declined to answer questions about the raid. “The university has no comment on matters of ongoing criminal investigations,” Duran said in a statement to The Intercept.
Fairfax County Police Department’s public affairs office told The Intercept the department only assisted with the case and that George Mason University and the FBI were the lead investigators and directed questions to them. FBI Washington field office spokesperson Lira Gallagher said the agency could not confirm or deny the existence of an investigation and directed questions to George Mason police. The Fairfax County Attorney and George Mason police did not respond to requests for comment.
Police used excessive violence in the raid in response to paint on the floor, said Bassam Haddad, a member of the George Mason faculty.
“Universities and university administrators have become an extension of state power, and we have now seen it firsthand in this case of a violent raid into the students’ home without any material evidence whatsoever,” said Haddad, a founding director of the Middle East and Islamic Studies Program at George Mason and an associate professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government.
“When they do things like this, it really does impact an entire community and an entire demographic at our school.”
It was not lost on George Mason students that the crackdown seemed to target the large number of Arab and Muslim students at the school.
“This repression has really been built up against multiple organizations on campus, especially with SJP, but really with any pro-Palestinian leaning organizations,” said a student representative of the George Mason University Coalition for Palestine, a campus organization, who asked for anonymity to avoid retaliation. “GMU has a huge Arab and Muslim population. When they do things like this, it really does impact an entire community and an entire demographic at our school.”
“This honestly has just been an attack, not only on Palestinian organizers and the movement in general, but also on free speech as well.”
SJP Suspension
When police arrived at the household last month, they forced the family to gather in the living room while they searched the house, according to two people familiar with the matter. Some family members were eventually released to attend work, but the rest remained while police conducted their six-hour search.
Police seized electronics from the residence, including phones and laptops, but made no arrests. At one point, police found antique firearms legally registered to the family’s son, a Mason alum and volunteer deputy chief firefighter.
Following the raid, authorities brought charges against the son related to the firearms. He litigated the charges and a Fairfax County Circuit Court judge dismissed them two weeks later.
“As a faculty senator, my colleagues asked me to raise a question to President Gregory Washington about the students’ family home being raided during a faculty senate meeting,” said Monea, the English professor. “He declined to share any information with the faculty senate at that time.”
Mason administrators sent an email to the SJP president the day after the raid announcing that the SJP chapter had been placed under an interim suspension. Since the daughter who currently leads SJP had her computer seized, however, she did not see the email until the following week.
No other SJP members nor Manski, the group’s faculty adviser, were made aware of the suspension until later last month. They finally found out when SJP members were told that a scheduled panel with the school chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People had been canceled due to the suspension.
The raid is part of the school’s increasing hostility toward activism against the war in Gaza, said Haddad, the faculty member supporting student activists. George Mason’s Board of Visitors — the school’s governing body — includes two appointments by Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin who currently work at the Heritage Foundation, which has called on the FBI to investigate campus protests against the war on Gaza.
“Have we become like the Soviet Union that we have been supposedly criticizing for decades, and now we continue to use as an example of overstretched power, corrupt power, and repressive and tyrannical power?” Haddad said. “Is this what we have become?”
Vanuatu’s special envoy to climate change says their case to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) is based on the argument that those harming the climate are breaking international law.
The case seeks an advisory opinion from the court on the legal responsibilities of countries in relation to climate change, and dozens of countries are making oral submissions.
Hearings started in The Hague with Vanuatu — the Pacific island nation that initiated the effort to obtain a legal opinion — yesterday.
Vanuatu’s Special Envoy for Climate Change and Environment Ralph Regenvanu told RNZ Morning Report they are not just talking about countries breaking climate law.
He outlined their argument as: “This conduct — to do emissions which cause harm to the climate system, which harms other countries — is in fact a breach of international law, is unlawful, and the countries who do that should face legal consequences.”
He said they were wanting a line in the sand, even though any ruling from the court will be non-binding.
“We’re hoping for a new benchmark in international law which basically says if you pollute with cumulative global greenhouse gas emissions, you cause climate change, then you are in breach of international law,” he said.
“I think it will help clarify, for us, the UNFCCC (UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) process negotiations for example.”
Regenvanu said COP29 in Baku was frustrating, with high-emitting states still doing fossil fuel production and the development of new oil and coal fields.
He said a ruling from the ICJ, though non-binding, will clearly say that “international law says you cannot do this”.
“So at least we’ll have something, sort of a line in the sand.”
Oral submissions to the court are expected to take two weeks.
Another Pacific climate change activist says at the moment there are no consequences for countries failing to meet their climate goals.
Pacific Community (SPC) director of climate change Coral Pasisi said a strong legal opinion from the ICJ might be able to hold polluting countries accountable for failing to reach their targets.
The court will decide on two questions:
What are the obligations of states under international law to protect the climate and environment from greenhouse gas emissions?
What are the legal consequences for states that have caused significant harm to the climate and environment?
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Mohammed, a middle school student in Philadelphia, puts on his “Free Gaza” bracelet as routinely as he brushes his teeth. He often wears a keffiyeh around his shoulders, despite, he said, being told at school to take it off.
“He’s so sure about who he is and what he wants to represent, he doesn’t care,” said Mariam, his mother.
Like many young Palestinian students across the country, Mohammed, who like his mother asked to use a pseudonym for fear of reprisals, has grown more political over the last year. His grandmother lives in the West Bank, and two of his cousins were killed by the Israeli military, part of the civilian death toll of Israel’s war on Gaza.
In November 2023, Mohammed’s English teacher at Philadelphia’s Baldi Middle School, Caroline Yang, and two other seventh grade teachers, Emily Antrilli and Jordan Kardasz, sensed Mohammed and other Muslim and Palestinian students needed a safe place to express themselves. Yang opened her classroom after school. The war was around a month old, and emotions were running high on all sides.
“They don’t want us to be loud. They don’t want us to be anything.”
The students decided to make posters. One listed names of Palestinian children killed by Israeli soldiers. Another showed a dove between Israeli and Palestinian flags. Some of the posters were adorned with slogans like “End apartheid,” “This is not war, this is genocide,” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Some of the posters contained red handprints; other handprints showed the red, white, green, and black of the Palestinian flag.
The teachers put up the signs, along with a Palestinian flag, in the school’s commons on November 17, 2023. The new display would accompany the flags of over 30 other nations, including Israel’s. Within an hour, before classes began, the school removed them, according to the teachers and a principal’s report obtained by The Intercept.
Soon, the posters would become the flashpoint in allegations and recriminations that included accusations of anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and anti-Muslim bias, as well as antisemitism. By the time the dust settled with the end of the school year last summer, the fallout had hit students and teachers alike. Some parents decided to pull students from the school. The three teachers had all left their jobs — and decided to file a federal civil rights complaint.
“Silencing. Erasure,” said Mariam, Mohammed’s mother, who was considering pulling both children from Baldi but ultimately kept them enrolled. “They don’t want us to be loud. They don’t want us to be anything.”
Posters made by students at Baldi Middle School, as shown in photographs from an Unsatisfactory Incident form filed about one of the teachers, Caroline Yang.Photos: Philadelphia School District
Strife in Schools
Across the country, students and educators who have advocated for Palestinians have faced censorship and professional repercussions. The Council on American Islamic Relations, the country’s largest Muslim civil rights organization, is suing a Maryland school district for allegedly placing three teachers on administrative leave for supporting Palestinian rights. Last October, two Minnesota public high school students were suspended for chanting “from the river to the sea.”
In Philadelphia schools, Israel’s war on Gaza had already sparked a furor. Protests erupted after a student podcast was censored by the district, and ad hoc groups have formed to make demands about Palestinian rights from the school system. The district has since suspended the teacher who assigned the censored project and who faced allegations of bias against supporters of Israel. District parents have since petitioned for her reinstatement and questioned the district’s motives.
As for Yang, Antrilli, and Kardasz, the teachers at Baldi, school district communications officer Christina Clark said Philadelphia schools seek to create inclusive learning environments in the full knowledge that their actions will shape students’ lives, but would not comment on personnel matters. Baldi’s principal, Bianca Gillis, did not respond to The Intercept’s multiple requests for comment. In a report summarizing multiple disciplinary hearings, Gillis wrote that the posters and flag caused staff pain and “had a negative and profound impact on Israeli and non Israeli staff.”
“I would not be able to sit right with myself if, as a teacher, I didn’t do anything while a genocide is happening.”
“We encourage all of us, staff, community members, and stakeholders of all kinds, to be the role models they deserve,” Clark wrote in a statement to The Intercept. She said the district has held two student forums to allow dialogue between the communities involved. The district has also partnered with the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education for workshops with district and school leaders “to increase understanding of antisemitism and Islamophobia.”
For the teachers, however, facilitating the posters was more than just a nod to inclusivity.
“With that many Palestinian students in our school,” Yang said, “I would not be able to sit right with myself if, as a teacher, I didn’t do anything while a genocide is happening.”
The Backlash
A month after the posters and flag were put up and taken down, the principal recommended that the district suspend the teachers without pay for five days and transfer them to different schools. The subsequent investigation, concluded in April, confirmed the disciplinary measures, though by the time the process was over, the recommendation for Kardasz’s transfer had been rescinded.
In May, with a month left in the school year, district officials ordered the teachers to stop teaching and work from home. Before the suspensions could be imposed, all three teachers resigned. None of them felt that they could be good teachers under the circumstances.
Top/Left: The exterior of Baldi Middle School in Philadelphia on May 8, 2024. Bottom/Right: Baldi teacher Jordan Kardasz wears a watermelon pin in support of Palestine on May 8, 2024.Photos: Hannah Yoon
The punishments were related to allegations that the teachers disobeyed an order to stay neutral on the war in Gaza, violated an administrative directive to email suggestions on ways to support the school community to the principal, broke three district policies, and created a “hostile work environment” for other staff members, according to disciplinary reports obtained by The Intercept. Other teachers, the report said, were afraid of “continued antisemitism” at work.
“Your actions indicate a select group of teachers exclusively, intentionally and purposefully discussing, planning and engaging students in an activity that was not discussed or approved with the administration of Baldi school and undermined efforts to address a serious and difficult issue for students and staff,” Gillis wrote in a disciplinary report.
When they were ordered to work from home, the teachers were told not to discuss the matter with other colleagues or students.
“My thought process was that it would start a conversation,” said Yang. “I never thought that it would lead to the backlash that it did.”
In response, the teachers, who were all in their first year at Baldi, filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, alleging that the school discriminated against Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students, infringed on students’ First Amendment-protected speech, and disciplined the teachers for their support of Palestinian students and Palestinian human rights.
“I want teachers who are going through something similar, who feel silenced at their schools, to know it’s not just them,” said Yang. “The district needs to protect teachers’ right to teach and talk about Palestine, not leave it up to each principal’s will.”
The federal complaint also alleged that the school rescinded accommodations for Muslim students to make an afternoon prayer during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. Mohammed and other Muslim students said they had not been allowed to carry out the time-specific prayer. Clark, the district spokesperson, told The Intercept that students can pray during school hours, but prayer should not be held during instructional time to minimize “academic interruption.”
The civil rights complaint and students interviewed by The Intercept, including Mohammed, have also alleged that educators told them to remove their keffiyehs, the checkered Palestinian scarves. (Clark said that Baldi students “may wear keffiyehs on dress down days and during the regular school day.”)
The Department of Education is evaluating the complaint and has not yet made a determination on whether it will open an investigation into the district, according to an attorney who helped the teachers file the complaint.
Censoring Student Speech
In Philadelphia schools, Arabic is the fifth-most spoken language, according to the district, with a large number of Arab students residing in northeast Philadelphia, where Mohammed lives.
At Baldi, the school has instituted “healing circles” led by the district’s diversity, equity, and inclusion office, with students responding overwhelmingly to a school survey that they feel safe and supported, according to the report from Gillis, the Baldi principal.
In October, however, the school’s assistant principal directed teachers to stay “neutral” on Gaza, according to the teachers. And in November 2023, during an all-staff meeting, Gillis gave a verbal directive that teachers must email her if they have suggestions for ways to support students. The teachers hung the posters and flag despite that order — followed by the response from other faculty members described in internal reports.
Top/Left: Sisters stand next to each other at a park in Philadelphia on June 11, 2024. Bottom/Right: A student at their home in Philadelphia on June 9, 2024.Photos: Hannah Yoon
“Staff members shared concerns of being safe in our building and that the Jewish community felt discriminated against, marginalized and hated,” says one of the disciplinary reports obtained by The Intercept. “Tears were shed in Principal Gillis’ office over the fear of continued Antisemitism.”
The lawyer who helped the teachers file their federal complaint said the school’s actions appeared to be an attempt to punish teachers for facilitating students’ speech.
“I think they’re trying to find a way to censor student speech without running afoul of the law,” said Noelia Rivera-Calderón, an education civil rights attorney and member of Palestine Legal Attorney Network.
The teachers said a double standard is at work on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Philadelphia schools. They pointed to the Israeli flag in the commons and another one in Baldi’s main office, next to Italian and American flags. And neutrality is a facade, they said: In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the teachers allege the school had pro-Ukrainian student art on a hallway bulletin board.
In May, Gillis stated that any signage, writing, or clothing that supported “’only one country’ created an unsafe environment, specifically noting that any sign of Palestine was unsafe for Jewish students,” according to the federal complaint.
None of the other displays stirred the sort of controversy or discipline that has erupted over the Palestinian flag and posters. The OCR complaint alleges that disciplinary meetings “made clear that Baldi administration’s concerns with the posters were not procedural but due to their pro-Palestine content.”
“The punishment is not because we hung up posters, the punishment is not because we didn’t have parents’ permission after school, they’re going to say that that’s what it is,” said Kardasz, one of the teachers. “But the punishment is the fact that these posters are pro-Palestinian, they are anti-genocide, they are anti-violence towards Palestinian people.”
“The kids who made the posters believed in a free Palestine before they even knew who the three of us were,” Kardasz said. “They found teachers who they felt comfortable saying that to.”
When Mohammed’s mother Mariam found out about the posters, she said she was ecstatic. She said, “Because that meant that somebody was recognizing them for who they are.”
“Am I Ever Going to See Ms. Yang Again?”
One Baldi student involved in making the posters told The Intercept that a school official had told the student to remove their keffiyeh, they said, because it violated the school uniform.
In contrast, the student said being in Yang’s classroom in November and making posters instilled a sense of pride, “because I knew there were people who stood with us.”
“I thought it was the best we could do to show our solidarity,” said the student, whose mother requested they remain anonymous. “Since you’re still a middle schooler, you can’t do much.”
The student’s mother took her kids out of Baldi and placed them in a private school.
“Having Ms. Yang there just made me feel at peace, like someone cares about Palestinian life,” the mother said. “And the fact that they kicked her out for doing that just made me feel like it’s just not a place I want my kids to be.”
Antrilli, who’s lived in Philadelphia for seven years, is now teaching at a charter school across the river in Camden, New Jersey. That decision wasn’t easy.
“I was ready to have my career with this district,” said Antrilli, who had been in her first year at Baldi. “The district will just keep going the way that it’s going, and it’s going to lose teachers like us who really want to help these kids, and these kids have to still go into these schools and feel this way every day.”
Kardasz, for her part, is teaching at a community college in the Philadelphia suburbs. As for Yang, she isn’t sure if she will return to teaching at all.
Sitting in his living room this past June, Mohammed posed a question to his mother: “Am I ever going to see Ms. Yang again?”
The NZ prime minister’s comments followed the ICC announcing arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Israel’s former defence minister Yoav Gallant on allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the 13-month war on the besieged Gaza Strip that has killed more than 44,000 people — mostly women and children.
Netanyahu and Gallant are now fugitives from global justice after the ICC issued the arrest warrants against them.
Although Israel — and the US — does not recognise the authority of the ICC, the highest international criminal court, and Netanyahu and Gallant will not turn themselves in, the pair’s world has got a lot smaller.
The Rome Statute, the treaty that established the ICC, includes 124 state parties across six continents.
“The law operates on the basis of a presumption that people will obey it. That’s how all laws are created,” Kuttab told Al Jazeera.
“You expect everybody to respect the law. Those who don’t respect the law are themselves violating the law.”
He added that there were early signs that countries would not ignore the court’s decision.
Many of Israel’s allies — including several European Union countries — have committed to enforcing the arrest warrants.
The ICC was set up in 2002 to prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and the crime of aggression when member states are unwilling or unable to do so themselves. It is based in The Hague in the Netherlands.
The case at the ICC is separate from another legal battle Israel is waging at the top UN court, the International Court of Justice, in which South Africa accuses Israel of genocide, an allegation Israeli leaders deny.
A total of 124 countries are state parties to the Rome Statute, which founded the International Criminal Court. They include 29 nations from the Americas: Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay, and Venezuela. Map: CC AJ Lab
President-elect Donald Trump vows to start his second term with the immediate mass deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants. Like everything else, deportations of the 21st century are an increasingly data-centric undertaking, tapping vast pools of personal information sold by a litany of companies. The Intercept asked more than three dozen companies in the data business if they’ll help; only four were willing to comment.
While details of the plan have varied, Trump’s intention is clear. He plans to use federal immigration police and perhaps the military to force millions of immigrants out of the United States in an operation the president-elect says has “no price tag.” While the country braces for the possibility of immigrants forcibly rounded up and deported, much of the undertaking will likely remain invisible — the domain of software analysis and database searches of unregulated personal data.
Regardless of immigration status, it is nearly impossible to exist today without creating a trail of records. DMV visits, electricity bills, cellphone subscriptions, bankruptcy proceedings, credit history, and other staples of modern life all wind up ingested and repackaged for sale by data companies. Information like this has helped inform deportation proceedings under both Republican and Democratic leadership.
In 2021, The Intercept reported that Immigration and Customs Enforcement paid LexisNexis nearly $17 million to access its database of personal information, which the company says includes 10,000 different data points spanning hundreds of millions of people in the United States. Within just seven months, according to documents reviewed by The Intercept, ICE had searched this database over 1.2 million times.
Similar uses of unregulated private data have become commonplace for immigration and border authorities. In 2020, Protocol and the Wall Street Journal reported on the extensive use of location and other personal data gleaned from smartphone apps by companies like Gravy Analytics and Venntel and resold to ICE and Customs and Border Protection. ICE “has used the data to help identify immigrants who were later arrested,” according to sources who spoke to the Journal.
Analytic software sold by Palantir has been instrumental to ICE’s deportation efforts; reporting by The Intercept showed the company’s tools were used in a 2017 operation targeting unaccompanied minors and their families.
Last year, Motherboard reported CBP had purchased access to Babel Street software that “lets a user input a piece of information about a target—their name, email address, or telephone number—and receive a bevy of data in return,” including “social media posts, linked IP address, employment history, and unique advertising identifiers associated with their mobile phone.”
To see whether corporate America will support Trump’s promised anti-immigrant operation, The Intercept reached out to data and technology companies that hold immense quantities of personal information or sellanalytic software useful to an agency like ICE. The list includes obscure data brokers that glean intimate personal details from advertising streams, mainstream cellular phone providers, household-name social networks, predictive policing firms, and more.
The list is by no means exhaustive. Private firms that quietly collect and sell personal data that could be of use to immigration authorities are innumerable and ever-growing. Some of these companies, like Meta, may not directly sell personal records to third-party customers in the manner of LexisNexis but could be asked to aid in immigration enforcement if presented with a legal request. At times, social media companies have opted to fight such requests they consider overly broad or invasive.
In 2016, as Trump prepared to begin his first term, The Intercept asked nine major tech firms whether they would help build a nationwide “Muslim registry,” as he had pledged during his campaign. Initially, only one — Twitter — even responded (the answer was no). Eventually, Facebook (as Meta was then known), Apple, Microsoft, and Google stated on the record that they too would not help build a computerized list of Muslims. The country now faces the prospect of another nationally polarizing MAGA campaign pledge, again with horrific civil liberties implications, and again requiring the aid or at least cooperation of one or many technology firms.
As in 2016, The Intercept posed the same question to each company, and requested a yes or no response: Would your company provide the Trump administration with data or other technical services to help facilitate mass deportation operations, either voluntarily, in response to a legal request, or via a paid contract?
This is how they responded.
Company
Industry
Comment
Airsage
Location data broker
No response
Anomaly Six
Geolocational surveillance
No response
Apple
Consumer technology
No response
Appriss
Data broker
No response
AT&T
Telecom
No response
Acxiom
Data broker
No response
Babel Street
Geolocational surveillance
No response
Booz Allen
Government technology contractor
No response
Clearview
Facial recognition
No response
Complementics
Data broker
No response
CoreLogic
Data broker
No response
Dataminr
Social media surveillance
No response
Digital Envoy
Data broker
No response
Equifax
Credit agency/data broker
No response
Experian
Credit agency/data broker
No response
Flock Safety
Surveillance
“As I’m sure you’re aware, our mission is to eliminate crime, and build a safer future. However, we don’t create the laws. We operate in CA, a sanctuary state, and our customers follow the enforcement rules of the state. In contrast, we also operate in TX, which is not a sanctuary state, and our customers follow the enforcement rules of the state. At the end of the day, we support the Constitution and the democratically-elected governing bodies having the right to enact laws at the will of the people.”
When asked again if Flock would engage in a contract pertaining to mass deportations, spokesperson Josh Thomas replied, “We don’t entertain hypotheticals.”
Fog Data Science
Geolocational surveillance
No response
Google
Internet/consumer technology
No response
Gravy Analytics
Location data broker
No response
IBM
Enterprise/consumer technology
No response
Innovis
Credit agency/data broker
No response
Inrix
Location data broker
No response
LexisNexis
Data broker
“LexisNexis Risk Solutions provides tools that support the lawful protection of society and the enforcement of the rule of law. Our tools are designed to be used in compliance with all applicable laws and do not single out individuals based on immigration status. We are committed to ensuring that our solutions are used responsibly and ethically, in alignment with established legal standards to promote safety and security within a democracy.”
When asked if this answer constituted a hypothetical “yes,” LexisNexis Risk Solutions spokesperson Jennifer Richman did not comment further.
Meta
Social media
Meta acknowledged receipt of The Intercept’s inquiry but did not provide a response.
Microsoft
Internet/enterprise/ consumer technology
No response
Near/Azira
Location data broker
“No. Azira has been expressly built to help business leaders make smart business decisions based on consumer behavior data. The company’s solutions are not designed nor intended for use in law enforcement. Based on Azira’s policies and practices around personal data protection as well as clear restrictions around sensitive locations and applicable privacy regulations, Azira data is not lawfully permitted to be utilized in this scenario.”
Oracle
Enterprise technology
No response
Outlogic
Location data broker
No response
Palantir
Data analytics
“We don’t have a comment.”
Peregrine
Predictive policing
No response
Safegraph
Location data broker
No response
T-Mobile
Telecom
No response
Thomson Reuters Clear
Data broker
“Our investigative solutions do not contain data about a person’s immigration or employment eligibility status. They are not designed for use for mass illegal immigration inquiries or for deporting non-criminal undocumented persons and non-citizens. Various agencies within DHS engage Thomson Reuters to support their investigations, such as to address child exploitation, human trafficking, narcotics smuggling, national security and public safety cases, organized crime, and transnational gang activity.”
When asked if, even though the company’s products are not designed for “mass illegal immigration inquiries,” said services would ever be allowed for such a use, company spokesperson Samina Ansari said, “We don’t comment on speculation.”
In Manchester, two Palestine Action trials take place this week for defendants who have plead ‘not guilty’ for their actions at the sites of Israel’s arms trade and their facilitators. They appear in court to state that Israel’s largest arms firm, Elbit Systems, is guilty: those resisting genocide are not.
Palestine Action: in the dock for saving lives
On Monday 2 and Tuesday 3 December, one Palestine Action activist will stand trial in Manchester Magistrates Court for a 2023 action in which they occupied the overhang of the Deansgate offices of Fisher German.
Fisher German were, at the time, landlords for the Elbit’s Staffordshire drone engine factory, UAV Engines – known to export arms components to Israel. Fisher German have since publicly cut ties with UAV Engines and Elbit after the months-long campaign of disruption.
As part of an ongoing campaign against those complicit in Elbit’s business-of-bloodshed, Palestine Action has targeted Fisher German dozens of times.
The real estate company was first targeted back in 2021 – with an occupation of the roof of their Birmingham offices (Vine Property Management in Harborne) which also saw the site covered in paint. Three activists were eventually found not guilty in court of the resulting charges.
These same offices were then hit with five covert actions over 2022, with activists breaking windows and dousing the property in red paint, marking it with a symbol of the blood shed by the company’s Israeli business partners:
Fisher German temporarily abandoned the Birmingham premises in August 2022.
Similar actions took place at Fisher German offices across the country throughout the two year campaign. Most recently in 2023, a single activist occupied the roof of the entrance to Fisher German’s Manchester offices, which had also been occupied by a coalition of trade unionists, who also demanded that Fisher German cut ties with Israel’s largest arms company:
It is this activist which is facing trial this week.
‘The accuser, not the accused’
Then, from Wednesday 4 to Friday 6 December, that same activist and one other will appear in Minshull Street Crown Court charged with criminal damage and aggravated trespass in relation to an action at the Elbit Systems ‘Ferranti’ factory in Oldham, Greater Manchester in February 2021.
As the Canary reported at the time, protesters from Palestine Action and Extinction Rebellion, armed with banners and red paint, said their early-morning raid on the Israeli-owned Elbit Ferranti factory in Oldham, Greater Manchester, is because they “will not accept an economy based on devastation, occupation and war”:
After relentless direct action at the site, the Elbit Ferranti factory – which formerly produced imaging technology for Israel’s drones – has been shut down for good since 2022.
The two activists facing trial at Minshull Street have had all defences ruled out by the judge – meaning that they will not be permitted to speak on Palestine, Elbit Systems, the genocide in Gaza, or any of the substantive reasons why their action proved necessary.
Regardless, Palestine Action said in a statement that:
they appear in the court as the accuser, not the accused, in the knowledge that Elbit System’s criminal enterprise will not last in Britain.
Featured image and additional images via Palestine Action
An exiled West Papuan leader has called for unity among his people in the face of a renewed “colonial grip” of Indonesia’s new president.
President Prabowo Subianto, who took office last month, “is a deep concern for all West Papuans”, said Benny Wenda of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP).
Speaking at the Oxford Green Fair yesterday — Morning Star flag-raising day — ULMWP’s interim president said Prabowo had already “sent thousands of additional troops to West Papua” and restarted the illegal settlement programme that had marginalised Papuans and made them a minority in their own land.
“He is continuing to destroy our land to create the biggest deforestation project in the history of the world. This network of sugarcane and rice plantations is as big as Wales.
“But we cannot panic. The threat from [President] Prabowo shows that unity and direction is more important than ever.
Indonesia doesn’t fear a divided movement. They do fear the ULMWP, because they know we are the most serious and direct challenge to their colonial grip.”
Here is the text of the speech that Wenda gave while opening the Oxford Green Fair at Oxford Town Hall:
Wenda’s speech
December 1st is the day the West Papuan nation was born.
On this day 63 years ago, the New Guinea Council raised the Morning Star across West Papua for the first time.
We sang our national anthem and announced our Parliament, in a ceremony recognised by Australia, the UK, France, and the Netherlands, our former coloniser. But our new state was quickly stolen from us by Indonesian colonialism.
ULMWP’s Benny Wenda speaking on West Papua while opening the Oxford Green Fair on flag-raising day in the United Kingdom. Image: ULMWP
This day is important to all West Papuans. While we remember all those we have lost in the struggle, we also celebrate our continued resistance to Indonesian colonialism.
On this day in 2020, we announced the formation of the Provisional Government of West Papua. Since then, we have built up our strength on the ground. We now have a constitution, a cabinet, a Green State Vision, and seven executives representing the seven customary regions of West Papua.
Most importantly, we have a people’s mandate. The 2023 ULMWP Congress was first ever democratic election in the history. Over 5000 West Papuans gathered in Jayapura to choose their leaders and take ownership of their movement. This was a huge sacrifice for those on the ground. But it was necessary to show that we are implementing democracy before we have achieved independence.
The outcome of this historic event was the clarification and confirmation of our roadmap by the people. Our three agendas have been endorsed by Congress: full membership of the MSG [Melanesian Spearhead Group], a UN High Commissioner for Human Rights visit to West Papua, and a resolution at the UN General Assembly. Through our Congress, we place the West Papuan struggle directly in the hands of the people. Whenever our moment comes, the ULMWP will be ready to seize it.
Differing views
I want to remind the world that internal division is an inevitable part of any revolution. No national struggle has avoided it. In any democratic country or movement, there will be differing views and approaches.
But the ULMWP and our constitution is the only way to achieve our goal of liberation. We are demonstrating to Indonesia that we are not separatists, bending this way and that way: we are a government-in-waiting representing the unified will of our people. Through the provisional government we are reclaiming our sovereignty. And as a government, we are ready to engage with the world. We are ready to engage with Indonesia as full members of the Melanesian Spearhead Group, and we believe we will achieve this crucial goal in 2024.
The importance of unity is also reflected in the ULMWP’s approach to West Papuan history. As enshrined in our constitution, the ULMWP recognises all previous declarations as legitimate and historic moments in our struggle. This does not just include 1961, but also the OPM Independence Declaration 1971, the 14-star declaration of West Melanesia in 1988, the Papuan People’s Congress in 2000, and the Third West Papuan Congress in 2011.
All these announcements represent an absolute rejection of Indonesian colonialism. The spirit of Merdeka is in all of them.
The new Indonesian President, Prabowo Subianto, is a deep concern for all West Papuans. He has already sent thousands of additional troops to West Papua and restarted the illegal settlement programme that has marginalised us and made us a minority in our own land. He is continuing to destroy our land to create the biggest deforestation project in the history of the world. This network of sugarcane and rice plantations is as big as Wales.
But we cannot panic. The threat from Prabowo shows that unity and direction is more important than ever. Indonesia doesn’t fear a divided movement. They do fear the ULMWP, because they know we are the most serious and direct challenge to their colonial grip.
I therefore call on all West Papuans, whether in the cities, the bush, the refugee camps or in exile, to unite behind the ULMWP Provisional Government. We work towards this agenda at every opportunity. We continue to pressure on United Nations and the international community to review the fraudulent ‘Act of No Choice’, and to uphold my people’s legal and moral right to choose our own destiny.
I also call on all our solidarity groups to respect our Congress and our people’s mandate. The democratic right of the people of West Papua needs to be acknowledged.
What does amnesty mean?
Prabowo has also mentioned an amnesty for West Papuan political prisoners. What does this amnesty mean? Does amnesty mean I can return to West Papua and lead the struggle from inside? All West Papuans support independence; all West Papuans want to raise the Morning Star; all West Papuans want to be free from colonial rule.
But pro-independence actions of any kind are illegal in West Papua. If we raise our flag or talk about self-determination, we are beaten, arrested or jailed. The whole world saw what happened to Defianus Kogoya in April. He was tortured, stabbed, and kicked in a barrel full of bloody water. If the offer of amnesty is real, it must involve releasing all West Papuan political prisoners. It must involve allowing us to peacefully struggle for our freedom without the threat of imprisonment.
Despite Prabowo’s election, this has been a year of progress for our struggle. The Pacific Islands Forum reaffirmed their call for a UN Human Rights Visit to West Papua. This is not just our demand – more than 100 nations have now insisted on this important visit. We have built vital new links across the world, including through our ULMWP delegation at the UN General Assembly.
Through the creation of the West Papua People’s Liberation Front (GR-PWP), our struggle on the ground has reached new heights. Thank you and congratulations to the GR-PWP Administration for your work.
Thank you also to the KNPB and the Alliance of Papuan Students, you are vital elements in our fight for self-determination and are acknowledged in our Congress resolutions. You carry the spirit of Merdeka with you.
I invite all solidarity organisations, including Indonesian solidarity, around the world to preserve our unity by respecting our constitution and Congress. To Indonesian settlers living in our ancestral land, please respect our struggle for self-determination. I also ask that all our military wings unite under the constitution and respect the democratic Congress resolutions.
I invite all West Papuans – living in the bush, in exile, in refugee camps, in the cities or villages – to unite behind your constitution. We are stronger together.
Thank you to Vanuatu
A special thank you to Vanuatu government and people, who are our most consistent and strongest supporters. Thank you to Fiji, Kanaky, PNG, Solomon Islands, and to Pacific Islands Forum and MSG for reaffirming your support for a UN visit. Thank you to the International Lawyers for West Papua and the International Parliamentarians for West Papua.
I hope you will continue to support the West Papuan struggle for self-determination. This is a moral obligation for all Pacific people. Thank you to all religious leaders, and particularly the Pacific Council of Churches and the West Papua Council of Churches, for your consistent support and prayers.
Thank you to all the solidarity groups in the Pacific who are tirelessly supporting the campaign, and in Europe, Australia, Africa, and the Caribbean.
I also give thanks to the West Papua Legislative Council, Buchtar Tabuni and Bazoka Logo, to the Judicative Council and to Prime Minister Edison Waromi. Your work to build our capacity on the ground is incredible and essential to all our achievements. You have pushed forwards all our recent milestones, our Congress, our constitution, government, cabinet, and vision.
Together, we are proving to the world and to Indonesia that we are ready to govern our own affairs.
To the people of West Papua, stay strong and determined. Independence is coming. One day soon we will walk our mountains and rivers without fear of Indonesian soldiers. The Morning Star will fly freely alongside other independent countries of the Pacific.
Until then, stay focused and have courage. The struggle is long but we will win. Your ancestors are with you.
The world’s biggest climate case begins at The Hague in the Netherlands today. Oral arguments will be heard by the International Court of Justice, or ICJ, which will consider what obligations United Nations member states have under international law to protect the planet from greenhouse gas emissions for future generations.
“The stakes are not high, they’re devastatingly high,” said Julian Aguon, an attorney representing Vanuatu, the Pacific country leading the case. “It’s an opportunity to finally bring the promise of climate justice closer within reach.”
The ICJ was established after World War II as a judicial mechanism for mitigating conflicts between United Nations member states and continues to arbitrate disputes issuing advisory opinions interpreting and clarifying international law. Such opinions are non-binding, but are still meaningful because they clarify binding law, such as the meaning of international treaties including the 2015 Paris Agreement that sought to cap the severity of global warming. In 1994, a judgment from the court on war between Libya and Chad over disputed territory prompted Libya to withdraw from Chad, and helped lead to a peace agreement.
But the court’s rulings are not always effective. Earlier this year, the ICJ ruled that Israel should end its occupation of the Palestinian territories immediately and make reparations to affected peoples. The occupation has continued, illustrating the limits of the ICJ’s power. In addition, big polluters like China and the U.S. have rejected the court’s compulsory jurisdiction, and so a ruling may apply to them more narrowly.
The court will now decide what if any legal consequences such countries should face for contributing to climate change, both from what they’ve done and what they haven’t done. That could include affirming that big polluters have a legal obligation to pay reparations.
The campaign to bring the case to the ICJ was initiated in 2019 by 27 law students at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji. It has now grown to be the largest case in the 77-year history of the ICJ and will consist of oral arguments from 98 countries and 12 international nongovernmental organizations.
In order to get on the ICJ’s docket, the students who began the case first had to convince Vanuatu’s government to back their campaign for an advisory opinion, then get other Pacific states on board by bringing the issue before the Pacific Forum, the premier diplomatic body in the Oceanic region.
The pandemic in 2020 interrupted their campaign, preventing the youth from traveling to United Nations’ climate conferences to advocate for their agenda. But the group moved online and managed to drum up support from Pacific island states, Caribbean nations, countries in Africa and Latin America, and dozens more. Slowly the group built enough diplomatic support to get on the agenda at the U.N. General Assembly, and later, built such a widespread backing that the Assembly approved the resolution calling for an ICJ advisory opinion on climate change by consensus.
“How the law is shaped from here on depends on this moment, depends on the ICJ,” said Vidal Prashad, one of the student campaigners based in Fiji. “We have the opportunity to leave behind a more capable international legal regime than we inherited.”
Ahead of this week’s oral arguments, young people have continued their campaigning, helping to collect witness testimonies from Indigenous Pacific peoples on how they’re currently being harmed by rising seas and climate change-fueled extreme weather events. They are also helping the governments who plan to present at the ICJ to craft their arguments and ensure they put forth the strongest, most progressive case. Prashad flew from Fiji to The Hague, where the youth’s five-year grassroots effort is finally reaching its conclusion.
Joie Chowdhury, a senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law, which has provided legal support for the case, said a favorable ruling from ICJ would help climate activists hold polluting countries accountable. Youth activists could cite the ruling in future climate litigation against their governments. Politicians could use the ICJ’s opinion to push for sanctions against countries who fail to comply, and diplomats could point to the document as a minimum standard in next year’s global climate change negotiations. “Failure to comply with legal consequences in the face of such devastating climate harm, that’s not just being in contravention of the law, it’s unconscionable,” Chowdhury said.
She noted that a lot of countries talk big about climate action, but this week’s oral arguments could illuminate what big polluters really think about the idea of being legally liable for their greenhouse gas emissions, something that could provide more clarity on what the barriers to climate action are. And even if it’s not in large countries’ interest to put up money for climate reparations, it is in their interest to appear to respect the treaties that they’ve already agreed to, which the ICJ ruling could help clarify.
“Climate justice is about accountability,” Chowdhury said. “Climate harm has been done, there was knowledge about this, and there must be redress for frontline communities. And for this court to really clarify that there is a right to remedy and reparation for climate harm, that is really important.”
“It will have moral weight,” said Arnold Kiel Loughman, the attorney general of Vanuatu, who plans to address the court. “We are doing this for the benefit of the global community.”
Climate change witness testimonials from across the Pacific underscore the cost of doing nothing. One village in Papua New Guinea has been forced to move four times due to sea level rise, and is in the midst of its fifth and final relocation. “I say final, because there are simply no more inland (places) to go,” Aguon said.
Such climate impacts have been existential for Indigenous Pacific peoples whose cultures are intimately connected to the food they grow, the waters they fish, and the lands they call home.
“We have so much to lose,” said Prashad from the University of the South Pacific. “Whole countries are standing to lose their whole identities.”
A landmark case that began in a Pacific classroom and could change the course of future climate talks is about to be heard in the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
The court will begin hearings involving a record number of countries in The Hague, in the Netherlands, today.
Its 15 judges have been asked, for the first time, to give an opinion about the obligations of nations to prevent climate change — and the consequences for them if they fail.
The court’s findings could bolster the cases of nations taking legal action against big polluters failing to reduce emissions, experts say.
They could also strengthen the hand of Pacific Island nations in future climate change negotiations like COP.
Vanuatu, one of the world’s most natural disaster-prone nations, is leading the charge in the international court.
The road to the ICJ — nicknamed the “World Court” — started five years ago when a group of University of the South Pacific law students studying in Vanuatu began discussing how they could help bring about climate action.
“This case is really another example of Pacific Island countries being global leaders on the climate crisis,” Dr Wesley Morgan, a research associate with UNSW’s Institute for Climate Risk and Response, said.
“It’s an amazing David and Goliath moment.”
Environmental advocates and lawyers from around the world will come to the International Court of Justice for the court case. Image: CC BY-SA 4.0/ Velvet
Meanwhile, experts say the Pacific will be watching Australia’s testimony today closely.
So what is the court case about exactly, and how did it get to this point?
From classroom to World Court Cynthia Houniuhi, from Solomon Islands, remembers clearly the class discussion where it all began.
Students at the University of the South Pacific’s campus in Vanuatu’s capital, Port Vila, turned their minds to the biggest issue faced by their home countries.
While their communities were dealing with sea level rise and intense cyclones, there was an apparent international “deadlock” on climate change action, Houniuhi said.
And each new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change painted a bleak picture of their futures.
“These things are real to us,” Hounhiuhi said. “And we cannot accept that . . . fate in the IPCC report.
“[We’re] not accepting that there’s nothing we can do.”
Their lecturer tasked them with finding a legal avenue for action. He challenged them to be ambitious. And he told them to take it out of their classroom to their national leaders.
So the students settled on an idea: Ask the World Court to issue an advisory opinion on the obligations of states to protect the climate against greenhouse gas emissions.
“That’s what resonated to us,” Houniuhi, now president of Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change, said.
Students were motivated to take action after seeing how sea level rise had affected communities across the Pacific. Image: Britt Basel/RNZ Pacific
They sent out letters to Pacific Island governments asking for support and Vanuatu’s then-Foreign Minister Ralph Regenvanu agreed to meet with the students.
Vanuatu took up the cause and built a coalition of countries pushing the UN General Assembly to send the matter to its main judicial body, the International Court of Justice, for an advisory opinion.
In March last year, they succeeded when the UN nations unanimously adopted the resolution to refer the case — a historic first for the UN General Assembly.
Speakers at the UN General Assembly hailed the decision to send the case to the International Court of Justice as a milestone in a decades-long struggle for climate justice. Image: X/@UN
It was a decision celebrated with a parade on the streets of Port Vila.
Australian National University professor in international law Dr Donald Rothwell said Pacific nations had already overcome their biggest challenge in building enough support for the case to be heard.
“From the perspective of Vanuatu and the small island and other states who brought these proceedings, this is quite a momentous occasion, if only because these states rarely have appeared before the International Court of Justice,” he said.
“This is the first occasion where they’ve really had the ability to raise these issues in the World Court, and that in itself will attract an enormous amount of global attention and raise awareness.”
Dr Sue Farran, a professor of comparative law at Newcastle University in the United Kingdom, said getting the case before the ICJ was also part of achieving climate justice.
“It’s recognition that certain peoples have suffered more than others as a result of climate change,” she said.
“And justice means addressing wrongs where people have been harmed.”
A game changer on climate? Nearly 100 countries will speak over two weeks of hearings — an unprecedented number, Professor Rothwell said.
Each has only a short, 30-minute slot to make their argument.
The court will decide on two questions: What are the obligations of states under international law to protect the climate and environment from greenhouse gas emissions?
And, what are the legal consequences for states that have caused significant harm to the climate and environment?
Vanuatu will open the hearings with its testimony.
Regenvanu, now Vanuatu’s special envoy on climate change, said the case was timely in light of the last COP meeting, where financial commitments from rich, polluting nations fell short of the mark for Pacific Islands that needed funding to deal with climate change.
Vanuatu’s climate change envoy Ralph Regenvanu said the ICJ case was about climate justice. Image: Hilaire Bule/RNZ Pacific
For a nation hit with three cyclones last year — and where natural disaster-struck schools have spent months teaching primary students in hot UNICEF tents – the stakes are high in climate negotiations.
“We just graduated from being a least-developed country a few years ago,” Regenvanu said.
“We don’t have the financial capacity to build back better, build back quicker, respond and recover quicker.
“We need the resources that other countries were able to attain and become rich through fossil fuel development that caused this crisis we are now facing.
“That’s why we’re appearing before the ICJ. We want justice in terms of allowing us to have the same capacity to respond quickly after catastrophic events.”
He said the advisory opinion would stop unnecessary debates that bog down climate negotiations, by offering legal clarity on the obligations of states on climate change.
Three cyclones struck Vanuatu in 2023, including Tropical Cyclone Lola, which damaged buildings on Ambrym Island. Image: Sam Tasso/RNZ Pacific
It will also help define controversial terms, such as “climate finance” — which developing nations argue should not include loans.
And while the court’s advisory opinion will be non-binding, it also has the potential to influence climate change litigation around the world.
Dr Rothwell said much would depend on how the court answered the case’s second question – on the consequences for states that failed to take climate action.
He said an opinion that favoured small island nations, like in the Pacific Islands, would let them pursue legal action with more certainty.
“That could possibly open up a battleground for major international litigation into the future, subject to how the [International Court of Justice] answers that question,” he said.
Regenvanu said Vanuatu was already looking at options it could take once the court issues its advisory opinion.
“Basically all options are on the table from litigation on one extreme, to much clearer negotiation tactics, based on what the advisory opinion says, at the forthcoming couple of COPs.”
‘This is hope’ Vanuatu brought the case to the ICJ with the support of a core group of 18 countries, including New Zealand, Germany, Bangladesh and Singapore.
Australia, which co-sponsored the UN resolution sending the case to the ICJ, will also speak at today’s hearings.
“Many will be watching closely, but Vanuatu will be watching more closely than anyone, having led this process,” Dr Morgan said.
A Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade spokesperson said Australia had engaged consistently with the court proceedings, reflecting its support for the Pacific’s commitment to strengthening global climate action.
Some countries have expressed misgivings about taking the case to the ICJ.
The United States’ representative at the General Assembly last year argued diplomacy was a better way to address climate change.
And over the two weeks of court hearings this month, it’s expected nations contributing most to greenhouse gases will argue for a narrow reading of their responsibilities to address climate change under international law — one that minimises their obligations.
Other nations will argue that human rights laws and other international agreements — like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights — give these nations larger obligations to prevent climate change.
Professor Rothwell said it was hard to predict what conclusion the World Court would reach — and he expected the advisory opinion would not arrive until as late as October next year.
“When we’re looking at 15 judges, when we’re looking at a wide range of legal treaties and conventions upon which the court is being asked to address these questions, it’s really difficult to speculate at this point,” he said.
“We’ll very much just have to wait and see what the outcome is.”
There’s the chance the judges will be split, or they will not issue a strong advisory opinion.
But Regenvanu is drawing hope from a recent finding in a similar case at the International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea, which found countries are obliged to protect the oceans from climate change impacts.
“It’s given us a great deal of validation that what we will get out of the ICJ will be favourable,” he said.
For Houniuhi, the long journey from the Port Vila classroom five years ago is about to lead finally to the Peace Palace in The Hague, where the ICJ will have its hearings.
Houniuhi said the case would let her and her fellow students have their experiences of climate change reflected at the highest level.
But for her, the court case has another important role.
Pro-independence Kanak leader Christian Téin will remain in a mainland French jail for the time being, a Court of Appeal has ruled in Nouméa.
This followed an earlier ruling on October 22 from the Court of Cassation, which is tasked to rule on possible procedural mistakes in earlier judgments.
The Court of Cassation found some flaws in the procedure that justified the case being heard again by a Court of Appeal.
Téin’s lawyer, Pierre Ortet, confirmed his client’s detention in a mainland prison (Mulhouse jail, north-eastern France) has been maintained as a result of the latest Court of Appeal hearing behind closed doors in Nouméa on Friday.
But he also told local media he now intends to bring the case to the European Court of Human Rights, as well as United Nations’ human rights mechanisms — especially on the circumstances that surrounded Téin’s transfer to France on 23 June 2024 on board a specially-chartered plane four days after his arrest in Nouméa on June 19.
Nouméa Public Prosecutor Yves Dupas told local media in an interview on Friday that in this case the next step should happen “some time in January”, when a criminal chamber of the Court of Cassation is expected to deliver another ruling.
Reacting to recent comments made by pro-independence party Union Calédonienne, which maintains Téin is a political prisoner, Dupas said Téin and others facing similar charges “are still presumed innocent”, but “are not political prisoners, they have not been held in relation to a political motive”.
Alleged crimes
The alleged crimes, he said, were “crimes and delicts related to organised crime”.
The seven charges include complicity as part of murder attempts, theft involving the use of weapons and conspiracy in view of the preparation of acts of organised crimes.
Téin’s defence maintains it was never his client’s intention to commit such crimes.
Christian Téin is the head of a “Field Action Coordinating Cell” (CCAT), a group created late in 2023 by the largest and oldest pro-independence party Union Calédonienne.
From October 2023 onward, the CCAT organised marches and demonstrations that later degenerated — starting May 13 — into insurrectional riots, arson and looting, causing 13 deaths and an estimated 2.2 billion euros (NZ$3.9 billion) in material damage, mainly in the Greater Nouméa area.
“The judicial inquiry aims at establishing every responsibility, especially at the level of ‘order givers’,” Dupas told local Radio Rythme Bleu on Friday.
He confirmed six persons were still being detained in several jails of mainland France, including Téin.
3 released under ‘judicial control’
Three others have been released under judiciary control with an obligation to remain in mainland France.
“You see, the manifestation of truth requires time. Justice requires serenity, it’s very important”, he commented.
Late August, Téin was also chosen as president of the pro-independence umbrella FLNKS at its congress.
The August 2024 Congress was also marked by the non-attendance of two other main pillars of the movement, UPM and PALIKA, which have since confirmed their intention to distance themselves from FLNKS.
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.
It was confirmed on Saturday 30 November that the Court of Appeal will conduct an extraordinary mass hearing of 16 Just Stop Oil political prisoners, arising from four separate cases, who received combined prison sentences of over 41 years for peaceful protest. The hearing has been listed for 29 and 30 January 2025 at the Royal Courts of Justice in London.
The Whole Truth Five – Roger Hallam (5yrs), Cressida Gethin (4yrs), Louise Lancaster (4yrs), Daniel Shaw (4yrs), and Lucia Whittaker De Abreu (4yrs) received record breaking prison sentences for planning nonviolent disruption on the M25, to stop the granting of new oil and gas licences:
M25 Gantries – George Simonson (2yrs), Theresa Higginson (2yrs), Paul Bell (22 months), Gaie Delap (20 months), and Paul Sousek (20 months) participated in that same action, by climbing onto gantries over the M25.
Navigator Tunnellers – Larch Maxey (3yrs), Chris Bennett (18 months), Samuel Johnson (18 months), and Joe Howlett (15 months) occupied tunnels dug under the road leading to the Navigator Oil Terminal in Thurrock, Essex.
Sunflowers – Phoebe Plummer (2yrs) and Anna Holland (20 months) threw soup on the glass protecting Van Gogh’s Sunflowers painting:
While the actions in these cases are markedly different from one another, they are united by being nonviolent and taken in an attempt to save lives, as well as by the disproportionate sentences imposed.
Where’s Walney?
These came after disgraced John Woodcock (‘Lord Walney’), an oil and arms industry lobbyist falsely presented to the public as an ‘independent’ Government adviser, called for groups such as Just Stop Oil and Palestine Action to be treated as equivalent to serious organised criminals.
Since then an unprecedented sentencing inflation has taken hold, despite Britain’s prisons crisis, with multiple peaceful protestors jailed for longer than if they had committed violent or sexual offences. The practice is at odds with Britain’s history and international practice and has been condemned by the United Nations and other international observers [7].
The appeals against all four sets of jail sentences will be heard by a full session of the Court of Appeal, led by Lady Justice Carr (the Lady Chief Justice).
Points of appeal will include whether a conscientious motivation should be treated as mitigation, and whether throwing soup on glass should be sentenced as an act of violence, if it caused some damage to the frame.
The outcome will be a defining moment for the right to protest in Britain, with far reaching consequences for our basic democratic rights and freedoms.
Just Stop Oil sentences violate basic human rights, says UN
Lex Korte, spokesperson for the Free Political Prisoners campaign, said:
A subset of judges have responded all too eagerly to the call from the disgraced Lord Walney, the arms and oil industry lobbyist, to jail peaceful climate campaigners for longer than if they’d committed serious crimes of sexual violence.
This would be insane at any time, let alone in the midst of climate breakdown and Britain’s prisons crisis. It is corruption designed to shield from accountability the fossil fuel industry, which has systematically suppressed from the public the scientific evidence about the catastrophic impacts of their deadly businesses.
As the UN has made clear, these sentences violate basic principles of human rights, democratic freedoms and international law. What’s at stake in this hearing is not just the freedom of some courageous individuals. It’s the credibility of the British legal system and the lifeblood of democracy itself.
The demands of the Free Political Prisoners campaign are:
To put a stop to the role of arms and oil industry lobbyists, such as Lord Walney, in drafting laws that criminalise those who expose the violence and lies of those industries.
To ensure that everyone who has taken reasonable and proportionate measures to prevent mass loss of life has the opportunity to properly present that as a defence to criminal charges
To end the jailing of people for taking peaceful action to protect life and to uphold international law.
A ‘chilling response to legitimate protest’
James Skeet, spokesperson for Just Stop Oil, noted:
We’ve passed the 1.5 degree threshold that was supposed to keep us safe, as governments continue to serve the oil and gas lobby, whilst locking up young people for trying to preserve their chance of a future. In years to come, people will question the priorities of our judiciary, and will ask ‘who were actually the real criminals’?
Tim Lancaster, political prisoner family member, said:
Prison is a poor solution for most problems but it is a chilling response to legitimate protest. Good people should not be imprisoned for raising the alarm about climate change. Organising and participating in peaceful protest, when Sunak broke the law by selling oil licences, should not result in lengthy prison sentence. I welcome the decision to hear these appeals together and the opportunity it provides to right this wrong and to treat these brave, principled people with kindness and respect.
A Fiji solidarity group for the Palestinians has accused the Rabuka-led coalition government of “complicity” in Israel’s genocide and relentless war in Gaza that has killed more than 44,000 people — mostly women and children — over the past year.
The Fijians4Palestine have called on the Fiji government to “uphold the principles of peace, justice, and human rights that our nation cherishes”.
“We urge our leaders to use their diplomatic channels to advocate for a peaceful resolution to the conflict, to support international efforts in providing humanitarian aid to the affected regions, and to publicly express solidarity with the Palestinian people, reflecting the sentiments of many Fijians,” the movement said in a statement marking the UN International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.
The group said it was “ashamed that the Fiji government continues to vote for the genocide and occupation of Palestinians”.
It said that it expected the Fiji government to enforce arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s former defence minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip.
The Fijians4Palestine group’s statement said:
It has been over one year since Israel began its genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
Over the past year, Israeli attacks have killed more than 44,000 Palestinians living in Gaza, equal to 1 out of every 55 people living there.
At least 16,756 children have been killed, the highest number of children recorded in a single year of conflict over the past two decades. More than 17,000 children have lost one or both parents.
At least 97,303 people are injured in Gaza — equal to one in 23 people.
According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, every day 10 children lose one or both legs, with operations and amputations conducted with little or no anaesthesia due to Israel’s ongoing siege.
In addition to the killed and injured, more than 10,000 people are feared buried under the rubble.
A Fiji protester with a “Your silence kills” placard rebuking the Fiji government for its stance on Israeli’s war on Gaza. Image: FWCC
With few tools to remove rubble and rescue those trapped beneath concrete, volunteers and civil defence workers rely on their bare hands.
We, the #Fijians4Palestine Solidarity Network join the global voices demanding a permanent ceasefire and an end to the violence. We express our unwavering solidarity with the Palestinian people.
The Palestinian struggle is not just a regional issue; it is a testament to the resilience of a people who, despite facing impossible odds, continue to fight for their right to exist, freedom, and dignity. Their struggle resonates with all who believe in justice, equality, and the fundamental rights of every human being.
Families torn apart
The images of destruction, the stories of families torn apart, and the cries of children caught in the crossfire are heart-wrenching. These are not mere statistics or distant news stories; these are real people with hopes, dreams, and aspirations, much like us.
As Fijians, we have always prided ourselves on our commitment to peace, unity, and humanity. Our rich cultural heritage and shared values teach us the importance of standing up for what is right, even when it is not popular or convenient.
Today, we stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people, not out of political allegiance but out of a shared belief in humanity, justice, and the inalienable human rights of every individual.
We unequivocally condemn the State of Israel for its actions that amount to war crimes, genocide, and apartheid against the Palestinian people. The deliberate targeting of civilians, the disproportionate use of force, and the destruction of essential infrastructure, including hospitals and schools, are in clear violation of international humanitarian law.
The intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group is evident. The continuous displacement of Palestinians, the destruction of their homes, and the systematic erasure of their history and culture are indicative of genocidal intent.
The State of Israel’s policies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, characterised by racial segregation, discrimination, and domination, amount to apartheid as defined under international law.
Oppressive regime
The construction of settlements, the separation wall, and the system of checkpoints are manifestations of this oppressive regime. Palestinians are subjected to different laws, regulations, and treatments based on their ethnicity, clearly violating the principle of equality.
We call upon the Fiji government to uphold the principles of peace, justice, and human rights that our nation cherishes. We urge our leaders to use their diplomatic channels to advocate for a peaceful resolution to the conflict, to support international efforts in providing humanitarian aid to the affected regions, and to publicly express solidarity with the Palestinian people, reflecting the sentiments of many Fijians.
We are ashamed that the Fiji government continues to vote for the genocide and occupation of Palestinians. We expect our government to enforce arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s former defence minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip.
The silence of the Fiji government is complicity, and history will not forgive their inaction.
Our solidarity with the Palestinian people is a testament to our shared humanity. We believe in a world where diversity, is treated with dignity and respect. We dream of a future where children in Gaza can play without fear, where families can live without the shadow of war, and where the Palestinian people can finally enjoy the peace and freedom they so rightly deserve.
There can be no peace without justice, and we stand in unity with all people and territories struggling for self-determination and freedom from occupation.
The Pacific cannot be an Ocean of Peace without freedom and self determination in Palestine, West Papua, Kanaky and all oppressed territories.
New Caledonia’s largest pro-independence party, the Union Calédonienne (UC), has unveiled the main outcome of its congress last weekend, including its plans for the French Pacific territory’s political future.
Speaking at a news conference on Thursday in Nouméa, the party’s newly-elected executive bureau, now headed by Emmanuel Tjibaou, debriefed the media about the main resolutions made during its congress.
One of the motions was specifically concerning a timeframe for New Caledonia’s road to independence.
Tjibaou said UC now envisaged that one of the milestones on this road to sovereignty would be the signing of a “Kanaky Agreement”, at the latest on 24 September 2025 — a highly symbolic date as this was the day of France’s annexation of New Caledonia in 1853.
‘Kanaky Agreement’ by 24 September 2025? This, he said, would mark the beginning of a five-year “transition period” from “2025 to 2030” that would be concluded by New Caledonia becoming fully sovereign under a status yet to be defined.
Several wordings have recently been advanced by stakeholders from around the political spectrum.
Depending on the pro-independence and pro-France sympathies, these have varied from “shared sovereignty”, “independence in partnership”, “independence-association” and, more recently, from the also divided pro-France loyalists camp, an “internal federalism” (Le Rassemblement-LR party) or a “territorial federation” (Les Loyalistes).
Charismatic pro-independence leader Jean-Marie Tjibaou, Emmanuel’s father who was assassinated in 1989, was known for being an advocate of a relativist approach to the term “independence”, to which he usually preferred to adjunct the pragmatic term “inter-dependence”.
Founding FLNKS leader Jean Marie Tjibaou in Kanaky New Caledonia in 1985 . . . assassinated four years later. Image: David Robie/Café Pacific
Negotiations between all political parties and the French State are expected to begin in the next few weeks.
The talks (between pro-independence, anti-independence parties and the French State) are scheduled in such a way that all parties manage to reach a comprehensive and inclusive political agreement no later than March 2025.
The talks had completely stalled after the pro-indeoendence riots broke out on 13 May 2024.
Over the past three years, following three referendums (2018, 2020, 2021, the latter being strongly challenged by the pro-independence side) on the question of independence (all yielding a majority in favour of New Caledonia remaining part of France), there had been several attempts to hold inclusive talks in order to discuss New Caledonia’s political future.
But UC and other parties (including pro-France and pro-independence) did not manage to sit at the same table.
Speaking to journalists, Emmanuel Tjibaou confirmed that under its new leadership, UC was now willing to return to the negotiating table.
He said “May 13 has stopped our advances in those exchanges” but “now is the time to build the road to full sovereignty”.
Back to the negotiating table In the footsteps of those expected negotiations, heavy campaigning will follow to prepare for crucial provincial elections to be held no later than November 2025.
The five years of “transition” (2025-2030), would be used to transfer the remaining “regal” powers from France as well as putting in place “a political, financial and international” framework, accompanied by the French State, Tjibaou elaborated.
And after the transitional period, UC’s president said a new phase of talks could start to put in place what he terms “interdependence conventions on some of the ‘regal’ — main — powers” (defence, law and order, foreign affairs, currency).
Tjibaou said this project could resemble a sort of independence in partnership, a “shared sovereignty”, a concept that was strongly suggested early November 2024 by visiting French Senate President Gérard Larcher.
But Tjibaou said there was a difference in the sense that those discussions on sharing would only take place once all the powers have been transferred from France.
“You can only share sovereignty if you have obtained it first”, he told local media.
One of the other resolutions from its congress held last weekend in the small village of Mia (Canala) was to reiterate its call to liberate Christian Téin, appointed president of the FLNKS (Kanak Socialist National Liberation Front) in absentia late August, even though he is currently imprisoned in Mulhouse (north-east of France) pending his trial.
Allegations over May riots
He is alleged to have been involved in the organisation of the demonstrations that degenerated into the May 13 riots, arson, looting and a deadly toll of 13 people, several hundred injured and material damage estimated at some 2.2 billion euros (NZ$3.9 billion).
Tjibaou also said that within a currently divided pro-independence movement, he hoped that a reunification process and “clarification” would be possible with other components of FLNKS, namely the Progressist Union in Melanesia (UPM) and the Kanak Liberation Party (PALIKA).
Since August 2024, both UPM and PALIKA have de facto withdrawn with FLNKS’s political bureau, saying they no longer recognised themselves in the way the movement had radicalised.
In 1988, after half a decade of a quasi civil war, Jean-Marie Tjibaou signed the Matignon-Oudinot agreements with New Caledonia’s pro-France and anti-independence leader Jacques Lafleur.
The third signatory was the French State.
One year later, in 1989, Tjibaou was shot dead by a hard-line pro-independence militant.
His son Emmanuel was aged 13 at the time.
‘Common destiny’
In 1998, a new agreement, the Nouméa Accord, was signed, with a focus on increased autonomy, the notions of “common destiny” and a local “citizenship” and a gradual transfer of powers from France.
After the three referendums held between 2018 and 2021, the Nouméa Accord prescribed that if there had been three referendums rejecting independence, then political stakeholders should “meet to examine the situation thus generated”.
On Thursday, Union Calédonienne also stressed that the Nouméa Accord remained the founding document of all future political discussions.
“We are sticking to the Nouméa Accord because it is this document that brings us to the elements of accession to sovereignty”.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
(@DulanAon) December 9, 2024
(@MannieMighty1) December 8, 2024
called for climate justice, self-determination & accountability
talks of climate leadership but argues against binding human rights
exposed polluters hiding behind the 
