Pfizer is spending big money to control online media. And, a group of 8 teenage girls have been arrested for murdering a homeless man in Canada, and authorities think social media may have played a role in the killing. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more. Transcript: *This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please […]
On the road to Rustavi Prison #12, where the only journalist jailed in Georgia is still serving out his 3.5-year sentence, Sofia Liluashvili is speaking to me about poetry.
Liluashvili is the wife of Georgian journalist Nika Gvaramia, who spent more than a year behind bars before a pardon by President Salome Zurabishvili led to his release on June 22. Less than two weeks earlier, I and CPJ Deputy Emergencies Director Kerry Paterson were in Georgia, the country that became independent after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, driving with Liluashvili to the prison holding her husband.
Liluashvili is in the back of a black SUV talking about growing up in Georgia under Soviet rule as we stop for water at a gas station known for its American-style hot dogs. We are in this car on our way to stand outside Rustavi prison and call on President Zurabishvili to release him.
Tamta Muradashvili, lawyer for Mtavari Arkhi TV station; Kerry Paterson, CPJ’s deputy emergencies director; Lucy Westcott, CPJ’s emergencies director; and Sofia Liluashvili, wife of Nika Gvaramia stand outside of Rustavi Prison, where Gvaramia was held for more than a year until June 22, 2023. (Credit: CPJ)
Thirteen days later, Zurabishvili would do just that.
I was part of a CPJ team in Georgia attending the ZEG Storytelling Festivaland to bring attention to Gvaramia’s case, as well as broader global press freedom concerns. Our trip also gave us the opportunity to tell Liluashvili and Tamta Muradashvili, lawyer for Mtavari Arkhi (Main Channel), the opposition broadcaster run by Gvaramia before his arrest, that Gvaramia would be named as one of CPJ’s 2023 International Press Freedom Award winners – the first Georgian journalist to receive this recognition.
Miraculously, he’ll now be able to accept the award in person.
But back to poetry. We head out of the city toward the prison, known for holding political prisoners. It’s lunchtime, so cars crawl around the slender blue figures of the Merheb Fam Monuments decorating the traffic circle. Liluashvili recalls how thoughts were not your own when you grew up in Soviet-era Georgia. Presented with a poem in school, you were immediately told its meaning. There was no opportunity to let the words marinate, to attach feelings to rhythm and couplets, to create your own definitions. Being denied a chance to think for yourself was a restrictive way to live, she says.
Now, she says, there is fear among many Georgians that those days could return.
Georgia’s political climate has deteriorated since the optimistic days of the 2003 uprising, the Rose Revolution. Stark polarization over whether Georgia should tilt toward Russia or Europe has contributed to a worsening media environment in recent years; tensions over the regional impact of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine have only deepened the country’s divisions.
Nick Lewis, CPJ’s correspondent for Central Asia and the Caucasus, says journalists have been attacked and legislation has been weaponized against independent media. In July 2021, protesters attacked dozens of journalists covering a planned LGBT-Pride march in Tbilisi – an event Lewis describes as a turning point for the media, with Georgian cameraman Aleksandre Lashkarava dying after being beaten by anti-LGBT protesters. There is also increasing concern about abusive SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) suits brought by government officials against opposition news outlets.
This year alone, CPJ’s documentation of numerous press freedom violations in Georgia includes attacks on journalists at protests against a proposed Russia-style “foreign agent” bill that was introduced by authorities—but quickly squashed following the protests—and the suspension of accreditation for opposition broadcasters covering parliament.
Liluashvili believes the importance of freedom of expression, that ability to decide what and how to think for yourself, is directly tied to her husband’s three-and-a-half-year jail sentence. In Georgia, she says, it’s important to be able speak freely.
Sofia Liluashvili, wife of journalist Nika Gvaramia, speaks to Georgian media outside of Rustavi Prison, June 9, 2023. (Credit: CPJ)
Gvaramia, the only journalist in Georgia sentenced to prison in retaliation for his work since CPJ started compiling records in 1992, was jailed on abuse of power charges related to his use of a company car at his previous employer, broadcaster Rustavi 2. The charges – denied by Gvaramia – were widely considered to be retaliatory, with the European Parliament describing them as “dubious” and noting that his sentence was perceived in Georgia “as an attempt to silence a voice critical of the current government.”
That government is led by the populist-conservative Georgian Dream party that Gvaramia and others decry as increasingly influenced by Russia.
Georgia’s Western aspirations are well-documented, with recent polls showing public support for joining the EU and NATO at 89 percent and 73 percent respectively. Tbilisi’s graffiti echo these numbers, as many walls are decorated with the country’s borders filled in with the colors and symbols of each institution’s flag. The European Union, which closely monitored Gvaramia’s imprisonment, called his jailing an impediment to EU membership. For Gvaramia and other opposition journalists and figures, this is a fight against a Russian-influenced government for a European future characterized by democracy and press freedom.
Challenges to Georgia’s press freedom are not new. Lincoln Mitchell, a lecturer at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and author of “Uncertain Democracy: U.S. Foreign Policy and Georgia’s Rose Revolution” and “The Color Revolutions”, told CPJ that media conditions under the previous government of currently imprisoned Mikheil Saakashvili were dire. Opposition stations were barred from broadcasting or shut down, while broadcasting offices were raided and computers pulled out of the wall with the help of sledgehammers in order to keep them off air, he said.
“It’s impossible to look at Georgia and say it’s becoming more democratic and freer,” noted Mitchell. “However, it is also dangerous to embrace too deeply the narrative [that] this is a government that is pro-Russia.”
In Tbilisi, our prison drive takes us past layers of buildings that give way to flatlands intermittently broken up by clusters of Soviet-era apartment buildings. I inhale ginger sweets and channel my pre-press conference nerves into asking Liluashvili questions. Muradashvili, as his lawyer, is allowed to visit Gvaramia daily, but Liluashvili sees him only once a month. She always brings him books and food and says he does not complain about conditions in the prison. She is used to this drive more than a year into her husband’s imprisonment, but as she won’t be going inside today she sees this visit as a business, rather than personal, trip.
Closer now to Rustavi, an industrial city of around 100,000 people, Liluashvili recounts details of her previous prison visits. One image stands out: the handprints left on the glass pane separating visitors from prisoners. Some big, some small, the prints haven’t, for some reason, been wiped away. The smudged ghosts of the yearning to touch a loved one haunt her. We are struck by how she speaks about Gvaramia not only as her husband and father of their three children, or even as a well-regarded journalist, but as someone she truly admires.
Local TV crews are waiting as we step into the blistering early June heat. Liluashvili, dressed in the red and white colors of the Georgian flag, dons a pair of spherical Dr. Strangelove-style glasses and continues sharing stories about Gvaramia, who, she says, knows we are outside today. She recalls a post-World Cup 2022 prison visit when his voice was hoarse from celebrating Argentina winning the tournament.
An exterior view of Rustavi Prison, with a children’s play area alongside the parking lot. (Credit: CPJ)
I notice a tiny, seemingly new children’s playground composed of a seesaw and a rabbit on a spring, little handles poking out of its cheeks, sitting next to the glass-and-wood façade of the prison’s similarly fresh-looking reception building. It looks displaced, a mistake in the scenery, in front of the barbed wire-topped high white walls and the guard tower that looms nearby. The only shade is in the shallow shadows of cars or trees. Staff recognize Liluashvili and wave to her on their way into the prison.
Gvaramia’s colleagues from Mtavari Arkhi are among those who interview me, Liluashvili, and Muradashvili, before I read my comments. They are eager to report on his imprisonment, which has had a chilling effect on journalists throughout the country.
Standing in front of assembled journalists and cameras, my statement, which emphasizes that the jailing of a journalist marks a turning point for a country, is one of many calls by media freedom groups – including CPJ – for Gvaramia’s release. An April 2023 letter from CPJ to President Zurabishvili and signed by nearly a dozen media freedom organizations calling for his release received widespread attention in the country.
CPJ Emergencies Director Lucy Westcott is shown speaking outside of Rustavi Prison on Mtavari Arkhi’s 3pm news bulletin, while driving back to Tbilisi. June 9, 2023. (Credit: CPJ)
Our visit makes headlines less than an hour later on Mtavari Arkhi’s 3pm bulletin. We watch it on a phone mounted to the car’s dashboard, hurtling down the road back to Tbilisi. Next to us, Liluashvili is running Gvaramia’s Twitter and Facebook accounts, ensuring the visit is fed back out into the world in as many ways as possible. CPJ colleagues in New York and Sweden are working to push out the news coverage at the same time. I hope I’ve done justice to his family, colleagues, and everyone who has worked so hard to secure his freedom.
A new report from The Intercept has revealed that the Pentagon is scrolling through social media trying to identify people making mean tweets about military generals. They claim they’re doing this for safety reasons, but they’re actually trying to keep tabs on anyone that is critical of the US war machine. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more. Transcript: […]
A joint submission by the American Bar Association Center for Human Rights, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and Freedom House for the 44th Session of the Universal Periodic Review Working Group, November 2023.
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Journalist Gustavo Gorriti remembers the days — just a few years ago — when people on the streets of Lima approached him to congratulate him for exposing corrupt government officials, drug trafficking mafias, and human rights abusers. A few even asked him to pose for selfies. These days, though, motorists shout insults at him from their cars. He’s been told that he faked his 1992 kidnapping and that he belongs in prison. He gets dirty looks and faces an avalanche of online abuse.
Gorriti, the founder and editor-in-chief of the award-winning Lima-based investigative news website IDL-Reporteros blames the backlash largely on La Resistencia, or “The Resistance,” an ultra right-wing group that has picketed the homes and offices of prominent journalists, politicians, and human rights activists, claiming they are pushing Peru towards communism and chaos. The group has also disrupted book events and news conferences and has clashed with left-wing protesters. Critics describe its members as bullies and shock troops at the service of right-wing politicians.
Peruvian investigative journalist Gustavo Gorriti is a frequent target of La Resistencia protests. (AFP/Cris Bouroncle)
La Resistencia has staged about 20 raucous protests outside the office of IDL-Reporteros and in front of Gorriti’s home over the past five years. The group was recently at the center of a small political earthquake in Peru; its July 10 meeting with Deputy Culture Minister Juan Reátegui caused such an uproar among the Peruvian press corps that Reátegui was fired the next day.
The press had good reason to object: through loudspeakers and bullhorns, La Resistencia members have hurled death threats and antisemitic slurs at Gorriti, who is Jewish. They insist that IDL-Reporteros produces fake news and that, instead of divulging wrongdoing by the powerful, Gorriti and his team of journalists are themselves the corrupt ones.
These falsehoods are magnified on social media and by right-wing outlets in Peru, like TV station Willax and the daily newspaper Expreso. All this, Gorriti says, reduces the impact and traction of IDL-Reporteros’ investigative journalism.
“It’s an accumulation of lies that amounts to character assassination,” Gorriti, 75, said in an interview last month in his cramped office in Lima. “We must never underestimate the power of disinformation.”
Gorriti isn’t the only one who sees the rise of La Resistencia as ominous for press freedom in Peru, which was already under stress amid a rising number of criminal defamation lawsuits filed against journalists and attacks on dozens of reporters during anti-government protests earlier this year.
So far, none of the targeted journalists has been physically attacked by La Resistencia but they fear this could be the next step.
“La Resistencia is made up of fanatics who foment violence and intolerance on behalf of the worst elements of Peruvian politics,” said Antonio Zapata, a Peruvian historian and columnist for La República, a Lima newspaper that has been targeted by the group.
La Resistencia was founded in 2018 by Juan José Muñico, a 47-year-old metalworker from a working-class neighborhood of Lima. A 2020 investigation by IDL-Reporteros said that when Muñico was 22, he was questioned in a 1998 murder case of a Peruvian army soldier; Muñico was never charged and the case remains unsolved.
In a rare interview, Muñico told CPJ that he formed La Resistencia, which he said counts some 150 members, in response to what he and others viewed as an alarming leftward drift in Peruvian politics and society. He said former police officers and military personnel are part of the group which supports conservative family values. Its slogan is: “God, homeland, and family.”
La Resistencia often targets independent Peruvian media outlets and journalists who have reported on corruption scandals involving right-wing politicians and on human rights abuses carried out by the police and military. Muñico claims that many of these reports are either exaggerated or false.
“The media manipulates information all the time,” he told CPJ. “So, we began to identify the journalists who are saying these things.”
La Resistencia members protest outside the home of La República columnist Rosa Maria Palacios. (YouTube/IDL-Reporteros)
La Resistencia’s most frequent target is IDL-Reporteros, the journalism wing of the Legal Defense Institute, an independent organization dedicated to fighting corruption and improving justice in Peru. Last year, the institute won a defamation case against Muñico.
Since 2015 IDL-Reporteros has published a series of exposés about corruption within Peru’s judicial system and about Odebrecht, a Brazilian construction firm that admitted to paying $800 million in kickbacks to politicians across Latin America in exchange for public works contracts.
Partly as a result of IDL-Reporteros’ scoops, dozens of Peruvian public officials, lawyers, judges and business people are under investigation for criminal acts, including failed presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori and other right-wing politicians that La Resistenciasupports.
Keiko Fujimori is the daughter of Alberto Fujimori, the former president who is serving a 25-year prison sentence for human rights violations and abuse of power. Muñico told CPJ that Fujimori, whom he credits with bringing security and economic stability to Peru during his time in office, was the inspiration for his own foray into politics, which included an unsuccessful campaign for a congressional seat in 2020.
Fujimori’s daughter is under investigation for money laundering, a case that has been extensively covered by IDL-Reporteros.
“That’s why La Resistencia is defaming us,” said Glatzer Tuesta, director of the Legal Defense Institute and a journalist who works closely with Gorriti.
The group’s largest protest occurred on May 5, when about 50 members of the group set off small explosives, lit flares, and threw bags of trash and broken glass at the IDL-Reporteros office. Some of the demonstrators shouted threats, including “Gorriti, your days are numbered” and “Gorriti: you will die.” After Gorriti filed a complaint, the attorney general’s office opened a preliminary investigation of Muñico and other members of La Resistencia for harassment and disturbing public order, Carlos Rivera, IDL-Reportero’s lawyer, told CPJ.
On February 21, the group protested outside of Gorriti’s home in Lima then marched to the nearby house of Rosa Maria Palacios, a columnist for La República who also hosts radio and TV news programs. Palacios said she was targeted in response to her reports criticizing the police for killing protesters during a wave of unrest that broke out in December 2022 following the ouster of then-President Pedro Castillo, a leftist despised by La Resistencia.
La República columnist Rosa Maria Palacios believes La Resistencia is targeting her over her journalism on police killings of protesters. (CPJ/John Otis)
“Because I was explaining these things to the public I ended up with a mob at the door of my house,” Palacios told CPJ. “There were about 20 people with bullhorns calling me a terrorist, and a communist and a dirty pig.”
Jaime Chincha, a well-known Peruvian TV journalist who has also been targeted by La Resistencia with protests, told CPJ that while police officers monitor La Resistencia activities they do not intervene. He believes that the police have come under pressure from the right-wing government of President Dina Boluarte to give the group free reign.
The Peruvian police did not respond to CPJ’s requests for an interview to discuss La Resistencia. A police source, who did not want to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the press, said his commanders “are not going to talk about it because it’s an extremely delicate issue within the police.”
Alberto Otárola, Boluarte’s cabinet chief, told reporters after the deputy culture minister’s meeting with the group that the government respects press freedom and “deplores any initiative by people or groups that tries to normalize violence and assaults the dignity and security of people.”
For his part Muñico, the founder of La Resistencia, says there’s no reason for the police to intervene. “We protest outside,” he said, denying that the demonstrators intend to intimidate journalists from doing their jobs. “It’s not like we’re burning down their houses.”
Still, La Resistencia counts other friends in politics. At a seminar organized by the group last year, lawyer and right-wing politician Ángel Delgado extolled the group, saying, “you are fundamental for Peru’s democracy.” Another supporter, according to Gorriti and news reports, is Lima’s right-wing mayor, Rafael López Aliaga.
Chincha and Gorriti insist that the constant harassment is illegal and could, in some cases, be qualified as hate speech. Roberto Pereira, a Lima lawyer who often defends journalists, told CPJ that “when La Resistencia alters public order, it’s no longer free speech.”
Glatzer Tuesta, the director of the Legal Defense Institute (third from left) and Gustavo Gorriti (fourth from left) demonstrate against La Resistencia. Behind them signs read “The people reject violence” and “Fascism is pestilence; Stop the Violence!”
Last year, the Legal Defense Institute won a criminal defamation lawsuit against Muñico, who was ordered to pay the outlet 10,000 sols (US$2,754) and was given a one-year suspended prison sentence. Muñico currently faces another defamation lawsuit stemming from remarks he made about a Peruvian human rights group and the Legal Defense Institute, which he called a “criminal organization.”
When La Resistencia began targeting him in 2018, Gorriti said he tried to stay focused on investigative journalism. But now he says debunking the group’s disinformation campaign is his top priority.
To that end Gorriti organized a rally on June 6 to defend IDL-Reporteros. Supporters banged on drums, unfurled banners, and shouted slogans denouncing La Resistencia. Near the end of the hour-long event, Gorriti grabbed a microphone and addressed the crowd.
La Resistencia and its allies “attack independent journalism because they are trying to impose an empire of lies,” he said. “But we will defend journalism with our lives and do all we can to provide people with the truth.”
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New York, July 13, 2023—Bangladesh authorities must immediately drop their investigation into journalist Adhara Yasmin and stop using the Digital Security Act to intimidate journalists in retaliation for their work, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Thursday.
On May 13, the Chittagong Cyber Tribunal, which adjudicates alleged cybercrime offenses in southeast Bangladesh, registered a complaint under the Digital Security Act against Yasmin and her source in relation to the RTV broadcast reporter’s April 30 video investigation exposing alleged crimes by the conversative Islamic organization Rajarbagh Darbar Sharif and one of its leaders, Shakerul Kabir, according to newsreports and a person familiar with the case, who spoke to CPJ on the condition of anonymity due to fear of reprisal.
Kabir filed the complaint accusing her of violating three sections of the Digital Security Act, according to CPJ’s review of the document. In her investigation, Yasmin reported that Kabir has been accused of extortion, land grabbing, and violence against women.
The Digital Security Act, which criminalizes several forms of speech online, has frequently been used to target critical journalists in Bangladesh since its enactment in 2018. In March 2023, Bangladesh authorities arrested a Prothom Alo reporter and opened multiple investigations under the act into the leading newspaper’s leadership and staff, prompting United Nations human rights chief Volker Türk to reiterate his call on authorities to impose an immediate moratorium on the law.
CPJ and other rights groups also have called for the suspension of the law.
“It is appalling that Bangladeshi journalist Adhara Yasmin has been targeted under the draconian Digital Security Act for her investigative reporting,” said Carlos Martinez de la Serna, CPJ’s program director. “Authorities must immediately drop their investigation, stop using the act against journalists, and ensure Yasmin is not subjected to further retaliation for her work.”
Yasmin found out about the complaint on July 8, in a call from a local police station. The next day, she learned she had been summoned for questioning on July 14 at the police Criminal Investigation Department in Chittagong’s Noakhali sub-district, about 173 kilometers (107 miles) from her home in the capital city Dhaka, according to the person who spoke to CPJ.
Yasmin’s source, who appeared in her video investigation, is named as an accused in the complaint. Rajarbagh Darbar Sharif, led by Pir Dillur Rahman, has previously been accused of filing fabricated criminal complaints to facilitate land grabbing.
CPJ called and messaged Kabir and Muhammad Rafiqul Islam, the investigating officer in the case, but did not receive any replies.
Berlin, July 13, 2023 – The Committee to Protect Journalists said it welcomed the Montenegro Supreme Court’s Wednesday decision to uphold a verdict in January to acquit journalist Jovo Martinović on drug trafficking charges.
“This decision finally puts an end to the eight-year legal saga involving prominent investigative journalist Jovo Martinović, who was twice wrongly convicted on drug-related charges,” said Attila Mong, CPJ’s Europe representative. “The verdict is a critical vindication for Martinović, and we can only hope Montenegro authorities have learned that covering crime does not mean a reporter is involved in criminal activity.”
Martinović, a prominent investigative journalist who covers crime, was detained in 2015, along with 17 others, on suspicion of participating in a drug trafficking ring and held for more than 14 months pending a trial on drug-related charges. Martinović denied the charges and said they were in retaliation for his journalism.
In 2019, he was sentenced to 18 months in prison, but the verdict was overturned. In a 2020 retrial, his sentenced was reduced to one year; the journalist’s appeal, which was initially rejected, went to the Supreme Court, which ordered a second retrial. In January 2023, Martinović was acquitted of all charges. The prosecution’s appeal was denied Wednesday.
Stockholm, July 12, 2023— The Committee to Protect Journalists says it is relieved by Wednesday’s decision by a Kyrgyzstan appeals court to annul a lower court ruling ordering the closure of Radio Azattyk, the local service of U.S. Congress-funded broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
“We are relieved by the reversal of Kyrgyz authorities’ decision to shutter Radio Azattyk, but they should never have tried to close it in the first place,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in London. “Kyrgyz authorities must allow Radio Azattyk to work freely and stop putting pressure on it and other media outlets over content they dislike or don’t agree with.”
Radio Azattyk appealed an April 27 district court decision to shutter the broadcaster for publishing a September 2022 video report about border clashes with neighboring Tajikistan. In October, Kyrgyz authorities blocked Radio Azattyk’s websites over the video and ordered a freeze on the outlet’s bank account under money laundering laws.
On Wednesday, July 12, 2023, the court confirmed a settlement between the broadcaster’s parent company Azattyk Media and Kyrgyzstan’s Ministry of Culture, Information, Sport, and Youth Policy. According to the ministry, that settlement resulted in the removal of the video from the outlet’s websites.
The ministry announced it would end the block on Radio Azattyk’s websites, and a spokesperson for the Kyrgyzstan President said “restrictions” on Azattyk Media would be lifted.
Jeffrey Gedmin, acting president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, said that the decision — “a result of concerted advocacy and support from the international community” — would enable Radio Azattyk “to continue to reach its audiences with trusted reporting.”
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New York, July 7, 2023—In response to a Belarusian court sentencing journalist Andrey Famin to seven years in prison, the Committee to Protect Journalists issued the following statement of condemnation:
“The seven-year prison sentence handed down to Belarusian journalist Andrey Famin for his alleged involvement in a low-profile network of regional newspapers is proof that authorities will spare no one in their efforts to suppress independent voices,” said Carlos Martinez de la Serna, CPJ’s program director, in New York. “Authorities should drop all charges against Famin, release him immediately, and let the media work freely.”
On June 21, a court in the capital city of Minsk sentenced Famin to seven years on charges of calling for sanctions, participating in gross violations of public order, and creating an extremist formation, according to July 4 reports by the banned human rights group Viasna and the Belarusian Association of Journalists, an advocacy and trade group operating from exile.
Belarusian authorities detained Famin on October 27, 2022. Later that day, the pro-government Telegram channel Svodki Tsentra published a video in which Famin is seen saying that he was the editor of Vestniki, a Belarusian network of self-published regional newspapers, and that he was detained by police for his editing activities, according tomultiplemediareports and CPJ’s review of the video, which has since been taken offline.
In the video, Famin says that he started the Vestniki opposition newspaper network in 2020, and wrote and edited articles for the papers. He said he received a total of about US$700 for his work.
Vestniki’s regional papers merged into a single outlet, Belaruskiy Vestnik, after February 24, 2022, Famin says in the video. The newspaper was also distributed through its Telegram channel, which had about 300 subscribers when Famin was detained, and reported on politics, social issues, and the war in Ukraine. Belarusian authorities labeled Vestniki an extremist formation in December 2022.
CPJ emailed the Belarusian Investigative Committee for comment but did not receive any reply.
At least 26 journalists were imprisoned in Belarus at the time of CPJ’s 2022 prison census. Famin was not listed in that census because of fears that his inclusion could imperil his court case.
In a statement, Arms Control Association executive director Daryl Kimball said that sending cluster bombs to Ukraine “would be escalatory, counterproductive, and only further increase the dangers to civilians caught in combat zones and those who will, someday, return to their cities, towns, and farms.”
“Some U.S. officials claim that these weapons ‘would be useful’ against mass formations of troops and armor or broad targets, such as airfields, and that they would allow Ukraine to concentrate their use of unitary warheads against higher-value Russian targets,” said Kimball.
“The reality is more complicated,” he continued. “Cluster munitions will not differentiate a Ukrainian soldier from a Russian one. The effectiveness of cluster munitions is significantly oversold and the impact on noncombatants is widely acknowledged, but too often overlooked.”
Kimball noted that “the limited military utility and the substantial humanitarian dangers of cluster munitions are among the key reasons why the Defense Department halted using them in Afghanistan in 2002 and Iraq in 2003, and has chosen to invest in alternative munitions.”
“It is why, in 2008, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates issued an order to phase out by 2018 cluster munitions with an unexploded ordnance rate of greater than 1%, and it is why, in 2011, the Obama administration affirmed this policy,” said Kimball. “It is why Congress, in 2018, enacted a series of export restrictions on cluster munitions with a failure rate in excess of 1%.”
“The Pentagon has, unfortunately, dragged its feet and in 2017 the Trump administration announced the 2018 deadline for phasing out non-compliant cluster munitions would not be met,” he added. “No new deadline for meeting that goal was set by the Trump administration or the Biden administration.”
On the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, President Joe Biden said, “The decisions we make over the next five years are going to determine and shape our lives for decades to come… a choice between chaos and stability.”
Kimball on Thursday referenced that February statement and said, “Rather than add to the chaos and side-step the rules of the global system, President Biden should have made it clear that cluster munitions need not and should not be part of the conflict in Ukraine, or in any war.”
As the Arms Control Association explains:
Cluster munitions are designed to disperse or release explosive submunitions, each of which weighs less than 20 kilograms, and includes those explosive submunitions. The U.S. stockpile includes dual-purpose improved conventional munitions (DPICMs), surface-to-surface warheads, and other types of older cluster munitions. Given that cluster munitions disperse hundreds or even thousands of tiny but deadly bomblets, their use produces significant quantities of unexploded submunitions that can maim, injure, or kill civilians and friendly forces during, and long after, a conflict.
The limited military value and the indiscriminate impacts of these weapons led the majority of the world’s countries to negotiate the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions. The treaty—which 123 nations have joined—prohibits State parties from developing, producing, acquiring, using, transferring, or stockpiling cluster munitions. While 23 NATO members are parties to the treaty, the United States, Ukraine, and Russia are not.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) has long documented the devastating consequences of U.S.-made cluster munitions in countries such as Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yemen.
On Thursday, HRW released a new report detailing civilian harm and suffering caused by the use of cluster bombs throughout the war in Ukraine.
“Cluster munitions used by Russia and Ukraine are killing civilians now and will continue to do so for many years,” said Mary Wareham, the organization’s acting arms director. “Both sides should immediately stop using them and not try to get more of these indiscriminate weapons.”
This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.
The state of Indiana is suing popular social media app TikTok for endangering children. Also, lobbyists have found a new way to outsmart politicians and get them to attend their corporate events. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more. Transcript: *This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos. Mike Papantonio: The state of […]
New York, July 3, 2023—In response to a South African High Court’s Monday judgment striking down a gag order against the amaBhungane Center for Investigative Journalism, the Committee to Protect Journalists issued the following statement:
“Today’s judgment is a massive victory for media freedom in South Africa and an important vindication of a journalist’s ethical duty to protect confidential sources in the public interest,” said Angela Quintal, CPJ’s Africa program coordinator. “Deputy Judge President Roland Sutherland’s judgment reaffirms that the country’s courts will not condone pre-publication censorship without appropriate notice and that investigative journalists have the right to hold and use leaked information in the public interest.”
Quintal has been an amaBhungane board member since October 2013.
A judge granted the original injunction against amaBhungane on June 1—following a secret application by the Moti Group, the subject of the outlet’s coverage—and the action was widely condemned as a threat to media freedom in the country. The injunction ordered the outlet to return leaked documents and refrain from publishing further articles based on them.
On June 3, amaBhungane launched an urgent application in the Johannesburg High Court to overturn the order, in which the parties agreed that the investigative outlet would not destroy or alter the documentation until the matter could be heard in open court.
AmaBhungane sought another urgent application seeking to overthrow the original order last week; the judgment in its favor was delivered Monday, July 3.
Sutherland called the Moti Group’s application an “abuse of the court process,” according to multiplenewsreports and a joint statement by the South African National Editors’ Forum, the Campaign for Free Expression, and Media Monitoring Africa, three local press freedom organizations who joined amaBhungane in its legal case. The judge ordered the Moti Group to pay amaBhungane’s and the three organizations’ legal costs.
We recently talked about drug company Merck suing the federal government because they don’t want to lower the cost of their drugs. That lawsuit has now expanded, with groups like the US Chamber of Commerce and Big Pharma front groups joining in to keep prices high for American consumers. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more. Transcript: *This transcript […]
The company responsible for toxic PFAS chemicals being a part of our everyday lives has agreed to a massive settlement with cities and municipalities that could provide some relief for residents that have been consuming the toxic chemicals. This fight is far from over, but this is a huge win for the plaintiffs. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss […]
Texas has been experiencing a record-breaking heat wave that has now spread across the southern United States. And while this was happening, Texas governor Greg Abbott signed a bill that eliminates mandatory water breaks for outdoor construction workers. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more. Transcript: *This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse […]
Communications between Hunter Biden and a business associate in China have raised a lot of questions about how he cashed in on his family name – and the messages suggest that President Biden may have been by his side the entire time, literally. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more. Transcript: *This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription […]
America’s Lawyer E59: Newly released messages show that Hunter Biden was using his father’s status and connections to secure payments from overseas business partners, and we’ll tell you what this could mean for the Biden family. The US Chamber of Commerce and several other groups are joining the legal fight to keep prescription drug prices higher […]
A tech CEO admitted to Wall Street analysts that he has been praying for inflation. Then, a new study has confirmed that there are unsafe levels of PFAS chemicals in every single state in this country. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more. Click here to find out more about PFAS lawsuits. Transcript: *This transcript was generated by a […]
Companies in the United States are using contracts to trap workers in jobs that they hate, creating a new form of indentured servitude. Also, health insurance companies are gouging consumers while taking millions of dollars from the federal government each year. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more. Transcript: *This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, […]
A lawyer in New York is facing sanctions – and possibly worse – after he used the AI service Chat GPT to create a legal brief. The artificial intelligence bot created a list of fake court cases that the lawyer used in his brief, but he got busted when the opposing side couldn’t find any […]
Pharmaceutical giant Merck is suing the federal government so that they can continue to price gouge American consumers. Merck is angry about legislation that would require them to lower the cost of just a handful of their drugs covered by Medicare because they want to squeeze as much money as possible out of sick people. Mike […]
America’s Lawyer E58: Voices are growing louder calling for the Democratic Party to have a REAL primary for the 2024 nomination, but the Party is scared as the non-Biden candidates start to gain momentum. The drug company Merck is suing the federal government so that they can continue to price gouge consumers with their over-priced […]
