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Former Fiji PM Voreqe Bainimarama jailed over block of USP police probe

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RNZ Pacific

Former Fiji Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama has been sentenced to one year in prison, Fiji media are reporting.

Bainimarama, alongside suspended Fiji Police Commissioner Sitiveni Qiliho appeared in the High Court in Suva today for their sentencing hearing for a case involving their roles in blocking a police investigation at the University of the South Pacific in 2021.

Qiliho has been sentenced to two years jail.


Bainimarama and Qiliho jailed.      Video: Fiji Village

Bainimarama, the 69-year-old former military commander and 2006 coup leader, had been found guilty of perverting the course of justice.

Qiliho had been found guilty of abuse of office by the High Court Acting Chief Justice Salesi Temo, who upheld the state’s appeal.

Bainimarama and Qiliho walked out of the High Court in Suva in handcuffs, and were escorted straight into a police vehicle.

“The former PM and the suspended COMPOL were found not guilty and acquitted accordingly by Resident Magistrate Seini Puamau at the Suva Magistrates Court on 12 October 2023,” the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions said.

“The State had filed an appeal against their acquittal where the Acting Chief Justice, Salesi Temo then overturned the Magistrate’s decision and found the two guilty as charged. The matter was then sent back to the Magistrates’ Court for sentencing.

Headlines on the Fiji state broadcaster FBC website today 9 May 2024
Headlines on the Fiji state broadcaster FBC website today. Image: FBC screenshot APR

“In sentencing the duo, Magistrate Puamau announced that both their convictions would not be registered. The former PM was granted an absolute discharge while the suspended COMPOL received a conditional discharge with a fine of $1500 on 28 March 2024 by the Suva Magistrates Court following which the State had filed an appeal and challenged the discharge for a custodial sentence.

“The Acting Chief Justice quashed the Magistrate Court’s sentence and pronounced the custodial sentences respectively.”

Qiliho walks out of the Suva High Court and escorted by police officers to the be taken to jail. 9 May 2024
Qiliho walks out of the Suva High Court and escorted by police officers to the be taken to jail. Image: Fiji TV screenshot RNZ

Earlier today, local media reported an increased police presence outside the Suva court complex.

“There is more pronounced police presence than usual with vehicles being checked upon entry. A section has been cordoned off in front of the High Court facing Holiday Inn,” broadcaster fijivillage.com reported.

State broadcaster FBC reported that police only allowed close relatives and Bainimarama and Qiliho’s associates, along with the media, to sit in the courtroom.

MPs from the main opposition FijiFirst party in Parliament, including opposition leader Inia Seruiratu, Faiyaz Koya were present in court.

Brief timeline:

  • The duo were sentenced by the Magistrates Court on 28 March.
  • Magistrate Seini Puamau gave Bainimarama an absolute discharge — the lowest level sentence an offender can get and no conviction was registered.
  • Qiliho was fined FJ$1500 and without a conviction as well.
  • The 69-year-old former military commander and 2006 coup leader was found guilty of perverting the course of justice in a case related to the University of the South Pacific; and suspended police chief Qiliho was found guilty of abuse of office by the High Court Acting Chief Justice Salesi Temo.
  • Magistrate Puamau’s judgement had left many in the legal circles and commentators in the country perplexed.
  • The State – through the Office of the Director of Public Prosecution – had appealed the sentencing straightaway to the High Court.
  • They were back in court 7 days later — during the court appearance at the High Court, the Acting Chief Justice Salesi Temo, gave time until the 24 April for the respondents to file their submissions and for the State to reply by the 29th.
  • The sentencing hearing was last Thursday, 2 May.
  • Acting Chief Justice Salesi Temo sentences Bainimarama to one year in jail and Qiliho for two years.

Bainimarama’s attempt to pervert the course of justice charge had a maximum tariff of five years while Qiliho’s charge of abuse of office carried a maximum tariff of 10 years.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ and Asia Pacific Report.

‘We are witnessing an unfolding genocide’ – Israeli historian

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Team Zeteo

After months of threats and speculation, the Israeli military has officially begun to move into the southern Gazan city of Rafah, sending in tanks and taking control of the border crossing with Egypt.

The UN Secretary-General has warned an assault on Rafah would be a “humanitarian nightmare,” while US President Joe Biden appears unfazed as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu violates what the US president previously called his “red line.”

In response to these escalations, Mehdi Hasan hosted a town hall for Zeteo paid subscribers with Israeli Holocaust scholar Professor Raz Segal and Palestinian lawyer Diana Buttu.

Professor Segal, who has previously called Israel’s war on Gaza a “textbook case of genocide,” said: “If we finally recognised Israel for what it is, which is a white supremacist settler state, then the problem is that it’s not just confined to that.

“We have to recognise the whole system behind it, its support, its allies, including white supremacy and settler colonialism in the US.”


A society ‘awash with war criminals’.    Video: Zeteo

Zeteo contributing lawyer Diana Buttu reminded viewers that Israel’s latest escalations in Rafah were, unfortunately, “no surprise”, stating that the invasion was what “Netanyahu always wanted”.

“He’s made it clear since the beginning that they were going to continue to push Palestinians further south,” Buttu told Mehdi.

“And the point is very clear, that they want to get rid of Palestinians.”

Buttu also discussed her new Zeteo column, ‘A Diary of a Palestinian Living in Israel,’ in which she describes the “genocide fever” that’s taken over Israel.

Information about subscribing to Zeteo here.

How an ‘antisemitism hoax’ drowned out the discovery of mass graves in Gaza

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One might have expected the discovery of mass graves of hundreds of Palestinians to be front-page news
One might have expected the discovery of mass graves of hundreds of Palestinians to be front-page news -- especially since the same World Court ruled four months ago that a “plausible” case had been made that Israel was committing genocidal acts in Gaza. And yet, like so many other Israeli atrocities, this one barely caused a ripple in the news cycle. Image: www.jonathan-cook.net

Fake Israeli claims keep Western publics focused on “evil” humanitarian aid workers and “evil” anti-war protesters rather than the kind of evil that dares in broad daylight to kill 15,000 children, destroy hospitals, and hide bodies in mass graves.

ANALYSIS: By Jonathan Cook

A gruesome discovery was made in Gaza last month. Some 300 Palestinian bodies — of men, women and children — were unearthed from an unmarked mass grave in the courtyard of the Nasser hospital in Khan Younis.

Even given Israel’s record of committing relentless atrocities in Gaza over the past seven months — killing tens of thousands of Palestinians, most of them women and children — this one stood out.

Some bodies were reported to have been found with their hands and feet bound, and stripped of clothing, strongly suggesting they had been executed during a three-month invasion of the city by Israeli soldiers. Others were said to be decapitated, or their skin and organs removed.

Some 10,000 people had been sheltering at Gaza’s second-largest hospital when it was attacked back in February. At the time there were reports of patients and staff being picked off by sniper fire. The medical facility was left in ruins.

Another 400 people are still reported missing in Khan Younis. More mass graves have already been uncovered.

Referring to some of the bodies, Yamen Abu Suleiman, a civil defence leader in Khan Younis, told CNN: “We do not know if they were buried alive or executed. Most of the bodies are decomposed.”

The revelations from Khan Younis fit a pattern that has been gradually emerging as Israeli troops have pulled back.

Latest mass graves
The latest of several mass graves were found at Gaza’s largest hospital, al-Shifa. Israel left the area earlier last month after destroying the hospital. Together, the graves are reported to have contained hundreds of bodies.

Further unmarked graves have been discovered in Beit Lahiya.

The United Nations human rights chief, Volker Turk, said he was “horrified” by the reports.

Back in the 1990s, the identification of mass graves of thousands of Muslim men from the Bosnian town of Srebrenica led to the setting up of a special war crimes tribunal of the International Criminal Court. It ruled in 2001 that a genocide had occurred in Srebrenica committed by Bosnian Serbs — a judgment later confirmed by the International Court of Justice, sometimes referred to as the World Court.

In the circumstances, one might have expected the discovery of mass graves of hundreds of Palestinians to be front-page news — especially since the same World Court ruled four months ago that a “plausible” case had been made that Israel was committing genocidal acts in Gaza.

And yet, like so many other Israeli atrocities, this one barely caused a ripple in the news cycle.

Months ago, the establishment British media largely lost interest in reporting on the continuing slaughter in Gaza. The contrast with the media’s early coverage of Ukraine has been stark. The discovery of a mass grave containing some 100 bodies in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha — blamed on Russian troops — caused international outrage.

Bucha byword for Russian savagery
Bucha quickly became a byword for Russian savagery, and the discovery sustained months of calls for Russian leaders to be tried for genocide.

The general indifference of British media outlets to the mass graves found in Gaza is hugely convenient for Britain’s two main political parties.

The UK has avoided pushing for a ceasefire to end Israel’s bloodletting in Gaza. It refuses to stop selling Israel weapons and components that have helped in the killing of Palestinians — and potentially aid workers too.

On Israel’s say-so, Britain cut funding to Unrwa, the UN aid agency best placed to stop a famine Israel is wilfully inducing in the enclave by blocking aid. And a British abstention helped foil a vote in the United Nations Security Council last month to recognise Palestine as a state, something 140 other nations have already done.

The Labour party has offered only muted opposition.

Bipartisan support in the UK for Israel’s plausible genocide has provoked a groundswell of public anger, including regular protests in London that attract hundreds of thousands of marchers.

Once again, however, the British media has seemed far less interested in reporting Israeli atrocities than in imputing malign motivations to large sections of the British public incensed by what is happening in Gaza.

Mass graves ‘drowned out’
It was quite extraordinary that the discovery of mass graves in the enclave was almost completely drowned out by an all-too-obvious hoax pulled by an Israel lobbyist.

Gideon Falter, chief executive of the Campaign Against Antisemitism, has been trying to shut down the peaceful London marches calling for an end to the butchering of men, women and children in Gaza since Israel began its military assault more than six months ago.

In Falter’s words, the hundreds of thousands of people who turn out regularly to call for a ceasefire — including a large bloc of Jews — are “lawless mobs” posing a direct threat to Jews like himself.

He has found powerful allies in the government. Home Secretary James Cleverly said the march organisers have “real evil intent”, while his predecessor Suella Braverman labelled the protests calling for a ceasefire as “hate marches”.

Both have put pressure on the police to ban the protests for being supposedly antisemitic

There is precisely no evidence for any of these claims. In fact, according to police figures, Glastonbury music festivalgoers were nearly four times more likely to be arrested than those attending the London marches.

Which has left the continuing mass marches a major embarrassment to both the UK government and the opposition Labour party by highlighting their continuing complicity in what has become — with revelations like the discovery of mass graves — ever more clearly a genocide.

That is the proper context for understanding Falter’s latest intervention.

Engineering a provocation
As the Metropolitan police are only too aware, Falter’s group, along with other pro-Israel activists, have every incentive to engineer a provocation to add to the already considerable pressure on the police to ban the London marches and further curtail a fundamental civil liberty — the right to protest.

A video on social media shows Falter being confronted by police in a previous incident in which he tried to drive a large van with pro-Israel messages down the march route.

But his breakthrough came last month when, accompanied by an Israeli-trained security detail and a film crew, he tried repeatedly to break through a police line along the route and walk against the flow of the march. Responsible for maintaining public order at large protests, Met officers stopped him.

There are well-known rules imposed by the police surrounding large protests on highly charged ideological issues like this one.

The marchers are not allowed to stray from the route determined by the police, and opponents — whether Israel apologists like Falter or Islamophobic white nationalists — are not allowed to approach and antagonise the marchers. The job of the police is to keep the sides apart.

Blocked by officers, Falter had his script ready. He simply insisted on his right to “cross the street” as a Jew going about his business.

Given the way the public discourse about Israel and antisemitism has been malevolently manipulated by the British establishment over the past eight years — after the long-time Palestinian solidarity activist Jeremy Corbyn was elected Labour leader — Falter could not lose in this encounter.

Filmed ‘evidence’
If the police arrested him, he would have filmed evidence that he was being victimised as a Jew by an antisemitic police force.

If they refused to let him “cross the street”, he would have filmed proof that the march was indeed filled with Jew haters posing a threat to his safety.

And if the police failed in their duties and let him and his retinue walk against the flow of the packed protest, he — like anyone attempting to do this — would at the very least be jostled. Based on the established credulity of the establishment media in covering antisemitism, Falter was presumably confident that this could be spun as a hate crime against him.

The police clearly seemed to understand Falter’s game plan. They appeared extremely reluctant to arrest him, even though a former chief superintendent, Dal Babu, observed that, in trying to push past them, Falter could have been charged with “assault on a police officer and breach of the peace”.

Instead, the officers patiently argued for at least a quarter of an hour with Falter, pointing out that he could bypass the march using a different route.

But in this lengthy, testy encounter, the Campaign Against Antisemitism boss finally got what he wanted. One officer made a slip-up, suggesting that the problem was that the skullcap-wearing Falter was “openly Jewish”.

As noted, lots of Jews attend the march and do so under banners declaring that they are Jews. Despite being “openly Jewish”, all say they are warmly welcomed by other demonstrators.

Manipulated public discourse
The officer’s mistake was understandable. Israel apologists and the British establishment spent years manipulating the public discourse to conflate Israel, the political nationalist ideology of Zionism and Jewishness in a blatant ploy to vilify supporters of Corbyn, the anti-racist former Labour leader, as antisemites.

The problem wasn’t that Falter is “openly Jewish”, it was that he is a vocal, openly Zionist supporter of Israel, one who makes excuses for its genocide and vilifies those who are opposed to the bloodletting. It is not his ethnicity or religion that are a provocation, it is his ugly politics.

But with the officer’s comment in the can, Falter released a heavily edited version of his confrontation with the police to an establishment media only too willing — at least, initially — to swallow two completely implausible ideas Falter was peddling.

First, that the police officer’s comment was proof that the Met is institutionally racist against Jews and that is why it has allowed the anti-genocide marches to go ahead. Falter called for the head of the Met, Sir Mark Rowley, to be sacked.

And second, and more importantly, that the officer’s comment was proof that the marches are indeed “hate marches” consisting of — as he declared to a BBC interviewer — “racists, extremists and terrorist sympathisers”.

It may all have been fake news but it fitted an agenda the media has been promoting for years: that anything more than the lightest-touch criticism of Israel is evidence of antisemitism.

The political and media class have been increasingly struggling to credibly sustain that idea in the face of Israel committing a genocide — but Falter’s video served briefly as a shot in the arm.

Verbal slip-up
From one police officer’s brief, verbal slip-up, he was able to fire up a national debate that took as its premise the idea that police were colluding with “antisemitic hate marches”.

On the back foot, the Met hurriedly agreed to meet Falter and “Jewish community leaders”, seemingly to get their advice on what needed to be done about the marches.

BBC evening news reported that pressure was growing on the Met “to get the balance right between allowing legitimate protest and cracking down on hate speech and intimidation”.

Good Morning Britain’s hosts fawned over Falter on Monday morning, accepting uncritically that the march posed a threat to him as a Jew and expressing concern that the police were not getting that balance right.

But quite unlike the years-long  accusations of fake antisemitism whipped up by Falter and others to oust Corbyn, one that was enthusiastically amplified by the state-corporate media, the Met had powerful allies inside the establishment that pushed back.

Before Falter’s hoax could properly take hold, Sky released a much longer video of his confrontation with the police. It showed that they had blocked his way after identifying him as a provocateur. Police can be heard accusing him of being “disingenuous” and telling him to stop “running into protesters”.

Former police officers, including Babu, were invited on TV to offer a counter-narrative that cast Falter in a far less sympathetic light.

Falter ‘fakery’ the victor
By Tuesday, the Met chief Rowley was feeling confident enough to go on the attack, praising the officer at the centre of the row and accusing pro-Israel activists of using “fakery” to undermine the Met.

But even wounded, Falter emerged decisively as the victor.

No one is talking — as they should be — about why groups like the Campaign Against Antisemitism, which regularly and so visibly meddle deeply in British politics in the interests of a foreign power, Israel, are treated as charities.

Instead, Falter has given the political and media class more ammunition to argue that the marches need to be banned, and has put police decision-making under yet more scrutiny.

Whatever bullishness Rowley exhibited in public, his battles behind the scenes against a government keen to silence the marches will have been made far more complicated.

But, more importantly, Falter has played an invaluable role in bolstering Israel’s favourite tactic. He has deflected attention in the UK away from its war crimes — including the mass graves in Khan Younis — to squabbles entirely divorced from reality about whether Jews are safe from the anti-war movement.

Precisely the same dynamic is playing out in the United States, where the establishment – from President Joe Biden down – is painting peaceful protests on college campuses against the genocide as hotbeds of hatred and antisemitism.

US arrests of protesters
There, things are even more out of hand, with the police called in to make arrests of students and faculty.

In both cases, the real debate — about why Britain and the US are still actively supporting the bombing and starvation of Gaza’s population after six months of genocide — has once more been muffled by the Israel lobby’s fake news.

Establishment media have once again seized on any pretext available to them to focus on a twig rather than the forest.

The pattern is hard to miss: the British establishment, including the government and the BBC, are working hand in hand to help Israel and its genocide apologists win the public relations battle.

Only briefly, when the honour of the police — the establishment’s fist — got a bloodied nose, was there a degree of pushback.

Take, for example, the day in January when the World Court ruled there was a “plausible” case made by South Africa’s lawyers that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. That same day Israel successfully sabotaged the devastating news with a scoop of its own.

It alleged that some 12 UNRWA staff members it had seized in Gaza – out of a total of 13,000 in the enclave on the agency’s payroll — had confessed to taking part in Hamas’ attack on October 7, in which some 1150 Israelis were killed.

Cut funding demand
Israel demanded Western states immediately cut all funding to UNRWA. It has been Israel’s long-term goal to eliminate the refugee agency and permanently erase the rights of Palestinians to return to homes their families were expelled from in 1948 in what is now Israel.

Most Western capitals, including the UK, dutifully complied, even though the decision was certain to plunge Gaza even deeper into a famine Israel has been engineering as part of its genocidal policies.

But the announcement’s timing was important too. Western media focused their coverage on a story about UNRWA that should have been marginal, even were it true.

The World Court’s finding that Israel was plausibly committing genocide was far more significant. Nonetheless, reporting on the ruling — especially the fact that the court suspected Israel was carrying out genocidal acts — was entirely overshadowed by the claims against UNRWA.

Late last month, months on, an independent review commissioned by the UN and led by the former French foreign minister, Catherine Colonna, found that Israel had still failed to produce any evidence to support its allegations against UNRWA.

But just as with Falter’s hoax, the goal of such accusations by Israel is never to expose the truth. The aim is to distract from the truth.

The same can be said of Israel’s still unsubstantiated claims of unprecedented savagery committed by Hamas on October 7, from beheading babies to carrying out systematic mass rape.

None of these allegations, which have been widely regurgitated by the establishment Western media, have ever been backed up with evidence. Whenever testimonies have been scrutinised, they have unravelled.

But all these claims have served a purpose. They keep Western publics focused on evil humanitarian aid workers and evil anti-war protesters rather than the kind of evil that dares in broad daylight to kill 15,000 children, destroy hospitals, and hide bodies in mass graves.

Jonathan Cook is a writer, journalist and self-appointed media critic. Winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. This article was first published by Middle East Eye and is republished here with the author’s permission.

Auckland Palestine rally honours Gaza journalists for freedom award

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Asia Pacific Report

About 500 people honoured Palestinian journalists in the heart of the New Zealand city of Auckland today for their brave coverage of Israel’s War on Gaza, now in its seventh month with almost 35,000 people killed, mostly women and children.

Marking the annual May 3 World Press Freedom Day “plus two”, the crowd also strongly applauded UNESCO’s Guillermo Cano Award being presented to the Palestinian journalists for their “courage and commitment”.

Several speakers gave tributes to the journalists, the more than 100 Gazan news workers killed had their names read out and put on display, and cellphones were lit up due to the breeze preventing candle flames.

Part of the crowd at the New Zealand rally in Auckland today honouring the Palestinian journalists
Part of the crowd at the New Zealand rally in Auckland today honouring the Palestinian journalists for their Media Freedom Day award for their coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza. Image: Asia Pacific Report

Activist MC Anna Lee, wo represents several groups including NZEI Te Riu Roa Educators for Gaza/Palestine, praised the journalists and said they set an example to the world.

“Journalists there have experienced a prolonged onslaught against press freedom with the arbitrary killings, arrests and intimidation,” she said.

“These acts have also restricted the world’s ‘right to know’ what has been happening in Palestine.”

She said they stood in solidarity with the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate and the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions-Gaza.

Bex Silver, a young New Zealand Jewish woman, spoke about how she experienced first hand the disinformation in Israeli news media and the oppression of Palestinians when she visited the Occupied West Bank last year and “found out what was really happening”.


Shut the Gaza war down chants in Auckland.     Video: Café Pacific

Journalist Dr David Robie, convenor of Pacific Media Watch, said 143 journalists had been killed, according to Al Jazeera and the Gaza Media Office, and it was mostly targeted “assassination by design”.

He paid tribute to several individual journalists as well as the group, including Shireen Abu Akleh, shot by an Israeli sniper more than a year before the October 7 war outbreak, and Hind Khoudary, a young journalist who had inspired people around the world.

He also shared Hind’s message to the world: “Don’t forget Palestine. We are weary, and your voice is our strength. Remember our voices, remember our faces.”

The Guillermo Cano Prize was awarded to the Gaza journalists in Santiago, Chile, as part of World Press Freedom Day global events.

Nasser Abu Baker, president of the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate (PJS) and vice-president of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), received the UNESCO prize on behalf of his colleagues in Gaza.

Candles for the Palestinian journalists
Candles for the Palestinian journalists – named those who have been killed. Image: Asia Pacific Report

‘Unique suffering, fearless reporting’
The UN cultural agency has recognised the “unique suffering and fearless reporting” of Gaza’s journalists by awarding them the freedom prize.

Apart from those journalists and media workers have been killed by Israeli strikes in Gaza since October 7, nearly all the rest have been injured, displaced or bereaved.

From the start of the conflict, Israel closed Gaza’s borders to international journalists, and none have been allowed free access to the enclave since.

A thousand Gazan journalists were working at the start of the war, and more than a 100 of them have been killed.

“As a result,” reports the IFJ, “the profession has suffered a mortality rate in excess of 10 percent — about six times higher than the mortality rate of the general population of Gaza and around three times higher than that of health professionals.

PJS president Baker said: “Journalists in Gaza have endured a sustained attack by the Israeli army of unprecedented ferocity — but have continued to do their jobs, as witnesses to the carnage around them.

“It is justified that they should be honoured on World Press Freedom Day.


Naming the martyred Gaza journalists.   Video: Café Pacific

‘Most deadly attack on press freedom’
“What we have seen in Gaza is surely the most sustained and deadly attack on press freedom in history. This award shows that the world has not forgotten and salutes their sacrifice for information.”

IFJ general secretary Anthony Bellanger said: “This prize is a real tribute to the commitment to information of journalists in Gaza.

“Journalists in Gaza are starving, homeless and in mortal danger. UNESCO’s recognition of what they are still enduring is a huge and well-deserved boost.”


Kia Ora Gaza – doctors speak out.      Video: Café Pacific

Gaza Freedom Flotilla blocked
Also at the rally today were Kia Ora Gaza’s organiser Roger Fowler and two of the three New Zealand doctors who travelled to Turkiye to embark on the Freedom Flotilla which was sending three ships with humanitarian aid to break the Gaza siege.

Israel thwarted the mission for the time being by pressuring the African nation of Guinea-Bissau to withdraw the maritime flag the ships would have been sailing under.

However, flotilla organisers are working hard to find another flag country for the ships and the doctors vowed to rejoin the mission.

Palestinian children at today's Auckland rally
Palestinian children at today’s Auckland rally . . . one girl is holding up an image of an old pre-war postage stamp from the country called Palestine with the legend “We are coming back”. Image: David Robie/Cafe Pacific Report

Media freedom award for the Gaza journalists who have paid a terrible price in Israel’s genocidal war

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Part of the crowd paying tribute to the Gazan journalists who have been awarded the 2024 Guillermo Cano Media Freedom Award
Part of the crowd paying tribute to the Gazan journalists who have been awarded the 2024 Guillermo Cano Media Freedom Award for their coverage of the Israeli war on Gaza. Image: David Robie/Pacific Media Watch

By David Robie, convenor of Pacific Media Watch

Along with the devastating death toll — now almost 35,000 people, hundreds of aid workers and hundreds of medical staff have been killed in the genocidal Israeli war on Gaza — journalists have also paid a terrible price.

By far the worst of any war.

In Vietnam, 63 journalists were killed in two decades.

Part of the crowd paying tribute to the Gazan journalists who have been awarded the 2024 Guillermo Cano Media Freedom Award
Part of the crowd paying tribute to the Gazan journalists who have been awarded the 2024 Guillermo Cano Media Freedom Award for their coverage of the Israeli war on Gaza. Image: David Robie/Pacific Media Watch

The Second World War was worse, with 67 journalists killed in seven years.

But now in the war on Gaza, we have had 143 journalists killed in seven months.

That’s the death toll according to Al Jazeera and the Gaza Media Office. (Western media freedom monitoring usually cite a lower figure, around the 100 plus mark, but the higher figure is more accurate).

And these journalists — sometimes their whole families as well – have been deliberately targeted by the Israeli “Offensive” Force – I call it “offensive” rather than what it claims to be, defensive (IDF).

‘Kill off’ journalists
Assassination by design. Clearly the Israeli policy has been to kill off the journalists, silence the messengers, whenever they can.

Try to stifle the truth getting out about their war crimes, their crimes against humanity.

But it has failed. Just like the humanity of the people of Gaza has inspired the world, so have the journalists.

Their commitment to truth and justice and to telling the world their horrendous story has been an exemplary tale of bravery and courage in the face of unspeakable horror.

But there has been a glimmer of hope in spite of the gloom. On Friday — on World Press Freedom Day, May 3 — UNESCO, the United Nations cultural agency, awarded all Palestinian journalists covering the war in Gaza the annual Guillermo Cano Award for media freedom.

This award is named in honour of Guillermo Cano Isaza, a Colombian investigative journalist who was assassinated in front of the offices of his newspaper El Espectador in Bogotá, Colombia on 17 December 1986.

Announcing the Gaza award in the capital of Chile, Santiago, in an incredibly emotional ceremony, Mauricio Weibel, chair of the international jury of media professionals, declared:

“In these times of darkness and hopelessness, we wish to share a strong message of solidarity and recognition to those Palestinian journalists who are covering this crisis in such dramatic circumstances.

“As humanity, we have a huge debt to their courage and commitment to freedom of expression.”

Ultimate price
For those of us who watch Al Jazeera every day to keep up with developments in Palestine and around the world — and thank goodness we have had that on Freeview to balance the pathetic New Zealand media coverage — I would like to acknowledge some of their journalists who have paid the ultimate price.

First, I would like to acknowledge the assassination of American-Palestinian Shireen Abu Akleh, who was murdered by Israeli military sniper while reporting on an army raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank on 11 May 2022.

Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh
Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh . . . killed by an Israeli sniper in 2022 with impunity. Image:

A year later there was still no justice, and the Paris-based media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders issued a protest, saying:

“The systematic Israeli impunity is outrageous and cannot continue.”

Well it did, right until the war on Gaza began five months later.

But I am citing this here and now because Shireen’s sacrifice has been a personal influence on me, and inspired me to take a closer look into Israel’s history of impunity over the killing of journalists — and just about every other crime. (It has violated 62 United Nations resolutions without consequences).

I have this photo of her on display in my office, thanks to the Palestinian Youth Aotearoa, and she constantly reminds me of the cruelty and lies of the Israeli regime.

Now moving to the present war, last December, Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh was wounded in an Israeli strike in which his colleague and Al Jazeera Arabic’s cameraman Samer Abudaqa was killed, while they were reporting in southern Gaza.

Dahdouh’s wife Amna, son Mahmoud, daughter Sham and grandson Adam were previously killed in an attack in October after an Israeli air raid hit the home they were sheltering in at the Nuseirat refugee camp.

Then the veteran journalist’s eldest son, Hamza Dahdouh, also an Al Jazeera journalist, was killed in January by an Israeli missile attack in Khan Younis, southern Gaza.

News media reports said he was in a vehicle near al-Mawasi, an Israel-designated safe area, with journalist Mustafa Thuraya, who was also killed in the attack.

According to reports from Al Jazeera correspondents, their vehicle was targeted as they were trying to interview civilians displaced by previous bombings.

In February, Mohamed Yaghi, a freelance photojournalist who worked with multiple media outlets, including Al Jazeera, was also killed in an Israeli air strike in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza.

The names of the killed journalists in the Gaza war
The names of the killed journalists in the Gaza war as at 5 April 2024. Image: AJ/CC

Al Jazeera’s Gaza offices in a multistoreyed building were bombed two years ago, just as many Palestinian media offices have been systematically destroyed by the Israelis in the current war.

Last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu branded Al Jazeera as a “terrorist channel”. Why? Because it broadcasts the truth about Israel’s genocidal war and Netanyahu threatened to ban the channel from Israel under a new law to control foreign media.

A month after that threat, Netanyahu has today followed up after his cabinet voted unanimously to order Al Jazeera to close down operations in Israel, which will curb the channel’s reporting on the daily Israeli harassment and raids on the Palestinians of the Occupied West Bank.

And this is the country that proclaims itself to be the “only democracy” in the Middle East.

Many of the surviving Gaza journalists are very young with limited professional experience.
They have had to learn fast, a baptism by fire.

I would like to round off with a quote from one of these young journalists, Hind Khoudary, a 28-year-old reporter for Al Jazeera since day one of the war, who used to sign on her social media reports for the day “I’m still alive”:

“I am a daughter, a sister to eight brothers, and a wife.

“Choosing to stay here is a choice to witness and report on the unbearable reality my city endures. Forced from my home, alongside countless Palestinians, we strive for the basics – clean food and water – without transportation or electricity.

“I am not a superhero; I am shattered from the inside. The loss of relatives, friends, and colleagues weighs heavy on my soul. Israeli forces ravaged my city, reducing homes to rubble. [Thousands of] civilians still lie beneath the remnants.

“My heart is aching, and my spirit is fragile. Since October 7, journalists have been targets; Israel seeks to stifle our voices.

“I miss my family.

“But surrender is not an option. I will continue to report, to breathe life into the stories of my people until my last breath. Please, do not let the world forget Palestine. We are weary, and your voice is our strength.

“Remember our voices, remember our faces.”

Pacific Media Watch convenor Dr David Robie delivering a speech on media freedom
Pacific Media Watch convenor Dr David Robie delivering a speech on media freedom at the Palestinian rally at Auckland today. Image: Del Abcede/Pacific Media Watch

This article is adapted from a media freedom speech by Pacific Media Watch convenor Dr David Robie at the Palestine rally today calling for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza war.

NZ slumps to 19th as RSF says press freedom threatened by global decline

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Pacific Media Watch

New Zealand has slumped to an unprecedented 19th place in the annual Reporters Without Borders 2024 World Press Freedom Index survey released today on World Press Freedom Day — May 3.

This was a drop of six places from 13th last year when it slipped out of its usual place in the top 10.

However, New Zealand is still the Asia-Pacific region’s leader in a part of the world that is ranked as the second “most difficult” with half of the world’s 10 “most dangerous” countries included — Myanmar (171st), North Korea (172nd), China (173rd), Vietnam (175th) and Afghanistan (178th).

Freelance Gaza journalist Moussa Al Zaanoun
Freelance Gaza journalist Moussa Al Zaanoun talks to RSF about the problems of reporting from the besieged enclave under fire . . . “There was no transportation, no microphone, no camera, not even electricity to charge your phone to film. We were always looking for places with electricity or internet to continue our work.” Image: RSF screenshot APR

New Zealand is 20 places above Australia, which fell 12 places and is ranked 39th.

However, NZ is closely followed in the Index by one of the world’s newer nations, Timor-Leste (20th) — among the top 10 last year — and Samoa (22nd).

Fiji was 44th, one place above Tonga, and Papua New Guinea had dropped 32 places to 91st. Other Pacific countries were not listed in the survey which is based on media freedom performance through 2023.

Scandinavian countries again fill four of the world’s top countries for press freedom.


RSF’s World Press Freedom Index 2024 – press freedom threatened. Video: RSF

No Asia-Pacific nation in top 15
No country in the Asia-Pacific region is among the Index’s top 15 this year. In 2023, two journalists were murdered in the Philippines (134th), which continues to be one of the region’s most dangerous countries for media professionals.

The United States dropped 10 places from 45th to 55th.

In the survey’s overview, the RSF researchers said press freedom around the world was being “threatened by the very people who should be its guarantors — political authorities”.

This finding was based on the fact that, of the five indicators used to compile the ranking, it is the ‘political indicator’ that has fallen the most , registering a global average fall of 7.6 points.


Covering the war from Gaza.    Video: RSF

“As more than half the world’s population goes to the polls in 2024, RSF is warning of a
worrying trend revealed by the Index — a decline in the political indicator, one of five indicators detailed,” said editorial director Anne Bocandé.

“States and other political forces are playing a decreasing role in protecting press freedom. This disempowerment sometimes goes hand in hand with more hostile actions that undermine the role of journalists, or even instrumentalise the media through campaigns of harassment or disinformation.

“Journalism worthy of that name is, on the contrary, a necessary condition for any democratic system and the exercise of political freedoms.”

Record violations in Gaza
At the international level, says the Index report, this year is notable for a “clear lack of political will on the part of the international community” to enforce the principles of protection of journalists, especially UN Security Council Resolution 2222 in 2015.

“The war in Gaza has been marked by a record number of violations against journalists and media since October 2023. More than 100 Palestinian reporters have been killed by the Israeli Defence Forces, including at least 22 in the course of their work.”

UNESCO yesterday awarded its Guillermo Cano world press freedom prize to all Palestinian journalists covering the war in Gaza.

“In these times of darkness and hopelessness, we wish to share a strong message of solidarity and recognition to those Palestinian journalists who are covering this crisis in such dramatic circumstances,” said Mauricio Weibel, chair of the international jury of media professionals.

“As humanity, we have a huge debt to their courage and commitment to freedom of expression.”

Occupied and under constant Israeli bombardment, Palestine is ranked 157th out of 180
countries and territories surveyed in the overall Index, but it is ranked among the last 10 with regard to security for journalists.

Israel is also ranked low at 101st.

RSF World Press Freedom Index
The RSF World Press Freedom Index . . . the 2024 map. Link here to the interactive map. Image: RSF

Criticism of NZ
Although the Index overview gives no detailed explanation on this year’s decline in New Zealand’s Index ranking, it nevertheless gives an overview of the media freedom status and then concludes that the country had “retained its role as a press freedom model”.

While the NZ status had declined, many other comparable nations had deteriorated further.

Last December RSF condemned Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters in the newly elected rightwing coalition government for his “repeated verbal attacks on the media” and called on Prime Minister Christopher Luxon to reaffirm his government’s support for press freedom.

“Just after taking office . . . Peters declared in an interview that he was ‘at war’ with the media. A statement that he accompanied on several occasions with accusations of corruption among media professionals,” said RSF in its public statement.

“He also portrayed a journalism support fund set up by the previous [Labour] administration as a ’55 million dollar bribe’. The politician also questioned the independence of the public broadcasters Television New Zealand (TVNZ) and Radio New Zealand (RNZ).

“These verbal attacks would be a cause of concern for the sector if used to support a policy of restricting the right to information.”

Cédric Alviani, RSF’s Asia-Pacific bureau director, also noted at the time: “By making irresponsible comments about journalists in a context of growing mistrust of the New Zealand public towards the media, Deputy Prime Minister Peters is sending out a worrying signal about the newly-appointed government’s attitude towards the press.

“We call on Prime Minister Christopher Luxon to reaffirm his government’s support for press freedom and to ensure that all members of his cabinet follow the same line.”

Pacific Media Watch compiled this summary from the RSF World Press Freedom Index.

OPM’s Bomanak accuses UN of failing to uphold decolonisation role over West Papua

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An unknown Papuan artist's depiction of the graphic torture videos
An unknown Papuan artist's depiction of the graphic torture videos . . . These videos are just the latest chapter in a long history of atrocities inflicted upon Papuans in the name of suppressing their cries for freedom. Image: APR

Asia Pacific Report

A West Papuan resistance leader has condemned the United Nations role in allowing Indonesia to “integrate” the Melanesian Pacific region in what is claimed to be an “egregious act of inhumanity” on 1 May 1963.

In an open letter to UN Secretary-General António Guterres, Organisasi Papua Merdeka-OPM (Free Papua Organisation) leader Jeffrey P Bomanak has also claimed that this was the “beginning of genocide” that could only have happened through the failure of the global body to “legally uphold its decolonisation responsibilities in accordance with the UN Charter”.

Bomanak says in the letter dated yesterday that the UN failed to confront the “relentless barbarity of the Indonesian invasion force and expose the lie of the fraudulent 1969 gun-barrel ‘Act of No Choice’”.

The open letter follows one released on the eve of Anzac Day last month which strongly criticised the role of Australia and the United States, accusing both countries of “betrayal” in Papuan aspirations for independence.

According to RNZ News today, an Australian statement in response to the earlier OPM letter said the federal government “unreservedly recognises Indonesia’s territorial integrity and sovereignty over the Papua provinces”.

The White House has not responded.

The OPM says it has compiled a “prima facie pictorial ‘integration’ history” of Indonesia’s actions in integrating the Pacific region into an Asian nation. It plans to present this evidence of “six decades of crimes against humanity” to Secretary-General Guterres and new Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto.

The open letter states:

May 1, 2024

Dear Secretary-General Guterres,

I am addressing you in an open letter which I will be releasing to media and governments because I have previously brought to your attention the history of the illegal annexation of West Papua on May 1st, 1963, and the role of your office in the fraudulent UN referendum in 1969, called an Act of Free Choice and I have never received a reply.

Part of the opening page of the five-page OPM open letter to the United Nations
Part of the opening page of the five-page OPM open letter to the United Nations. Image” Screenshot APR

After six decades of OPM letters and Papuan appeals to the UN Secretariat, I am providing the transparency and accountability of an “open letter”, so that historians of the future can investigate the moral and ethical credibility of the UN Secretariat.

May 1st is a day of mourning for Papuans. A day of grief over the illegal annexation of our ancestral Melanesian homeland by a violent occupation force from Southeast Asia.

Indonesia’s annexation of Western New Guinea (Irian Jaya/West Papua) on May 1, 1963, is commemorated in Indonesia’s Parliament as a day of integration. The photos on these pages on these pages show a different story. The reality these photos portray is, in fact, one of the longest ongoing acts of genocide since the end of the Second World War.

An invasion and an illegal annexation not unlike Nazi Germany’s annexation in 1938 of
its neighbouring country, Austria. The difference for Papuans is that the UN and the USA were co-conspirators in preventing our right to determine a future that was our right to have under the UN decolonisation process: independence and nation-state sovereignty.

A very chilling contradiction — the Allies we fought alongside, nursed back to life, and died with during WWII had joined forces with a mass-murderer not unlike Hitler — the Indonesian president Suharto (see Photo collage #2: Axis of Evil).

Some scholars have called the May 1, 1963 annexation “Indonesia’s Anschluss”. Suharto and the conspirators goal of colonial invasion and conquest had been achieved through
the illegal annexation of my people’s ancestral homeland, my homeland.

General and president-in-waiting Suharto signed a contract in 1967 with American mining giant Freeport, another company associated with David Rockefeller, two years before we were to determine our future through the aforementioned gun-barrel UN referendum project-managed by a brutal occupation force. Our future had already been determined by Suharto, David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, and Suharto’s friend, UN secretary-General U Thant. U Thant had succeeded Dag Hammarskjöld who had been assassinated for his controversial view that human rights and freedom were absolutely universal and should not be subjected to the criminal whims of either tyrants like Suharto or a resource industry with views on human rights and freedom that resembled Suharto’s.

I do not need to give you a blow-by-blow history for your edification — you already know the entire history and the victim tally — 350,000 adults and 150,000 children and babies. And rising. You are, after all, a man of some principle — Portugal’s former prime minister of Portugal from 1995 to 2002, as well as a member of the Portuguese Socialist Party. And presiding as Portuguese prime minster during the final years of Fretilin’s war of liberation in East Timor, a former Portuguese colony invaded by Indonesia in 1975 with anywhere up to 250,000 victims of genocide. Please explain to me the difference between the Indonesia’s
invasion and “integration” of East Timor and Indonesia’s invasion and “integration” of my homeland, Western New Guinea (West Papua).

Apart from the oil in the Timor Gap and the gold and copper all over my homeland — the wealth of someone else’s resources promoting the “integration” policies pictured over these pages.

As a member of a socialist party, you might be attending May Day ceremonies today. I will be counselling victims and the families of loved ones who have been “integrated” today. Yes, the freedom-loving Papuans are holding rallies to protest the annexation of our homeland . . .  to protest the failure — your failure — to apply justice and to end this nightmare.

The cost of the UN-approved annexation to Papuans in pain and suffering: massacres, torture, systemic rape by TNI and Polri, mutilation and dismemberment as a signature of your barbarity. Relentless barbarity causing six decades of physical and cultural genocide, ethnocide, infanticide, and wave after wave of ethnic cleansing.

The cost to Papuans in the theft and plunder of our natural resources: genocide by starvation and famine.

The cost to Papuans from the foreign resource industry plundering our natural resources: the devastation of pristine environments, whole ecosystems poisoned by the resource industry’s chemical toxicity, called tailings, released into rivers thereby destroying whole riverine catchments along with food sources from fishing and farming — catchment rivers and nearby farming lands contaminated by Freeport, and other’s. A failure to apply any international standards for risk management to prevent the associated birth defects
in villages now living in contaminated catchments.

That we would choose to become part of any nation so brutal defies credibility. That the UN approved integration should have been impossible based on the evidence of the ever-increasing numbers of defence and security forces landing in West Papua and undertaking military campaigns that include ever-increasing victims and internally displaced Papuans, the bombing of central highland villages a current example? Such courage! Why are foreign
media not allowed into my people’s homeland?

Secretary-General Guterres, future historians will judge the efficacy of the United Nations. The integrity. West Papua will feature as a part the UN Secretariat’s legacy. To this endeavour, as the leader of Organisasi Papua Merdeka, I ask, and demand that you comply with your obligations under article 85 part 2 and sundry articles of your Charter of United Nations which requires that you inform the Trusteeship Council about your General Assembly resolution 1752, with which you are subjugating our people and homelands of West New Guinea which we call West Papua.

The agreement which your resolution 1752 is authorising, begins with the words “The Republic of Indonesia and the Kingdom of the Netherlands, having in mind the interests and welfare of the people of the territory of West New Guinea (West Irian)”

Your agreement is clearly a trusteeship agreement written according to your rules of Chapter XII of your Charter of the United Nations.

The West Papuan people have always opposed your use of United Nations military to make our people’s human rights subject to the whim of your two administrators, UNTEA and from 1st May 1963 the Republic of Indonesia that is your current administrator.

We refer to your organisation’s last official record about West Papua which still suffers your ongoing unjust administration managed by UNTEA and Indonesia:

Because you also used article 81 and Chapter XII of your Charter to seize control of our homelands when you created your General Assembly resolution 1752, the Netherlands was excused by article 73(e), “to transmit regularly to the Secretary-General for information purposes, subject to such limitation as security and constitutional considerations may require, statistical and other information of a technical nature relating to economic, social, and educational conditions in the territories for which they are respectively responsible other than those territories to which Chapters XII and XIII apply”, from transmitting further reports about our people and the extrajudicial killings that your new administrators began using to silence our demands for our liberty and independence.

We therefore demand your Trusteeship Council begin its unfinished duty of preparing your United Nations reports as articles 85 part 2, 87 and 88 of your Charter requires.

West Papua is entitled to independence, and article 76 requires you assist. It is illegal for Indonesia to invade us and to impede our independence, and to subsequently subject us to six decades of every classification for crimes against humanity listed by the International Criminal Court.

We know this trusteeship agreement was first proposed by the American lawyer John Henderson in 1959, and was discussed with Indonesian officials in 1961 six months before the death of your Dag Hammarskjöld. We think it is shameful that you then elected Indonesia’s friend U Thant as Secretary-General, and we demand that you permit the Secretariat to perform its proper duty of revealing your current annexation of West Papua (Resolution 1752) to your Trusteeship Council.

I look forward to your reply.

Yours sincerely,

Jeffrey P Bomanak
Chairman-Commander OPM
Markas Victoria, May 1, 2024

Caitlin Johnstone: CNN compares campus protesters to Nazis in stunning propaganda segment

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CNN’s Dana Bash launched into a fire-and-brimstone sermon
CNN’s Dana Bash launched into a fire-and-brimstone sermon on 1 May 2024 comparing anti-genocide university protesters in the US to the brownshirts of Nazi Germany. Image: caitlinjohnstone.com.au

COMMENTARY: By Caitlin Johnstone

In one of the most appalling propaganda segments I have ever seen in my life, CNN’s Dana Bash launched into a fire-and-brimstone sermon on Wednesday comparing anti-genocide university protesters to the brownshirts of Nazi Germany — doing so in defense of a fascistic police crackdown against those very same protesters.

After playing a clip of Zionist activist Eli Tsives theatrically claiming campus protesters at UCLA were blocking him from his classroom, Bash solemnly said, “Again, what you just saw is 2024 in Los Angeles. Hearkening back to the 1930s in Europe, and I do not say that lightly. The fear among Jews in this country is palpable right now.”

According to journalist Jeremy Lindenfeld — who happens to be Jewish — Tsives wasn’t even being denied access to his classroom, but was only being denied access to the protesters’ encampment which he’d conveniently decided he wanted to walk through in order to get there. Dana Bash makes no mention of this, framing this instead as a terrifying attack on Jews which could soon see them being loaded onto trains headed for extermination camps.

Bash played a clip of New York City Mayor Eric Adams saying “There is a movement to radicalize young people, and I’m not going to wait until it’s done,” as though preventing the spread of radical political opinions is something a mayor is elected to do in the United States.

“They’re calling for a ceasefire,” says Bash. “Well, there was a ceasefire on October 6, the day before Hamas terrorists brutally murdered more than a thousand people inside Israel and took hundreds more as hostages.”

This is a brazen propagandistic lie. Israeli forces had been routinely murdering Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank in the weeks and months preceding the October 7 attack. On October 6 2023, The New Arab published an article titled “2023 is ‘deadliest year’ for Palestinian children say human rights groups,” citing the Defence of Children International — Palestine along with other sources.

“This hour, I’ll speak to an American Israeli family whose son is still held captive by Hamas since that horrifying day, that brought us to this moment,” said Bash, adding, “You don’t hear the pro-Palestinian protesters talking about that. We will.”

Ah yes, such brave, up-punching journalistic integrity for you to talk about the Israeli hostages, Dana.

Not like we haven’t been hearing about them every single day from the imperial media for the last seven months while orders of magnitude more Palestinians are butchered by US-supplied war machinery.

“At UCLA, pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups were attacking each other, hurling all kinds of objects, a wood pallet, fireworks, parking cones, even a scooter,” Bash says.

Another lie. The footage going around makes it abundantly clear the violence is being consistently instigated by Zionist counter-protesters, with videos of pro-Israel thugs launching fireworks and hurling bottles of chemicals into the encampment, ganging up on a protester on the ground and beating him with sticks, and tearing down parts of the encampment while screaming “Second Nakba!”

Later on in the same segment of Bash’s own show, CNN’s Stephanie Elam contradicts Bash’s both-sides lie by commenting on some of this footage, saying, “And you can see that in the video, it looked like people from this side were breaking down the encampment from the pro-Palestinian side last night, throwing objects in there.

“As well as it looks like some sort of maybe pepper spray or something coming from the other side over here.”

It should here be noted that Dana Bash gets her surname from her first husband Jeremy Bash, who went on to serve as the chief-of-staff for both the CIA and the Pentagon. The woman is pure swamp.

It should also be noted that CNN’s own staff recently leaked to The Guardian that they have been pressured to report on the Gaza onslaught with an extreme pro-Israel bias, attributing the pressure to the network’s new CEO Mark Thompson.

I for one think it’s great that the imperial media are becoming so transparently obvious about their propagandistic nature, and I hope they keep exposing mainstream Westerners to the fact that the primary purpose of these outlets is to promote the information interests of the US and its allies.

Propaganda only works if you don’t know it’s happening to you, so hopefully they keep going mask-off like this for everyone to see.

Caitlin Johnstone is an independent Australian journalist and poet. Her articles include The UN Torture Report On Assange Is An Indictment Of Our Entire Society. She publishes a website and Caitlin’s Newsletter. This article was first published here and is republished under a Creative Commons licence.

Gaza Freedom Flotilla: Activists blocked from sailing to Gaza but vow to keep trying to break siege

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DEMOCRACY NOW! With Amy Goodman

AMY GOODMAN: As the official death toll in Gaza nears 35,000, ceasefire talks are continuing this week with Hamas officials in Cairo, Egypt, and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in now in Israel. Meanwhile, Israel’s military’s chief-of-staff has approved the continuation of war, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refused to call off the expected ground invasion of Rafah.

This comes as the International Criminal Court (ICC) could reportedly issue arrest warrants for senior Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Netanyahu, over the war on Gaza and for Israel’s blocking of humanitarian aid. Israel has also targeted humanitarian workers in deadly attacks.

Hundreds of aid workers have been killed by Israel since October 7, including seven members of the international organisation World Central Kitchen, which is resuming food distribution in Gaza today, nearly four weeks after its convoy came under attack.

Amidst the mounting humanitarian disaster in Gaza, hundreds of activists aboard the Freedom Flotilla were blocked in Turkey on Saturday as they attempted to set sail for the besieged Palestinian territory. Organisers say Guinea-Bissau withdrew its flagged ships under pressure from Israel, but vowed to overcome this latest challenge.

A group of UN experts called for safe passage of the vessels, writing:

“The Flotilla is a material manifestation of international support for the ongoing Palestinian struggle for freedom and self-determination, and the internationally recognised right to receive humanitarian aid without interference or hindrance.

“Support for the Palestinian people’s human rights is acute under the current conditions of genocide, domicide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.”

For more, we’re joined in Istanbul by Huwaida Arraf, Palestinian American human rights attorney, organizer with the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. She was also part of the 2010 Gaza Freedom Flotilla, which Israel attacked, killing 10 activists on the Mavi Marmara.

Welcome to Democracy Now! again, Huwaida. If you can talk about what this Freedom Flotilla is and the obstacles it has faced leaving Turkey?

HUWAIDA ARRAF: Thank you. It’s good to be with you, Amy.

The Freedom Flotilla is a continuation of the effort of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition to confront and challenge and, indeed, break Israel’s unlawful siege on Gaza. It has been in place since 2007.

It is a form of collective punishment, which is not only unlawful, it is a war crime, and yet our governments have not been doing anything about it. And, in fact, the very fact that for decades our governments have been allowing Israel impunity is what has brought us to this point where Israel for seven months can commit live-streamed genocide and the world doesn’t — the “world” meaning our governments; of course — people are mobilising, but we’re not stopping it, because Israel is so used to this impunity.

We have come together, the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, and announced that we are going to sail an emergency flotilla in light of the dire situation in Gaza, which includes mass starvation and now famine that has set in — again, war crimes, but our governments aren’t doing anything about it.

What do they do? Pay lip service to Palestinian human rights, airdrop food or talk about a maritime corridor which leaves Israel in control of what, if any, aid at all gets to a people trying to survive a genocide.

It’s absolutely obnoxious. And one of the things that the UN special rapporteurs, that you mentioned, in their statement said, that our Freedom Flotilla is legitimately challenging Israel’s control over the entry of aid, which no government is doing. And that’s what needs to be done.

How can we be in the state where a country that has been found to be plausibly committing a genocide by the World Court is allowed to control what, if any, aid gets to a people trying to survive a genocide? It is unconscionable.

And so we have come together. We are now, and have been, in Istanbul, Turkey, Türkiye. We have ships ready to go. We have one cargo ship loaded with over 5000 tonnes of humanitarian aid, largely food, clean water, medicines, baby formula, nutrition for children, diapers. That was all ready to go.

Hundreds of activists from 40 countries were here, knowing that Israel has killed activists before in such a mission, and yet still willing to risk it to do what no government has done. And yet, instead of our governments supporting our efforts, they have conspired to actually block us.

And so, what happened on Friday is we received a surprise communiqué from the Guinea-Bissau International Ship Registry saying that they have withdrawn their flag from two of our ships — the cargo ship and the main passenger vessel. Now, we cannot sail without a flag.

It was clear to us that the withdrawal of this flag was under pressure, likely from the United States and Israel, because the way that they communicated to us was highly unusual, if not unprecedented.

In their communication to us, they specifically referenced our trip to Gaza, and they had demanded from us a number of things, which were impossible to meet in the two-hour timeframe that they gave us, which some of those things included a complete manifesto of our cargo, all of the ports we were going to sail in, a letter from the receiving port where we were going to arrive saying that our arrival and carry of humanitarian aid is welcome. They gave us a two-hour window.

This is never done. It’s like when you go to register your car at the DMV, they don’t ask you everywhere you’re going and who is going to be in your car. I don’t know of a situation where this has been done before. And yet, because we did not meet these and were not able to submit all of this information within a two-hour window, they informed us that our flag has been withdrawn. This is not the end.

AMY GOODMAN: What made you believe that Israel put . . .

HUWAIDA ARRAF: We are pursuing this legally and politically . . .

AMY GOODMAN: What made you believe that Israel had put pressure on Guinea-Bissau to remove its flags?

HUWAIDA ARRAF: Again, because the demands that they made of us specifically referencing our planned trip to confront Israel’s siege and our intent to arrive in Gaza, and giving us a two-hour window to submit all of this documentation about our journey, and knowing that Israel has done this before. It has tried all kinds of methods in order to sabotage our missions. It has sabotaged our boats before. It has attempted to get various — and succeeded, in getting various countries to block us from leaving port.

And it was being reported that the United States specifically was putting pressure on Türkiye, the government here, to block us from leaving. But we were sure we were going to be able to leave from Türkiye, because the support here is so great.

So, Israel has tried all of these efforts. It actually boasts about these efforts. But if Israel thinks that this is the end of our effort to break the unlawful siege of Gaza, they are sadly mistaken.

A lot of the activists who were here are fired up. They are determined. They are going back home at this point, until we can reflag our ships, which will hopefully be in the coming weeks, and coming back with even more people and more determination.

So this is a minor setback, but it’s certainly not the end. And we will not . . .

AMY GOODMAN: Huwaida Arraf . . .

HUWAIDA ARRAF: We will not stop in our efforts . . .

AMY GOODMAN: Huwaida . . .

HUWAIDA ARRAF: . . . to break the siege  . . .

AMY GOODMAN: If you can tell us . . .

HUWAIDA ARRAF: . . .  and get to the people of Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: . . .  who the activists are, the doctors, the nurses, the lawyers, who are on board this ship?

HUWAIDA ARRAF: I would love to. They are amazing people from all over the world, who have left their families, who have left their jobs, who have left the comforts of their own home to undertake a mission where we could not guarantee their safety. So, we had doctors coming from as far as New Zealand.

We’ve had activists from South Africa. We had truck drivers from Ireland. We have mental health and social workers from the United States, students, professors, retired US military, retired US active combat, former FBI agents. We had parliamentarians, the former mayor of Barcelona, European parliamentarians, Algerian and Jordanian parliamentarians . . . really, a cross-section of humanity that is sick and tired of our governments allowing the ongoing persecution, and now genocide of the Palestinian people.

And we are determined to stop this by direct action, which is . . . of course, goes along with all of the other efforts that have been taking place all around the world. And we also want to send our respect, admiration and solidarity with the student movement across the United States and now spreading across the world.

This is what’s needed. We are going to bring about the change our governments have sadly failed. They only pay lip service to democracy, freedom and human rights.

AMY GOODMAN: Among the high-profile activists . . .

HUWAIDA ARRAF: The people are going to force this to happen.

AMY GOODMAN: . . .  that are part of the Freedom Flotilla is Nkosi “Mandla” Mandela, South African member of Parliament and the grandson of Nelson Mandela. He spoke to Al Jazeera last week.

NKOSI ZWELIVELILE ”MANDLA” MANDELA: I am a living example of the efforts of the International Solidarity Movement. I am free. South Africa is free. We were able to defeat apartheid South Africa because of the support that we had from the international community. And therefore we want to thank them for taking this stand and for ensuring that they will not be complicit, they will no longer be silent, they will be the voice for the Palestinians.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, in the summer of 2010, the Israeli military attacked a Gaza Freedom Flotilla, killing 10 people, including an American citizen. It was the Mavi Marmara that they attacked, the ship. Then Vice-President Joe Biden defended the raid in an interview on PBS shortly afterward.

VICE-PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: You can argue whether Israel should have dropped people onto that ship or not and the rest, but the truth of the matter is, Israel has a right to know. They’re at war with Hamas, has a right to know whether or not arms are being smuggled in.

And up to now, Charlie, what’s happened? They’ve said, “Here we go. You’re in the Mediterranean. This ship, if you divert — divert slightly north, you can unload it, and we’ll get the stuff into Gaza.”

So, what’s the big deal here? What’s the big deal of insisting it go straight to Gaza?

AMY GOODMAN: [Vice] President Joe Biden in 2010. Huwaida Arraf, this shows the stakes. Ten people were killed. Yet you’re willing to go on this ship to try to challenge the Gaza blockade. As we wrap up, you have 30 seconds. Talk about that risk.

HUWAIDA ARRAF: Yeah. First of all, I need to say that Joe Biden is absolutely mistaken. Israel has no right — had no right to intercept and attack our ships, because it has no right to place the Palestinian people under collective punishment. Again, it is a war crime, and a UN panel, an independent investigation, found the very same thing.

Amy, it’s a sad thing that people — it has to be a life-or-death situation to deliver food to people who are being deliberately starved. But that is what we have here, because our governments have continued to allow Israel to do this. I left my two kids at home, and I promised them that I would come back.

I know they need their mother. And I hoped to be able to fulfill my promise to come back, but I didn’t know. I don’t know. But what I do know is that I can’t leave to them a world where this can happen, where people can be slaughtered for months on end, oppressed for years, and the world does nothing.

So, my action here, and a lot of the activists that have joined us, and the many, many more who want to join us now, do it with the same conviction that we have to act to change the world that we went to live in and that we want to pass on to generations to come, and we are willing to risk our lives to do that.

AMY GOODMAN: Huwaida Arraf, Palestinian-American human rights attorney, one of the organisers of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, speaking to us from Istanbul, Turkey.

The original content of this programme is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence and was originally published here on 29 April 2024

Pacific alliance condemns France over bid to ‘derail’ Kanaky decolonisation

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French policies over Kanaky under fire
French policies over Kanaky under fire . . . Pacific alliance says Paris has shown no interest in respecting the Noumea Accords or in granting the Kanak people their "right to be free". Image: @KanakySuport

Asia Pacific Report

A Pacific civil society alliance has condemned French neocolonial policies in Kanaky New Caledonia, saying Paris is set on “maintaining the status quo” and denying the indigenous Kanak people their inalienable right to self-determination.

The Pacific Regional Non-Governmental Organisations (PRNGOs) alliance, representing some 15 groups, said in a statement that it reaffirmed its solidarity with the Kanaks in a bid to to expose ongoing efforts by the French government to “derail a decolonisation process painstakingly pursued in this Pacific Island territory for the last 30 years”.

It said that France — especially under the Macron government — as the colonial power administering this UN-sanctioned process of decolonisation had repeatedly shown that it
could not remain a “neutral party” to the Noumea Accords.

French policies over Kanaky under fire
French policies over Kanaky under fire . . . Pacific alliance says Paris has shown no interest in respecting the Noumea Accords or in granting the Kanak people their “right to be free”. Image: @KanakySuport

The 1998 pact was designed specifically to hand sovereignty back to the people of Kanaky New Caledonia and end French colonial rule, said PRNGOs.

“In recent months, the Macron government [has] forced through proposed constitutional
amendments aimed at changing voting eligibility rules for local elections in the French
territory,” said the statement.

“These eligibility provisions have been preserved and protected under the [Noumea] Accords as a safeguard for indigenous peoples against demographic changes that could make them a minority in their own land and block the path to freedom.”

The electoral amendments were passed by the French Senate in early April and
will be voted on in Parliament this month.

Elections deferred
“The Macron government has, in a parallel move, also managed to defer local elections,
initially scheduled for mid-May, to mid-December at the latest, to allow voting under new
provisions that would favour pro-French parties,” the statement said.

In 2021, President Macron unilaterally called for the third independence referendum to be
held in December that year amid the covid-19 pandemic that “heavily affected the
ability of indigenous communities to organise and participate”.

Although it was a “no” vote, only 43.87 percent of the 184,364 registered voters exercised their right to vote.

“Express reservations and requests by Kanak leaders and representatives for a later date were ignored, casting serious doubt on genuine representation and participation,” said PRNGOs.

A Pacific Islands Forum Mission sent to observe proceedings concluded in its report that “the self-determination referendum that took place 12 December 2021 did so with the non-participation of the overwhelming majority of the indigenous people of New Caledonia.

“The result of the referendum is an inaccurate representation of the will of registered voters . . . ”

The alliance said that in all of these actions, the French government had shown no interest at all in respecting the Noumea Accords or in granting the Kanak people their most fundamental rights — “particularly the right to be free”.

‘Democracy’ link claimed
Macron’s allies and pro-French advocates have claimed that these initiatives by the
French government are more consistent with democratic principles and the rule of law.

The aspirations of the Kanak people for self-determination had been
“mischaracterised as being ethno-nationalistic, akin to the ‘far-right’, and racist,” PRNGOs said.

The alliance said that if the vote on May 13 succeeded in removing the electoral roll restrictions succeed, it would be seen as a direct attack on the principle of the right to self-determination enshrined in the UN Charter and its Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People.

“That the evil of colonialism can continue unchecked in this manner, and in this 21st century, is not only an insult to the Pacific region but to the international system,” the statement said.

“The Pacific is not distracted by French false narratives. The Kanak, as people, are the rightful inhabitants of what is present day New Caledonia still under enduring French colonial rule.”

The alliance called on President Macron to withdraw the constitutional changes on electoral roll provisions protecting the rights of the indigenous people of Kanaky, and it appealed to France to send a neutral high-level mission to resume dialogue between pro-independence parties and local anti-independence groups over a new political agreement.

It also called for another independence referendum that “genuinely reflects their will”.

Republished from Asia Pacific Report.