Kia Ora Gaza and the Freedom Flotilla Coalition . . . “Getting humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza is urgent, but it isn't sufficient. We must end Israel’s unlawful, deadly blockade as well as Israel’s overall control of Gaza.”
Three New Zealand doctors — two Palestinian and one Iraq-born — are planning to join the charity Kia Ora Gaza in its mission this month to provide humanitarian aid to the besieged enclave, reports 1News.
But reporter Simon Mercep says “they’re not completely sure whether they’ll reach the Gaza coast and step on dry land”.
Mercep asked Gaza-born Dr Wasfi Shahin how hopeful was he?
“He paused before smiling as he told 1News tonight: ‘Fifty percent. Not more’.
But Mercep said he remained determined.
Dr Shain said: “I hope I can reach there to see what I left 50 years ago.”
1News asked Faiez Idais, a Jordan-trained doctor, how dangerous he expected the mission to be.
‘We’ll be in danger’
“If they [the people of Gaza] are in danger, we’ll be in danger. It’s not a problem for us,” he said.
“They don’t have even water to drink. They don’t have food to eat.”
“I am a physician,” he added. “I can’t do anything from here.”
Dr Idais was born in Jerusalem and has never been to the Gaza Strip.
The third doctor, Iraqi-born Dr Adnan Al-Kenani, took a pragmatic approach, reports Mercep.
The three doctors off to Gaza . . . Dr Faiez Idais (from left), Dr Adnan Al-Kenani and Gaza-born Dr Wasfi Shahin (seated) . . . “If we get an opportunity, if we land there, we can do service.” Image: 1News screenshot APR
“If we get an opportunity, if we land there, we can do service on land,” he said. “It depends on the circumstances there. But we are purely a health organisation.”
The doctors will fly out of Auckland next week to join the Freedom Flotilla Coalition international humanitarian effort, which is assembling ships at the port of Istanbul in Turkiye.
A container vessel and one ship for volunteers is already there, and a third is expected to join soon.
Seven aid workers killed
Since the doctors were interviewed for the report last weekend, seven international charity workers were killed in a drone attack by Israeli forces in Gaza — six foreigners and a Palestinian.
This took the death toll of aid workers to at least 203 aid workers in Israel’s deadly six-month war on Gaza, according to the Aid Worker Security Database.
The killing has caused outrage around the world and the founder of the charity World Central Kitchen that employed the aid workers, Spanish American celebrity chef Jose Andres, said they were “targeted systematically”.
This took the death toll of aid workers to 195 in Israel’s deadly six-month war on Gaza.
Dr Adnan Al-Kenani , a GP and surgeon from Auckland, and Kia Ora Gaza coordinator Roger Fowler speaking at a Palestine solidarity rally in Aotea Square last Sunday. Image: David Robie/APR
‘Catastrophic hunger’
Meanwhile, the Freedom Flotilla Coalition reports that it will be sailing in mid-April with several vessels carrying 5500 tons of humanitarian aid and hundreds of international human rights observers to challenge the ongoing illegal Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip.
“This is an emergency mission as the situation in Gaza is dire, with famine setting in in northern Gaza, and catastrophic hunger present throughout the Gaza Strip as the result of a deliberate policy by the Israeli government to starve the Palestinian people,” the coalition said in a statement.
“Time is critical as experts predict that hunger and disease could claim more lives than have been killed in the bombing.
“Getting humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza is urgent, but it is not sufficient. We must end Israel’s unlawful, deadly blockade as well as Israel’s overall control of Gaza.”
The statement added that “allowing Israel to control what and how much humanitarian aid can get to Palestinians in Gaza is like letting the fox manage the henhouse.”
The New York-based media watchdog Committee to Protect Journalists says the announcement by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of his intention to ban Al Jazeera follows a similar pattern of media interference, including the killing of media workers.
“We’ve seen this kind of language before from Netanyahu and Israeli officials in which they try to paint journalists as ‘terrorists’, as ‘criminals’. This is nothing new,” CPJ’s chief executive Jodie Ginsberg told Al Jazeera.
“It’s another example of the tightening of the free press and the stranglehold the Israeli government would like to exercise. It’s an incredibly worrying move by the government.”
War on Gaza – Israel’s planned Al Jazeera ban condemned Video: Al Jazeera
Mohamed Moawad, the managing editor of Al Jazeera, said: “What we are doing is trying to give voice to the voiceless and try and make sure that the suffering of civilians on the ground is heard by the entire world.”
Netanyahu wrote on X on Monday that “Al Jazeera harmed Israel’s security, actively participated in the October 7 massacre, and incited against Israeli soldiers.
“The terrorist channel Al Jazeera will no longer broadcast from Israel. I intend to act immediately in accordance with the new law to stop the channel’s activity.’
The Israeli parliament approved a law granting the government authority to ban foreign news networks, including Al Jazeera. PM Netanyahu pledged to “act immediately” to close the network’s local office ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/L2RXOzVi5t
The Qatar-based network rejected what it described as “slanderous accusations” and accused Netanyahu of “incitement”.
“Al Jazeera holds the Israeli Prime Minister responsible for the safety of its staff and network premises around the world, following his incitement and this false accusation in a disgraceful manner,” it said in a statement.
‘Slanderous accusations’
“Al Jazeera reiterates that such slanderous accusations will not deter us from continuing our bold and professional coverage, and reserves the right to pursue every legal step.”
Netanyahu has long sought to shut down broadcasts from Al Jazeera, alleging anti-Israel bias, the network reports on its website.
The law, which passed in a 71-10 vote in the Knesset, gives the prime minister and communications minister the authority to order the closure of foreign networks operating in Israel and confiscate their equipment if it is believed they pose “harm to the state’s security”.
White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said that an Israeli move to shut down Al Jazeera would be “concerning”.
“The United States supports the critically important work of journalists around the world and that includes those who are reporting in the conflict in Gaza,” Jean-Pierre told reporters.
“So we believe that work is important. The freedom of the press is important. And if those reports are true, it is concerning to us.”
The legislation’s passage comes nearly five months after Israel said it would block Lebanese outlet Al Mayadeen. It refrained from shutting Al Jazeera at the same time.
Move with closure
After the vote on Monday, Israel’s Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi said he intended to move forward with the closure. He said Al Jazeera had been acting as a “propaganda arm of Hamas” by “encouraging armed struggle against Israel”.
“It is impossible to tolerate a media outlet, with press credentials from the Government Press Office and offices in Israel, acting from within against us, certainly during wartime,” he said.
According to news agencies, his office said the order would seek to block the channel’s broadcasts in Israel and prevent it from operating in the country. The order would not apply to the occupied West Bank or Gaza.
Israel has often lashed out at Al Jazeera, which has offices in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.
In May 2022, Israeli forces shot dead senior Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh while she was covering an Israeli military raid in the West Bank town of Jenin.
A UN-commissioned report concluded that Israeli forces used “lethal force without justification” in the killing, violating her “right to life”.
During the war in Gaza, several of the channel’s journalists and their family members have been killed by Israeli bombardments.
On October 25, an air raid killed the family of Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh, including his wife, son, daughter, grandson and at least eight other relatives.
Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 32,782 people, mostly women and children, according to Palestinian authorities.
Pacific Media Watch, Asia Pacific Report and news agencies.
On my office wall hangs a framed portrait of Shireen Abu Akleh, the inspiring and celebrated American-Palestinian journalist known across the Middle East to watchers of Al Jazeera Arabic, who was assassinated by an Israeli military sniper with impunity.
State murder.
She was gunned down in full blue “press” kit almost two years ago while reporting on a raid in the occupied West Bank’s Jenin refugee camp, clearly targeted for her influence as a media witness to Israeli atrocities.
West Papua . . . “Indonesia is claiming to oppose genocide in Gaza while committing their own genocide in West Papua.” Image: AJ screenshot APR
As in the case of all 22 journalists who had been killed by Israeli military until that day, 11 May 2022, nobody was charged.
Now, six months into the catastrophic and genocidal Israeli War on Gaza, some 137 Palestinian journalists have been killed — murdered – by Israeli snipers, or targeted bombs demolishing their homes, and even their families.
Also in my office is pasted a red poster with a bird-of-paradise shaped pen in chains and the legend “Open access for journalists – Free press in West Papua.”
The poster was from a 2017 World Media Freedom Day conference in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, which I attended as a speaker and wrote about. Until this day, there is still no open door for international journalists
Harassed, beaten
Although only one killing of a Papuan journalist is recorded, there have been many instances when local news reporters have been harassed, beaten and threatened – beyond the reach of international media.
Ardiansyah Matra was savagely beaten and his body dumped in the Maro River, Merauke. A spokesperson for the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI), Victor Mambor, said at the time: “‘It’s highly likely that his murder is connected with the terror situation for journalists which was occurring at the time of Ardiansyah’s death.”
Dr David Robie . . . author and advocate. Image: Café Pacific
Frequently harassed himself, Mambor, founder and publisher of Jubi Media, was apparently the target of a suspected bomb attack, or warning, on 23 January 2023, when Jayapura police investigated a blast outside his home in Angkasapura Village.
At first glance, it may seem strange that comparisons are being made between the War on Gaza in the Middle East and the long-smouldering West Papuan human rights crisis in the Asia-Pacific region almost 11,000 km away. But there are several factors at play.
Melanesian and Pacific activists frequently mention both the Palestinian and West Papuan struggles in the same breath. A figure of up to 500,000 deaths among Papuans is often cited as the toll from 1969 when Indonesia annexed the formerly Dutch colony in controversial circumstances under the flawed Act of Free Choice, characterised by critics as the Act of “No” Choice.
The death toll in Gaza after the six-month war on the besieged enclave by Israel is already almost 33,000 (in reality far higher if the unknown number of casualties buried under the rubble is added). Most of the deaths are women and children.
Indonesian soldiers gag journalists in West Papua – the cartoon could easily be referring to Gaza where attacks on Palestinian journalists have been systemic with 137 killed so far, by far the biggest journalist death toll in any conflict. Image: ProtetAnakMelanesia/APR
Ethnic cleansing
But there are mounting fears that Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Gazans has no end in sight and the lives of 2.3 million people are at stake.
Both Palestinians and West Papuans see themselves as the victims of violent settler colonial projects that have been stealing their land and destroying their culture under the world’s noses — in the case of Palestine since the Nakba of 1948, and in West Papua since Indonesian paratroopers landed in a botched invasion in 1963.
They see themselves as both confronting genocidal leaders; Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose popularity at home sinks by the day with growing protests, and Indonesia’s new President-elect Prabowo Subianto who has an atrocious human rights reputation in both Timor-Leste and West Papua.
And both peoples feel betrayed by a world that has stood by as genocides have been taking place — in the case of Palestine in real time on social media and television screens, and in the case of West Papua slowly over six decades.
Indonesian politicians such as Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi have been quick to condemn Israel, including at the International Court of Justice, but Papuan independence leaders find this hypocritical.
“We have full sympathy for the struggle for justice in Palestine and call for the restoration of peace,” said United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) president Benny Wenda.
Pacific protesters for a Free Palestine in New Zealand’s largest city, Auckland. Image: David Robie/APR
‘Where’s Indonesian outrage?’
“But what about West Papua? Where was Indonesia’s outrage after Bloody Paniai [2014], or the Wamena massacre in February?
“Indonesia is claiming to oppose genocide in Gaza while committing their own genocide in West Papua.”
“Over 60 years of genocidal colonial rule, over 500,000 West Papuans have been killed by Indonesian forces.”
Wenda said genocide in West Papua was implemented slowly and steadily through a series of massacres, assassinations and policies, such as the killings of the chair of the Papuan Council Theys Eluay in 2001; Mako Tabuni (2012); and cultural curator and artist Arnold Ap (1984).
In the South Pacific, Indonesia is widely seen among civil society, university and community groups as a ruthless aggressor with little or no respect for the Papuan culture.
Jakarta is engaged in an intensive diplomacy campaign in an attempt to counter this perception.
Unarmed Palestinians killed in Gaza – revealing Israel’s “kill zones”. Video: Al Jazeera
Israel’s ‘rogue’ status
But if Indonesia is unpopular in the Pacific over its brutal colonial policies, it is nothing compared to the global “rogue” status of Israel.
In the past few weeks, as atrocity after atrocity pile up and the country’s disregard for international law and United Nations resolutions increasingly shock, supporters appear to be shrinking to its long-term ally the United States and its Five Eyes partners with New Zealand’s coalition government failing to condemn Israel’s war crimes.
On Good Friday — Day 174 of the war – Israel bombed Gaza, Syria and Lebanon on the same day, killing civilians in all three countries.
In the past week, the Israeli military ratcheted up its attacks on the Gaza Strip in defiance of the UN Security Council’s order for an immediate ceasefire, expanded its savage attacks on neighbouring states, and finally withdrew from Al-Shifa Hospital after a bloody two-week siege, leaving it totally destroyed with at least 350 patients, staff and displaced people dead.
Fourteen votes against the lone US abstention after Washington had earlier vetoed three previous resolutions produced the decisive ceasefire vote, but the Israeli objective is clearly to raze Gaza and make it uninhabitable.
As The Guardian described the vote, “When Gilad Erdan, the Israeli envoy to the UN, sat before the Security Council to rail against the ceasefire resolution it had just passed, he cut a lonelier figure than ever in the cavernous chamber.”
The newspaper added that the message was clear.
‘Time was up’
“Time was up on the Israeli offensive, and the Biden administration was no longer prepared to let the US’s credibility on the world stage bleed away by defending an Israeli government which paid little, if any, heed to its appeals to stop the bombing of civilian areas and open the gates to substantial food deliveries.”
Al Jazeera interviewed Norwegian physician Dr Mads Gilbert, who has spent long periods working in Gaza, including at al-Shifa Hospital. He was visibly distressed in his reaction, lamenting that the Israeli attack had “destroyed” the 78-year legacy of the Strip’s largest and flagship hospital.
Speaking from Tromso, Norway, he said: “This is such a sad day, I’ve been weeping all morning.”
Dr Gilbert said he did not know the fate of the 107 critical patients who had been moved two days earlier to an older building in the complex.
“The maggots that are creeping out of the corpses in al-Shifa Hospital now,” he said, “are really maggots coming out of the eyes of President Biden and the European Union leaders doing nothing to stop this horrible, horrible genocide.”
Australia-based Antony Loewenstein, the author of The Palestine Laboratory, who has been reporting on Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories for two decades, described Israel’s attack on the hospital as the “actions of a rogue state”.
Gaza health officials said Israel was targeting all the hospitals and systematically destroying the medical infrastructure. Only five out of a total of 37 hospitals still had some limited services operating.
The non government organisation Doctors Without Borders says it is “horrified” at the destruction of al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City . . . “Gaza’s largest hospital is now out of service, people in the north are left with even fewer healthcare options.” Image: AJ/Anadolu
Strike on journalists’ tent
Yesterday, four people were killed and journalists were wounded in an Israeli air strike on a tent in the courtyard of al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza.
The Israeli military claimed the strike was aimed at a “command centre” operated by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad armed group, but footage screened by Al Jazeera reporter Hind Khoudary clearly showed it was a tent where displaced people were sheltering and journalists and photographers were working.
The Israeli military have killed another photojournalist and editor, Abdel Wahab Awni, when they bombed his home in the Maghazi refugee camp. This took the number of journalists killed since the start of the war to 137, according to Gaza’s Government Media Office.
Al Jazeera has revealed that Israel was using “kill zones” for certain combat areas in Gaza. Anybody crossing the “invisible” lines into these zones was shot on sight as a “terrorist”, even if they were unarmed civilians.
The chilling practice was exposed when footage was screened of two unarmed civilians carrying white flags being apparently gunned down and then buried by bulldozer under rubble. A US-based civil rights group described the killings as a “heinous crime”.
The kill zones were confirmed at the weekend by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which said the military had claimed to have killed 9000 “terrorists”, but officials admitted that many of the dead were often civilians who had “crossed the line” of fire.
Call for sanctions
The Israeli peace advocacy group Gush Shalom sent an open letter to all the embassies credited to Israel calling for immediate sanctions against the Israeli government, saying Netanyahu was “flagrantly refusing” to comply with the ceasefire resolution.
“We, citizens of Israel,” said the letter, “are calling on your government to initiate a further meeting of the Security Council, aiming to pass a resolution which would set effective sanctions on Israel — in order to bring about an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip until the end of Ramadan and beyond it.”
A Palestinian-American professor of law Dr Noura Erakat, of Rutgers University, recently told a BBC interviewer that Israel had made its end game very clear from the beginning of the war.
“Israel has made its intent clear. Its war cabinet had made its intent clear. From the very beginning, in the first week of October 7, it told us its goal was to depopulate Gaza.
“They have equated the decimation of Hamas, which they cannot achieve militarily, with the depopulation of the entire Gaza strip.”
A parallel with Indonesia’s fundamentally flawed policies in West Papua. Failing violent settler colonialism.
Dr David Robie is editor of Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific. This article was first published at Asia Pacific Report.
Once Palestine is erased, it’s highly unlikely that it can ever be restored. Image: caitlinjohnstone.com.au/
COMMENTARY: By Caitlin Johnstone
The Zionist plan for the Palestinians is to kill them and drive them off their land by whatever cruelty is necessary, with the understanding that one day people will look back on it in the same way they look back on the genocides of other indigenous populations, saying, “Yeah it was bad, but that was in the past so there’s nothing we can do about it.”
The Zionists take a long view of history, understanding that all the outrage and backlash they’re facing over Gaza right now will one day be irrelevant if they can carry out their plan for the territory today.
They know that future generations of Israeli settlers will be able to say “Sure there was an ethnic cleansing in Gaza and a bunch of mass atrocities were committed, but that all happened before I was born; I had nothing to do with it.
“What do you want me to do, give up the home I’ve lived in all my life? That’s nuts.”
And they’re absolutely right: if Israel succeeds in driving the Palestinians out of Gaza (and assuming humanity doesn’t destroy itself via nuclear armageddon or environmental collapse), that is exactly the future they can expect to have. The genocidal atrocities against the Palestinians will be something kids learn about in history class.
Israel itself might even be able to be a lot more honest about what happened, once the Palestinian problem has been fully resolved and the threat of a Palestinian state no longer exists.
Israel is so dedicated to protecting civilian life that it’s deliberately gunning down unarmed Palestinians whenever they walk within firing range and then adding them to its “Hamas terrorists killed” tally. https://t.co/3XrjPvzoui
So they do what they need to do in the meantime, with the understanding that this will one day all be rubbed away by the sands of time. They commit what atrocities they need to commit, they lie in whatever ways they need to lie, and they exert influence wherever they need to exert influence until they can get this thing locked down.
Once they have, they can sit back and let old father time do the rest of the work for them.
That’s why it’s so important to oppose this thing now: because once Palestine is erased, it’s highly unlikely that it can ever be restored.
We see what an uphill battle it is to obtain any rights at all for indigenous populations in other nations founded on genocidal settler-colonialism, and they haven’t even been driven out of their national borders into foreign countries.
The sins of the present and the recent past are much, much easier to correct than the sins of the distant past. That’s why the Zionists are so keen to move these atrocities into the “sins of the distant past” category.
University of the South Pacific staff protesting last November in black with placards calling for “fair pay” and for vice-chancellor Professor Ahluwalia to resign. Image: Association of USP Staff (AUSPS)
The University of the South Pacific — one of only two regional universities in the world — is facing a “gathering storm” over leadership, a management crisis and a looming strike, reports Islands Business.
In the six-page cover story in the latest edition of the regional news magazine this week, IB reports that pay demands by the 12-nation institution “headline other contentions such as the number of unfilled vacancies and the strain that the unions say it’s causing staff”.
The magazine also reported concerns about the “diminishing presence of Pacific Island academics” at what is a regional institution with 30,000 students representing Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Niue, Republic of the Marshall Islands, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.
The Islands Business cover story on the University of the South Pacific this week . . . concerns over leadership, USP Council, declining student numbers and threatened strike action. Image: IB screenshot APR
The world’s other regional university is the Jamaica-based University of the West Indies with five campuses in 18 countries and 50,000 students.
Another factor at USP is the “absence of female academics, and questions over the way some key contracts have been handled by management”.
Staff say there are no longer any female professors at the Pacific university and the institution recently failed to renew the contract of Nobel Prize-winning academic Dr Elisabeth Holland, formerly professor of ocean and climate change and the longtime director of USP’s Pacific Centre for Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD), in controversial circumstances.
She had been one of USP’s most distinguished staff members and a key Pacific climate crisis voice in global forums.
Plunged into crisis
“In February 2021, the University of the South Pacific (USP) was plunged into crisis when vice-chancellor Professor Pal Ahluwalia was unceremoniously thrown out of Fiji following a middle-of-the-night raid on his campus residence, accused by the then [FijiFirst] government of Voreqe Bainimarama of breaching the country’s immigration laws,” wrote the magazine’s Fiji correspondent Joe Yaya, himself a former graduate of the university who was a member of the award-winning USP student journalism team covering the George Speight attempted coup in May 2000.
“Within months of taking up the job in 2019, a bombshell report by Ahluwalia had alleged widespread financial mismanagement within the university under former administrations. It triggered an independent investigation by New Zealand-based accounting firm BDO and Ahluwalia’s eventual expulsion from Fiji.
“Three years later, USP finds itself beset by a host of new problems, most prominent among them an overwhelming vote this month by staff across Fiji (97 percent of academic staff and 94 percent of administration and support personnel) to go on strike over pay issues.”
USP’s Professor Pal Ahluwalia . . . facing mounting opposition from the university’s staff with unions planning strike action. Image: Fijivillage News
Some of the concerns about pay and appointments are shared by key members of the USP Council and its senior management team.
“Leadership emerged as a major point of discussion in interviews conducted by Islands Business,” wrote Yaya.
Dr Ahluwalia reportedly retains firm support from some USP Council members, and also the student association.
However, Islands Business reported that the university management had refused to respond to the magazine’s questions.
Several interview efforts
“Over a seven-week period beginning January 22, we made several efforts to reach vice-chancellor Ahluwalia. In mid-February, his office said he would not be able to provide an interview while at Laucala Campus ‘because of his busy schedule’ (they specified ‘engagements with stakeholders and other university-related activities’),” the magazine reported.
“On March 6, Dr Ahluwalia responded in an email: ‘Many of the questions that you ask in relation to staff are being discussed with the respective unions and it is inappropriate for me to make comments through the media.
“‘Most of your other questions relate directly to matters that are the business of our Council and its deliberations are confidential so it is inappropriate too for me to discuss these matters outside of Council.’”
Islands Business also sought a response from Professor Pat Walsh, acting pro-chancellor of USP, and chair of the Council. Dr Walsh is the New Zealand government’s representative on the Council. He did not respond to Islands Business.
Former USP pro-chancellor and chair, now Marshall Islands President Dr Hilda Heine, told Islands Business that during her term with USP, one of the “strong challenges we faced was the issue with the vice-chancellor”.
Professor Ahluwalia’s extended work contract is expected to be finalised at next month’s Council meeting which has been moved from May to April 26-27.
The vice-chancellor is due to meet the staff unions in mediation on Tuesday in a bid to avoid a staff strike.
Since the atrocious footage of the suffering of an indigenous Papuan man reverberates in the heart of Puncak by the brute force of Indonesia’s army in early February, shocking tactics deployed by those in power to silence critics has been unfolding.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the plight of the leaders of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), Markus Haluk and Menase Tabuni. Their unwavering resolve in condemning the situation has faced targeted harassment and discrimination.
The leaders of the ULMWP have become targets of a state campaign aimed at silencing them.
Menase Tabuni, serving as the executive council president of the ULMWP, along with Markus Haluk, the executive secretary, have recently taken on the responsibility of leading political discourse directly from within West Papua.
This decision follows the ULMWP’s second high-level summit in Port Vila in August 2023, where the movement reaffirmed its commitment to advocating for the rights and freedoms of the people of West Papua.
On March 23, the ULMWP leadership released a media statement in which Tabuni condemned the abhorrent racist slurs and torture depicted in the video of a fellow Papuan at the hands of Indonesia’s security forces.
Tabuni called for an immediate international investigation to be conducted by the UN Commissioner of the Human Rights Office.
Since UU ITE took effect in November 2016, it has been viewed as the state’s weapon against critics, as shown during the widespread anti-racism protests across West Papua in mid-August of 2019.
Harassment and intimidation . . . ULMWP leaders (from left) Menase Tabuni (executive council president), Markus Haluk (executive council secretary), Apolos Sroyer (judicial council chairperson), and Willem Rumase (legislative council chairperson). Image: ULMWP
The website SemuaBisaKena, dedicated to documenting UU ITE cases, recorded 768 cases in West Papua between 2016 and 2020.
The limited information on laws to protect individuals exercising their freedom of speech, including human rights defenders, political activist leaders, journalists, and civil society representatives, makes the situation worse.
Threats and hate speech on his social media accounts are frequent. His Twitter account was hacked and deleted in 2022 after he posted a video showing Indonesian security forces abusing a disabled civilian.
Thirteen Indonesian soldiers arrested over viral torture video. Video: Al Jazeera
Systematic intimidation
The systematic nature of this intimidation in West Papua cannot be understated.
It is a well-coordinated effort designed to suffocate dissent and silence the voice of resistance.
The barrage of messages and missed calls to both Tabuni and Haluk creates a psychological warfare waged with callous indifference, leaving scars that run deep. It creates an atmosphere of perpetual unease, leaving wondering when the next onslaught will happen.
The inundation of their phones with messages filled with discriminatory slurs in Bahasa serves as crude reminders of the lengths to which state entities will go in abuse of the law.
Translated into English, these insults such as “Hey asshole I stale you” or “You smell like shit” not only denigrate the ULMWP political leaders but also serve as threats, such as “We are not afraid” or “What do you want”, which underscore calculated malice behind the attacks.
This incident highlights a systemic issue, laying bare the fragility of democratic ideals in the face of entrenched power and exposing the hollowness of promises made by those who claim to uphold the rule of law.
Disinformation grandstanding In the wake of the Indonesian government’s response to the video footage, which may outwardly appear as a willingness to address the issue publicly, there is a stark contrast in the treatment of Papuan political leaders and activists behind closed doors.
While an apology from the Indonesian military commander in Papua through a media conference earlier this week may seem like a step in the right direction, it merely scratches the surface of a deeper issue.
Firstly, the government’s call for firm action against individual soldiers depicted in the video, which has proven to be military personnel, cannot be served as a distraction from addressing broader systemic human rights abuses in West Papua.
A thorough and impartial investigation into all reports of harassment, intimidation and reprisals against human rights defenders ensures that all perpetrators are brought to justice, and if convicted, punished with penalties commensurate with the seriousness of the offence.
However, by focusing solely on potential disciplinary measures against a handful of soldiers, the government fails to acknowledge the larger pattern of abuse and oppression prevailing in the region.
Also the statement from the Presidential Staff Office could be viewed as a performative gesture aimed at neutralising international critics rather than instigating genuine reforms.
Without concrete efforts to address the root causes of human rights abuses in West Papua, such statements risk being perceived as empty rhetoric that fails to bring about tangible change for the Papuan people.
Enduring struggle Historically, West Papua has been marked by a long-standing struggle for independence and self-determination, always met with resistance from Indonesian authorities.
Activists advocating for West Papua’s rights and freedoms become targets of threats and harassment as they challenge entrenched power structures and seek to bring international attention to their cause.
The lack of accountability and impunity enjoyed by the state and its security forces of such acts further emboldens those who seek to silence dissent through intimidation and coercion. Thus, the threats and harassment experienced by the ULMWP leaders and West Papua activists are not only a reflection of the struggle for self-determination but also symptomatic of broader systemic injustices.
In navigating the turbulent waters ahead, let us draw strength from the unwavering resolve of Markus Haluk, Menase Tabuni and many Papuans who refuse to be silenced.
The leaders of the ULMWP and all those who stand alongside them in the fight for justice and freedom serve as a testament to the enduring power of the human spirit.
It is incumbent upon us all to stand in solidarity with those who face intimidation and harassment, to lend our voices to their cause and to shine a light on the darkness that seeks to envelop them.
For in the end, it is only through collective action and unwavering resolve that we can overcome the forces of tyranny and usher in a future where freedom reigns freely.
Ronny Kareni is a Canberra-based Free West Papua activist, musician, trained-diplomat, youth vocational specialist and human rights defender. He graduated in diplomacy studies at the Australian National University. He is committed to and passionate about working with First Nations, Pacific and the nonprofit sector to support social, cultural and legal justice for the most vulnerable target groups. Special report for Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific.
"Shocked and appalled" . . . Why this State Department staffer resigned in protest over US policies over the Israeli War on Gaza. Image: CNN screenshot APR
COMMENTARY: By Annelle Sheline
Since Hamas’ attack on October 7, Israel has used American bombs in its war in Gaza, which has killed more than 32,000 people — 13,000 of them children — with countless others buried under the rubble, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.
In the West Bank, armed settlers and Israeli soldiers have killed Palestinians, including US citizens. These actions, which experts on genocide have testified meet the crime of genocide, are conducted with the diplomatic and military support of the US government.
For the past year, I worked for the office devoted to promoting human rights in the Middle East. I believe strongly in the mission and in the important work of that office.
Resigned US State Department official Annelle Sheline . . . “Whatever credibility the United States had as an advocate for human rights has almost entirely vanished since the war began.” Image: AS/APR
However, as a representative of a government that is directly enabling what the International Court of Justice has said could plausibly be a genocide in Gaza, such work has become almost impossible. Unable to serve an administration that enables such atrocities, I have decided to resign from my position at the Department of State.
Our office seeks to support journalists in the Middle East; yet when asked by NGOs if the US can help when Palestinian journalists are detained or killed in Gaza, I was disappointed that my government didn’t do more to protect them. Ninety Palestinian journalists in Gaza have been killed in the last five months, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. That is the most recorded in any single conflict since the CPJ started collecting data in 1992.
By resigning publicly, I am saddened by the knowledge that I likely foreclose a future at the State Department. I had not initially planned a public resignation. Because my time at State had been so short — I was hired on a two-year contract — I did not think I mattered enough to announce my resignation publicly. However, when I started to tell colleagues of my decision to resign, the response I heard repeatedly was, “Please speak for us”.
We are appalled by the administration’s flagrant disregard for American laws that prohibit the US from providing assistance to foreign militaries that engage in gross human rights violations or that restrict the delivery of humanitarian aid.
The Biden administration’s own policy states,
“The legitimacy of and public support for arms transfers among the populations of both the United States and recipient nations depends on the protection of civilians from harm, and the United States distinguishes itself from other potential sources of arms transfers by elevating the importance of protecting civilians.”
Yet this noble statement of policy has been directly in contradiction with the actions of the president who promulgated it.
President Joe Biden himself indirectly admits that Israel is not protecting Palestinian civilians from harm. Under pressure from some congressional Democrats, the administration issued a new policy to ensure that foreign military transfers don’t violate relevant domestic and international laws.
Yet just recently, the State Department ascertained that Israel is in compliance with international law in the conduct of the war and in providing humanitarian assistance. To say this when Israel is preventing the adequate entrance of humanitarian aid and the US is being forced to air drop food to starving Gazans, this finding makes a mockery of the administration’s claims to care about the law or about the fate of innocent Palestinians.
Some have argued that the US lacks influence over Israel. Yet retired Israeli Major General Yitzhak Brick noted in November that Israel’s missiles, bombs and airplanes all come from the US.
“The minute they turn off the tap, you can’t keep fighting,” he said. “Everyone understands that we can’t fight this war without the United States. Period.”
Even now, Israel is considering invading Lebanon, which brings a heightened risk of regional conflict that would be catastrophic. The US has sought to prevent this outcome but shows no appetite for withholding offensive weapons from Israel in order to compel greater restraint there or in Gaza.
Biden’s support for Israel’s far-right government thus risks sparking a wider conflagration in the region, which could well put US troops in harm’s way.
So many of my colleagues feel betrayed. I write for myself but speak for many others, including Feds United for Peace, a group mobilising for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza that represents federal workers in their personal capacities across the country, and across 30 federal agencies and departments.
After four years of then-President Donald Trump’s efforts to cripple the department, State employees embraced Biden’s pledge to rebuild American diplomacy. For some, US support for Ukraine against Russia’s illegal occupation and bombardment seemed to reestablish America’s moral leadership. Yet the administration continues to enable Israel’s illegal occupation and destruction of Gaza.
I am haunted by the final social media post of Aaron Bushnell, the 25-year-old US Air Force serviceman who self-immolated in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington on February 25:
“Many of us like to ask ourselves, ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?’ The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.”
I can no longer continue what I was doing. I hope that my resignation can contribute to the many efforts to push the administration to withdraw support for Israel’s war, for the sake of the 2 million Palestinians whose lives are at risk and for the sake of America’s moral standing in the world.
Annelle Sheline, PhD, served for a year as a foreign affairs officer at the Office of Near Eastern Affairs in the US Department of State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. Her open article was first published here at CNN.
Imagine how the Western political-media class would be acting if Russia or China was deliberately blockading food from an imprisoned population of millions of people. Image: caitlinjohnstone.com.au
COMMENTARY: By Caitlin Johnstone
Imagine how the Western political-media class would be acting if Russia or China was bombing and starving a walled-in population of two million, half of them children.
Seriously, imagine it. Imagine the rage and vitriol. Imagine the nonstop media coverage.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, US media coverage of that war exceeded the media coverage of all US wars in the previous three decades. If Russia were deliberately and systematically exterminating civilians in Ukraine or anywhere else, the Western media coverage of those war crimes would be many times more.
It’s almost cliché at this point to say “imagine if Russia or China did this”, but such comparisons are important for retaining a sense of perspective on just how evil the Western political-media class is being about Gaza right now.
We’re seeing articles come out in the mass media about starvation in Gaza which never once even mention the word “Israel”. Do you think that would be happening if this were being perpetrated by a government which defies the Western empire? Of course not.
Imagine how the Western political-media class would be acting if Russia or China was deliberately blockading food from an imprisoned population of millions of people.
Imagine how the Western political-media class would be acting if Russia or China was relentlessly raining military explosives on densely packed urban areas known to be full of children.
Imagine how the Western political-media class would be acting if Russia or China was deliberately and methodically ethnically cleansing an oppressed population for entirely racist reasons.
Imagine how the Western political-media class would be acting if evidence that Russia or China are committing horrific war crimes was surfacing on a daily basis.
Imagine how the Western political-media class would be acting if Russia or China were getting caught in lie after lie after lie while carrying out such a mass atrocity.
Imagine how the Western political-media class would be acting if Russia or China tried to present them with blatantly fabricated evidence of crimes committed by the targeted population in justification of their atrocities.
We’d be living in a different political and media landscape. If Russia or China was doing what Israel is doing, entire presidential campaigns would have been built around who would oppose it most aggressively.
Imagine If Russia Or China Did The Things Israel Is Doing In Gaza
Every sanction and embargo in the book would have been slammed upon the perpetrating government. The Western press would be falling all over themselves to expose every atrocity and every lie and blaring those expositions as feature stories on every platform for months, and showering one another with awards for doing so.
Instead we get this. Government officials babbling nonstop about Israel’s “right” to “defend itself” and how this would all be over if Hamas didn’t keep fighting, while showering Israel with weapons to help it continue its atrocities.
The mass media churning out a constant deluge of passive-language “Gazans are having trouble finding food for some reason” headlines and continuous reminders that this is all happening because of October 7, while repeating Israeli atrocity propaganda like it’s gospel truth.
All viable US presidential candidates vowing their unconditional support for Israel while occasionally impotently finger-wagging at this or that aspect of Israel’s atrocities to avoid looking like complete psychopaths.
That contrast between how the Western political-media class is acting toward the Gaza genocide and how we all know they’d be acting if an unaligned government was doing something similar is exactly why the US-centralised empire cannot be permitted to rule our world anymore.
It pretends to stand for peace, justice, freedom and democracy, but in reality it just inflicts nonstop death and suffering upon human beings around the world and covers it up with propaganda spin from its servile mainstream press.
It purports to uphold the “rules-based international order”, but all that means in practice is that it upholds an international order in which the US empire makes up the rules as it goes along and changes them as it pleases.
Humanity cannot allow itself to be abused and tyrannised by this murderous, hypocritical globe-spanning power structure any longer. A better world is possible, but we’re going to have to find a way to pry the talons of these monsters off the steering wheel first.
Indonesian soldiers board a transport ship for Papua as part of a routine redeployment of 450 troops, at the port in Krueng Geukueh, Aceh, in 2021. Image: Editorial screenshot APR
It happens again and again; indigenous Papuans fall victim to Indonesian soldiers.
This time, we have photographic evidence for the brutality, with videos on social media showing a Papuan man being tortured by a group of plainclothes men alleged to be the Indonesian Military (TNI) members. One clip shows the man’s head being beaten with a rod, while another has his back slashed by a blade that looks like a combat knife.
After initially denying the assailants in the footage were military personnel, the TNI issued on Monday a rare apology and said that 13 soldiers had been arrested following the viral video.
“I apologise to all Papuans, and we will work to ensure this is never repeated,” said Cenderawasih Military Commander in Papua Major General Izak Pangemanan.
That rare apology is a positive sign, but it is not enough. We have had enough pledges from the military about not inflicting more violence on Papuans, but time and again blood is spilled in the name of the military and police campaign against armed separatist [pro-independence] groups.
The resource-rich Papua region has seen escalating violence since 2018, when the military increased its presence there in response to deadlier and more frequent attacks, allegedly committed by armed rebels.
Throughout 2023 alone, there were 49 acts of violence by security forces against civilians recorded by the rights group Commission for Missing Person and Victims of Violence (Kontras) in the form of, among others, forceful arrest, torture and shooting. At least 67 people were injured and 41 others lost their lives in the violence.
Also according to Kontras, some of the arrested civilians could not be proven to have ties to the armed rebel groups, particularly the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB).
In regard to this week’s viral videos, the TNI claimed that the man beaten in the video was identified as Defianus Kogoya, a separatist [pro-independence activist] who planned to burn down a health center in Central Papua.
Whether Defianus was a rebel or civilian, what the soldiers did to him is unjustified, because no national or international law allows the torture of members of hostile forces.
The Geneva Conventions and its additional protocols have at least seven articles banning torture. There are also other sets of regulations banning cruel or inhuman treatment of captured enemies.
National regulations also prohibit security forces personnel from committing unnecessary violent acts. Article 351 of the Criminal Code mandates two years and eight months’ imprisonment for any individuals committing torture, a provision that also applies to military personnel.
For soldiers, the punishment can be heavier as they face the possibility of getting an additional one third of the punishment if they are found guilty of torture by a military court.
The TNI also announced on Monday that it had arrested 13 soldiers allegedly involved in the incidents in the video. The investigations are still ongoing, but the military promised to name them as suspects soon.
These might be good first steps, but they may mean nothing if their superiors are not prosecuted alongside the foot soldiers. At the very least, the TNI must ensure that the 13 suspects are prosecuted thoroughly in a military court of justice.
The TNI should also work harder to prevent systemic issues that allow such violence to occur. A TNI spokesperson acknowledged on Monday that the military was far from perfect. That is good, but it would be better if the TNI actually worked in a transparent manner on how it addresses that imperfection.
Overall, the government and especially the incoming administration of President-elect Prabowo Subianto must make more serious efforts at achieving a long-lasting peace in Papua.
Sending more troops has proven to merely lead to escalation. The incoming government should consider the possibility that fighting fire with fire, only leads to a bigger fire.
This editorial in The Jakarta Post was published yesterday, 27 March 2024, under the title “Stop fighting fire with fire”. Republished from Pacific Media Watch.
Anti-Bases Campaign (ABC) organiser Murray Horton . . . speaking against the controversial GCSB spy base in Waihopai Valley in 2021. Image: ABC screenshot APR
A New Zealand investigative journalist and author says the US spy system hosted by the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) appears to be a controversial intelligence system used in global capture-kill operations.
“The IGIS report said the GCSB decision to host a foreign system from 2012-2020 was ‘improper’ and that the GCSB ‘could not be sure the tasking of the capability was always in accordance with… New Zealand law’,” he wrote.
“The Inspector-General said: ‘I have found some of the GCSB’s explanations about how the capability operated and was tasked to be incongruous with information in GCSB records at the time’,” Hager wrote.
But the Inspector-General could not reveal details of the system to the public because they were “highly classified”.
“The name and function of the foreign spy spying equipment, the identity of the ‘foreign partner agency’ and the location of the ‘GCSB facility’ where foreign equipment was hosted all remained secret,” Hager wrote.
Hager argued that the mystery spy equipment appeared strongly to be a top secret US surveillance system that had been installed at the GCSB’s Waihopai base at the same time as the equipment in the IGIS investigation was installed at a “GCSB facility”.
25 years of investigations
Hager has worked as an investigative journalist for the past 25 years, and has been a New Zealand member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists for 20 of those years.
In 2018, he was part of a reference group established by the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security.
Hager wrote that the top secret NSA spy equipment had the ghostly codename “APPARITION” and fitted with all the details presented in the IGIS report.
“APPARITION was owned by and controlled by the US National Security Agency — the world’s largest intelligence gathering agency and head of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance that includes the GCSB,” he wrote.
According to Hager, the NSA internal report, written after the launch of the APPARITION system in 2008, said that it “builds on the success of the GHOSTHUNTER prototype . . . a tool that enabled a significant number of capture-kill operations against terrorists”.
“Capture-kill operations involve lethal attacks on targeted people using drones, bombs and special forces raids,” wrote Hager.
“Human rights organisations have documented numerous deaths of civilians during capture-kill operations — many of them ‘algorithmically targeted’ by electronic surveillance systems such as APPARITION.
‘Extra-judicial killings’
“They are also criticised as being ‘extra-judicial killings’.”
For decades, protesters had been calling for the GCSB’s iconic radomes at Waihopai Valley spy base in rural Marlborough to be dismantled, saying that when that intelligence was shared with Five Eyes partners — the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia — it made New Zealand complicit in the military campaigns of those countries, among other criticisms.
However, Anti-Bases Campaign (ABC) organiser Murray Horton said at the time of news of the domes’ redundancy in 2021 was nothing to celebrate, since the base itself would continue to operate at the site, “albeit without its most conspicuous physical features that stick out like dogs’ balls”.
