Via America’s Lawyer: President Biden has spent months disavowing US ties with Saudi Arabia, so why is a $650 million arms deal now back on the table? 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: A major arms deal is on the way for […]
For much of the last 20 or so years, the north of Ireland wasn’t used to being front and centre in international headlines. But thanks to the DUP and other hardline Brexiteers, that’s exactly where it was as 2021 began. And thanks also to a Brexiteer Tory government, the north made headlines for another reason. This time for the conflict that, largely speaking, fell silent in 1998.
As I’ve writtenextensively for The Canary, the peace we’ve had in the north in the last 23 years has been an uneasy one. Part of what makes it so uneasy is the tin ear the British government gives to victims’ families.
The government’s insensitivity and deafness was especially loud and clear in July. Because that was the month secretary of state for Northern Ireland Brandon Lewis confirmed plans for an amnesty that could see British forces evade justice for their crimes in Ireland. And not only that, as if to consolidate its vision of the past, in November the British government announced plans to rewrite the history of that conflict. The Telegraph said the government feared “creeping revisionism around the role of the IRA and the atrocities it committed”. Oh the irony!
However, regardless of Britain’s tactic to conceal its dirty past in Ireland, the families of those who died at Britain’s hands have not relented. They continued their pursuit of justice for their loved ones into 2021. And it’s their bravery, not the callousness of the UK government, that will be the lasting memory and message of legacy issues in 2021. This article is another in The Year In Review series. You’ll be able to catch up on the many of the other review articles here.
But it was Labour which was first up
The year actually began with an example of historical revisionism from the Labour Party. This was evident when then shadow secretary of state for Northern Ireland Louise Haigh ran an online “education programme” about the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement.
Haigh invited professor Jon Tonge from the University of Liverpool to address her first seminar. According to Tonge, the conflict began at the collapse of the 1973 Sunningdale agreement. Sunningdale was an attempt at power-sharing in the north which collapsed after five months following British loyalist opposition.
As I wrote at the time, in addition to ignoring the first five years of the conflict, Tonge completely omitted Irish republican concerns and the violent British repression against Irish Catholics and republicans. Republican paramilitaries – as they’d wanted since the war of independence over one hundred years ago – were fighting for a united Ireland. Tonge also ignored that the 30-year conflict was in part born out of the repression, by the British state and its agents, of peaceful protests in 1968.
Blood soaked journey
In March, when Connla Young of the Irish Newsrevealed the “blood-soaked journey” of a British loyalist gun, it revealed a double standard in the mainstream media’s reporting on the north. Loyalists imported that gun, along with many others, to murder Irish republicans and innocent Catholics during the conflict.
Unfortunately, though, Young’s journalism is an exception in the mainstream. Because his colleagues don’t display an ounce of his courage. Instead they portray today’s loyalists who oppose the current post-Brexit arrangements in the north, as an “umbrella group”. Lobbyists, if you will. Yet these loyalist groups are a direct descendant of the gangs, who once acted as the death squads of the British state. But this hasn’t stopped the mainstream media giving them pride of place. What did the Telegraph say about “revisionism”?
As they admit one, another resurfaces
In May, a coroner declared 9 of the 11 Ballymurphy massacre victims, shot by the British army, were innocent. Victims’ families already knew this just as they knew all 11 were innocent. These innocent people died following the invasion of over 600 British soldiers into the Ballymurphy area of west Belfast between the 9 and 11 August 1971. This British invasion marked the beginning of the British policy of imprisoning Irish Catholics and republicans without trial – internment.
Following the coroner’s announcement, we were reminded how Ballymurphy was far from a one off. Thanks to the relentless diligence of legacy researchers at Paper Trail, new evidence indicates “a major British military operation about to begin in the vicinity”, at the time 13-year-old schoolgirl Martha Campbell was murdered in May 1972. But with this proposed amnesty in place, would anybody face trial?
Tories make their crimes official
Never believe anything until it has been officially denied, goes the adage. Well, the Tories weren’t denying anything as such, they just don’t want anyone to talk about British crimes in Ireland.
In July, a series of announcements came that amounted to a denial of any wrong-doing. In early July, the Public Prosecution Service (PPS) announced it would drop the cases against two British soldiers for the murder of three Irish people in Derry in 1972. The PPS claimed there wasn’t a reasonable chance of either soldier being prosecuted.
Later that month, Lewis announced plans to grant an amnesty to British forces, and paramilitary groups, who fought in the 30-year conflict. As I wrote at that time:
And while some in the mainstream media, and Labour party leader Keir Starmer, say Lewis’s proposal means an amnesty “for terrorists”, the reality is quite different. Because given the lack of prosecutions compared to the eventual admission of wrong-doing by the British establishment, it looks as if the British establishment is trying to whitewash its record during that 30-year conflict.
The British state continued to white-wash when it met with a human rights group who represent victims’ of British state violence, soon after Lewis’s announcement. From that meeting it seemed as if the British government was, at best, trying to minimise its role in the conflict in Ireland. It claimed British security forces were only responsible “for around 10% of Troubles-related deaths” and that “the vast majority… were lawful”. A state of complete and deliberate denial.
Human rights groups continued to call out the British establishment’s lies through their research and a day of nation-wide action in Ireland in September.
Tireless campaigning
It is without doubt thanks to the tireless campaigning of a dedicated few that the British cover up campaign will never be normalised. We were reminded of this throughout the year and especially every December when we remember the 15 people murdered as a result of the McGurk’s Bar bombing in Belfast in 1971. Campaigners continue to expose Britain’s role in this bloody act of slaughter, and its role in deliberately and falsely blaming Irish republicans for the carnage.
So it’s somewhat fitting, if not poignant, that the year ended with the UK Supreme Court highlighting a cover up relating to alleged torture in Ireland. The court found the police’s failure to investigate allegations of torture against the “hooded men” was unlawful. In 2014, the Irish state broadcaster RTÉ, showed these men had indeed been tortured by the British state. The British also replicated these torture techniques in Iraq in 2003.
British state traumatising families
Try as they might, the British establishment will not succeed. Because the campaign for justice goes on. And the more the British cover up, the more these campaigners fight. As such, it’s fitting that the final word should be left with them. Ciarán MacAirt of Paper Trail told The Canary that 2021 was “very much a double-edged sword”:
The British state has re-traumatized families across these islands because of its endless threats to dismantle the Stormont House Agreement unilaterally and to enact its pernicious Legacy Bill. The British state’s mask has slipped and it wants to bury its war crimes and protect its killers whilst denying bereaved families equal access to due process of the law. The British media’s mendacity in reporting this assault on basic human rights was similarly damaging to families too.
Nevertheless, the dignity, fortitude and bravery of these ordinary families were beacons throughout the darkness and deceit of 2021. These heroes are my highlight as they have demolished the falsehoods of a powerful state and relentlessly succeed in this state’s own courts. It is their heroism in fighting for truth and justice that has driven the British state to break international and domestic human rights law. The perfidious British state is running scared because it murdered its own citizens and covered up its crimes, but did not account for a basic human emotion – love. That is what is driving each and every family member and that is why Britain is in such trouble.
We at The Canary look forward to highlighting that bravery and heroism in the years to come.
Papua New Guinean church workers working behind the scenes to help the terrorised people of the Nankina valley in Madang’s Rai Coast district are now themselves at risk after they were named in a news report.
The missionaries (names withheld) called on the police to send in more manpower to apprehend the “Het Wara” gang, saying their members who are on the ground would now be targeted by the gangsters.
This plea comes shortly after reports came in from sources on the ground that the house of one of the church members was burnt by the gang.
One of the missionaries told the Post-Courier that they had not wanted to be named or take credit for what they were doing out of concern for the security of their members on the ground.
“Knowing how this gang operates, they will definitely go after our members when the police leave,” said the missionary.
“Over the course of two years, this gang has killed people who stood up to them, who reported them to authorities or who tried to get help.
“So we appeal to the government and the police, please send in more manpower, end their reign of terror.”
35 homes burnt down
Meanwhile, reports from the area indicate that the gang is continuing to terrorise villagers despite a contingent of policemen flying into the area this week. A total of 35 homes have been burnt down so far, with three men killed and several others severely injured.
There are also reports of an unconfirmed number of women and girls being abducted and raped by the gang in the last three weeks.
Madang police were deployed to the area on Sunday and 10 Northern mobile group policemen were deployed yesterday to beef up manpower to hunt down the gang.
The group was flown in yesterday morning to join the team of 11 from Madang.
Team leader Steven Yalamu told the Post-Courier that the team from Lae arrived safely and were all now based at Tibu.
21 policemen on the ground
“Currently, we have 21 men on the ground but we are looking at bringing in more manpower to hunt down these criminals who have been preying on their own people,” Detective Inspector Yalamu said.
“Also the place is so rugged and mountainous that we have to wait for a helicopter to fly us to where the gang is at now.
“The gang is still active and is moving, attacking other villages that are further away from where we are, but I’d like to remind them that the hand of the law is long and we will still catch up with them.”
Peace and normalcy has been restored at Tibu village where police are now based.
Yalamu called on all Tibu villagers who may still be hiding in the bush to return to their homes and village.
“I also call on all villagers in the area to work with us to apprehend this gang.”
The interim President of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) provisional government, Benny Wenda, has condemned Indonesia for the arrest and torture of eight students, and appeals to Melanesian countries to support their plea.
The eight West Papuan students were arrested by Indonesian police for peacefully demonstrating with banners and hand-painted Morning Star flags in Jayapura, capital of the Indonesian-ruled province of Papua, on 1 December 2021.
They have been charged with treason, and may face 25 years in prison.
In an interview with 96.3 Buzz FM, Wenda said that this happened when West Papua celebrated its 60th year anniversary, which is significant for all West Papuans.
“The event is celebrated globally. Official celebrations took place in Netherlands, in United Kingdom, Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu,” he said.
“The university students peacefully raised their flags, marched and chanted withdrawal of the military and demanded self-determination.
“Just last month, I asked the Indonesian government to allow my people to express themselves because we always respect their independence on August 17 annually,” Wenda said.
‘Call for respect and release’
“We have called for respect and are not happy with this arrest.
“We are also asking the international community to monitor the situation.”
Amnesty Indonesia has already called for the immediate release of the students. These students have been fed up with the military operations, internal displacements, murders and bombings.
Wenda also said that recently an elderly woman, Paulina Imbumar, who leads prayers, was arrested, and a request had been sent to the police station to release her.
The chair of the Vanuatu West Papua Association, Job Dalesa, said it was very sad to hear such actions taken.
He added that it was an independent human rights flag and the students were portraying their stand.
Dalesa called on the people of Vanuatu to unite in prayer for the people of West Papua.
“We will appeal to Indonesia to stop such actions,” he said.
The Vanuatu Daily Post contacted the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) headquarters in Port Vila for comments on the situation. However, there was no immediate response.
Kizzy Kalsakau and Jason Abel are Vanuatu Daily Post reporters. Republished with permission.
The Paris-based global media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has condemned three “dictatorial regimes” — Belarus, China and Myanmar — for their role in a global surge in the jailing of journalists doing their job.
According to the RSF annual round-up, a record number of journalists — 488, including 60 women — are currently detained worldwide, while another 65 are being held hostage.
Meanwhile, the number of journalists killed in 2021 — 46 — is at its lowest in 20 years.
RSF said in a statement that the number of journalists detained in connection with their work had never been this high since the watchdog began publishing its annual round-up in 1995.
RSF logged a total of 488 journalists and media workers in prison in mid-December 2021, or 20 percent more than at the same time last year.
This exceptional surge in arbitrary detention is due, above all, to three countries — Myanmar, where the military retook power in a coup on 1 February 2021; Belarus, which has seen a major crackdown since Alexander Lukashenko’s disputed reelection in August 2020; and Xi Jinping’s China, which is tightening its grip on Hong Kong, the special administrative region once seen as a regional model of respect for press freedom.
RSF has also never previously registered so many female journalists in prison, with a total of 60 currently detained in connection with their work – a third (33 percent) more than at this time last year.
China world’s biggest jailer of journalists
China, the world’s biggest jailer of journalists for the fifth year running, is also the biggest jailer of female journalists, with 19 currently detained. They include Zhang Zhan, a 2021 RSF Press Freedom laureate, who is now critically ill.
Belarus is currently holding more female journalists (17) than male (15). They include two reporters for the Poland-based independent Belarusian TV channel Belsat — Daria Chultsova and Katsiaryna Andreyeva — who were sentenced to two years in a prison camp for providing live coverage of an unauthorised demonstration.
In Myanmar, of the 53 journalists and media workers detained, nine are women.
“The extremely high number of journalists in arbitrary detention is the work of three dictatorial regimes,” RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said.
“It is a reflection of the reinforcement of dictatorial power worldwide, an accumulation of crises, and the lack of any scruples on the part of these regimes. It may also be the result of new geopolitical power relationships in which authoritarian regimes are not being subjected to enough pressure to curb their crackdowns.”
Another striking feature of this year’s round-up is the fall in the number of journalists killed in connection with their work — 46 from 1 January to 1 December 2021. The year 2003 was the last time that fewer than 50 journalists were killed.
This year’s fall is mostly due to a decline in the intensity of conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Yemen and to campaigning by press freedom organisations, including RSF, for the implementation of international and national mechanisms aimed at protecting journalists.
Journalists deliberately targeted Nonetheless, despite this remarkable fall, an average of nearly one journalist a week is still being killed in connection with their work. And RSF has established that 65 percent of the journalists killed in 2021 were deliberately targeted and eliminated.
Mexico and Afghanistan are again the two deadliest countries, with seven journalists killed in Mexico and six in Afghanistan. Yemen and India share third place, with four journalists killed in each country.
In addition to these figures, the 2021 round-up also mentions some of the year’s most striking cases. This year’s longest prison sentence, 15 years, was handed down to both Ali Aboluhom in Saudi Arabia and Pham Chi Dung in Vietnam.
The longest and most Kafkaesque trials are being inflicted on Amadou Vamoulké in Cameroon and Ali Anouzla in Morocco.
The French journalist Olivier Dubois was the only foreign journalist to be abducted this year. He has been held hostage in Mali since April 8.
Since 1995, RSF has been compiling annual round-ups of violence and abuses against journalists based on precise data gathered from 1 January to 1 December of the year in question.
“The 2021 round-up figures include professional journalists, non-professional journalists and media workers,” RSF explains.
“We gather detailed information that allows us to affirm with certainty or a great deal of confidence that the detention, abduction, disappearance or death of each journalist was a direct result of their journalistic work. Our methodology may explain differences between our figures and those of other organisations.”
Reporters Without Borders and Pacific Media Watch collaborate.
Via America’s Lawyer: The US Secretary of Defense finally orders a probe into US airstrikes that killed civilians in Syria back in 2019. RT Correspondent Brigida Santos joins Mike Papantonio to explain why it took so long to investigate these deadly airstrikes, and whether we can expect to see any accountability in the ranks. Transcript: *This transcript was generated by a […]
Armed conflict in West Papua continues to claim lives, displace tens of thousands of people and cause resentment at Indonesian rule.
But despite ongoing calls for help, neighbouring countries in the Pacific Islands region remain largely silent and ineffectual in their response.
This year, Indonesia’s military has increased operations to hunt down and respond to attacks by pro-independence fighters with West Papua National Liberation Army (WPNLA) which considers Indonesia an occupying force in its homeland.
Since late 2018, several regencies in the Indonesian-ruled Papuan provinces have become mired in conflict, notably Nduga, Yahukimo, Intan Jaya, Puncak Jaya, Maybrat as well as Pegunungan Bintang regency on the international border with Papua New Guinea.
The ongoing cycle of violence has created a steady trickle of deaths on both sides, and also among the many villages caught in the middle.
Identifying the death toll is difficult, especially because Indonesian authorities restrict outside access to Papua.
However, research by the West Papua Council of Churches points to at least 400 deaths due to the conflict in the aforementioned regencies since December 2018, including people who have fled their villages to escape military operations and then died due to the unavailability of food and medicine.
‘Some cross into PNG’
“We have received reports that at least 60,000 Papuan people from our congregations have currently evacuated to the surrounding districts, including some who have crossed into Papua New Guinea,” says Reverend Socratez Sofyan Yoman, president of the Fellowship of Baptist Churches of West Papua.
West Papuan villagers flee their homes due to the armed conflict in Maybrat regency, September 2021. Image: RNZ Pacific
The humanitarian crisis which Yoman described has spilled over into Papua New Guinea, bringing its own security and pandemic threats to PNG border communities like Tumolbil village in remote Telefomin district.
Reverend Yoman and others within the West Papua Council of Churches have made repeated calls for the government to pull back its forces.
They seek a circuit-breaker to end to the conflict in Papua which remains based on unresolved grievances over the way Indonesia took control in the 1960s, and the denial of a legitimate self-determination for West Papuans.
But it is not simply the war between Indonesia’s military and the Liberation Army or OPM fighters that has created ongoing upheavals for Papuans.
This year has seen:
more arbitrary arrests and detention of Papuans for peaceful political expression;
treason charges for the same;
harassment of prominent human rights defenders;
more oil palm, mining and environmental degradation that threatens Papuans’ access to their land and forest;
a move by Indonesian lawmakers to extend an unpopular Special Autonomy Law roundly rejected by Papuans; and
a terror plot by alleged Muslim extremists in Merauke Regency in Papua’s south-east corner.
Reverend Socratez Sofyan Yoman … the Indonesian president and vice-president have “turned a blind eye and heart to the Papua confict”. Image: RNZ Pacific
Not only the churches, but also Papuan customary representatives, civil society and the pro-independence movement have been calling for international help for many years, particularly for an intermediary to facilitate dialogue with Indonesia towards some sort of peaceful settlement.
Groups frustrated with Jakarta
The groups have expressed frustration about the way that Jakarta’s defensiveness over West Papua’s sovereignty leaves little room for solutions to end conflict in the New Guinea territory.
On the other hand, Indonesian government officials point towards various major infrastructure projects in Papua as a sign that President Joko Widodo’s economic development campaign is creating improvements for local communities.
Despite the risks of exacerbating the spread of covid-19 in Papua, Indonesia recently held the National Games in Jayapura, with President Widodo presiding over the opening and closing of the event, presenting it as a showcase of unity and development in the eastern region.
“The president and vice-president of Indonesia while in Papua did not discuss the resolution of the protracted Papua conflict. They turned a blind eye and heart to the Papua confict,” says Reverend Yoman.
Beyond the gloss of the Games, Papuans were still being taken in by authorities as treason suspects if they bore the colours of the banned Papuan Morning Star flag.
Regional response At their last in-person summit before the pandemic, in 2019, Pacific Islands Forum leaders agreed to press Indonesia to allow the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights into Papua region in order for it to present them with an independent assessment of the rights situation in West Papua.
Advocating for the UN visit, as a group in the Forum, appears to be as far out on a limb that regional countries — including Australia and New Zealand — are prepared to go on West Papua.
However even before 2019, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights office had already been trying for years to send a team to Papua, and found it difficult securing Indonesia’s approval.
That the visit has still not happened since the Forum push indicates that West Papua remains off limits to the international community as far as Jakarta is concerned, no matter how much it points to the pandemic as being an obstacle.
Indonesian military forces conduct operations in Intan Jaya, Papua province. Image: RNZ Pacific
The question of how the Pacific can address the problem of West Papua is also re-emerging at the sub-regional level within the Melanesian Spearhead Group whose full members are PNG, Fiji, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and New Caledonia’s Kanaks.
The United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) is looking to unlock the voice of its people at the regional level by applying again for full membership in the MSG, after its previous application had “disappeared”.
The ULMWP’s representative in Vanuatu, Freddy Waromi, this month submitted the application at the MSG headquarters in Port Vila.
No voice at the table
The organisation already has observer status in the MSG, but as Waromi said, as observers they do not have a voice at the table.
“When we are with observer status, we always just observe in the MSG meeting, we cannot voice our voice out.
“But with the hope that we become a full member we can have a voice in MSG and even in Pacific Islands Forum and even other important international organisations.”
ULMWP representative in Vanuatu Freddie Waromi … “with the hope that we become a full member we can have a voice in MSG.” Image: RNZ Pacific
Indonesia, which is an associate member of the MSG, opposes the ULMWP’s claim to represent West Papuans.
“They’re still encouraging them (the MSG) not to accept us,” Waromi said of Jakarta.
He said the conflict had not abated since he fled from his homeland into PNG in 1979, but only worsened.
“Fighting is escalating now in the highlands region of West Papua – in Nduga, in Intan Jaya, in Wamena, in Paniai – all those places, fighting between Indonesian military and the National Liberation Army of West Papua has been escalating, it’s very bad now.”
Vanuatu consistently strong
Vanuatu is the only country in the Pacific Islands region whose government has consistently voiced strong support for the basic rights of West Papuans over the years. Other Melanesian countries have at times raised their voice, but the key neighbouring country of PNG has been largely silent.
The governor of PNG’s National Capital District, Powes Parkop, this month in Parliament lambasted successive PNG governments for failing to develop a strong policy on West Papua.
Governor Powes Parkop of Papua New Guinea’s National Capital District … “We have adopted a policy that is shameful and unethical.” Image: Johnny Blades/RNZ Pacific
He claimed that PNG’s long silence on the conflict had been based on fear, and a “total capitulation to Indonesian aggression and illegal occupation”.
“We have adopted a policy that is shameful and unethical,” he said of PNG’s “friends to all, enemies to none” stance.
“How do we sleep at night when the people on the other side are subject to so much violence, racism, deaths and destruction?
“When are we going to summon the courage to talk and speak? Why are we afraid of Indonesia?”
Parkop’s questions also apply to the Pacific region, where Indonesia’s diplomatic influence has grown in recent years, effectively quelling some of the support that the West Papua independence movement had enjoyed.
Time is running out for West Papuans who may soon be a minority in their own land if Indonesian transmigration is left unchecked.
Yet that doesn’t mean the conflict will fade. Until core grievances are adequately addressed, conflict can be expected to deepen in West Papua.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The Papuan people have rejected the investigation team formed by the Indonesian state through the Attorney-General’s Office (AGO) to investigate alleged gross human rights violations in Paniai on 8 December 2014.
“To this day Indonesia has never solved any cases of gross human rights violations in the land of Papua, especially not the bloody Paniai case,” said Papuan activist Andi Yeimo about the massacre when Indonesian troops killed five teenagers and wounded 17.
“So, we the people of Paniai and the families of the victims are [instead] hoping for a visit by the United Nations High Commissioner [on Human Rights] to see for themselves the evidence and facts on the ground in Karel Gobai, the location of the shootings.”
Yeimo believes that the Indonesian government is incapable of resolving cases of gross human rights violations and the Papuan people are asking for the United Nations to visit Papua.
“We already know that the government talks nonsense. Indonesia once offered four billion [rupiah] (NZ$419,000) in money as compensation. But we, the families of the victims, rejected this evil attempt outright,” he said.
In relation to a UN visit to Papua, Yeimo said that 85 countries had already urged the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to visit Papua.
But Indonesia had used the covid-19 pandemic situation as grounds to prevent the visit.
Indonesian ‘distractions’
“Domestically, Indonesia [tries] to distract the Papuan people’s focus with the agenda of Otsus (the extension of special autonomy), the creation of new autonomous regions, the National Sports Week and military operations in West Papua,” said Yeimo.
“All students, youth, religious figures, state civil servants and all OAP (indigenous Papuans) unite now, take part in rejecting the [investigation] team formed by the state. We Papuans all know that Indonesia has never taken responsibility for its actions.”
Earlier, Amiruddin, the head of the investigation team into gross human rights violations, said he hoped that the newly formed team of investigators would be able to work transparently.
“The Attorney-General’s move to form the Paniai incident investigation team is a good move”, said Amiruddin in a press release.
Notes from Indo Left News: On 8 December 2014, barely two months after President Joko Widodo was sworn in as president, five high-school students were killed and 17 others seriously wounded when police and military opened fire on a group of protesters and local residents in the town of Enarotali, Paniai regency. Shortly after the incident, while attending Christmas celebrations in Jayapura on December 28, Widodo personally pledged to resolve the case but seven years into his presidency no one has been held accountable for the shootings.
The US Senate has passed its National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) military spending bill for the fiscal year of 2022, setting the budget at an astronomical $778 billion by a vote of 89 to 10. The bill has already been passed by the House, now requiring only the president’s signature. An amendment to cease facilitating Saudi Arabia’s atrocities in Yemen was stripped from the bill.
“The most controversial parts of the 2,100-page military spending bill were negotiated behind closed doors and passed the House mere hours after it was made public, meaning members of Congress couldn’t possibly have read the whole thing before casting their votes,” reads a Politico article on the bill’s passage by Lindsay Koshgarian, William Barber II and Liz Theoharis.
The US military had a budget of $14 billion for its scaled-down Afghanistan operations in the fiscal year of 2021, down from $17 billion in 2020. If the US military budget behaved normally, you’d expect it to come down by at least $14 billion in 2022 following the withdrawal of US troops and official end of the war in Afghanistan. Instead, this new $778 billion total budget is a five percent increase from the previous year.
“Months after US President Joe Biden’s administration pulled the last American troops out of Afghanistan as part of his promise to end the country’s ‘forever wars’, the United States Congress approved a $777.7bn defence budget, a five percent increase from last year,” Al Jazeera reports.
“For the last 20 years, we heard that the terrorist threat justified an ever-expanding budget for the Pentagon,” Win Without War executive director Stephen Miles told Al Jazeera. “As the war in Afghanistan has ended and attention has shifted towards China, we’re now hearing that that threat justifies it.”
"For the last 20 years, we heard that the terrorist threat justified an ever-expanding budget for the Pentagon. As the war in Afghanistan has ended and attention has shifted towards China, we’re now hearing that that threat justifies it." https://t.co/GtBFUTRWmR via @AJEnglish
Upon the removal of US troops from Afghanistan, President Biden said the following in August:
“After more than $2 trillion spent in Afghanistan — a cost that researchers at Brown University estimated would be over $300 million a day for 20 years in Afghanistan — for two decades — yes, the American people should hear this: $300 million a day for two decades. If you take the number of $1 trillion, as many say, that’s still $150 million a day for two decades. And what have we lost as a consequence in terms of opportunities? I refused to continue in a war that was no longer in the service of the vital national interest of our people.”
You would think a government so grieved over the loss of “opportunities” for the American people due to Afghanistan war spending would be eager to begin allocating that wealth toward providing opportunities to Americans at the end of that war. Instead, more wealth has been diverted to the US war machine.
The NDAA passage comes amid heightened tensions between the US and Russia, and the bill includes $300 million for military aid to Ukraine, $50 million more than what the Pentagon requested. According to The Wall Street Journal, at least $75 million of the Ukraine aid will be “lethal,” meaning it will be spent on offensive weapons, such as Javelin anti-tank missiles the US has already provided to Kyiv.
A sane military (if there is such a thing) would be bolstered in times when a nation needs to defend itself and scaled down during peacetime. With the US military it’s completely backwards: it’s taken as a given that the budget must keep expanding, and then reasons are made up to justify doing so by making “peacetime” nonexistent. The military budget isn’t set to serve existing conditions, conditions are set to serve the military budget.
Before it was the Russians and the Chinese it was terrorists, and before it was terrorists it was the Soviets. After the fall of the USSR, there emerged a popular notion of a “peace dividend” in which defense spending could be reduced in the absence of America’s sole rival and the abundant excess funds used to take care of the American people instead. The only problem was that a lot of people had gotten very rich and powerful as a result of that cold war defense spending, and that money and power was used at some key points of influence. Less than three months after the dissolution of the Soviet Union we learned of the Wolfowitz Doctrine from The New York Times saying the US had resolved to prevent the rise of another superpower at all cost, and a few years later the neocons found their way into the George W Bush administration to usher in an unprecedented new era of military expansionism and wars of aggression.
The military-industrial complex Eisenhower warned about in his farewell address as president became inevitable as soon as the US government espoused imperialist ambitions. War profiteering is what you get when you mix capitalism with a globe-spanning power structure that must labor continuously to maintain unipolar planetary domination, which can only be done with ceaseless violence and the threat thereof. It was inevitable that an industry would not only arise to meet that demand, but begin using the wealth it generates to push for more warmongering. The war industry surfs on the war-fueled empire like dolphins on the wake of a freight ship, except in this case the dolphins are also able to help propel and steer the ship.
One of the many disgusting things about the bloated $778 billion defense budget is next year anything less than that will be labeled "a cut to military spending" and the bi-partisan war hawks will end up increasing it again & again. Enough is never enough for the death merchants.
And meanwhile that insane, mindless juggernaut is hurtling toward a direct confrontation with Russia and China, who are growing increasingly intimate and unified against their common enemy. These are forming the head of a rapidly coalescing group of powers who have refused to be absorbed into the folds of the US-centralized power alliance, and you don’t have to be a historian to understand that world powers splitting into two increasingly hostile alliance groups can lead some very ugly places. Especially now in the age of nuclear weapons.
The human species has some very daunting tests ahead of it. I hope we pass.
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More deployments, a more aggressive approach, and more intense state vs state conflict. This is the dystopian vision laid out by the new head of the British military admiral Tony Radakin. He’s the man who just replaced general Nick Carter as chief of the defence staff.
In a speech at the Royal United Service Institute, Radakin said “British national interest” should become a guiding principle once again. He added that preparing for state-on-state conflict and competition were the order of the day.
More deployments
One of his top priorities, Radakin said, is more military deployments:
It is about having formations, units, platforms, systems and people that are both more deployable and deployed more, whether at home or abroad. This follows from our conclusions about constant strategic competition. We need to be more active and engaged to achieve the deterrence, stability and prosperity at the heart of our national strategy.
He added that he didn’t want troops frustrated in barracks but out in the world acting as ambassadors:
Our forces need to be out in the world supporting British interests, deterring and shaping on a continuous basis. This is what our politicians demand, and it gets after the frustrations felt by our people when they find themselves stuck in barracks or delayed by training or equipment when they should be deployed as ambassadors for Global Britain – shaping, training and influencing.
Industry
Military forces were a key part of British life, he said. Referring to the military as central to communities around the UK.
Our air stations and garrisons, our dockyards and training schools, are the life blood of so many communities. We invest billions into aviation, shipbuilding and other high-tech industries, in every region and every community across all of these islands. We’re the experts at levelling up. We’ve been doing it for centuries and we’ll be doing it long into the future.
And it must be recognised that our interests at home and abroad are linked. Global Britain. Levelling Up. Strengthening the Union. These aren’t campaign slogans or catch phrases. They are the policy of the Government and are bound up with our defence and security.
Powerful?
Radakin also veered into a rather fantastic vision of Britain as a serious global power. He hyped the country’s alliances and lauded it’s supposed values:
The rest of the world see us for who we are. A permanent member of the UN Security Council. A nuclear power. A trading power. The world’s fifth largest economy. A strong, powerful country but outward looking, cooperative and generous too.
The speech overlooked the increased aggression of the UK and her allies in, for example, the Indo-Pacific region. It also overlooked the role of the UK media in the project. For example, this BBC report uncritically hyping the UK foreign policy position which was spotted by investigative journalist John Pilger:
I post this as a striking example of the kind of 'journalism' the BBC dispense as unabashed PR. This monstrous, dated warship has been sent to provoke China, which is not our enemy but is nuclear armed. Not a single challenge to the 'commodore' as he rattles off his nonsense. https://t.co/Ejv7Nfxzg0
Radakin’s vision is meant to be optimistic. In truth, it looks rather dystopian. It seems to spell more overseas operations despite failure in recent ones like Afghanistan. The arms trade is presented as a point of national pride. A deeper integration of the military into our communities is proposed as a bid to hold a creaking union together. And, above all, it forwards a plan for interacting with the world that’s based on a fantasy vision of British global power.
President Biden may soon approve the largest military spending bill since World War II, which ramps up spending to counter China and Russia. Separately, the Senate voted down a bipartisan bid by Senators Bernie Sanders, Rand Paul and Mike Lee to halt $650 million in U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia amid the devastating ongoing war in Yemen. “The last thing we need to do is be throwing more money at the Pentagon,” says William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy. “This whole idea that China and Russia are military threats to the United States has primarily been manufactured to jump up the military budget.”
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMYGOODMAN: President Biden may soon vote to approve the largest military spending bill since World War II, with a 5% increase over last year’s military spending bill. The $768 billion military budget is $24 billion higher than what Biden requested despite the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. The package includes funds aimed at countering China’s power and to build Ukraine’s military strength. It also includes nearly $28 billion in nuclear weapons funding.
The bill is headed to the Senate, then to President Biden, after the House approved the bill late Tuesday night with more Republicans than Democrats voting for it. Among those who voted no was progressive New York Congressmember Jamaal Bowman, who tweeted, quote, “It is astounding how quickly Congress moves weapons but we can’t ensure housing, care, and justice for our veterans, nor invest in robust jobs programs for districts like mine.” Bowman also criticized how the compromise bill strips funding that would have established an office for countering extremism in the Pentagon, saying the bill, quote, “must also protect the Black men and women who are disproportionately the target of extremism and a biased military justice system,” unquote.
Also absent from the bill is a provision to require women to register for the draft.
Separately, the Senate voted down a bipartisan bid by Senators Bernie Sanders, Rand Paul and Mike Lee to halt $650 million in U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia amidst the devastating ongoing war on Yemen.
For more, we’re joined by Bill Hartung, director of Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy, author of a new report, “Arming Repression: U.S. Military Support for Saudi Arabia, from Trump to Biden,” his latest book, Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex.
Bill Hartung, welcome back to Democracy Now! First of all, if you can just respond to the House passage of the largest weapons spending bill in U.S. history since World War II?
WILLIAMHARTUNG: Well, I think it’s an outrage, if you look at what we really need. You know, in the roundup, you talked about the need to spend on pandemic preparedness. The world is on fire with the impacts of climate change. We’ve got deep problems of racial and economic injustice in this country. We’ve got an insurrection and violence trying to undermine our democracy. So the last thing we need to do is be throwing more money at the Pentagon. And it’s a huge amount. It’s more than we spent in Vietnam, the Korean War, the Reagan buildup of the ’80s, all throughout the Cold War. And as you said, even at the time as Biden has pulled out U.S. troops from Afghanistan, the Pentagon budget keeps going up and up.
NERMEENSHAIKH: And, Bill Hartung, could respond specifically to the fact that the budget is $24 billion more than what was requested? Is it common to have such a huge difference in terms of the amount requested and the amount granted, $24 billion?
WILLIAMHARTUNG: Well, Congress often adds money for pet projects — Boeing aircraft in Missouri, attack submarines in Connecticut and Virginia — but nothing at this level. You know, $24 billion is the biggest congressional add-on that I can think of in recent memory. So it’s kind of extraordinary, especially, as we said, when the endless wars should be winding down.
NERMEENSHAIKH: And can you talk about some of the key figures in Congress who have been pushing for an increase?
WILLIAMHARTUNG: Well, you’ve got people like James Inhofe, who’s the Republican lead on the Senate Armed Services Committee, who’s basically said we need to spend 3 to 5% more per year in perpetuity, which would push the budget over a trillion dollars within five to six years. He is always touting a report called the National Defense Strategy Commission report, which was put together primarily by people who were from the arms industry, from think tanks funded by the arms industry. Basically, it was a kind of a special interest collection that were pushing this.
And then you have Mike Rogers from Alabama, who’s the key player on House Armed Services. He’s got Huntsville in his state, and Huntsville is sort of the missile capital of America — Army missiles, missile defense systems. He also gets hundreds of thousands of dollars from the weapons industry for his reelection. So, there’s a strong kind of pork barrel special interest push by the military-industrial complex that help bring about this result.
AMYGOODMAN: The Senate voted down a bipartisan bid by Senators Bernie Sanders, Rand Paul and Mike Lee to halt the $650 million in U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia, this amidst the devastating ongoing war on Yemen. I want to play a clip of Senators Paul and Sanders addressing the Senate Tuesday.
SEN. RANDPAUL: The U.S. should end all arms sales to the Saudis until they end their blockade of Yemen. President Biden said he would change the Trump policy of supporting Saudi’s war in Yemen, but it’s not all that apparent that policy has changed. … We commission these weapons, and we should not give them to countries who are starving children and are committing, essentially, genocide in Yemen.
SEN. BERNIESANDERS: President, I find myself in the somewhat uncomfortable and unusual position of agreeing with Senator Paul.
AMYGOODMAN: So, that was Senator Sanders and Paul. Bill Hartung, you’re the author of the new report headlined “Arming Repression: U.S. Military Support for Saudi Arabia, from Trump to Biden.” Can you talk about the significance of this, what was voted down?
WILLIAMHARTUNG: Well, these missiles are air-to-air missiles, which can be used to enforce the air blockade that’s been put over Yemen. So, the Saudis have bombed the Sana’a airport runways. They’ve tried to keep ships from coming in with fuel. And as a result, costs of medical supplies now are out of the reach of the average person of Yemen. People haven’t been able to leave the country for medical treatment. Norwegian Refugee Council and CARE say 32,000 people have probably died just for lack of being able to leave the country for that specialized care. Four hundred thousand children are at risk, according to the World Food Programme, of starvation because of the blockade. Millions of Yemenis need humanitarian aid just to survive, and the Saudi blockade is making it increasingly difficult to get that aid or to get commercial goods that they need.
So, basically, this is a criminal enterprise run by Mohammed bin Salman. And Joe Biden said, when he was a candidate, Saudi Arabia, we’d treat it like an pariah; he wouldn’t arm them. In his first foreign policy speech, he said the U.S. should stop support for offensive operations in Yemen. And yet he’s approved a contract for maintenance of Saudi planes and attack helicopters, and now this deal for the missiles. So he’s basically gone back on his pledge to forge a new relationship with Saudi Arabia and to use U.S. leverage to end the blockade and the war itself.
NERMEENSHAIKH: Bill, before we conclude, just to go back to the military budget, could you comment specifically on the $28 billion earmarked for nuclear weapons?
WILLIAMHARTUNG: Well, unfortunately, this bill doubles down on the Pentagon’s buildup of a new generation of nuclear weapons, a new generation of nuclear warheads, which is, of course, the last thing we need at a time of global tensions. You know, in particular, there was even a provision that said it’s not allowed to reduce the number of intercontinental ballistic missiles, which are the most dangerous weapons in the world because they could easily be used by accident if there were a false alarm of attack, because the president has only minutes to decide whether to use these things. So, I think that’s one of the biggest stains on this bill, is basically continuing to stoke the nuclear arms race, not only at great cost but at great risk to the future of the planet.
AMYGOODMAN: And finally, the China and Russia being used as justification for weapons sales and increased military budget, can you compare the U.S. military budget to theirs?
WILLIAMHARTUNG: Well, the U.S. spends about 10 times what Russia spends, about three times what China spends. It has 13 times as many active nuclear warheads in its stockpile as China does. We’ve got 11 aircraft carriers of a type that China doesn’t have. We’ve got 800 U.S. military bases around the globe, while China has three. So this whole idea that China and Russia are military threats to the United States has primarily been manufactured to jump up the military budget. And so far, unfortunately, at least in the halls of Congress and the Biden administration, that’s been successful.
AMYGOODMAN: Bill Hartung, we want to thank you for being with us, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy. We’ll link to your new report, “Arming Repression: U.S. Military Support for Saudi Arabia, from Trump to Biden.” Hartung’s latest book, Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex.
Next up, calls are growing for President Biden to extend the moratorium on student debt payments as millions face a debt crisis during the pandemic. We’ll speak with the Debt Collective’s Astra Taylor about her new animated film, Your Debt Is Someone Else’s Asset. Stay with us.
After three decades of frustratingly slow progress but with a measure of quiet optimism over the decolonisation process unfolding under the Noumea Accord, Kanaky New Caledonia is again poised on the edge of a precipice.
Two out of three pledged referendums from 2018 produced higher than expected – and growing — votes for independence. But then the delta variant of the global covid-19 pandemic hit New Caledonia with a vengeance.
Like much of the rest of the Pacific, New Caledonia with a population of 270,000 was largely spared during the first wave of covid infections. However, in September a delta outbreak infected 12,343 people with 280 deaths – almost 70 percent of them indigenous Kanaks.
With the majority of the Kanak population in traditional mourning – declared for 12 months by the customary Senate, the pro-independence Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) and its allies pleaded for the referendum due this Sunday, December 12, to be deferred until next year after the French presidential elections.
In fact, there is no reason for France to be in such a rush to hold this last referendum on Kanak independence in the middle of a state of emergency and a pandemic. It is not due until October 2022.
It is clear that the Paris authorities have changed tack and want to stack the cards heavily in favour of a negative vote to maintain the French status quo.
When the delay pleas fell on deaf political ears and appeals failed in the courts, the pro-independence coalition opted instead to not contest the referendum and refuse to recognise its legitimacy.
Vote threatens to be farce
This Sunday’s vote threatens to be a farce following such a one-sided campaign. It could trigger violence as happened with a similar farcical and discredited independence referendum in 1987, which led to the infamous Ouvea cave hostage-taking and massacre the following year as retold in the devastating Mathieu Kassovitz feature film Rebellion [l’Ordre at la morale] — banned in New Caledonia for many years.
On 13 September 1987, a sham vote on New Caledonian independence was held. It was boycotted by the FLNKS when France refused to allow independent United Nations observers. Unsurprisingly, only 1.7 percent of participants voted for independence. Only 59 percent of registered voters took part.
After the bloody ending of the Ouvea cave crisis, the 1988 Matignon/Oudinot Accord signed by Kanak leader Jean-Marie Tjibaou and anti-independence leader Jacques Lafleur, paved the way for possible decolonisation with a staggered process of increasing local government powers.
A decade later, the 1998 Noumea Accord set in place a two-decade pathway to increased local powers – although Paris retained control of military and foreign policy, immigration, police and currency — and the referendums.
The New Caledonian independence referendum 2020 result. Image: Caledonian TV
In the first referendum on 4 November 2018, 43.33 percent voted for independence with 81 percent of the eligible voters taking part (recent arrivals had no right to vote in the referendum).
In the second referendum on 4 October 2020, the vote for independence rose to 46.7 percent with the turnout higher too at almost 86 percent. Only 10,000 votes separated the yes and no votes.
Kanak jubilation in the wake of the 2020 referendum with an increase in the pro-independence vote. Image: APR file
Expectations back then were that the “yes” vote would grow again by the third referendum with the demographics and a growing progressive vote, but by how much was uncertain.
Arrogant and insensitive
However, now with the post-covid tensions, the goodwill and rebuilding of trust for Paris that had been happening over many years could end in ashes again thanks to an arrogant and insensitive abandoning of the “decolonisation” mission by Emmanuel Macron’s administration in what is seen as a cynical ploy by a president positioning himself as a “law and order” leader ahead of the April elections.
Another pro-independence party, Palika, said Macron’s failure to listen to the pleas for a delay was a “declaration of war” against the Kanaks and progressive citizens.
Many academics writing about the implications of the “non” vote this Sunday are warning that persisting with this referendum in such unfavourable conditions could seriously rebound on France at a time when it is trying to project its “Indo-Pacific” relevance as a counterweight to China’s influence in the region.
China is already the largest buyer of New Caledonia’s metal exports, mainly nickel.
“The dangerous political game being played by Macron in relation to New Caledonia recalls decisions made by French leaders in the 1980s which disregarded pro-independence opposition, instrumentalised New Caledonia’s future in the national political arena, and resulted in some of the bloodiest exchanges of that time,” they wrote.
The theme of the webinar asks: “Has the search for a consensus solution to the antagonisms that have plagued New Caledonia finally ended? Is [the final] referendum likely to draw a line under the conflicts of the past or to reopen old wounds.”
Today’s New Caledonia webinar at Victoria University of Wellington. Image: VUW
One of the webinar panellists, Denise Fisher, criticised in The Conversation the lack of “scrupulously observed impartiality” by France for this third referendum compared to the two previous votes.
“In the first two campaigns, France scrupulously observed impartiality and invited international observers. For this final vote, it has been less neutral,” she argued.
“For starters, the discussions on preparing for the final vote did not include all major independence party leaders. The paper required by French law explaining the consequences of the referendum to voters favoured the no side this time, to the point where loyalists used it as a campaign brochure.”
‘Delay’ say Pacific civil society groups
A coalition of Pacific civil society organisations and movement leaders is among the latest groups to call on the French government to postpone the third referendum, which they described as “hastily announced”.
While French Minister for Overseas Territories Sebastien Lecornu had told French journalists this vote would definitely go ahead as soon as possible to “serve the common good”, critics see him as pandering to the “non” vote.
The Union Calédoniènne, Union Nationale pour l’independence Party (UNI), FLNKS and other pro-independence groups in the New Caledonia Congress had already written to Lecornu expressing their grave concerns and requesting a postponement because of the pandemic.
“We argue that the decision by France to go ahead with the referendum on December 12 ignores the impact that the current health crisis has on the ability of Kanaks to participate in the referendum and exercise their basic human right to self-determination,” said the Pacific coalition.
“We understand the Noumea Accord provides a timeframe that could accommodate holding the last referendum at any time up to November 2022.
“Therefore, we see no need to hastily set the final referendum for 12 December 2021, in the middle of a worldwide pandemic that is currently ravaging Kanaky/New Caledonia, and disproportionately impacting [on] the Kanak population.”
The coalition also called on the Chair of the Pacific Islands Forum, Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama to “disengage” the PIF observer delegation led by Ratu Inoke Kubuabola. Forum engagement in referendum vote as observers, said the coalition, “ignores the concerns of the Kanak people”.
‘Act as mediators’
The coalition argued that the delegation should “act as mediators to bring about a more just and peaceful resolution to the question and timing of a referendum”.
Signatories to the statement include the Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era, Fiji Council of Social Services, Melanesian Indigenous Land Defence Alliance, Pacific Conference of Churches, Pacific Network on Globalisation, Peace Movement Aotearoa, Pasifika and Youngsolwara Pacific.
Melanesian Spearhead Group team … backing indigenous Kanak self-determination, but a delay in the vote. Image: MSG
Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, which along with the FLNKS are full MSG members, have been informed by the secretariat of its concerns.
In a media release, the MSG’s Director-General, George Hoa’au, said the situation in New Caledonia was “not conducive for a free and fair referendum”.
Ongoing customary mourning over covid-19 related deaths in New Caledonia meant that Melanesian communities were unable to campaign for the vote.
Kanak delegation at the United Nations. Image: Les Nouvelles Calédoniènnes
Hopes now on United Nations
“Major hopes are now being pinned on a Kanak delegation of territorial Congress President Roch Wamytan, Mickaël Forrest and Charles Wéa who travelled to New York this week to lobby the United Nations for support.
One again, France has demonstrated a lack of cultural and political understanding and respect that erodes the basis of the Noumea Accord – recognition of Kanak identity and kastom.
Expressing her disappointment to me, Northern provincial councillor and former journalist Magalie Tingal Lémé says: What happens in Kanaky is what France always does here. The Macron government didn’t respect us. They still don’t understand us as Kanak people.”
Dr David Robie covered “Les Événements” in New Caledonia in the 1980s and penned the book Blood on their Banner about the turmoil. He also covered the 2018 independence referendum.
Barely one week before top military brass, veterans and Hawaii government officials were to mark the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, families living in military housing around Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam on Oahu noticed something was wrong with their tap water. They smelled gasoline and saw a sheen on the surface.
Complaints and questions were soon followed by sickness. Infants developed bright red rashes, people and pets vomited, and children and adults were rushed to emergency rooms with sores in their mouths, headaches, stomach cramps, nausea and bloody stool.
Initially, U.S. Navy officials dismissed concerns and said they had been drinking the water themselves without problem. On November 29, the base commander said in a statement, “[T]here are no immediate indications that the water is not safe.” But three days later, Navy officials reported that tests found that Navy drinking water lines had been contaminated with volatile hydrocarbons like those present in JP-5 jet fuel used for aircraft carriers.
At the center of the crisis is the U.S. military’s Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility which includes 20 steel-lined tanks built between 1940-43 underground into the Kapukaki Ridge just east of Ke Awa Lau O Puuloa (known as Pearl Harbor) near U.S. Indo-Pacific Command headquarters.
Each tank holds 12.5 million gallons of fuel which is used for the endless stream of naval vessels and military aircraft that operate from Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam and nearby military installations at the heart of the U.S. military presence in the Pacific.
The Red Hill facility has a history of spills and leaks, dating back as far as 1948. Since its construction, the nearly 80-year-old tanks have leaked more than 180,000 gallons of fuel, according to Sierra Club of Hawaii estimates.
Built vertically in porous volcanic rock, the tanks sit roughly 100 feet above a key aquifer that provides water to more than 90,000 military service members and their families, as well as the greater Honolulu metropolitan area, home to some 400,000 people.
Speaking at a town hall meeting on December 2, Rear Admiral Blake Converse, deputy commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, said a test found petroleum products just above the waterline in a Red Hill well. Wells in other parts of central Oahu, Converse said, did not show signs of contamination. He said that the problem would be resolved with “significant additional flushing … with a good water source.”
However, that same day, Hawaii Congressman Kaialii (Kai) Kahele called the situation a “crisis of astronomical proportions.” Kahele, an Iraq and Afghanistan war combat veteran and Hawaii Air National Guard pilot, described visiting the home of one impacted Navy family who took their daughter to the emergency room for a headache and throat irritation where she was diagnosed with “chemical burns in her mouth.”
Holding up a plastic bottle filled at the family’s home, Kahele said, “If you smell this water, you would know that there is something wrong with this water.”
At a subsequent public meeting, Captain Michael McGinnis, a surgeon with U.S. Pacific Fleet, advised, “There are no long-term consequences from a short-term exposure” but added, “should we discover [this] was a long-term issue … it’s important for us to register who’s been in this area should long-term consequences develop.”
According to a Honolulu Star-Advertiserreport, petroleum contamination in the Navy’s water supply was present as early as last July.
Meanwhile, some schools in the affected area have stopped using tap water and the military has established medical walk-in facilities, medical and counseling services, a hotline, portable showers and bottled water distribution sites to serve impacted residents.
Contamination Goes Back Decades
The current crisis follows a November 20 leak due to operator error in which 14,000 gallons of fuel spilled from a drain line near the Red Hill facility, but contamination concerns and accidents go back decades.
Wayne Chung Tanaka, executive director of the Sierra Club of Hawaii, told Truthout that his organization has been monitoring Red Hill for years. A 27,000-gallon leak in 2014 should have caused alarm, but Tanaka said Hawaii’s political leaders have continued to defer to the Navy for years.
“Concerns have been raised for decades. I think the 2014 was just another wake-up call,” Tanaka said. “For many people, it’s a worry that this is a harbinger for the future for a much broader segment of the population.”
In 2017, the Sierra Club of Hawaii successfully sued Hawaii’s Department of Health to ensure underground storage tank regulations were applied to Red Hill. An additional lawsuit was filed in 2019 to stop permit applications from being automatically approved. Additional litigation is ongoing in relation to the Navy’s permit application itself, which may not be extended after whistleblower allegations of failure to disclose an active leak into Pearl Harbor.
According to Tanaka, eight of the fuel-filled tanks haven’t been inspected in between 20 and 60 years. The construction and location of the tanks makes direct manual inspection difficult or impossible. Tanaka pointed out one tank damage analysis with a 40 percent error rate.
Calling the Red Hill storage tanks “museum pieces” that have outlived their usefulness, Tanaka said the Navy should close the facility permanently and store fuel in a more secure location. “Just get [the fuel] away from the aquifer immediately before something even worse happens.”
“This last week’s events have illustrated [that if] the local Navy leadership simply cannot guarantee the safety [and] protection of their own service members and their families, we cannot trust them with the safety of our groundwater and drinking water supply,” Tanaka said.
In Hawaii, Water Is Wealth
Kawenaulaokala Kapahua, a Native Hawaiian land activist with the group Hawaii Peace and Justice, noted that Red Hill facility was built on land taken by executive action during World War II. He pointed out that while “Hawaiians have lived on these islands for thousands of years and existed without polluting our natural resources, the military has been here for less than 150 years and already our water is seeing the detrimental effects of their presence.”
Kapahua notes that the word for “wealth” in Hawaiian is the repetition of the Hawaiian word for water twice (waiwai). “In Hawaiian culture, wealth is not an idea of dollar signs and stocks. Having a lot of water means you are wealthy — it means you are resource-rich … it means that the land is healthy.”
Kapahua told Truthout that he sees Red Hill as part of a larger pattern of U.S. military environmental destruction throughout the Pacific, from Okinawa and Japan to Guam, the Marshall Islands and across the Hawaiian Islands. He points to the Hawaiian island of Kahoolawe, which the U.S. military bombed so hard it cracked the water table and where unexploded ordnance remain in Oahu’s Makua and Waikane Valleys.
“The military has a long history of land mismanagement in Hawaii — pollution and the mismanagement of public resources that end up damaging and threatening the health of the public, so this is no surprise,” Kapahua said. He wants the military to take money from what he called its “massively over-inflated budget” to pay reparations and help restore water purity and cleanliness while also vacating the Red Hill facility permanently and paying for environmental remediation, health impacts and repairs associated with Red Hill.
Trust Has Been Broken
While some military service members and their families have been reluctant to criticize, many are speaking out. One of those is Mai Hall, the wife of an active-duty Air Force enlisted airman who lives in privatized off-base Navy housing. On November 28, Hall noticed her tap water smelled strange — “like a gasoline station when you pump gas.” Her neighbors also reported their water smelled like fuel.
That evening, Hall and other residents received an email from the housing management company which read, “The Navy is investigating reports of a chemical smell in drinking water at several homes in some military housing areas.… There is no immediate indication that the water is not safe.”
By November 30, Hall received a third email which said, “Navy and Department of Health test results on water samples from various locations on Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, including military housing, have not detected petroleum constituents in initial testing.” But by then Hall, her husband and their 9-year-old son, along with thousands of others had cooked, bathed and consumed contaminated water.
Hall told Truthout that soon after they noticed the gasoline smell, she, her husband and their 9-year-old son began to suffer headaches, nausea, diarrhea and stomach pain. Some of her neighbors, she said, had it far worse, describing an infant covered in a painful-looking bright red rash. Others developed blisters in their mouth caused by chemical burns, vomiting and headaches.
“Why did [the Navy] wait so long to tell us not to drink [the water]? The Department of Health told us not to drink it before the Navy did,” Hall said. She feels that trust has been broken. “We don’t know who to believe.”
Hall wants the Navy to apologize for what she called “mistreatment and miscommunication of this whole ordeal,” and she wants the Red Hill facility shut down permanently. Her message to the military is: “Make it right. Take care of your people.”
Unlike the U.S. Army, Navy and Marines, which were taking care of the impacted families of those enlisted with direct reimbursement checks, Hall, a Native Hawaiian, said she was told to apply for a grant through the Air Force to cover costs incurred due to the disruption of running water (dining out, paper goods, laundry). “It’s not equitable access to resources compared to other branches.”
Unlike some Hawaiians who want the military completely removed from Hawaii, Hall said she believes there is a place for the military in Hawaii. “We can’t totally be independent from the military because they do provide some support for us… I know that. I’ve learned to live with it,” she said. But she hastened to add: “The military has to realize, this is not their land. They’re on stolen land … so you have to respect it, clean up after yourselves, and make reparations, or at least pay your fair share to sustain the environment in which you live. That has never happened.”
Drinking From the Same Glass
This week, Hawaii’s Gov. David Ige and the state’s four-person congressional delegation called for an immediate suspension of operations and the removal of fuel from the tanks at Red Hill, but stopped short of demanding permanent closure.
Prior to that announcement, on December 3, the Honolulu Board of Water Supply announced that as a precaution, it shut down the Halawa shaft, which represents approximately 20 percent of the water supply for urban Honolulu, including downtown, and Hawaii’s primary tourism district, Waikiki.
Honolulu Board of Water Supply’s chief engineer, Ernie Lau, explained that the military and the city draw from the same aquifer. “We basically take water from the same glass of water,” Lau said.
With the Navy’s water source confirmed to be contaminated with petroleum, Lau said, “What we don’t want to do is keep on pumping from our side of that glass and suck the fuel across the valley through the underground aquifer which exists in the porous lava rock into our wells and send it to our homes, to our customers. We do not want to do that.”
After a day of political showdown that at times involved shouting battles and personal clashes, the much anticipated motion of no confidence against Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare was defeated by 32 votes to 15 with two abstentions.
With the capital city Honiara virtually closed for business yesterday, attention turned to Vavaya Ridge where Parliament was debating the motion.
The motion came on the back of social unrest that saw the looting and burning of some 56 buildings across the city and the re-engagement of foreign forces in Honiara to arrest the situation two weeks ago and restore law and order.
In moving the motion, opposition leader Matthew Wale admitted that he had been conflicted by the need for this motion at this hour in “our history”.
“On the one hand we are dealing with it today because there is need for a political solution to the causes of the tragic events of two weeks ago,” he said.
“On the other, I am conscious that what we say in ventilating this motion may further add to what are already high levels of anger in certain quarters of our society.”
Wale said that as a result of the tragic events that caused so much loss and destruction and even cost lives he had called on the Prime Minister to resign.
‘Eruption of anger’
“I did not make that call out of malice toward him personally. I made that call in recognition of the fact that the tragic events were not isolated events, nor were they purely criminal, but were the eruption of anger based on political issues and decisions for which the PM must bear the primary responsibility,” he said.
“It is democratic for a Prime Minister to be called upon to resign, there is nothing undemocratic about the call. And if he chose to resign that too would be democratic.
Opposition leader Matthew Wale speaking to the no-confidence motion … “The tragic events were not isolated events, nor were they purely criminal, but were the eruption of anger based on political issues and decisions for which the PM must bear the primary responsibility.” Image: APR screenshot
“As is the case, the Prime Minister refused to resign, and therefore has necessitated this motion,” he said while moving the motion.
“Although [the people] are resource rich, yet they are cash poor. They have hopes that their children will have access to better opportunities than they did.”
— Opposition leader Matthew Wale
In arguing his case, Wale stated several issues.
On the economy, the MP for Aoke/Langalana said the vast majority of “our people live on the margins of our economy”.
“Although they are resource rich, yet they are cash poor. They have hopes that their children will have access to better opportunities than they did.
“They work hard to afford the high cost of education, though many children leave school because of lack of school fees. Our people are angry that education is so expensive, and that only those that can afford it are able to educate all their kids to a high level of education,” Wale said.
Access to healthcare challenging
“On health, Wale said the vast majority of our people lived where access to healthcare was challenging at best.
He said basic medicines and supplies are often not adequate to meet their health care needs adding that the state of the hospitals are perpetually in crisis management.
The opposition leader pointed out that at the National Referral Hospital Emergency Department patients were sleeping on the floor.
“Why is this the case? Who is responsible? Our people are angry about this,” he asked in Parliament.
Wale also highlighted logging companies disregard of tribal and community concerns, that drive conflict and disputes within tribes and communities. He said the government stood with the logging companies.
He also accused Sogavare of the use of the People’s Republic of China’s National Development Fund (NDF) money to prop up the Prime Minister as another of those issues that was undermining and compromising the sovereignty of the country.
He said the PM was dependent on that money to maintain his political strength.
Chinese funding influence
“How is he then supposed to make decisions that are wholly only in the interests of Solomon Islands untainted or undiluted by considerations for the PRC funds,” he asked.
“You see public anger has been built up over many years by all this bad governance. No serious efforts have been taken to address these serious issues. Provincial governments have increasingly over the past several years repeated their desire that they be given the constitutional mandate to manage their own affairs. Honiara has been consuming almost all the wealth that has been generated from resources exploited from the provinces,” Wale said.
He stated that the provinces had lost trust in Honiara.
“Erratic, poor, mercenary, and politically expedient decision making makes what is already a bad situation worse.
Wale said this was the situation specifically with Malaita.
“Malaita has stood on principle that a PM that lies to the country and Parliament does not have moral authority and legitimacy. Malaita would not accept it.
“Because of that principled position, this PM has not ceased to scheme and plot the consistent and persistent persecution of Malaita.
Malaita sought peaceful protest
“Malaitans have sought to petition the PM, twice, but were ignored and brushed aside in a rather juvenile manner. Malaita asked to stage peaceful protests, but these were denied.
“Malaitans sought an audience with the PM, but they were summarily dismissed. So what are they then supposed to do to get the PM’s attention? The PM consistently refused to visit Auki,” Wale said.
Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare speaking in Parliament yesterday … “We never received any formal log of issues from [Malaita].” Image: APR screenshotIn his response, Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare strongly rejected the claims stating that he had never received any issues of concerns from Malaita province.
“We never received any formal log of issues from them so that the government sits with them and dialogue over it,” he said.
He stressed that the government runs on rules and protocols on how they deal with each other.
Regarding the motion, Sogavare said it should never be brought to the floor of Parliament.
He accused Wale and his cohorts for driving the interests of a few people.
Willing to face justice
Sogavare said the majority of peace loving Malaitans condemned with utter disgust what had happened.
On corruption allegations, that the foreign forces were helping to protect his government, Sogavare said he was willing to face justice.
“I am very willing and if the leader of opposition can prove the allegations he has against me. This is the easiest way to remove the Prime Minister—that is to send him to jail,” he said.
On the lack of government support in terms of development on Malaita, Sogavare argued that despite the current economic environment his government had performed very well.
In that regard, he said the government did not fail the people of the country, including Malaita province, in the implementation of the twin objective of his government’s policy re-direction.
He said that the government had done so much for Malaita — as a matter of fact more than what some provinces that contributed so much to the country’s economy were getting.
Eight MPs including the PM spoke on the motion.
Robert Iroga is editor of SBM Online. Republished with permission.
The Solomon Islands prime minister came in for searing criticism when he faced a confidence vote in Parliament today.
A motion of no confidence against Manasseh Sogavare was debated amid tight security in the capital Honiara, where hundreds of regional security forces have deployed following major political unrest less than two weeks ago.
About 250 defence force and police personnel from Australia, Papua New Guinea, Fiji and New Zealand were on high alert in anticipation of potential unrest around the outcome of the vote.
Local media reported that numerous local families departed from Honiara aboard interisland ferries to return to home villages to avoid potential unrest in the capital, where many shops and schools had also closed.
The motion was tabled by opposition leader Matthew Wale, who has accused Sogavare of allowing corruption to fester, and of treating the people of Malaita province with contempt.
Malaitans played a central role in the late November protest that sparked the unrest, which left extensive destruction in Honiara, prompting Sogavare’s request for regional security help.
Suidani denies instigation claims
Malaita’s provincial Premier Daniel Suidani, whose administration has fallen out with the national government, especially over the country’s move to switch diplomatic ties from Taiwan to China, has denied claims by the coalition that he instigated the unrest.
Wale told Parliament that the actions of the rioters should not obscure the real issue behind the unrest.
“We must condemn all the criminality in the strongest terms, but it pales, Mr Speaker, in comparison to the looting happening at the top,” he said.
Speaking in favour of the motion, former prime minister Rick Hounipwela described Sogavare as the ultimate opportunist whose accession to prime minister over four stints “has always been under abnormal circumstances”.
Blaming the prime minister for negligent management of the country’s finances, Hounipwela said the country’s corruption problem had deepened under Sogavare’s rule.
“We’ve experienced huge tax exemptions worth millions of dollars given to the people who least needed it, usually the loggers and mining operators.”
Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare speaking in Parliament today … “When we are under attack from forces of evil, we must stand up for what is right.” Image: APR screenshot
In today’s debate on the motion, Sogavare said the motion had been filed against the backdrop of an illegal attempted coup.
‘Stand up to tyranny’
“When we are under attack from forces of evil, we must stand up for what is right, we must stand up to this tyranny. We cannot entertain violence being used to tear down a democratically elected government.”
Sogavare rejected the opposition’s accusation of corruption against him.
Hounipwela, the MP for Small Malaita, accused the prime minister of using the pandemic State of Emergency to give himself authoritarian powers.
He also claimed Sogavare had used police to repress public criticism of his leadership, and of directing foreign embassies and high commissions in the country to notify the government of their moves around the provinces.
“To vote against [the motion], members would be aiding and abetting his zeal for power and to rule this country with an iron fist. That’s what we see as a track record,” Hounipwela said.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Shocking footage has been circulating on social media showing National Armed Forces (TNI) Indonesian military helicopters firing indiscriminately at civilian villages in Suru-Suru District, Yahukimo Regency, Papua.Video: via Café Pacific
SPECIAL REPORT:By Yamin Kogoya
This past week marked 60 years since West Papua declared independence on 1 December 1961.
Around the world, Papuans and solidarity groups commemorated this national day in melancholic spirits — the weight of that fateful day carries courage and pride, but also great suffering and betrayal.
Outraged by 60 years of silence and ignorance, Powes Parkop, the Governor of Papua New Guinea’s capital, strongly condemned the PNG government in Port Moresby last week. He said the government shouldn’t ignore the crisis in the Indonesian-controlled region of New Guinea.
Parkop accused the government of doing little to hold Indonesia accountable for decades of human rights violations in West Papua in a series of questions in Parliament directed at Foreign Minister Soroi Eoe.
Port Moresby’s Governor Powes Parkop with the West Papuan Morning Star flag … criticised PNG policy of “seeing no evil, speaking no evil and to say no evil against the evils of Indonesia”. Image: Filbert Simeon
“Hiding under a policy of ‘Friends to All, Enemy to None’ might be okay for the rest of the world, but it is total capitulation to Indonesian aggression and illegal occupation,” Parkop said.
“It is more a policy of seeing no evil, speaking no evil and to say no evil against the evils of Indonesia.”
A similar voice also echoed from staff members of the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre during their West Papua flagraising event at their office in Suva on Wednesday.
Ignorance ‘needs to stop’
Shamima Ali, coordinator and human rights activist from the crisis centre, said Pacific leaders — including Fiji — have been too silent on the issue of West Papua and the ignorance needed to stop.
Ali said that since Indonesia’s occupation of West Papua, gross human rights violations — including enforced disappearances, bombings, rocket attacks, torture, arbitrary detention, beatings, killings, sexual torture, rape, forced birth control, forced abortions, displacement, starvation, and burnings– had sadly become an enforced “way of life” for West Papuans.
Staff members of the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre show solidarity for West Papua at their office in Suva last Wednesday – December 1. Image: FWCC
As a mark of remembrance, flags were raised all across the globe from Oxford — the refugee home of Benny Wenda, the West Papua independence icon — to Holland, homeland of many descendants of exiled Papuan independence leaders who left the island in protest against Indonesia’s illegal annexation in 1960.
Celebrating Papuans’ national day in West Papua or anywhere in Indonesia is not safe.
Amnesty International Indonesia reported last Friday that police arrested and charged eight Papuan students for peacefully expressing their political opinions on December 1 — Papuans’ Independence Day.
The report also stated that Papuans frequently face detention and charges for peacefully expressing their political views. But counter-protesters often assault Papuans under police watch with no repercussions.
Eight arrested in Jayapura
At least eight people were arrested in Jayapura, Papua, and 19 were arrested in Merauke, Papua, for displaying the Morning Star flag.
In Ambon and Bali, 19 people were injured by police beatings, and 13 people were injured when protesters were physically attacked by counter-protesters who used racist language, reports Amnesty International Indonesia.
In West Papua, the Indonesian police are also reported to have investigated eight young Papuans involved in raising the Morning Star flag in front of the Cenderawasih Sport Stadium, known as GOR in Jayapura Papua, according to the public relations Chief of Papua Police, Ahmad Musthofa Kamal.
Across West Papua, the Morning Star flag has been raised in six districts: Star Mountains, Intan Jaya, Puncak, Central Mamberamo, Paniai, and Jayapura City.
Unfortunately, Papuans are hunted like wild animals on this day as Jakarta continues to force them to become a part of Indonesia’s national narrative. The stories of which, for the past 60 years, have been nothing but nightmares filled with mass torture, death, and total erasure.
Amid all the celebrations, protests, and arrests happening across the globe on this national day, shocking footage emerged of yet another aerial attack in the Star Mountain region.
In the last few days, shocking footage has been circulating on social media showing National Armed Forces (TNI) Indonesian military helicopters firing indiscriminately at civilian villages in Suru-Suru District, Yahukimo Regency, Papua.
According to reports, this is the result of a shooting incident between the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) and the TNI in which a TNI member was killed, and another was wounded.
Soldier flown to Aceh
Serda Putra Rahaldi was one of those killed in the incident. He was flown to Aceh via Jakarta.
Praka Suheri, another TNI soldier wounded in the incident, has also been evacuated to Timika Regional General Hospital for treatment.
It is difficult to know the exact circumstances leading to the death of a soldier, but Brigadier General TNI Izak Pangemanan, Commander of Military Resort 172/PWY, says two soldiers were drinking water in a shelter located only 15 meters from the post when the shooting took place, Antara reported on Saturday, December 4, 2021.
Since November 20, five TNI soldiers have been wounded, including Sergeant Ari Baskoro and Serda Putra Rahaldi, who died in Suru-suru, Antara reported on Saturday, December 4, 2021.
The armed conflicts remain tense between the TPNPB and the TNI in seven regencies in the territory of West Papua, namely: Yahukimo District, Intan Jaya Regency, Star Mountains Regency, Nduga District, Peak District, and Maybrat-Sorong Regency.
This seemingly low-level, yet hidden conflict between the Indonesian state security forces and the TPNPB continues, if not worsens, and the world has largely turned a blind eye to it.
The Papuan church leaders stated in local media, Jubi, on Thursday November 25, that a massive military build-up and conflict between Indonesian security forces and TPNPB had resulted in displacing more than 60,000 Papuan civilians.
‘More than 60,000 displaced’
“More than 60,000 people have been displaced. Many children and mothers have been victims and died while in the evacuation camps,” said the chair of the Synod of West Papua Baptist Churches Reverend Socrates Sofyan Yoman.
Jakarta seems to have lost its ability to see the value of noble words inscribed in its constitution for the betterment of humanity and the nation. In essence, what is written, what they say, and what they practise all contradict one another – and therein lies the essence of the human tragedy.
On December 1, 1961, the sacred Papuan state was seized with guns, lies and propaganda.
On May 1, 1963, Indonesia came to West Papua with guns.
In 1969, Jakarta forced Papuan elders to accept Indonesia during a fraud referendum at gunpoint. In the 1970s, Indonesia used guns and bombs to massacre Papuan highland villagers.
And after 60 years, Jakarta is still choosing guns and bombs as their preferred means to eradicate Papuans.
Sixty years on, the making of the current state of West Papua with guns and bombs is difficult to forget. Although West Papua lacks one key characteristic that East Timor had that brought international attention to their ardent independence war.
Morning Star flag – always flying
Nevertheless, as demonstrated around the world last week on December 1, their banned Morning Star flag seemed to always be flying in some corner of the world.
As long as Papuans fly the Morning Star flag, their plight will challenge the human heart that cries out for freedom that binds us all together, despite our differences.
As Indonesia’s state violence intensifies, Indonesians are likely to sympathise more with Papuans’ plight for justice and freedom.
At some point, the government of Indonesia must choose whether to continue to ignore Papuans and use guns and bombs to crush them or to recognise them with a new perspective.
Yamin Kogoya is a West Papuan academic who has a Master of Applied Anthropology and Participatory Development from the Australian National University and who contributes to Asia Pacific Report. From the Lani tribe in the Papuan Highlands, he is currently living in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
The Royal Solomon Islands Police Force (RSIPF) has appealed to opposition leader Matthew Wale to “stop interfering” with police investigations in the wake of the rioting in Honiara last month.
“It is unfortunate that the leader of opposition, Mr Mathew Wale, attempted to question an ongoing investigation by police in the media,” said Police Commissioner Mostyn Mangau.
“Issues raised by Honourable Wale are legal issues that are best dealt with by the court.”
Commissioner Mangau said in a statement that the police reassured Solomon Islanders that the police were an independent body and did not pursue political agendas.
“RSIPF will not engage in legal arguments in the media,” he said.
“Police will not further comment on matters that are subject to ongoing investigations. A leader should not interfere with police investigations.”
Mangau said an accused would be provided with legal counsel and it was the duty of the lawyer to advocate for the rights of the accused in court.
He added that Solomon Islands was currently under a state public emergency and the rules were set out under the Emergency Powers (COVID-19) (No.3) regulation 2021.
Praise for AFP officers
Meanwhile, the RSIPF Facebook page praised the help from the Australian Federal Police as part of their peacekeeping role.
“Officers from the @AustFedPolice are supporting the RSIPF on the streets of Honiara,” sid the Facebook page along with a gallery of photos of Australian police on duty in Honiara.
“Highly-skilled personnel have deployed from Australia, including the Specialist Operations Tactical Response team. Their mission is to support the RSIPF to protect the community and key infrastructure, and to peacefully restore order in Honiara.”
The AFP officers had helped the RSIPF “peacefully restore calm in the community”.
The Biden administration on Thursday rejected demands for a binding international agreement banning or tightly regulating the use of so-called killer robots, autonomous weapons that campaigners fear will make war more deadly and entrench a global norm of “digital dehumanization.”
During a meeting in Geneva, State Department official Josh Dorosin said the U.S. prefers “the development of a non-binding code of conduct” on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS), which have already been used in conflicts to track and kill without a human operator.
While dozens of countries — most recently New Zealand — have expressed support for a global ban on the use of autonomous weapons systems, the U.S. has been a major obstacle to progress for years. On Thursday, Dorosin reiterated U.S. opposition to prohibiting killer robots through a “legally-binding instrument.”
John Tasioulas, director of the Institute for Ethics in AI, called the Biden administration’s position “sad but unsurprising.”
New Zealand, for its part, announced Tuesday that it would join the international coalition demanding a ban on LAWS, declaring that “the prospect of a future where the decision to take a human life is delegated to machines is abhorrent.”
“This is an issue with significant implications for global peace and security, and I’m optimistic New Zealand, alongside the international community, is well placed to push for action,” said Phil Twyford, New Zealand’s minister of disarmament and arms control.
Clare Conboy of the Stop Killer Robots coalition applauded New Zealand’s stand as “a powerful demonstration of political and moral leadership.”
“We look forward to supporting the government of New Zealand in their work to establish new law and to further build upon their proud history of leading international disarmament efforts and centering human rights, peace, and disarmament in their foreign policy,” she added.
In a report issued ahead of the latest round of United Nations talks, Human Rights Watch and the Harvard Law School International Human Rights Clinic warned that “it would be difficult for fully autonomous weapons systems, which would select and engage targets without meaningful human control, to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants as required under international humanitarian law.”
“The emergence of autonomous weapons systems and the prospect of losing meaningful human control over the use of force,” the report states, “are grave threats that demand urgent action.”
Bonnie Docherty, senior arms researcher at Human Rights Watch, said Wednesday that “much opposition to killer robots reflects moral repulsion to the idea of machines making life-and-death decisions.”
“A new treaty would fill the gap in international treaty law and protect the principles of humanity and dictates of public conscience in the face of emerging weapons technology,” Docherty argued.
Solomon Islands police have arrested 217 suspects connected to the three days of rioting and looting in the capital Honiara last week, but no alleged instigators so far.
Thirty three of the arrested people were juveniles — those under 18.
Police Commissioner Mostyn Managau appealed to members of the public to come forward and support police with evidence.
The riots and looting started on November 24 when a crowd of demonstrators broke into the Parliament grounds. They were then forced out from the Parliament area.
Their retreat into the city sparked three days of riots and looting that saw Chinatown razed, and several other properties in the eastern city set on fire, police stations attacked — one set ablaze, and Honiara High School torched to the ground.
Meanwhile, Commissioner Mangau said there were two ongoing investigations — one into the looting and rioting, while the other probes the alleged perpetrators.
So far there have still been no arrests of key players allegedly behind the riot.
Robert Irogais editor of SBM Online. Republished with permission.
Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare has called on opposition leader Matthew Wale to resign over allegations that he was involved in last week’s riots and has warned over what he calls “domestic terrorists” as bitter crisis claims hardened.
Sogavare revealed this in his opening parliamentary statement on Tuesday in the motion to adjourn the meeting until next Monday — December 6.
The opposition leader had admitted he did not have the numbers for his planned no confidence motion and “yet he is adamant that the motion be held on 6th December, the Prime Minister added.
“I urge the Prime Minister to stop using ex-militants as security details,” he said.
“The close protection unit of the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force (RSIPF) as well as the RSIPF [are] already doing this job’”
Prime Minister Sogavare said: “As stated in Parliament, we have received information that the instigators are now planning to threaten individual members of Parliament in government.
Violence ‘as a tool’
“This is exactly why the leader of opposition is adamant to have the motion debated. He is fully aware that if the threats are successful, the MPs would be resigning ahead of the planned motion of no confidence.
“Wale is using violence and disorder as a tool to further his agenda.”
The Prime Minister condemned this illegal action, saying that if the allegations were true then Wale should be doing the right thing by resigning.
Sogavare also reminded Malaita provincial Premier Daniel Suidani that harbouring criminal elements was a crime under the Penal Code of the Solomon Islands and was punishable by imprisonment.
This call was made following information received by the Solomon Islands government that “domestic terrorists” responsible for the rioting on 24th – 27th November 24-27 had escaped to Auki and were currently being housed by Suidani either at his residence or supporting their accommodation.
That was also a criminal act to “house and protect domestic terrorists”.
Sogavare demanded that Suidani report them to Auki police.
Robert Iroga is editor of SBM Online. Republished with permission.
New Zealand Defence Force and police personnel head to Honiara today for their peacekeeping role. Image: NZ Defence Force/RNZ
NZ joins regional ‘stabilisation’ force
Meanwhile, New Zealand Defence Force and police personnel flew to Honiara today to assist with restoration of peace and order, reports RNZ Pacific.
Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta said the personnel would maintain peace rather than get involved in domestic politics.
They are joining a Pacific contingent of Australian, Fijian and Papua New Guinean police and troops at the request of the Solomon Islands government.
Opposition leader Matthew Wale has rejected the prime minister’s claim that he and other opposition members were behind last week’s rioting in the Solomon Islands capital of Honiara.
Wale claimed that the false statements were aimed towards diverting the public’s attention from Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare’s “own failures” in dealing with the crisis.
Wale said Sogavare “must recognise his role in this tragedy”.
“These recent events are the culmination of the prime minister’s leadership style which stretch back throughout his tenure,” the opposition leader said.
Wale said he had repeatedly made calls for the prime minister to initiate dialogue with the restless province Malaita.
“I have stated on several occasions the need for the prime minister to have constructive dialogue with Malaita,” he said.
“In light of the deteriorating relationship between the province and national government, I specifically urged the prime minister last year to lead a delegation to Malaita to deal with their issues’.
Sogavare had failed to do this.
‘Negative attitude’
“His negative attitude to deal with these issues is also reflected in the recent events when he ran away and refused to engage in dialogue with the people who marched to Parliament.”
Reflecting on the damage from the rioting, Wale said that what had happened in the last few days was truly a tragedy.
“As a leader, I lament with the people who have suffered losses and condemn what has happened.
“Because of the large damage that has occurred these past days, the public’s impulse to blame someone is understandable.”
The Central Bank of Solomon Islands (CBSI) estimated the loss to the local economy at $US28 million. Three people died in the Chinatown fires.
The prime minister must not take advantage of this and divert the public’s attention from his actions and omissions which had directly contributed to the problem, Wale said.
The opposition leader called on the prime minister to “stop blaming others” for his own failures and “take responsibility as a true leader”.
NZ peacekeepers RNZ Pacific reports that the New Zealand government is deploying dozens of Defence Force and police personnel to Honiara in the coming days “to help restore peace and stability”
Since rioting and looting started in the Solomon Islands last week, Australia, Fiji and Papua New Guinea have sent about 200 troops and police to help keep the peace there.
Robert Iroga is editor of SBM Online. Republished with permission.
From Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau in Aotearoa New Zealand to Paris, France, and from Wellington Te Whanganui-a-Tara to Jayapura and far beyond, thousands of people across the world today raised the Morning Star flag — banned by Indonesian authorities — in simple acts of defiance and solidarity with West Papuans.
They honoured the raising of the flag for the first time 60 years ago on 1 December 1961 as a powerful symbol of the long West Papua struggle for independence.
One of the first flag-raising events today was in Wellington where Peace Movement Aotearoa and Youngsolwara Pōneke launched a virtual ceremony online with most participants displaying the banned flag.
Green MP Teanau Tuiono … indigenous solidarity for West Papuans. Image: APR screenshot
Hosted by Victoria University Pacific studies lecturer Dr Emalani Case, a Hawai’an, many young Pacific Islanders spoke of the indigenous struggle in West Papua and their hopes for eventual independence.
“Here in Aotearoa, we have the opportunity and the privilege of being able to raise the flag without being punished for it,” Dr Case said.
Two Green MPs — Teanau Tuiono and Eugenie Sage — were also among the “flag-raisers”, declaring their solidarity with the Papuan self-determination struggle.
Asia Pacific Report editor Dr David Robie and Del Abcede were among those who spoke.
In six decades of brutal civil conflict, hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost through combat and deprivation, and Indonesia has been criticised internationally for human rights abuses, reports Stefan Armbruster of SBS News.
In Australia, the Morning Star flew in activist Ronny Kareni’s adopted hometown of Canberra.
Asia Pacific Report’s Dr David Robie and Del Abcede … messages of West Papuan support. Image: APR screenshot
“It brings tears of joy to me because many Papuan lives, those who have gone before me, have shed blood or spent time in prison, or died just because of raising the Morning Star flag,” Kareni, the Australian representative of the United Liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP), told SBS.
“Commemorating the 60th anniversary for me demonstrates hope and also the continued spirit in fighting for our right to self-determination and West Papua to be free from Indonesia’s brutal occupation.”
West Papua’s Ronny Kareni … “Commemorating the 60th anniversary for me demonstrates hope and also the continued spirit in fighting for our right to self-determination.” Image: SBS
Indonesia’s diplomats regularly issue statements criticising the flag protests, including two years ago when the flag was raised at Sydney’s Leichhardt Town Hall, as “a symbol of separatism” that could be “misinterpreted to represent support from the Australian government”.
No response to questions about the flag’s 60th anniversary had been received by SBS News from the Indonesian embassy this year and community members and groups declined to comment.
“It’s a symbol of an aspiring independent state which would secede from the unitary Indonesian republic, so the flag itself isn’t particularly welcome within official Indonesian political discourse,” said Vedi Hadiz, an Indonesian citizen and director of the Asia Institute at the University of Melbourne.
“The raising of the flag is an expression of the grievances they hold against Indonesia for the way that economic and political governance and development has taken place over the last 60 years.
“But it’s really part of the job of Indonesian officials to make a counterpoint that West Papua is a legitimate part of the unitary republic.”
The history of the Morning Star After World War II, a wave of decolonisation swept the globe.
The Netherlands reluctantly relinquished the Dutch East Indies in 1949, which became Indonesia, but held onto Dutch New Guinea, much to the chagrin of President Sukarno, who led the independence struggle.
In 1957 Sukarno began seizing the remaining Dutch assets and expelled 40,000 Dutch citizens, many of whom were evacuated to Australia, in large part over The Netherlands’ reluctance to hand over Dutch New Guinea.
The Dutch created the New Guinea Council of predominantly elected Papuan representatives in 1961 and it declared a 10-year roadmap to independence, adopted the Morning Star flag, the national anthem — “Hai Tanahku Papua” or “Oh My Land Papua” — and a coat-of-arms for a future state to be known as “West Papua”.
The Dutch and West Papuan flags fly side-by-side in 1961. Image: SBS
The West Papua flag was inspired by the red, white and blue of the Dutch but the design can hold different meanings for the traditional landowners.
“The five-pointed star has the cultural connection to the creation story, the seven blue lines represent the seven customary land groupings,” Kareni told SBS.
The red is now often cited as a tribute to the blood spilt fighting for independence.
Attending the 1961 inauguration were Britain, France, New Zealand and Australia — represented by the president of the Senate Sir Alister McMullin in full ceremonial attire — but the United States, after initially accepting an invitation, withdrew.
Morning Star raised for first time
The Morning Star flag was raised for the first time alongside the Dutch one at a military parade in the capital Hollandia, now called Jayapura, on December 1.
On December 19, President Sukarno began ordering military incursions into what he called “West Irian”, which saw thousands of soldiers parachute or land by sea ahead of battles they overwhelmingly lost.
With long supply lines on the other side of the world and waning international support, the Dutch sensed their time was up and signed the territory over to UN control in October 1962 under the “New York Agreement”, which abolished the symbols of a future West Papuan state, including the flag.
The Morning Star flag in Paris, France. Image: AWPA
The UN handed control to Indonesia in May 1963 on condition it prepared the territory for a referendum on self-determination.
The so-called Act Of Free Choice referendum in 1969 saw the Indonesian military round up 1025 Papuan leaders who then voted unanimously to become part of Indonesia.
The outcome was accepted by the UN General Assembly, which failed to declare if the referendum complied with the “self-determination” requirements of the New York Agreement, and Dutch New Guinea was incorporated into Indonesia.
In 1971, the Free Papua Movement (OPM) declared the “republic of West Papua” with the Morning Star as its flag, which has gone on to become a potent binding symbol for the movement.
“It’s a milestone, 60 years, and we’re still waiting to freely sing the national anthem and freely fly the Morning Star flag so it’s very significant for us, ” Kareni said.
“We still continue to fight, to claim our rights and sovereignty of the land and people.”
Morning Star flag-raising at a public lecture by Professor David Robie at Griffith University’s Brisbane campus before the in October 2019 before the Melanesian Media Freedom Forum (MMFF) conference. Image: Griffith University
The New Zealand government is deploying dozens of Defence Force and police personnel to Honiara in the coming days “to help restore peace and stability”.
Since rioting and looting started in the Solomon Islands last week, Australia, Fiji and Papua New Guinea have sent troops to help keep the peace there.
An initial NZDF team of 15 will join them tomorrow, followed by a larger group of 50 at the weekend.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the response was short-term and to help restore peace and stability.
“New Zealand is committed to its responsibilities and playing its part in upholding regional security.
“We are deeply concerned by the recent civil unrest and rioting in Honiara, and following yesterday’s request of the Solomon Islands government, we have moved quickly to provide urgent assistance.
Samoan police are also on standby to send personnel to assist peacekeeping forces.
Unrest stemmed from protest
The unrest stemmed from a protest calling for the removal of Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare that spilled over into rioting and left major destruction in the capital.
A government statement said the destruction of local businesses was done by “heartless people with selfish agendas”.
It warned that instigators were planning a next phase of unrest, including the declaration of Malaita province as an independent state.
Malaita’s provincial Premier Daniel Suidani, whose administration has fallen out with the national government, denies claims that he instigated the unrest.
Malaitans played a central role in last week’s protest before opportunists and looters co-opted the mobilisation into major unrest.
Premier Daniel Suidani of Malaita province … denies claims that he instigated the unrest. Image: Daniel Suidani/Provincial Facebook/RNZ
Ringleader statements on Facebook
The government statement said it was aware of reports that ringleaders behind the unrest were openly stating on Facebook that “in order to build a new house, the old house must be first destroyed”.
“Such statements are not helping the volatile situation we are currently experiencing in Honiara,” the statement said.
“To the peace loving and right minded Malaitans, we should ask ourselves whether we are comfortable with the violent advocators to lead our people to an independent state.”
However, the national government said it was encouraged by “the wisdom of the majority of our citizens not to employ violence, looting or threatening tactics to impose one’s evil plan of decimating Honiara city, the capital of Solomon Islands”.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Fiji is the latest regional country to announce it is sending security forces to Solomon Islands where major unrest rocked the capital.
Days of rioting in Honiara by mobs who torched buildings and looted shops prompted the government to call for outside help.
In what’s shaping up as a Pacific regional response, Fiji yesterday deployed 50 soldiers to help keep the peace in Honiara, with 120 more troops on standby.
They follow last week’s deployment of more than 100 Australian defence force and police personnel, as well as 37 Papua New Guinea police and correctional service forces.
Canberra has been playing a co-ordinating role with the other Pacific nations. New Zealand is also part of the conversation, although its role appears minimal at this stage.
Signs from both Australia and PNG indicate that, provisionally, their forces are expected to be in Solomon Islands no longer than a month.
The Fiji military unit is deploying as part of a reinforcement platoon embedded with the Australian contingent in Honiara.
120 troops on standby
According to the Fiji government, another 120 Fijian troops are on standby if required.
Over three days last week, many buildings were torched in Honiara’s east, particularly its Chinatown area — leaving at least three people dead.
The unrest had spiralled from a protest against Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare last Wednesday.
By the weekend, law and order was largely restored in Honiara due to the reinforcement of local police capabilities due to the peacekeepers from Australia and Papua New Guinea.
On Monday, the Solomons Parliament met briefly — amid tight security — to pass two motions. One was for the routine extension of the State of Public Emergency in place since the start of the covid-19 pandemic.
The other was to authorise expenditure for the massive loss and damage caused by the riots — estimated at US$28 million.
Despite the resignation of four government MPs last week, and calls for him to stand down to restore control in the country, Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare still commands a clear majority in the House.
Solomon Islands Parliament … still a clear majority for Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare. Image: Koroi Hawkins/RNZ
‘Melting pot of the country’ The MP for Central Guadalcanal, Peter Shanel Agovaka, who is also Communications and Aviation Minister, said each time a group of people from outer provinces who were unhappy with the government, they tended to come to Honiara and destroy local business houses.
“I think people from other provinces should respect that as hosts of this capital we allow people of all provinces, and all denominations and all races, to come here.
“This is the melting pot of the country, and to see it in ruins like this is really very sad.”
According to Shanel, a lot of households had been affected.
“Eighty to 90 percent of Chinatown is burnt down. This is really sad, because these are innocent people,” he said.
“The way to remove a prime minister is through the parliamentary process. It’s not through the burning of businesses or private properties and looting them.”
Capital’s schools close All schools in the Solomon Islands capital have been ordered to close early as a result of the widespread destruction caused by last week’s unrest in Honiara.
Education Secretary Dr Franco Rodie said the decision was reached after consultation with the heads of various schools and taking into consideration parents concerns for the safety of their children.
Dr Rodie said thankfully most major exit examinations had already been conducted and in class assessments will have to be taken into consideration for everyone else.
State of emergency Forty-one out of 49 members of Parliament on Monday yesterday voted in favour of the four-month-extension, as proclaimed by the Governer-General, Sir David Vunagi.
Opposition leader Matthew Wale asked for clarification on the covid status of emergency personnel from Australia and Papua New Guinea brought in because of last week’s riots.
Health Minister Culwick Togamana said all foreign security personnel were double vaxxed and tested negative for covid-19 upon departure and again on arrival in the country.
Togamana also expressed disappointment in the poor uptake of vaccines with less than 20 percent of the population fully vaccinated.
Clean-up time after the riots in Honiara. Image: Fijian community, Honiara/RNZ
Clean-up underway The clean-up in Honiara is underway and church and community groups are turning up to clear the wreckage from last week’s rioting.
However, the riots have created a shortage of food and RNZ Pacific correspondent Elisabeth Osifelo said there had been long queues for the shops that were open, as well as for petrol and at ATMs while banks remain closed.
“The prices have sllightly gone up with rice and so it just depends on where the shop is,” she explained.
“I found out towards the eastern parts of Honiara because I think the shops are very limited that the prices have gone up and varying on different items as well.”
Solomon Islands police have confirmed the identity of the three bodies recovered from a building burnt in Chinatown during the violence — an adult and two children.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Pressure is mounting on Indonesia to back off its brutal and unsuccessful military strategy in trying to crush West Papuan resistance to its flawed rule in “the land of Papua”.
Critics have intensified their condemnation of the intransigent “no negotiations” stance of authorities as West Papuans mark their national day today on 1 December 1961 when the banned Morning Star flag of independence was raised for the first time.
The TNI (Indonesian military), the Polri (Indonesian police) and the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) have been locked in a conflict since Jakarta ordered a crackdown in May following a declaration of resistance groups as “terrorists”.
Many groups have raised their criticism of Jakarta’s flawed handling of its two colonised Melanesian provinces, Papua and West Papua. Recent developments include:
The Papua Council of Churches has made a “moral call” condemning the Indonesian government for continuing to choose a “path of violence” in dealing with the armed conflict in Papua being waged by OPM rebels and other pro-independence militia groups.
One hundred and ninety-four Catholic leaders from across Papua have called for an end to military operations, saying dialogue and reconciliation would be the best way to resolve the prolonged conflict.
Coinciding with the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, earlier this month, Wenda and other Papuan leaders had launched a “Green State Vision” pledging to address the climate emergency and impact of natural resource extraction in an “independent” West Papua.
They added that they would make “ecocide” a serious crime in the world’s third largest rainforest after the Amazon and the Congo.
‘Path of violence’
Pastor Benny Giay, a member of the Papua Council of Churches, says the Indonesian government is still choosing the path of violence in dealing with the armed conflict.
The council has come to this conclusion based on its experience of how conflicts in Papua have been handled in the past and the recent situation, involving six regencies in Papua — Intan Jaya, the Bintang Mountains, Nduga, Yahukimo, Maybrat and Puncak Papua.
“Based on past experience and the most recent facts, we concluded that the Indonesian government is still choosing the path of violence in dealing with the Papua conflict,” said Pastor Giay, according to CNN Indonesia.
Giay said that as a consequence of many years of armed conflict, at least 60,000 Papuans had fled into the forests or neighbouring regencies.
He and three other pastors view this as part of what could not be separated from the politics of “systematic racism”.
They suspect that “buzzers” — fake internet account operators — are being used by Indonesian intelligence and pro-government groups.
These buzzers, said Pastor Giay, continued to spread hoaxes and news containing anti-Papuan views based on racism against the Papuan people.
‘Prolonged suffering’
The Papua Council of Churches is calling for the United Nations Human Rights Council (Dewan HAM PBB) to visit Papua to see the humanitarian crisis directly – “the prolonged suffering of Papuans for the last 58 years.”
The council also wants the Indonesian government to put an end to its racist policies.
Pastor Giay and his fellow pastors have demanded that President Widodo be consistent about a statement he made on September 30, 2019, agreeing to dialogue with the ULMWP.
“Mediated by a third party [in a similar way] as took place between the Indonesian government and the GAM (Free Aceh Movement) on August 15, 2005,” said Pastor Giay.
Deputy Presidential Chief of Staff Jaleswari Pramodhawardani has reportedly said that the government was managing the security situation in Papua and West Papua provinces in “accordance with the law”.
This was conveyed in response to a UN report in intimidation and violence against human rights activists in Papua, says CNN Indonesia.
Open letter of protest from ELSHAM Papua. Image: Screenshot APR
Open letter of protest
On November 15, ELSHAM Papua sent an open letter to President Widodo protesting about the presence of non-organic troops in Papua and West Papua provinces. It says this has resulted in the deaths of many civilian victims as well as members of the TNI, Polri and the TPNPB, according to Suara Papua.
Each time an armed conflict happened, the first casualties were mothers and children — along with the elderly — who were forced to seek shelter and were suffering, ELSHAM said.
“What is happening at the moment, once again shows that the state has been negligent in protecting its citizens,” it said.
“It should be the responsibility of the state to protect its citizens as mandated by the preamble to the 1945 Constitution — that the state is obliged to protect everyone regardless of their birthplace in Indonesia.”
The open letter asked the government to withdraw all non-organic troops from Papua, for the TNI, Polri and TPNPB troops to restrain themselves, and for both warring parties to prioritise respect for human rights.
The letter also declared that security forces should not become the “accomplices of business interests and companies” in Indonesia — and instead be the protectors of ordinary people and “good” law enforcement officials.
The open letter was supported by 24 civil society organisations which work in human rights, justice and the environment.
Media conference by Catholic leaders in Jayapura, Papua. Image: Suara Papua
Speaking on behalf of the priests, Father Alberto John Bunai said the government had been ecstatic over the success of the recent 20th National Games in Papua, but the people were “deeply saddened by the suffering of God’s communities” in Nduga, Intan Jaya, Puncak, Kiwirok and Maybrat.
“To solve the root of the problem, what is needed is dialogue and reconciliation in a dignified manner,” Father Bunai said at a “moral call” media conference in Waena, Jayapura.
It was the church’s duty to articulate the “cries of God’s communities” who had no voice, Father Bunai said.
“The government must halt the ongoing military operations which have resulted in the killing of civilians, violence and people being displaced in several parts of Papua.”
A contingent of 50 Republic of Fiji Military Forces troops flew to Honiara today to help restore security and stability in the Solomon Islands after three days of rioting last week.
Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama had pledged Fijian support for his Solomon Islands counterpart Manasseh Sogavare.
The request was accepted and Fiji’s troops were prepared, the RFMF said today in a statement.
The Fijian soldiers departed for Honiara on a Royal Australian Air Force C-130 transport plane about 12 noon. They are joining about 150 Australian and Papua New Guinea troops and police in Solomon Islands.
Commander Major-General Jone Kalouniwai said in his farewell speech to the troops at the Queen Elizabeth Barracks in Suva: “We are here, heeding the call of our nation through the Prime Minister after his discussion with the Solomon Islands Prime Minister to assist our fellow Melanesian family in the Solomons.”
“We are all placing our trust on you that you will go out there and perform to the best of your ability to help bring peace and stability in the Solomons,” said General Kalouniwai.
Contingent Commander Lieutenant-Colonel Asaeli Toanikeve thanked the RFMF leadership for their trust in his leadership.
‘We will bravely stand’
“I would also like to assure you that we will bravely stand and heed the call of the military and the nation for we believe this is God calling on our lives to assist the people of the Solomon Islands in their time of need,” Lieutenant-Colonel Toanikeve said.
Assigned to prepare the contingent, the commanding officer 3rd Battalion Fiji Infantry Regiment, Lieutenant-Colonel Penioni Naliva, said the troops had been briefed on what to expect.
“More importantly, they are there to assist law enforcement agencies in the Solomon Islands bring back peace and stability to their country,” Colonel Naliva said.
Naliva added that the deploying contingent, which has been made up of men from all units of the RFMF, would be specifically tasked with ensuring a stable environment for future operations in case more troops were needed.
Just four years into his military career and going on his first deployment, Legal Officer Captain Aisea Paka said he was excited when it was conveyed to him that he was going on this tour.
“I had a feeling that the time would come for it. However, mindful of the work we are to partake in, there are a lot of legal matters to deal with apart from operations. I want to thank the leadership for this opportunity,” said the Rotuman officer.
Akanisi Vakanawa, wife of a deploying soldier, said that while the news of the sudden deployment came as a surprise it was something she had always expected.
Almost 80 years after Fiji troops first landed in the Solomons during the Second World War and 15 years since their last deployment with the Australian-led Regional Assistance Mission to the Pacific nation, Fijian soldiers are returning.
Papua New Guinea’s deployment of 37 police and Correctional Services staff to Solomon Islands on Friday was done on the back of a regional police-to-police engagement arrangement to help stem the civil unrest in Honiara.
Police Commissioner David Manning, who returned to Port Moresby from Honiaria on Friday evening on a chartered Tropicair plane, said he met his Solomon Islands counterpart Mostyn Mangau.
The first thing the PNG contingent did was to protect some of the state assets such as Henderson International Airport and Parliament House.
Manning said a further commitment was known to Commissioner Mangau and Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare to increase manpower if the situation worsened.
He said that the members of the PNG contingent would work side by side and under Commissioner Mangau’s orders.
He said on the meeting with Mangau that the situation was of great concern for them given the manpower shortage in Solomon Islands.
PNG’s intervention was not just timely but was critical to them to contain the situation.
Manning said according to the brief, most of the shops in Chinatown were looted and burnt down, including the PNG-owned BSP building in Honiara.
He said an aerial view of the capital indicated that the city streets were empty with no movement of people.
He said PNG’s intervention was part of PNG’s interest in helping provide regional security.
Fiji providing 50 troops The Fiji Times reports that Fiji will today deploy a 50 troops to Solomon Islands.
Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama confirmed this in Parliament yesterday in response to the upheaval in Honiara.
He said the team would be dispatched to Honiara as part of a reinforced platoon embedded with Australian Force elements on the ground.
“Another 120 troops here in Fiji will remain on standby for deployment if needed to help maintain security,” Bainimarama said.
Republished with permission on PNG Post-Courier and The Fiji Times.
The British loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) blew up McGurk’s bar in Belfast on 4 December 1971. It murdered 15 innocent people and injured more than 16. This bombing occurred in the early years of the 30-year conflict in Ireland. British authorities blamed the IRA, claiming the bomb detonated prematurely en route to its intended target. But campaigners claim that this assertion was a lie.
As the 50th anniversary of that massacre approaches, victims’ families have launched a new website. The website commemorates the dead, those who survived, and their families. Since the bombing, those families have continued to fight for the truth. And in the lead up to the anniversary, they will be “publishing critical new evidence and articles”.
The Canary is exclusively revealing some of that evidence that shows a British army commander lied about his knowledge of the bombing in a newspaper article just two weeks after the incident. Campaigners claim this is the first instance of that commander lying about the McGurk’s bar bombing.
A new project begins
The site also includes work from award-winning Belfast artist Sinéad O’Neill-Nicholl. The artist started a sound installation project where she’s recording “the lived experiences” of the families in the aftermath of the massacre. O’Neill-Nicholl’s project is called Never the Same. The installation, at the site of the explosion, currently features:
16 short recordings of the families’ personal memories around grief and loss, which visitors can listen to whilst at the McGurk’s Bar memorial.
Ciarán MacAirt is a justice campaigner and grandson of two of the McGurk’s Bar victims. He called O’Neill-Nicholl’s work “an innovative sound installation”. MacAirt will be revealing “new evidence” about the bombing on this site. He said:
Unfortunately, the new website is a timely reminder too that our Campaign for Truth is ongoing even after 50 years, as the British authorities – including the Office of Police Ombudsman, Police Service Northern Ireland, Ministry of Defence and Cabinet Office – are withholding evidence from our families to this very day. We will prove this over the coming weeks.
Some of this evidence relates to what lieutenant general Harry Tuzo knew about the bombing. Tuzo was general officer commanding (GOC) of the British Army at that time. In a newspaper article on 20 December 1971, Tuzo said he was 98% certain the bomb went off inside the pub. In that article, Tuzo speculated that it was unlikely:
anybody not known to the denizens [regulars] of that pub could have got in with a parcel under his arm.
Therefore, Tuzo’s statement implicates the people inside the pub in the bombing.
What we already know
The website shows previously seen secret documents that indicate British armed forces knew the bar had been attacked from outside. Additionally, it suggests brigadier Frank Kitson colluded with local police to tell lies about the bombing and to conceal the truth.
Indeed, as reported by The Canary in August 2020, MacAirt uncovered new files that revealed the name of the UVF’s original target. The files also showed that there was a nearby British army presence that evening. Moreover, MacAirt claims his files showed a connection between Kitson and the atrocity.
In December 2020, MacAirt released previously unseen documentation that showed:
a high-level, coordinated and sustained Security Force and Civil Service plot to deceive the Parliaments of Britain and Northern Ireland about the true circumstances of the McGurk’s Bar Massacre.
Critical documentation
Now, MacAirt has exclusively revealed to The Canary that some of this new documentation implicates GOC Tuzo. Because just four days before his statement in the above newspaper article, he attended a security meeting in Stormont just outside Belfast:
They discussed the McGurk’s bar bombing at this meeting. Notes on the meeting state:
Circumstantial evidence indicates that this was a premature detonation and two of those killed were known I.R.A. members at least one of whom had been associated with bombing activities. Intelligence indicates that the bomb was destined for use elsewhere in the city.
“A republican own-goal”?
Campaigners claim this is a lie. In fact, on the 49th anniversary of the bombing, they had challenged police to prove that the bombing victims were IRA members. They say they’ve yet to get a response. And as previously reported by The Canary, MacAirt alleges the British army and the RUC colluded “just a few hours after the bomb explosion” to blame the victims for the explosion. They labelled it “a republican own-goal”. A British army log stated:
RUC have a line that the bomb in the pub was a bomb designed to be used elsewhere, left in the pub to be picked up by the Provisional IRA. Bomb went off and was a mistake. RUC press office have a line on it – NI should deal with them.
But the British knew where the bomb was planted
According to MacAirt, all of this could have led to security forces misinforming Tuzo. However, in 2009, MacAirt uncovered information that showed Tuzo had been informed the bomb was planted outside the bar and not inside:
A bomb believed to have been planted outside the bar was estimated by the A.T.O. to be 30/50lb of HE (high explosive)
Then in 2016, MacAirt and his legal team uncovered a Headquarters Northern Ireland log from December 1971. This revealed proof that officers examined the bomb site the following morning and informed Tuzo’s Headquarters on the morning of 5 December 1971:
ATO [Ammunition Technical Officer] is convinced bomb was placed in entrance way on ground floor. The area is cratered and clearly was the seat of the explosion.
MacAirt said the authorities had always told the families they hadn’t discovered the probable seat of the explosion. But this was not the case. Because the ATO’s report, which had first gone to Kitson’s Brigade Headquarters, read:
As far as can be assessed from the damage and the crater by the expl[osion]… the bomb was placed on the ground floor entrance on the corner of the building that faces into the junction.
MacAirt told The Canary:
The British Army and its leaders including Lt. General Sir Harry Tuzo and Brigadier Frank Kitson knew that the bomb was placed outside the bar and the bar was attacked. They knew that the innocent victims were not to blame.
So, when Tuzo offered his Christmas message at the press conference on 20th December 1971 and he spoke about the McGurk’s Bar Massacre, he was lying.
Lt. General Sir Harry Tuzo is as much in the frame for the cover-up of the McGurk’s Bar Massacre as his subordinate, Frank Kitson.
The truth will not remained buried
The project organisers believe the Never the Same project will inspire other families in Ireland and the UK who wish to commemorate the loved ones they lost during this 30-year conflict. The launch comes as Northern Ireland secretary Brandon Lewis is planning an amnesty from criminal prosecution for British military personnel. This amnesty would also apply to loyalist and republican paramilitaries who fought in the conflict. That amnesty would take effect if Lewis’s plans become law.
Long before the government proposed this amnesty, campaigners believed British authorities had never been forthcoming with the truth behind Britain’s involvement in the conflict. And as MacAirt added:
It is horrific to consider that before we buried our loved ones on cold days in December 1971, the British state buried the truth.
This new website, along with MacAirt’s relentless and thorough investigative work, shows that whatever attempts the British employ to bury the truth, campaigners will continue to uncover it.
A spokesperson said they are yet to confirm the identities of the bodies.
Local reports say the remains are of some of the looters trapped inside the building.
Most of the rioting and looting took place in Chinatown, and our correspondent there said only six buidlings are left standing.
No NZ plans to evacuate citizens New Zealand has no plans to evacuate its citizens from the troubles in the Solomon Islands, Honiara.
A protest on Wednesday calling for the Solomon Islands prime minister Manasseh Sogavare to stand down lapsed into major unrest which local police were unable to contain.
A spokesperson from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said on Friday evening, the High Commission in Honiara is providing Safe Travel advice to New Zealanders in the Solomon Islands.
This includes following the instructions of the local authorities.
In the heart of China Town, where buildings are burning in all sides.This building stands. pic.twitter.com/H0Kgkf6kX7
The spokesperson said any New Zealanders in the Solomons who have not registered with Safe Travel are advised to do so as soon as possible.
There are 43 New Zealanders registered on SafeTravel, all believed to be in Honiara.
New Zealanders in Solomon Islands are also urged to exercise care and remain where they are if it is safe to do so, a MFAT spokesperson said in a statement.
“Since 19 March 2020 we have advised all New Zealanders do not travel overseas,” the spokesperson said.
Armed Honiara police in action in the Solomon Islands yesterday. Image: Georgina Kekea/RNZ Pacific
No request for help from Solomons govt – NZ Earlier, New Zealand’s Trade Minister David Parker issued a statement as acting Foreign Affairs Minister, with Nanaia Mahuta overseas on her first official trip.
Parker said New Zealand had not received any requests for assistance from the Solomons government.
“New Zealand is a long-standing partner of Solomon Islands, and there are deep and enduring connections between our two countries,” Parker said.
“Our engagement in Solomon Islands is guided by the principle of tātou tātou, or all of us acting together for the common good.
“We stand with the government and people of Solomon Islands through this difficult time,” Parker said.
Australia has deployed police and defence force personnel following a request from the Solomon Islands prime minister Manasseh Sogavare.
Community step in to help police RNZ Pacific correspondent in Honiara Georgina Kekea said police had been able to contain the crowd from going into the main CBD area in Honiara.
A group protecting one of the buildings in Chinatown … an RNZ Pacific correspondent reports only six buildings are left standing after three days of looting and riots. Image: Georgina Kekea/RNZ Pacific
She said most of the rioting and looting has been taking place in Chinatown and not so much in the west side of Honiara.
Kekea said members of the community in West Honiara came forward to help the police and make sure people do not damage shops or buildings along the CBD.
“Friday afternoon, some of the mothers and people in the Henderson community marched along the main CBD asking those participating in the riots to just stay back,” she said.
“It’s the Eastern part of Honiara that is still not under control.”
She also said people were looking for food on Friday and that will be an issue for those in Honiara in the coming days.
Overnight curfew The overnight curfew declared by the Solomon Islands Governor-General in the capital Honiara has ended.
Sir David Vunagi said the 7pm to 6am curfew would be repeated everyday until revoked.
Sir David had said it was a necessary measure for the preservation of public security.
Only authorised officers were allowed to move within the city during the curfew hours and anyone found breaching the restrictions would be prosecuted.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
