Mexico City, May 27, 2025—Honduran authorities should conduct a prompt, thorough, and transparent investigation into the arbitrary detention, accounts of physical abuse and threats against journalist Frank Mejía, and ensure those responsible are held to account, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Tuesday.
In the early hours of Sunday, May 18, police officers raided Mejía’s home in the Peña por Bajo neighborhood of Tegucigalpa, beat him, stole personal belongings, and subjected him to “cruel and inhuman treatment,” according to multiplenewsreports and local press group C-Libre.
Mejía told the Facebook news page Perspectiva Informativa that he was held for about three hours and threatened with death. Mejía said officers also seized his phone and stole $80 in cash.
“Authorities must treat these serious allegations with the urgency and transparency they demand, and hold the officers responsible to account,” said CPJ Latin America Program Coordinator Cristina Zahar, in São Paulo. “There can be no tolerance for abuses committed under the guise of security operations, especially when they target members of the press.”
Mejía, who self-publishes Comando Maya newspaper, filed a formal complaint on May 20, with the Honduran Public Prosecutor’s Office in Tegucigalpa. He was accompanied by his legal representative and son, Stuart Mejía.
According to Perspectiva Informativa, Stuart said his father, who has no criminal record, was tortured and humiliated in a “gross violation of human rights,” and their family fears for their safety. The journalist underwent a forensic medical examination, and its findings were submitted to prosecutors along with the formal complaint.
Honduran Security Minister Gustavo Sánchez said on X that he directed the Inspector General’s Office to begin inquiries.
The national police director, Juan Manuel Aguilar, told the newspaper El Heraldo that the police denied any misconduct. The agency said the operation was based on a 911 emergency alert reporting a possible kidnapping at Mejía’s residence.
A Cambodian woman who criticized Phnom Penh’s inconclusive efforts to negotiate with Washington over trade tariffs is in the cross-hairs of Cambodian police who accuse her of trying to overthrow the government and say they’ll ask Thailand to extradite her.
The woman, identified by police as Chhin Chou from Battambang province, had posted audio over video footage of Cambodia’s commerce minister on Facebook under the user name “Overseas Woman.” In it, she claimed that the first round of tariff negotiations between Cambodia and U.S. officials in Washington on May 15 had failed, and that the second round due in early June would also fail due to the Cambodian government’s human rights violations.
The United States is least-developed Cambodia’s main export market and the government of Prime Minister Hun Manet is reckoning with a 49% U.S. tariff rate on its vital footwear and textile sectors unless it can reach a deal with the Trump administration.
“Unless we follow their demands, they will not agree,” Overseas Woman posted. “We must stop illegal actions in Cambodia and ensure free and fair elections. If the Cambodian leadership cannot fulfill these conditions, then the second round of negotiations will also fail.”
Last Friday, Cambodia’s national police last week issued a statement accusing Chhin Chou of distorting facts and incitement to overthrow the government. Describing her as an opposition activist, the police said they were preparing the legal procedures necessary to cooperate with Thai authorities to have her arrested and extradited to Cambodia.
Thailand has previously cooperated in arrests of Cambodian opposition activists on its soil – typically doing so on the quiet because of criticism it faces from human rights activists and some Western governments when it deports refugees who could face political persecution back in Cambodia. In this case, Cambodian police took the unusual step of naming the suspect they were seeking.
On Monday, Police Col. Katatorn Khamtieng, deputy spokesperson for Thailand’s Immigration Bureau, told Radio Free Asia that the bureau has not yet received any directive from the Thai National Police Bureau to arrest Chhin Chou.
Ny Sokha, president of the Cambodian human rights organization Adhoc, stated that the online post does not constitute an illegal act, as it is a legitimate expression of opinion protected under the law.
“Both national and international laws, especially the constitution, clearly guarantee Cambodian citizens’ freedom to assemble and express opinions. So in my view, we must draw a clear distinction between criminal offenses and lawful freedom of expression,” Ny Sokha said.
RFA Khmer was able to contact Chhin Chou last week but she declined to make any comments, saying that she was seeking a safe location.
Cambodia’s government has demonstrated a shrinking tolerance for dissenting opinions.
According to a 2024 report from Human Rights Watch, at least 94 people were arrested by Cambodian authorities on charges of “incitement to cause serious social unrest and treason” due to criticism of the government. Of those, 59 individuals were reportedly unlawfully detained, the rights group said.
The intolerance extends to journalists such as Ouk Mao, who had reported on logging in a wildlife sanctuary in northern Cambodia. He was arrested by plainclothes police without a warrant on May 16. He was charged with incitement and defamation.
On Sunday, a judge at the Stung Treng Provincial Court ordered Ouk Mao’s release on bail. He is still facing 15 other complaints involving charges of illegal logging, encroachment, and burning of forestland for private ownership.
Ouk Mao told RFA that he will continue to protect the forest more vigorously than before and is not afraid of timber traders or those who destroy forests.
“Now I have no more fear or hesitation. I will continue protecting the forest even more strongly than before. I ask that I be given full freedom to help safeguard the forest so it can be preserved for the long term,” he said.
Pimuk Rakkanam in Bangkok contributed reporting. Translated by Poly Sam. Edited by Mat Pennington.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Khmer.
Liverpool’s victory parade after winning the Premier League was marred by a man driving a car directly into celebrating fans. Almost 30 people were taken to hospital for treatment, and another 20 people received treatment at the scene. However, the immediate response of right-wing racists was to try to weaponise the horror for their own racist ends.
Then, news outlets began to report with the following wording:
A 53-year-old white British man has been arrested and is believed to be the driver of the vehicle, according to Merseyside Police.
Naturally, the racists then pivoted to claim that the man’s race was only being mentioned because he was white. It’s either that, or the fact that we’re just 9 months removed from the 2024 race riots that were enflamed by misinformation and speculation about the race of the Southport attacker.
Liverpool attacker
In the moments before the police confirmed the racial identity of the attacker, the usual suspects were ominously spewing forth warnings.
Laurence Fox – he of variouslegal troubles for being a shithouse – alluded to “them”:
Perhaps Fox is following the example of fellow racist crank, Tommy Robinson (otherwise known as Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) and trying to avoid being banged up for libel against a Syrian refugee.
One user summed up why the racists were really mad:
Racists angry that Merseyside Police disclosed the race of the attacker in Liverpool because it denied them the chance to become a roving band of violent thugs again
Britain First leader and rabid right-winger Paul Golding questioned why the police were so “quick” to release the identity of the attacker:
Paul the ghoul Golding struggles to hide his disappointment at the fact that, the driver who ploughed through crowds in Liverpool yesterday is a white British male. pic.twitter.com/VYcJpfyzH9
— t/a Underscores Rn’t Us (@AndyPlumb4) May 27, 2025
One social media user explained why the police had to mention the racial identity of the attacker:
To stop racists from rioting and burning hotels housing asylum-seekers again. The police had to say from early on that the person who drove into Liverpool fans was a 53 year old white British man.
Sometimes, it’s not a conspiracy – it’s the most obvious answer. The same user also caught serial twat Joey Barton editing his tweet once he realised the attacker was white:
Joey Barton forgot that we can still see the old version of the edited tweet.
He tried to weaponise what happened in Liverpool and changed his mind after he found out that the driver was a 53-year-old British white man. pic.twitter.com/iWPeH2CaE4
Many of these same racists also tried to blame Liverpool fans for the attack.
In footage of the horrific incident, fans can be seen trying to stop the driver by getting to the car door, and hitting the car. Plenty of people tried to, somehow, shift blame to Liverpool fans for the attack.
While people do historically enjoy blaming Scousers, this bizarre claim doesn’t make a bit of sense – what else could people being attacked have done to stop a car accelerating at them? They were very clearly on a planned part of the parade rout, and this was an attack that intended to hurt people watching the parade:
the way people have switched their attitude towards the driver once he was confirmed to be a white british man is very telling. cos why are people trying to make him out to be some poor lad who just panicked cos evil scouse thugs were banging on his car?
Of course, the focus should be on the injured Liverpool fans who will have been terrified.
However, thanks to right-wing racists, the focus has instead been on the spectre of a potential Muslim and/or Black or maybe Brown man who attacked Liverpool fans.
No such thing happened!
These people are so racist that they’re making up scenarios to get mad at. It doesn’t take the sharpest tool in the box to work out that the police are evidently trying to learn from the mishandling of the Southport attack by quashing rumours at the first chance it gets. Unfortunately for the rest of us, these racists are as sharp as a scoop of ice cream.
In their rush to confirm the ethnicity of the attacker, the police clarified that they weren’t treating it as a terrorist incident. The BBCreported that:
The incident is not being treated as terror-related, police said.
Police only define events as terrorism if they are considered to have been intended to influence the government or intimidate the public for the purpose of “advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause”.
When is a terrorist a terrorist?
The threshold for a white attacker being considered a terrorist is one that involves some kind of manifesto, online evidence of radicalisation, and perhaps a digital footprint of threatening behaviour.
The threshold for a Muslim being considered a terrorist is to simply be Muslim.
Muslims are considered to belong to a religion and culture that contains infinite capacity for radicalisation. Muslims are not given the luxury of understanding that sometimes people do fucking heinous things like drive into crowds of people to cause as much harm as possible.
That is white supremacy in action. White supremacy does advance an ideological cause – and it encompasses both the radicalised manifesto-wielding loner, and those who believe, if not in their own superiority, but the inferiority of Muslims who are perpetually outsiders, others, savages, and aliens.
Neither the police nor the state have the racial literacy to be able to understand the above. If nothing else, it would severely restrict their own modes of operation.
As it is, these racists hoping for a Muslim attacker in Liverpool as further evidence of Britain being ‘taken over’ are the most visible examples of a white supremacist society. But make no mistake, they’re far from the only bits of evidence.
In August 2017, four men were jailed for life at the Old Bailey for plotting a terrorist attack. They were caught in an undercover police sting, and their defence lawyers insist their case continues to raise troubling and pressing questions …
On Friday 26 August 2016, Naweed Ali drove to his first day of work at a delivery company in Birmingham. His next door neighbour and close friend Khobaib Hussain had already been working at Hero Couriers for a month. The name seemed appropriate. There was something heroic about the work they did. Ali and Hussain were hired to drive around the country reuniting airline passengers with lost property. The pay was great, too – £100 a shift, cash in hand. It seemed too good to be true.
A punitive defamation charge filed against one of Samoa’s most experienced and trusted journalists last week has sparked a flurry of criticism over abuse of power and misuse of a law that has long been heavily criticised as outdated.
Talamua Online senior journalist Lagi Keresoma, who is also president of the Journalists Association of Samoa (JAWS), was charged with one count of defamation under Section 117A of Samoa’s Crimes Act 2013 on May 18.
She was elected in 2021 as the first woman to hold the presidency.
The charge followed an article she had published more than two weeks earlier on May 1 alleging that a former police officer had appealed to Samoa’s Head of State to have charges against him withdrawn.
The accused was charged with “allegedly forging the signature of the complainant as guarantor to secure a $200,000 loan from the Samoa National Provident Fund”. He denies the allegation.
It was reported that the complainant was another senior police officer.
Criminal libel removed, then restored
The criminal libel law was removed by the Samoan government in 2013, but was revived four years later in 2017. It was claimed at the time that it was needed to deal with issues triggered by social media.
JAWS immediately defended their president, saying it stood in “full solidarity” with Keresoma and calling for an immediate repeal of the law.
The association said the provision was a “troubling development for press freedom in Samoa” and added that it “should not be used to silence journalists and discourage investigative reporting”.
“It is deeply concerning that a journalist of Lagi Keresoma’s integrity and professionalism is being prosecuted under a law that has long been criticised for its negative effect on press freedom,” said the association.
Talamua Online senior journalist Lagi Keresoma . . . charged with criminal defamation over a report earlier this month. Image: Samoa Observer
Keresoma told Talamua Online she had been summoned twice to the police station and the police suggested that she apologise publicly and to the complainant and the complaint would be withdrawn.
However, she said: “To apologise is an admission that the story is wrong, so after speaking to my lawyer and my editor, it was decided to have the police file their charges, but no apology from my end.”
Her lawyer also contacted the police investigating officer informing that her client was not making a statement but to prepare the charges against her.
Keresoma was summoned to the police headquarters on Saturday and Sunday and the charges were only finalised on Monday morning before she was released.
‘Outdated and controversial provision’ “Her arrest under this outdated and controversial provision raises serious concerns about the misuse of legal tools to silence independent journalism. The action appears heavy-handed and disproportionate, and risks being perceived as an abuse of power to suppress public scrutiny and dissent,” Lagipoiva said.
“The United Nations Human Rights Committee and UN Special Rapporteurs, particularly the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, have repeatedly called for defamation to be treated as a civil matter, not a criminal one.
“The continued application of criminal defamation in Samoa contradicts international standards and poses a chilling threat to press freedom, particularly for women journalists who already face systemic risks and intimidation.”
Pacific Media Watch notes: “This is a disturbing development in Pacific media freedom trends. Clearly it is a clumsy attempt to intimidate and silence in-depth investigation and reporting on Pacific governance.
“For years, Samoa has been a beacon for media freedom in the region, but it has fared badly in the latest World Press Freedom Index and this incident involving alleged criminal libel, a crime that should have been struck from the statutes years ago, is not going to help Samoa’s standing.
This Day in Anarchist History, May 15, we remember the insurrectionary life and tragic, early death of Christos Tsoutsouvis.
Tsoutsouvis had been a member of one of the first Greek leftist guerrilla orgs known as the ELA or Revolutionary People’s Struggle.
Over the years he participated in a number of militant acts of property destruction and later graduated to political assassinations targeting some of the worst perpetrators of torture of the Greek military junta.
He died on 15 May 1985 in a shoot out with the police in which he managed to take 3 of them with him.
This story was published in partnership with The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom covering gun violence in America. Sign up for its newsletters here.
Shortly after dark one day in September 2022, police officers Yang Lee and Charles Laskey-Castle arrived on Milwaukee’s west side to investigate a car abandoned on the sidewalk. Lee knelt to examine the driver’s side floorboard as Laskey-Castle stood behind him. Then Lee rose—and his holstered gun fired a bullet into his partner’s leg.
The shooting was captured on body camera footage, and it was at least the third time in three years that a Milwaukee officer’s SIG Sauer P320 pistol had allegedly fired without a trigger pull, according to lawsuits and police records. The following month, the Milwaukee Police Department moved to replace its P320s with weapons from another manufacturer.
“There is no higher priority than the safety of the people who protect our city,” Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson said at an October 2022 news conference announcing the switch. “Unexplained discharges, they have injured people. That’s completely unacceptable to me.”
At the same event, Milwaukee’s police chief revealed that, to offset the cost of the new weapons, the department would be reselling its P320s to a gun dealer. Soon, the old P320s—deemed too dangerous for the city’s officers—would be available for purchase by civilians.
The decision in Milwaukee follows a pattern that has been repeated in cities across the nation as police departments reevaluate their use of the P320 amid mounting concerns about the weapon’s safety. A 2023 investigation by The Trace and the Washington Post revealed that the P320 has gruesomely injured scores of people who alleged in lawsuits that it has a potentially deadly defect. SIG Sauer denied these claims.
Over the past two months, The Trace surveyed more than 60 law enforcement agencies whose officers once used the P320. More than 20 of those agencies—including police departments in Oklahoma City, Denver, and Chicago—have moved to prohibit the gun because of fears about unintentional discharges. Twelve agencies said they resold their P320s to the public after determining the model was unsafe for officers to use.
Cumulatively, these departments sent at least 4,000 P320s back into the commercial market.
Used SIG Sauer P320s can be purchased by civilians after they are resold or traded in by law enforcement. Credit: SIG Sauer screenshot
“If the primary function of law enforcement is to protect and serve, one would think that returning a problematic weapon to the public is not particularly consistent with that mission,” Jonathan Jacobs, director of the Institute for Criminal Justice Ethics at New York’s John Jay College, told The Trace. “The ethical issues here are very, very plain.”
A Milwaukee police spokesperson said, “The trade-in was a cost-savings for the department.”
SIG Sauer declined to comment on the specifics of this story and directed questions to p320truth.com, a website it created about the gun. The gunmaker previously has denied that the P320 is capable of firing without a trigger pull and cited accounts of unintentional discharges with other firearms as evidence that such issues are neither uncommon nor suggestive of a defect.
Concerns Grow After Multiple Shootings, Lawsuits
Concerns about the P320 surfaced recently in Washington, where in February, the state’s Criminal Justice Training Commission banned the P320 from its facilities, citing an “abundance of allegations of un-commanded discharges occurring around the country.” Because the commission hosts mandatory training for police officers, its decision pressured law enforcement agencies across the state to reconsider their use of the P320.
The ban came after at least two shootings involving P320s among Washington law enforcement. Last year, a Kitsap County sheriff’s deputy’s holstered P320 discharged while she apprehended a suspect in a grocery store, according to body camera footage obtained by local media. Nobody was injured, but after the shooting, the Kitsap County Commission offered to fully fund the purchase of different guns plus the cost of destroying the old P320s to remove them from circulation.
The Sheriff’s Office declined the offer, and in March, it said it would be reselling more than 200 P320s to a dealer. “It seemed like the fiscally responsible thing to do,” Kitsap County Undersheriff Russ Clithero told The Trace. The office received roughly $300 per resold weapon—more than $60,000.
One of the most popular handguns in America, the P320 has been used by officers at more than a thousand law enforcement agencies across the country. But according to police records and lawsuits, as of April 23, at least 120 people have alleged that their P320 fired without the trigger being pulled. Those shootings resulted in more than 110 injuries and at least one death.
Dozens of people have sued SIG Sauer over P320 discharges. Several cases have been dismissed, and the company won a jury trial in 2022. More recently, however, two juries have ruled against SIG Sauer, awarding more than $13 million in damages. After the most recent verdict, in November, the national Fraternal Order of Police sent a letter to SIG Sauer requesting an accounting of measures taken by the company to address widespread concerns about the P320.
“The officers who rely on your products must have absolute confidence in the safety and performance of their weapon,” the letter read.
The Trace contacted 69 law enforcement agencies for this story and 41 responded. A total of 16 confirmed that after issuing the P320 to officers, they switched to a new pistol out of concern about the P320’s safety. Four others had acknowledged publicly that their departments switched pistols because of safety reasons but did not respond to The Trace.
The Pasco County Sheriff’s Office in Florida resold more than 800 P320s after three officers survived incidents in which they say their P320s discharged, though nobody pulled the guns’ triggers, records show.
“The trade-in value was necessary to facilitate the transition to the Glocks we currently use,” a spokesperson for the Sheriff’s Office said. “We cannot speak for what actions the vendor took with the weapons after we traded them back.”
The Police Department in Bridge City, Texas, resold its P320s after one of its officers claimed she was shot in the groin by a holstered gun zipped inside her purse, a police report shows. The bullet missed her spine by inches.
R.D. Bergeron, the assistant police chief of Bridge City, said the department kept the gun involved in the shooting. “The last thing we would want is anyone, officer or civilian, to get hurt due to it firing uncommanded,” Bergeron said.
A Common Police Practice
Law enforcement agencies generally resell weapons for budget reasons. Used police guns are popular among gun buyers because they’re relatively inexpensive and often in good condition. Resales have drawn criticism from law enforcement experts and gun violence researchers, who have argued that introducing used police weapons to the civilian marketplace risks fueling crime.
At least 52,000 police guns had been involved in crimes—including homicides and other violent assaults—since 2006, according to an investigation by The Trace, CBS News, and Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting. While that tally includes guns lost by or stolen from police, many of the firearms were resold by law enforcement.
Ed Obayashi, a deputy sheriff in Modoc County, California, and a national police ethics expert, said reselling an allegedly defective gun poses an added threat to public safety, even if it never slips into criminal hands. For this reason alone, he said, departments should not resell P320s if they believe the guns to be defective. “There are situations in law enforcement where you’re going to have to do the right thing, even if it’s going to cost you financially,” Obayashi said.
In Laredo, Texas, the Police Department resold about 500 P320s after an officer experienced an unintentional discharge, officials said. The officer was not injured, but investigators concluded that his gun had fired “without the trigger being pulled,” according to a Bexar County Criminal Investigations Laboratory report obtained by The Trace.
When asked why the agency had resold its P320s after pulling them from service, a police spokesperson did not respond.
In addition to the 12 agencies that resold P320s to dealers, two—the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority (SEPTA) and the Honesdale Borough Police Department, also in Pennsylvania—returned their guns to SIG Sauer, The Trace found.
SEPTA returned its P320s after an officer’s gun discharged in a Philadelphia subway station, narrowly missing his leg. Andrew Busch, a SEPTA spokesperson, said the agency could not place conditions on what might happen with the returned guns. When asked whether it had considered holding onto the guns, Busch said, “We are not going to comment on internal deliberations or discussions with the manufacturer.”
Many of the largest police forces in the country allow officers to buy their own guns from an approved list, rather than issuing a single model to the whole department. Five such agencies contacted for this story—the Chicago, Denver, and Dallas police departments, as well as the Clark County and Pierce County sheriff’s offices in Washington—said they had pulled the P320 from their approved handgun lists or planned to bar officers from carrying the model because of safety concerns.
“The SIG Sauer P320 was found to no longer meet the internal safety standards of the Denver Police Department,” a spokesperson for the agency wrote in an emailed statement.
Sixteen other agencies either remained confident in the P320’s reliability or said they had transitioned away from the gun for reasons other than safety concerns, like it not being compatible with their preferred accessories.
The Goshen, Indiana, police chief, José Miller, said the P320 had proven reliable and “operationally sound” in over a decade of service. “Our evaluation—bolstered by both our internal experience and external research, including findings from the Department of the Army—leaves no doubt,” Miller said. “The SIG Sauer P320 is a safe, dependable firearm.”
Only one police department—in Orange, Connecticut—opted not to resell its P320s. Instead, the guns are locked away at headquarters. “If we believe a firearm might be defective, we don’t agree with putting that weapon back on the street,” said Max Martins, the department’s assistant chief. “What if we traded in the guns, then a civilian bought one of our old ones and there was an accidental discharge? You don’t want that on your conscience.”
Australia has launched the world’s first UN Police Peacekeeping Training course tailored specifically for the Pacific region.
The five-week programme, hosted by the Australian Federal Police (AFP), is underway at the state-of-the-art Pacific Policing Development and Coordination Hub in Pinkenba, Brisbane.
AFP said “a landmark step” was developed in partnership with the United Nations, and brings together 100 police officers for training.
AFP Deputy Commissioner Lesa Gale said the programme was the result of a long-standing, productive relationship between Australia and the United Nations.
Gale said it was launched in response to growing regional ambitions to contribute more actively to international peacekeeping efforts.
Participating nations are Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu.
“This course supports your enduring contribution and commitment to UN missions in supporting global peace and security efforts,” AFP Northern Command acting assistant commissioner Caroline Taylor said.
Pacific Command commander Phillippa Connel said the AFP had been in peacekeeping for more than four decades “and it is wonderful to be asked to undertake what is a first for the United Nations”.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
About 2000 New Zealand protesters marched through the heart of Auckland city today chanting “no justice, no peace” and many other calls as they demanded an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and an end to the Israeli atrocities in its brutal war on the besieged Palestinian enclave.
For more than 73 days, Israel has blocked all food, water, and medicine from entering Gaza, creating a man-made crisis with the Strip on the brink of a devastating famine.
Israel’s attacks killed more than 150 and wounded 450 in a day in a new barrage of attacks that aid workers described as “Gaza is bleeding before our eyes”.
in Auckland, several Palestinian and other speakers spoke of the anguish and distress of the global Gaza community in the face of Western indifference to the suffering in a rally before the march marking the 77th anniversary of the Nakba — the “Palestinian catastrophe”.
“There are cracks opening up all around the world that haven’t been there for 77 years,” said Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) co-chair John Minto in an inspired speech to the protesters.
“We’ve got politicians in Britain speaking out for the first time. Some conservative politician got standing up the other day saying, ‘I supported Israel right or wrong for 20 years, and I was wrong.’
‘The world is coming right’
“Yet a lot of the world has been wrong for 77 years, but the world is coming right. We are on the right side of history, give us a big round of applause.”
Minto was highly critical of the public broadcasters, Television New Zealand and Radio New Zealand, saying they relied too heavily on a narrow range of Western sources whose credibility had been challenged and eroded over the past 19 months.
PSNA co-chair John Minto . . . .capturing an image of the march up Auckland’s Queen Street in protest over the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Image: APR
He also condemned their “proximity” news value, blaming it for news editors’ lapse of judgment on news values because Israelis “spoke English”.
Minto told the crowd that that they should be monitoring Al Jazeera for a more balanced and nuanced coverage of the war on Palestine.
His comments echoed a similar theme of a speech at the Fickling Centre in Three Kings on Thursday night and protesters followed up by picketing the NZ Voyager Media Awards last night with a light show of killed Gazan journalists beamed on the hotel venue.
Protesters at the NZ Voyager Media Awards protesting last night against unbalanced media coverage of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Image: Achmat Eesau/PSNA
About 230 Gazan journalists have been killed in the war so far, many of them allegedly targeted by the Israeli forces.
Minto said he could not remember a previous time when a New Zealand government had remained silent in the face of industrial-scale killing of civilians anywhere in the world.
“We have livestreamed genocide happening and we have our government refusing to condemn any of Israel’s war crimes,” he said.
NZ ‘refusing to condemn war crimes’
“Yet we’ve got everybody in the leadership of this government having condemned every act of Palestinian resistance yet refused to condemn the war crimes, refused to condemn the bombing of civilians, and refused to condemn the mass starvation of 2.3 million people.
“What a bunch of depraved bastards run this country. Shame on all of them.”
Palestinian speaker Samer Almalalha . . . “Everything we were told about international law and human rights is bullshit.” A golden key symbolising the right of return for Palestinians is in the background. Image: APR
Palestinian speaker Samer Almalalha spoke of the 1948 Nakba and the injustices against his people.
“Everything we were told about international law and human rights is bullshit. The only rights you have are the ones you take,” he said.
“So today we won’t stand here to plead, we are here to remind you of what happened to us. We are here to take what is ours. Today, and every day, we fight for a free Palestine.”
Nakba survivor Ghazi Dassouki . . . a harrowing story about a massacre village. Image: Bruce King survivor
and he told a harrowing story from his homeland. As a 14-year-old boy, he and his family were driven out of Palestine during the Nakba.
He described “waking up to to the smell of gunpowder” — his home was close to the Deir Yassin massacre on April 9, 1948, when Zionist militias attacked the village killing 107 people, including women and children.
‘Palestine will be free – and so will we’
Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick said: “What we stand for is truth, justice, peace and love.
“Palestine will be free and, in turn, so will we.”
Israel has blocked all food, water, and medicine from entering Gaza, creating a man-made crisis, with the integrated food security agency IPC warning that famine could be declared any time between now and September, reports Al Jazeera.
The head of the UN Children’s Fund, Catherine Russell, said the world should be shocked by the killing of 45 children in Israeli air strikes in just two days.
Instead, the slaughter of children in Gaza is “largely met with indifference”.
“More than 1 million children in Gaza are at risk of starvation. They are deprived of food, water and medicine,” Russell wrote in a post on social media.
“Nowhere is safe for children in Gaza,” she said.
“This horror must stop.”
“The coloniser lied” . . . a placard in today’s Palestine rally in Auckland. Image: APR
Famine worst level of hunger
Famine is the worst level of hunger, where people face severe food shortages, widespread malnutrition, and high levels of death due to starvation.
According to the UN’s criteria, famine is declared when:
At least 20 percent (one-fifth) of households face extreme food shortages;
More than 30 percent of children suffer from acute malnutrition; and
At least two out of every 10,000 people or four out of every 10,000 children die each day from starvation or hunger-related causes.
Famine is not just about hunger; it is the worst humanitarian emergency, indicating a complete collapse of access to food, water and the systems necessary for survival.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), since Israel’s complete blockade began on March 2, at least 57 children have died from the effects of malnutrition.
“Stop Genocide in Gaza” . . . the start of the rally with PSNA co-chair Maher Nazzal on the right. Image: APR
An escape of a 13-year-old girl from a hostage crisis on the border of Papua New Guinea’s Western and Hela provinces has boosted hopes for the rescue of her fellow captives.
The group of 10 people was taken captive early on Monday morning at Adujmari.
PNG Police Commissioner David Manning has called the perpetrators “domestic terrorists” and warned that officers were able to use lethal force if needed to secure the release of the hostages.
Few modern political figures have done more to prompt spontaneous national discussions about the Bill of Rights and constitutional limits on government power than Donald Trump—if only because he tramples on them so frequently.
Indeed, President Trump has become a walking civics lesson.
Consider some of the constitutional principles that Trump can be credited with bringing into the spotlight unintentionally during his time in office.
First Amendment (free speech, press, religion, protest, and assembly): Trump’s repeated confrontations with the First Amendment have transformed free expression into a battleground, making it impossible to ignore the protections it guarantees. From branding the press as “the enemy of the people” and threatening to revoke media licenses to blacklisting law firms, threatening universities with funding cuts for not complying with the government’s ideological agenda, and detaining foreign students for their political views, Trump has treated constitutional protections not as guarantees, but as obstacles.
Second Amendment (right to bear arms): Trump has shown an inconsistent and, at times, authoritarian approach to gun rights, summed up in his infamous 2018 statement: “Take the guns first, go through due process second.” At the same time, Trump has encouraged the militarization of domestic police forces, blurring the line between civilian law enforcement and standing armies—a contradiction that cuts against the very spirit of the amendment, which was rooted in distrust of centralized power and standing militaries.
Fourth Amendment (protection against unreasonable searches and seizures): Trump’s expansion of no-knock raids, endorsement of sweeping surveillance tactics, sanctioning of police brutality and greater immunity for police misconduct, and the use of masked, plainclothes federal agents to seize demonstrators off the streets have revived conversations about privacy, unlawful searches, and the right to be secure in one’s person and property.
Fifth & Fourteenth Amendments (due process and equal protection): Perhaps nowhere has Trump’s disregard been more dangerous than in his approach to due process and equal protection under the law. The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments guarantee that neither citizens nor non-citizens can be deprived of liberty without fair procedures. Yet Trump’s Administration has repeatedly floated or enacted policies that sidestep due process, from the suggestion that he could suspend habeas corpus to the indefinite detention of individuals without trial, and openly questioned whether non-citizens deserve any constitutional protections at all.
Even the Sixth (right to a fair and speedy trial) and Eighth Amendments (protection against cruel and unusual punishment) have found new urgency: Trump has promoted indefinite pretrial detention for protesters and immigrants alike, while presiding over family separations, inhumane detention centers, and support for enhanced interrogation techniques. Trump has also doubled down on his administration’s commitment to carrying out more executions, including a push to impose the death penalty for crimes other than murder.
Tenth Amendment (states’ rights): The Tenth Amendment, which preserves state sovereignty against federal overreach, has been tested by Trump’s threats to defund sanctuary cities, override state public health measures, and interfere in local policing and elections. His efforts to federalize domestic law enforcement have exposed the limits of decentralized power in the face of executive ambition.
Fourteenth Amendment (birthright citizenship): No clause has been more aggressively misunderstood by Trump than the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. His push to strip citizenship from children born on U.S. soil to immigrant parents (birthright citizenship) ignores over a century of legal precedent affirming that citizenship cannot be denied by executive whim.
Article I, Section 8 (commerce and tariffs): Trump’s use of tariff authority provides another example of executive power run amok. Although the Constitution assigns Congress the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, Trump has imposed sweeping tariffs on allies and used them as political leverage. These actions not only undermine the constitutional balance between the branches but also weaponize trade policy for political ends.
Article I, Section 9 (Emoluments Clause): Trump’s disregard for the Emoluments Clause—a safeguard against presidential profiteering—brought this obscure constitutional provision back into the public eye. Between continuing to profit from his private businesses while in office and his reported willingness to accept extravagant gifts, including a $400 million luxury plane from the Qatari government, he has raised urgent ethical and legal concerns about self-dealing, corruption and backdoor arrangements by which foreign and domestic governments can funnel money into Trump’s personal coffers.
Article I, Section 9 (power of the purse): Trump has trampled on Congress’s exclusive power over federal spending, attempting to redirect funds by executive fiat rather than operating within Congress’s approved budgetary plan. He has also threatened to withhold federal aid from states, cities, and universities deemed insufficiently loyal.
Article II (executive powers): At the heart of Trump’s governance is a dangerous misreading of Article II, which vests executive power in the president, to justify executive overreach and the concept of an all-powerful unitary executive. He has repeatedly claimed “total authority” over state matters, wielded executive orders like royal decrees in order to bypass Congress, and sought to bend the Department of Justice to his personal and political will.
Historical Emergency Powers and Legal Precedents: Trump has also breathed new life into archaic emergency powers. He invoked the Alien Enemies Act to justify rounding up, detaining, and deporting undocumented immigrants without due process. He has also threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy troops domestically in order to deal with civil unrest, raising the specter of martial law cloaked in patriotic language.
In routinely violating the Constitution and crossing legal lines that were once unthinkable, Trump is forcing Americans to confront what the Constitution truly protects, and what it doesn’t.
Still, what good is a knowledgeable citizenry if their elected officials are woefully ignorant about the Constitution or willfully disregard their sworn duty to uphold and protect it?
For starters, anyone taking public office, from the president on down, should have a working knowledge of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and should be held accountable for upholding their precepts. And if they violate their contractual obligations to uphold and defend the Constitution, vote them out—throw them out—or impeach them.
“We the people” have power, but we must use it or lose it.
On April 4, 2022, Grand Rapids Police Officer Christopher Schurr murdered Patrick Lyoya, an unarmed Black Man whom the officer had pinned to the ground, with a single execution-style gunshot to the back of the head. Patrick Lyoya was a refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo and father to two small children. This horrific racist police murder made national news, sparking widespread condemnation and protests and as a result of this political pressure from the Black Lives Matter movement, the GRPD fired Schurr and the Kent County Prosecutor charged him with second degree murder.
Stuck in a state of disbelief for months, journalist Coralie Cochin was one of many media personnel who inadvertently put their lives on the line as New Caledonia burned.
“It was very shocking. I don’t know the word in English, you can’t believe what you’re seeing,” Cochin, who works for public broadcaster NC la 1ère, said on the anniversary of the violent and deadly riots today.
She recounted her experience covering the civil unrest that broke out on 13 May 2024, which resulted in 14 deaths and more than NZ$4.2 billion (2.2 billion euros) in damages.
“It was like the country was [at] war. Every[thing] was burning,” Cochin told RNZ Pacific.
The next day, on May 14, Cochin said the environment was hectic. She was being pulled in many directions as she tried to decide which story to tell next.
“We didn’t know where to go [or] what to tell because there were things happening everywhere.”
She drove home trying to dodge burning debris, not knowing that later that evening the situation would get worse.
“The day after, it was completely crazy. There was fire everywhere, and it was like the country was [at] war suddenly. It was very, very shocking.”
Over the weeks that followed, both Cochin and her husband — also a journalist — juggled two children and reporting from the sidelines of violent demonstrations.
“The most shocking period was when we knew that three young people were killed, and then a police officer was killed too.”
She said verifying the deaths was a big task, amid fears far more people had died than had been reported.
Piled up . . . burnt out cars block a road near Nouméa after last year’s riots in New Caledonia. Image NC 1ère TV screenshot APR
‘We were targets’ After days of running on adrenaline and simply getting the job done, Cochin’s colleagues were attacked on the street.
“At the beginning, we were so focused on doing our job that we forgot to be very careful,” she said.
But then,”we were targets, so we had to be very more careful.”
News chiefs decided to send reporters out in unmarked cars with security guards.
They did not have much protective equipment, something that has changed since then.
“We didn’t feel secure [at all] one year ago,” she said.
But after lobbying for better protection as a union representative, her team is more prepared.
She believes local journalists need to be supported with protective equipment, such as helmets and bulletproof vests, for personal protection.
“We really need more to be prepared to that kind of riots because I think those riots will be more and more frequent in the future.”
Protesters at Molodoï, Strasbourg, demanding the release of Kanak indigenous political prisoners being detained in France pending trial for their alleged role in the pro-independence riots in May 2024. Image: @67Kanaky/X
Social media She also pointed out that, while journalists are “here to inform people”, social media can make their jobs difficult.
“It is more difficult now with social media because there was so [much] misinformation on social media [at the time of the rioting] that we had to check everything all the time, during the day, during the night . . . ”
She recalled that when she was out on the burning streets speaking with rioters from both sides, they would say to her, “you don’t say the truth” and “why do you not report that?” she would have to explain to then that she would report it, but only once it had been fact-checked.
“And it was sometimes [it was] very difficult, because even with the official authorities didn’t have the answers.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
France preaches one thing and practices another.
France declared a state of emergency in its colony of New Caledonia after an anti-colonial uprising broke out there
New Caledonia has long sought independence, hoping to support itself through mining. The French sent in the… pic.twitter.com/g7RKXKaXNM
Ryan Coogler, Shedeur Sanders, Karmelo Anthony, and Rodney Hinton, Jr. have all captured the collective Black imagination, although for very different reasons. A successful film director, an athlete and two Black men in the throes of a punishing legal system are all the recipients of support and love from millions of Black people. It is true that the love of a “Black face in a high place” is a problematic phenomenon, but it is also true that Black people will rally around their own. That commendable instinct seems to be reserved for individuals, and not for the masses as a whole, and therein lies a problem.
Fresh, stringent security measures have been imposed in New Caledonia following aborted political talks last week and ahead of the first anniversary of the deadly riots that broke out on 13 May 2024, which resulted in 14 deaths and 2.2 billion euros (NZ$4.2 billion) in damages.
On Sunday, the French High Commission in Nouméa announced that from Monday, May 12, to Friday, May 15, all public marches and demonstrations will be banned in the Greater Nouméa Area.
Restrictions have also been imposed on the sale of firearms, ammunition, and takeaway alcoholic drinks.
In the wake of the May 2024 civil unrest, a state of emergency and a curfew had been imposed and had since been gradually lifted.
The decision also comes as “confrontations” between law enforcement agencies and violent groups took place mid-last week, especially in the township of Dumbéa — on the outskirts of Nouméa — where there were attempts to erect fresh roadblocks, High Commissioner Jacques Billant said.
The clashes, including incidents of arson, stone-throwing and vehicles being set on fire, are reported to have involved a group of about 50 individuals and occurred near Médipôle, New Caledonia’s main hospital, and a shopping mall.
Clashes also occurred in other parts of New Caledonia, including outside the capital Nouméa.
It adds another reason for the measures is the “anniversary date of the beginning of the 2024 riots”.
Wrecked and burnt-out cars gathered after the May 2024 riots and dumped at Koutio-Koueta on Ducos island in Nouméa. Image: NC 1ère TV
Law and order stepped up
French authorities have also announced that in view of the first anniversary of the start of the riots tomorrow, law and order reinforcements have been significantly increased in New Caledonia until further notice.
This includes a total of 2600 officers from the Gendarmerie, police, as well as reinforcements from special elite SWAT squads and units equipped with 16 Centaur armoured vehicles.
Drones are also included.
The aim is to enforce a “zero tolerance” policy against “urban violence” through a permanent deployment “night and day”, with a priority to stop any attempt to blockade roads, especially in Greater Nouméa, to preserve freedom of movement.
One particularly sensitive focus would be placed on the township of Saint-Louis in Mont-Dore often described as a pro-independence stronghold which was a hot spot and the scene of violent and deadly clashes at the height of the 2024 riots.
“We’ll be present wherever and whenever required. We are much stronger than we were in 2024,” High Commissioner Billant told local media during a joint inspection with French gendarmes commander General Nicolas Matthéos and Nouméa Public Prosecutor Yves Dupas.
Dupas said that over the past few months the bulk of criminal acts was regarded as “delinquency” — nothing that could be likened to a coordinated preparation for fresh public unrest similar to last year’s.
Billant said that, depending on how the situation evolves in the next few days, he could also rely on additional “potential reinforcements” from mainland France if needed.
French High Commissioner Jacques Billant, Public Prosecutor Yves Dupas and the Gendarmerie commander, General Nicolas Matthéos, confer last Wednesday . . . “We are much stronger than we were in 2024.” Image: Haut-Commissariat de la République en Nouvelle-Calédonie
New Zealand ANZAC war memorial set alight A New Zealand ANZAC war memorial in the small rural town of Boulouparis (west coast of the main island of Grande Terre) was found vandalised last Friday evening.
The monument, inaugurated just one year ago at last year’s ANZAC Day to commemorate the sacrifice of New Zealand soldiers during world wars in the 20th century, was set alight by unidentified people, police said.
Tyres were used to keep the fire burning.
An investigation into the circumstances of the incident is underway, the Nouméa Public Prosecutor’s office said, invoking charges of wilful damage.
Australia, New Zealand travel warnings In the neighbouring Pacific, two of New Caledonia’s main tourism source markets, Australia and New Zealand, are maintaining a high level or increased caution advisory.
The main identified cause is an “ongoing risk of civil unrest”.
In its latest travel advisory, the Australian brief says “demonstrations and protests may increase in the days leading up to and on days of national or commemorative significance, including the anniversary of the start of civil unrest on May 13.
“Avoid demonstrations and public gatherings. Demonstrations and protests may turn violent at short notice.”
Pro-France political leaders at a post-conclave media conference in Nouméa last Thursday . . . objected to the proposed “sovereignty with France”, a kind of independence in association with France. Image: RRB/RNZ Pacific
Inconclusive talks Last Thursday, May 8, French Minister for Overseas Manuel Valls, who had managed to gather all political parties around the same table for negotiations on New Caledonia’s political future, finally left the French Pacific territory. He admitted no agreement could be found at this stage.
In the final stage of the talks, the “conclave” on May 5-7, he had put on the table a project for New Caledonia’s accession to a “sovereignty with France”, a kind of independence in association with France.
This option was not opposed by pro-independence groups, including the FLNKS (Kanak Socialist National Liberation Front).
French Overseas Territories Minister Manuel Valls . . . returned to Paris last week without a deal on New Caledonia’s political future. Image: Caledonia TV screenshot APR
But the pro-France movement, in support of New Caledonia remaining a part of France, said it could not approve this.
The main pillar of their argument remained that after three self-determination referendums held between 2018 and 2021, a majority of voters had rejected independence (even though the last referendum, in December 2021, was massively boycotted by the pro-independence camp because of the covid-19 pandemic).
The anti-independence block had repeatedly stated that they would not accept any suggestion that New Caledonia could endorse a status bringing it closer to independence.
New Caledonia’s pro-France MP at the French National Assembly, Nicolas Metzdorf, told local media at this stage, his camp was de facto in opposition to Valls, “but not with the pro-independence camp”.
Metzdorf said a number of issues could very well be settled by talking to the pro-independence camp.
Electoral roll issue sensitive
This included the very sensitive issue of New Caledonia’s electoral roll, and conditions of eligibility at the next provincial elections.
Mesures administratives
À l’approche de la date d’anniversaire du début des émeutes de 2024, le Haut-commissaire, en lien avec les élus et responsables du monde économique, annonce les mesures suivante du 12 au 15 mai 2025 :
— Haut-commissariat en Nouvelle-Calédonie (@HC98800) May 10, 2025
Direct contacts with Macron Both Metzdorf and Backès also said during interviews with local media that in the midst of their “conclave” negotiations, they had had contacts as high as French President Emmanuel Macron, asking him whether he was aware of the “sovereignty with France” plan and if he endorsed it.
Another pro-France leader, Virginie Ruffenach (Le Rassemblement-Les Républicains), also confirmed she had similar exchanges, through her party Les Républicains, with French Minister of Home Affairs Bruno Retailleau, from the same right-wing party.
As Minister of Home Affairs, Retailleau would have to be involved later in the New Caledonian issue.
Divided reactions Since minister Valls’s departure, reactions were still flowing at the weekend from across New Caledonia’s political chessboard.
“We have to admit frankly that no agreement was struck”, Valls said last week during a media conference.
“Maybe the minds were not mature yet.”
But he said France would now appoint a “follow up committee” to keep working on the “positive points” already identified between all parties.
During numerous press conferences and interviews, anti-independence leaders have consistently maintained that the draft compromise put to them by Minister Valls during the latest round of negotiations last week, was not acceptable.
They said this was because it contained several elements of “independence-association”, including the transfer of key powers from Paris to Nouméa, a project of “dual citizenship” and possibly a seat at the United Nations.
“In proposing this solution, minister [Valls] was biased and blocked the negotiations. So he has prevented the advent of an agreement”, pro-France Les Loyalistes and Southern Province President leader Sonia Backès told public broadcaster NC la 1ère on Sunday.
“For us, an independence association was out of the question because the majority of [New] Caledonians voted three time against independence,” she said.
More provincial power plan
Instead, the Le Rassemblement-LR and Les Loyalistes bloc were advocating a project that would provide more powers to each of the three provinces, including in terms of tax revenue collection.
The project, often described as a de facto partition, however, was not retained in the latest phases of the negotiations, because it contravened France’s constitutional principle of a united and indivisible nation.
“But no agreement does not mean chaos”, Backès said.
On the contrary, she believes that by not agreeing to the French minister’s deal plan, her camp had “averted disaster for New Caledonia”.
“Tomorrow, there will be another minister . . . and another project”, she said, implicitly betting on Valls’s departure.
On the pro-independence front, a moderate “UNI” (National Union For Independence) said a in a statement even though negotiations did not eventuate into a comprehensive agreement, the French State’s commitment and method had allowed to offer “clear and transparent terms of negotiations on New Caledonia’s institutional and political future”.
The main FLNKS group, mainly consisting of pro-independence Union Calédonienne (UC) party, also said that even though no agreement could be found as a result of the latest round of talks, the whole project could be regarded as “advances” and “one more step . . . not a failure” in New Caledonia’s decolonisation, as specified in the 1998 Nouméa Accord, FLNKS chief negotiator and UC party president Emmanuel Tjibaou said.
Deplored the empty outcome
Other parties involved in the talks, including Eveil Océanien and Calédonie Ensemble, have deplored the empty outcome of talks last week.
They called it a “collective failure” and stressed that above all, reaching a consensual solution was the only way forward, and that the forthcoming elections and the preceding campaign could bear the risk of further radicalisation and potential violence.
In the economic and business sector, the conclave’s inconclusive outcome has brought more anxiety and uncertainty.
“What businesses need, now, is political stability, confidence. But without a political agreement that many of us were hoping for, the confidence and visibility is not there, there’s no investment”, New Caledonia’s MEDEF-NC (Business Leaders Union) vice-president Bertrand Courte told NC La Première.
As a result of the May 2024 riots, more than 600 businesses, mainly in Nouméa, were destroyed, causing the loss of more than 10,000 jobs.
Over the past 12 months, New Caledonia GDP (gross domestic product) has shrunk by an estimated 10 to 15 percent, according to the latest figures produced by New Caledonia statistical institute ISEE.
What next? Crucial provincial elections As no agreement was found, the next course of action for New Caledonia was to hold provincial elections no later than 30 November 2025, under the existing system, which still restricts the list of persons eligible to vote at those local elections.
The makeup of the electoral roll for local polls was the very issue that triggered the May 2024 riots, as the French Parliament, at the time, had endorsed a Constitutional amendment to push through opening the list.
At the time, the pro-independence camp argued the changes to eligibility conditions would eventually “dilute” their votes and make indigenous Kanaks a minority in their own country.
The Constitutional bill was abandoned after the May 2024 rots.
The sensitive issue remains part of the comprehensive pact that Valls had been working on for the past four months.
The provincial elections are crucial in that they also determine the proportional makeup of New Caledonia’s Congress and its government and president.
The provincial elections, initially scheduled to take place in May 2024, and later in December 2024, and finally no later than 30 November 2025, were already postponed twice.
Even if the provincial elections are held later this year (under the current “frozen” rules), the anti-independence camp has already announced it would contest its result.
According to the anti-independence camp, the current restrictions on New Caledonia’s electoral roll contradict democratic principles and have to be “unfrozen” and opened up to any citizen residing for more than 10 uninterrupted years.
The present electoral roll is “frozen”, which means it only allows citizens who have have been livingin New Caledonia before November 1998 to cast their vote at local elections.
The case could be brought to the French Constitutional Council, or even higher, to a European or international level, said pro-France politicians.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Around 2:00 in the morning, a white police officer–who would later acknowledge that the unarmed teenager startled him– fatally shot Thomas once in the chest.
Three days later, the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood was on fire.
Thomas’ death brought to 15 the number of African American men killed by Cincinnati police officers between 1995 and 2001. In the most high-profile of these cases, police mistook Roger Owensby Jr.–a sergeant in the U.S. Army who had no criminal record—for a drug dealer, put him in a chokehold, maced, and beat him. Officers were tried and acquitted.
Thomas’ killing was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.
On the morning of May 8, students at Johns Hopkins University launched an encampment on Keyser Quad, declaring it the Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya Liberated Zone in solidarity with the people of Gaza and in protest of the university’s ongoing complicity in genocide. Within the hour, demonstrators were met with indiscriminate aggression and physical harassment by armed Johns Hopkins Police and Baltimore Police officers, resulting in the injury of two students and the destruction of personal belongings.
Despite the peaceful nature of the protest, which Johns Hopkins Police themselves admitted, they issued multiple threats of imminent arrests, engaging in threats and verbal harassment well outside the scope of their putative role of enforcers of public safety.
Roughly 80 pro-Palestine protesters were arrested on Wednesday night after occupying a library on Columbia University’s campus.
Demonstrators rushed through Butler Library’s security gate at about 3:00 p.m., hanging banners, tagging shelves with graffiti, chanting pro-Palestine slogans, and renaming it the “Basel Al-Araj Popular University,” a reference to the Palestinian writer who was killed by the Israeli army in 2017.
By 7:00 p.m., the school had called in the police. A volatile scene had already developed, as a crowd of supporters gathered outside the building and public safety officers prevented students from leaving the library without showing identification.
“A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty.”—James Madison
We are being frog-marched into tyranny at the end of a loaded gun. Or rather, hundreds of thousands of loaded guns.
Let’s not mince words: President Trump’s April 28 executive order is the oldest trick in the authoritarian playbook: martial law masquerading as law and order.
The order doesn’t merely expand policing—it institutionalizes repression.
It sets us squarely on the road to martial law.
If allowed to stand, Trump’s executive order completes our shift from a nation of laws, where even the least among us had the right to due process, to a nation of enforcers: vigilantes with badges who treat “we the people” as suspects and subordinates.
Without invoking the Insurrection Act or deploying active-duty military forces, Trump has accelerated the transformation of domestic police into his own paramilitary force.
Authorizing the DOJ to defend officers accused of civil rights violations;
Increasing the transfer of military equipment to local police;
Shielding law enforcement from judicial oversight;
Prioritizing law enforcement protection over civil liberties;
Embedding DHS and federal agents more deeply into local policing.
All of this has occurred without congressional debate, judicial review, or constitutional scrutiny.
For years, we have watched as the government transformed local law enforcement into extensions of the military: outfitted with military hardware and trained in battlefield tactics.
However, this executive order goes one step further—it creates not just a de facto standing army but Trump’s own army: loyal not to the Constitution or the people but to the president.
This is the very danger the Founders feared: a militarized police force answerable to a powerful executive, operating outside the bounds of the law.
This is martial law without a declaration.
Today, law enforcement is equipped like the military, trained in battlefield tactics, and given broad discretion over who to target and how to respond. But these are not soldiers bound by the laws of war. They are civilian enforcers, wielding unchecked power with minimal oversight.
And they are everywhere.
Armored vehicles on neighborhood streets. Flashbang raids on family homes. Riot police in small towns. SWAT-style teams deployed by federal agencies. Drones overhead. Mass surveillance below.
We are fast approaching a reality where constitutional rights exist in name only.
In practice, we are ruled by a quasi-military bureaucracy empowered to:
Detain without trial;
Punish political dissent;
Seize property under civil asset forfeiture;
Classify critics as extremists or terrorists;
Conduct mass surveillance on the populace;
Raid homes in the name of “public safety”;
Use deadly force at the slightest provocation.
In other words, we’ve got freedom in name only.
It’s the same scenario nationwide: in big cities and small towns alike, militarized “warrior” cops—hyped up on power—ride roughshod over individual rights by exercising almost absolute discretion over who is a threat, what constitutes resistance, and how harshly they can deal with the citizens they were appointed to “serve and protect.”
This nationwide epidemic of court-sanctioned police violence has already ensured that unarmed Americans—many of them mentally ill, elderly, disabled, or simply noncompliant—will continue to die at the hands of militarized police.
From individuals shot for holding garden hoses to those killed after calling 911 for help, these tragedies underscore a chilling truth: in a police state, the only truly “safe” person is one who offers no resistance at all.
These killings are the inevitable result of a system that rewards vigilante aggression by warrior cops and punishes accountability.
Now, under the cover of executive orders and nationalist rhetoric, that warrior mentality is being redirected toward a more dangerous mission: silencing political dissent.
Emboldened by Trump’s call to reopen Alcatraz and target so-called “homegrown” threats, these foot soldiers of the police state are no longer going to be tasked with enforcing the law—they will be deployed to enforce political obedience.
This is not a theory. It is a reality unfolding before our eyes.
We are living in a creeping state of undeclared martial law.
The militarization of police and federal agencies over recent decades has only accelerated the timeline toward authoritarianism.
This is how freedom ends—not with a loud decree, but with the quiet, calculated erosion of every principle we once held sacred.
We’ve come full circle—from resisting British redcoats to submitting to American forces with the same disdain for liberty.
Our constitutional foundation is crumbling, and with it, any illusion that those in power still serve the public good.
For its part, Congress has abdicated its role as a constitutional check on executive power, passing sweeping authorizations with little scrutiny and failing to rein in executive overreach. The courts, too, have in the past sanctioned many of these abuses in the name of national security, public order, or qualified immunity. Instead of acting as constitutional safeguards, these institutions have largely become rubber stamps.
Indeed, the president, Congress, the courts, and the police have come to embody the very abuse the Founders fought to resist. Only now are the courts beginning to show glimmers of allegiance to the Constitution.
This is not about partisanship. This is about power without restraint.
As tempting as it is to place full blame on Trump for this full-throttle shift into martial law, he is not the architect of this police state. He is its most shameless enabler—a useful frontman for the Deep State in its ongoing war on the American people.
The head of Fiji’s prison service has been caught on camera involved in a fist fight that appears to have taken place at the popular O’Reilley’s Bar in the capital of Suva.
Sevuloni Naucukidi, the acting Commissioner of the Fiji Corrections Service (FCS), can be seen in the viral video throwing punches at another man as staff at the establishment scramble to contain the situation.
The 30-second clip of the incident, shared online by The Fiji Times today, had been viewed more than half a million times, with more than 8200 reactions and almost 2000 shares by 1pm (NZT).
Naucukidi was appointed to act as the Fiji prison chief at the end of March after the FCS Commissioner Dr Jalesi Nakarawa was stood down by the Constitutional Offices Commission following allegations of misbehaviour.
Fiji’s Minister for Justice Siromi Turaga (left) and Correction Service acting Commissioner Sevuloni Naucukidi on 30 March 2025. Image: Fiji Corrections Service/RNZ Pacific
Police spokesperson Wame Boutolu told The Fiji Times that no complaint had been filed with police regarding the incident.
The newspaper reported that it was not clear whether the incident took place before or after Naucukidi’s appointment as FCS acting commissioner.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The Fiji Times reported later that Justice Minister Siromi Turaga had said that a “certain level of decorum is expected at all times — particularly when in uniform, whether that be Bula Friday wear or your official work attire”.
He made the comments in relation to the controversial video.
Turaga said preliminary investigations indicated that the footage was from an earlier date.
“We have contacted the owners of the establishment, who have confirmed that the video likely dates back to early March 2025,” he said.
Hong Kong police have arrested the father and brother of wanted U.S.-based activist Anna Kwok, local media reported on Friday.
The police said they arrested two men aged 35 and 68 on Wednesday, suspecting them of violating the national security and crimes ordinances by “attempting to directly or indirectly handle the funds of fugitives.” They didn’t identify the men.
Local media said the police discovered that Kwok’s father, Kwok Yin-sang, traveled overseas to meet her. After returning to Hong Kong he tried to withdraw nearly US$14,000 from his daughter’s life and accident insurance policies, police said.
Kwok’s brother worked at an insurance company, according to the Sing Tao Daily, and may have used his knowledge of the industry to help manage his sister’s finances.
Kwok’s father was denied bail while her brother was released, Reuters reported. The family’s lawyer could not be reached for comment, the news agency said.
Anna Kwok is the executive director of the Washington-based political lobbying group the Hong Kong Democracy Council. Hong Kong authorities offered a HK$1 million (US$128,000) bounty for her capture, accusing her of “colluding with foreign forces” under the national security law, which bans criticism of the authorities.
Kwok’s parents and two brothers were detained in August last year and questioned over whether they had any contact or financial dealings with her.
Kwok wrote on Facebook at the time that her family had never helped her and were probably unaware of the nature of her work. She said the Hong Kong government wanted to silence her by harassing her family, but she would not give up trying to pave the way for Hong Kong’s freedom and self-determination.
Edited by Mike Firn and Mat Pennington.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Cantonese.
At 1am on Saturday 26 April, cops raided an Axe Drax supporter’s house. Police have now released them under investigation for burglary. This was all over an action where activists had written on some windows and a whiteboard with dry wipe pen in a private office.
Axe Drax: police raid activist’s house
Police seized their phone and laptop and denied them a phone call for 13 hours. While inside, police arrested and released arrestee supporter waiting at the station.
This follows Axe Drax and Reclaim the Power occupying the European headquarters of one of Drax’s biggest suppliers, Enviva, on Friday 25 April:
BREAKING: We stormed Enviva HQ today demanding an end to forest destruction & toxic pollution.
— Axe Drax @axedrax.bsky.social (@axe_drax) April 25, 2025
The arrest was over the action targeting Enviva, the world’s biggest wood pellet exporter. Despite this, the majority of the bail conditions are focused on Drax.
They include banning them from Drax’s AGM on 1 May and from Drax sites across the UK. Additionally, these also bar them and from Enviva’s European headquarters in York. Further to this, their bail conditions prohibit them from speaking about the arrest and raid over the internet.
Drax and Enviva: partners in deforestation
Drax Power Station, located near Selby in Yorkshire, is the world’s biggest woody biomass power station and the UK’s single largest carbon emitter.
The company sources from around the world, primarily the US, Canada, and the Baltic States. In many of these places, the company is responsible for razing high-risk forests, including old growth, ancient trees.
What’s more, Drax’s has situated its wood pellet production sites, predominantly in environmental justice communities. There, its operations emit large amounts of pollutants, such as PM10, PM2.5 and VOCs. Notably, these are linked to respiratory and pulmonary health impacts.
The UK government counts woody biomass as carbon neutral, allowing Drax to claim renewable energy subsidies.
Meanwhile, Enviva is the world’s largest producer of biomass wood pellets. Enviva is one of Drax’s main suppliers, providing about 15% of the wood pellets that Drax burns at is power station.
Its operations destroy 175,000 acres of Southern forests every year and it exports approximately 6.2 million metric tons of pellets per year.
Enviva’s plants are located in predominantly Black and brown, and low-income neighborhoods, where its facilities expose residents to tonnes of air pollution each year.
Whistleblowers have accused Enviva of sourcing almost exclusively whole trees and failing to replant forests. Scientific studies have concluded what on the ground research has been showing for years: that Enviva is contributing to deforestation in the US Southeast.
Police acting as Drax’s ‘private security’
Axe Drax spokesperson Rosie Gloster said:
What we are seeing here is yet another example of Drax treating the Police like their own private security. It’s beyond clear the raid and arrest were an attempt from Drax to crush dissent once again. Why else would the bail conditions focus on Drax – when it was an action targeting Enviva? Drax and Enviva are both companies who make their money from poisoning communities in the Southern US and destroying vital forests. We will not stop disrupting their destruction, this response alone shows we are having an impact.
A spokesperson from Reclaim the Power said:
Just like last summer, when Police spent over £3 million shutting down our peaceful climate camp, Drax have once again treated the Police like their own private security. It is clear that Drax and Enviva will do anything they can to avoid a light being shone on their poisonous pollution and destruction. Using Police as a tool to repress dissent is an age old technique by polluters like Drax – we will not let them intimate us.
One of the most essential branches of English liberty is the freedom of one’s house. A man’s house is his castle.
—James Otis, Revolutionary War activist, on the Writs of Assistance, 1761
What the Founders rebelled against—armed government agents invading homes without cause—we are now being told to accept in the so-called name of law and order.
Imagine it: it’s the middle of the night. Your neighborhood is asleep. Suddenly, your front door is splintered by battering rams. Shadowy figures flood your home, screaming orders, pointing guns, threatening violence. You and your children are dragged out into the night—barefoot, in your underwear, in the rain.
Your home is torn apart, your valuables seized, and your sense of safety demolished.
But this isn’t a robbery by lawless criminals.
This is what terror policing looks like in Trump’s America: raids by night, flashbangs at dawn, mistaken identities, and shattered lives.
On April 24, 2025, in Oklahoma City, 20 heavily armed federal agents from ICE, the FBI, and DHS kicked in the door of a home where a woman and her three daughters—all American citizens—were sleeping. They were forced out of bed at gunpoint and made to wait in the rain while agents ransacked the house, confiscating their belongings.
It was the wrong house and the wrong family.
There were no apologies. No compensation. No accountability.
This is the new face of American policing, and it’s about to get so much worse thanks to President Trump’s latest executive order, which aims to eliminate federal oversight and empower local law enforcement to act with impunity.
Trump’s supporters have long praised his efforts to deregulate business and government under the slogan of “no handcuffs.” But when that logic is applied to law enforcement, the result isn’t freedom—it’s unchecked power.
What it really means is no restraints on police power, while the rest of us are left with fewer rights, less recourse, and a constitution increasingly ignored behind the barrel of a gun.
This isn’t just a political shift. It’s a constitutional unraveling that hands law enforcement a blank check: more weapons, more power, and fewer consequences.
The result is not safety; it’s state-sanctioned violence.
It’s a future in which no home is safe, no knock is required, and no officer is ever held accountable.
That future is already here.
We’ve entered an era in which federal agents can destroy your home, traumatize your family, and violate the Fourth Amendment with impunity. And the courts have said: that’s just how it works.
These rulings reflect a growing doctrine of unaccountability enshrined by the courts and now supercharged by the Trump administration.
Trump wants to give police even more immunity, ushering in a new era of police brutality, lawlessness, and the reckless deployment of lethal force on unarmed civilians.
This is how the rights of ordinary Americans get trampled under the boots of unchecked power.
There was a time in America when a person’s home was a sanctuary, protected by the Fourth Amendment from unlawful searches and seizures.
That promise is dead.
We have returned to the era of the King’s Writ—blanket search powers once used by British soldiers to invade colonial homes without cause. As James Otis warned in 1761, such writs “annihilate the privilege” of privacy and due process, allowing agents of the state to enter homes “when they please.”
Trump’s new executive order revives this tyranny in modern form: armored vehicles, night raids, no-knock warrants, federal immunity. It empowers police to act without restraint, and it rewards those who brutalize with impunity.
Even more alarming, the order sets the stage for future legislation that could effectively codify qualified immunity into federal law, making it nearly impossible for victims of police violence to sue.
This is how constitutional protections are dismantled—not in one dramatic blow, but in a thousand raids, a thousand broken doors, a thousand courts that look the other way.
Let’s not pretend we’re safe. Who will protect us from the police when the police have become the law unto themselves?
The war on the American people is no longer metaphorical.
Government agents can now kick in your door without warning, shoot your dog, point a gun at your children, and suffer no legal consequences—so long as they claim it was a “reasonable” mistake. They are judge, jury, and executioner.
With Trump’s new order, the architecture of a police state is no longer theoretical. It is being built in real time. It is being normalized.
Nowhere is this threat more visible than in the unholy alliance between ICE and militarized police forces, a convergence of two of the most dangerous arms of the modern security state.
Together, they’ve created a government apparatus that acts first and justifies itself later, if at all. And it runs counter to everything the Bill of Rights was designed to prevent: punishment without trial, surveillance without suspicion, and power without accountability.
When ICE agents armed with military-grade equipment conduct predawn raids alongside SWAT teams, with little to no accountability, the result is not public safety. It is state terror. And it’s exactly the kind of unchecked power the Constitution was written to prevent.
The Constitution is intended to serve as a shield, particularly the Fourth Amendment, which safeguards against unreasonable searches and seizures. But in this new reality, the government has nullified that shield.
All of America is fast becoming a Constitution-free zone.
The Founders were aware of the dangers of unchecked power. That’s why they gave us the Fourth Amendment. But rights are only as strong as the public’s willingness to defend them.
If we allow the government to turn our homes into war zones—if we continue to reward police for lawless raids, ignore the courts for rubber-stamping abuse, and cheer political leaders who promise “no more handcuffs”—we will lose the last refuge of freedom: the right to be left alone.
On the morning of April 23, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies executed search warrants at multiple homes in Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, and Canton Township, Michigan. The raids reportedly targeted a number of student organizers who were connected to Gaza protests at the University of Michigan.
According to the group Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (SAFE), agents seized the students’ electronics and a number of personal items. Four individuals were detained, but eventually released.
TAHRIR Coalition, a student-led movement calling for divestment from Israel, said that officers initially refused to present warrants at the Ypsilanti raid. They were unable to confirm whether ICE was present at the raid.
When the Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Department in California wanted to purchase new firearms, it sold its used ones to help cover the cost. The old guns went to a distributor, which then turned around and sold them to the public. One of those guns—a Glock pistol—found its way to Indianapolis.
That Glock was involved in the killing of Maria Leslie’s grandson, and the fact that it once belonged to law enforcement makes her loss sting even more.
“My grandson was in his own apartment complex. He lived there,” Leslie said. “He should not have been murdered there, especially with a gun that traces back all the way to the California police department’s coffers.”
This week on Reveal, in a collaboration with The Trace and CBS News, reporter Alain Stephens examines a common practice for police departments—trading in their old weapons rather than destroying them—and how it’s led to tens of thousands of old cop guns ending up in the hands of criminals.
This is an update of an episode first aired in July 2024. Since then, more than a dozen law enforcement agencies have stopped reselling their used firearms or are reviewing their policies.
Sri Lankan police on Thursday blocked Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Minh Tue from continuing his barefoot journey around the South Asian island until he changes his visa, a witness told Radio Free Asia.
About 30 police descended on Tue and his group of 37 monks as they had finished eating and were preparing to depart from Narammala, a town about 40 miles (65 kilometers) northeast of the capital Colombo.
“They waved a document sent from Vietnam, stating that this group was not a group of real monks, so walking like this was against the laws of the host country,” Vietnamese filmmaker Nguyen Minh Chi, who witnessed the incident, recounted to RFA.
This came two days after a local monk, claiming to be from the Sri Lankan Buddhist Sangha, brandishing the same document, had attempted to bar the group from stopping at a Hindu temple.
Thich Minh Tue became an unlikely internet sensation last year in Vietnam, where his simple lifestyle has struck a chord. He undertook barefoot walks that went viral and well-wishers came out in droves.
Last December, he left Vietnam on a journey by foot to India, the birthplace of Buddhism. After crossing Laos, he entered Thailand with a plan to hike across conflict-wracked Myanmar, but ran into logistical and visa problems. He has since traveled to Malaysia, and a week ago arrived in Sri Lanka, a predominantly Buddhist nation. He still hopes to make it to India.
But his international wanderings have become progressively more troubled – seemingly reflecting the suspicion with which he’s regarded by authorities back home in communist Vietnam where religion is closely regulated.
The document sent from Vietnam and presented by the Sri Lankan police, according to Nguyen Minh Chi, is the letter signed by Thich Nhat Tu, a senior representative of the state-backed Vietnamese sangha – or Buddhist religious association – which came to light earlier this week.
The letter, a copy of which has been seen by RFA, accuses Thich Minh Tue of impersonating a Buddhist monk, attempting to establish a dissident sect, and posing threat to public order and national reputation.
According to Chi, the Sri Lankan police were polite and respectful. They asked the monks to change their visas from those for tourists to those for pilgrims, to suit the purpose of the trip.
The Vietnamese were then put on two different buses, one for monks and one for volunteers and YouTubers, and taken to a pagoda in the nearby town of Alawwa, Chi said.
The monks were told they will not be allowed to travel on foot until their visas are changed, he said.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Vietnamese.