Following the United Kingdom’s decision to extradite Julian Assange to face trial in the United States, the International Federation of Journalists’ (IFJ) Australian affiliate, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) has called on the Australian government to take swift steps to lobby for the dismissal of all charges against Assange.
The IFJ stands with the MEAA in condemning the extradition order and calls for Assange to be pardoned and allowed to be with his family.
On June 17, UK Home Secretary Priti Patel approved Assange’s extradition to the US to face charges, primarily under the nation’s Espionage Act, for releasing US government records that revealed the US military committed war crimes against civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq, including the killing of two Reuters journalists.
Assange, a member of the MEAA since 2007, may now only have a slim chance of challenging the extradition.
If found guilty, Assange faces up to 175 years in prison.
The WikiLeaks founder is highly likely to be detained in the US under conditions of isolation or solitary confinement, despite the US government’s assurances, which would severely exacerbate his risk of suicide.
WikiLeaks was awarded the Walkley Award for Most Outstanding Contribution to Journalism in 2011, an annual prize to reward excellence in Australian journalism, in recognition of the impact of WikiLeaks’ actions on public interest journalism by assisting whistleblowers to tell their stories.
According to the MEAA, Walkley judges said WikiLeaks applied new technology to”‘penetrate the inner workings of government to reveal an avalanche of inconvenient truths in a global publishing coup”.
Whistleblowers have since been used by other media outlets to expose global tax avoidance schemes, among other stories.
In the case of WikiLeaks, only Julian Assange faces charges, with no other WikiLeaks media partners cited in any US government legal actions.
In 2017, Chelsea Manning, a US Army intelligence analyst who released classified information to WikiLeaks, was pardoned by former US President Barack Obama.
MEAA media section federal president Karen Percy said: “We urge the new Australian government to act on Julian Assange’s behalf and lobby for his release. The actions of the US are a warning sign to journalists and whistleblowers everywhere and undermine the importance of uncovering wrongdoing.
“Our thoughts are with Julian and his family at this difficult time.”
The IFJ said: “The United Kingdom Home Secretary’s decision to allow the extradition of Julian Assange is a significant blow to media freedom and a dire threat to journalists, whistleblowers, and media workers worldwide.
“The IFJ urges the government of Australia to act swiftly to intervene and lobby the United States and United Kingdom governments to dismiss all charges against Assange. Journalism is not a crime.”
Last week on June 17 2022, UK Home Secretary Priti Patel issued a statement confirming she had approved the US government’s request to extradite Julian Assange.
The Australian founder of WikiLeaks faces 18 criminal charges of computer misuse and espionage.
This decision means Assange is one step closer to extradition, but has not yet reached the final stage in what has been a years-long process. Patel’s decision follows a March decision to deny leave to appeal by the UK Supreme Court, affirming the High Court decision that accepted assurances provided by the US government and concluded there were no remaining legal bars to Assange’s extradition.
The High Court decision overruled an earlier decision by a District Court that extraditing Assange to the US would be “unjust and oppressive” because the prison conditions he was likely to experience would make him a high risk for suicide.
In the High Court’s view, the American government’s assurances sufficiently reduced the risk.
Another appeal ahead WikiLeaks has already announced Assange will appeal the home secretary’s decision in the UK courts. He can appeal on an issue of law or fact, but must obtain leave of the High Court to launch an appeal.
This is a fresh legal process rather than a continuation of the judicial stage of extradition that followed his arrest in 2019.
Assange’s brother has stated the appeal will include new information, including reports of plots to assassinate Assange.
Several legal issues argued before the District Court in 2020 are also likely to be raised in the next appeal. In particular, the District Court decided the question of whether the charges were political offences, and therefore not extraditable crimes, could only be considered by the home secretary.
BREAKING: UK Home Secretary approves extradition of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange to the US where he would face a 175 year sentence – A dark day for Press freedom and for British democracy
The decision will be appealedhttps://t.co/m1bX8STSr8pic.twitter.com/5nWlxnWqO7
The question of whether and how the home secretary decided on this issue could now be ripe for argument.
Assange’s next appeal will also seek to re-litigate whether US government assurances regarding the prison conditions Assange will face are adequate or reliable. His lawyers will also again demand the UK courts consider the role of role of freedom of expression in determining whether to extradite Assange.
Assange will remain detained in Belmarsh prison while his appeal is underway. The decision of the High Court on his appeal against the home secretary’s decision may potentially be appealed to the Supreme Court.
If, after all legal avenues are exhausted in the UK, the order to extradite stands, Assange could take a human rights action to the European Court of Human Rights.
However, the European Court has rarely declared extradition to be contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights, except in cases involving the death penalty or whole-life sentences.
It has not yet considered freedom of expression in an extradition case.
Further appeals could add years more to the saga of Assange’s detention.
Responses from the Assange family and human rights advocates Assange’s wife, Stella Moris, called Patel’s decision a ‘“travesty”. His brother Gabriel Shipton called it “shameful”. They have vowed to fight his extradition through every legal means available.
Julian Assange’s family respond to decision. Video: Reuters
According to the secretary-general of Amnesty International Agnes Callamard:
Assange faces a high risk of prolonged solitary confinement, which would violate the prohibition on torture or other ill treatment. Diplomatic assurances provided by the US that Assange will not be kept in solitary confinement cannot be taken on face value given previous history.
What role for the Australian government?
Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus responded to the latest development last night. They confirmed Australia would continue to provide consular assistance to Assange:
The Australian government has been clear in our view that Mr Assange’s case has dragged on for too long and that it should be brought to a close. We will continue to express this view to the governments of the United Kingdom and United States.
However, it remains unclear exactly what form Australia’s diplomatic or political advocacy is taking.
In December 2021, Anthony Albanese said he could not see what purpose was served by the ongoing pursuit of Assange. He is a signatory to a petition to free Assange. Since he was sworn in as prime minister, though, Albanese has resisted calls to demand publicly that the US drop its criminal charges against Assange.
In contrast, Albanese recently made a public call for the release of Sean Turnell from prison in Myanmar.
In a way, Patel’s decision last week closes a window for stronger advocacy between Australia and the UK. While the matter sat with the UK Home Secretary, the Australian government might have sought to intervene with it as a political issue.
Now it seems possible Australia may revert to its long established position of non-interference in an ongoing court process.
Some commentators argue this is insufficient and that Australia must, finally, do more for Assange. Tasmanian MP Andrew Wilkie said it was high time Australia treated this as the political matter it is, and demand from its allies in London and Washington that the matter be brought to an end.
Barrister Greg Barns likened Assange’s situation to that of David Hicks, who was imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay:
The Howard government at the time brought him back to Australia. This is not unprecedented. It is important that Australia is able to use the great relationship it has with Washington to ensure the safety of Australians.
These comments suggest that Australia ought to focus any advocacy towards the US government, making a case for the criminal charges and extradition request to be abandoned.
At this stage it is impossible to say if the Albanese government has the will to take a stronger stand on Assange’s liberty. The prime minister and foreign minister have certainly invested heavily in foreign relations in the early weeks of their government, with emphasis on the significance of the US alliance.
Perhaps strong advocacy on Assange’s behalf at this time might be regarded as unsettling and risky. The US has had plenty of opportunity, and its own change of government, and yet it has not changed its determination to prosecute Assange.
This is despite former President Barack Obama’s decision to commute the sentence of Chelsea Manning, the whistleblower who provided classified material to Assange for publication through Wikileaks.
Stronger Australian advocacy may well be negatively received. Assange’s supporters will continue to demand that Albanese act regardless, banking on the strength of the Australia-US alliance as capable of tolerating a point of disagreement.
Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong was no doubt expecting a cooler reception than her three previous visits to the Pacific when she touched down in Honiara last Friday.
The Solomon Islands government website had not even listed the Australian minister’s visit — but it did note the first visit of a Saudi Arabian tourism minister, happening the same day.
With this visit, Wong walked a diplomatic tightrope that no senior minister in the previous government appeared willing to.
Solomon Islands leaders have had a very crowded schedule of late, as highlighted by the Solomon Star newspaper. It said Wong was the latest foreign figure to arrive on Solomon Island shores after a number of “high-level visits from USA, Japan and China recently, before and after the signing of the security pact”.
ABC News on Wong’s visit to Solomon Islands. Video: ABC
The security pact in question is the one signed on April 20 between China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, and Solomon Islands’ foreign minister, Jeremiah Manele.
Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare explained the riots of November 2021 left his government with “no option” but to enter into such a security agreement to “plug the gaps that exist in our security agreement with Australia”. What these “gaps” are, he did not say.
Since that signing, the entire Pacific has shifted in myriad ways. Wong has been very busy in her first month in office trying to reduce its impact.
She has had some wins with Fiji, Samoa and Tonga. Also, Australia assisted with the rapprochement at the Pacific Islands Forum, which has emerged reinvigorated after the stress test of the past year, when one-third of the members threatened to leave.
This was averted with a special meeting in Suva on June 7, with Micronesian leaders transported to it on Australian aircraft.
The biggest win so far, for which Wong can take some credit, was for her work in advance of the Pacific Islands Forum meeting on May 30. Here, the ten nations that recognise China did not collectively sign on to become “China-Pacific Island countries”. (Federated States of Micronesia President David Panuleo rallied the region with a stirring letter that instantly became a classic text.)
A whirlwind multi-nation visit by Wang before and after the May 30 meeting added inducements for working more closely with China through numerous bilateral agreements.
Wang spent the most time on his trip in the Solomon Islands. The effect of his effusive welcome by Sogavare, encapsulated in the photograph of the pair linking arms, denoted the “iron-clad” ties the two leaders were cementing between their nations.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare link arms in Honiara after making their security pact. Image: Xinhua/AP/AAP
This is a template agreement Wang has already shopped around Asia in 2021, tweaked for national specificities and concerns. In the case of the Solomon Islands, it mentions working together on “climate change” and “marine protection”.
Given all that China has offered Sogavare and his political allies — to the great detriment of the nation according to Opposition Leader Matthew Wale, who has charged the security deal is “a personal deal to protect the prime minister” — what could Penny Wong offer?
On her visits to Fiji, Samoa and Tonga, not being a member of the Morrison government that clung to its coal power and climate policies gave Wong a lot of mileage. This is the most important issue facing the region, recently reiterated in an impassioned speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue by Fiji’s minister for defence and policing, Inia Bakikoto Seruiratu.
The Solomon Islands is no exception.
That said, not being a Morrison government minister did not get Wong very far in Honiara. As she had signalled she would, Wong announced more vaccines donations and an expansion of the very popular (and desperately needed) labour scheme, the topic on which she got the most questions at her press conference.
She also visited a school and lunched with women leaders, who would have raised the dire need for improved medical facilities. Notably, it seems Wong did not meet Wale and other Sogavare opponents.
Very subtly, Wong presented an alternative to the China path. Unlike Wang’s visit, which greatly restricted press coverage, Wong encouraged it, no doubt hoping word would spread as it reportedly had in other parts of the Pacific.
A little story about Penny Wong’s recent visit to Fiji.
I was sitting on remote Kavewa Island, six cups of kava deep, and one of the men taps me on the shoulder.
He says “Nicki” (they were calling me Nicki) “your lady minister came here yeah?”
“Penny Wong?” I said. “She did” 1/
But what about “our shared security interests”, as Wong termed it? This got little traction in Honiara as Sogavare will not walk back from the China-Solomon Islands agreement.
On the election campaign trail, Wong described the pact as “the worst foreign policy blunder since World War Two”.
Many anticipate China will build a naval base, as appears to be happening in Cambodia. However, Sogavare has assured Wong, and others, this will not occur.
What may happen is that maritime militias appearing as fishing vessels, which China has used to great effect in the South China Sea, will slowly build a China military presence if there is not a change of leadership and direction in the Solomon Islands.
The recent “dangerous” confrontation between a Chinese fighter jet and an Australian airforce plane in the South China Sea on May 26, the day Wong began her visit to Fiji, is another sobering instance of tactics that might move south.
While Wong’s visit did not deliver big wins, it did not make things worse.
She got reassurances, but given what Sogavare has signed onto with China of late, there is a clear lack of connection between words and deeds. What Wong did do is signal another way forward for Sogavare’s considerable opposition.
In the coming week, a multilateral Pacific Islands effort will be announced in Washington DC that involves the US, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and France.
Given this, it is almost certain that the tempo of visits to the Solomon Islands and other Pacific nations is going to rise.
Dr Patricia A. O’Brien is a faculty member, Asian Studies Program, Georgetown University; visiting fellow, Department of Pacific Affairs, Australian National University; adjunct fellow, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington DC., Georgetown University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.
An investigation by Al Jazeera has obtained an image of the bullet used to kill the network’s journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, reports Al Jazeera staff.
The photograph for the first time shows the type of ammunition used to kill the veteran Al Jazeera correspondent in the occupied West Bank last month.
According to ballistic and forensic experts, the green-tipped bullet was designed to pierce armour and is used in an M4 rifle. The round was extracted from her head.
The bullet was analysed using 3D models and, according to experts, it was 5.56mm calibre – the same as used by Israeli forces. The round was designed and manufactured in the United States, experts said.
In this undated photo, Shireen Abu Akleh stands next to a TV camera above the Old City of Jerusalem [Al Jazeera Media Network]
Fayez al-Dwairi, a former Jordanian major-general, told Al Jazeera the weapon and round used to kill Abu Akleh are regularly carried by Israeli forces.
“This M4 and this munition is used by the Israeli army. It is available and used by the units. I cannot say the whole unit, or most of the soldiers, but they use it,” al-Dwairi told Al Jazeera.
“When any soldier uses it, he uses it for a definite target — he wants to hunt, he wants to kill … There is no way to use it for another thing.”
Palestinian assistant Multilateral Affairs Minister Ammar Hijazi told Al Jazeera the bullet will remain with the Palestinian government for further investigation.
Abu Akleh, a longtime TV correspondent for Al Jazeera Arabic, was killed last month while covering Israeli army raids in the city of Jenin.
Abu Akleh’s case was sent to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the investigation was recently handed over to the ICC prosecutor. The status of the case, however, remains unclear.
The 5.56mm bullet that killed Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh last month – designed to pierce armour and the same as used by Israeli forces. Image: Al Jazeera
“We think there is enough evidence with the prosecutor … that proves without reasonable doubt that the crime committed against Shireen Abu Akleh was done by the Israeli occupation and they are the perpetrators of this awful crime and they should be held responsible for it,” said Hijazi.
‘Trigger-happy policies’ Abu Akleh was wearing a press vest and standing with other journalists when she was killed.
Israeli authorities initially said Palestinian fighters were responsible for her death, circulating video of Palestinian men shooting down an alleyway. However, researchers from the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem found the spot where the clip was filmed and proved it was impossible to shoot Abu Akleh from there.
In an interview, Omar Shakir — Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch — said all evidence indicates the kill shot came from an Israeli soldier.
Sherif Mansour, MENA programme coordinator of the Committee to Protect Journalists, told Al Jazeera from Washington, DC, that “the pattern” of killing Palestinian media workers “is well known”.
“We have documented at least 19 journalists who were killed by Israeli fire, some of them in the Gaza wars in vehicles marked as press in 2012 and 2014,” Mansour said.
“Some of them were also killed by Israeli snipers while wearing vests with press signs, away from any threatening situation, two of them in 2018. Clearly, we have a problem here of trigger-happy policies that allows this to continue.”
‘Justice and accountability’ In what appeared to be an unprovoked assault at the Al Jazeera correspondent’s funeral days after she was killed, Israeli officers attacked pallbearers, which almost caused them to drop Abu Akleh’s coffin — an incident broadcast live that caused international outrage.
An Israeli police investigation into the attack concluded no one should be punished, despite finding there had been police misconduct, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.
Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim, reporting from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, said for Palestinians their version of events is being “confirmed by so many investigations”, including the latest one by Al Jazeera.
“Palestinians have been saying from day one that they know that the bullet that hit Shireen came from Israeli soldiers. The witnesses, the videos that we’ve seen from Palestinians who were there, show there were no Palestinian fighters around the area where Shireen was in,” Ibrahim said.
“Palestinians are seeking now is justice and accountability.”
‘The root cause’ A dual Palestinian-US national, Abu Akleh was one of Al Jazeera’s first field correspondents, joining the network in 1997.
Ori Givati, a former Israeli soldier now with the advocacy group Breaking the Silence, said the round that was analysed was a “very common bullet”.
“It is the bullet that most [Israeli] soldiers use during their service,” he told Al Jazeera.
“This investigation into Shireen’s killing is extremely important, but we also have to remember these incidents happen on a weekly basis.
“Our country understands that if you really look into these cases it all goes back to the root cause. It is why the system is terrified from actually conducting investigations. I haven’t seen Israel really investigate any incident.”
Al Jazeera emailed Israel’s Foreign Press Department for comment early Friday but did not immediately receive a response.
Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.
Assassinated journalist Shireen Abu Akleh … for Palestinians their version of events is being “confirmed by so many investigations”, including the latest one by Al Jazeera. Image: Al Jazeera
Australia has gifted Papua New Guinea with 3000 ballistic vests and 3000 helmets which arrived at Jackson’s International Airport in Port Moresby today.
They were flown in on a Royal Australian Airforce C17 Globemaster inbound from the United States.
The ballistic vests and helmets are a gift from Australia to the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary (RPNGC) in response to Papua New Guinea’s request for additional protective equipment for the police force.
At a ceremony yesterday, Australian High Commissioner Jon Philp and Australian Federal Police Commander Jamie Strauss formally signed over the equipment to Police Commissioner David Manning.
“Australia is pleased to deliver these ballistic vests and helmets ahead of the 2022 National Elections. PNG and Australia share a tradition of representative democracy reflecting our broader shared values and Australia is proud to be able to support PNG through this gift and through our broader Supporting Elections Programme,” said High Commissioner Philp.
The protective equipment that Australia delivered today will allow the RPNGC to safely carry out their duties — not only during the national election, but in the critical operations the RPNGC undertake every day.
AFP Commander Jamie Strauss highlighted that “the provision of this equipment is a demonstration of the maturing cooperation between the RPNGC and the AFP under the PNG-Australia Policing Partnership”.
The partnership between Australia and PNG was strengthened by our close cooperation during the covid-19 response and Australia looks forward to further deepening the cooperation.
Papua New Guinea goes to the polls on July 2-22.
Gorethy Kenneth is a PNG Post-Courier reporter. Republished with permission.
A birth of a child usually draws out changes from people. Parents, and even grandparents, recreate themselves in a bid to better address the demands of the new addition to the family.
Julio* knew this all too well. He first became a father at the young age of 17, and went on to work odd jobs to fulfill his responsibilities. But along the way, due to mounting pressure and the vicious cycle of poverty, Julio turned to illegal drugs.
“Sabi niya sa akin hindi ko siya maintindihan kasi ako raw may maayos na trabaho at madali makahanap ng panibagong trabaho kung sakali, samantalang siya, walang ganoong oportunidad para sa kanya,” Cristina, his younger sister, told Rappler in an interview.
(He told me I won’t be able to understand him because I have a stable job and can get another job if I want to, while he doesn’t have that opportunity.)
Julio eventually separated from his first wife, and met a new woman who then got pregnant. With a new baby on the way, 39-year-old Julio was determined more than ever to change.
He planned to start a sari-sari store, buy a refrigerator to sell frozen goods, just about anything to start anew.
“Gusto niya na iyong iyong nagawa niyang pagkukulang sa unang pamilya niya, hindi na ulit mangyari doon sa ipinagbubuntis ng kanyang kinakasama,” Cristina recalled. (He wanted to avoid repeating the same shortcomings he had with his first family.)
But President Rodrigo Duterte had other plans for Julio and thousands of others who came from the poorest communities in the Philippines. Drug dependents, for the country’s chief executive, are hopeless and useless to society.
Enemy out of drug users
Duterte made an enemy out of drug users and waged a “war” that smudged gutters, roads, and narrow alleys all over the country with blood.
RealNumberPH, the government’s unitary report on the drug war, shows that at least 6248 people have died at the hands of police during anti-illegal drug operations between July 2016 and April 30, 2022, while human rights groups estimate the total death toll to reach 30,000 to include victims of vigilante-style killings.
But figures obtained by Rappler show that the Philippine National Police (PNP) had already recorded 7884 deaths from July 1, 2016 to August 31, 2020.
On December 11, 2018, Julio became one of the thousands slain. One person told his family that their son was standing outside when he and a companion were abducted by men riding a white van.
Their lifeless bodies were found not long after.
Cristina was sure it was the police who killed his brother, but they feared going public with this allegation. It didn’t help that the sole witness, who talked to them during his brother’s funeral, was also eventually killed.
“Masakit ang pagkamatay niya pero iniisip ko na lang na at least nakita at naiburol namin siya, hindi tulad sa iba na nakikita na putol na ang kamay, wala na balita na bigla na lang nawawala,” she said.
(It hurts that he died but at least we were able to find his body and do a proper burial, unlike others who were dismembered or just disappeared completely.)
Duterte’s war on drugs
This is Duterte’s war on drugs, a key policy in his administration that has been scrutinised by both local and international bodies, including the International Criminal Court.
For Gloria Lai, regional director for Asia of the International Drug Policy Consortium, the bloody trail Duterte will leave behind once his presidential term ends on June 30 was highly unnecessary and preventable.
“[Killing people] is not a solution,” she told Rappler.
“What does success look like for the Duterte administration? It kept changing over time [and] there is no way you can say there is success,” Lai added.
The President and his allies’ rhetoric in the past six years would make one think that the Philippines has become a narcostate where drug users are behind the most violent crimes. For Duterte, they steal, they kill, they take innocent lives.
The Philippines indeed has issues with the proliferation of illegal drugs, but determining how widespread it is has been hard under the Duterte administration, given the overall lack of transparency and accurate data.
Duterte himself has been dropping different figures over the years. But a report released in February 2020 by Vice-President Leni Robredo following her short stint as co-chairperson of the Inter-Agency Committee on Anti-Illegal Drugs stated that there “is no common and reliable baseline data on the number of drug dependents in the country.”
‘Keeping their grip on power’
“It really just seemed to serve the administration well… to obtain power, to keep their grip on power, because it creates fear, it creates enemies, it creates scapegoats that justify really brutal and violent actions,” Lai said, adding that the drug issue was “exploited for political gain”.
Six years into the administration, the Duterte government remains tight-lipped, if not vague, about what it deemed key performance indicators of the bloody war on drugs.
PNP spokesperson Colonel Jean Fajardo said the police used two approaches in addressing the drug problem in the country. For the last six years, it had focused on reducing supplies and targeting their so-called pushers, up to high-value individuals.
“Dalawa po ang lagi nating ginagamit na approach dito po sa ating kampanya laban sa ilegal na droga. Ito po ‘yong tinatawag natin na supply reduction strategy and demand reduction strategy,” Fajardo told Rappler.
(We use two approaches in our campaign against illegal drugs. We call them supply reduction and demand reduction strategies.)
But despite this, the PNP and its partner Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) only managed to clear 25,061 out of 35,471 barangays it identified as being involved in illegal drugs. As of April 30, 2022, there are still 10,410 drug-affected barangays yet to be cleared by the PNP and PDEA.
Spike after start of bloody operations
This means, 29.34 percent of drug-affected barangays are yet to be cleared by drug enforcement authorities. Based on data on drug-affected barangays from 2016 to 2022, the Philippines saw a spike in 2017, a year after the start of bloody operations.
From 19,717 drug-affected villages in 2016, the number rose to 24,424 the following year. The number of drug-affected barangays then significantly dropped between 2020 and 2022 — the pandemic years.
In terms of collected illegal drugs, the authorities were able to seize P89.29-billion worth of illegal drugs from July 1, 2016 until April 30, 2022. PDEA, one of the lead agencies for Duterte’s drug war, boasted that they were able to seize 11,843.41 kilograms or P76.55-billion worth of shabu or crystalline methamphetamine.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has yet to release its 2022 report on synthetic drugs in Southeast Asia. But in their 2021 report, the UNODC reported that shabu was the cause of the majority of drug-related arrests and treatment admissions in the Philippines.
For six years, authorities were able to arrest a total of 341,494 individuals. Of this number, only 15,096 are considered high-value targets.
Based on the PNP’s classification, individuals who are considered high-value targets are those who run drug dens, are on the wanted list, and leaders and members of drug groups, among others.
This means that of the total number of arrested individuals due to illegal drug offences, only 4.42 percent or around four in every 100 people arrested are high-value targets.
Dehumanizing rhetoric, actions
Drug users bacame pawns
Duterte used drug users as pawns in his bid to make violence a norm in state policy and actions, Philippine Human Rights Information Center (PhilRights) executive director Nymia Pimentel-Simbulan said.
“The legacy that he will be leaving behind would be institutionalization of state violence, this particular government has a proclivity towards addressing societal problems using a war framework,” she told Rappler in an interview on Monday, June 13.
Staying true to his violent rhetoric, the President has effectively mobilised state resources to use violence and other punitive measures to address issues. Beyond the problem of illegal drugs, this approach can also be seen in the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.
If the Duterte government was serious about eradicating drugs in the Philippines, Lai said that it should’ve aimed for programs that better suit this intended outcome instead of focusing on killings.
For one, the state should’ve highlighted how drug addiction is a health problem, therefore producing better health programs. For people who use illegal drugs like shabu to stay awake to work long hours, the government should invest in programs that will keep families out of the vicious cycle of poverty.
But as it is, Duterte’s rhetoric and actions further dehumanize drug dependents, lumping them together with those who are part of the illegal drug syndicates.
“If you forced them and placed them into a list where they could be hunted down and randomly interrogated by police, or even just prevent them from getting a job or going to a certain school, you just drastically diminished their life prospects,” Lai said.
Gap in social response
PNP spokesperson Fajardo admitted that there is still really a gap when it comes to social response, as well as rehabilitation facilities to cater to drug personalities.
“Sinasabi natin, we agree on the fact na ito pong drug problem natin ay health problem. Hindi lang social problem. So ‘yong mga pasilidad kulang, ‘yong ating mga livelihood na pupuwede po nating i-offer dito sa mga sumurrender pati na rin po ‘yong mga nagtutulak, ‘yong mga pusher. Hindi po sa wala, pero kulang po talaga ‘yong efforts,” Fajardo said.
(We say that we agree on the fact that this drug problem is a health problem. Not only social problems. So our facilities are lacking, the livelihood that we can offer for the surrenderees, to pushers. It’s not that we don’t have anything, but the efforts are not enough.)
There are 64 drug rehabilitation centers in the Philippines as of 2021 — 16 under the Department of Health, nine with the local government units, and 39 privately-owned. Together, these facilities have 4840 bed capacity.
In a forum in June 2021, DOH’s Dangerous Drug Abuse Prevention and Treatment Programme manager Jose Leabres said there was a need for 11,911 additional in-patient beds for 2021 and 10,629 for 2022.
Data from the Dangerous Drugs Board (DDB) shows an increasing number of admissions to care facilities across the country. In 2021, there were at least 2344 new admissions.
A trail of blood
Duterte is leaving Malacañang on June 30 with a trail of blood from people killed in the name of his violent war on drugs. He also leaves behind thousands of orphaned children in the poorest communities, as well as a much more stigmatised issue of drug dependency in the Philippines.
It now falls on president-elect Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. to “address all the harms done by the Duterte administration” on the issue of illegal drugs in the country, according to Lai, as well as giving justice to thousands of victims.
During the campaign season, Marcos said he will continue Duterte’s drug war, but would focus on its being a health issue. He also hinted about shielding it from the International Criminal Court.
Meanwhile, just this June, during courtesy calls with foreign ambassadors, Swedish Ambassador Annika Thunborg said there was a discussion to continue the drug war within the framework of the law and respect for human rights, among others.
PNP spokesperson Fajardo said the incoming administration should put focus on demand reduction.
“Pero ‘yong isa pa pong approach natin na tinatawag po nating demand reduction program, hangga’t may bumibili po, hangga’t may market po ay talagang meron at meron pong sisibol na panibagong players,” she said.
(But the other approach that we call the demand reduction program, until there are people who purchase drugs, until there is a market for them, there will always be new players.) DRUG WAR DEATHS. Families of victims of drug-related extrajudicial killings and human rights advocates join a Mass at the Commission on Human Rights headquarters in Quezon City.
Not holding her breath
But Simbulan, whose group PhilRights has documented the victims of Duterte’s war on drugs, is not holding her breath, knowing the Marcos family’s track record and his alliance with Duterte.
“I am not that optimistic that it will adopt a different method or approach,” she said. “Chances are, it will adopt the same punitive violent approach in addressing the drug problem in the Philippines.”
IDPC’s Lai, meanwhile, said it’s going to be a massive turnaround if Marcos decides to do away with what Duterte has done. There is nothing preventing the incoming administration from focusing on drug issues, but it has to make sure to alter government response based on evidence and what communities really need, instead of a blanket campaign that puts a premium on killings.
Most importantly, the new administration should focus their resources on areas that would make a difference on people’s lives for the better.
“[They should] consider that in a lot of cases, the drug policies and the drug laws themselves have caused a lot more harm to people and communities than the actual drugs themselves,” Lai said.
* Names have been changed for their protection
Jodesz Gavilan is a Rappler reporter. Republished with permission.
Human rights committee including peers says public order bill lacks nuance and targets peaceful protests
MPs and peers have accused ministers of creating a “hostile environment” for peaceful protests with its proposals for new policing powers.
The draft public order bill includes a new offence of “locking on”, which relates to demonstrators attaching themselves to something so they cannot be removed. It carries a maximum sentence of up to 51 weeks in prison.
Labour MP for Brent Dawn Butler has revealed that House of Commons officials threatened her with police if she didn’t leave the building. This was after the speaker removed her from the chamber in 2021. Her treatment reflects the racist, misogynistic treatment of women of colour MPs at the heart of government.
Threatened with police
In July 2021, Butler told MPs that prime minister Boris Johnson had “lied to the House and the country over and over again” throughout the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
Temporary deputy speaker Judith Cummins ordered Butler to leave the House of Commons after the MP refused to apologise for her comments.
In an interview that the BBC is due to air on Sunday 19 June, the MP told BBC 1Xtra‘s Richie Brave:
When I got thrown out, I thought that was it. I was going to get myself a drink in one of the many bars in parliament because I was a bit shaky.
She added:
And then I got approached and I was told I needed to leave parliament now, and they said ‘are you going to leave now or do we need to get the police to escort you off the premises?
This response from Commons officials reflects the widespread over-policing of Black people in Britain. Indeed, police in England and Wales are nine times more likely to stop and search Black people than their white counterparts. And they are over three times more likely to arrest Black people than their white counterparts.
Butler has experienced racist over-policing firsthand in the streets and in parliament. For example, Met Police allegedly racially profiled the MP and a friend in an August 2020 car stop. And according to Butler, a police officer once physically removed her from a tea room in parliament.
No support from Labour ‘comrades’
In the BBC interview, Butler added that fellow Labour members failed to support her following the incident.
Indeed, although Labour leader Keir Starmer agreed with Butler, stating that the prime minister is “the master of untruths and half-truths”, he also stated that the deputy speaker was right to eject the MP from the Commons.
People in my own party were ready to disown me […] because I broke Parliamentary rules. It’s like they didn’t feel proud of me that I was brave enough to call the prime minister a liar.
She added:
The people who I expected a phone call from to say ‘Dawn we’ve got your back’… no it didn’t happen. And I got a lot of abuse as well.
This speaks to the lack of support and antagonism that women of colour MPs face from within their own ranks. For example, it was a group of Labour MPs who started the hashtag #PrayForDiane to mock Britain’s first ever Black female MP Diane Abbott while she was ill.
Incidents such as this show that women of colour can’t even rely on the support of those who are supposed to be allies.
Racism and misogyny at the heart of British government
Butler’s experience reflects the routine racism and misogyny that women of colour MPs experience while carrying out their duties in parliament.
Indeed, a 2020 ITV investigation found that most MPs of colour have experienced racism during their time in parliament, with over half experiencing racism directly from other MPs.
For example, Labour MP for Hampstead and Kilburn Tulip Siddiq told ITV that someone advised her to run for parliament using her white husband’s surname because:
people wouldn’t vote for ‘Tulip Siddiq’.
And for years, Labour MP for Hackney North Diane Abbott has spoken out about the racist and misogynistic abuse she has experienced from online trolls and from fellow politicians.
Despite their widely documented lived experiences, no Black MPs were initially chosen to take part in an emergency House of Commons debate about racist online abuse. The Commons speaker only invited two Black MPs to take part in the debate after shadow secretary for women and equalities Marsha de Cordova expressed her ‘disappointment’ at having not been selected.
In December 2021, Tory MPs argued against proposals to introduce a new parliamentary behaviour code to protect members against racism and misogyny.
All this shows that parliament regards calling out the country’s elected leader for his consistent, dangerous lies to be a far greater crime than the racist and misogynistic treatment of marginalised MPs who stand for truth and justice.
This country needs more fearless, outspoken politicians like Dawn Butler to challenge the Tories’ discriminatory, fascist agenda and Labour’s politics of ‘sitting on the fence’. But as things stand, the next generation of potential MPs will be put off from entering the elitist, misogynistic and racist Houses of Parliament. Maintaining a hostile environment for those who would seek to represent people from minority communities only serves to marginalise them further.
Indeed, at a time when red flag gun laws (which authorize government officials to seize guns from individuals viewed as a danger to themselves or others) are gaining traction as a legislative means by which to allow police to remove guns from people suspected of being threats, it wouldn’t take much for police to be given the green light to enter a home without a warrant in order to seize lawfully-possessed firearms based on concerns that the guns might pose a danger.
Frankly, a person wouldn’t even need to own a gun to be subjected to such a home invasion.
Nineteen states and the District of Columbia have adopted laws allowing the police to remove guns from people suspected of being threats. If Congress succeeds in passing the Federal Extreme Risk Protection Order, which would nationalize red flag laws, that number will grow.
As the Washington Post reports, these red flag gun laws “allow a family member, roommate, beau, law enforcement officer or any type of medical professional to file a petition [with a court] asking that a person’s home be temporarily cleared of firearms. It doesn’t require a mental-health diagnosis or an arrest.”
In the wake of yet another round of mass shootings, these gun confiscation laws—extreme risk protection order (ERPO) laws—may appease the fears of those who believe that fewer guns in the hands of the general populace will make our society safer.
Of course, it doesn’t always work that way.
Anything—knives, vehicles, planes, pressure cookers—can become a weapon when wielded with deadly intentions.
While in theory it appears perfectly reasonable to want to disarm individuals who are clearly suicidal and/or pose an “immediate danger” to themselves or others, where the problem arises is when you put the power to determine who is a potential danger in the hands of government agencies, the courts and the police.
We’ve been down this road before.
Remember, this is the same government that uses the words “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” interchangeably.
This is the same government whose agents are spinning a sticky spider-web of threat assessments, behavioral sensing warnings, flagged “words,” and “suspicious” activity reports using automated eyes and ears, social media, behavior sensing software, and citizen spies to identify potential threats.
This is the same government that has a growing list—shared with fusion centers and law enforcement agencies—of ideologies, behaviors, affiliations and other characteristics that could flag someone as suspicious and result in their being labeled potential enemies of the state.
For instance, if you believe in and exercise your rights under the Constitution (namely, your right to speak freely, worship freely, associate with like-minded individuals who share your political views, criticize the government, own a weapon, demand a warrant before being questioned or searched, or any other activity viewed as potentially anti-government, racist, bigoted, anarchic or sovereign), you could be at the top of the government’s terrorism watch list.
Now consider the ramifications of giving police that kind of authority: to preemptively raid homes in order to neutralize a potential threat.
It’s a powder keg waiting for a lit match.
Under these red flag laws, what happened to Duncan Lemp—who was gunned down in his bedroom during an early morning, no-knock SWAT team raid on his family’s home—could very well happen to more people.
At 4:30 a.m. on March 12, 2020, in the midst of a COVID-19 pandemic that had most of the country under a partial lockdown and sheltering at home, a masked SWAT team—deployed to execute a “high risk” search warrant for unauthorized firearms—stormed the suburban house where 21-year-old Duncan, a software engineer and Second Amendment advocate, lived with his parents and 19-year-old brother.
No one in the house that morning, including Lemp, had a criminal record.
No one in the house that morning, including Lemp, was considered an “imminent threat” to law enforcement or the public, at least not according to the search warrant.
So what was so urgent that militarized police felt compelled to employ battlefield tactics in the pre-dawn hours of a day when most people are asleep in bed, not to mention stuck at home as part of a nationwide lockdown?
According to police, they were tipped off that Lemp was in possession of “firearms.”
Thus, rather than approaching the house by the front door at a reasonable hour in order to investigate this complaint—which is what the Fourth Amendment requires—police instead strapped on their guns, loaded up their flash bang grenades and carried out a no-knock raid on the household.
According to the county report, the no-knock raid was justified “due to Lemp being ‘anti-government,’ ‘anti-police,’ currently in possession of body armor, and an active member of the Three Percenters,” a far-right paramilitary group that discussed government resistance.
This is what happens when you adopt red flag gun laws, painting anyone who might be in possession of a gun—legal or otherwise—as a threat that must be neutralized.
Therein lies the danger of these red flag laws, specifically, and pre-crime laws such as these generally where the burden of proof is reversed and you are guilty before you are given any chance to prove you are innocent.
Red flag gun laws merely push us that much closer towards a suspect society where everyone is potentially guilty of some crime or another and must be preemptively rendered harmless.
Where many Americans go wrong is in naively assuming that you have to be doing something illegal or harmful in order to be flagged and targeted for some form of intervention or detention.
Be warned: once you get on such a government watch list—whether it’s a terrorist watch list, a mental health watch list, a dissident watch list, or a red flag gun watch list—there’s no clear-cut way to get off, whether or not you should actually be on there.
You will be flagged as a potential threat and dealt with accordingly.
You will be tracked by the government’s pre-crime, surveillance network wherever you go.
Hopefully you’re starting to understand how easy we’ve made it for the government to identify, label, target, defuse and detain anyone it views as a potential threat for a variety of reasons that run the gamut from mental illness to having a military background to challenging its authority to just being on the government’s list of persona non grata.
The government has been building its pre-crime, surveillance network in concert with fusion centers (of which there are 78 nationwide, with partners in the private sector and globally), data collection agencies, behavioral scientists, corporations, social media, and community organizers and by relying on cutting-edge technology for surveillance, facial recognition, predictive policing, biometrics, and behavioral epigenetics (in which life experiences alter one’s genetic makeup).
Combine red flag laws with the government’s surveillance networks and its plan to establish an agency that will take the lead in identifying and targeting “signs” of mental illness or violent inclinations among the populace by using artificial intelligence to collect data from Apple Watches, Fitbits, Amazon Echo and Google Home, and you’ll understand why some might view gun control legislation with trepidation.
No matter how well-meaning the politicians make these encroachments on our rights appear, in the right (or wrong) hands, benevolent plans can easily be put to malevolent purposes.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, even the most well-intentioned government law or program can be—and has been—perverted, corrupted and used to advance illegitimate purposes once profit and power are added to the equation.
The war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on illegal immigration, the war on COVID-19: all of these programs started out as legitimate responses to pressing concerns and have since become weapons of compliance and control in the government’s hands.
No matter how well-intentioned, red flag gun laws will put a target on the back of every American whether or not they own a weapon.
The EU had concerns that Vanuatu’s investor citizenship programmes, known as “Golden passports”, is a threat to the EU countries.
Switzerland’s Federal Department of Justice and Police, which works alongside the Swiss State Secretariat for Migration, stated that those with passports issued before May 25, 2015, are not affected by the decision.
Both the EU and Swiss authorities said Vanuatu has been granting passports to foreigners without proper security clearance, and this may represent a risk to public order and internal security.
In March, when the EU Council published its decision to suspend the visa-free travel agreement with Vanuatu, it highlighted that in many cases, authorities in Vanuatu had granted citizenship to applicants who were listed in Interpol databases.
The council also claimed applications were quickly processed without security checks, and those who obtained Vanuatu golden passports were not obliged to be physically present in Vanuatu.
The EU has also urged its member states operating golden passports to stop the practice, calling the schemes “objectionable ethically, legally and economically”.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
For so long, the people of South Texas have been expected to sacrifice their communities to a border security apparatus. Drones, helicopters, and agents have saturated cities and towns where residents have gone without health insurance and send their children to underfunded schools. It was this apparatus that responded in late May when a gunman rampaged through an elementary school classroom in Uvalde, killing children—19 in all—and two teachers.
Hundreds of state troopers, federal immigration agents, sheriff’s deputies, U.S. Marshals, and local police quickly descended on a town of 15,000, set among ranchlands 80 miles southwest of San Antonio and 60 miles from the border with Mexico. That rapid influx reflected the deep penetration of the border security apparatus in the region. And it was members of that apparatus, a tactical team that included Border Patrol agents, that Governor Greg Abbott and Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw credited with charging into a classroom and killing the gunman.
Members of the former Honduran elite police unit, the COBRAS, worked with the ‘Los Grillos’ criminal gang to steal drug money and shipments, according to newly released U.S. court documents. Los Grillos, together with the special forces police unit are involved in selling and stealing drugs “through police operations” and according to Honduran press reports, act as contract hitman.
The New Zealand government is considering more action to crack down on violent gang behaviour but has dismissed the idea of a ban on wearing gang patches in public.
There have been a number of shootings and arson attacks in Auckland and Northland in recent weeks linked to escalating tensions between the Killer Beez and Tribesmen.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told Morning Report the government had asked police what other tools they wanted.
She said she expected to receive further advice soon.
She said changes had been made to widen the criteria for asset seizures and firearm prevention orders legislation was currently before select committee.
It was clear that the current outbreak of violence centred on escalating tensions between two gangs and the clear advice from experts was about the need “to come down hard on that behaviour”.
The police had taken such action with multiple arrests, multiple search warrants executed and 600 rounds of ammunition seized.
‘More tools needed?’
“We’ve asked them [police] to tell us in that environment are there more tools that you need,” she said.
The government had met them again last week and she was expecting more advice from them soon.
“We are moving as fast as we can where the police identify issues we can support them on.”
New policy would not go before cabinet later today — changes did not happen in a day or a week but the government was seeking to have the work expedited.
“This idea of gang patch bans — it’s been tried in other countries. It’s often a reactionary response you can see from politicians and when they’ve gone back and looked at whether it’s made a difference, review after review in different parts, for instance in Australia, has proved it hasn’t.
“Why don’t we put our energy into things that are going to make a difference.”
She invited National to bring forward other ideas on what would help solve violence from gangs.
“We will be engaging in the ones that the police tell us will make the biggest difference.”
Asked about changes affecting Māori in particular, she said any proposed legislation always went through a Bill of Rights process.
“But what we also always factor in are New Zealanders’ rights and their sense of safety and at present we see an escalation in tensions between gangs. Their behaviour includes examples of blatant lawlessness and that needs to be addressed.”
Reception from new Australian government pleasing Ardern has hailed her visit to Sydney as a “reset” of a trans-Tasman relationship which had soured in recent years — primarily over Australia’s intransigent stance on its “501” deportation policy.
Following talks with new Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, after which he said he had “listened” to New Zealand’s concern, Ardern said it was a significant improvement on any feedback she had received from Canberra previously.
She agreed Australia has stated its clear intention to continue to deport people which was exactly the same as New Zealand’s approach.
New Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese with New Zealand’s PM Jacinda Ardern at talks last week … Canberra has “listened”. Image: Katie Scotcher/RNZ
It was those “at the extreme end” of the spectrum who were in effect Australians with no connections to Aotearoa that the government was most concerned about being sent here, she said.
It had secured from Albanese a commitment to look at that aspect.
“We’ve not received a reception like that to these issues for a number of years.”
With a ministerial meeting due to be held in three weeks Ardern said she will be looking for signs of progress but it was too soon to expect a timeframe for action.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
A protest action by Papuan students which took place in the South Sulawesi provincial capital of Makassar, which was opposing the creation of new autonomous regions in Papua, ended in a clash with a social movement.
Several people were injured and rushed to the nearest hospital.
Action coordinator Boci explained that the incident began with the protesters planning to hold a rally in front of the Mandala Monument. When they began marching towards the rally point, they were blocked by the Ormas (the Indonesian Muslim Brigade).
“Since early morning there were plain clothed police with the ormas. Then when we moved off to the rally site we were blocked by the Ormas BMI, then we were assaulted, pelted with stones, beaten with pieces of wood, kicked, until three people were bleeding and I was hit and my fingers injured”, said Boci in a statement to CNN Indonesia.
The protesters then stood their ground in front of the Papuan student dormitory, said Boci, after which the police conducted negotiations and the BMI members retreated and moved away from the dormitory.
“Although we were provoked our action still continued. After that the police arrived but we continued to hold our ground in front of the dormitory and read out our action demands near the dormitory,” he explained.
As a result of the attack by the BMI, Boci said that five students suffered injuries and were bleeding.
Five students injured
“Yes, five students suffered injuries and are currently still receiving medical treatment”, he said.
Earlier, an Ormas in Makassar was involved in a class with several Papuan students in front of the Papuan student dormitory on Jalan Lanto Daeng Pasewang.
The clash occurred when the Papuan students were protesting against the creation of new autonomous regions (DOB) in Papua in front of the dormitory.
The Ormas then tried to break up the student protest. The Papuan students refused to accept this and pelted several of the Ormas members with stones.
Makassar metropolitan district police operational division head Assistant Superintendent Darminto said that those who had been injured were receiving medical treatment at the Labuang Baji Hospital.
For educators like myself, no matter how far we teach from Uvalde, Texas, the recent mass shooting at Robb Elementary, like so many before it, is still palpable in our classrooms — among students and teachers alike.
Two days after the massacre, Toni Wright, one of my students in New Haven, Conn., stood in our high school’s hallway crying. “I couldn’t even make it to school yesterday,” they told me. “I got on the bus, I made it down the street, but I had to get off and tell my mom to come get me. I was so upset that it was physically hurting me to try to go to school.”
Toni’s peers might have felt this way too, but many students did not want to talk about the shooting. As Toni explained, “I don’t think anyone knows how to talk about it without being like: ‘it’s so sad, it happened again.’”
The massacre at Robb Elementary is the 51st school shooting of this academic year, according to Education Week. This database suggests that 2021 – 2022 has seen more school shootings than any previous recorded year in U.S. histor
“Refund police.” This is the most inventive tagline Joe Biden and Democrats were able to come up with in response to the demands that arose from the rebellion in Minneapolis two years ago in summer 2020, after George Floyd became the latest casualty of the Minneapolis Police Department’s relentless war against Black people.
That summer’s uprisings drew more than 20 million people into the streets, all across the country. That energy spread across oceans, too; it was felt by millions of people around the world in the midst of a pandemic in which politicians and billionaires profited, as vulnerable communities suffered wildly disproportionate levels of illness and death.
Since then, we have seen the constant failure of the Democratic Party to protect the very people who helped elect them. The Democratic Party controls the House, the Senate and the White House, and still, they refuse to pass any measures that would materially improve the living conditions of our families and neighbors. No executive order, consent decree, or any other incremental reform is enough to turn the tide on the violent nature of policing. Our communities require bold action, not piecemeal offerings that invest more in the current system that produces a consistent stream of death and violence.
In Minneapolis, we have seen the same recycled reforms and lack of action by our government, while attacks on our communities continue to increase. Instead of being transparent with their constituents, elected officials like Mayor Jacob Frey have doubled down on the rhetoric and policies that have caused so much pain and violence in our communities.
Mayor Frey falsely claimed that no-knock warrants were banned — but we know they were not because yet another Black man, Amir Locke, was murdered by Minneapolis police in February after a no-knock warrant.
In April, the Minnesota Department of Human Rights released a report on the Minneapolis Police Department that illustrates the depth to which the police cannot be trusted. In it, state prosecutors said that many times, they are unable to use police body cam footage because of the general lack of respect and decency in the way the police conduct themselves. In other words, they don’t want to use the footage because it makes the police look bad, which undermines the prosecutors’ cases.
In recent weeks, we have also seen numerous former and current city employees come forward to expose how the Minneapolis Race and Equity Department has been used to deflect any real criticism of the mayor, and that staff in this department were tokenized and given no real power to implement changes that community members have been demanding for years. In an opinion article for the MinnPost, former City of Minneapolis Race and Equity Director Joy Marsh Stephens wrote, “this isn’t the first time we’ve seen leadership in the city be dismissive in the face of documented harm against BIPOC and allied white employees when it comes to racial equity. This is the culture of white supremacy in action. It is why under four city coordinators and two mayors in my six years at the city, the culture didn’t change. It is why I heard countless stories from others in the workforce about similar experiences in their departments and pre-dating my time at the city.” These stories further illustrate the city’s dogmatic resistance to change, and how efforts for change are undermined inside of city government.
However, truth be told, we do not require any more examples of why police and policing are not the answer to demands for safety, but instead the antithesis. The police and their allies like Frey cannot be trusted, and we must be wary of the disinformation and, in this case, the straight-up lies they tell in order to maintain their power and bolster the status quo.
The dishonesty of Minneapolis Police and law enforcement around the country is especially troubling right now, when so many in our community are in a heightened state of vulnerability. As we learn more about the response of police in recent mass shootings and the disinformation from law enforcement that followed in Uvalde, Texas, more and more people are realizing that the police don’t keep our communities safe.
Real societal transformation requires visionary demands, demands that are capable of expanding people’s imaginations and which make space for a diverse array of strategies and approaches. It is this imaginative engagement that our people desire and deserve, instead of federal and local representation that misleads us and refuses to enact life-affirming policies. Without a vision that engages our people’s imaginations and brilliance, there will be no path to victory for the left. Radical and revolutionary demands push us forward towards a more just world.
We must demand that we collectively tell and hold the truths that all of the systems of the state are failing communities of color, exploiting the planet and betraying our future. We must demand systems of care and accountability that affirm and sustain life and our environment for the long term. And above all, we must demand and fight for power — the power to keep our communities whole, to keep our families thriving, to define our existences and to decide our lives.
We must also reject neoliberalism that forces us into the misconception that every good solution should offer immediate gratification. This is a falsehood because real transformation requires time, relationships, organizing and patience. Transformation of ourselves, our people and our world is possible, but only if we continue to stay present, connected and visioning forward with one another; we must recognize that we are in a centuries-long fight to divest from harmful systems and build ones that prioritize life.
Last year, over 62,000 of our neighbors voted #YesOn2, the ballot initiative that would have created a Department of Public Safety and removed the Minneapolis Police Department from our city’s charter. In doing so they voted to reimagine safety, and thousands more took to the streets to protest racist police violence. Every day, more and more people are realizing that the systems we were told to look toward for safety and security, are structured to do more harm than good.
The Minneapolis Police Department doesn’t keep us safe. The Minneapolis Police Department doesn’t use their nearly $200 million budget to help sustain healthy community dynamics that prevent violence. Their bloated budget and tired tactics actually function to take resources out of the hands of Minneapolis residents who know how to take care of each other. Our ability to realize the positive change our people deserve requires that we build bridges and stay connected to each other. The political establishment wants us to reject each other and ignore the reality that the solutions to systemic poverty, community harm and gun violence lie with the residents of Minneapolis. We don’t have to throw some of our neighbors away — sending them into the grips of policing and prisons — to create a perception of safety for others.
Real justice will not be achieved by executive orders, consent decrees, or any other reform; we need bold and creative action that engages the public’s imaginations and retains their involvement for the long run. Our collective futures depend on it.
Back in April 2016, a Baltimore news report about “police recruiting perils after Freddie Gray” focused on a new police hire with an ideal origin story. Luke Shelley, a National Guardsman deployed here during the Baltimore Uprising in April 2015, had recently joined the Baltimore Police Department (BPD). As a guardsman, he had been stationed at Mondawmin Mall, ground zero for the rioting that took place on April 27, 2015, “an experience that convinced [Shelley] he wanted to serve the city,” local ABC affiliate WMAR reported.
“I want to be where the challenge is and where the need is for good police,” Shelley told WMAR in 2016. “To have that impact on countless lives—a hundred or a thousand or whoever you meet on a daily basis—I think is a pretty noble and high responsibility.”
The opening day of the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, California, was stained by brutal police repression of demonstrations.
The meeting has already been marred by controversy surrounding the White House’s refusal to invite Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, giving rise to boycotts and complaints from many other nations of the Americas. Perhaps most notable was the refusal of Mexico’s President, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to attend.
News outlets and social media platforms shared numerous videos of the scene in which a towering Los Angeles police officer violently attacked a woman who was speaking into a bullhorn, tackling her onto the pavement and delivering blows to her face. At that time, US President Biden’s presidential motorcade was passing through the area of the event now being referred to disparagingly as the “Friends of America Gathering” or the “Summit of Exclusion.”
Uvalde plans to hire more school police officers in the aftermath of the Robb Elementary School shooting, even amid reports that the officers dispatched to the scene waited for over an hour to enter the building as kids were trapped inside with the shooter.
On Thursday, Hal Harrell, the superintendent of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, announced that the district’s police department would expand the size of its force.
“It is our goal to hire additional officers to be assigned to each campus for the upcoming school year,” said Hal Harrell during a press conference.
However, it’s not apparent that the shooting could have been avoided or mitigated with a larger police department.
According to The New York Times, upon arriving at the Robb Elementary School, police waited for roughly one hour and seventeen minutes in order to supply officers with “protective equipment to lower the risk to law enforcement officers.” By that time, sixty officers had surrounded the perimeter of the school.
During the delay, Uvalde Police Chief Pete Arredondo was believed to have told the squadron that “people are going to ask why we’re taking so long.”
“We’re trying to preserve the rest of the life,” he reportedly said at the time.
Arredondo also appeared to be aware that people inside the school were already injured. “We think there are some injuries in there,” he apparently told the force. “And so you know what we did, we cleared off the rest of the building so we wouldn’t have any more, besides what’s already in there, obviously.”
Investigators are reportedly still probing how many people could have been saved with a quicker law enforcement response, which may have allowed victims to receive medical attention sooner.
One of the victim’s grandparents, Leonard Sandoval told the Times that one of the 10-year-old inside, who later died at a hospital, might have survived if the police had breached the building sooner. “He could have been saved,” Sandoval. “The police did not go in for more than an hour. He bled out.”
On Thursday, Arredondo toldThe Texas Tribune that the delay occurred because the only entryway into the school was blocked by a locked door with a steel jamb. The chief said he called for a sniper, tactical gear, and keys to open to the door.
“Each time I tried a key I was just praying,” he told the outlet. Officers were reportedly able to unlock the door after one hour and seventeen minutes, at which point they shortly killed the gunman inside.
“My mind was to get there as fast as possible, eliminate any threats, and protect the students and staff,” Arredondo said.
While much of the blame has been pinned on Arredondo’s apparent failure to adequately respond to the crisis, the police chief argued that such portrayals have been unfair.
“Not a single responding officer ever hesitated, even for a moment, to put themselves at risk to save the children,” Arredondo told the Tribune. “We responded to the information that we had and had to adjust to whatever we faced. Our objective was to save as many lives as we could, and the extraction of the students from the classrooms by all that were involved saved over 500 of our Uvalde students and teachers before we gained access to the shooter and eliminated the threat.”
Still, as the outlet noted, Arrendondo’s explanation does not address the entirety of the circumstances behind the force’s delay. And many law enforcement experts told the Tribune that “serious lapses in judgment” occurred.
The full strength of the Papua New Guinea security forces has yet to be deployed into the Highlands “hotspot areas” in time for the general election next month.
The commanding officers of the Royal PNG Constabulary, PNG Defence Force and PNG Correctional Services confirmed this yesterday.
The officers have not been deployed around the country with the three disciplinary forces waiting on the call from Police Commissioner David Manning.
an election-related death reported in Ialibu-Pangia;
Returning officer of Kompiam-Ambum shot and injured;
two candidates shot at by opposing candidate supporters;
oil spilled onto the tarmac at Kagamuga Airport; a minister chased by angry public in his district; and
the burning of party merchandise by opposing supporters.
In a statement, the PNGDF noted: “The launching of the PNGDF NATEL 22 security operations will be next week, once it is done, then we will be in a position to advise. As it is, troops are still in their units.”
The Correctional Services issued a statement noting that for their 500 men and women to be deployed for election operations, are still waiting on the call by Police.
Police Commissioner David Manning arrived in Mt Hagen, Western Highlands, and met with Assistant Commissioner of Police-Eastern End Rigga Neggi and WHP police commander Chief Superintendent Joe Puri.
‘The call out will be done’
“The call out, especially any operational order, will be done once it has been established where the men and women are needed,” he said.
“We have identified where the men and women need to be and that is where they will be sent.
“Many of the police units who were sent to the different provinces prior to the election have returned for a break before they are redeployed.
“Others will now be sent out to the other provinces.”
It is expected that over three days from June 15-17, the three armoured vehicles will travel into the Highlands region via Lae, Morobe Province.
The vehicles will arrive in Mt Hagen where the countrywide launch of the security operations will be held that will see more than 5000 security personnel deployed into 22 provinces.
Police Minister William Onglo said: “Election is known to be violent at times and we will ensure all security personnel from the three disciplinary forces are mobilised and sent out.”
‘Disastrous security planning’
Former police commissioner Gari Baki warned: “Deployment not done earlier is the start to a disastrous security planning for the election.
“Any deployment of security personnel should have been done two months before the issue of writ and the security assessment by the National Intelligence Organisation (NIO) should have been done six months ago.”
Several provincial police commanders (PPC) have expressed concern citing that the mobile squads normally deploy two months prior to issue of writs as Phase 1 of the whole Natel Operations to conduct awareness/road shows, assist local police attend to outstanding conflicts.
“However, this has not been done this election, mainly due to lack of funds from the national government. Hopefully, they might be inserted a few weeks before polling.”
In a media conference, ACP Neggi said: “We are progressing well with our operations at the Eastern command and we are expecting extra reinforcement to land this week onwards.
“So we should have a lot of security personnel on the ground and we are having a parade for the highlands operations next week. Before that, we will have a commanders’ conference here.
‘Bit of a hiccup’
“In terms of the security operations preparations we are progressing well.
“There are little bit of hiccup along the way but as time goes on… both Highlands commands will be operating from Mt Hagen for administrative support. But the operations will be rolled out in the provinces from Hela coming down toward Simbu.”
ACP–Western End John Kale said that in the provinces of Enga, Southern Highlands and Enga, the police work was continuing.
“We continue our awareness and we are talking to the people on elections, however this is a region that any little thing can start something big, we continue to monitor.”
Miriam Zarrigais a PNG Post-Courier reporter. Republished with permission.
A Russian-owned superyacht docked in Fiji has left for the United States after a Fiji court ordered its removal, saying it was a waste of money to maintain amid legal wrangling over its seizure.
Fiji’s Supreme Court lifted a stay order which had prevented the US from seizing the superyacht Amadea.
A US Justice Department’s Taskforce has focused on seizing yachts and other luxury assets of Russian oligarchs in a bid to pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin over the war in Ukraine.
The 106m Amadea arrived in Fiji on April 13 after an 18-day voyage from Mexico.
It was seized by Fiji authorities after the country’s High Court granted a US warrant last month that linked the yacht to sanctioned Russian oligarch Suleiman Kerimov.
The FBI has said the US$300 million luxury vessel had running costs of $25 million to $30 million per year, and the United States would pay to maintain the vessel after it was seized.
However, Fiji’s government has been footing the bill while an appeal by the vessel’s registered owner, Millemarin Investments, worked its way through the country’s courts.
Ordered to ‘sail out of Fiji’
The Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that public interest demanded the yacht “sail out of Fiji waters”, because having it berthed in Fiji was “costing the Fijian government dearly,” according to the judgment.
The vessel “sailed into Fiji waters without any permit and most probably to evade prosecution by the United States,” it added.
Anthony Coley, a spokesperson for the US Justice Department, posted on Twitter that the Amadea set sail for the United States on Tuesday “after having been seized as the proceeds of criminal evasion of US sanctions against Russian oligarch Suleyman Kerimov.”
The United States alleged Kerimov beneficially owned the Amadea, although lawyers for the vessel had denied this and told the court it was owned by another Russian oligarch, Eduard Khudainatov, the former chief of Russian energy giant Rosneft, who had not been sanctioned.
Last month, another luxury yacht reportedly owned by Khudainatov worth some $700 million was impounded by police in Italy.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Today, with authorization from the Fijian High Court and under a new flag, the Amadea set sail for the United States after having been seized as the proceeds of criminal evasion of US sanctions against Russian oligarch Suleyman Kerimov. (1/2) pic.twitter.com/JHiYUDKcmQ
Papua New Guinean police are investigating serious firearms offences allegedly involving five candidates contesting the election in the Highlands region.
The candidates in two different provinces are being investigated for the use of firearms at campaign rallies, for firing an unlicensed firearm, being in possession of a firearm and being in possession of a stolen vehicle.
The interest of police in the five candidates comes three weeks after the close of nomination in Southern and Western Highlands provinces.
Police fear that without proper manpower support, polling and counting in the two provinces will be the bloodiest with the high number of firearms being used and allegedly gathered by supporters of candidates.
The investigation comes after a two-week firearms amnesty ended on May 19.
Police Commissioner David Manning has issued instructions for all police personnel to arrest and charge anyone found to be be “manufacturing homemade guns, illegal ownership and possession of firearms, illegal possession and use of firearms, illegal possession of prohibited firearms and ownership and [in] possession of machine guns”.
However, a police source said the talks on arrests of those in possession of firearms would not occur without proper support of police.
‘What can police do?’
“Candidates are known to support their supporters with firearms but what can police do?” the source said.
“They can only arrest those they catch, the buy-back scheme of firearms and the recent firearms amendment will not stop the influx of firearms into the country, especially the Highlands region.”
Police Minister William Onglo has said: “Candidates need to lead by example, when you as a candidate don’t lead by example you show your supporters that they can do what they want.
“That needs to end, you want to be a leader and you are putting your hand up, this means whatever happens with your supporters you as their candidate must tell them what they are doing is wrong and if need be report them,” he said.
SHP police commander Chief Inspector Daniel Yangen said that with the instruction from Commissioner Manning and the amendments to the Firearms Act, if the candidates were found to be supplying and supporting the use of firearms in this election they will be charged by the SHP Election taskforce team.
“We see supporters moving around the province brandishing weapons but they hide their firearms, but when it comes to confrontations, suddenly firearms are brought out,” PPC Yangen said.
A high level group of observers in the 2017 National General Election made several recommendations on security to be looked at prior to the 2022 Election. However, these changes have not been made.
Miriam Zarrigais a PNG Post-Courier reporter. Republished with permission.
By Thierry Lepani and Miriam Zarriga in Mt Hagen, Papua New Guinea
The ugly side of Papua New Guinean elections has shown its face in the Western Highlands capital Mt Hagen with unknown suspects sabotaging one of the busiest airports in the country to protest against the appointment of electoral officials.
Using the cover of darkness yesterday, the suspects poured oil on the Kagamuga International Airport tarmac to disrupt flights, prompting the provincial police commander to describe it as an “act of terrorism”.
Chief Superintendent Joe Puri said the incident showed what people were capable of when they were frustrated.
“However, it does not give anyone the right to hold the whole province to ransom,” he said.
“Three different factions of supporters of candidates are suspected of being involved in this latest sabotage of the airport.
“The persons responsible gained access through the back fence near the Mt Hagen golf course and got onto the tarmac where litres of engine oil was poured onto the tarmac.”
This started in protest over the appointment of the Hagen Open Returning Officer, with two factions contesting the appointment of the official in court.
Commercial flights cancelled
Commercial flights were cancelled yesterday following a protest over the electoral official’s appointment.
The protesting locals wanted Willie Ropa to be reinstated as Returning Officer for the Hagen Open electorate.
Ropa’s appointment was disputed in court by Hagen MP William Duma, who challenged the decision of the Electoral Commission in light of two conflicting gazette notices over the appointment of two ROs for Hagen — Ropa and Amos Noifa.
This incident and others in just three weeks of campaigning and nominations should not be taken lightly, as the instances will only grow if nothing is done quickly by the authorities.
Just over the weekend, the Returning Officer for Kompiam-Ambum Open, Enga Province, was shot and had to be hospitalised.
Last week, the convoy of a sitting Member of Parliament (Okapa MP Saki Soloma) was stopped and attacked leading to several vehicles being torched and destroyed.
At the same time, former Nipa-Kutubu MP and now a candidate for Southern Highlands Provincial, Philemon Embel also narrowly escaped an assassination attempt on his life when his vehicle was shot at in the province.
While these incidents have taken place mainly in the Highlands region, it is no secret the syndrome of violence can quickly spread to other centres in the country.
Last month Police Commissioner David Manning called on the nation to help deliver a free, fair and safe election. Police are now maintaining a 24 hour presence around the airport.
Thierry Lepani and Miriam Zarrigaare PNG Post-Courier reporters. Republished with permission.
Police and bikers in Uvalde, Texas, are restricting a growing number of journalists from reporting on the aftermath of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School that left 19 fourth graders and two teachers dead. “None of us can ever recall being treated in such a manner and our job impeded in such a manner,” says Nora Lopez, executive editor of San Antonio Express-News and president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. “Newsgathering is a constitutional right, so at some point this will cross into basically official oppression,” she says. Lopez also says residents are now afraid to speak with the press after one parent of two Robb Elementary students reported police had threatened to arrest her if she spoke with reporters about how she rushed the school to try to save her children.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMYGOODMAN: At a church service on the Sunday after the shooting, Bella Barboza, who is 11 years old, spoke about her friend Ellie García, who was killed during the massacre at Robb Elementary School. Ellie had been set to celebrate her 10th birthday.
BELLABARBOZA: She was — Ellie was a very bright girl. She made a huge impact on the church. She was very kind and very active and very confident. … I remember we were painting jars for Mother’s Day, and I was washing mine off because I didn’t like it, and we were in the restroom, and I dropped it. And she was like, “Your mom is going to get mad.” And we were laughing together, just looking at the glass on the floor. And it was funny. … It was shocking, because I had faith that she would have — she was in the other room. But when I found out, I was just like, “Well, she’s in a better place now. And if this happens again, she doesn’t have to go through that.”
AMYGOODMAN: “If this happens again.” We turn now to look at threats to the media in Uvalde, Texas. Houston Chronicle reporter names Julian Gill tweeted that while he was reporting on the funeral of one of the students killed in the elementary school massacre, several members of the biker club Guardians of the Children followed, blocked and surrounded him as he tried to approach a cemetery to meet a photographer. One of the bikers — guys on motorcycles — told him they were working with police who asked them to be there. Gill shared this video of his exchange with police and the biker club.
POLICEOFFICER: How’s it going?
JULIANGILL: How’s it going? How are you?
POLICEOFFICER: Doing good.
JULIANGILL: You’re with Lubbock PD?
POLICEOFFICER: Yes, sir.
GUARDIANS OF THECHILDRENMEMBER 1: We’re Guardians of the Children. We’re a nonprofit 501(c)(3). We work with victims of child abuse, sexual assault, things of that nature.
JULIANGILL: OK.
GUARDIANS OF THECHILDRENMEMBER 1: We’re out here to provide a little bit of comfort and support for the families, help give them some space —
JULIANGILL: Sure. Sure.
GUARDIANS OF THECHILDRENMEMBER 1: — and let them grieve in peace.
JULIANGILL: OK.
GUARDIANS OF THECHILDRENMEMBER 1: So, you know, we just thought we’d come out, help some kids.
JULIANGILL: Sure.
GUARDIANS OF THECHILDRENMEMBER 1: Help some families in need. How are you doing today? Oh, man, don’t.
JULIANGILL: All right. I’m sorry.
GUARDIANS OF THECHILDRENMEMBER 1: Don’t bump into me, dude. Like, I mean —
JULIANGILL: I’m just trying to — I’m just trying to do my job, sir.
GUARDIANS OF THECHILDRENMEMBER 1: No, I understand, but —
GUARDIANS OF THECHILDRENMEMBER 2: You’re not allowed on cemetery property.
JULIANGILL: I’m sorry. Are you a police officer?
GUARDIANS OF THECHILDRENMEMBER 2: We’re working with the police. They asked us to do this.
JULIANGILL: You’re working with the police?
GUARDIANS OF THECHILDRENMEMBER 2: No! We are here to give the family space and time to grieve.
JULIANGILL: Well, I just got you on video saying you’re working with police.
AMYGOODMAN: That’s just one example of the bikers confronting reporters in Uvalde, Texas, as officials there are facing increasing accusations of stonewalling the media.
For more, we’re joined by Nora Lopez, executive editor of the San Antonio Express-News, also the president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, just like my colleague Juan González was.
Nora, welcome to Democracy Now! Can you talk about what is happening with the press there, the stonewalling? Start with these bikers.
NORALOPEZ: Well, first, thank you, Amy. And hi, Juan. Thank you both for inviting me to be on the show to talk about this really important topic and what’s happening right now in Uvalde.
Well, as you saw from Julian’s video — and I should explain that the Houston Chronicle is our sister paper, we’re both owned by Hearst, so we’ve had reporters from both papers in Uvalde reporting for both papers.
You know, the incident that you showed was from Thursday, and that’s when there were a lot of biker motorcycle clubs there who were telling us that they were there at the request of the police. To be entirely honest, we’ve never been able to confirm that from police themselves telling us that, yes, they invited them. But since then — actually, I think it was state Senator Gutierrez who helped us — they sort of backed down a little bit.
But, you know, more troubling is that the police has continued to also block access and basically harass reporters. As recently as Saturday and Sunday, one of my photographers was confronted by a police officer. And these are police officers that were not even from Uvalde. There’s about a dozen law enforcement agencies across the state who have sent some police officers there to help, because Uvalde is so small, and, yes, they’ve been overrun with both people who want to come from out of town to pay their respects and, of course, the media.
So, this treatment has continued. And honestly, it’s intolerable. They are blocking access to get close to the cemetery or to the churches or to the funeral home. They have set up roadblocks so we can’t even get within a block away. You know, the motorcycle bikers were physically standing in front of photojournalists, preventing them from being able to get any kind of video or to see anything. And it’s just been — it’s unprecedented. I’ve spoken to several reporters, including reporters from Spanish language, and none of us can ever recall being treated in such a manner and our job impeded in such a manner. It’s really extraordinary, the way things are unfolding.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Nora, I wanted to ask you about a related issue, which is how law enforcement officials have dealt with the Spanish-language press in getting out information about this tragedy to the Spanish-speaking community, given the fact that Uvalde is more than — itself is more than 80% Latino, the public schools are more than 90% Latino, and that in the entire state of Texas, of more than 5 million public school students, more than 52% are of Latinx descent. And yet, what’s been happening in terms of getting out the word by law enforcement to the Spanish-speaking community?
NORALOPEZ: Well, you know, at that very first press conference, there was some — they were taking questions, and I think it was already wrapping up, and one of the Spanish-language reporters asked, you know, “Can somebody speak to us in Spanish?” And I think at that point they were basically ignored. Nobody said anything. And it was — they got a lot of criticism on social media about this.
So, the very next day when they had a press conference, the first thing they said was, “Well, we’ll have somebody available after to speak to Spanish-language in Spanish.” And I’ve reached out to both Telemundo and Univision reporters, and they’ve said it’s gotten a little bit better. They don’t have anybody officially, but they’ve been able to find, you know, some officers who can speak Spanish who have been able to tell them a little bit. But it’s not the same thing as, as you and I both know as journalists, to have those officials who will have the facts as relayed to them to speak to Spanish-language.
So, that is a concern, and it’s a historical concern. Spanish-language media gets treated like second-class citizens at these types of events, and they’re basically left on their own to try to find someone who can do a standup in Spanish for them. But they do their job. I mean, this is not new to them. It’s pretty routine. And so they do what they need to do to find the people to talk to them in Spanish, and help give accurate reports to the public in their own language.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And in terms of the overall police response, the lack of information so many days after this tragedy, as a veteran journalist, have you ever seen such difficulty in terms of getting just the basic facts of what happened and who was there, and not having all these corrections constantly issued by law enforcement?
NORALOPEZ: None. I’ve never seen anything like this. I’m a former police reporter. I’ve covered police in Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio, and I’ve never seen a response like this. And, you know, every day some little new incident comes up that directly contradicts what we were initially told. So, this is unprecedented. We’ve never seen anything like this.
And what really concerns me, Juan, is two things. One, you know, that police are actively obstructing us from doing our jobs. And as you know, newsgathering is a constitutional right. So, at some point, this will cross into, basically, official oppression. So we are exploring our options with our Hearst legal and considering to see if there’s any kind of legal option that we have. So that’s one thing. And that’s a really serious thing.
But then the other thing that’s equally concerning is that they are actually blocking people from — who want to talk to us, from talking to us, from talking to the media. So, there is a chilling effect that’s going on in Uvalde. And the residents are seeing this, and they are now afraid to talk to us, as well. I’ve heard this from a couple of reporters who have told me that they’ve had people say, you know, “I’m going to get in trouble if I say anything.” I think there was one TV station who has reported the same as — that somebody that they know that they were interviewing said that he lost their job. I don’t have confirmation of that. But it is a chilling effect that’s going on in Uvalde. And it’s —
AMYGOODMAN: Nora, didn’t the mom, who was handcuffed trying to get her kids out of the school, handcuffed by police, say that afterward she got a phone call that if she kept repeating this, that she would be arrested?
NORALOPEZ: Yes, and they were saying the same thing to the media. You know, we’re walking on a public street, or we’re standing on a public sidewalk, and they’re telling us, “You need to move. This is private property.” And we’re like, “No, we’re — this is a public street.” And they’re, “If you don’t move, we’re going to arrest you.” And when we ask them, “Well, what is the charge?” they tell us something vague like, you know, “We’re protecting the privacy of the families.” So, that’s a really strange charge, something that’s not on the books, that I’m aware of.
So it’s a chilling effect. But make no mistake: The San Antonio Express-News is not going to pull out. We’re there. We are the big city paper that’s closest. And just as we did when we covered Sutherland, we will remain there for the long haul, because these people deserve their story to be told. And we don’t want this tragedy to be just swept under the rug. There needs to be — shine a light on what happened here, and there is so much that we don’t know. So much that we don’t know.
AMYGOODMAN: Nora Lopez, we want to thank you so much for being with us now and being out there with your reporters, executive editor of the San Antonio Express-News, also president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
Next up, we speak to investigative journalist Keri Blakinger about her new memoir, out today, Corrections in Ink, describing her journey from addiction to prison to the newsroom. Stay with us.
Famed activist and scholar Angela Davis along with anti-racist activists across the country say prominent jailhouse lawyer and Black liberation activist Anthony Gay was falsely convicted for a gun crime in order to send Gay back to prison, where Gay and his supporters say he was tortured in solitary confinement for living with untreated mental illness.
In 2018, Gay was released from an Illinois prison, where he spent 22 years in solitary confinement. To secure his release, he convinced a local state’s attorney that he had been wrongly condemned to serve consecutive rather than concurrent sentences for the rest of his life. Gay became a leading advocate for a bill that would limit the use of solitary confinement in Illinois to 10 days in a 180-day period.
However, in May 2019, he was arrested during a traffic stop and charged with allegedly illegally possessing a firearm and ammunition after fleeing from Rock Island, Illinois police — a charge that activists say is patently false. On May 31, 2019, a car Gay was riding in was pulled over for a traffic violation. Federal prosecutors claim Gay attempted to flee and was arrested after falling a short distance away. Prosecutors claim a handgun was allegedly found by police in Gay’s “path,” according to a brief statement from U.S. attorney’s office for central Illinois. A couple weeks later, police claimed they found ammunition for the handgun while searching a motel room where Gay was staying at the time of the arrest.
Yet Gay and his supporters say he faced discrimination in the courtroom and was set up by police, who provided the court with no physical evidence whatsoever that Gay possessed the gun allegedly found at the scene in May 2019, according to the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Oppression.
After successfully representing himself in a federal trial that ended with a hung jury, Gay, who is Black, was retried and convicted on May 19 by an all-white jury.
“His first federal trial on these charges less than a month earlier, ended in a hung jury, demonstrating that Anthony had convincingly argued that these charges were false,” Davis said in a statement on Monday. “Even more remarkably, he achieved that hung jury pro se – that is, representing himself.”
Supporters say Gay’s latest conviction echoes the state’s prior attempts to keep him locked away for most of his life. Gay was originally incarcerated at the age of 20 after driving without a license while on parole for stealing $1 and a hat. His already harsh seven-year sentence was extended multiple times after he began to suffer from mental illness in prison.
Instead of providing mental health treatment, the Illinois Department of Corrections locked him in solitary confinement — living alone with very little human contact, in a tiny cell— for years after allegedly getting into fights, according to a lawsuit Gay filed in federal court. (Even 15 days in solitary confinement is torture, according to the United Nations special rapporteur on torture.) Supporters contend Gay was “brutalized” by prison guards and locked in solitary confinement for defending himself and defying prison authorities.
Solitary confinement is widely considered a form of torture that is particularly damaging for people with mental illness. Gay has said he was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and was known to practice self-harm in the absence of proper treatment.
In addition to being punished for his mental illness, advocates say, he was punished for advocating for himself.
“Anthony has no law degree,” Davis said. “He learned the law through his own independent studies while spending 24 years in Illinois prisons, twenty-two of which were spent in solitary confinement.”
Davis and other activists say Gay is a political prisoner once again.
“There is no physical evidence tying Anthony to the gun they convicted him of possessing,” Davis said. “The police officer who testified that Anthony looked like he had a gun also falsified some of his testimony.”
The chief of police at the Rock Island Police Department did not respond to a request for comment.
Gay represented himself again after the first federal trial over the gun charges resulted in a hung jury. Gay was retried before the same white federal district court judge, supporters say, who colluded with prosecutors to ensure Gay would face an all-white, pro-police jury in Peoria, Illinois, where the population is 27 percent Black. Throughout the trial, Gay argued that police did not have physical evidence to prove he was carrying the gun, which law enforcement claimed was reported stolen and crossed state lines.
“No fingerprints or DNA were found on the pistol the police found near where Anthony was arrested,” Davis said. “Even harder to explain, there were there no prints or DNA on the bullets.”
At the same time, Gay and his attorney recently agreed to $25,500 settlement, plus attorney’s fees and court costs, to be paid by the City of Rock Island over a civil case alleging police misconduct one week before Gay’s arrest on gun charges. Gay said he was in a car with family members when they were shot at 13 times while stopped at an intersection. Gay claims the officers who responded blatantly violated his rights, according to the Quad-City Times:
Gay said he was ordered at gunpoint by responding Rock Island police officer J.T. Key to put his hands in the air and get on his knees. He claims another officer, Scott Gable, “aggressive cuffed and forced” him to his knees after telling officers he could not kneel. While cuffed, Gay alleges Key “ran up and kneed” him in the face.
He also alleges police illegally searched him, threw his phone and illegally seized $1,500 in cash and a hotel key.
His suit claims Rock Island police violated his Fourth Amendment right, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. Other counts alleged in the complaint include battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, unlawful detainment, unlawful imprisonment and denial of equal protection.
Gay’s claim that police seized his hotel key shortly before he was arrested for gun and ammunition possession — with the bullets allegedly confiscated from his hotel room — is evidence that Gay was framed in retribution for his activism, according to supporters.
Gay is scheduled to be sentenced on September 16 and faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. He is appealing the conviction and appealing for support from anti-racist activists everywhere.
“The banality of our racist system of mass incarceration is punctuated with the heroism of stories of unconquerable souls,” Davis said. “Like George Jackson and Frank Chapman, Anthony not only educated himself in prison, but he also politicized himself.”
Before the retrial that ended in conviction, Gay said he was facing an uphill battle, but it’s a battle he is “cut out for.”
“I don’t think no one should back down from corruption,” Gay said. “I don’t think no one should back down from being wrongly prosecuted. I think you should always stand up. And since that’s my belief, I believe I have to lead by example.”
It is easy to forget why Julian Assange has been on trial in England for, well, seemingly forever.
Didn’t he allegedly sexually assault two women in Sweden? Isn’t that why he holed up for years in the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid facing charges?
When the bobbies finally dragged him out of the embassy, didn’t his dishevelled appearance confirm all those stories about his lousy personal hygiene?
Didn’t he persuade Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning to hack into the United States military’s computers to reveal national security matters that endangered the lives of American soldiers and intelligence agents? He says he is a journalist, but hasn’t The New York Times made it clear he is just a “source” and not a publisher entitled to first amendment protection?
If you answered yes to any or all of these questions, you are not alone. But the answers are actually no. At very least, it’s more complicated than that.
To take one example, the reason Assange was dishevelled was that staff in the Ecuadorian embassy had confiscated his shaving gear three months before to ensure his appearance matched his stereotype when the arrest took place.
Julian Assange arrives at Westminster Magistrates Court in London, Britain, on April 11, 2019. His shaving gear had been confiscated. Image: The Conversation/EPA/Stringer
That is one of the findings of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, whose investigation of the case against Assange has been laid out in forensic detail in The Trial of Julian Assange.
What is the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Torture doing investigating the Assange case, you might ask? So did Melzer when Assange’s lawyers first approached him in 2018:
I had more important things to do: I had to take care of “real” torture victims!
Melzer returned to a report he was writing about overcoming prejudice and self-deception when dealing with official corruption. “Not until a few months later,” he writes, “would I realise the striking irony of this situation.”
Cover of The Trial of Julian Assange … “the continuation of diplomacy by other means”. Image: Verso
The 47 members of the UN Human Rights Council directly appoint special rapporteurs on torture. The position is unpaid — Melzer earns his living as a professor of international law — but they have diplomatic immunity and operate largely outside the UN’s hierarchies.
Among the many pleas for his attention, Melzer’s small office chooses between 100 and 200 each year to officially investigate. His conclusions and recommendations are not binding on states. He bleakly notes that in barely 10 percent of cases does he receive full co-operation from states and an adequate resolution.
He received nothing like full co-operation in investigating Assange’s case. He gathered around 10,000 pages of procedural files, but a lot of them came from leaks to journalists or from freedom-of-information requests.
Many pages had been redacted. Rephrasing Carl Von Clausewitz’s maxim, Melzer wrote his book as “the continuation of diplomacy by other means”.
What he finds is stark and disturbing:
The Assange case is the story of a man who is being persecuted and abused for exposing the dirty secrets of the powerful, including war crimes, torture and corruption. It is a story of deliberate judicial arbitrariness in Western democracies that are otherwise keen to present themselves as exemplary in the area of human rights.
It is the story of wilful collusion by intelligence services behind the back of national parliaments and the general public. It is a story of manipulated and manipulative reporting in the mainstream media for the purpose of deliberately isolating, demonizing, and destroying a particular individual. It is the story of a man who has been scapegoated by all of us for our own societal failures to address government corruption and state-sanctioned crimes.
Collateral murder
The dirty secrets of the powerful are difficult to face, which is why we — and I don’t exclude myself — swallow neatly packaged slurs and diversions of the kind listed at the beginning of this article.
Melzer rightly takes us back to April 2010, four years after the Australian-born Assange had founded WikiLeaks, a small organisation set up to publish official documents that it had received, encrypted so as to protect whistle-blowers from official retribution.
Assange released video footage showing in horrifying detail how US soldiers in a helicopter had shot and killed Iraqi civilians and two Reuters journalists in 2007.
Apart from how the soldiers spoke — “Hahaha, I hit them”, “Nice”, “Good shot” — it looks like most of the victims were civilians and that the journalists’ cameras were mistaken for rifles. When one of the wounded men tried to crawl to safety, the helicopter crew, instead of allowing their comrades on the ground to take him prisoner, as required by the rules of war, seek permission to shoot him again.
As Melzer’s detailed description makes clear, the soldiers knew what they were doing:
“Come on, buddy,” the gunner comments, aiming the crosshairs at his helpless target. “All you gotta do is pick up a weapon.”
The soldiers’ request for authorisation to shoot is given. When the wounded man is carried to a nearby minibus, it is shot to pieces with the helicopter’s 30mm gun. The driver and two other rescuers are killed instantly. The driver’s two young children inside are seriously wounded.
US army command investigated the matter, concluding that the soldiers acted in accordance with the rules of war, even though they had not. Equally to the point, writes Melzer, the public would never have known a war crime had been committed without the release of what Assange called the “Collateral Murder” video.
The video footage was just one of hundreds of thousands of documents that WikiLeaks released last year in tranches known as the Afghan war logs, the Iraq war logs, and cablegate. They revealed numerous alleged war crimes and provided the raw material for a shadow history of the disastrous wars waged by the US and its allies, including Australia, in Aghanistan and Iraq.
Julian Assange in 2010. Image: The Conversation/ Stefan Wermuth/AP
Punished forever Melzer retraces what has happened to Assange since then, from the accusations of sexual assault in Sweden to Assange taking refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London in an attempt to avoid the possibility of extradition to the US if he returned to Sweden. His refuge led to him being jailed in the United Kingdom for breaching his bail conditions.
Sweden eventually dropped the sexual assault charges, but the US government ramped up its request to extradite Assange. He faces charges under the 1917 Espionage Act, which, if successful, could lead to a jail term of 175 years.
Two key points become increasingly clear as Melzer methodically works through the events.
The first is that there has been a carefully orchestrated plan by four countries — the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden and, yes, Australia — to ensure Assange is punished forever for revealing state secrets.
Assange displaying his ankle security tag in 2011 at the house where he was required to stay by a British judge. Image: The Conversation/Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
The second is that the conditions he has been subjected to, and will continue to be subjected to if the US’s extradition request is granted, have amounted to torture.
On the first point, how else are we to interpret the continual twists and turns over nearly a decade in the official positions taken by Sweden and the UK? Contrary to the obfuscating language of official communiques, all of these have closed down Assange’s options and denied him due process.
Melzer documents the thinness of the Swedish authorities’ case for charging Assange with sexual assault. That did not prevent them from keeping it open for many years. Nor was Assange as uncooperative with police as has been suggested. Swedish police kept changing their minds about where and whether to formally interview Assange because they knew the evidence was weak.
Melzer also takes pains to show how Swedish police also overrode the interests of the two women who had made the complaints against Assange.
It is distressing to read the conditions Assange has endured over several years. A change in the political leadership of Ecuador led to a change in his living conditions in the embassy, from cramped but bearable to virtual imprisonment.
Since being taken from the embassy to Belmarsh prison in 2019, Assange has spent much of his time in solitary confinement for 22 or 23 hours a day. He has been denied all but the most limited access to his legal team, let alone family and friends.
He was kept in a glass cage during his seemingly interminable extradition hearing, appeals over which could continue for several years more years, according to Melzer.
Julian Assange’s partner, Stella Morris, speaks to the media outside the High Court in London in January this year. Image: The Converstion/Alberto Pezzali/AP
Assange’s physical and mental health have suffered to the point where he has been put on suicide watch. Again, that seems to be the point, as Melzer writes:
The primary purpose of persecuting Assange is not – and never has been – to punish him personally, but to establish a generic precedent with a global deterrent effect on other journalist, publicists and activists.
So will the new Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, do any more than his three Coalition and two Labor predecessors to advocate for the interests of an Australian citizen? In December 2021, Guardian Australia reported Albanese saying he did “not see what purpose is served by the ongoing pursuit of Mr Assange” and that “enough is enough”.
Since being sworn in as prime minister, he has kept his cards close to his chest.
The actions of his predecessors suggest he won’t, even though Albanese has already said on several occasions since being elected that he wants to do politics differently.
Melzer, among others, would remind him of the words of former US president Jimmy Carter, who, contrary to other presidents, said he did not deplore the WikiLeaks revelations.
They just made public what was the truth. Most often, the revelation of truth, even if it’s unpleasant, is beneficial. […] I think that, almost invariably, the secrecy is designed to conceal improper activities.
On June 2, 250 students at Little Village Lawndale High School (LVLHS) in Chicago walked out of school to demand “Police out!” They marched through Little Village, which is the largest Latino neighborhood in Chicago, to the North Lawndale neighborhood, which is a Black community. The protest was organized by the LVLHS FightBack student group, which called for “Black and Brown Unity.”
Other demands raised by the students included equitable funding for all four schools. They explained there are four separate schools within one building. The school which has a predominantly Black student body receives less funding per student than the other three.
Julian Akil Rose: Yeah, so I actually got my grounding in organizing for a few reasons, and to be honest the timeline isn’t 100% clear simply because so many things were happening at once. So, don’t read this as a timeline, these are the co-incident layers.
Layer One: when I arrived at UConn in 2012 there was a big class action lawsuit against the university for mishandling sexual assault cases…I believe it was 7 women that came forward.
Layer Two: I was invited to participate in a program called The Men’s Project – the goal of the Men’s Project is to train students who identify as men to positively influence their peers by challenging social norms that promote gender-based violence; understanding their connection to survivors of gender-based violence; and role modeling effective bystander interventions – permanently changed my life.
A flurry of peaceful rallies and protests erupted in West Papua and Indonesia on Friday, June 3.
Papuan People’s Petition (PRP), the National Committee for West Papua (Komite Nasional Papua Barat-KNPB) and civil society groups and youth from West Papua marched in protest of Jakarta’s plan to create more provinces.
Thousands of protesters marched through the major cities and towns in each of West Papua’s seven regions, including Jayapura, Wamena, Paniai, Sorong, Timika/Mimika, Yahukimo, Lanny Jaya, Nabire, and Merauke.
As part of the massive demonstration, protests were organised in Indonesia’s major cities of West Java, Central Jakarta, Jogjakarta, Bandung, Semarang, Surabaya, and Bali.
Demonstrators said Papuans wanted an independence referendum, not new provinces or special autonomy.
3/6/22 Wamena, West Papua
“Papua: freedom!”
“Referendum: yes!”
Thousands of protestors are rejecting Jakarta’s arbitrary plan to create new provinces and Special Autonomy status. They are demanding an independence referendum. pic.twitter.com/QnxBu8egHp
— Veronica Koman 許愛茜 (@VeronicaKoman) June 3, 2022
According to Markus Haluk, one of the key coordinators of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), almost all Papuans took to the streets to show Jakarta and those who want to wipe out the Papuan people that they do not need special autonomy or new provinces.
[CW: blood]
This student protestor is the embodiment of West Papuan spirit. Indonesian forces beat him bloody but he will not be silenced.
— Veronica Koman 許愛茜 (@VeronicaKoman) June 3, 2022
Above is a text image that captures the spirit of the demonstrators. A young man is shown being beaten on the head and blood running down his face during a demonstration in Jayapura city of Papua on Friday.
The text urges Indonesia’s president Jokowi to be tagged on social media networks and calls for solidarity action.
Numerous protesters were arrested and beaten by Indonesian police during the demonstration.
Security forces brutalised demonstrators in the cities of Sorong, Jayapura, Yahukimo, Merauke, and elsewhere where demonstrations were held.
Hi Prof. Dr. MAHFUD….. where you get 82% people of West Papua supporting your government’s DOB and Otsus Jilid Il?
Even in these pictures can tell you the real fact that 99, 99% of indigenous West Papuans REJECTED your DOB and the Otonomi Jilid Il. pic.twitter.com/e9SS1QTi71
An elderly mother is seen been beaten on the head during the demonstration in Sorong. Tweet: West Papua Sun
People who are beaten and arrested are treated inhumanely and are not followed up with proper care, nor justice, in one of Asia-Pacific’s most heavily militarised areas.
Among those injured in Sorong, these people have been named Aves Susim (25), Sriyani Wanene (30), Mama Rita Tenau (50), Betty Kosamah (22), Agus Edoway (25), Kamat (27), Subi Taplo (23), Amanda Yumte (23), Jack Asmuru (20), and Sonya Korain (22).
Root of the protests in the 1960s
The protests and rallies are not merely random riots, or protests against government corruption or even pay raises. The campaign is part of decades-old protests that have been carried out against what the Papuans consider to be an Indonesian invasion since the 1960s.
The Indonesian government claims West Papua’s fate was sealed with Indonesia after a United Nations-organised 1969 referendum, known as the Pepera or Act of Free Choice, something Papuans consider a sham and an Act of No Choice.
In spite of Indonesia’s claim, the Indonesian invasion of West Papua began in 1963, long before the so-called Act of Free Choice in 1969.
It was well documented that the 1025 Papuan elders who voted for Indonesian occupancy in 1969 were handpicked at gunpoint.
In the six years between 1963 and 1969, Indonesian security forces tortured and beat these elders into submission before the vote in 1969 began.
Friday’s protesters were not merely protesting against Jakarta’s draconian policy of drawing yet another arbitrary line through Papuan ancestral territory, but also against Indonesia’s illegal occupation.
The Papuans accuse Jakarta of imposing laws, policies, and programmes that affect Papuans living in West Papua, while it is illegally occupying the territory.
Papuans will protest indefinitely until the root cause is addressed. On the other hand, the Indonesian government seems to care little about what the Papuans actually want or think.
Markus Haluk said Indonesia did not view Papuans as human beings equal to that of Indonesians, and this mades them believe that what Papuans want and think, or how Jakarta’s policy may affect Papuans, had no value.
Jakarta, he continued, will do whatever it wants, however, it wishes, and whenever it wishes in regard to West Papua.
In light of this sharp perceptual contrast, the relationship between Papuans and the Indonesian government has almost reached a dead end.
Fatal disconnect
The Lowy Institute, Australia’s leading think-tank, published an article entitled What is at stake with new provinces in West Papua? on 28 April 2022 that identifies some of the most critical terminology regarding this dead-end protracted conflict — one of which is “fatal disconnect”.
The conclusion of the article stated, “On a general level, this means that there is a fatal disconnect between how the Indonesian government view their treatment of the region, and how the people actually affected by such treatment see the arrangement.”
It is this fatal disconnect that has brought these two states — Papua and Indonesia — to a point of no return. Two states are engaged in a relationship that has been disconnected since the very beginning, which has led to so many fatalities.
The author of the article, Eduard Lazarus, a Jakarta-based journalist and editor covering media and social movements, wrote:
That so many indigenous West Papuans expressed their disdain against renewing the Special Autonomy status … is a sign that something has gone horribly wrong.
The tragedy of this irreconcilable relationship is that Jakarta does not reflect on its actions and is willfully ignorant of how its rhetoric and behaviour in dealing with West Papua has caused such human tragedy and devastation spanning generations.
The way that Jakarta’s leaders talk about their “rescue” plans for West Papua displays this fatal disconnect.
KOMPAS.com reported on June 2 that Vice-President Ma’ruf Amin had asked Indonesian security forces to use a “humanist approach” in Papua rather than violence.
Ma’ruf expressed this view also in a virtual speech made at the Declaration of Papua Peace event organised by the Papuan Indigenous Peoples Institute on June 6.
In a press release, Ma’ruf said he had instructed the combined military and police officials to use a humanist approach, prioritise dialogical efforts, and refrain from violence.
Ma’ruf believes that conducive security conditions are essential to Papua’s development, and that the government aims to promote peace and unity in Papua through various policies and regulations.
The Papua Special Autonomy Law, he continued, regulates the transfer of power from provinces to regencies and cities, as well as increasing the percentage of Papua Special Autonomy Funds transferred to 2.25 percent of the National General Allocation Fund.
Additionally, according to the Vice-President, the government is drafting a presidential regulation regarding a Papuan Development Acceleration Master Plan (RIPPP) and establishing the Papuan Special Autonomy Development Acceleration Steering Agency (BP3OKP) directly headed by Ma’ruf himself.
He also underscored the importance of a collaboration between all parties, including indigenous Papuans. Ma’ruf believes that Papua’s development will speed up soon since the traditional leaders and all members of the Indigenous Papuan Council are willing to work together and actively participate in building the Land of Papua.
Indonesia’s new military commander
General Andika Perkasa. Image: File
Recently, Indonesia’s newly appointed Commander of Armed Forces, General Andika Perkasa, proposed a novel, humanistic approach to handling political conflict in West Papua.
Instead of removing armed combatants with gunfire, he has vowed to use “territorial development operations” to resolve the conflict. In these operations, personnel will conduct medical, educational, and infrastructure-building missions to establish a rapport with Papuan communities in an effort to steer them away from the independence movement.
In order to accomplish Perkasa’s plans, the military will have to station a large number of troops in West Papua in addition to the troops currently present.
When listening to these two countries’ top leaders, they appear full of optimism in the words and new plans they describe.
But the reality behind these words is something else entirely. There is, as concluded by Eduard Lazarus, a fatal disconnect between West Papuan and Jakarta’s policymakers, but Jakarta is unable to recognise it.
Jakarta seems to suffer from cognitive dissonance or cognitive disconnect when dealing with West Papua — a lack of harmony between its heart, words, and actions.
Cognitive dissonance is, by definition, a behavioural dysfunction with inconsistency in which the personal beliefs held, what has been said, and what has been done contradict each other.
Vice-chair of Papuan People’s Representative Council Yunus Wonda. Image: File
This contradiction, according to Yunus Wonda, deputy chair of the Papuan People’s Representative Council, occurs when the government changes the law and modifies and amends it as they see fit.
What is written, what is practised, and what is in the heart do not match. Papuans suffer greatly because of this, according to Yunus Wonda.
Mismanagement of a fatalistic nature
Jakarta continues to mismanage West Papua with fatalistic inconsistent policies, which, according to the article, “might already have soured” to an irreparable degree.
The humanist approach now appears to be another code in Indonesia’s gift package, delivered to the Papuans as a Trojan horse.
The words of Indonesia’s Vice-President and the head of its Armed Forces are like a band aid with a different colour trying to cover an old wound that has barely healed.
According to Wonda, the creation of new provinces is like trying to put the smoke out while the fire is still burning.
Jakarta had already tried to bandage those old wounds with the so-called “Special Autonomy” 20 years ago. The Autonomy gift was granted not out of goodwill, but out of fear of Papuan demands for independence.
However, Jakarta ended up making a big mess of it.
The same rhetoric is also seen here in the statement of the Vice-President. Even though the semantic choices and construction themselves seem so appealing, this language does not translate into reality in the field.
This is the problem — something has gone very wrong, and Jakarta isn’t willing to find out what it is. Instead, it keeps imposing its will on West Papua.
Jakarta keeps preaching the gospel of development, prosperity, peace, and security but does not ask what Papuans want.
The 2001 Special Autonomy Law was supposed to allow Papuans to have greater power over their fate, which included 79 articles designed to protect their land and culture.
Furthermore, under this law, one important institution, the Papuan People’s Assembly (Majelis Rakyat Papua-MRP), together with provincial governments and the Papuan People’s Representative Council (Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat Papua-DPRP), was given the authority to deal with matters that are most important to them, such as land, population control, cultural identity, and symbols.
Section B of the introduction part of the Special Autonomy law contains the following significant provisions:
That the Papua community is God’s creation and is a part of a civilised people, who hold high human rights, religious values, democracy, law and cultural values in the adat (customary) law community and who have the right to fairly enjoy the results of development.
Three weeks after these words were written into law, popular independence leader Theys H. Eluay was killed by Indonesian special forces (Kopassus). Ryamizard Ryacudu, then-army chief-of-staff, who in 2014 became Jokowi’s first Defence Minister, later called the killers “heroes” (Tempo.co, August 19, 2003).
In 2003, the Megawati Soekarnoputri government divided the province into two, violating a provision of the Special Autonomy Law, which was based on the idea that Papua remains a single territory. As prescribed by law, any division would need to be approved by the Papuan provincial legislature and MRP.
Over the 20 years since the Autonomy gift was granted, Jakarta has violated and undermined any legal and political framework it agreed to or established to engage with Papuans.
Governor Lukas Enembe … not enough resources to run the five new provinces being created in West Papua. Image: West Papua Today
Papuan Indigenous leaders reject Jakarta’s band aid
On May 27, Governor Lukas Enembe of the settler province of Papua, told Reuters there were not enough resources to run new provinces and that Papuans were not properly consulted.
As the governor, direct representative of the central government, Enembe was not even consulted about the creation of new provinces.
Yunus Wonda and Timotius Murid, two Indigenous Papuan leaders entrusted to safeguard the Papuan people and their culture and customary land under two important institutions — the Papuan People’s Assembly (Majelis Rakyat Papua-MRP) and People’s Representative Council (Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat Papua-DPRP) — were not consulted about the plans.
Making matters worse, Jakarta stripped them of any powers they had under the previous autonomous status, which set the precedent for Jakarta to amend the previous autonomous status law in 2021.
This amendment enables Jakarta to create new provinces.
The aspirations and wishes of the Papuan people were supposed to be channelled through these two institutions and the provincial government, but Jakarta promptly shut down all avenues that would enable Papuans to have their voices heard.
Governor Enembe faces constant threats, terrorism Governor Enembe has also been terrorised and intimidated by unknown parties over the past couple of years. He said, “I am an elected governor of Indonesia, but I am facing these constant threats and terror. What about my people? They are not safe.”
This is an existential war between the state of Papua and the state of Indonesia. We need to ask not only what is at stake with the new provinces in West Papua, but also, what is at stake in West Papua under Indonesia’s settler-colonial rule?
Four critical existential issues facing West Papua
There are four main components of Papuan culture at stake in West Papua under Indonesia’s settler-colonial rule:
1. Papuan humans
2. Papuan languages
3. Papuan oral cultural knowledge system
4. Papuan ancestral land and ecology
Papua’s identity was supposed to be protected by the Special Autonomy Law 2001.
However, Jakarta has shown no interest or intention in protecting these four existential components. Indonesia continues to amend, create, and pass laws to create more settler-colonial provincial spaces that threaten Papuans.
The end goal isn’t to provide welfare to Papuans or protect them, but to create settlers’ colonial areas so that new settlers — whether it be soldiers, criminal thugs, opportunists, poor improvised Indonesian immigrants, or colonial administrators — can fill those new spaces.
Jakarta is, unfortunately, turning these newly created spaces into new battlegrounds between clans, tribes, highlanders, coastal people, Papua province, West Papua province, families, and friends, as well as between Papuans and immigrants.
Media outlets in Indonesia are manipulating public opinion by portraying one leader as a proponent of Jakarta’s plan and the other as its opponent, further fuelling tension between leaders in Papua.
Yamin Kogoya is a West Papuan academic who has a Master of Applied Anthropology and Participatory Development from the Australian National University and who contributes to Asia Pacific Report. From the Lani tribe in the Papuan Highlands, he is currently living in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
Welcome to another Episode of System Fail. In this episode we will be covering the trend of rising state repression around the globe.
We start in so-called Chile where the newly elected ostensibly left-libertarian president Gabriel Boric has failed to deliver on his promise to free political prisoners.
Meanwhile in Munich, police have raided a number of apartments, an anarchist library, and a print shop.
Then in Greece, long term anarchist prisoner Giannis Michaildis has announced a hunger strike demanding his release.
Finally, a run down of the recent events at the Defend the Forest Atlanta encampment.
