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Category: military

  • Myanmar’s junta plans draconian cyber-security law to stifle dissent

    Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has condemned a proposed cyber-security law in Myanmar that would organise online censorship and force social media platforms to share private information about their users when requested by the authorities.

    The draft law, which has just been leaked, is clearly designed to prevent pro-democracy activists from continuing to organise the demonstrations that have been taking place every day in cities across Myanmar in response to the military coup on February 1.

    The State Administration Council – as the new military junta euphemistically calls itself – sent a copy of the proposed law to internet access and online service providers on  February 9.

    And the junta is expected to make it public on February 15.

    The draft law, which RSF has seen, would require online platforms and service providers operating in Myanmar to keep all user data in a place designated by the government for three years.

    ‘Causing hate, destabilisation’
    Article 29 would give the government the right to order an account’s “interception, removal, destruction or cessation” in the event of any content “causing hate or disrupting unity, stabilisation and peace,” any “disinformation,” or any comment going “against any existing law.”

    This extremely vague wording would give the government considerable interpretative leeway and would in practice allow it to ban any content it disliked and to prosecute its author.

    Article 30, on the other hand, is very specific about the data that online service providers must hand over to the government when requested: the user’s name, IP address, phone number, ID card number and physical address.

    Any violation of the law would be punishable by up to three years in prison and a fine of 10 million kyats (6200 euros). Those convicted on more than one count would, of course, serve the corresponding jail terms consecutively.

    RSF submission
    “The provisions of this cyber-security law pose a clear threat to the right of Myanmar’s citizens to reliable information and to the confidentiality of journalists’ and bloggers’ data,” said Daniel Bastard, the head of RSF Asia-Pacific desk.

    “We urge digital actors operating in Myanmar, starting with Facebook, to refuse to comply with this shocking attempt to bring them to heel. This junta has absolutely no democratic legitimacy and it would be highly damaging for platforms to submit too its tyrannical impositions.”

    Facebook has nearly 25 million users in Myanmar – 45 percent of the population. Three days after the February 1 coup, the junta suddenly blocked access to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

    But many of the country’s citizens have been using VPNs (virtual private networks) to circumvent the censorship.

    The proposed law’s leak has coincided with social media reports of the arrival of many Chinese technicians tasked with setting up an internet barrier and cybersurveillance system of the kind operating in China, which is an expert in this domain.

    Earlier this week, RSF reported the comments of several journalists who have been trying to cover the protests against the military coup, and who said that press freedom has been set back 10 years in the space of 10 days, back to where it was before the start of the democratisation process.

    Myanmar is ranked 139th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2020 World Press Freedom Index.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Beyond Donald Trump

    In his 1967 speech at Riverside Church, Martin Luther King, Jr. laid out America’s greatest problems: “the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism.” Continue reading

    The post Beyond Donald Trump appeared first on BillMoyers.com.

    This post was originally published on BillMoyers.com.

  • Covid colonialism: outbreak among UK troops could jeopardise Kenyan successes

    Six British soldiers have now been hospitalised in Kenya amid confusion over an outbreak of coronavirus (Covid-19) among a group of 1,600 troops deployed to the east African nation for a training exercise.

    The latest case was reported on 11 February following a week of troubling leaks about a military exercise which had gone ahead despite the risk of spreading the virus internationally.

    Reuters said on Twitter:

    Kenya, a former UK colony, continues to host the British military on a permanent basis, with the UK military population growing by thousands during large-scale training exercises.

    It’s been reported that over 300 troops from the Mercian battlegroup, which includes two full infantry battalions, have been held in isolation. Some have reportedly been forced to bivouac inside in Nanuki camp – a staging ground between the capital Nairobi and the vast training areas used by the military.

    Rumours

    Local press has reported that Kenyan workers employed by the military have been sent home on full pay until the crisis is over.

    The troops reportedly started to arrived in January to take part in Askari Storm, a regular exercise which been halted since the pandemic hit the UK in early 2020. Despite the confirmed cases, which officially stand at 11, a further 150 troops are said to have flown into the country on 8 January.

    The military claims that strict anti-coronavirus measures are in place. However, Sky reported that anonymous members of the battlegroup rejected this:

    claims by the Ministry of Defence that the soldiers are having their temperatures taken three times a day have been dismissed as “a total lie” by troops on the ground.

    “It’s chaos,” one soldier said. Another described the handling of the situation by senior officers as “a clusterf**k”

    Covid colonialism

    The revelations raise concerns that the deployment may have brought UK strains of coronavirus to Kenya.

    According to a report in the Independent from 28 January, Kenya defied early predictions that African nations would be overwhelmed by the pandemic. Dr Betty Addero Radier, head of the country’s tourist board, told the paper they had locked down the country effectively during the outbreak:

    Kenya was one of the first countries to close our entire air space, and it remained closed until mid August.

    Kenya’s response has been swift and practical. The perception [in the West] might be that ‘Africa has suffered a lot of diseases and knows the repercussions’, but really the interventions made by our government have served us in good stead.

    There is a mindset in the Western world that says whenever anything happens, Africa is going to be the hardest hit. But Africa has been able to prove this wrong. What’s happening in the UK is shocking. It sounds that as if there is a lot of uncertainty as the pandemic evolves and that there is no plan.

    The Mercians are based in barracks in the Midlands, North-West and South of the England, and the other units which make up the battlegroup are from around the UK. The latest hospitalization comes as a leading scientist has warned that the Kent strain of coronavirus, with its higher transmissibility, could become one of the most dominant globally.

    Feature image via Wikimedia Commons/Cpl Jamie Hart

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Biden Puts A Stop To MASSIVE Saudi Arabia Arms Deal Created By Former Trump Administration

    Via America’s Lawyer: President Biden halts a Saudi arms deal brokered under Trump. Could the new administration be pivoting away from future dealings with the controversial regime? 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:             And finally tonight, some good news. Joe Biden has […]

    The post Biden Puts A Stop To MASSIVE Saudi Arabia Arms Deal Created By Former Trump Administration appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.

    This post was originally published on The Ring of Fire.

  • With Biden’s Backing, Space Force Threatens to Accelerate the Arms Race

    The official flag of the United States Space Force is presented in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C. on May 15, 2020.

    Republicans’ recent loss of control over the federal government means it’s fake outrage season in Washington, D.C. Last week, conservative lawmakers marked the occasion by lambasting White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki for allegedly failing to show sufficient reverence for the Space Force, the new branch of the U.S. Armed Forces established in 2019 under the administration of Donald Trump to assert U.S. military dominance in outer space.

    At a press conference on February 2, Psaki responded to a question about President Joe Biden’s support for Trump’s creation by joking about the Space Force being “the plane of today” — a reference to how she had fielded questions about the color of Air Force One during the previous day’s press conference, and how the questions about the Space Force were subsequently taking center stage.

    “It is an interesting question. I am happy to check with our Space Force point of contact,” Psaki added. “I’m not sure who that is. I will find out and see if we have any update on that.”

    While most wouldn’t have batted an eyelash at those remarks, Republicans flew into a fury. Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama, the leading Republican on the House Armed Services, accused Psaki of using “an entire branch of our military as the punchline of a joke, which I’m sure China would find funny.” Rep. Michael Waltz of Florida charged Psaki with “demeaning the incredible work of Space Force personnel.”

    In response to the GOP attacks, Psaki clarified the Biden administration’s staunchly pro-Space Force position. “We look forward to the continuing work of Space Force and invite the members of the team to come visit us in the briefing room anytime to share an update on their important work,” she said in a tweet posted hours after her plane quip.

    “They absolutely have the full support of the Biden administration,” Psaki said of Space Force personnel at the next day’s press conference.

    But while Republicans were publicly sweating the future of the military branch, or at least pretending to, it’s unlikely that the defense industry was worried. The bill establishing the Space Force passed Congress in 2019 with overwhelming bipartisan support. Several Democrats in both the House and Senate also crossed the aisle last year to form bipartisan Space Force caucuses in each chamber.

    Four Democrats who still serve in Congress co-founded the caucuses: Senators Kyrsten Sinema (Arizona) and Martin Heinrich (New Mexico), and Reps. Charlie Crist (Florida) and Jason Crow (Colorado). Within days of co-founding the House Space Force caucus, Crist received $3,000 from the Political Action Committee (PAC) of Blue Origin, the spaceflight contractor founded and owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos. Crist also received $2,500 from aerospace giant Northrop Grumman’s PAC early last September, weeks before the establishment of the House Space Force Caucus.

    The two companies are among top Space Force contractors that have preferred donating to Democrats over Republicans in the past few years. In the most recent election cycle, individuals employed by Blue Origin and the company’s PAC gave Democratic candidates for federal office $209,103 while giving Republicans $95,494. Northrop Grumman’s PAC and individuals employed by the company gave Democratic candidates $1,449,859 while giving Republican candidates $1,153,363. And employees and executives and the PAC run by SpaceX, the company owned by billionaire Elon Musk, gave Democrats $468,772 while giving Republicans $274,914.

    The Pentagon has relied on these three companies alongside United Launch Alliance (ULA), a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, to get Space Force off the ground, both figuratively and literally (ULA donors preferred Republican candidates last election cycle). The four firms have each been paid hundreds of millions of dollars to develop space launch technology for the U.S. military.

    The Space Force announced last August that it would end launch technology partnerships with Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman, but the latter still has plenty of business with the branch, including a $2.3 billion contract to develop satellites for a missile warning system. In December, Bezos’s firm reacted to its loss by establishing an advisory board staffed by seven ex-NASA and military officials to help compete for “lucrative government contracts,” in the words of Reuters.

    Though the Space Force is heavily associated with President Trump, Democrats have been pushing the U.S. military for years to ratchet up its celestial presence. In January, The New York Times published a lengthy piece detailing how the Obama administration boosted the Pentagon’s “offensive space control” capabilities by churning $7.2 billion in contracts through 67 companies.

    “The beneficiaries included Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla, and Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon,” the paper noted (Musk was not actually one of Tesla’s founders, for the record).

    The push to militarize space started under the Bush administration in response to the Chinese military testing anti-satellite weaponry in 2007. In the years leading up to the test, however, the U.S.government repeatedly voted against U.N. General Assembly resolutions proposed by Russian diplomats, which sought to affirm that outer space should only be used for “peaceful purposes.”

    In 2005 and 2006, the resolutions “enjoyed support from an overwhelming majority, with only Israel abstaining and the United States objecting,” as the Nuclear Threat Initiative noted. Three years before the first resolution, Russia and China had released a paper entitled: “Possible Elements for a Future International Legal Agreement on the Prevention of the Deployment of Weapons in Outer Space, the Threat or Use of Force Against Outer Space Objects.”

    But with Democrats and Republicans now both firmly behind Space Force, it seems there is no going back. In December 2019, days before Congress first advanced legislation to create the branch, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the U.S. military’s new focus on outer space would force the Russian government “to pay increased attention to strengthening the orbital group, as well as the rocket and space industry as a whole.”

    The call from Putin reinforced warnings from critics of the Space Force worried about the proliferation of weapons in the thermosphere and beyond. Laura Grego, a physicist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the establishment of the U.S. military branch “would prompt a space arms race that would threaten U.S. military and civilian satellites, not protect them.”

    “Creating a new military service focused on space will create bureaucratic incentives to hype the space weapons threat and build new weapons,” Grego added.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Don’t touch academic freedom – why the Philippine military action is so intrusive and gross

    Jamela Alindogan reports from Manila on the attack on academic freedom. Video: Al Jazeera

    Teachers and students in the Philippines are angry over the decision to allow military forces to enter the top state university. The 1989 deal was put in place to protect students from the warrantless arrests and constant surveillance by police and military forces that were common during the 1970s era of martial law. Mel Sta Maria at Rappler analyses the crisis.

    ANALYSIS: By Mel Sta Maria in Manila

    Because of the controversy resulting from the unilateral termination by the Defence Department (DND) of the University of the Philippines (UP) and the DND’s accord limiting the entry of security personnel inside UP, Commission of Higher Education (CHED) chair J. Prospero de Vera was quoted in news reports as saying a “panel of education experts will define the meaning of academic freedom and the role of security forces in the protection of academic freedom and the welfare of students.”

    CHED or a “panel of experts” will define academic freedom for the University of the Philippines?

    This is the most intrusive, gross, and unconstitutional governmental action that can ever be done in regard to education.

    No governmental agency should define how academic freedom should be operationalised in UP and, for that matter, in any educational institution, like Ateneo de Manila University, Far Eastern University, Polytechnic University of the Philippines, De La Salle University, Mindanao State University, University of San Carlos, University of Sto. Tomas, and others.

    The 1987 Constitution provides that “academic freedom shall be enjoyed in all institutions of higher learning” (Article 14 Section 5[2]). The operative verb is “shall” – not may, could, or any other discretionary word.

    “Shall” is a command which all must observe unqualifiedly. No exact definition was made for a very fundamental reason.

    From the constitutional deliberations, Commissioner Adolf Azcuna (who later became a Supreme Court associate justice) said: “Since academic freedom is a dynamic concept, we want to expand the frontiers of freedom, especially in education, therefore, we shall leave it to the court to develop further the parameters of academic freedom.”

    The intent of the framers
    The intent of the framers was not for the executive department, especially the CHED, to come up with an academic freedom “definition”. The task has been exclusively and particularly given to the Supreme Court “to develop further parameters of academic freedom”.

    The reason is so obvious. The executive and Congress are political departments often imbued by temporal, erratic, and slanted motivations. Education cannot be left to these people.

    And the Supreme Court did its job by enunciating the pillars of academic freedom. All institutions of higher learning have exclusively the constitutional right to decide on the following:

    1. who may teach;
    2. what may be taught;
    3. how it shall be taught; and who may be admitted to study. (Ateneo de Manila vs. Capulong et. al., GR No. 99327 May 27, 1993).

    Significantly, the Supreme Court did not provide any specific definition but only enumerated these 4 pillars so that academic freedom shall truly be expansive and free pursuant to the spirit and aspiration of the constitutional mandate.

    For the CHED or any “panel of experts” to make a definition and impose it on UP or other schools will “straightjacket” or constrict academic freedom, opening it up to further so-called qualifications in the future.

    If that happens, it will usher in the beginning of more, though gradual, intrusions. I dread the day when the CHED and the DND, on the pretext of “security” reasons, will give outlines or syllabus to teachers for them to teach students – worst, for the CHED or the police to sit in in a class to monitor whether the “right” “patriotic” lessons are properly taught.

    State indoctrination
    This is state indoctrination. An atmosphere of prior restraint will be created – a repugnant situation.

    The Supreme Court’s parameters are enough guidance. There is no need to add anything. Neither is clarification necessary. Let us leave it at that. Let the institutions of higher learning principally decide what kind of atmosphere their education will have.

    Justice Frankfurter, the most revered US Supreme Court magistrate on the subject of academic freedom, said: “It is the business of a university to provide that atmosphere which is most conducive to speculations, experiment, and creation.”

    And the University of the Philippines, to show fidelity to that “business of a university” to provide the right educational atmosphere to its professors and students, entered into the accord with the DND.

    UP grounds are public places which can be entered into by anybody. But, if they can be freely roamed by state agents with ulterior motives to monitor, overtly or clandestinely, UP’s academic community, education will be inhibited. That is not acceptable. The exclusionary nature of the accord therefore was important.

    Without it, there will be an atmosphere where professors and students may exhibit uncalled for reservations in their discussions and research, talking and investigating less freely lest they may be mistaken as seditionist or terrorist by state agents roaming around the campus.

    This undue self-restraint will destroy that “marketplace of ideas” which an educational institution should be.

    What about ‘mistaken incitement’?
    What if law or political science professors engage their students to research, debate, defend, or debunk the propriety or the pros and cons of socialism, Marxism, or even liberation theology, and roaming state agents, not experts in these topics, hear the discussions?

    It is possible that, mistakenly, these professors may be suspected of inciting students to commit terrorism and then apprehended.

    “This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it.”

    That quote is from Abraham Lincoln, one of the greatest United States presidents.

    “A revolution, woven in the dim light of mystery, has kept me from you. Another revolution will return me to your arms, bring me back to life.”

    This is one of the memorable quotes in El Filibusterismo, written by Jose Rizal.

    What if a theatrical play created, written, produced, and directed by students were staged revolving around those statements? State agents without expertise on these matters may suspect these students of fomenting radical ideas and arrest them. The mere thought of such possibilities can restrain free expression, discussion, and analysis.

    Accord termination ominous
    The termination of the UP-DND accord is ominous especially in the light of the Anti-Terror-Law (ATL), where mere suspicion is the threshold for an arrest based on the vague provisions of the law.

    Professors and students can be victimised by the ATL. For instance, government surveillance can be made on any suspected person except that “surveillance, interception, and recording of communications between lawyers and clients, doctors and patients, journalists and their sources, and confidential business correspondence shall not be authorized” (Section 16 of the ATL).

    Professors and students are not exempted. Also, while “confidential business correspondence” is exempted, confidential educational correspondence between professors and students are not. These omissions portentously tell volumes on the vulnerability of professors and students.

    With the UP-DND accord’s termination and the ATL’s implementation, the lure to control the conscience, the thought process, the learning, the outlook, the discernment of students, may just be too great for unscrupulous state officials to resist. This is disturbing.

    Government officials should not tinker with academic freedom. Many Filipinos benefitted from its unadulterated concept. Many more have served the country well, performed their civic duties consistently, and gave hope to future generations.

    A definition by a “panel of experts” will not only define for educational institutions what academic freedom is; more dangerously, it will effectively dictate to them what academic freedom is not; what it no longer means. That is destructive and constitutionally abhorrent.

    Dr Mel Sta Maria is dean of the Far Eastern University (FEU) Institute of Law in the Philippines. He teaches law at FEU and the Ateneo School of Law, hosts shows on both radio and YouTube, and has authored several books on law, politics, and current events.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Why Indonesia’s planned new Papuan provinces will cause division and destruction

    The politics of divide and rule and how Indonesia’s attempt to separate indigenous Papuans is an irrational and unrealistic proposal that will damage the cultural values of kinship and togetherness as Melanesian people, writes Dr Socratez Yoman.

    ANALYSIS: By Dr Socratez Yoman

    The Indonesian coloniser has become an ignorant ruler with deaf ears and with evil intention in fighting for the addition of new Papuan provinces without the population numbers to justify this.

    Provincial division is a serious problem because the population of Papua and West Papua does not meet the requirements to establish new provinces.

    The planned provinces will cause division and destruction of the cultural values of kinship and togetherness as Melanesian people.

    After Indonesia failed with a plan to move 2 million indigenous Papuans to Manado, the new strategy devised by the Jakarta authorities is to separate indigenous Papuans according to ethnic groups. This is a crime against humanity and is a gross human rights violation carried out by the state.

    The author followed the presentation from the Minister of Home Affairs of the Republic of Indonesia, Tito Karnavian, to the Working Meeting of Commission I DPD RI in Jakarta on 27 January 2021 regarding the government’s version of the Provincial Expansion scenario which was not rational or realistic.

    The Minister of Home Affairs is not paying attention to the standards and requirements for the development of a new administrative area, such as area size, population, human resources and financial and natural resources.

    The criteria for a new government have been largely ignored, but political interests and remilitarisation have become the main mission. To be honest, the people and nation of West Papua do not need lots of division of districts and provinces.

    Military purpose for new provinces
    These new provinces are only for political and military purposes and to move excess population from Java.

    The proposal in summary

    1. Papua Province
    (the original province)
    Capital: Jayapura
    a. Jayapura Town
    b. Jayapura Regency
    c. Keerom Regency
    d. Sarmi Regency
    e. Maberamo Raya Regency
    f. Waropen Regency
    g. Kep. Yapen Regency
    h. Biak Numfor Regency
    i. Supiori Regency

    2. South Papua Province
    (new province)
    Capital: Merauke
    a. Merauke Regency
    b. Boven Digoel Regency
    c. Mappi Regency
    d. Asmat Regeny
    e. Peg Bintang Regency

    3. Central Eastern Papua Province
    (new province)
    Capital: Wamena
    a. Jayawijaya Regency
    b. Lani Jaya Regency
    c. Tolikora Regency
    d. Nduga Regency
    e. Maberamo Tengah Regency
    f. Yalimo Regency
    g. Yahukimo Regency
    h. Puncak Jaya Regency
    i. Puncak Regency

    4. Western Central Papua Province
    (still under debate)
    Capital: Mimika
    a. Mimika Regency
    b. Paniai Regency
    c. Deiyai Regency
    d. Dogiay Regency
    e. Nabire Regency
    f. Intan Jaya Regency

    5. West Papua Daya Province
    (previously mostly West Papua Province)
    Capital: Sorong
    a. Town of Sorong
    b. Sorong Regency
    c. Sorong Selatan Regency
    d. Maybrat Regency
    e. Tambrauw Regency
    f. Raja Ampat Regency

    With these additions Papua would have five provinces. The mechanism for provincial expansion is in accordance with Article 76 of the Special Autonomy Law with additional authority changes from the central government when there is a deadlock in the region.

    The total population of West Papua includes two provinces respectively: Papua Province 3,322,526 people and West Papua 1,069,498 inhabitants. The total is 4,392,024 inhabitants.

    Evenly dividing up population
    If the population is divided evenly from the total population of 4,392,024 the population for the five provinces are as follows:

    1. Papua Province will be inhabited by a population of 878,404 people.

    2. West Papua Province will be inhabited by a population of 878,404 people.

    3. The Province of Puppet I will be inhabited by a population of 878,404 people.

    4. The Province of Puppet II will be inhabited by a population of 878,404 people.

    5. The Province of Puppet III will be inhabited by a population of 878,404 people.

    The question is whether a province with a total population of 878,404 people is worthy and eligible to become a province?

    It is very important to compare with the population of the provinces of West Java, Central Java and East Java.

    1. Total population of West Java: 46,497,175 people.

    2. Total population of Central Java: 35,557,248 people.

    3. Total Population of East Java: 38,828,061 people.

    The question is why does the government of the Republic of Indonesia not carry out splitting the provinces of West Java, Central Java and East Java, which have the largest population sizes?

    ‘Transfer of excess population’
    As a consequence of a population shortage in this province, the Indonesian authorities will transfer the excess population of Malay Indonesians to these puppet provinces.

    The creation of these five provinces also have as their main objective to build 5 military area commands, 5 police area command bases, tens of military district commands and dozens of police district headquarters and various other units. The land of Melanesia will be used as the home of the military, police and Indonesian Malay people.

    The consequences will be that the indigenous Papuans from Sorong to Merauke will lose their land because the land will be robbed and looted to build office buildings, military headquarters, police headquarters, army district bases, and police district bases.

    Humans will be removed, made impoverished, without land and without a future, even slaughtered and destroyed like animals in a natural or unnatural way as we have experienced and witnessed until the present.

    There is evidence that a genocide process has been carried out by the modern colonial rulers of Indonesia in this era of civilisation. The crimes of the Indonesian colonial rulers continue to be exposed in public.

    In 1969, when the West Papuan people were integrated into Indonesia, the indigenous population was around 809,337 people. Meanwhile, the neighbouring independent state of Papua New Guinea has around 2,783,121 people.

    Since then, the indigenous population of PNG has reached 8,947,024 million, while the number of Indigenous Papuans is still only 1.8 million.

    Modern colonial ruler
    This fact shows that the Indonesian government is a modern colonial ruler which has occupied and colonised the people and nation of West Papua.

    Dr Veronika Kusumaryati, a daughter of Indonesia’s young generation in her dissertation entitled: Ethnography of the Colonial Present: History, Experience, And Political Consciousness in West Papua, revealed:

    “For Papuans, current colonialism is marked by the experience and militariSation of daily life. This colonialism can also be felt through acts of violence that are disproportionately shown to Papuans, as well in the narrative of their lives.

    “When Indonesia arrived, thousands of people were detained, tortured and killed. Offices were looted and houses burned. … these stories did not appear in historical books, not in Indonesia, nor in the Netherlands. This violence did not stop in the 1960s.”

    (Kusumaryati, V. (2018). Ethnography of the Colonial Present: History, Experience, And Political Consciousness in West Papua, p. 25).

    The Indonesian government repeats the experience of the colonial rulers of apartheid in South Africa. In 1978, Peter W. Botha became Prime Minister and he carried out a politics of divide and conquer by dividing the unity of the people of South Africa through establishing puppet states: 1. The Transkei Puppet State. 2. The Bophutha Tswana Puppet State. 3. Venda Puppet State. 4. The Ciskei Puppet State. (Source: 16 Most Influential Heroes of Peace: Sutrisno Eddy, 2002, p. 14).

    There is a serious threat and displacement of indigenous Papuans from their ancestral lands proven by the fact that in the regencies they have been robbed by the Malays and have been deprived of their basic rights for Indigenous Papuans in the political field. See the evidence and examples as follows:

    1. Sarmi Regency 20 seats: 13 migrants and 7 indigenous Papuans (OAP).

    2. Boven Digul Regency 20 seats: 16 migrants and 6 Indigenous Papuans

    3. Asmat Regency 25 seats: 11 migrants and 14 Indigenous Papuans

    4. Mimika Regency 35 seats: 17 migrants and OAP 18 Indigenous Papuans

    5. 20 seats in Fakfak District: 12 migrants and 8 Indigenous Papuans.

    6. Raja Ampat Regency, 20 seats: 11 migrants and 9 Indigenous Papuans.

    7. Sorong Regency 25 seats: 19 migrants and 7 Indigenous Papuans.

    8. Teluk Wondama Regency 25 seats: 14 migrants and 11 Indigenous Papuans.

    9. Merauke Regency 30 seats: 27 migrants and only 3 Indigenous Papuans.

    10. South Sorong Regency 20 seats. 17 migrants and 3 indigenous Papuans.

    11. Kota Jayapura 40 seats: Migrants 27 people and 13 indigenous Papuans.

    12. Kab. Keerom 23 seats. Migrants 13 people and 7 indigenous Papuans.

    13. Kab. Jayapura 25 seats. Migrants 18 people and 7 indigenous Papuans.

    Meanwhile, the members of the Representative Council of Papua and West Papua Provinces are as follows:

    1.  Papua Province out of 55 members, 44 Papuans and 11 Malays/Newcomers.;
    2. West Papua Province, out of 45 members, 28 Malays/Newcomers and only 17 Indigenous Papuans.

    Reverend Socratez Sofyan Yoman is a Baptist priest, author and human rights defender from Papua. He filed this article for Asia Pacific Report.

     

     

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Why Indonesia’s planned new Papuan provinces will cause division and destruction

    The politics of divide and rule and how Indonesia’s attempt to separate indigenous Papuans is an irrational and unrealistic proposal that will damage the cultural values of kinship and togetherness as Melanesian people, writes Dr Socrates Yoman.

    ANALYSIS: By Dr Socrates Yoman

    The Indonesian coloniser has become an ignorant ruler with deaf ears and with evil intention in fighting for the addition of new Papuan provinces without population numbers to justify this.

    Provincial division is a serious problem because the population of Papua and West Papua does not meet the requirements to establish new provinces.

    The planned provinces will cause division and destruction of the cultural values of kinship and togetherness as Melanesian people.

    After Indonesia failed with a plan to move 2 million indigenous Papuans to Manado, the new strategy devised by the Jakarta authorities is to separate indigenous Papuans according to ethnic groups. This is a crime against humanity and is a gross human rights violation carried out by the state.

    The author followed the presentation from the Minister of Home Affairs of the Republic of Indonesia, Tito Karnavian, to the Working Meeting of Commission I DPD RI in Jakarta on 27 January 2021 regarding the government’s version of the Provincial Expansion scenario which was not rational or realistic.

    The Minister of Home Affairs is not paying attention to the standards and requirements for the development of a new administrative area, such as area size, population, human resources and financial and natural resources.

    The criteria for a new government have been largely ignored, but political interests and remilitarisation have become the main mission. To be honest, the people and nation of West Papua do not need lots of division of districts and provinces.

    Military purpose for new provinces
    These new provinces are only for political and military purposes and to move excess population from Java.

    The proposal in summary

    1. Papua Province
    (the original province)
    Capital: Jayapura
    a. Jayapura Town
    b. Jayapura Regency
    c. Keerom Regency
    d. Sarmi Regency
    e. Maberamo Raya Regency
    f. Waropen Regency
    g. Kep. Yapen Regency
    h. Biak Numfor Regency
    i. Supiori Regency

    2. South Papua Province
    (new province)
    Capital: Merauke
    a. Merauke Regency
    b. Boven Digoel Regency
    c. Mappi Regency
    d. Asmat Regeny
    e. Peg Bintang Regency

    3. Central Eastern Papua Province
    (new province)
    Capital: Wamena
    a. Jayawijaya Regency
    b. Lani Jaya Regency
    c. Tolikora Regency
    d. Nduga Regency
    e. Maberamo Tengah Regency
    f. Yalimo Regency
    g. Yahukimo Regency
    h. Puncak Jaya Regency
    i. Puncak Regency

    4. Western Central Papua Province
    (still under debate)
    Capital: Mimika
    a. Mimika Regency
    b. Paniai Regency
    c. Deiyai Regency
    d. Dogiay Regency
    e. Nabire Regency
    f. Intan Jaya Regency

    5. West Papua Daya Province
    (previously mostly West Papua Province)
    Capital: Sorong
    a. Town of Sorong
    b. Sorong Regency
    c. Sorong Selatan Regency
    d. Maybrat Regency
    e. Tambrauw Regency
    f. Raja Ampat Regency

    With these additions Papua would have five provinces. The mechanism for provincial expansion is in accordance with Article 76 of the Special Autonomy Law with additional authority changes from the central government when there is a deadlock in the region.

    The total population of West Papua includes two provinces respectively: Papua Province 3,322,526 people and West Papua 1,069,498 inhabitants. The total is 4,392,024 inhabitants.

    Evenly dividing up population
    If the population is divided evenly from the total population of 4,392,024 the population for the five provinces are as follows:

    1. Papua Province will be inhabited by a population of 878,404 people.

    2. West Papua Province will be inhabited by a population of 878,404 people.

    3. The Province of Puppet I will be inhabited by a population of 878,404 people.

    4. The Province of Puppet II will be inhabited by a population of 878,404 people.

    5. The Province of Puppet III will be inhabited by a population of 878,404 people.

    The question is whether a province with a total population of 878,404 people is worthy and eligible to become a province?

    It is very important to compare with the population of the provinces of West Java, Central Java and East Java.

    1. Total population of West Java: 46,497,175 people.

    2. Total population of Central Java: 35,557,248 people.

    3. Total Population of East Java: 38,828,061 people.

    The question is why does the government of the Republic of Indonesia not carry out splitting the provinces of West Java, Central Java and East Java, which have the largest population sizes?

    ‘Transfer of excess population’
    As a consequence of a population shortage in this province, the Indonesian authorities will transfer the excess population of Malay Indonesians to these puppet provinces.

    The creation of these five provinces also have as their main objective to build 5 military area commands, 5 police area command bases, tens of military district commands and dozens of police district headquarters and various other units. The land of Melanesia will be used as the home of the military, police and Indonesian Malay people.

    The consequences will be that the indigenous Papuans from Sorong to Merauke will lose their land because the land will be robbed and looted to build office buildings, military headquarters, police headquarters, army district bases, and police district bases.

    Humans will be removed, made impoverished, without land and without a future, even slaughtered and destroyed like animals in a natural or unnatural way as we have experienced and witnessed until the present.

    There is evidence that a genocide process has been carried out by the modern colonial rulers of Indonesia in this era of civilisation. The crimes of the Indonesian colonial rulers continue to be exposed in public.

    In 1969, when the West Papuan people were integrated into Indonesia, the indigenous population was around 809,337 people. Meanwhile, the neighbouring independent state of Papua New Guinea has around 2,783,121 people.

    Since then, the indigenous population of PNG has reached 8,947,024 million, while the number of Indigenous Papuans is still only 1.8 million.

    Modern colonial ruler
    This fact shows that the Indonesian government is a modern colonial ruler which has occupied and colonised the people and nation of West Papua.

    Dr Veronika Kusumaryati, a daughter of Indonesia’s young generation in her dissertation entitled: Ethnography of the Colonial Present: History, Experience, And Political Consciousness in West Papua, revealed:

    “For Papuans, current colonialism is marked by the experience and militariSation of daily life. This colonialism can also be felt through acts of violence that are disproportionately shown to Papuans, as well in the narrative of their lives.

    “When Indonesia arrived, thousands of people were detained, tortured and killed. Offices were looted and houses burned. … these stories did not appear in historical books, not in Indonesia, nor in the Netherlands. This violence did not stop in the 1960s.”

    (Kusumaryati, V. (2018). Ethnography of the Colonial Present: History, Experience, And Political Consciousness in West Papua, p. 25).

    The Indonesian government repeats the experience of the colonial rulers of apartheid in South Africa. In 1978, Peter W. Botha became Prime Minister and he carried out a politics of divide and conquer by dividing the unity of the people of South Africa through establishing puppet states: 1. The Transkei Puppet State. 2. The Bophutha Tswana Puppet State. 3. Venda Puppet State. 4. The Ciskei Puppet State. (Source: 16 Most Influential Heroes of Peace: Sutrisno Eddy, 2002, p. 14).

    There is a serious threat and displacement of indigenous Papuans from their ancestral lands proven by the fact that in the regencies they have been robbed by the Malays and have been deprived of their basic rights for Indigenous Papuans in the political field. See the evidence and examples as follows:

    1. Sarmi Regency 20 seats: 13 migrants and 7 indigenous Papuans (OAP).

    2. Boven Digul Regency 20 seats: 16 migrants and 6 Indigenous Papuans

    3. Asmat Regency 25 seats: 11 migrants and 14 Indigenous Papuans

    4. Mimika Regency 35 seats: 17 migrants and OAP 18 Indigenous Papuans

    5. 20 seats in Fakfak District: 12 migrants and 8 Indigenous Papuans.

    6. Raja Ampat Regency, 20 seats: 11 migrants and 9 Indigenous Papuans.

    7. Sorong Regency 25 seats: 19 migrants and 7 Indigenous Papuans.

    8. Teluk Wondama Regency 25 seats: 14 migrants and 11 Indigenous Papuans.

    9. Merauke Regency 30 seats: 27 migrants and only 3 Indigenous Papuans.

    10. South Sorong Regency 20 seats. 17 migrants and 3 indigenous Papuans.

    11. Kota Jayapura 40 seats: Migrants 27 people and 13 indigenous Papuans.

    12. Kab. Keerom 23 seats. Migrants 13 people and 7 indigenous Papuans.

    13. Kab. Jayapura 25 seats. Migrants 18 people and 7 indigenous Papuans.

    Meanwhile, the members of the Representative Council of Papua and West Papua Provinces are as follows:

    1.  Papua Province out of 55 members, 44 Papuans and 11 Malays/Newcomers.;
    2. West Papua Province, out of 45 members, 28 Malays/Newcomers and only 17 Indigenous Papuans.

    Reverend Socratez Sofyan Yoman is a Baptist priest, author and human rights defender from Papua. He filed this article for Asia Pacific Report.

    Print Friendly, PDF & Email

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Biden Rejects Iran’s Offer To Restart Nuclear Agreement

    The Biden administration has reportedly rejected an offer by Iranian officials to rejoin the Iran Nuclear Agreement that Donald Trump had terminated. This is not a smart move by Biden, as they have been warning this week that Iran is getting closer to nuclear capabilities, a claim that was also made by the Trump administration. […]

    The post Biden Rejects Iran’s Offer To Restart Nuclear Agreement appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.

    This post was originally published on The Ring of Fire.

  • Myanmar coup: Asian response echoes ‘democracy comes with stability’ adage

    ANALYSIS: By Kalinga Seneviratne

    Both coverage in the Asian press and statements by neighbouring Asian governments reported in the media on the grabbing of exclusive power by the military in Myanmar reflects the traditional Asian adage that democracy should go hand in hand with economic and political stability.

    Thus, sanctions and external funding of protest groups (usually urban elites and the young) are discouraged.

    Myanmar is a member of the Association of South East Nations (ASEAN) regional grouping, which was instrumental in guiding Myanmar to transit from military rule to civilian rule a decade ago.

    The ASEAN secretariat issuing a statement through its current chair Brunei reiterated that “domestic political stability is essential to a peaceful, stable and prosperous ASEAN Community”.

    Sharon Seah, coordinator at the ASEAN Studies Centre at the National University of Singapore noted that the ASEAN statement this week WAs a slight deviation from the one that ASEAN made after the 2014 coup d’etat in Thailand.

    “What is new in this iteration is the fact that the grouping recognises that collective goals can be undermined by a member state’s political ructions,” she noted.

    Seah, in a commentary published by Singapore’s TODAYOnline news portal, points out that the current ASEAN statement “sounds familiar except that this time, ASEAN is far further along the process of regional integration and community-building, since the ASEAN Community blueprint was launched in 2015”.

    Pax Americana ‘is over’
    Further, she wrote, “Pax Americana, as Southeast Asia knows it, is over and the global world order has changed irrevocably”, thus external pressure (from outside the region) is not the way to go.

    Interestingly, China’s media – both Xinhua news agency and Global Times – have described the latest coup in Myanmar as a “reshuffle of Cabinet”. Their logic may have some substance.

    “Myanmar military announced a major cabinet reshuffle hours after a state of emergency was declared on Monday,” February 1, reported Xinhua from Yangon.

    It referred to a military statement that “new union ministers were appointed for 11 ministries, while 24 deputy ministers were removed from their posts”.

    It added that Union chief justice and judges of the Supreme Court, chief justices and judges of regional or state High Courts are allowed to remain in office as well as members of the Anti-Corruption Commission, chairman, vice-chairman and members of the Myanmar National Human Rights Commission.

    The military used sections of the 2008 constitution, to which Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) had agreed to when they took part in the 2015 elections and won on a landslide.

    This constitution allows the military to take over the government in the event of an emergency that threatens Myanmar’s sovereignty leading to “disintegrating [of] the Union (or) national solidarity”.

    It is debatable if such a situation exists and this could be the subject of argument in coming months.

    Nine years ago
    Luv Puri, a member of UN Secretary-General’s good offices on Myanmar writing in Japan Times (as a private citizen) this week noted that nearly nine years ago, Aung San Suu Kyi reluctantly decided to participate in a byelection to the Parliament and after being elected she was resolute in her cautiousness as the Western leaders sought her advice on how to approach the then President Thein Sein’s government.

    “She had earlier termed the whole process an instance of sham democracy,” recalls Puri, adding, “on February 1, 2021, she proved to be right as the military or Tatmadaw, as it is locally known, staged a coup in the wee hours”.

    Puri noted that the military’s grouse is that at least 8.6 million irregularities were found in voter lists and the ruling NLD government and its appointed election commission failed to review the 2020 elections results, with the latter saying that there was no evidence to support the military’s claims.

    The ruling NLD party won 396 out of 476 seats in the November 8 election, allowing the party to govern for another five years.

    “The contesting positions are symptoms of a deeper institutional malaise.

    “Constitutionally, three important ministries relating to national security, namely defence, home and border, are held by the military,” notes Puri.

    “The military nominates 30 percent of the members of Parliament.

    Existential battle ‘for political survival’
    “In an environment in which the military is fighting an existential battle for political survival, after ruling the country directly or indirectly since the formation of the republic, a military coup was an imminent possibility.”

    China and India, with Myanmar, sandwiched between them have reacted cautiously to the latest developments.

    Myanmar is essential for the success of China’s BRI (Belt and Road Initiative) while for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Look East” project Myanmar is an important lynchpin.

    India has a 1468 km border with Myanmar that runs along 3 north-east Indian states – Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram – all of which face ethnic and religious tensions.

    China has taken issue with Western media reports that it supported the military takeover in Myanmar.

    Global Times reported that China’s foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin has refuted such claims at a media briefing.

    “Such allegations are not factual,” he said in Beijing. He has also added that China was puzzled by a leaked document from the UN Security Council that China is supposed to have vetoed.

    “Any action taken by the Security Council should contribute to Myanmar’s political and social stability, help Myanmar realize peace and reconciliation, and avoid intensifying contradictions,” he told the media.

    “For India, which had cultivated a careful balance, between nudging along the democratic process by supporting Ms Suu Kyi, and working with the military to ensure its strategic interests to the North East and deny China a monopoly on Myanmar’s infrastructure and resources, the developments are unwelcome,” noted India’s The Hindu in an editorial.

    “The government will need to craft its response taking into consideration the new geopolitical realities of the U.S. and China as well as its own standing as a South Asian power.”

    ‘Share of uncertainties’
    The Indian Express also expressed similar sentiments in an editorial noting that new developments “will create its share of uncertainties” for India.

    “It must continue its engagement with Myanmar and leverage its influence with the Army to persuade it to step back,” added the Express.

    While Myanmar’s expat populations in places like Bangkok, Tokyo and Sydney have demonstrated calling for international intervention, within Myanmar people have taken a different strategy to confront the military takeover.

    Myanmar Times (MT), that is locally owned and published from Yangon, carried a number of reports on how this is shaping up. They reported about various aspects of civil disobedience campaigns initiated by trade unions, leading artists and the medical profession.

    MT reported that a movement, which urged Myanmar citizens to not buy and use products affiliated with the Tatmadaw has gone viral since February 3.

    The military has been linked to a large number of businesses in various sectors. They have been associated with food and beverage products, cigarettes, the entertainment industry, internet service providers, banks, financial enterprises, hospitals, oil companies, and wholesale markets and retail businesses, among others, the newspaper pointed out.

    MT also reported that “Myanmar celebrities, who usually make headlines for their latest albums, haircuts and fashion choices, have used their social media profiles for an entirely different purpose this week”.

    Singers change from cosmetics to disobedience
    Since the military seized power on February 1, “Myanmar’s singers, actors and artists changed their topic of interest from cosmetics to disobedience to the rule of the junta” noted MT.

    Among the celebrities are Paing Takhon who started his modelling career in 2014 and has amassed over 1 million followers on Facebook and filmmaker Daung with 1.8 million.

    Meanwhile, the Confederation of Trade Unions Myanmar (CTUM) and Myanmar Industry Craft and Service-Trade Unions Federation (MICS)  announced that they had resigned and are no longer part of government, employers and workers’ groups.

    The “Civil Disobedience Campaign” that was launched on February 2 is also joined by health-care workers in 40 townships, including doctors and nurses from 80 hospitals.

    Meanwhile, Seah argues that this month’s events are a big setback for ASEAN community building and to help in any democratic retransformation, an ASEAN-led commission to investigate the military junta’s allegations of electoral fraud could be set up, headed by a mutually respected senior ASEAN personality trusted by all sides.

    “For the commission’s findings to be accepted at the international level, support must come from ASEAN’s external stakeholders,” she argues.

    “The selection of the commission members must be transparent from the get-go and may require consultations with key stakeholders both inside and outside Myanmar (while) ASEAN should secure the agreement of the military junta to dial down to a state of limited emergency, refrain from the use of force against civilians and allow the functioning of government with specified conditions between the NLD and the military”.

    – IDN-InDepthNews, 04 February 2021

    IDN is flagship agency of the non-profit International Press Syndicate. This article by Kalinga Seneviratne is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Myanmar coup: Asian response echoes ‘democracy comes with stability’ adage

    ANALYSIS: By Kalinga Seneviratne

    Both coverage in the Asian press and statements by neighbouring Asian governments reported in the media on the grabbing of exclusive power by the military in Myanmar reflects the traditional Asian adage that democracy should go hand in hand with economic and political stability.

    Thus, sanctions and external funding of protest groups (usually urban elites and the young) are discouraged.

    Myanmar is a member of the Association of South East Nations (ASEAN) regional grouping, which was instrumental in guiding Myanmar to transit from military rule to civilian rule a decade ago.

    The ASEAN secretariat issuing a statement through its current chair Brunei reiterated that “domestic political stability is essential to a peaceful, stable and prosperous ASEAN Community”.

    Sharon Seah, coordinator at the ASEAN Studies Centre at the National University of Singapore noted that the ASEAN statement this week WAs a slight deviation from the one that ASEAN made after the 2014 coup d’etat in Thailand.

    “What is new in this iteration is the fact that the grouping recognises that collective goals can be undermined by a member state’s political ructions,” she noted.

    Seah, in a commentary published by Singapore’s TODAYOnline news portal, points out that the current ASEAN statement “sounds familiar except that this time, ASEAN is far further along the process of regional integration and community-building, since the ASEAN Community blueprint was launched in 2015”.

    Pax Americana ‘is over’
    Further, she wrote, “Pax Americana, as Southeast Asia knows it, is over and the global world order has changed irrevocably”, thus external pressure (from outside the region) is not the way to go.

    Interestingly, China’s media – both Xinhua news agency and Global Times – have described the latest coup in Myanmar as a “reshuffle of Cabinet”. Their logic may have some substance.

    “Myanmar military announced a major cabinet reshuffle hours after a state of emergency was declared on Monday,” February 1, reported Xinhua from Yangon.

    It referred to a military statement that “new union ministers were appointed for 11 ministries, while 24 deputy ministers were removed from their posts”.

    It added that Union chief justice and judges of the Supreme Court, chief justices and judges of regional or state High Courts are allowed to remain in office as well as members of the Anti-Corruption Commission, chairman, vice-chairman and members of the Myanmar National Human Rights Commission.

    The military used sections of the 2008 constitution, to which Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) had agreed to when they took part in the 2015 elections and won on a landslide.

    This constitution allows the military to take over the government in the event of an emergency that threatens Myanmar’s sovereignty leading to “disintegrating [of] the Union (or) national solidarity”.

    It is debatable if such a situation exists and this could be the subject of argument in coming months.

    Nine years ago
    Luv Puri, a member of UN Secretary-General’s good offices on Myanmar writing in Japan Times (as a private citizen) this week noted that nearly nine years ago, Aung San Suu Kyi reluctantly decided to participate in a byelection to the Parliament and after being elected she was resolute in her cautiousness as the Western leaders sought her advice on how to approach the then President Thein Sein’s government.

    “She had earlier termed the whole process an instance of sham democracy,” recalls Puri, adding, “on February 1, 2021, she proved to be right as the military or Tatmadaw, as it is locally known, staged a coup in the wee hours”.

    Puri noted that the military’s grouse is that at least 8.6 million irregularities were found in voter lists and the ruling NLD government and its appointed election commission failed to review the 2020 elections results, with the latter saying that there was no evidence to support the military’s claims.

    The ruling NLD party won 396 out of 476 seats in the November 8 election, allowing the party to govern for another five years.

    “The contesting positions are symptoms of a deeper institutional malaise.

    “Constitutionally, three important ministries relating to national security, namely defence, home and border, are held by the military,” notes Puri.

    “The military nominates 30 percent of the members of Parliament.

    Existential battle ‘for political survival’
    “In an environment in which the military is fighting an existential battle for political survival, after ruling the country directly or indirectly since the formation of the republic, a military coup was an imminent possibility.”

    China and India, with Myanmar, sandwiched between them have reacted cautiously to the latest developments.

    Myanmar is essential for the success of China’s BRI (Belt and Road Initiative) while for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Look East” project Myanmar is an important lynchpin.

    India has a 1468 km border with Myanmar that runs along 3 north-east Indian states – Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram – all of which face ethnic and religious tensions.

    China has taken issue with Western media reports that it supported the military takeover in Myanmar.

    Global Times reported that China’s foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin has refuted such claims at a media briefing.

    “Such allegations are not factual,” he said in Beijing. He has also added that China was puzzled by a leaked document from the UN Security Council that China is supposed to have vetoed.

    “Any action taken by the Security Council should contribute to Myanmar’s political and social stability, help Myanmar realize peace and reconciliation, and avoid intensifying contradictions,” he told the media.

    “For India, which had cultivated a careful balance, between nudging along the democratic process by supporting Ms Suu Kyi, and working with the military to ensure its strategic interests to the North East and deny China a monopoly on Myanmar’s infrastructure and resources, the developments are unwelcome,” noted India’s The Hindu in an editorial.

    “The government will need to craft its response taking into consideration the new geopolitical realities of the U.S. and China as well as its own standing as a South Asian power.”

    ‘Share of uncertainties’
    The Indian Express also expressed similar sentiments in an editorial noting that new developments “will create its share of uncertainties” for India.

    “It must continue its engagement with Myanmar and leverage its influence with the Army to persuade it to step back,” added the Express.

    While Myanmar’s expat populations in places like Bangkok, Tokyo and Sydney have demonstrated calling for international intervention, within Myanmar people have taken a different strategy to confront the military takeover.

    Myanmar Times (MT), that is locally owned and published from Yangon, carried a number of reports on how this is shaping up. They reported about various aspects of civil disobedience campaigns initiated by trade unions, leading artists and the medical profession.

    MT reported that a movement, which urged Myanmar citizens to not buy and use products affiliated with the Tatmadaw has gone viral since February 3.

    The military has been linked to a large number of businesses in various sectors. They have been associated with food and beverage products, cigarettes, the entertainment industry, internet service providers, banks, financial enterprises, hospitals, oil companies, and wholesale markets and retail businesses, among others, the newspaper pointed out.

    MT also reported that “Myanmar celebrities, who usually make headlines for their latest albums, haircuts and fashion choices, have used their social media profiles for an entirely different purpose this week”.

    Singers change from cosmetics to disobedience
    Since the military seized power on February 1, “Myanmar’s singers, actors and artists changed their topic of interest from cosmetics to disobedience to the rule of the junta” noted MT.

    Among the celebrities are Paing Takhon who started his modelling career in 2014 and has amassed over 1 million followers on Facebook and filmmaker Daung with 1.8 million.

    Meanwhile, the Confederation of Trade Unions Myanmar (CTUM) and Myanmar Industry Craft and Service-Trade Unions Federation (MICS)  announced that they had resigned and are no longer part of government, employers and workers’ groups.

    The “Civil Disobedience Campaign” that was launched on February 2 is also joined by health-care workers in 40 townships, including doctors and nurses from 80 hospitals.

    Meanwhile, Seah argues that this month’s events are a big setback for ASEAN community building and to help in any democratic retransformation, an ASEAN-led commission to investigate the military junta’s allegations of electoral fraud could be set up, headed by a mutually respected senior ASEAN personality trusted by all sides.

    “For the commission’s findings to be accepted at the international level, support must come from ASEAN’s external stakeholders,” she argues.

    “The selection of the commission members must be transparent from the get-go and may require consultations with key stakeholders both inside and outside Myanmar (while) ASEAN should secure the agreement of the military junta to dial down to a state of limited emergency, refrain from the use of force against civilians and allow the functioning of government with specified conditions between the NLD and the military”.

    – IDN-InDepthNews, 04 February 2021

    IDN is flagship agency of the non-profit International Press Syndicate. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Police accused of ‘harassment’ after Palestine Action co-founder arrested for blackmail

    Palestine Action co-founder Richard Goddard was arrested for blackmail on 3 February, just days after the group launched a joint action with Extinction Rebellion that shut down the premises of Israeli arms firm Elbit Systems.

    The arrest, which was filmed, took place at around 3pm and Goddard was taken to Fresh Wharf Custody Base, London. Both he and co-founder Huda Ammori reportedly had their passports seized during the raid. Palestine Action has accused the police of ‘harassment’:

    In a statement, Ammori said:

    The only thing we can assume this is about is [Palestine Action] demanding that companies do not associate with war criminals, and if they do we will take action. This is not blackmail. This is asking for companies to abide by International Law and Human Rights Conventions.

    This is just another extension of harassment by the police. We will not be deterred by police harassment; we will only grow stronger and call on everyone to join us in forcing war criminals out.

    Elbit Systems

    As The Canary previously reported, Palestine Action was set up in 2020 and has carried out numerous actions against Elbit Systems because it is:

    Israel’s largest private weapons manufacturer. It is responsible for manufacturing a majority of the drones used to drop bombs on Palestinians in Gaza, and owns IMI Systems. IMI is the sole supplier of small calibre ammunition to the Israeli army, who use it in their violent military occupation of Palestine.

    UEL [a factory owned by Elbit Systems] is accused of manufacturing engines for the Hermes 450 drone. The Hermes 450 is one of the drones which Israel has used to fire missiles into the Gaza Strip.

    According to The Intercept, a Hermes 450 was deployed during an attack that killed four boys from the Bakr family during Israel’s assault on Gaza in 2014.

    Solidarity

    Palestine Action is calling on people to take action over the arrest:

    Goddard’s arrest is just the latest action taken by the police against Palestine Action activists. This has included using counterterror laws and house raids.

    Palestine Action is being targeted for taking action against an arms company. It’s down to all of us that we stand in solidarity with those facing repression for trying to stop this murderous trade.

    Featured image via Palestine Action

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • UK urged to follow US and stop arms sales contributing to ‘humanitarian catastrophe’

    The US has temporarily suspended arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, putting pressure on the UK government to do the same.

    President Biden said he would be reviewing previous administrations’ arms deals after pledging to “reassess” the US’s relationship with Saudi Arabia. This comes as the human rights situation in Yemen, caused by the civil war and Saudi Arabia-led air strikes, continues to worsen.

    Philippe Nassif, the Amnesty advocacy director for the Middle East and North Africa, said:

    The suspension of arms sales by the US is a step in the right direction and ups the pressure on European countries, most notably the UK and France, to follow suit and stop fuelling the human misery in Yemen.

    For years, we have been warning Western states that they risk complicity in war crimes as they continue to enable the Saudi-led coalition with arms. The Biden administration is finally acknowledging the disastrous effects of these continued sales, and puts to shame other states that continue to ignore the mountain of evidence of probable war crimes collected by Yemenis, the United Nations, and human rights organization over the course of the past six years.

    The situation in Yemen

    There is currently a humanitarian crisis in Yemen, with thousands on the brink of famine as its civil war continues.

    In 2015, when the Houthi movement attempted to seize control of the country, a Saudi Arabia-led coalition launched an air campaign, believing Iran to be backing the Houthis. The coalition’s blockade of Yemen has caused a huge increase in food and fuel prices.

    The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project (Acled) said the Saudi Arabia-led coalition has killed more than 8,000 Yemeni civilians in its targeted air strikes. This is in addition to the hundreds of thousands of people the UN estimated have died – more than half from a lack of access to food, healthcare, and infrastructure.

    UK arms sales

    According to Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), in September 2020 the UK had approved the licencing of £6.5bn worth of arms to the Saudi-led coalition since the bombing of Yemen began in 2015.

    The Court of Appeal ruled in 2019 that the government selling arms to Saudi Arabia without assessing whether the conflict breached humanitarian law was unlawful. In July 2020, the UK government announced it would resume selling arms to Saudi Arabia despite assessing it to have committed “possible” violations of humanitarian law.

    CAAT Research Coordinator Sam Perlo-Freeman told The Canary that CAAT welcomed Biden’s decision to freeze arms sales. He said:

    [The Biden administration] must now move swiftly to put this into action by making the halt to the arms sales permanent, and by ending the ongoing technical and logistical support to the Saudi air force, without which they could not continue the war. Yemen can’t wait – the man-made humanitarian catastrophe caused by the war is putting millions at risk of starvation, so Biden must act now.

    The UK government is becoming glaringly isolated in its continuing support for this bloody war. Outrage against the war is spreading worldwide. The US is moving against arms sales, and just last week Italy permanently ended the sale of bombs and missiles to Saudi Arabia and the UAE. But the UK government remains intent on pouring yet more fuel on the fire.

    Featured image via Flickr/Alisdare Hickson

    By Jasmine Norden

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Defense Contractor Raytheon Is Driving US Participation With Crisis In Yemen

    Via America’s Lawyer: Defense secretary General Lloyd Austin is just the latest lobbyist to assume leadership in Washington. RT Correspondent Brigida Santos joins Mike Papantonio to explain how the revolving door keeps turning between politicians and defense contractors, no matter who is POTUS. Transcript: *This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos. Mike Papantonio:             The […]

    The post Defense Contractor Raytheon Is Driving US Participation With Crisis In Yemen appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.

    This post was originally published on The Ring of Fire.

  • Pentagon Again Declares Climate Change A National Security Threat

    The U.S. Pentagon has once again made the assertion that climate change is a national security threat, something that the agency has actually known as far back as the 1980’s. The problem this time is that the Pentagon hasn’t acknowledged their role in the climate crisis, as they are the largest polluter on the planet, […]

    The post Pentagon Again Declares Climate Change A National Security Threat appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.

    This post was originally published on The Ring of Fire.

  • ULMWP accuses Indonesia of ‘ethnic cleansing’, aggression against Papuans

    Part of the militarised police convoy at Manokwari, West Papua. Image: ULMWP

    Pacific Media Watch newsdesk

    Indonesia has pursued a strategy of aggressive arrests and violence against peaceful demonstrations for independence since the announcement of a provisional government of West Papua and rejection of Jakarta’s “Special Autonomy” renewal last month, reports the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP).

    ULMWP chair Benny Wenda was named interim President of the provisional government on 1 December 2020 as the Papuan people roundly rejected renewal of the failed 2001 Special Autonomy law.

    Highlighting the vast resources the Indonesian state is dedicating to crushing dissent over  renewal of Special Autonomy status across West Papua, a large convoy of heavily-armed police vehicles was photographed heading toward demonstrations in Manokwari last week on January 11.

    On January 7, West Papuan activist Alvarez Kapisa was arrested by Indonesian security forces.

    Kapisa helped organise meetings where West Papuan’s overwhelmingly asserted their rejection of the colonial special autonomy law, calling for their legal right to self-determination, decolonisation and independence.

    Nine more Papuans were arrested in Biak and Supiori between January 4-7 by joint Indonesian military and police patrols for questioning over their support for Benny Wenda’s provisional government and rejection of special autonomy.

    In Biak, they include Yusup Daimboa, Soleman Rumayomi and Yermias Rabrageri, as well as five villagers in Supirori.

    In Serui, Frans Kapisa, Yonathan Ruwayari and Yuliana Rumbara have also been detained. The International Lawyers for West Papua has released a statement condemning their treating.

    KNPB leader abducted
    On January 4, at 5pm, popular activist and National Committee for West Papua (KNPB) leader Naftall Tipagau was abducted by police intelligence agents, alleged ULMWP.

    The husband and father was attacked and dragged into a black van in front of his family, in Intan Jaya, where military operations have displaced over 13,000 people.

    He is yet to be released and no charges have been made by police.

    Tipagau actively reported in Intan Jaya, where the Indonesian military has recently killed Papuan priests.

    The recently discovered Wabu Bloc of gold reserves is planned for extraction by Freeport McMoran, the mining company responsible for decades of environmental destruction and human rights abuses at the Grasberg gold and copper mine in West Papua.

    Papuans and political leaders around the world were horrified on January 6 as plans for a complete “ethnic cleansing” of Papuans were revealed by Indonesian General Hendropriyono.

    Plan to remove Papuans
    The retired Kopassus general and former head of the Indonesian State Intelligence Agency (BIN) declared his proposal to forcibly remove two million Papuans from their homeland and replace them with Indonesians.

    He stated his plans for Indonesia to “transmigrate these two million people to Manado and move two million Manadonese over to Papua. What for? So that we could racially separate them from Papuans in PNG, so that they could feel more like Indonesians instead of foreigners”.

    This plan for ethnic cleansing matches the history of Indonesian population management, described as settler colonialism by a recent study.

    In 1985, the head of the Indonesian “Transmigration” policy of population resettlement described the aim of the programme thus: “The different ethnic groups will in the long run disappear because of integration, and there will be one kind of man.”

    That same day, on January 6, Indonesian forces tortured and killed Mispo Gwijangge, a Papuan who was only 14 years old when he was first arrested in 2018. The 16-year-old boy was falsely charged with the killing of 17 Indonesian soldiers in Nduga, and was imprisoned and tortured for 333 days.

    In Serui, Papuan elder and chairman of West Papua National Authority (WPNA) Waropen regency, Jeremias Rabrageri, was arrested by colonial Indonesian forces on December 30 along with his son, Reiner Rabrageri, after declaring his support for Benny Wenda’s provisional West Papuan government.

    In the week before Christmas, 4850 TNI soldiers were deployed to West Papua to assist the Indonesian police. TNI soldiers were placed throughout West Papua to shut down the peaceful demonstrations marking two decades of failed special autonomy that ended on January 1 and the displays of support for Benny Wenda’s provisional government.

    Confession to torture
    This deployment comes alongside a confession on December 23 by an Indonesian military chief that TNI soldiers tortured, murdered and burned two West Papuan brothers in their custody, alleges ULMWP.

    The bodies of Luther and Apinus Zanambani were then thrown into a river in April 2020.

    This is not the only recent execution carried out. On 26 October 2020, Catholic Catechist Rufinus Tigau was also murdered by the TNI in a village raid.

    On the anniversary of Indonesia’s 1961 attempted invasion of West Papua, on December 19, Indonesian police arrested both Indonesians and Papuans who came together to peacefully protest 59 years of human rights abuses.

    Lombok was the signing place of a notorious treaty between Indonesia and Australia, in which the latter promised to avoid upsetting Indonesia’s occupation of West Papua.

    Indonesian police attacked West Papuan students peacefully protesting against Indonesian human rights abuses, arresting 18 students in Nabire on 10 December 2020.

    Fourteen members of the National Committee for West Papua (KNPB) were also arrested in Merauke and accused of treason on December 12, including chairman of the Merauke branch Charles Sraun, by Indonesian police, who also destroyed the KNPB office. They remain incarcerated and their families have been denied visitation rights.

    Media investigate Indonesian propaganda
    In December, Australian and British media began investigating the Indonesian government’s use of propaganda and fake social media accounts.

    Indonesian intelligence has been running a coordinated social media campaign to discredit the West Papuan independence movement, attributing online posts supporting Indonesia’s colonisation to UK politicians and Australian officials.

    This followed a Bellingcat investigation exposing Indonesia’s creation of fake profiles to disseminate pro-occupation propaganda that have flooded Facebook and Twitter in the past 12 months.

    On 12 January 2021, the Netherlands became the 83rd international state calling for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to be allowed into West Papua.

    This comes after similar calls by the UK government on November 11 following a declaration of concern over killings of Papuans by Indonesian forces by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

    Print Friendly, PDF & Email

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • ULMWP accuses Indonesia of ‘ethnic cleansing’, aggression against Papuans

    Pacific Media Watch newsdesk

    Indonesia has pursued a strategy of aggressive arrests and violence against peaceful demonstrations for independence since the announcement of a provisional government of West Papua and rejection of Jakarta’s “Special Autonomy” renewal last month, reports the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP).

    ULMWP chair Benny Wenda was named interim President of the provisional government on 1 December 2020 as the Papuan people roundly rejected renewal of the failed 2001 Special Autonomy law.

    Highlighting the vast resources the Indonesian state is dedicating to crushing dissent over  renewal of Special Autonomy status across West Papua, a large convoy of heavily-armed police vehicles was photographed heading toward demonstrations in Manokwari last week on January 11.

    On January 7, West Papuan activist Alvarez Kapisa was arrested by Indonesian security forces.

    Kapisa helped organise meetings where West Papuan’s overwhelmingly asserted their rejection of the colonial special autonomy law, calling for their legal right to self-determination, decolonisation and independence.

    Nine more Papuans were arrested in Biak and Supiori between January 4-7 by joint Indonesian military and police patrols for questioning over their support for Benny Wenda’s provisional government and rejection of special autonomy.

    In Biak, they include Yusup Daimboa, Soleman Rumayomi and Yermias Rabrageri, as well as five villagers in Supirori.

    In Serui, Frans Kapisa, Yonathan Ruwayari and Yuliana Rumbara have also been detained. The International Lawyers for West Papua has released a statement condemning their treating.

    KNPB leader abducted
    On January 4, at 5pm, popular activist and National Committee for West Papua (KNPB) leader Naftall Tipagau was abducted by police intelligence agents, alleged ULMWP.

    The husband and father was attacked and dragged into a black van in front of his family, in Intan Jaya, where military operations have displaced over 13,000 people.

    He is yet to be released and no charges have been made by police.

    Tipagau actively reported in Intan Jaya, where the Indonesian military has recently killed Papuan priests.

    The recently discovered Wabu Bloc of gold reserves is planned for extraction by Freeport McMoran, the mining company responsible for decades of environmental destruction and human rights abuses at the Grasberg gold and copper mine in West Papua.

    Papuans and political leaders around the world were horrified on January 6 as plans for a complete “ethnic cleansing” of Papuans were revealed by Indonesian General Hendropriyono.

    Plan to remove Papuans
    The retired Kopassus general and former head of the Indonesian State Intelligence Agency (BIN) declared his proposal to forcibly remove two million Papuans from their homeland and replace them with Indonesians.

    He stated his plans for Indonesia to “transmigrate these two million people to Manado and move two million Manadonese over to Papua. What for? So that we could racially separate them from Papuans in PNG, so that they could feel more like Indonesians instead of foreigners”.

    This plan for ethnic cleansing matches the history of Indonesian population management, described as settler colonialism by a recent study.

    In 1985, the head of the Indonesian “Transmigration” policy of population resettlement described the aim of the programme thus: “The different ethnic groups will in the long run disappear because of integration, and there will be one kind of man.”

    That same day, on January 6, Indonesian forces tortured and killed Mispo Gwijangge, a Papuan who was only 14 years old when he was first arrested in 2018. The 16-year-old boy was falsely charged with the killing of 17 Indonesian soldiers in Nduga, and was imprisoned and tortured for 333 days.

    In Serui, Papuan elder and chairman of West Papua National Authority (WPNA) Waropen regency, Jeremias Rabrageri, was arrested by colonial Indonesian forces on December 30 along with his son, Reiner Rabrageri, after declaring his support for Benny Wenda’s provisional West Papuan government.

    In the week before Christmas, 4850 TNI soldiers were deployed to West Papua to assist the Indonesian police. TNI soldiers were placed throughout West Papua to shut down the peaceful demonstrations marking two decades of failed special autonomy that ended on January 1 and the displays of support for Benny Wenda’s provisional government.

    Confession to torture
    This deployment comes alongside a confession on December 23 by an Indonesian military chief that TNI soldiers tortured, murdered and burned two West Papuan brothers in their custody, alleges ULMWP.

    The bodies of Luther and Apinus Zanambani were then thrown into a river in April 2020.

    This is not the only recent execution carried out. On 26 October 2020, Catholic Catechist Rufinus Tigau was also murdered by the TNI in a village raid.

    On the anniversary of Indonesia’s 1961 attempted invasion of West Papua, on December 19, Indonesian police arrested both Indonesians and Papuans who came together to peacefully protest 59 years of human rights abuses.

    Lombok was the signing place of a notorious treaty between Indonesia and Australia, in which the latter promised to avoid upsetting Indonesia’s occupation of West Papua.

    Indonesian police attacked West Papuan students peacefully protesting against Indonesian human rights abuses, arresting 18 students in Nabire on 10 December 2020.

    Fourteen members of the National Committee for West Papua (KNPB) were also arrested in Merauke and accused of treason on December 12, including chairman of the Merauke branch Charles Sraun, by Indonesian police, who also destroyed the KNPB office. They remain incarcerated and their families have been denied visitation rights.

    Media investigate Indonesian propaganda
    In December, Australian and British media began investigating the Indonesian government’s use of propaganda and fake social media accounts.

    Indonesian intelligence has been running a coordinated social media campaign to discredit the West Papuan independence movement, attributing online posts supporting Indonesia’s colonisation to UK politicians and Australian officials.

    This followed a Bellingcat investigation exposing Indonesia’s creation of fake profiles to disseminate pro-occupation propaganda that have flooded Facebook and Twitter in the past 12 months.

    On 12 January 2021, the Netherlands became the 83rd international state calling for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to be allowed into West Papua.

    This comes after similar calls by the UK government on November 11 following a declaration of concern over killings of Papuans by Indonesian forces by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Chancellor defends UP as ‘bastion of academic freedom’ against military

    By Lorraine Ecarma in Cebu City

    The University of the Philippines Visayas (UPV) will continue to stand against any threats to human rights, chancellor Clement Camposano has declared in response to the termination of a long-standing accord preventing military incursion on campus.

    In a Facebook post, Camposano said the academic freedom in the university was “not something anyone can abrogate”.

    “The University of the Philippines Visayas like the rest of the UP System, will remain a bastion of academic freedom,” he wrote.

    “This is not something anyone can abrogate. We will stand firm against any and all attempts to deprive us of our democratic rights.”

    The brief statement was posted on Monday, hours after news broke of Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana’s decision to unilaterally terminate the decades-old pact between the University of the Philippines and the Department of National Defence preventing military and police presence in all UP System campuses.

    In his official statement posted yesterday, the UP Visayas chancellor pointed to the tumultuous history between UP and the DND as the cause of the university’s apprehension.

    “Historical events that have shaped the relationship of UP and the country’s security forces—many of these leaving wounds that have yet to heal—explain the university’s strong apprehensio,” he wrote.

    ‘Sordid reality of recent killings’
    “While the Department of National Defence has given assurances that constitutionally guaranteed rights and freedoms would not be suppressed, these historical events and the sordid reality of recent killings, abductions, and other forms of human rights abuses widely believed to have been perpetrated by security forces cannot but leave us unassured.”

    Even before the scrapping of the accord, UP System universities in the Visayas have long decried unwarranted military and police presence in their campuses.

    One of the most recent instances was the arrest of 8 protestors, collectively known as Cebu 8, during a picket rally against the then anti-terror bill held in front of the UP Cebu campus last June.

    Videos of the arrest in social media showed police breaching the walls of UP Cebu to chase students and activists seeking refuge inside the campus.

    And despite the government’s assurance that the accord’s termination was not meant to suppress activism and academic freedom in UP, students, faculty, and staff from UP Cebu said they have not forgotten about the arrest of Cebu 8.

    The Unified Student Organisations of UP Cebu, along with the University Student Council, the All UP Academic Employees Union, and the university’s student publication Tug-ani came out with a joint statement condemning the termination.

    “We remember the violent dispersal of the June 5th protest against the then Anti-Terrorism Bill last year, wherein armed non-uniformed PNP personnel chased protesters inside the campus and groundlessly detained 8 individuals, including a bystander, now collectively known as the Cebu 8,” the statement reads.

    Death threats against union president
    The unified organisations also pointed out the arrest of UP Cebu alumna Myles Albasin of Mabinay 6 and the death threats received by faculty union president Regletto Imbong earlier this month as “one of one of the many UP-DND Accord violations and harassments” that had been committed.

    They added the termination of the UP-DND agreement was a disrespect to the martyrs from the university who died in the pursuit of democracy during martial law, and enjoined the administration to remain firm against any threats academic freedom.

    “For the DND to end this accord is already an admission of either their ignorance of the country’s history or their blatant disrespect of the martyrs who fought for the freedoms we enjoy today and now the Duterte administration is desperately trying to snatch away from us again,” they said.

    “We collectively call upon the UP administration, UP board of regents to affirm their mandate in ensuring that UP shall remain a zone of peace and refuge; to defend the university against the DND’s attempt of militarising our schools, and to stand and fight against all fascist manoeuvres that threaten our academic freedom and basic rights,” they added.

    In her official statement, UP Cebu chancellor Liza Corro said the abrogation without consultation of the agreement was “deeply concerning to say the least,” considering the many threats faced by UP Cebu.

    “Especially for us here in UP Cebu, as it came at a time, when our students and faculty members have been subjected to direct intimidation and threats, including red-tagging… We strongly condemned such acts of transgression and bullying,” Corro wrote.

    She went on to defend Imbong, describing him as an “academic scholar of good standing” who was active not only in the academe but also in campaigning for social justice.

    “His active engagements to help elevate social ills, is inherent in his basic task as a UP constituent, in fact as a good and responsible Filipino citizen. This does not make him an insurgent or a terrorist.

    “We strongly condemn any and all forms of baseless accusations and red-tagging among our constituents, faculty and students alike. They deserve our respect, not harassment,” she added.

    Asia Pacific Report republishes Rappler articles with permission.

    Print Friendly, PDF & Email

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Chancellor defends UP as ‘bastion of academic freedom’ against military

    By Lorraine Ecarma in Cebu City

    The University of the Philippines Visayas (UPV) will continue to stand against any threats to human rights, chancellor Clement Camposano has declared in response to the termination of a long-standing accord preventing military incursion on campus.

    In a Facebook post, Camposano said the academic freedom in the university was “not something anyone can abrogate”.

    “The University of the Philippines Visayas like the rest of the UP System, will remain a bastion of academic freedom,” he wrote.

    “This is not something anyone can abrogate. We will stand firm against any and all attempts to deprive us of our democratic rights.”

    The brief statement was posted on Monday, hours after news broke of Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana’s decision to unilaterally terminate the decades-old pact between the University of the Philippines and the Department of National Defence preventing military and police presence in all UP System campuses.

    In his official statement posted yesterday, the UP Visayas chancellor pointed to the tumultuous history between UP and the DND as the cause of the university’s apprehension.

    “Historical events that have shaped the relationship of UP and the country’s security forces—many of these leaving wounds that have yet to heal—explain the university’s strong apprehensio,” he wrote.

    ‘Sordid reality of recent killings’
    “While the Department of National Defence has given assurances that constitutionally guaranteed rights and freedoms would not be suppressed, these historical events and the sordid reality of recent killings, abductions, and other forms of human rights abuses widely believed to have been perpetrated by security forces cannot but leave us unassured.”

    Even before the scrapping of the accord, UP System universities in the Visayas have long decried unwarranted military and police presence in their campuses.

    One of the most recent instances was the arrest of 8 protestors, collectively known as Cebu 8, during a picket rally against the then anti-terror bill held in front of the UP Cebu campus last June.

    Videos of the arrest in social media showed police breaching the walls of UP Cebu to chase students and activists seeking refuge inside the campus.

    And despite the government’s assurance that the accord’s termination was not meant to suppress activism and academic freedom in UP, students, faculty, and staff from UP Cebu said they have not forgotten about the arrest of Cebu 8.

    The Unified Student Organisations of UP Cebu, along with the University Student Council, the All UP Academic Employees Union, and the university’s student publication Tug-ani came out with a joint statement condemning the termination.

    “We remember the violent dispersal of the June 5th protest against the then Anti-Terrorism Bill last year, wherein armed non-uniformed PNP personnel chased protesters inside the campus and groundlessly detained 8 individuals, including a bystander, now collectively known as the Cebu 8,” the statement reads.

    Death threats against union president
    The unified organisations also pointed out the arrest of UP Cebu alumna Myles Albasin of Mabinay 6 and the death threats received by faculty union president Regletto Imbong earlier this month as “one of one of the many UP-DND Accord violations and harassments” that had been committed.

    They added the termination of the UP-DND agreement was a disrespect to the martyrs from the university who died in the pursuit of democracy during martial law, and enjoined the administration to remain firm against any threats academic freedom.

    “For the DND to end this accord is already an admission of either their ignorance of the country’s history or their blatant disrespect of the martyrs who fought for the freedoms we enjoy today and now the Duterte administration is desperately trying to snatch away from us again,” they said.

    “We collectively call upon the UP administration, UP board of regents to affirm their mandate in ensuring that UP shall remain a zone of peace and refuge; to defend the university against the DND’s attempt of militarising our schools, and to stand and fight against all fascist manoeuvres that threaten our academic freedom and basic rights,” they added.

    In her official statement, UP Cebu chancellor Liza Corro said the abrogation without consultation of the agreement was “deeply concerning to say the least,” considering the many threats faced by UP Cebu.

    “Especially for us here in UP Cebu, as it came at a time, when our students and faculty members have been subjected to direct intimidation and threats, including red-tagging… We strongly condemned such acts of transgression and bullying,” Corro wrote.

    She went on to defend Imbong, describing him as an “academic scholar of good standing” who was active not only in the academe but also in campaigning for social justice.

    “His active engagements to help elevate social ills, is inherent in his basic task as a UP constituent, in fact as a good and responsible Filipino citizen. This does not make him an insurgent or a terrorist.

    “We strongly condemn any and all forms of baseless accusations and red-tagging among our constituents, faculty and students alike. They deserve our respect, not harassment,” she added.

    Asia Pacific Report republishes Rappler articles with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • UK trained military of 13 countries with poor human rights records

    Campaigners seek inquiry into whether skills gained in UK were used to commit abuses in countries such as Bahrain, China and Saudi Arabia

    The UK government has trained the armies of two-thirds of the world’s countries, including 13 it has rebuked for human rights violations.

    An anti-arms trade organisation has called for an investigation into the use of UK military training by other countries to determine whether it has been used to perpetrate human rights abuses.

    Continue reading…

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

  • A sad Papuan human rights tale – the torture and death of Mispo Gwijangge

    Cremation at the funeral of Papuan teenager Mispo Gwijangge … he was wrongly accused, jailed and then set free to his death from torture. Image: Tabloid Jubi

    Asia Pacific Report newsdesk

    West Papuans are facing the start of 2021 with sorrowful news about the death of Mispo Gwijangge, a victim of accusations and torture over alleged crimes he did not commit.

    Some human rights advocates and lawyers, including Amnesty International Indonesia, have expressed their condolences for his death in Wamena on January 6, reports Tabloid Jubi.

    Amnesty International Indonesia says Gwijangge was charged over the killing of 17 PT Istaka Karya workers in Nduga at the end of 2018.

    The Papua Advocacy Team found a number of irregularities in the case.

    Gwijangge, who was not fluent in the Indonesian language, explained through the help of an interpreter that he did not commit the murders he was accused of.

    He said he was in a refugee camp in Wamena when the murder of PT Istaka Karya took place on December 2, 2018. Gwijangge was sentenced to death, even though he was still under age, who should not have been given a death sentence, say advocates.

    Michel Himan, one of Gwijangge’s defence lawyers who handled the case, while expressing his deep condolences, said that Gwijangge had been arrested on 12 May 2018. He was only 14 years old when he was detained at the Jayawijaya police headquarters.

    In prison cell for 333 days
    For 333 days, he remained in a prison cell and was often tortured.

    Himan said that without the knowledge of his family Gwijangge had been transferred to Jakarta for “security reasons”, while the trial of another case at the same time went smoothly.

    Gwijangge was forced to accept this unjust legal process. He had never committed the murder, say advocates.

    Himan, who is known as a prominent young lawyer from Papua in the Indonesian capital, recalls his conversation with Gwijangge at Salemba prison in Jakarta.

    “Mispo said, ‘I never went to school. I can’t read and write and have never been out of town, always live in the village, I’ve never been involved as alleged, I don’t know anything.’

    “’I just wanted to go home because no one takes care of my mum. My mum is alone in the jungle [temporary refugee camp], Mispo told Himan while staring at the clouds.

    “My head is dizzy, and I am worried about my mother, I just wanted to get back to Papua as soon as possilble,” Himan recalls about what Gwijangge told him.

    Pneumonia, back pain
    Gwijangge was badly sick with pneumonia and back pain as a result of the torture he had received.

    “We were all worried about his situation at that time. We have done our best to help him for the sake of healing,” said Himan.

    Tabloid Jubi reports that according to Mispo’s older sister with initials DG, Gwijangge had still been traumatised after being arrested in the middle of last year. He was accused of being involved in the murder of dozens of Trans Papuan Highway workers in Nduga regency in early December 2018.

    “He didn’t want to take medication. He was worried that someone would try to find fault with him, and then he would be arrested again,” said DG.

    Gwijangge’s family decided to take care of him from home.

    Nduga refugees volunteer Raga Kogeya said it was natural that Mispo Gwijangge had still been traumatised. The youth had been arrested and accused of crimes he did not commit.

    At that time, the threat was the maximum of a death penalty.

    Luckily, the panel of judges at the Central Jakarta District Court, who tried the Gwijangge case, rejected all of the charges against him by the public prosecutor.

    The judges were willing to consider various irregularities presented by Gwijangge’s legal team. Finally, they decided to drop the prosecution and to free him from detention.

    This report has been compiled by a special Pacific Media Watch correspondent. Tabloid Jubi articles are republished with permission.

    Print Friendly, PDF & Email

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Assange wins. The cost – the crushing of press freedom

    ANALYSIS: By Jonathan Cook in CounterPunch

    The unexpected decision by Judge Vanessa Baraitser to deny a US demand to extradite Julian Assange, foiling efforts to send him to a US super-max jail for the rest of his life, is a welcome legal victory, but one swamped by larger lessons that should disturb us deeply.

    Those who campaigned so vigorously to keep Assange’s case in the spotlight, even as the US and UK corporate media worked so strenuously to keep it in darkness, are the heroes of the day.

    They made the price too steep for Baraitser or the British establishment to agree to lock Assange away indefinitely in the US for exposing its war crimes and its crimes against humanity in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    But we must not downplay the price being demanded of us for this victory.

    A moment of celebration
    We have contributed collectively in our various small ways to win back for Assange some degree of freedom, and hopefully a reprieve from what could be a death sentence as his health continues to deteriorate in an overcrowded Belmarsh high-security prison in London that has become a breeding ground for covid-19.

    For this we should allow ourselves a moment of celebration. But Assange is not out of the woods yet. The US has said it will appeal the decision. And it is not yet clear whether Assange will remain jailed in the UK – possibly in Belmarsh – while many months of further legal argument about his future take place.

    The US and British establishments do not care where Assange is imprisoned – be it Sweden, the UK or the US. What has been most important to them is that he continues to be locked out of sight in a cell somewhere, where his physical and mental fortitude can be destroyed and where he is effectively silenced, encouraging others to draw the lesson that there is too high a price to pay for dissent.

    The personal battle for Assange won’t be over till he is properly free. And even then he will be lucky if the last decade of various forms of incarceration and torture he has been subjected to do not leave him permanently traumatised, emotionally and mentally damaged, a pale shadow of the unapologetic, vigorous transparency champion he was before his ordeal began.

    That alone will be a victory for the British and US establishments who were so embarrassed by, and fearful of, Wikileaks’ revelations of their crimes.

    Rejected on a technicality
    But aside from what is a potential personal victory for Assange, assuming he doesn’t lose on appeal, we should be deeply worried by the legal arguments Baraitser advanced in denying extradition.

    The US demand for extradition was rejected on what was effectively a technicality. The US mass incarceration system is so obviously barbaric and depraved that, it was shown conclusively by experts at the hearings back in September, Assange would be at grave risk of committing suicide should he become another victim of its super-max jails.

    One should not also discard another of the British establishment’s likely considerations: that in a few days Donald Trump will be gone from the White House and a new US administration will take his place.

    There is no reason to be sentimental about president-elect Joe Biden. He is a big fan of mass incarceration too, and he will be no more of a friend to dissident media, whistleblowers and journalism that challenges the national security state than was his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama. Which is no friend at all.

    But Biden probably doesn’t need the Assange case hanging over his head, becoming a rallying cry against him, an uncomfortable residue of the Trump administration’s authoritarian instincts that his own officials would be forced to defend.

    It would be nice to imagine that the British legal, judicial and political establishments grew a backbone in ruling against extradition. The far more likely truth is that they sounded out the incoming Biden team and received permission to forgo an immediate ruling in favour of extradition – on a technicality.

    Keep an eye on whether the new Biden administration decides to drop the appeal case. More likely his officials will let it rumble on, largely below the media’s radar, for many months more.

    Journalism as espionage
    Significantly, Judge Baraitser backed all the Trump administration’s main legal arguments for extradition, even though they were comprehensively demolished by Assange’s lawyers.

    Baraitser accepted the US government’s dangerous new definition of investigative journalism as “espionage”, and implied that Assange had also broken Britain’s draconian Official Secrets Act in exposing government war crimes.

    She agreed that the 2007 Extradition Treaty applies in Assange’s case, ignoring the treaty’s actual words that exempt political cases like his. She thereby opened the door for other journalists to be seized in their home countries and renditioned to the US.

    Baraitser accepted that protecting sources in the digital age – as Assange did for whistleblower Chelsea Manning, an essential obligation on journalists in a free society – now amounts to criminal “hacking”. She trashed free speech and press freedom rights, saying they did not provide “unfettered discretion by Mr Assange to decide what he’s going to publish”.

    She appeared to approve of the ample evidence showing that the US spied on Assange inside the Ecuadorian embassy, both in violation of international law and his client-lawyer privilege – a breach of his most fundamental legal rights that alone should have halted proceedings.

    Baraitser argued that Assange would receive a fair trial in the US, even though it was almost certain to take place in the eastern district of Virginia, where the major US security and intelligence services are headquartered. Any jury there would be dominated by US security personnel and their families, who would have no sympathy for Assange.

    So as we celebrate this ruling for Assange, we must also loudly denounce it as an attack on press freedom, as an attack on our hard-won collective freedoms, and as an attack on our efforts to hold the US and UK establishments accountable for riding roughshod over the values, principles and laws they themselves profess to uphold.

    Even as we are offered with one hand a small prize in Assange’s current legal victory, the establishment’s other hand seizes much more from us.

    Vilification continues
    There is a final lesson from the Assange ruling. The last decade has been about discrediting, disgracing and demonising Assange. This ruling should very much be seen as a continuation of that process.

    Baraitser has denied extradition only on the grounds of Assange’s mental health and his autism, and the fact that he is a suicide risk. In other words, the principled arguments for freeing Assange have been decisively rejected.

    If he regains his freedom, it will be solely because he has been characterised as mentally unsound. That will be used to discredit not just Assange, but the cause for which he fought, the Wikileaks organisation he helped to found, and all wider dissidence from establishment narratives. This idea will settle into popular public discourse unless we challenge such a presentation at every turn.

    Assange’s battle to defend our freedoms, to defend those in far-off lands whom we bomb at will in the promotion of the selfish interests of a western elite, was not autistic or evidence of mental illness. His struggle to make our societies fairer, to hold the powerful to account for their actions, was not evidence of dysfunction. It is a duty we all share to make our politics less corrupt, our legal systems more transparent, our media less dishonest.

    Unless far more of us fight for these values – for real sanity, not the perverse, unsustainable, suicidal interests of our leaders – we are doomed. Assange showed us how we can free ourselves and our societies. It is incumbent on the rest of us to continue his fight.

    Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). This article was first published by CounterPunch. His website is http://www.jonathan-cook.net/

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Are US and Iran headed for a military showdown before Trump leaves office?

    ANALYSIS: By Clive Williams, Australian National University

    Tensions are running high in the Middle East in the waning days of the Trump administration.

    Over the weekend, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif claimed Israeli agents were planning to attack US forces in Iraq to provide US President Donald Trump with a pretext for striking Iran.

    Just ahead of the one-year anniversary of the US assassination of Iran’s charismatic General Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards also warned his country would respond forcefully to any provocations.

    Today, we have no problem, concern or apprehension toward encountering any powers. We will give our final words to our enemies on the battlefield.

    Israeli military leaders are likewise preparing for potential Iranian retaliation over the November assassination of senior Iranian nuclear scientist Dr Mohsen Fakhrizadeh — an act Tehran blames on the Jewish state.

    Both the US and Israel have reportedly deployed submarines to the Persian Gulf in recent days, while the US has flown nuclear-capable B-52 bombers to the region in a show of force.

    The United States flew strategic bombers over the Persian Gulf twice in December in a show of force. Image: Air Force/AP

    And in another worrying sign, the acting US Defence Secretary, Christopher Miller, announced over the weekend the US would not withdraw the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz and its strike group from the Middle East — a swift reversal from the Pentagon’s earlier decision to send the ship home.

    Israel’s priorities under a new US administration
    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would like nothing more than action by Iran that would draw in US forces before Trump leaves office this month and President-elect Joe Biden takes over. It would not only give him the opportunity to become a tough wartime leader, but also help to distract the media from his corruption charges.

    Any American military response against Iran would also make it much more difficult for Biden to establish a working relationship with Iran and potentially resurrect the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

    It’s likely in any case the Biden administration will have less interest in getting much involved in the Middle East — this is not high on the list of priorities for the incoming administration.

    However, a restoration of the Iranian nuclear agreement in return for the lifting of US sanctions would be welcomed by Washington’s European allies.

    This suggests Israel could be left to run its own agenda in the Middle East during the Biden administration.

    Israel sees Iran as its major ongoing security threat because of its support for Hezbollah in Lebanon and Palestinian militants in Gaza.

    One of Israel’s key strategic policies is also to prevent Iran from ever becoming a nuclear weapon state. Israel is the only nuclear weapon power in the Middle East and is determined to keep it that way.

    While Iran claims its nuclear programme is only intended for peaceful purposes, Tehran probably believes realistically (like North Korea) that its national security can only be safeguarded by possession of a nuclear weapon.

    In recent days, Tehran announced it would begin enriching uranium to 20 percent as quickly as possible, exceeding the limits agreed to in the 2015 nuclear deal.

    This is a significant step and could prompt an Israeli strike on Iran’s underground Fordo nuclear facility. Jerusalem contemplated doing so nearly a decade ago when Iran previously began enriching uranium to 20 percent.

    Iran's Fordo nuclear facility
    A satellite photo shows construction at Iran’s Fordo nuclear facility. Image: Maxar Technologies/AP

    How the Iran nuclear deal fell apart
    Iran’s nuclear programme began in the 1950s, ironically with US assistance as part of the “Atoms for Peace” programme. Western cooperation continued until the 1979 Iranian Revolution toppled the pro-Western shah of Iran. International nuclear cooperation with Iran was then suspended, but the Iranian programme resumed in the 1980s.

    After years of negotiations, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was signed in 2015 by Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany (known as the P5+1), together with the European Union.

    The JCPOA tightly restricted Iran’s nuclear activities in return for the lifting of sanctions. However, this breakthrough soon fell apart with Trump’s election.

    In April 2018, Netanyahu revealed Iranian nuclear programme documents obtained by Mossad, claiming Iran had been maintaining a covert weapons program. The following month, Trump announced the US withdrawal from the JCPOA and a re-imposition of American sanctions.

    Iran initially said it would continue to abide by the nuclear deal, but after the Soleimani assassination last January, Tehran abandoned its commitments, including any restrictions on uranium enrichment.

    Iranians burn US and Israel flags
    Iranians burn US and Israel flags during a funeral ceremony for Qassem Soleimani last year. Image: Abedin Taherkenareh/EPA

    Israel’s history of preventive strikes
    Israel, meanwhile, has long sought to disrupt its adversaries’ nuclear programs through its “preventative strike” policy, also known as the “Begin Doctrine”.

    In 1981, Israeli aircraft struck and destroyed Iraq’s atomic reactor at Osirak, believing it was being constructed for nuclear weapons purposes. And in 2007, Israeli aircraft struck the al-Kibar nuclear facility in Syria for the same reason.

    Starting in 2007, Mossad also apparently conducted an assassination program to impede Iranian nuclear research. Between January 2010 and January 2012, Mossad is believed to have organised the assassinations of four nuclear scientists in Iran. Another scientist was wounded in an attempted killing.

    Israel has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement in the killings.

    Iran is suspected to have responded to the assassinations with an unsuccessful bomb attack against Israeli diplomats in Bangkok in February 2012. The three Iranians convicted for that attack were the ones recently exchanged for the release of Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert from an Iranian prison.

    Bomb suspect Mohammad Kharzei
    Bomb suspect Mohammad Kharzei, one of the men released by Thailand in November in exchange for Kylie Moore-Gilbert. Image: Sakchai Lalit/AP

    The Mossad assassination programme was reportedly suspended under pressure from the Obama administration to facilitate the Iran nuclear deal. But there seems little doubt the assassination of Fakhrizadeh was organised by Mossad as part of its ongoing efforts to undermine the Iranian nuclear programme.

    Fakhrizadeh is believed to have been the driving force behind covert elements of Iran’s nuclear programme for many decades.

    The timing of his killing was perfect from an Israeli perspective. It put the Iranian regime under domestic pressure to retaliate. If it did, however, it risked a military strike by the truculent outgoing Trump administration.

    It’s fortunate Moore-Gilbert was whisked out of Iran just before the killing, as there is little likelihood Iran would have released a prisoner accused of spying for Israel (even if such charges were baseless) after such a blatant assassination had taken place in Iran.

    What’s likely to happen next?
    Where does all this leave us now? Much will depend on Iran’s response to what it sees (with some justification) as Israeli and US provocation.

    The best outcome would be for no obvious Iranian retaliation or military action despite strong domestic pressure for the leadership to act forcefully. This would leave the door open for Biden to resume the nuclear deal, with US sanctions lifted under strict safeguards to ensure Iran is not able to maintain a covert weapons program.The Conversation

    By Dr Clive Williams, Campus visitor, ANU Centre for Military and Security Law, Australian National University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Resolution of human rights violation cases in Papua ‘has deteriorated’

    By Benny Mawel in Jayapura

    The enforcement of human rights and the resolution of various cases of human rights violations in Papua in 2020 has worsened, say advocates.

    Indonesia is being urged to immediately ratify the Rome Statute so that various cases of human rights violations in Papua can be tried at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Netherlands.

    The Papuan Human Rights Advocates Association director, Gustav Kawer, said the enforcement of human rights as well as the resolution of cases of human rights violations in Papua in 2020 are getting worse.

    “Take note, the face of human rights enforcement is getting worse,” Kawer said.

    Kawer explained a number of indicators that “proved” the handling of cases of human rights violations in Papua was getting worse.

    He referred to cases of shooting of residents that happened during 2020 in Nduga, Mimika, and Intan Jaya regencies.

    The shooting of residents [indigenous West Papuans] in Mimika regency took place on 13 April 2020, with the killing Roni Wandik and Eden Armando Debari.

    In Nduga regency on 18 July 2020, Elias Karunggu and his son Seru Karunggu were killed.

    In Intan Jaya district, there have been a number of cases of shootings of indigenous West Papuans, including the killing of Pastor Yeremia Zanambani on 19 September 2020, and the shooting that killed the catechist of the Timika Diocese of Rome Catholic Church, Rufinus Tigau, on 7 October 2020.

    State ‘not serious’
    Kawer said that the state was not serious about resolving the shooting cases against Papuan civilians. This meant impunity for perpetrators of human rights violations in Papua continued.

    “Impunity prevents human rights enforcement from being achieved,” said Kawer.

    Kawer said that the practice of impunity was indicated in the handling of various cases of shootings of citizens and human rights violations in Papua.

    He gave an example of the formation of the Joint Fact-Finding Team for the shooting case of Pastor Yeremia Zanambani, which in the end tended to be a political process rather than a law enforcement and human rights process.

    “The team submitted a report to the President. The report [should have been submitted] to the Attorney-General’s Office and the court. [Because the report was submitted to the President], so the legal [process] did not [work],” Kawer said.

    Kawer also regretted the steps of the National Human Rights Commission (Komnas HAM) which also submitted a report on the Intan Jaya case to President Joko Widodo.

    “We thought there would be a recommendation for gross human rights violations, but [it was] illegible,” said Kawer.

    Serious setback
    He said that the handling of the shooting in Intan Jaya was a serious setback in the process of handling human rights violations in Papua.

    Previously, the results of Komnas HAM investigations in a number of previous cases were submitted to the Attorney-General’s Office, with a recommendation that the cases be tried in court.

    Kawer gave an example that the process resulted in the accused killers in the murder of Theys Hiyo Eluay and the Abepura case on 7 December 2000 being put on trial.

    “In the previous case, even though there were perpetrators who were free, and we know it was a design of impunity, [it appears] there were efforts [the state carried out the legal process],” said Kawer.

    Kawer said that throughout 2020 the practice of law enforcement in Papua had shown increasingly disparities in the law, where there were differences in treatment of perpetrators with civilian backgrounds and those with security backgrounds.

    “[If] the perpetrator is the apparatus, it will not be processed. If the community is involved, they will be processed until they are imprisoned,” said Kawer who gave an example of the trial against participants in the demonstrations against Papuan racism.

    Nevertheless, Kawer appreciated the TNI’s efforts to be more open and investigate the involvement of its soldiers in the murder and burning of the bodies of two West Papuan civilians in Intan Jaya.

    ‘Impression of impunity’
    “We appreciate this, there is an openness. However, there is an impression of impunity too, [due to] the articles subject to Article 170 of the Criminal Code and Article 180 of the Criminal Code. It carries a light [sentence], 12 years in prison and 9 months in prison. Even though it was a murder case, “said Kawer.

    Student activist Bheny Murib from Nduga also criticised the state for “hiding human rights violations” in Papua. As a result, he believed that the state did not want to take care of the right to life of indigenous West Papuans.

    “[The armed conflict in Nduga] has [lasted] two years. Our family is still in evacuation,” said Murib.

    Murib also considered that the state did not take action against human rights violators in Papua. He gave an example of the shooting case of a truck driver named Hendrik Lokbere in Batas Batu, Nduga regency, on 19 December 2019.

    “This year, [the case] is even one year. The perpetrator was never prosecuted [legally], even though thousands of Nduga residents demonstrated demanding [the perpetrator be tried],” said Murib.

    Ratification of Rome Statute
    Kawer said that the track record of handling cases of human rights violations in Papua showed that the Republic of Indonesia was unable and unwilling to prosecute perpetrators of human rights violations in Papua.

    He urged Indonesia to ratify the Rome Statute, so that various cases of human rights violations in Papua could be tried at the ICC in The Hague, Netherlands.

    “The solution, the country should ratify the Rome Statute. [By ratifying the Rome Statute], cases in Papua [can] be brought to the ICC,” said Kawer.

    Kawer also urged the state to open up and be willing to sit together with the parties who are opposed to the state.

    “The state should open space for dialogue with groups that ask for the right to self-determination,” he said.

    Benny Mawel is a Tabloid Jubi journalist. This article was translated by a Pacific Media Watch correspondent from the original report.

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  • Take no prisoners

    In December 1944, Frank Hartzell was a young soldier pressed into fierce fighting during the Battle of the Bulge. He was there battling Nazi soldiers for control of the Belgian town of Chenogne, and he was there afterward when dozens of unarmed German prisoners of war were gunned down in a field. 

    Reporter Chris Harland-Dunaway travels to Belgium to tour Chenogne with Belgian historian Roger Marquet. Then he sits down with Bill Johnsen, a military historian and former dean of the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, to ask why the Patton Papers don’t accurately reflect Gen. George S. Patton’s diary entries about Chenogne. 

    The massacre at Chenogne happened soon after the Malmedy massacre, during which Nazi troops killed unarmed American POWs. The German soldiers responsible were tried at Dachau, but the American soldiers who committed the massacre at Chenogne were never held accountable. Harland-Dunaway interviews Ben Ferencz, the last surviving lawyer from the Nuremberg Trials, about why the Americans escaped justice.

    And finally, Harland-Dunaway returns to Hartzell to explain what he’s learned and to press Hartzell for a full accounting of his role that day in Chenogne. 

    This episode was originally broadcast July 28, 2018.

    The post Take no prisoners appeared first on Reveal.

    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • Take No Prisoners (Rebroadcast)

    This episode originally was broadcast July 28, 2018. 

    In December 1944, Frank Hartzell was a young soldier pressed into fierce fighting during the Battle of the Bulge. He was there battling Nazi soldiers for control of the Belgian town of Chenogne, and he was there afterward when dozens of unarmed German prisoners of war were gunned down in a field. 

    Reporter Chris Harland-Dunaway pieces together what led up to that event, who was responsible and why no Americans were held accountable for this war crime.

    Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.

    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • A belated Papua Christmas morning story from Nduga’s internal refugees

    By Benny Mawel in Jayapura

    “Merry Christmas, 25 December 2020,” says the graffiti displayed in the yard of the Nduga student dormitory in the study city of Jayapura.

    Hundreds of eyes stared at the writing, then they moved forward lighting Christmas candles.

    “We want Christmas light,” said Arim Tabuni, a senior student who attended the joint event.

    Arim is one of Nduga’s students. He looked thin, like never before. Now he walks slowly and bent a little.

    “I was sick but came to light a candle. We want to continue to ignite the light of truth in our hearts,” he said softly, with a slight frown.

    He is still sick from the beatings of Indonesian security forces when he broke up a peaceful student demonstration in Jayapura city. The assault was inflicted on him on 2 May 2016.

    Beside him, Bheny Murib sat down, occasionally staring at the theme. He ignored his turn to light the candle. He just sat there until the event was over.

    Stories of refugees
    Apparently, Murib was mumbling stories of refugees in Nduga. He has lost the momentum of the joys of Christmas since 2018. Parents, younger siblings, and brothers left their house to the forest to neighbouring districts such as Lanny Jaya, Puncak, Asmat, Yahukimo and Jayawijaya (Wamena).

    He remembered house, honai (traditional house of indigenous West Papuans), the church is quiet. There is no puff of burning smoke celebrating Christmas together in the church yard.

    Nduga students from various study cities cannot go home on holiday like before.

    “We wanted to celebrate Christmas with our parents at home, but these two years have all disappeared,” said Murib.

    To remember that, Nduga students in Jayapura celebrate Christmas in the dormitory yard.

    “Usually there is a large dormitory hall but today it is on this courtyard,” he said, looking at the baby Jesus Christmas manger lying down.

    it reminded him of the birth of children in Nduga. Mothers were forced to give birth in forests and caves.

    Birth in the forest
    Gelina Lilbid is one of the names of the women she remembers giving birth in the forest.

    Lilbid is the wife of an uncle. Gelina gave birth on her way to flee from Yigi, Nduga, to Kyawagi, Lanny Jaya and on to Wamena.

    Murib told the story of the birth of a child who was named Pengungsiana Kelenea.

    According to the story of Gelina Lilbid: “I gave birth to a child in the middle of the forest on 4 December 2018.

    “A lot of people thought my son was dead. It turned out that my child was still breathing.

    “My child is sick, has difficulty breathing and has a cough with phlegm. It was very cold in the forest, so when we walked again, I felt that my baby had not moved.

    “We thought he was dead. The family had given up. A family asked me to throw my child away because it was thought he was dead.

    “But I still love and carry my child. Yes, if you really die, I have to bury my child properly even in the forest.

    “Because I kept carrying my baby, my brother made a fire and heated the tree leaves, and the heated leaves he stuck them all over my baby’s body.

    “After the brothers put the heated leaves on the fire, my baby breathed and drank breast milk. We went on a trip.

    “We were very scared because the TNI continued to shoot at our hiding place. We continued to walk in the forest, and we searched for a cave that we could hide in.

    “I was carrying my child having just arrived from Kuyawagi, Lanny Jaya Regency in Wamena. We have been in Kuyawagi since the beginning of December 2018.

    “Before going to Kuyawagi, we lived in the forest without eating enough food. We are very hard and suffering on our own land,” said Murib recounting Gelina Lilbid’s story.

    Refugee babies fleeing
    Refugee babies have fled with their parents, now in Jayawijaya (Wamena) district, since 2018. Refugees are now two years old in December 2020.

    There were two other children who were born on the way to the evacuation. Their names are Wene Kelenea and Larinus Kelenea.

    Wene is a word in the language of the Lani tribe, Yali and Huwula which means story, news, problems, confrontations, conflicts with one another.

    If the names are sorted into Wene, Larinus, Refugees. Because of the confrontation and conflict, they had to flee.

    He said his family were in refugee camps, children had to be born on the evacuation trip. It just passed. Everyone looks silent, takes it for granted, as if there is no conflict.

    “When will the Indonesian government, churches and the United Nations pay attention to our human rights,” he said.

    “If they cannot respect human rights, cannot take care of the fate of the Nduga people, all parties must admit that the Nduga people want to take care of themselves.”

    “Stop military operations in the Nduga region and give the West Papuan nation sovereign rights,” wrote the Nduga students, among the flickering candles on their dormitory grounds.

    This article was translated by a Pacific Media Watch correspondent from the original report.

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  • Military police chief says TNI soldiers burned Papuan bodies to hide deaths

    Lieutenant-General Dodik Widjanarko … named nine suspects over the killing of two Zanambani brothers. Image: CNN Indonesia

    Pacific Media Watch newsdesk

    The commander of the Indonesian Army Military Police (Danpuspomad), Lieutenant-General Dodik Widjanarko says TNI AD soldiers in Papua have committed acts of violence, including burning bodies to erase traces of their killing.

    General Widjanarko said bodies were burned after in an incident that led to two civilians, Luther Zanambani and Apinus Zanambani, detained at the Sugapa Koramil, Papua, on 21 April 2020 dying without trace, reports CNN Indonesia.

    The two brothers are reportedly the family of Pastor Yeremia Zanambani, who was shot dead in Intan Jaya, Papua, on September 19.

    General Widjanarko described the chronology of the deaths of the two civilians.

    The incident began when the Raider Battalion Unit 433 JS Kostrad carried out a sweeping operation on April 21. During the operation, they suspected the two brothers were part of an alleged “Armed Criminal Group” (KKB).

    The KKB, or the Armed Separatist Criminal Group (KKSB), is how law enforcers in Indonesia label the militant group of the pro-independence Free Papua Organisation (OPM).

    On the basis of this suspicion, several members who were on duty at that time immediately interrogated the two people at Sugapa Koramil Paniai Kodim, said General Widjanarko.

    Yellow public truck
    “During the interrogation, there was excessive action beyond the limits of propriety which resulted in Apinus Zanambani’s death and Luther Zanambani’s critical death at that time,” General Widjanarko told a media conference at the Army Puspom Building, Jalan Medan Merdeka Timur, Central Jakarta, on Wednesday.

    At first the two civilians were about to be transferred to Kostrad’s Yonif PR 433 JS Kotrad by using a yellow public truck, said the general.

    However, while riding a vehicle with police number B 9745 PGD in the middle of the journey, Luther Zanambani, who was previously critical, died.

    General Widjanarko said that in order to erase any trace of the deaths of the two civilians, members of the Indonesian Army who were ainvolved in the incident tried to remove the two bodies.

    “When arriving at Kotis Yonif Pararider 433 JS Kostrad to leave a trail, the victim’s bodies were then burned and the ashes dumped in the Julai River in Sugapa sub-district,” said the three-star TNI general.

    Regarding the deaths of the two Zanambani brothers, General Widjanarko said that the Joint Army Police Headquarters Team together with the Cenderawasih XVII Military Command had named nine suspects.

    The nine suspects, comprised two Paniai Kodim personnel and seven personnel from Yonit Pararider 433 JSD Kostrad.

    Nine suspects named
    “The suspects comprise two personnel from the Paniai Military Command, Major Inf ML and the FTP Special Officer as well as seven personnel from the Yonif Para Raider 433 JS Kostrad, namely Major Inf YAS, Lettu Inf JMTS, Serka B, Seryu OSK, Sertu MS, Serda PG, and Kopda MAY,” said General Widjanarko.

    The suspects’ determination was carried out after examining 21 witnesses, both from the TNI and civilians, said the general.

    The investigation was carried out on 19 members of the Indonesian Army comprising five personnel from the Paniai Kodim, 13 personnel from Yonif Para Raider 433 JS, and one personnel from Denintel Kodam XVII Cenderawasih.

    Even though nine suspects had been named, General Widjanarko said that his party was still conducting an in-depth examination of several personnel of Yonif Para Raider 433 JS, which needed further investigation.

    This article was translated by a Pacific Media Watch correspondent from the original report. 

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  • Family of murdered Papuan pastor want case tried in human rights court

    Investigators at the scene where Pastor Yeremia Zanambani was alleged to have been shot dead by the Indonesian military near Hitadiap village. Image: CNN Indonesia screenshot

    Pacific Media Watch newsdesk

    The family of Pastor Yeremia Zanambani, who was shot dead in Hitadipa district, Intan Jaya regency, Papua, three months ago are asking that the case be tried in a human rights court.

    They oppose having the trial being taken to a military tribunal, reports CNN Indonesia.

    “They [Yeremia’s family] want the case to be heard in a human rights court, so that the perpetrator can be tried in accordance with his actions and there will be justice for the victim. The victim’s family has no faith in the legal process of a military tribunal,” said a member of the team of lawyers representing Zanambani’s family, Yohanis Mambrasar.

    In early October the government formed the Intan Jaya Joint Fact Finding Team (TGPF) to investigate the killing of Pastor Zanambani on September 19.

    The team found allegations of the involvement of security personnel in the murder of the religious figure.

    In a press release on Wednesday, the commander of the Army’s Military Police Centre, Lieutenant General Dodik Widjanarko, said that the Army Headquarters Legal Process Reinforcement Team was in the process of attempting to question 21 personnel from the 400 Raider Military Battalion in relation to the shooting.

    Aside from questioning the 21 personnel, Widjanarko said that they had also questioned 14 personnel from the Cendrawasih XVII Regional Military Command’s (Kodam) Penebalan Apter Military Operational Unit Task Force.

    Legal handling deplored
    Mambrasar said that he deplored the legal handling of the case which should already be at a more advanced stage in the investigation.

    “Like arresting and declaring suspects, because there’s already enough evidence. There are many witnesses and the indicating evidence is already very strong [and enough] to explain the case and the perpetrator,” he said.

    He also said other such cases which had occurred in Papua recently, such as the murder of two youths named Luter Zanambani and Apinus Zanambani on April 21, the torching of a healthcare office on September 19 and the shooting of Agus Duwitau on October 7 must also be resolved by a human rights court.

    Pastor Yeremia ZanambaniRev Yeremia Zanambani … alleged to have been shot dead by the Indonesian military in Hitadiap village on September 19. Image: Suara Papua

    Mambrasar said that as regulated under Article 9 in conjunction with Article 7(b) of Law Number 26/2000 on a Human Rights Court, the elements of a gross human rights violation in these cases — including Zanambani’s shooting — had already been met.

    “As referred to under Article 7, namely that there were acts of violent killing which took in a systematic and broad manner”, he said.

    IndoLeft News reports:
    Although the government sanctioned TGPF only said that it found indications of the involvement of security personnel in Zanambani’s murder, an investigation by the government’s own National Human Rights Commission (Komnas HAM) explicitly alleged Zanambani’s murderer as being Hitadipa sub-district military commander Chief Sergeant Alpius Hasim Madi.

    Komnas HAM said Zanambani was killed while being interrogated on the whereabouts of an Indonesian military assault rifle two days earlier during an exchange of fire with the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB).

    Translated by James Balowski for IndoLeft News. The original title of the article was “Keluarga Korban Minta Kasus Intan Jaya Diadili Pengadilan HAM”.

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  • Police, TNI raid Papuan secretariat in Merauke – 14 activists arrested

    The vandalised KNPB secretariat at Almasuh, Merauke, in Papua. Image: Suara Papua

    By Charles Maniani in Manokwari

    Indonesian Mobile Brigade (Brimob) paramilitary police, national police intelligence officers (intel) and the army’s special forces (Kopassus) have stormed the West Papua National Committee (KNPB) offices in the Almasuh area of Merauke regency, Papua,

    The raid last week was reported by a Suara Papua informant from Merauke on Monday. The raid ended with two motorcycles being seized and six more people arrested.

    “Yesterday, on Sunday (13/12/2020) at around 2 pm local time Brimob and intel officers arrived and vandalised the KNPB secretariat in Almasuh, they arrested six people and two motorcycles were taken,” the source told Suara Papua from Merauke.

    When sought for confirmation on Tuesday, Merauke KNPB member Yoris Wopay said that arrests were made on two occasions totalling 14 people who were being held temporarily by the Merauke district police (Polres).

    “They were all arrested and beaten with cane sticks, four people were ordered to lie on the ground, then they were taken to Polres, there they were assaulted again, Kristian Yandun’s head was cut and bleeding and Michael Beteop’s back was bleeding, then they were detained with criminal prisoners. And two motorcycles were taken by the Merauke Polres”, he said.

    No reason was given for their detention and the detainees have asked for a lawyer.

    Suara Papua meanwhile has been unable to obtain confirmation from the Merauke district police about why they were arrested.

    The names of those arrested are:

    KNPB Chairperson Charles Sraun (38)
    Deputy Chairperson Petrus Paulus Kontremko (32)
    KNPB diplomacy division head Robertus Landa (23)
    KNPB members Kristian Yandun (38), Michael Beteop (24), Elias Kmur (38), Marianus Anyum (25), Kristian. M. Anggunop (24), Emanuel. T Omba (24), Petrus Kutey (27), Linus Pasim (26), Salerius Kamogou (24), Petrus Koweng (28) and Yohanes Yawon (23).

    Translated by James Balowski for IndoLeft News. The original title of the article was “Sekretariat KNPB Merauke Digerebek, 14 Aktivis Ditangkap”.

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