The first votes of the 2024 Solomon Islands joint elections have been cast in Honiara on Friday.
The Solomon Islands Electoral Commission (SIEC) said pre-polling has been facilitated for police officers and electoral officials who will be working during polling day on April 17.
The pre-polling for working officials was held from 7am to 4pm local time.
For the election proper, 19 pre-polling locations have been organised across the 10 provinces.
The elections office is encouraging voters to check their details on the electoral commission’s polling station locator.
Officers of the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force (RSIPF) turned up on Friday and cast their votes at the Honiara Multipurpose Hall. Image: Solomon Islands Electoral Commission/RNZ
Meanwhile, the SIEC has clarified guidelines regarding elections campaigning after what it said were “misconceptions in the media”.
It said that according to the Electoral Act 2018, campaigning in all forms were permitted up until 24 hours before polling day, including but not limited to rallies, speeches and public parades.
“A recent news article in the Island Sun newspaper erroneously suggested that SIEC had advised against float parades in Honiara City,” it said in a statement.
“The SIEC clarifies that decisions regarding public floats and parades fall under the rightful jurisdiction of the Honiara City Council and the Royal Solomon Islands Police, not the SIEC.
“It is crucial for all stakeholders, including candidates, political parties, and the media, to adhere to the Electoral Act 2018 and conduct campaigns within the legal framework.”
The commission is urging local media to verify information before publishing so that it is accurate and maintains the integrity of the electoral process.
This report is drawn from RNZ News reports and photographs under a community partnership and other sources.
Last year, 25-year-old Carlee Russell called 911 in Hoover, Alabama, reporting that there was a child on the interstate. Then Russell vanished, and no child was found. A massive search effort followed, along with a national media frenzy. Two days later, she returned home, seemingly unharmed but claiming that she had escaped a kidnapping.
After about a week, sympathy for Russell turned to anger as investigators concluded that she had faked her disappearance and charged her with two misdemeanors for false reporting. She pleaded guilty, and a judge ordered Russell to pay nearly $18,000 in restitution and to serve probation and community service – a sentence deemed far too lenient by those outraged by Russell’s actions. Nothing less than jail time would satisfy them.
“The biggest thing was just the impact it had,” said Alabama state Rep. Mike Shaw, a Republican from Hoover. “I mean, hundreds of people showed up to search, and it was a pretty damaging thing for the community.”
Emboldened by the community outrage, Shaw and other state lawmakers proposed legislation that was designed to deter, or at least more severely punish, the next Carlee Russell. The bill, which has cleared the House of Representatives and is poised for a vote in the Senate, would create a new class C felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison for a false report that “alleges imminent danger to a person or the public.”
“One of the real problems with that false report is that it hurts the next person who actually experiences something,” Shaw said. “If you have a false report, it kind of makes everybody skeptical on the next one.”
As anyone who has been told the fable of the child who cried wolf knows, Shaw is right that false reports lead to more skepticism. But the outsized attention they receive obscures the fact that they’re relatively rare. And this legislation doesn’t consider a prevalent problem: the troubling track record of police in Alabama and across the country when it comes to framing reports of violence as having been made up.
Kijana Mitchell is an Alabama-based advocate for survivors of domestic violence who’s also worked as a 911 dispatcher. She said she’s encountered law enforcement officers who suspect a victim is lying simply because they make the common and complicated decision to return to an abusive relationship.
And she fears this bill could work in the favor of abusers – “master manipulators” who will use it to convince victims not to report an assault to skeptical officers. “A law like this can scoop up a lot of innocent victims” if people aren’t able to prove their case to the police’s satisfaction, Mitchell said. “This added factor that our lawmakers are trying to bring into the equation will really bolster a lot of (abusers’) ability to keep victims from speaking up.”
For the last six years, I’ve been collecting and researching cases in which people – mostly young women and sometimes children – were charged with falsely reporting a rape or sexual assault. I’ve amassed more than 230 cases that span the country, an investigation we first shared in the documentary “Victim/Suspect,” streaming on Netflix. In our first-of-its-kind qualitative analysis, we found a pattern of police turning their suspicions to the reporting victim before thoroughly investigating the alleged crime.
Academic studies consistently estimate that 2% to 8% of reports of sexual assault and rape are false. But police officers presume reporting victims are lying much more frequently: In one 2010 study, a majority of sex crimes detectives with less than seven years of experience believed that anywhere from 40% to 80% of rape reports were false. And a 2018 study found that officers’ estimates of false rape reports go up the more they believe in popular myths about rape, like the idea that women lie about rape after regrettable sex or they bear responsibility if they were drunk.
In case after case I reviewed, detectives didn’t interview suspects or send rape kits to the lab. Instead, they interrogated the reporting victim, seizing on the moment when they backtracked or buckled under the pressure, framing it as either a recantation or a confession.
In one-quarter of the 52 cases we analyzed, it took investigators less than 24 hours after the report was made to conclude the victims were lying.
Tangled up in these reports are complicating factors: gaps in memory due to trauma, delays in reporting and a lack of physical evidence. I’ve watched or listened to more than a dozen recorded interrogations and interviewed women who were charged with false reporting.
What I heard again and again were police officers clumsily or aggressively questioning alleged victims, who were typically interviewed alone, in the same manner in which they interrogated suspects. One detective lied to a teenager, saying videos proved her account of being raped at a party wasn’t true. She was left confused and desperate to end the interaction. Another detective told a 12-year-old who insisted she was raped by a family member that she would have to return to foster care. A college student facing harsh questioning about an allegation of sexual assault eventually agreed when police said it wasn’t true, wanting to drop the case.
All of them saw the police conclude their reports were intentionally fabricated and were charged with crimes.
Emma Mannion is all too familiar with this dynamic. In 2016, when she was an 18-year-old freshman at the University of Alabama, she told police that a man she’d met earlier that night had raped her in the back of a car while his friend stood guard.
“Knowing what I know now, I would absolutely not report,” said Mannion, now living in her home state of New Hampshire.
Tuscaloosa investigators concluded within a few days that she lied because she was ashamed that she had sex with a stranger. Under questioning for two and a half hours, Mannion never backed away from her allegation that she was raped – and still hasn’t. But there was a moment in her interrogation when everything seemed to change. A detective chided her for wasting police resources. She had distracted him from working with “true victims,” he said.
“I’m so sorry,” she responded.
“Well, if you’re sorry, then that makes me feel better,” the detective said, softening his tone.
Police records summarized that Mannion confessed to lying about the assault and she was charged with making a false report to law enforcement.
Shortly before Mannion had to decide whether to fight the charge, she heard about what happened to University of Alabama student Megan Rondini, who was also interrogated by Tuscaloosa police after reporting a rape. Similarly, detectives quickly turned the focus of their investigation against Rondini. While a grand jury considered criminal charges against her in February 2016, Rondini took her own life.
Mannion said she wasn’t mentally stable enough to go through a trial and relive the incident again and again. She pleaded guilty to a youthful offender charge, a generic label used for nonviolent crimes. Mannion faced only a misdemeanor. But other young women seeking justice after being sexually assaulted could face felony charges.
“I already have a hard time comprehending and understanding how they did what they did,” Mannion said. “I cannot fathom (Tuscaloosa police) looking at 18-year-old Emma and going, ‘Yes, this is a felony charge, and she should go to prison.’ ”
There is no evidence that false reports in Alabama – or nationwide – are increasing or creating a measurable strain on police resources. Nonetheless, this isn’t the first time Alabama has tried to make false reporting penalties more severe. In 2019, then-Rep. Dickie Drake, a Republican, introduced a similar bill, aiming to make a false report of sexual assault or rape a class C felony. At the time, advocates and survivors testified against the measure, saying it would only deter legitimate reports of assault. It didn’t make it out of the Judiciary Committee.
Sen. Merika Coleman, a Democrat based in the greater Birmingham area, spoke out against the bill back then and intends to do the same when the new proposal goes to a vote in the Senate. “I think that it can make our communities less safe,” she said. “If someone is afraid to report because they may face up to 10 years in prison if they are not believed, and then you would have a monster still on the streets.”
She also said the racial dynamics of Carlee Russell’s case can’t be ignored. Russell is a young Black woman who received the type of sympathetic media treatment usually reserved for blond-haired, blue-eyed women. “I think people got pissed off,” Coleman said. “White folks got pissed off.”
The proposed bill includes a qualifier that the false report must allege “imminent danger” to a person or the public, a provision a sponsor said is intended to account for only the most egregious false reports: someone falsely reporting a bomb threat, for instance, or a report similar to Russell’s that launches a big police response. But could a report of a stranger rape or an abusive spouse with a gun also be considered an imminent threat? After Mannion reported rape, her university issued a public safety notice to warn other students.
Best estimates suggest that only about a third of sexual assaults are reported to police, and advocates worry this bill could further exacerbate already existing police and victim mistrust.
“My greatest fear is that this bill will cause victims of sexual violence to read this as another reason NOT to report,” Brenda Maddox, executive director of the Tuscaloosa SAFE Center, a sexual assault crisis center, wrote in an email. “These types of crimes are significantly underreported because by nature they are shrouded in secrecy, not to be talked about in the light of day, and often turned back on the victim as being culpable in their own crime.”
Shaw, the state representative who proposed the House version of the bill, said he spoke to constituents, law enforcement officers and his fellow legislators while drafting this legislation. But he said he didn’t reach out to anyone who works with victims, the community that is most likely to ask police for help and at risk of being accused of false reporting.
He acknowledged the bill is in response to the Russell case – a “sample size of one,” he said. “I think it’s somewhat reactive. But we’re really trying not to be.”
If this bill passes and law enforcement officers in Alabama pursues felony charges for a rape or domestic violence case and there are questions about the quality of the investigation, Shaw promised that he would look into it.
Fijian bus drivers and bus checkers wake up early in the morning to serve the public so it is disappointing to see school students harassing and bullying them, says the bus operators industry group.
Fiji Bus Operators Association general secretary Rohit Latchan said he was responding to a recent video on social media involving a high school student threatening a bus checker.
Latchan also pleaded with parents and teachers to teach students respect towards everyone, especially bus drivers and checkers.
“People should realise that bus drivers and checkers are also humans,” Latchan said.
“They’re providing service to the public, especially to students.
“I am pleading with parents and teachers to respect and appreciate bus drivers and checkers. There is no need for abuse or threats.
“Driving all day is not an easy job. We don’t want our drivers to get hurt.”
Closed fist threat
The video shows the student threatening a bus driver and a bus checker saying, ‘Au sega ni rerevaki kemudrau’ (I am not afraid of you) after he got on board with a closed fist.
Although it is unclear what caused the incident, many found the issue of a young student challenging adults alarming.
Acting Police Commissioner Juki Fong Chew said the matter had been directed to the Central Deputy Police Commissioner for investigations and a team would visit the school tomorrow.
Meanwhile, Education Secretary Selina Kuruleca said all necessary processes had been followed, including informing parents and the Child Protection Services.
“We again request parents to remind their children on the importance of proper behaviour at all times,” Kuruleca said.
“Even though the student was responding to some earlier incident by the driver, he could have reported the incident to the police instead of this swearing and threatening behaviour.
“The student is undergoing counselling at the moment.”
Temalesi Vono is a Fiji Times reporter. Republished with permission.
It wants the power to decide who lives or dies and whose rights are worthy of protection.
Abortion may still be front and center in the power struggle between the Left and the Right over who has the right to decide—the government or the individual—when it comes to bodily autonomy, the right to privacy, sexual freedom, the rights of the unborn, and property interests in one’s body, but there’s so much more at play.
In the 50-plus years since the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling in Roe v. Wade, the government has come to believe that it not only has the power to determine who is deserving of constitutional rights in the eyes of the law but it also has the authority to deny those rights to an American citizen.
This is how the abortion debate has played into the police state’s hands: by laying the groundwork for discussions about who else may or may not be deserving of rights.
Despite the Supreme Court having overturned its earlier rulings recognizing abortion as a constitutional right under the Fourteenth Amendment, the government continues to play fast and loose with the lives of the citizenry all along the spectrum of life.
Take a good, hard look at the many ways in which Americans are being denied their rights under the Constitution.
American families killed by errant SWAT team raids in the middle of the night are being denied their rights under the Constitution.
Unarmed citizens who are tasered or shot by police for daring to hesitate, stutter, move a muscle, flee or disagree in any way with a police order are being denied their rights under the Constitution.
American citizens subjected to government surveillance whereby their phone calls are being listened in on, their mail and text messages read, their movements tracked and their transactions monitored are being denied their rights under the Constitution.
These are all American citizens—endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, rights that no person or government can take away from them, among these the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—and they are all being oppressed in one way or another by a government that has grown drunk on power, money and its own authority.
If the government—be it the President, Congress, the courts or any federal, state or local agent or agency—can decide that any person has no rights, then that person becomes less than a citizen, less than human, less than deserving of respect, dignity, civility and bodily integrity. He or she becomes an “it,” a faceless number that can be tallied and tracked, a quantifiable mass of cells that can be discarded without conscience, an expendable cost that can be written off without a second thought, or an animal that can be bought, sold, branded, chained, caged, bred, neutered and euthanized at will.
It’s a slippery slope that justifies all manner of violations in the name of national security, the interest of the state and the so-called greater good.
Yet those who founded this country believed that what we conceive of as our rights were given to us by God—we are created equal, according to the nation’s founding document, the Declaration of Independence—and that government cannot create, nor can it extinguish our God-given rights. To do so would be to anoint the government with god-like powers and elevate it above the citizenry.
Unfortunately, we have been dancing with this particular devil for quite some time now.
If we continue to wait for the government to restore our freedoms, respect our rights, rein in its abuses and restrain its agents from riding roughshod over our lives, our liberty and our happiness, then we will be waiting forever.
The highly politicized tug-of-war over abortion will not resolve the problem of a culture that values life based on a sliding scale. Nor will it help us navigate the moral, ethical and scientific minefields that await us as technology and humanity move ever closer to a point of singularity.
Humanity is being propelled at warp speed into a whole new frontier when it comes to privacy, bodily autonomy, and what it means to be a human being. As such, we haven’t even begun to wrap our heads around how present-day legal debates over bodily autonomy, privacy, vaccine mandates, the death penalty, and abortion play into future discussions about singularity, artificial intelligence, cloning, and the privacy rights of the individual in the face of increasingly invasive, intrusive and unavoidable government technologies.
Yet here is what I know.
Life is an inalienable right.
By allowing the government to decide who or what is deserving of rights, it shifts the entire discussion from one in which we are “endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights” (that of life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness) to one in which only those favored by the government get to enjoy such rights.
If all people are created equal, then all lives should be equally worthy of protection.
The below article is an opinion piece from Neil Goodwin, an activist who was arrested for blocking an entrance to parliament with his mobility scooter
I’m in Westminster Magistrate’s Court at 10am on Wednesday 3 April, charged with blocking the entrance to parliament in my mobility scooter; I’m disabled, living with multiple sclerosis (MS). This is a bit of what I am hoping to tell the judge.
Protesting the climate crisis as a disabled person
On 19 July 2023, exactly a year on from the hottest day on record and the devastating Wennington wild fire, I travelled up to parliament to protest. It was a Wednesday, and Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) was on – the busiest day of the week for parliament and for the media who cover it.
I positioned myself in front of the carriage entrance, facing towards the road:
I had dressed up the basket on the front of my mobility scooter to look like it was on fire, with a warning sign on the from showing a disabled wheelchair user caught between a fire and a flood – referencing the Wennington wildfire exactly a year previously.
It also referenced the danger from flash flooding, which was tragically emphasised in the run up to my plea hearing by the death of an 83-year-old Chesterfield woman called Maureen Gilbert, who drowned in her home during Storm Babet, as she was unable to escape the rapidly rising water inside her terrace home owing to mobility problems.
I carried a placard with fake flames coming out of the top, that said, ‘I cannot run from a Climate Emergency’. Neither run literally, because of my disability, nor run from what I feel is my social responsibility to try and spotlight the implications of a climate emergency, not just for disabled communities, but for all vulnerable people – the old and the frail.
Cops provide a concerning response
I asked the first police officer who approached me, I believe my arresting officer, to turn on his body cam and record a safety announcement – me detailing my various disabilities.
I explained exactly why I was there, and I was told that I was liable to be arrested.
I remember asking one officer, I think my arresting officer, to see it not as an arrest, but a demonstration in how difficult it would be to save someone like me from a fire at a moment’s notice and carry me to the safety of a police cell. To see it as an exercise in preparedness, as it were – to which, I remember him saying:
If you were in a burning building, I’d throw you over my shoulder and carry you out.
I remember thinking, if you threw me over your shoulder, it would be like throwing a 13-stone ironing board over your shoulder, as my back and neck are almost entirely fused, and you’d probably drop me and/or break my neck in the process. It certainly wouldn’t be that quick and easy.
I was given every opportunity to leave, invited on numerous occasions to carry out my protest along the pavement, away from the entrance. But it felt right to remain just where I was: right in the middle of what they like to call the Sterile Zone.
Now prosecuting disabled people to acting ‘socially responsibly’
It’s strange, but I felt both my strongest and weakest at the same time. Surrounded by cops, one of whom apparently had a best friend with MS, yet none of whom could lay a finger on me, through fear of breaking something.
Who knew that fragility could become a super-power; the burning issue of climate change held aloft, perhaps barring the way of prime minister Rishi Sunak who’s motorcade would have usually swept past by then.
So, I was arrested under section 143 of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 which I thought was quite apt, as I sincerely believe that I was acting socially responsibly raising these urgent issues, especially for disabled, vulnerable and frail people; those who will be shoved onto the front line of this Tory government’s war against the weather.
I pleaded ‘not guilty’ because I don’t think that I did anything wrong. My mum told me to tell the judge that I had seen the error of my ways – when in fact some of us were beginning to feel a real terror in our days:
Featured image and additional images via Gareth Morris, via via Jamie Lowe
Indonesia’s military regional command in Papua has denied claims made by a pro-independence West Papuan group that abducted New Zealand pilot Phillip Mehrtens more than a year ago that the army had staged a bombing attack, The Jakarta Post reports.
Responding to a claim by the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) that aerial bombing had taken place in an area in Nduga regency where Mehrtens had been taken hostage on February 7 last year, the Indonesian Military (TNI) said it had deployed only flyby operations there.
Lieutenant Colonel Candra Kurniawan, a spokesperson for the Cendrawasih Regional Military Command in Papua province, denied that any military operation involving aerial bombs had taken place.
“This [patrol] was conducted together with the local community. There has been nothing like an air strike,” Candra told the Bahasa-language Tempo on Saturday.
He also rebuffed TPNPB’s claim that TNI soldiers had engaged in a firefight with members of pro-independence group.
“Many [TNI] members are in the field serving the community, the situation is also conducive,” Colonel Candra said.
On March 30, TPNPB spokesperson Sebby Sambom said in a statement received by Tempo that the military had deployed aerial attacks using “military aircraft, helicopters and drones” and destroyed four of the group’s posts in Nduga.
Police and prison guards injured at least 17 inmates in western Myanmar after a prison riot broke out, an advocacy group told Radio Free Asia on Monday.
Fighting between prison staff and inmates, including political prisoners charged with opposing Myanmar’s regime, started on Sunday night in Ayeyarwady division’s Pyapon Prison, one Pyapon city resident said.
“I heard that two inmates tried to break out of the prison that night,” he said, declining to be named for security reasons. “However, they were captured by prison guards. The authorities buried the news.”
According to sources close to Pyapon Prison and Myanmar’s Political Prisoners Network, a dispute between prisoners and prison guards caused the riot, but RFA has not been able to independently verify the claim.
Prison authorities accused the inmates of attacking guards, claiming the guards controlled the situation by bringing in junta-affiliated police and soldiers, according to a statement by the Political Prisoners Network.
Seventeen inmates are receiving treatment at the prison hospital, along with one guard, said Thaik Tun Oo, a member of the leading committee for the Political Prisoners Network.
“Currently, we know that some political prisoners are among the 17 injured,” he said. “Others are criminal prisoners. I think the number of injured people might be more than 17.”
Authorities locked down Pyapon Prison on Monday following the riots, he added.
RFA contacted Naing Win, deputy director general of the junta’s Prisons Department, and Ayeyarwady’s junta spokesperson Khin Maung Kyi for comment on the riot, but neither picked up the phone.
Junta soldiers and police have increased security in Pyapon town to prevent unrest spreading, locals said.
Prisoners in Ayeyarwady’s capital of Pathein staged a protest in January 2023 after guards tortured an inmate who was caught with a cell phone, and again one week later when the prison planned to execute a teacher sentenced to death.
In response, guards killed eight people and injured 60 in a shooting meant to quash the riot.
Following the country’s 2021 coup, over 26,000 political prisoners have been arrested in Myanmar for speaking against the country’s military junta, funding rebel groups and other charges. Over 20,000 are still in prison, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.
Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Kiana Duncan and Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Burmese.
An Australian solidarity group for West Papuan self-determination has condemned Indonesian authorities over the “unjust” clampdown on freedom of speech and freedom of assembly in the Melanesian region.
In a statement yesterday, the Australia West Papuan Association (AWPA) said arrests and intimidation of activists was intended to stop any activity that “might bring attention to the international community of the injustices suffered by the West Papuan people”.
AWPA spokesperson Joe Collins referred to a court case involving allegations of “treason” last week and other recent attempts to stifle free speech.
“On Tuesday, 28 March, in the Jayapura District Court, Yoseph Ernesto Matuan, who is a student of the University of Science and Technology Jayapura (USTJ), was charged with treason,” the AWPA statement said.
Matuan had called for a referendum and raised the banned Morning Star flag of independence at a rally in November 2022.
Two other USTJ students will also undergo an indictment hearing this Wednesday, April 3.
The November 2022 rally had been held to commemorate the 22th anniversary of the assassination of Papua Presidium Council leader Theys Hiyo Eluay on the 10 November 2001.
“During the rally police fired tear gas, beat students and lecturers, and arrested a number of students who gave speeches and raised the Morning Star flag,” Collins said.
“So much for Articles 19 and 20 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which state:
Article 19
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
and
Article 20
Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
“Jakarta seems to believe that these articles do not apply to the West Papuan people,” Collins said.
“And, in another outrageous act, police arrested 20 West Papuans who were undertaking fund raising activities for victims of the two cyclones which hit Vanuatu at the beginning of March.
“The fund-raising activities were forced to be disbanded by the security forces and although those arrested were eventually released, the intimidation of activists is to stop any activity that might bring attention to the international community of the injustices suffered by the West Papuan people — even though in this case it was a humanitarian act, not a political protest,” he said.
Indonesian police arrest West Papuan protesters . . . 20 students were seized at the fundraising rally for Vanuatu. Image: UWPA
Vietnamese police have arrested four more Buddhist monks from the Khmer Krom indigenous group in an ongoing clash over a pagoda in the country’s south.
Authorities in Vinh Long province also arrested an activist during a raid on Thursday at Dai Tho Pagoda, known as the Tro Nom Sek pagoda in Khmer, police said in a statement posted on Facebook.
The nearly 1.3-million strong Khmer Krom indigenous community live in a part of Vietnam that was once southeastern Cambodia. They face discrimination in Vietnam and suspicion in Cambodia, where they are often perceived not as Cambodians but as Vietnamese.
The dispute with local authorities stems from an incident last November when Thach Chanh Da Ra and others wouldn’t allow a task force from the Tam Binh District People’s Committee to enter the pagoda.
Thach Chanh Da Ra is accused of filming their visit to “defame local authorities and divide national unity.” He was dismissed from the government-recognized Vietnam Buddhist Sangha in December.
Vietnamese police arrested activist Thach Nha. (Soc Trang province police via Facebook)
On Tuesday, Thach Chanh Da Ra and follower Kim Khiem were accused of posting slandering and insulting videos on social media and charged with “abusing the rights to democratic freedom,” in violation of Article 331, a law that rights groups have said is vaguely written and often used to stifle dissent.
Police also arrested Thach Ve Sanal, another member of the pagoda, on charges of “illegally arresting, holding, or detaining people,” for his alleged role in the November incident.
Cell phones seized
The five men arrested on Thursday were also being detained on suspicion of “abusing the rights to democratic freedom” under Article 331, police said.
A monk who witnessed the arrests told Radio Free Asia that about 10 police officers entered the pagoda, defrocked the four monks and arrested them and the one activist.
By Buddhist law, monks can only be defrocked by senior monks if they breach Buddhist law – not by police.
When other monks tried to prevent the arrests, the officers responded with violence and confiscated everyone’s cell phones, the witness said.
“The persecution is brutal,” he said. “It is against our tradition and it is inhuman.”
The Khmers Kampuchea-Krom Federation condemned Thursday’s arrests, saying in a statement that “the actions of the Vietnamese authorities against these revered spiritual leaders and their supporters are a flagrant violation of fundamental human rights, including the rights to freedom of religion, expression and association.”
Translated by Anna Vu and Yun Samean. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.
RFA Khmer contributed to this report.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Vietnamese.
Police blocked and harassed reporters from the state-owned broadcaster CCTV at the site of a fatal gas explosion in Sanhe, a city in China’s northern Hebei province, on March 13, 2024, according to newsreports. The explosion was triggered by a gas leak at a restaurant, which killed seven and injured 27.
During a live broadcast about the tragic incident, two police officers interrupted CCTV reporter Yang Hailing and attempted to block the camera. At least 10 officers allegedly pushed another CCTV reporter, Xu Mengzhe, and two colleagues while they were reporting live on camera.
The incident prompted a rare rebuke from the All-China Journalists Association, a group overseen by China’s Communist Party. The association issued a statement demanding local authorities allow journalists to report on incidents concerning public security.
The Sanhe local government apologized to the reporters, noting that “some reporters were forcibly persuaded to leave while covering the event, exposing the shortcomings and inadequacies in our work.”
“We feel deeply responsible for this and apologize to reporters from CCTV and other media outlets,” the local government said in a March 14 statement.
Separately, on March 4, Chinese authorities announced the cancellation of the annual press conference by its premier, which is one of the rare moments when a top Chinese leader would answer questions from journalists, according to newsreports. The surprise announcement was not followed by an explanation for the cancellation.
The annual news conference has been held for decades at the end of the yearly parliament gathering but was scrapped at the close of this year’s annual parliament meeting and will not be held for the remaining term of China’s parliament, ending in 2027.
China was the world’s worst jailer of journalists, according to CPJ’s latest annual prison census, with at least 44 behind bars as of December 1, 2023.
Police in Vietnam’s Dong Nai province have suspended an officer involved in the case of Vu Minh Duc who died just hours after being summoned for investigation. His family told Radio Free Asia his body bore signs of torture after it was released from hospital on March 22, the day he died.
On March 27, Tien Phong (The Pioneers) newspaper reported that Capt. Thai Thanh Thuong, deputy head of the Police Team for Social Order Crimes Investigation of Long Thanh District Police had been suspended.
The female officer signed the notice to summon Duc to the local police station on the morning of March 22.
The decision to temporarily suspend the officer, signed by the director of Dong Nai Provincial Police, took effect on March 24. It did not specify why she was suspended.
As reported by RFA, Duc, was accompanied by his relatives to the district police’s headquarters in accordance with the summons notice, to work with investigator Thai Thanh Huong or investigator Luu Quang Trung regarding a case of “disrupting public order” in connection with a fight on Oct. 7, 2023 in An Phuoc commune.
On the afternoon of March 22, his family was informed that Duc had fainted during the interrogation and was sent to Long Thanh District’s General Hospital for emergency care. He later was transferred to a hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, and when his family arrived, the doctors told them Duc had died.
According to the death certificate of Cho Ray Hospital, Duc died because of a coma, acute kidney failure, acute liver failure, and injuries to the soft parts of his left and right thigh.
The National Forensic Institute worked with the Dong Nai Provincial Police and the Long Thanh District Police to conduct an autopsy on the afternoon of March 23, 2024, to find out the cause of his death.
His family was not allowed either to take photos of the autopsy or to receive the autopsy report.
“His chest area, his skin had swellings and dents, and his thighs and buttocks were swollen. In addition, the level of bruising was noteworthy. Taking a deep look inside when he was operated on, I saw a lot of blood clots inside, penetrating deep into the bone. They were not normal bruises,” Vu Hoang Phu, who witnessed the autopsy told RFA on March 27.
“On his two wrists there were scratches forming circle shapes, our family believe they were handcuffs traces.
“Together with other traces on his body, the family thought there seemed to have been some kind of great force put on his body.”
Phu said his family had received many calls and messages, saying that in addition to Thai Thanh Huong and Luu Quang Trung three other district police officers had also taken part in Duc’s interrogation.
His family arrived at Cho Ray Hospital, around 9:50 p.m. on March 22 and a doctor informed that Mr. Duc had passed away. However, the hospital’s death certificate said he died at 11:00 p.m.
“Our family is now very sad and cannot understand, plus terrified by the level of pain he had suffered. We still don’t know who beat Duc to such an extent, and what objects were used to investigate/interrogate him,” Phu said.
He said his family had sent petitions to multiple agencies, asking them to clarify where and when his brother died, who participated in his interrogation, and why there were bruises on his body.
Translated by Anna Vu. Edited by Mike Firn and Taejun Kang.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Vietnamese.
Fiji’s Acting Public Prosecutor has filed an appeal against the sentences of former prime minister Voreqe Bainimarama and suspended police chief Sitiveni Qiliho in their corruption case.
Bainimarama was granted an absolute discharge for attempting to pervert the course of justice while Qiliho received a conditional discharge with a fine of FJ$1500 ($NZ$1110) for abuse of office by the Suva Magistrates Court earlier today.
“The sentence delivered by Magistrate Puamau is unsatisfactory, is wrong both in fact and in law and does not reflect the considerations and tariff of cases or matters of similar nature,” Acting Director of Public Prosecution John Rabuku said in a statement following the sentencing.
The notice of appeal against the sentence was filed in the High Court this afternoon.
The state has filed four grounds of appeal:
a. That the sentence imposed by the learned Magistrate against both the Respondents are manifestly lenient and in breach of sentencing principles, case laws and the tariff set in other similar matters and offences.
b. That the learned Magistrate erred in law and in fact when she made a finding that there were no aggravating factors against the Respondents.
c. That the learned Magistrate erred in law and in fact in considering irrelevant factors in sentencing the Respondents; and
d. That the learned Magistrate erred in law and in fact when she made a finding that there was no victim and that the offending was a technical breach by both Respondents.
Lowest-level sentence
An absolute discharge is the lowest-level sentence that an offender can get. It means no conviction was registered against Bainimarama.
State broadcaster FBC News reports that Magistrate Puamau considered Bainimarama’s health.
The 69-year-old was sentenced alongside Qiliho, who was given a FJ$1500 fine without conviction as well.
The absolute discharge and a fine without conviction was given despite the prosecutors last week urging Magistrate Puamau to order immediate custodial sentences towards the high end of the tariff for both men — which would be no less than five years in jail for Bainimarama and 10 years for Qiliho.
RNZ Pacific reported earlier today that a Fiji governance professor, Dr Vijay Naidu, said the magistrate had been sypathetic to both men.
“It is surprising in that the sentencing is like the minimalist kind of approach,” he said.
“I didn’t expect the magistrate to sentence them for the maximum of you know 10 . . . and five years, but the sentence now is quite farcical because these persons are found guilty and they are given sentences that, to say the least, is quite ludicrous.”
He said Bainimarama was “not out of the woods yet” because there was a string of other charges that he would face in the coming months.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The family of Black teenager Ronaldo Johnson, killed by Greater Manchester Police (GMP) due to a police pursuit, have hit out after a coroner failed to even mention the chase in his ruling. They’re also supporting a campaign calling for an end to police pursuits.
Ronaldo Johnson: killed by GMP
Ronaldo Johnson, affectionately known as Ron, was a 17-year-old Black teenager. He died on 6 April 2021 when a car crashed following a police chase in Manchester in the early hours of 31 March 2021.
At 3.46am on 31 March 2021, Greater Manchester police officer PC Stuart Oram began pursuit of a car after it went through a red traffic light. During the pursuit, the police officer followed the car the wrong way around a roundabout and pursued it at high speeds of up to 65mph before it collided with a taxi in an intersection moments later.
As the Canary‘s Sophia Purdy-Moore previously wrote:
Ronaldo suffered life-threatening injuries sustained due to a pursuit by GMP. The boy – who was travelling with friends as a backseat passenger – died in hospital on 6 April…
In October 2021, Johnson’s grieving family spoke out about the lack of support provided by the police and the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC).
Now, the family’s grief has been compounded by a coroner.
Coroner’s verdict ‘disappointing’
On Tuesday 26 March the inquest concluded that Ron was unlawfully killed by the driver of the car that was pursued by Greater Manchester police.
The inquest heard that, despite knowledge that there was at least one victim, the officer in question did not immediately attend to the victims of the crash. Instead, he pursued the driver of the car on foot for a period of almost three minutes before returning to the scene of the crash.
When managing scenes, College of Policing guidance requires officers to first and foremost prioritise the preservation of life. It is clear that was not done in this case.
In his evidence at the inquest, pursuing officer Oram accepted that he should have requested for emergency services instead of simply stating “serious crash, serious crash”, so that the control room would know to call an ambulance immediately.
#EndPolicePursuits
The charity and campaign group INQUEST said in a statement:
The family are disappointed that the coroner’s findings made no mention of the police pursuit by Greater Manchester police officer, PC Stuart Oram. In their view this was a central issue in the inquest. The family firmly believe that if it were not for the police pursuit, Ron would still be here today.
The family are campaigning alongside others to call for an end to police pursuits.
Ron was a patient, kind, caring, strong, loving, passionate young boy who was dedicated to caring for the sick, disabled or anyone going through a tough season. After he died, the family learned from his friends that he had been donating packed lunches to those in need.
As reported by grassroots cop-watching group Northern Police Monitoring Project (NPMP), Johnson’s untimely death contributed to GMP’s increasing number of deaths from police pursuits. Johnson was one of eight such deaths in Manchester between September 2020 and May 2021.
Losing Ron has devastated his family, friends, loved ones and the community. We are fighting for justice for Ronaldo and will continue to fight for him. We ask you to support the Ronaldo Thierry Johnson Foundation.
We are also working collectively with other families who have lost their loved ones in high-risk, unnecessary police pursuits. We do not want to see another life lost and invite you to support the #EndPolicePursuits campaign.
No GMP failures addressed
Selen Cavcav, senior caseworker at INQUEST, said:
We are disappointed by this inquest conclusion, which does not address any failures by the officer especially in relation to his decision not to provide immediate medical assistance to Ronaldo following the collision. There needs to be a complete review of training and rules that allow the police to continue dangerous pursuits like this that cost lives.
It is a travesty that this family were not granted funding for legal representation when representation for the other state bodies was paid from the public purse.
This inequality of arms is one of the biggest obstacles facing families, who need to fight each step of the way to get basic answers as to how their loved one died and whether things could have been done differently to prevent the tragic outcome.
Justice for Ronaldo Johnson
Emma Gilbert, Solicitor for the family at Imran Khan and Partners, said:
It is astounding that the coroner’s findings of fact made no reference to the police pursuit by Greater Manchester Police immediately preceding the collision that led to Ron’s death. Ron’s death did not happen in a vacuum.
It happened in the context of at least 8 deaths following police pursuits by Greater Manchester Police in 2021/22 alone, according to statistics by the Independent Office for Police Conduct.
If families cannot rely on the inquest process to ask questions about and properly record facts on the death of their loved one – where are they supposed to turn?
Although three-quarters of migrants surveyed in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand said they suffered some type of abuse while leaving their homelands via people-smuggling networks, nearly half said they would do it again, the United Nations said in a report released Tuesday.
The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime conducted a survey of nearly 4,800 migrants and refugees in those three countries who had turned to illegal networks to smuggle them into Southeast Asia, the UNODC’s regional office in Bangkok said in its report.
The respondents were abused by the “military, police, smugglers, border guards or criminal gangs,” according to the report titled “Migrant Smuggling in Southeast Asia.” Those who took part in the survey were from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, Pakistan, Somalia and Vietnam, and included Rohingya.
“Migrant smuggling is often not a free or voluntary choice, but an act of desperation, to seek security, safety or opportunity, or freedom from threat of harm, oppression or corruption,” said Masood Karimipour, UNODC regional representative in Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
“The data shows that smugglers may be individual actors, loosely connected criminals, or organized groups. Bringing them to justice is an important part of protecting the people seeking safety and a better life,” he said in a statement that accompanied the report’s release.
The report found that military and police were seen as likely to carry out physical violence; ask for bribes or engage in extortion; cause death; and commit sexual violence during the journey.
“Non-physical violence (e.g., harassment) is more common for men (18% of smuggled men surveyed) than women (13%). Eleven percent of women and 6% of men experienced sexual violence, while 9% of men and 6% of women witnessed death,” the report said.
About one-quarter of the respondents said that climate issues including floods, drought or extreme temperatures drove them to seek out smugglers.
“Climate issues are particularly relevant for smuggled Bangladeshis; three out of four Bangladeshis surveyed said that climate-related or natural environment issues influenced their decision to leave,” the UNODC said.
A similar number said they were pulled into having to bribe officials, or give them gifts or perform favors during their travels.
“[P]eople think that they need smugglers to help them deal with corrupt authorities,” the report said.
Despite this, “Among smuggled people surveyed, almost half (48%) stated that they would have taken the journey anyway, knowing what they did now about the conditions, 40% said that they would not have and 12% were undecided,” the report said.
It found that more than two out of every three respondents said they, family or friends had initiated contact with smugglers through social media, by phone or in person. They pay fees averaging US$2,380.
Nearly 90% of Rohingya – members of a persecuted and stateless Muslim minority group from Myanmar – told interviewers that they used smugglers to get to Malaysia, Thailand or Indonesia.
In light of the report released by UNODC, RFA-affiliate BenarNews reached out and interviewed three Rohingya who had relied on people-smuggling networks in their efforts to migrate to countries in Southeast Asia other than Myanmar.
Rohingya Shobbir Hussain (left) and fellow refugees Sirajul Mustafa, Abdul Kalam and Hafiz Ayasullah stand near the Balee Meuseuraya Aceh Building, a meeting building in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, March 25, 2024. (Nurdin Hasan/BenarNews)
One of the three, Shobbir Hussain, 18, is among 2,000 Rohingya who have been sheltering in Indonesia’s Aceh region since October 2023.
Along with about 130 other Rohingya, he arrived in Aceh Besar regency on Dec. 10, from the Cox’s Bazar refugee camp in Bangladesh, after weeks adrift at sea.
Shobbir said his parents sent him on his journey to have a better life.
“Life in the Cox’s Bazar refugee camp, Bangladesh, is no longer safe. There are frequent acts of violence, kidnapping and extortion,” Shobbir said.
“It turns out here is not what I expected either,” he said.
Four months after arriving in Aceh, Shobbir said his life is much like it was in the Bangladesh camp – his time is spent eating and sleeping.
“There is nothing to do, even though I want to go to school or work.”
Shobbir said his father paid smugglers to take him by a wooden boat across the rough Andaman Sea – a 45-day journey to Indonesia – after they promised a better life in Indonesia or Malaysia. He said he did not know how much his father had paid for him to leave.
His father, mother and seven siblings lived in a cramped Cox’s Bazar refugee camp after they were forced to leave Rakhine state following a brutal offensive launched by the Myanmar military in 2017.
“Our house was burned down and the Myanmar military shot dead one of my younger brothers. That’s why we fled to Bangladesh,” he said.
Fled to Malaysia
Meanwhile in Malaysia, Shahidullah Mohd Hosein, said his parents paid smugglers to help him leave a crowded refugee camp in search of better opportunities abroad.
Shahidullah lived in the Kutapalong refugee camp in Bangladesh after his family fled the prosecution in Myanmar. His family and about 1 million other Rohingya live in camps and settlements in and around Cox’s Bazar.
Shahidullah said he had no future in the camp.
“There are a lot of groups who kidnap people to demand ransom, and if the family of the kidnapped person does not pay, they threaten to kill that person,” Shahidullah, 29, told BenarNews.
He said groups have burned shelters in the crowded camps at night, leaving families homeless.
Shahidullah said he reached out to a syndicate to arrange passage to Malaysia. Before long the syndicate demanded his mother pay 500,000 Bangladeshi taka ($4,565) to transport him to Malaysia. He arrived in Malaysia in September 2023.
“I did not know how my mother was able to get the money. But after a few days I was sent to a boat with around 100 other Rohingya.
“It took us one month and some trekking to get us to Malaysia. We had no food throughout the journey and could only eat when we were on land,” he said, adding that the group had to resort to eating leaves while trekking through jungles.
Shahidullah’s journey ended last September in Ampang, near Malaysia’s capital of Kuala Lumpur, where he has been housed by the Rohingya expatriate community.
Rohingya Halima Khatun, 25, seen here in a Cox’s Bazar refugee camp, returned to Bangladesh last month after spending 13 months incarcerated in Myanmar after her effort to travel to Malaysia failed, March 8, 2024. (Sharif Khiam/BenarNews)
In Bangladesh, a Rohingya woman has returned to a refugee camp after her attempt to travel to Myanmar for an arranged marriage led to spending more than a year in a Myanmar prison.
Halima Khatun saw her father killed by Burmese troops in Myanmar’s Rakhine state on Aug. 25, 2017. Her mother took her and two sisters across the border where they sheltered at a Bangladesh seeking shelter in the Teknaf refugee camp.
Halima, who was 18 at the time, said she fled the camp in late 2022 to travel to Malaysia assisted by human traffickers. Instead, she spent 13 months in prison after being arrested by Myanmar authorities when the boat’s engine broke down during the sea voyage.
“My family was unable to trace me during those 13 months. They assumed I had drowned in the sea or died anyhow,” she told BenarNews during an interview.
Following her release from prison, Halima returned to Bangladesh in February with assistance from Myanmar relatives.
“My marriage to Habibur Rahman, a young Rohingya guy in Malaysia, was planned. He was the one who attempted to utilize the ‘Dalal’ syndicate to get me there,” she said. The term means brokers.
“One of the brokers involved in my journey to Malaysia was a Rohingya living in Myanmar; another was a local Bangladeshi,” Halima said.
The traffickers demanded 800,000 taka ($7,289) as payment for transporting her to Malaysia.
She was traveling with several Rohingya men and women, as well as some Bangladeshis.
“After leaving Shamila [a Rakhine state village], we stayed on that boat for 22 days before moving on to another small boat for two days and two nights. Then, as the boat [engine stalled], the sailors rushed away.
“Then the ‘military’ arrived and rescued us. After that, a police car drove all of us to a place where we were for 12 days,” she said.
Sentenced to two years in a Myanmar prison, Halima spent 13 months incarcerated.
About three weeks ago, Halima paid a broker fee to cross the Naf river by boat and return to Bangladesh.
Halima said the man who promised to marry her had already married another Rohingya girl from a camp in Bangladesh and took her to Malaysia.
Abdur Rahman in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, Ahmad Mustakim Zulkifli in Kuala Lumpur and Nurdin Hasan in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, contributed to this report.
BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news organization.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By BenarNews Staff.
Amnesty International Indonesia is calling for an evaluation of the placement of TNI (Indonesian military) in Papua after a video of a Papuan man being tortured by several soldiers at the Gome Post in Puncak regency, Central Papua, went viral on social media.
“This incident was a [case of] cruel and inhuman torture that really damages our sense of justice,” said Amnesty International executive director Usman Hamid in a statement.
“It tramples over humanitarian values that are just and civilised. To the families of the victim, we expressed our deep sorrow.”
“Sadists!” . . . An Indonesian newspaper graphic of the torture video that went viral. Image: IndoLeft News
Hamid said that no one in this world, including in Papua, should be treated inhumanely and their dignity demeaned — let alone to the point of causing the loss of life.
“The statements by senior TNI officials and other government officials about a humanitarian approach and prosperity [in Papua] are totally meaningless.
“It is ignored by the [military] on the ground,” he said.
Hamid said that such incidents were able to be repeated because until now there had been no punishment for TNI members proven to have committed crimes of kidnapping, torture and the loss of life.
Call for fact-finding team
Hamid said Amnesty International was calling for a joint fact-finding team to be formed to investigate the abuse, including urging that an evaluation be carried on to the deployment of TNI soldiers in the land of Papua.
“There must be a sharp reflection on the placement of security forces in the land of Papua which has given rise to people falling victim, both indigenous Papuans, non-Papuans, including the security forces themselves”, he said.
Earlier, a short video containing an act of torture by TNI members went viral on social media. It shows a civilian who has been placed in an oil drum filled with water being tortured by members of the TNI.
TNI Information Centre director (kapuspen) Major-General Nugraha Gumilar has revealed the identity of the person being tortured by the soldiers as allegedly being a member of a pro-independence resistance group — described by Indonesia as an “armed criminal group (KKB)” — named Definus Kogoya.
“The rogue TNI soldiers committed acts of violence against a prisoner, a KKB member by the name of Definus Kogoya at the Gome Post in Puncak Regency, Papua,” he said when sought for confirmation on Saturday.
Despite this, General Gumilar has still has not revealed any further information about the identity of the TNI members who committed the torture. He confirmed only that more than one member was involved in the abuse.
He said an “intensive examination” was still being conducted and he pledged it would be transparent and act firmly against all of the accused torturers.
“Later I will convey [more information] after the investigation is finished, what is clear is that it was more than one person if you see from the video”, he said.
Note: The video (warning: contains graphic, violent content and viewer discretion is advised) of the Papuan man being tortured by TNI soldiers can be viewed on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJgAHYdLgVo (requires registration)
Papua New Guinea’s Defence Minister and minister responsible for the National Disaster Centre Dr Billy Joseph confirmed today that the government — with coordinated support from all stakeholder agencies and development partners — was responding appropriately to the natural disasters that has hit many parts of the country.
The National Disaster Center (NDC) is the national coordinating agency and is working with provincial governments and district development authorities (DDAs) as well as the Department of Works and Highways, PNG Defence Force and other stakeholders to coordinate and respond promptly.
The East Sepik provincial earthquake on Sunday left at least three dead and more than 1000 homes collapsed.
The US Geological Survey said it was magnitude 6.9 and just over 40 km deep.
PNG’s Disaster Minister Dr Billy Joseph . . . “seven people are still missing [off the coast of New Ireland] and our search is still active.” Image: PNG Post-CourierA summary of the current crises impacting on Papua New Guinea.
King tides and heavy flooding The minister confirmed that about 10 provinces are getting the necessary assistance from the National Disaster Center, including Goroka/EHP which was not included in the initial report provided to his office.
PNG Defence Force troops are working closely with the Simbu Provincial Government and Gumine DDA and their respective leaderships as Simbu was one of the worst affected provinces.
7 people missing off the coast of New Ireland Province Nine people boarded a banana boat at Kavieng for Emirau Island but did not make it due to heavy weather conditions when the boat capsized.
Two of the young men swam to the island to look for help while seven others made a makeshift raft and floated awaiting assistance.
“As of today, seven people are still missing and our search is still active — if we don’t find them after 72 hours, we will declare them lost and the search will be discontinued,” Minister Joseph said.
The Australian Defence Force has provided a C27 aircraft to conduct low aerial surveillance of the subject areas.
A PNGDF Navy Patrol Boat has also been deployed to the area but no sightings have been reported.
The Search and Rescue operations are being coordinated by the National Maritime Safety Authority with oversight provided by the PNG Defence Force.
East Sepik Province earthquake NDC is working very closely with the leaders of East Sepik, including the provincial government, to ensure much needed help reach the people that need it.
An emergency allocation of K200,000 (about NZ$90,000) has been made available for food, water, shelter and medicines etc as seen appropriate by the Provincial Disaster Committee.
It is at their disposal. A commercial helicopter is now in Wewak to assist in the relief operations and the PNDF military helicopter will join shortly.
“We are also mobilising support from our bilateral partners to assist but the challenge is now for the Provincial Disaster Center to provide reports to NDC so we define and coordinate what kind of emergency assistance is required,” Minister Joseph said.
Minister Joseph further warned Papua New Guineans to take precautions and not take risks, especially at sea, as the country’s emergency services are stretched and rescue efforts may not happen in time.
Miriam Zarriga is a PNG Post-Courier reporter. Republished with permission.
An Australian solidarity group for West Papua today warned of a fresh “heavy handed” Indonesia crackdown on Papuan villagers with more “arrests and torture”.
Joe Collins of the Australia West Papua Association (AWPA) gave the warning in the wake of the deployment of 30 elite rangers last week at the Ndeotadi 99 police post in Paniai district, Central Papua, following a deadly assault there by Papuan pro-independence resistance fighters.
Two Indonesian police officers were killed in the attack.
The AWPA warning also follows mounting outrage over a brutal video of an Indonesian Papuan man being tortured in a fuel drum that has gone viral.
Collins called on the federal government to “immediately condemn” the torture of West Papuans by the Australian-trained Indonesian security forces.
“If a security force sweep occurs in the region, we can expect the usual heavy-handed approach by the security forces,” Collins said in a statement.
“It’s not unusual for houses and food gardens to be destroyed during these operations, including the arrest and torture of Papuans.
“Local people usually flee their villages creating more IDP [internally displaced people]”.
60,000 plus IDPs
Human rights reports indicate there are more than 60,000 IDP in West Papua.
“The recent brutal torture ofan indigenous Papuan man shows what can happen to West Papuans who fall foul of the Indonesian security forces,” Collins said.
“Anyone seeing this video which has gone viral must be shocked by the brutality of the military personal involved.
The video clip was shot on 3 February 2024 during a security force raid in Puncak regency.
“The Australian government should immediately condemn the torture of West Papuans by the Indonesian security forces [which] Australia trains and holds exercises with.
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. In particular, no one shall be subjected without his free consent to medical or scientific experimentation.
“As more Papuans become aware of the horrific video, they may respond by holding rallies and protests leading to more crackdowns on peaceful demonstrators,” Collins said.
“Hopefully Jakarta will realise the video is being watched by civil society, the media and government officials around the world and will control its military in the territory.”
The US rulers and their national security state foisted two major campaigns of lies on us to win our support for their planned wars. The first that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. This bogus story was rejected by the progressive and anti-war movements. The second that Trump colluded with Putin to steal the 2016 election; this, progressives fell for. It remains a shocking example of manipulation of supposedly well-educated progressive people – many of whom do not hesitate to ridicule MAGA people for their bigotry and ignorance.
Russiagate, packaged as a tale of Putin and Trump collusion, was a plot against the government elected by the people. Russiagate, first leaked to the media in mid-2016 by CIA Director Brennan, sought to sabotage a presidential campaign and then delegitimize the Trump presidency. It was an essential tool for legitimizing the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, costing hundreds of billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives.
Yet, no evidence was ever presented that Trump colluded with Putin. No evidence was presented that the Russians hacked Democratic National Committee (DNC) computers. No evidence was presented that any votes in 2016 were switched.
Origin of anti-Russian campaign and the Russiagate Story
In 2014 Washington instigated an anti-Russian coup in Ukraine. Then when Russia aided Syria in the US-provoked “civil war,” Russia bashing intensified. As General Wesley Clark revealed, the US had targeted Syria for overthrow at least since 2001 and was in a favorable position to accomplish this goal until Moscow began significant military aid to Damascus in 2015.
CIA’s Brennan aimed to manipulate the public to prepare for a showdown with Russia. Mike Whitney wrote, “After Putin blocked Brennan’s operations in both Ukraine and Syria, Brennan had every reason to retaliate and to use the tools at his disposal to demonize Putin and try to isolate Russia.” Meanwhile, Trump was gaining ground in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries when he called for US troops to get out Syria and the Middle East and said the “deep state” lied to us about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Whitney adds, “It provided him [Brennan] the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone, to deliver a withering blow to Putin and Trump at the very same time.”
Russiagate was created by CIA director John Brennan. The CIA started what is called Russiagate in order to prevent Trump from being able to normalize relations with Russia. The CIA and the military/security complex need an enemy in order to justify their huge budgets and unaccountable power. Russia has been assigned that role. The Democrats joined in as a way of attacking Trump. They hoped to have him tarnished as cooperating with Russia to steal the presidential election from Hillary and to have him impeached.
Russian expert Stephen Cohen concurred, reporting that Brennan was collecting material for the collusion story in late 2015 or early 2016 and instigated the FBI investigation into the Trump-Putin hoax. “Brennan played a central role in promoting the Russiagate narrative thereafter.” Cohen, in “Russiagate’s ‘Core Narrative’ Has Always Lacked Actual Evidence,” said the story was based on two documents: an “Intelligence Community Assessment” and the Steele dossier, compiled by a retired UK intelligence officer. The core narrative of both claimed Putin intervened in the 2016 presidential campaign to damage Hillary Clinton’s candidacy to help Trump. Journalist Aaron Mate further detailed CIA Director Brennan’s role as “a prime mover of Russiagate.”
Steele Dossier
“The Dossier” asserted Trump colluded with Russia to defeat Hillary Clinton, claiming that Russia hacked the DNC computer servers. Mike Whitney and others point out the Steele Dossier was paid for by the DNC and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. While the Dossier is now discredited, the FBI’s investigation into Trump’s connections to Russia was launched based on “information” gathered from this paid-for report. Steele “was a former M16 agent who was paid $160,000 for composing the dubious set of reports that make up the dossier. We don’t even know if Steele’s alleged contacts or intermediaries in Russia actually exist or not.”
The “Intelligence Community Assessment” (ICA)
CIA boss Brennan, along with the FBI and the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Clapper, finally released the ICA report in January 2017, which concluded that Putin “ordered” a campaign aimed at influencing the election. The Assessment claimed:
“Russian efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential election represent the most recent expression of Moscow’s longstanding desire to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order… We assess with high confidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election, the consistent goals of which were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary [Hillary] Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency…We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump…Russian intelligence obtained and maintained access to elements of multiple US state or local electoral boards…. We have high confidence in these judgments.”
The Assessment contained no evidence of Russia’s role but asserted Russia’s actions included hacking into the email accounts of the DNC along with intermediaries such as WikiLeaks to release the hacked information.
Stephen Cohen adds, “Clapper subsequently admitted he had personally selected for the ICA analysts from the three agencies, but we still do not know who. No doubt these were analysts who would conform to the ‘core narrative’ of Kremlin-Trump collusion…. the ICA provided almost no facts for its ‘assessment.’”
National Security State Directors Perpetuate their Trump-Putin collusion hoax
CIA’s Brennan deceived Congress and the public by claiming sufficient evidence existed to investigate Trump’s campaign. The BBC 2017 article Ex-CIA chief Brennan says Trump-Russia inquiry ‘well-founded’ stated Brennan “told the House Intelligence Committee he was aware of intelligence showing contact between Russian officials and ‘US persons involved in the Trump campaign’.” Brennan said the Russians ‘brazenly interfered’ in the 2016 US elections and were ‘very aggressive.’”
The third national security state boss, FBI Director Comey, proclaimed in Congressional hearings that Putin:
hated Secretary Clinton so much that the flip side of that coin was that he had a clear preference for the person running against the person he hated so much. They engaged in a multifaceted campaign to undermine our democracy. They were unusually loud in their intervention. It’s almost as if they didn’t care that we knew, that they wanted us to see what they were doing. Their number one mission is to undermine the credibility of our entire democracy enterprise of this nation. They’ll be back. They’ll be back, in 2020. They may be back in 2018.
Mike Whitney remarked, “So among his other talents, Comey also knows how to read minds. He knows that Putin hates Hillary and favors Trump. He knows the Russians ‘engaged in a multifaceted campaign to undermine our democracy’, even though he hasn’t produced a lick of proof to verify his claims.”
Whitney adds later, “The FBI made a “concerted effort to conceal information from the court” in order to get a warrant to spy on a member of a rival political campaign. The FBI failed to mention that the dossier was paid for by the Hillary campaign and the DNC.”
The fourth national police state boss, NSA Director Michael Rogers, when asked on November 15, 2016, about the WikiLeaks release of DNC emails during the 2016 presidential campaign, declared, “This was a conscious effort by a nation-state [Russia] to attempt to achieve a specific effect.” He added, “This was not something that was done casually. This was not something that was done by chance.”
Thus, the Trump-Putin collusion and Russia hacking story was propagated by the CIA, NSA, FBI, and DNI, the backbone of the national security police state.
The story that Russia “hacked” DNC-Hillary Clinton computers
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity pointed out that the “NSA is able to identify both the sender and recipient when hacking is involved…The bottom line is that the NSA would know where and how any “hacked” emails from the DNC, HRClinton or any other servers were routed through the network.” Given that this hacking was allegedly by a foreign power, which the US considered an enemy, it would make sense to conclude the NSA knew Russia did not do it, but stayed mum.
Instead of asking the NSA or FBI, the DNC hired CrowdStrike to investigate the “hacking” of their computers, despite the claimed significant US national security threat that a foreign power hacked presidential campaign computers to alter the election. CrowdStrike became the only actual source for “information” on the Russian hacking of DNC computers and Russia’s providing the scoop to WikiLeaks. FBI Director Comey never insisted on access to the DNC computers, nor was the FBI given an unredacted report. The only evidence of a hack comes from this company paid by the DNC.
CrowdStrike’s chief technical officer was Dmitri Alperovich, a senior fellow with the Saudi and Rockefeller Foundation funded think tank, the neocon Atlantic Council. It has several former CIA directors on its board and considered to be NATO’s “think tank.”
Adam Schiff, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, knew from the head of CrowdStrike, Shawn Henry in December 5, 2017, that CrowdStrike had no evidence that the DNC emails were hacked by Russia or anyone else. However, Schiff kept this from the public until May 7, 2020, two and a half years later.
National Police State Directors admit they made up the Trump-Putin collusion Story
After the 2016 election, the DNI, CIA, NSA, and FBI bosses admitted they made up the collusion story and that the Intelligence Community Assessment they released to the public contained no evidence. CIA boss Brennan when asked on May 23, 2017 in a Congressional hearing into Russian collusion declared, “I don’t do evidence…I don’t know whether such collusion existed.”
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper admitted to the House Intelligence Committee on July 17, 2017, “I never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign or someone in it was plotting/conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election.” Clapper also owned up, in July 5, 2017 testimony that “17 intelligence agencies” had confirmed Russian interference in the 2016 election has been false all along.
For his part, FBI Director Comey, in Congressional testimony on March 20, 2017, “stated there is no evidence to support collusion between President Donald Trump and Russia.” In a June 8, 2017 hearing, when asked “Are you confident that no votes cast in the 2016 presidential election were altered?” Comey answered, “I’m confident.”
Brennan, Clapper, and Comey, the three chief national security state bosses behind the Russiagate story admitted they made it up, that no evidence substantiates their hoax on the public.
Too many progressives swallow the CIA invented Trump-Putin collusion story
Thus, we have the heads of the national security state police agencies concocting a story to sway a US presidential election and incite anger at Russia. Progressives recognize the NSA, CIA and FBI as enemies of human rights and liberties. Most progressives also view Trump as fascist or “neo-fascist.” But here we have the curiosity of the national police state agencies interfering in a US election to stop a “fascist” from being elected. Progressives might reflect on why they have ended up opposing the same candidate the national security state opposes, how they put themselves in the position of voting for the candidates (Hillary and Biden) that the national security state preferred.
We now have evidence to know the US national security state systematically interfered in a presidential election. They made up a story and convinced most of the US public of it. They even surveilled and wire-tapped members of the presidential campaign they opposed. This testifies to the colossal reach of the national security state over us, their ability to make us believe a falsehood is reality. And get away with it unpunished. It attests to their power over US society that no dared indict them for trying to fix our elections.
That the national police agencies undertook this vast operation against the Republican Party, considered the more reactionary enforcer of the status quo of the two corporate parties, warns us what they have in store when an actual popular revolt against their status quo arises.
Considerable information has existed for some years that the Russiagate hoax was no more true than Saddam Hussein’s WMDs, which few progressives swallowed. The opposite case here. Progressives drank the anti-Trump “Kool-Aid.” A 2018 Gallup poll showed that 90% of Democratic voters bought the Russia interference story compared to 67% of Republican voters. On whether Russia changed the election outcome, 78% of Democratic voters agreed. without evidence ever presented. Ironically, these voters include those who proclaim, “follow the science” and consider the MAGA crowd as uneducated and prejudiced.
Many progressives had just supported Bernie in 2015-16 only to see Hillary Clinton’s dirty tricks snatch the Democratic nomination from him. Yet they welcomed this Clinton/DNC/national security state propagated hoax – the very people they just repudiated; a testimony of how the ruling class can manage consent.
The police state agencies whipped up such a Russiagate hysteria that if you questioned it in a public forum, you were sure to be attacked as being a Putin stooge, disloyal, a MAGA bigot.
This Putin-Trump collusion hoax and consequent hysteria laid the foundation for the later propaganda campaign to provoke the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. And we see in the 2018 poll that Democratic voters were more welcoming of aggressive action. Likewise, a poll revealed ten months into the Ukraine war that, “33% of Republicans agreed with that prolonged support, compared to 61% of Democrats and 46% of independents.” Remarkedly, Democratic voters have become more war-friendly.
In addition, Russiagate gave impetus to the campaign of smearing independent, anti-war media as agents of Russian disinformation. Even articles in progressive media such as Counterpunch propagated this nonsense, labeling those who did not support the US attempts to overthrow the Syrian government or defend the Ukrainian coup regime as “Assadists” and “Putinists.” This shows the continuing threat to the anti-war movement, given that US national security police state disinformation operations still hold considerable sway, permitting them to repress and marginalize voices for peace more easily.
Tyrants don’t like people who speak truth to power.
Cue the rise of protest laws, which take the government’s intolerance for free speech to a whole new level and send the resounding message that resistance is futile.
Weaponized by police, prosecutors, courts and legislatures, these protest laws, along with free speech zones, bubble zones, trespass zones, anti-bullying legislation, zero tolerance policies, hate crime laws, and a host of other legalistic maladies have become a convenient means by which to punish individuals who refuse to be muzzled.
In Florida, for instance, legislators passed a “no-go” zone law making it punishable by up to 60 days in jail to remain within 25 feet of working police and other first responders after a warning.
Yet while the growing numbers of protest laws cropping up across the country are sold to the public as necessary to protect private property, public roads or national security, they are a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a thinly disguised plot to discourage anyone from challenging government authority at the expense of our First Amendment rights.
It doesn’t matter what the source of that discontent might be (police brutality, election outcomes, COVID-19 mandates, the environment, etc.): protest laws, free speech zones, no-go zones, bubble zones, trespass zones, anti-bullying legislation, zero tolerance policies, hate crime laws, etc., aim to muzzle every last one of us.
No matter how you package these laws, no matter how well-meaning they may sound, no matter how much you may disagree with the protesters or sympathize with the objects of the protest, these proposed laws are aimed at one thing only: discouraging dissent.
This is the painful lesson being imparted with every incident in which someone gets arrested and charged with any of the growing number of contempt charges (ranging from resisting arrest and interference to disorderly conduct, obstruction, and failure to obey a police order) that get trotted out anytime a citizen voices discontent with the government or challenges or even questions the authority of the powers-that-be.
Journalists have come under particular fire for exercising their right to freedom of the press.
According to U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, the criminalization of routine journalism has become a means by which the government chills lawful First Amendment activity.
Journalists have been arrested or faced dubious charges for “publishing,” asking too many questions of public officials, being “rude” for reporting during a press conference, and being in the vicinity of public protests and demonstrations.
It’s gotten so bad that merely daring to question, challenge or hesitate when a cop issues an order can get you charged with resisting arrest or disorderly conduct.
These incidents reflect a growing awareness about the state of free speech in America: you may have distinct, protected rights on paper, but dare to exercise those rights, and you risk fines, arrests, injuries and even death.
Case in point: Tony Rupp, a lawyer in Buffalo, NY, found himself arrested and charged with violating the city’s noise ordinance after cursing at an SUV bearing down on pedestrians on a busy street at night with its lights off. Because that unmarked car was driven by a police officer, that’s all it took for Rupp to find himself subjected to malicious prosecution, First Amendment retaliation and wrongful arrest.
The case, as Jesse McKinley writes in The New York Times, is part of a growing debate over “how citizens can criticize public officials at a time of widespread reevaluation of the lengths and limits of free speech. That debate has raged everywhere from online forums and college campuses to protests over racial bias in law enforcement and the Israel-Hamas war. Book bans and other acts of government censorship have troubled some First Amendment experts. Last week, the Supreme Court heard arguments about a pair of laws — in Florida and Texas — limiting the ability of social media companies such as Facebook to ban certain content from their platforms.”
Bottom line: what the architects of the police state want are submissive, compliant, cooperative, obedient, meek citizens who don’t talk back, don’t challenge government authority, don’t speak out against government misconduct, and don’t resist.
What the First Amendment protects—and a healthy constitutional republic requires—are citizens who routinely exercise their right to speak truth to power.
Yet there can be no free speech for the citizenry when the government speaks in a language of force.
Unfortunately, this is how the government at all levels—federal, state and local—now responds to those who choose to exercise their First Amendment right to speak freely.
Remember, the unspoken freedom enshrined in the First Amendment is the right to challenge government agents, think freely and openly debate issues without being muzzled or treated like a criminal.
As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, by muzzling the citizenry, by removing the constitutional steam valves that allow people to speak their minds, air their grievances and contribute to a larger dialogue that hopefully results in a more just world, the government is creating a climate in which violence becomes inevitable.
In Papua New Guinea, sorcery accusation-related violence (SARV) remains a significant form of violence across many parts of the country.
Many of the hundreds of cases that are reported end up before the village court system, which has been the focus of a study by the PNG Institute of National Research in partnership with the Australian National University and Divine Word University.
These institutions looked at the role of the village courts, when dealing with SARV cases, and how it can be improved.
Miranda Forsyth from the ANU’s School of Regulation and Global Governance was one of the researchers involved and spoke with RNZ Pacific’s Don Wiseman about the issues.
Don Wiseman (DW): This matter of sorcery accusation related violence does appear to be getting worse and worse across PNG, and while many of the victims’ cases are being taken to the village courts, this isn’t always working for them?
Miranda Forsyth (MF): That’s right. So first of all, in terms of it getting worse and worse, we actually don’t know. What we do know is that it is a major problem that isn’t going away. There are hundreds of these cases every year. And we know that it is impacting upon different communities in different ways. And it’s traveling into provinces that had never used to be in before. So, for example, in Enga [Province], there weren’t these kinds of cases before about 2010.
We also know that in some places where, traditionally, it was men who were being accused then, now women are being accused there. We also know that children are a growing group of victims of sorcery accusations.
We can also say that it seems that some of the violence has changed as well. There’s a kind of a sexualised violence that’s often used when it’s women who are being accused, but doesn’t tend to have been around as prevalently in the past. So, just to contextualise a little bit, the claims that it’s growing — of course these crimes are very hidden, often the whole community is complicit.
And so people don’t go to the police, they don’t go to the court. And that’s been the case forever, really. We don’t have any good data where we can say, ‘oh, clearly, these are the trends’. But there’s a lot more attention being paid to the issue now, which is fantastic.
It certainly appears from the number of cases that are being reported in the newspapers and that are getting to the formal courts as well, that the numbers are growing. In terms of what happens when people go to see the village courts; what our research has found is that there are both challenges for the village court magistrates and there’s also a lot of really creative responses.
DW: It’s clearly a challenging matter right across the country for officials at every level. But for these village magistrates working largely in isolation, it must be horrendously challenging?
MF: Yes, particularly the village court magistrates who are not really clear themselves about what the law is, who might believe very strongly in sorcery, those are big challenges for them. Often, as well, it’s a village court magistrate against the entire community. So it puts their lives at risk.
We’ve certainly documented a number of cases where village court magistrates have had their house burned down or been chased out of the village when they’ve been trying to act on behalf of the accused and the accused family. It’s quite a precarious position.
What we find is that the village court magistrates are most successful when they can act in coalition with, for example, a sympathetic police officer or a strong religious leader or a strong village leader — a community leader of some sort, when there is support from a strong family member, as well.
All of these things give credibility and help the village court magistrate to manage the case.
DW: There are examples as well, though aren’t there in your research, of magistrates, who clearly believe the accusations of sorcery and end up siding with the perpetrators?
MF: Absolutely. We’ve documented quite a number of those cases where the village court magistrates will require the person who’s been accused to pay compensation to their accusers for having performed sorcery. This is obviously a really problematic outcome for the person who’s been accused, that not only have they been accused, they’ve gone through what can often be horrendous physical violence, but then the justice system actually condemns them further and requires them to pay compensation.
We’ve also documented some cases where the village court magistrates have also been involved in giving beatings to the people who have been accused. There are definitely those cases that are problematic. A number of those, however, were appealed to the higher courts and the higher courts then gave out sentences and issued very clear instructions to say that that was inappropriate. So there is some degree of oversight by those higher level courts.
However, there are certainly village court magistrates who are really trying to be creative in the way in which they’re helping victims of SARV. They are, for example, issuing preventative audits. When it’s the suspicion and talk and gossip going around, and they’re getting on the front foot and they’re saying, ‘we are warning everybody that you are not allowed to take any action against these particular people’. That works better when they’re able to rely upon a police officer to support them.
We also find that some village court magistrates are able to use their mediating functions to really understand what’s going on at the heart of these accusations. Is it really about a fear of sorcery or is it about somebody wanting to take another wife, for example? Or are there land disputes that are really at the heart of this? And they then proactively get involved in mediating those underlying tensions so that the accusations themselves don’t develop any further.
DW: It’s a question largely then of greater resourcing, more education for these people?
MF: A lot of them [the magistrates] don’t have their salary paid on a regular basis. They don’t have regular training. They don’t have supports in terms of oversight by the higher courts. They don’t have police officers that they can call upon to help to keep the peace when they’re holding their meetings. There is a great need for more support for village for magistrates, who are often doing an amazing job against all odds.
DW: What else could be done to improve their lot and improve the lives of sorcery accusation victims?
MF: One of the things that we’ve proposed is that there are creative training materials that are distributed, for example, through people’s smartphones, so that they can refresh their memory, ‘Oh, that’s right. That’s what the law says and these are the different strategies that we can use to address these cases’, short videos, for example, or else just little pads that they can keep in their pocket.
We also thought about the fact that it would be a good idea to facilitate the setting up of direct communication links between village court magistrates and the police and SARV victims so that they can quickly be activated when people are afraid that something is going to go down, then they can step in. Because what we find is that the earlier the intervention is made, the more chance it’s got of being effective.
Once things really get out of control. It’s very hard for anybody to stop it, unfortunately.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
A senior National Court judge in Papua New Guinea has dismissed an expatriate prisoner’s request to have his sentence suspended due to poor health.
Judge Panuel Mogish said the court was interested in maintaining a standard that was equal to both non-citizens and citizens of Papua New Guinea.
“Suspension is impossible for an expatriate as these expatriates deliberately come into this country and cause an offence so they have to be punished accordingly within this country instead of breaking the law then [using] medical reasons to flee,” he said.
Justice Mogish was responding to submissions made by a 52-year-old Italian drug trafficker, Carlo D’Attansio, whose lawyer initially asked that his client who has cancer be given mercy of the court and have part or the whole of his sentence suspended.
D’Attanasia, is one of four men who were convicted of concealing bags of cocaine weighing 611kg and worth K200 million (about NZ$88 million) between February and July 2020 in the vicinity of Papa and Lealea, Central Province.
However, since being locked up, D’Attanasio has been pleading to the court about his cancer which he said was life threatening.
He has been admitted to the Paradise Private hospital but continuously brings to court complaints that he is not being treated well.
‘Life-threatening’ says letter
Yesterday, his lawyer told the court that the chief executive officer of the private hospital had written a statement to show that D’Attanasio’s condition was life-threatening and he would need medical treatment overseas.
D’Attanasio therefore asked the court to either suspend his sentence in part or full, or impose a lesser penalty on him.
The state prosecutions objected to the request saying he was a main actor in the crime and deserved the highest penalty of 25 years’ imprisonment.
Justice Mogish then said: “It could be seen as a double standard.”
Melyne Baroiis a PNG Post-Courier reporter. Republished with permission.
Istanbul, March 19, 2024 – The Committee to Protect Journalists urges Turkish authorities to investigate reports of police harassment of three reporters during Kurdish spring Newroz celebrations in Istanbul on Sunday.
On Sunday, March 17, Police officers in Istanbul harassed at least three reporters in two separate incidents while they were covering a mass arrest during Newroz celebrations calling for Kurdish rights in Yenikapı Square. Officers took Agence France-Presse reporter Eylül Deniz Yaşar into custody and detained Tuğçe Yılmaz and Ali Dinç, reporters with independent news website Bianet. Yılmaz and Dinç were ordered to lay on the ground, handcuffed, and allegedly beaten.
“Reporters Tuğçe Yılmaz, Ali Dinç, and Eylül Deniz Yaşar were simply doing their jobs by reporting on a Newroz celebration, an event of public interest, when police harassed them,” said Özgür Öğret, CPJ’s Turkey representative. “Turkish authorities must investigate this harassment and make sure reporters in the field face no obstacles to their work.”
All three reporters will file criminal complaints with the police, according to the reports above and Yılmaz and Yaşar, who spoke to CPJ separately via messaging app.
Police officers tried to prevent other reporters from capturing video as Yılmaz and Dinç were forced to lay on the ground and surrounded by several officers. The two journalists were documenting celebration attendees being taken into custody by the police.
Separately, police did not allow Yaşar to pass a security checkpoint with her camera despite her presenting her press card. They then took her into custody for approximately six hours during which she was threatened and insulted, according to news reports.
CPJ emailed the Turkish Interior Ministry, which oversees the police, for comment, but did not immediately receive any reply.
New York, March 19, 2024—Nepali authorities must swiftly and impartially investigate the attack on journalist Padam Prasad Pokhrel and hold the perpetrators to account, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Tuesday.
On the evening of February 28, up to 15 police officers attacked Pokhrel, editor-in-chief of the news website Pranmancha, while the journalist was filming officers allegedly displacing street vendors by force in the Sundhara area of the capital Kathmandu, according to local advocacy groups Media Action Nepal and Freedom Forum, as well as a statement by the Working Journalists Association of Nepal, reviewed by CPJ.
Pokhrel was filming a baton charge by the Kathmandu metropolitan police when the officers surrounded him, beat him with batons, and kicked him for around ten minutes, he told CPJ, adding that he shouted that he was a journalist and displayed his press identification card. The journalist told CPJ that officers confiscated his phone, camera, and laptop, along with other items worth around 11,000 rupees (US $82) that he purchased earlier that day.
Pokhrel said officers then dragged him into a vehicle and continued to beat him for around 15 minutes until they reached a local police station, where he was left outside and later taken to the hospital by officers with the Nepal central police force. Pokhrel said he was treated at the National Trauma Center for a torn ligament in his right leg and significant bruising and muscle pain throughout his body.
“Nepali authorities must complete a credible and transparent investigation into the assault on journalist Padam Prasad Pokhrel and return any items seized during the attack,” said Beh Lih Yi, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator. “The public has a right to be informed about police violence in their communities, and journalists must be able to cover such incidents without fear of reprisal.”
Following protests by local journalists, the Kathmandu Metropolitan City administration appointed an investigative committee to probe the incident and told the journalist that the findings would be revealed on Friday, March 22, Pokhrel said.
Authorities returned Pokhrel’s phone on Monday but said they were unaware of the location of his other items, the journalist told CPJ.
CPJ called and messaged Bhim Prasad Dhakal, spokesperson of the Nepal Police; Dinesh Mainali, spokesperson of the Kathmandu metropolitan police; and Pradip Pariyar, chief administrative officer of the Kathmandu Metropolitan City administration, but did not receive a response.
The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department agreed on Feb. 29, 2024, to pay the Las Vegas Review-Journal a total of $620,000 to cover the paper’s legal fees, settling two lawsuits against the department for violations of the state’s public records law.
The settlement stemmed from two incidents in which the department repeatedly denied the newspaper’s requests for documents or provided heavily redacted files, the Review-Journal reported. The first request sought the case file of a 2018 police investigation into a Nevada Highway Patrol trooper who had allegedly asked a confidential informant to harm or kill his wife. The second sought information about a deadly fire at the city’s Alpine Motel Apartments in 2019.
The newspaper filed lawsuits challenging both of the public records denials in February 2020. Immediately after the Review-Journal filed its suit concerning the fire, the department released some records, including a small portion of the body-camera footage, 911 calls and radio traffic records, according to court filings reviewed by the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.
After years of litigation, both lawsuits were appealed to the state Supreme Court, which determined in two separaterulings in March and August of 2023 that the police department had violated the Nevada Public Records Act when failing to comply with the Review-Journal’s requests. The court ordered that the records be released with limited redactions and awarded the newspaper attorneys’ fees and costs under the NPRA’s fee-shifting mandate.
During a public meeting at police headquarters on Feb. 29, 2024, the Metropolitan Police Committee on Fiscal Affairs — which oversees the department’s finances — approved payments of $325,000 and $295,000, the Review-Journal reported.
An attorney for the Review-Journal told the newspaper that such reimbursements for legal fees are vital after taking the government to court, but lamented the impact they have on the public.
“It is a shame that governmental entities so often spend public money to fight against transparency when in the end it is taxpayers who are forced to foot the bill,” Review-Journal Chief Legal Officer Ben Lipman said.
Since January 2023, the Review-Journal has been awarded just under $1 million in attorneys fees following successful public records lawsuits. In addition to the recent settlements, the newspaper received $337,000 in connection with a lawsuit over denied requests for child autopsy reports as part of the Review-Journal’s investigation into how child protective services handled cases in which children died.
Review-Journal Executive Editor Glenn Cook told the outlet after the March 2023 ruling that he hopes it will lead to increased police transparency and compliance with the state public records law.
“The Nevada Supreme Court has very clearly upheld the public’s right to know again and again,” Cook said. “If Metro would stop withholding public records, it would improve public trust, save taxpayer money and spare the courts a lot of wasted time and resources.”
As our research has previously revealed, the man who attacked two mosques in Christchurch on 15 March 2019, killing 51 people, posted publicly online for five years before his terrorist atrocity.
Here we provide further information about Brenton Tarrant’s posting. This article has two main goals.
First, by placing his online posting against his other online and offline activities, we gain a far more complete picture of the path to his attack.
Second, we want to show how his online community played a role in his radicalisation. This is important, as the same can happen to others immersed in that community.
In combining his online and offline activity here we do not seek to attribute blame to those who might have been expected to detect this behaviour. It is exceptionally difficult to identify terrorists online.
And yet, history is full of difficult problems that have been overcome. We use the benefit of hindsight to provide greater understanding of Tarrant’s pathway than has previously been available.
The aim is to prevent similar attacks by better understanding how such people act and how they might be detected.
Words and deeds In the timeline below, we focus on Tarrant’s activity in 2018, following his first visit to Dunedin’s Bruce Rifle Club on December 14 2017, until his final overseas trip in October. It is for this period that we have the most comprehensive online posting history.
In 2024, we have both the benefit of hindsight and the accumulation of information relating to the attack. However, this triangulation of online and offline activities illustrates the ways those contemplating terrorist violence might act.
We can now see, for example, that Tarrant bought high-powered firearms on three occasions over a six-week period in March and April 2018. And he posted publicly twice on the online imageboard 4chan about his plans for racially motivated violence, and his veneration of a perpetrator of a similar attack.
Tarrant therefore not only “leaked” his plans for violence, he did so at the very moment he was buying weapons for it.
Over 20 days in July and August, Tarrant presented to hospital with gunshot wounds, and began selling weapons online under the username Mannerheim (the name of a Finnish nationalist leader revered for defeating the communists in the country’s civil war).
He also posted publicly about his anger at the presence of mosques in South Island cities (claiming one had replaced a church). He wrote “soon” when another poster suggested setting fire to these places of worship.
A month later he attempted to sell weapons on online marketplace TradeMe, using a prominent white nationalist slogan — “14 Words” — in his username. (Strangely, this clear red flag was mentioned only once in the royal commission report on the attacks.)
TradeMe removed one of these advertisements for violating its terms of use. That caused Tarrant to move to another forum — NZ Hunting and Shooting Forums — to complain.
Extremist community Our study has also revealed how important the 4chan community is to the radicalisation of individuals like Tarrant. In contrast to the fleeting human interaction he had with others as he travelled the world, 4chan was Tarrant’s community.
4chan’s /pol/ (politically incorrect) board became his home. Here he interacted with others over long periods, imagining he was speaking to the same people over months and years, and assuming many of them had become his friends.
We have found that, while creating a sense of belonging and community, /pol/ also works to create extremists in both direct and indirect ways.
Its anonymous nature (users are assigned a unique ID number for each thread, rather than a username) has two effects. One is well known, the other identified in our study.
First, anonymity encourages behaviour that would be absent if the poster’s identity was known. Second, anonymity is frustrating for those who wish to “be someone”, who crave respect and notoriety.
We have documented the way Tarrant (and others) strive to gain status in a discussion, only to have to start again when they move to a new thread and are given a new ID. This lack of ongoing recognition is agonising for some individuals, who go to lengths to obtain respect.
Anonymity and peer respect And just like a real-world fascist movement, /pol/ venerates violent action as necessary for the vitality and regeneration of the community.
When a terrorist attack, school shooting or other violent event occurs, users celebrate these events in so-called “happening” threads. These threads are longer, more emotional and excited than any other discussions. Participants often claim the individual at the centre of the event is “/ourguy/” (a reference to the /pol/ board).
The threads are also highly anticipatory: many users believe this event will finally push society into violent chaos and race war.
These dynamics are closely connected. For those who seek recognition and status on the bulletin board, such as Tarrant, the excited attention and adoration given to those who perpetrate high-profile violence is the clearest path to the peer respect that the anonymity of the board otherwise denies them.
As harrowing as this finding is, we contend that gaining respect from their online community is in itself a crucial motivation for some perpetrators of far-right terrorism.
The nature of this extreme but easily accessible corner of the internet means any hope Tarrant was a one-off — and that this won’t happen again — is misguided.
The authors acknowledge the expert contribution of tactical and forensic linguist and independent researcher Julia Kupper. More information about our study will be released at heiaglobal.com. Our research was approved by the University of Auckland Human Participant Ethics Committee. A paper based on this study has been submitted for peer review and publication.
Russians have begun a second day of voting in a presidential election that has seen sporadic protests as some, defying threats of stiff prison sentences, showed their anger over a process set up to hand Vladimir Putin another six years of rule.
By midday of March 16, Russian police had opened at least 15 criminal probes into incidents of vandalism in polling stations, independent media reported.
More than one-third of Russia’s 110 million eligible voters cast ballots in person and online on the first day of the country’s three-day presidential election, the Central Election Commission (TsIK) said after polls closed on March 15 in the country’s westernmost region of Kaliningrad.
Balloting started up again on March 16 in the Far East of Russia and will continue in all 11 time zones of the country, as well as the occupied Crimean Peninsula and four other Ukrainian regions that Moscow partially controls and baselessly claims are part of Russia.
Putin is poised to win and extend his rule by six more years after any serious opponents were barred from running against him amid a brutal crackdown on dissent and the independent media.
The ruthless crackdown that has crippled independent media and human rights groups began before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine was launched, but has been ratcheted up since.
Almost exactly one month before the polls opened, Putin’s most vocal critic, opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, died in an isolated Arctic prison amid suspicious circumstances as he served sentences seen as politically motivated.
Some Russians expressed their anger over Putin’s authoritarian rule on March 15, vandalizing ballot boxes with a green antiseptic dye known as “zelyonka” and other liquids.
Among them was a 43-year-old member of the local election commission in the Lenin district of Izhevsk city, the Interior Ministry said on March 16.
The official was detained by police after she attempted to spill zelyonka into a touchscreen voting machine, the ministry said. Police didn’t release the woman’s name, but said she was a member of the Communist Party.
Similar incidents were reported in at least nine cities, including St. Petersburg, Sochi, and Volgograd, while at least four voters burned their ballots in polling stations.
In Moscow, police arrested a woman who burned her ballot inside a voting booth in the city’s polling station N1527 on March 15, Russian news agencies reported, citing election officials in the Russian capital.
The news outlet Sota reported that that woman burned a ballot with “Bring back my husband” handwritten on it, and posted video purportedly showing the incident.
There also was one report of a firebombing at a polling station in Moscow, while In Russia’s second-largest city, St. Petersburg, a 21-year-old woman was detained after she threw a Molotov cocktail at an entrance of a local school that houses two polling stations.
“It’s the first time I’ve see something like this — or at least [such attacks] have not been so spectacular before,” Roman Udot, an election analyst and a board member of the independent election monitor Golos, told RFE/RL.
“The state launched a war against [the election process] and this is the very striking harvest it gets in return. People resent these elections as a result and have started using them for completely different purposes [than voting].”
Russia’s ruling United Russia party claimed on March 16 that it was facing a widespread denial-of-service attack — a form of cyberattack that snarls internet use — against its online presence. The party said it had suspended nonessential services to repel the attack.
Meanwhile, Russian lawmakers proposed amendments to the Criminal Code to toughen punishments for those who try to disrupt elections “by arson and other dangerous means.” Under the current law, such actions are punishable by five years in prison, and the lawmakers proposed to extend it to up to eight years in prison.
No Serious Challengers
Before his death, Navalny had hoped to use the vote to demonstrate the public’s discontent with both the war and Putin’s iron-fisted rule.
He called on voters to cast their ballot at 12 p.m. on March 17, naming the action “Noon Against Putin.” HIs wife and others have since continued to call for the protest to be carried out.
Viral images of long lines forming at this time would indicate the size of the opposition and undermine the landslide result the Kremlin is expected to concoct.
Putin, 71, who has been president or prime minister for nearly 25 years, is running against three low-profile politicians — Liberal Democratic Party leader Leonid Slutsky, State Duma deputy speaker Vladislav Davankov of the New People party, and State Duma lawmaker Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party — whose policy positions are hardly distinguishable from Putin’s.
Boris Nadezhdin, a 60-year-old anti-war politician, was rejected last month by the TsIK because of what it called invalid support signatures on his application to be registered as a candidate. He appealed, but the TsIk’s decision was upheld by Russia’s Supreme Court.
“Would like to congratulate Vladimir Putin on his landslide victory in the elections starting today,” European Council President Charles Michel wrote in a sarcastic post on X, formerly Twitter, on March 15.
“No opposition. No freedom. No choice.”
Ukraine and many Western governments have condemned Russia for holding the vote in regions it occupies parts of, calling the move illegal.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres added his voice to the criticism on March 15, saying he “condemns the efforts of the Russian Federation to hold its presidential elections in areas of Ukraine occupied by the Russian Federation.”
His spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, added that the “attempted illegal annexation” of those regions has “no validity” under international law.
Many observers say Putin warded off even the faintest of challengers to ensure a large margin of victory that he can point to as evidence that Russians back the war in Ukraine and his handling of it.
Police from Vietnam’s Dak Lak province made unexpected visits to two areas in Thailand where a number of ethnic minorities are seeking refugee status on grounds that they have been persecuted, they told Radio Free Asia.
Members of the Montagnard community said they panicked when the agents visited their homes on Thursday to persuade and threaten them to return to Vietnam. The term “Montagnard” was coined by French colonialists to describe tribes who live in Vietnam’s Central Highlands, many of whom are Christians, but Vietnam has rejected use of the term.
Police also searched for those wanted in last June’s armed attacks on two People’s Commune headquarters in Dak Lak province in the Central Highlands that left nine people dead, the refugees said.
The area where the attacks took place is home to about 30 indigenous tribes who have a long history of conflict with the Vietnamese majority, and who claim they have been discriminated against.
Montagnards living in Bang Len district Nakhon Pathom province, 60 kilometers (37 miles) from the Thai capital Bangkok, said Thai police brought the Vietnamese police officers to their homes.
Thai police officers asked the Montagnards to gather in a front yard where two of eight Vietnamese officers dressed in plainclothes questioned them, one of the refugees told Radio Free Asia on Friday.
Not convinced
The two officers gave their names and said they were from the homeland security force in Dak Lak province and from the Gia Lai provincial police, while the other officers took photos and videos with smartphones and camcorders, the refugee said.
They tried to persuade the Montagnards to return to Vietnam, saying they would take care of their transportation, food and accommodation expenses,” he said.
“Once you return to Vietnam, we’ll take care of everything,” the refugee said, recalling the officers’ words.
But he was skeptical. “If we returned to Vietnam, we would die,” he said “We would never be safe. What the Vietnamese [authorities] want is to imprison us.”
Dinh Ngan, an ethnic Bana refugee, said the directorof the Gia Lai provincial police said he would be their “guardian” if they wanted to return. Otherwise, the director said the police would arrest them or they would face difficulties.
Another refugee, Nay Phot, said the same official told the Montagnards to return to Vietnam where the government would be lenient towards them and provide them with land and vehicles.
“They threatened that if we didn’t come back, the police would have to arrest us, and then the government would no longer forgive us,” he said.
In a statement posted nine days ago, Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security branded Montagnard Stand for Justice and the Montagnard Support Group as terrorist organizations linked to the 2023 Dak Lak attacks.
Asking about others
The refugee, who requested anonymity out of fear of his safety, said the two officers asked him and others about the whereabouts of Y Quynh Bdap and other wanted Montagnards, showing them their images and arrest warrants on their cellphones.
Y Quynh Bdap, co-founder of Montagnard Stand for Justice, was accused of being associated with the Dak Lak attacks and later sentenced in absentia to 10 years in prison on a terrorism charge at a trial held in Vietnam this January. He has denied participating in the attack.
Police Col. Adisak Kamnerd of the Bang Len police told RFA that he had not received requests from any agency to allow Vietnamese officers to go there.
Another security official, who asked not to be named because he is not authorized to speak to the media, told BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service, that this was the first known incident whereby Vietnamese police questioned Vietnamese refugees in Thailand, violating their basic privacy rights. He also called the action “undiplomatic.”
“I believe they are coming after the suspects in the Dak Lak attacks,” he said.
The incident occurred one day after the Public Security Online Newspaper reported that Minister of Public Security To Lam met with Thai Ambassador to Vietnam Nikorndej Balankura. During the meeting, Lam proposed that the two sides sign an agreement on extradition and mutual legal assistance in criminal matters.
RFA did not receive a response to an email sent to the U.N.’s refugee agency in Bangkok.
Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not immediately respond to an emailed request for information.
Translated by Anna Vu for RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Vietnamese.
In February and March 2024, two reporters in separate states said they had the police called on them while they were conducting everyday reporting duties.
Tampa Bay Times reporter Justin Garcia had the police called on him on Feb. 20, 2024, by the city’s fire chief after he showed up at the Tampa Fire Rescue department headquarters, looking for documents about a firefighter who had recently been fired, according to Garcia, who spoke to the U.S Press Freedom Tracker, and the newspaper.
Garcia told the Tracker that he was informed that he needed to submit the request through an online portal, which he had already done. According to Garcia, he also cited Florida's Chapter 119, which states that “all state, county and municipal records are open for personal inspection and copying by any person.”
After going back and forth with Personnel Chief Robbie Northrop, who is not a public records custodian, the police were called, even though Garcia was acting within his capacity as a reporter, he told the Tracker. Garcia left before police arrived and was not arrested.
According to records obtained by the Times, Northrop first asked a lower-level employee to call the police, who said she did not have time to make the call. Fire Chief Barbara Tripp eventually called the police on Garcia, the Times reported, adding that it was unknown who asked Tripp to call the police.
“No one ever should call the police on a reporter even if that reporter is being belligerent, obnoxious and aggressive,” Adam Smith, spokesperson for Mayor Jane Castor, told the Times. Both the Times and Garcia maintain that he never raised his voice or was disruptive in any way.
In the second incident, WTIC-TV news reporter Matt Caron said in a tweet on March 8 that Connecticut public school officials had called police while he was reporting live about “racism and bullying” that his outlet’s reporting had exposed.
“I was standing on public property,” Caron wrote. He added that he would use the Freedom of Information Act to request the bodycam footage “to see what was said.”
The Fiji High Court has ruled that former prime minister Voreqe Bainimarama and suspended police chief Sitiveni Qiliho are guilty of corruption.
Acting Chief Justice Salesi Temo overturned the Magistrates’ Court judgment and convicted both men at the Suva High Court today.
Bainimarama was charged with one count of attempted to pervert the course of justice and Qiliho was charged with one count of abuse of office, the Public Prosecutor’s Office said.
“The former PM and the suspended [police commissioner] were found not guilty and acquitted accordingly by Resident Magistrate Seini Paumau at Suva Magistrates Court on 12 October 2023. The State had filed eight grounds of appeal which mainly centred on the opinion that the Magistrate erred in law and in fact on several evidentiary and procedural issues, thereby resulting in an unfair trial and an erroneous verdict.”
The office said that Justice Temo in his judgment found that the magistrate had erred in fact and in law when she found both the respondents not guilty and therefore overturned the Magistrate’s decision.
“Justice Temo found both the respondents guilty as charged.”
Justice Temo has ordered that this matter be brought before Magistrate Puamau on March 18 at the Suva Magistrates’ Court for her to abide by the decision of the High Court and pronounce both the respondents guilty as charged and convict them accordingly.
“Justice Temo ordered both the respondents and the State to file their mitigation and sentencing submissions by 20 March after which the Magistrate is ordered to conduct a sentence hearing on 21 March followed by the sentencing of the two respondents on 28 March.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
