“There are already a dozen cases piling up against me,” she said. “I’m a journalist. One murder case is enough to frame me.”

Rupa, a former chief correspondent at privately owned broadcaster Ekattor TV, now faces nine murder cases. Her husband, Shakil Ahmed, the channel’s former head of news, is named in eight.  

A year ago, Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus took charge of Bangladesh’s interim government after Sheikh Hasina resigned and fled the country following weeks of student-led protests, during which two journalists were killed.

Yunus promised media reform and repealed the Cyber Security Act, a law used to target journalists under Hasina. But in a November 2024 interview with newspaper The Daily Star, Yunus said that murder accusations against journalists were being made hastily. He said the government had since halted such actions and that a committee had been formed to review the cases.

Still, nearly a year later, Rupa, Ahmed, Shyamal Dutta and Mozammel Haque Babu, arrested on accusations of instigating murders in separate cases, remain behind bars. The repeated use of such charges against journalists who are widely seen as sympathetic to the former regime appear to be politically motivated censorship.

In addition to such legal charges, CPJ has documented physical attacks against journalists, threats from political activists, and exile. At least 25 journalists are under investigation for genocide by Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal – a charge that has been used to target figures linked to the former Hasina government. 

“Keeping four journalists behind bars without credible evidence a year on undermines the interim government’s stated commitment to protect press freedom,” said CPJ Regional Director Beh Lih Yi. “Real reform means breaking from the past, not replicating its abuses. All political parties must respect journalists’ right to report as the country is set for polls in coming months.”

A CPJ review of legal documents and reports found that journalists are often added to First Information Reports (FIRs) – documents that open an investigation – long after they are filed. In May, UN experts raised concern that over 140 journalists had been charged with murder following last year’s protests.

Shyamal Dutta’s daughter, Shashi, told CPJ the family has lost track of how many cases he now faces. They are aware of at least six murder cases in which he is named, while Babu’s family is aware of 10. Rupa and Ahmed’s family told CPJ that they haven’t received FIRs for five cases in which one or the other journalist has been named, which means that neither can apply for bail.

Shafiqul Alam, Yunus’s press secretary, and police spokesperson Enamul Haque Sagor did not respond to CPJ’s emailed request for comment. 

Violence and threats

In 2025, reporters across Bangladesh have faced violence and harassment while covering political events, with CPJ documenting at least 10 such incidents, most of which were carried out by members or affiliates of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its student wing, Chhatra Dal. In several instances, journalists sustained serious injuries or were prevented from reporting after footage was deleted or phones seized, including Bahar Raihan, Abdullah Al Mahmud, and Rocky Hossain.

Responding to the allegations, Mahdi Amin, adviser to Acting BNP Chair Tarique Rahman, told CPJ that while isolated misconduct may occur in a party of BNP’s size, the party does not protect wrongdoers. 

Others have faced threats from supporters of different political parties and the student groups that led the protests against Hasina. Reporters covering opposition groups like Jamaat-e-Islami or its student wing, Islami Chhatra Shibir, have come under particular pressure. On June 9, Hasanat Kamal, editor of EyeNews.news, told CPJ he’d fled to the United Kingdom after being falsely accused by Islami Chhatra Shibir of participating in a violent student protest. Anwar Hossain, a journalist for the local daily Dabanol, told CPJ he’d been threatened by Jamaat supporters after publishing negative reports about a local party leader. 

CPJ reached out via messaging app to Abdus Sattar Sumon, a spokesperson for Jamaat-e-Islami, but received no response.

Since Hasina’s ouster, student protesters from the Anti-Discrimination Students Movement (ADSM) have increasinglytargeted journalists they accuse of supporting the former regime, which in one case led to the firing of five journalists. Student-led mobs have also besieged outlets like Prothom Alo and The Daily Star. 

CPJ reached out via messaging app to ADSM leader Rifat Rashid but received no response.

On July 14, exiled investigative journalist Zulkarnain Saer Khan, who fled Bangladesh after exposing alleged high-level corruption under Hasina and receiving threats from Awami League officials, posted on X about the repression of the media: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Kunal Majumder/CPJ India Representative.

To mark the release of the 2025 World Press Freedom Index, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) partnered with the agency The Good Company to launch a new awareness campaign that puts an ironic twist on the glossy advertising of the tourism industry.

Three out of six countries featured in the exposé are from the Asia Pacific region — but none from the Pacific Islands.

The campaign shines a stark light on the press freedom violations in countries that seem perfect on postcards but are highly dangerous for journalists, says RSF.

• READ MORE: Fiji media welcomes credible news services, but not ‘pop-up propagandists’, says Simpson
• PINA on World Press Freedom Day – facing new and complex AI challenges
• Rabuka salutes Fiji media but warns against taking freedom for granted
• NZ fares well in latest RSF press freedom index as authoritarian regimes stifle Asia-Pacific media
• RSF 2025 World Press Freedom rankings
• RSF World Press Freedom Index 2025: economic fragility a leading threat to press freedom

It is a striking campaign raising awareness about repression.

Fiji (44th out of 180 ranked nations) is lucky perhaps as three years ago when its draconian media law was still in place, it might have bracketed up there with the featured “chilling” tourism countries such as Indonesia (127) — which is rapped over its treatment of West Papua resistance and journalists.

Disguised as attractive travel guides, the campaign’s visuals use a cynical, impactful rhetoric to highlight the harsh realities journalists face in destinations renowned for their tourist appeal.

Along with Indonesia, Greece (89th), Cambodia (115), Egypt (170), Mexico (124) and the Philippines (116) are all visited by millions of tourists, yet they rank poorly in the 2025 World Press Freedom Index, reports RSF.

‘Chilling narrative’
“The attention-grabbing visuals juxtapose polished, enticing aesthetics with a chilling narrative of intimidation, censorship, violence, and even death.

“This deliberately unsettling approach by RSF aims to shift the viewer’s perspective, showing what the dreamlike imagery conceals: journalists imprisoned, attacked, or murdered behind idyllic landscapes.”

The RSF Index 2025 teaser.     Video: RSF

Indonesia is in the Pacific spotlight because of its Melanesian Papuan provinces bordering Pacific Islands Forum member country Papua New Guinea.

Despite outgoing President Joko Widodo’s 10 years in office and a reformist programme, his era has been marked by a series of broken promises, reports RSF.

“The media oligarchy linked to political interests has grown stronger, leading to increased control over critical media and manipulation of information through online trolls, paid influencers, and partisan outlets,” says the Index report.

“This climate has intensified self-censorship within media organisations and among journalists.

“Since October 2024, Indonesia has been led by a new president, former general Prabowo Subianto — implicated in several human rights violation allegations — and by Joko Widodo’s eldest son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, as vice-president.

“Under this new administration, whose track record on press freedom offers little reassurance, concerns are mounting over the future of independent journalism.”

Fiji leads in Pacific
In the Pacific, Fiji has led the pack among island states by rising four places to 40th overall, making it the leading country in Oceania in 2025 in terms of press freedom.

Both Timor-Leste, which dropped 19 places to 39th after heading the region last year, and Samoa, which plunged 22 places to 44th, lost their impressive track record.

Of the only other two countries in Oceania surveyed by RSF, Tonga rose one place to 46th and Papua New Guinea jumped 13 places to 78th, a surprising result given the controversy over its plans to regulate the media.

RSF reports that the Fiji Media Association (FMA), which was often critical of the harassment of the media by the previous FijiFirst government, has since the repeal of the Media Act in 2023 “worked hard to restore independent journalism and public trust in the media”.

In March 2024, research published in Journalism Practice journal found that sexual harassment of women journalists was widespread and needed to be addressed to protect media freedom and quality journalism.

In Timor-Leste, “politicians regard the media with some mistrust, which has been evidenced in several proposed laws hostile to press freedom, including one in 2020 under which defaming representatives of the state or Catholic Church would have been punishable by up to three years in prison.

“Journalists’ associations and the Press Council often criticise politicisation of the public broadcaster and news agency.”

On the night of September 4, 2024, Timorese police arrested Antonieta Kartono Martins, a reporter for the news site Diligente Online, while covering a police operation to remove street vendors from a market in Dili, the capital. She was detained for several hours before being released.

Samoan harassment
Previously enjoying a good media freedom reputation, journalists and their families in Samoa were the target of online death threats, prompting the Samoan Alliance of Media Professionals for Development (SAMPOD) to condemn the harassment as “attacks on the fourth estate and democracy”.

In Tonga, RSF reports that journalists are not worried about being in any physical danger when on the job, and they are relatively unaffected by the possibility of prosecution.

“Nevertheless, self-censorship continues beneath the surface in a tight national community.”

In Papua New Guinea, RSF reports journalists are faced with intimidation, direct threats, censorship, lawsuits and bribery attempts, “making it a dangerous profession”.

“And direct interference often threatens the editorial freedom at leading media outlets. This was seen yet again at EMTV in February 2022, when the entire newsroom was fired after walking out” in protest over a management staffing decison.

“There has been ongoing controversy since February 2023 concerning a draft law on media development backed by Communications Minister Timothy Masiu. In January 2024, a 14-day state of emergency was declared in the capital, Port Moresby, following unprecedented protests by police forces and prison wardens.”

This impacted on government and media relations.

Australia and New Zealand
In Australia (29), the media market’s heavy concentration limits the diversity of voices represented in the news, while independent outlets struggle to find a sustainable economic model.

While New Zealand (16) leads in the Asia Pacific region, it is also facing a similar situation to Australia with a narrowing of media plurality, closure or merging of many newspaper titles, and a major retrenchment of journalists in the country raising concerns about democracy.

Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

We’re joined by the four-time Grammy-winning musician Macklemore, a vocal proponent of Palestinian rights and critic of U.S. foreign policy. He serves as executive producer for the new documentary The Encampments, which follows last year’s student occupations of college campuses to protest U.S. backing of Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza. He tells Democracy Now! why he got involved with the film and the roots of his own activism, including the making of his song “Hind’s Hall,” named after the Columbia student occupation of the campus building Hamilton Hall, which itself was named in honor of the 5-year-old Palestinian child Hind Rajab. Rajab made headlines last year when audio of her pleading for help from emergency services in Gaza was released shortly before she was discovered killed by Israeli forces. “We are in urgent, dire times that require us as human beings coming together and fighting against fascism, fighting against genocide, and the only way to do that is by opening up the heart and realizing that collective liberation is the only solution,” Macklemore says.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

In its current iteration, it is inspired by the Israeli “Iron Dome” multilayered defensive shield, a matter that raised an immediate problem, given the trademark ownership of the name by the Israeli firm Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. Given the current administration’s obsession with all things golden, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has dubbed this revived endeavour “Golden Dome for America”. The renaming was noted in a February 24 amendment to request for information from industry. Much sniggering is surely in order at, not only the name itself, but the stumbling.

Reagan, even as he began suffering amnesiac decline, believed that the United States could be protected by a shield against any attack by Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles. The technology intended for that endeavour, much of it requiring a space component, was thin on research and non-existent in development. The envisaged use of laser weapons from space and terrestrial components drew much derision: the President had evidently been too engrossed by the Star Wars films of George Lucas.

The source for this latest initiative (“deploying and maintaining a next-generation missile defense shield”) is an executive order signed on January 27 titled “The Iron Dome for America”. (That was before the metallurgical change of name.) The order asserts from the outset that “The threat of attack by ballistic, hypersonic and cruise missiles and other advanced aerial attacks remains the most catastrophic threat facing the United States.” It acknowledges Reagan’s SDI but strikes a note of disappointment at its cancellation “before its goal could be realized.” Progress on such a system since the US withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002 had been confined to “limited homeland defense” efforts that “remained only to stay ahead of rogue-nation threats and accidental or unauthorized missile launches.”

The Secretary of Defense is also directed, within 60 days, to submit to Trump “a reference architecture, capabilities-based requirements, and an implementation plan for the next-generation missile defense shield.” Such a shield would defend the US from “ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles and the other next-generation attacks from peer, near-peer and rogue adversaries.” Among some of the plans are the accelerated deployment of a hypersonic and ballistic tracking space sensor layer; development and deployment of proliferated space-based interceptors and the development and deployment of capabilities that will neutralise missile assaults “prior to launch and in the boost phase”.

The original SDI was heavy on the intended development and use of energy weapons, lasers being foremost among them. But even after four decades, US technological prowess remains unable to deploy such weapons of sufficient power and accuracy to eliminate drones or missiles. The Israelis claim to have overcome this problem with their Iron Beam high energy laser weapon system, which should see deployment later this year. For that reason, Lockheed Martin has partnered with Israeli firm Rafael to bring that technology into the US arsenal.

To date, Steven J. Morani, currently discharging duties as undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, has given little away about the herculean labours that have been set. “Consistent with protecting the homeland and per President Trump’s [executive order],” he told the McAleese Defense Programs Conference in Washington earlier this month, “we’re working with the industrial base and [through] supply chain challenges associated with standing up the Golden Dome.” He admitted that this was “like the monster systems engineering problem” made even more difficult by being “the monster integration problem”.

The list of demerits to Golden Dome are many, and Morani alludes to them. For one, the Israeli Iron Dome operates across much smaller territory, not a continent. The sheer scale of any defence shield to protect such a vast swathe of land would be, not merely from a practical point but a budgetary one, absurd. A space-based interceptor system, a point that echoes Reagan’s Star Wars fantasy, would require thousands of units to successfully intercept one hefty ballistic missile. Todd Harrison of the American Enterprise Institute has offered a calculation: a system of 1,900 satellites would cost somewhere between US$11 and US$27 billion to develop, build and launch.

A study for Defence and Peace Economics published this year goes further. The authors argue that, even if the US had appropriate ballistic missile defence technology and a sufficient number of interceptors to be distributed in a two-layer defence with an efficiency return of 90%, 8 times more would have to be spent than the attacker for a bill between US$60 and US$500 billion. If it was assumed that individual interceptor effectiveness was a mere 50%, and the system could not discriminate against decoys, the cost would be 70 times more, with a staggering bill of US$430 billion to US$5.3 trillion.

The most telling flaw in Golden Dome is one long identified, certainly by the more sober members of the establishment, in the annals of defence. “The fundamental problem with any plan for a national missile defense system against nuclear attack,” writes Xiaodon Liang in an Arms Control Association issues brief, “is that cost-exchange ratios favor the offense and US adversaries can always choose to build up or diversify their strategic forces to overwhelm a potential shield.” As Liang goes on to remark, the missile shield fantasy defies a cardinal rule of strategic competition: “the enemy always gets a vote.”

Monster system; monstrous integration issues. Confusion with the name and trademark problems. Strategically misguided, even foolish. Golden Dome, it would seem, is already being steadied for a swallow dive.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

The “Shining Star” wasn’t quite as lustrous this year in North Korea, as celebrations for the birthday of supreme leader Kim Jong Un’s late father and predecessor came and went without much fanfare, residents told Radio Free Asia.

In years past, the “Day of the Shining Star ”-- Feb. 16, the birthday of Kim Jong Il -- was called the “nation’s greatest holiday,” celebrated with crowded public events like gymnastics exhibitions, military parades and fireworks displays.

Plus families received extra food rations and supplies as “gifts” to commemorate the late Dear Leader’s life.

But this year there were no gifts, and the streets were empty, residents said. Experts, meanwhile, said the lack of celebratory atmosphere was an indication that Kim Jong Un is trying to downplay the significance of his father to boost his own reputation.

The empty streets were a shocking sight, a resident from the northern province of Ryanggang told RFA Korean on condition of anonymity for safety reasons.

“This year on February 16th, Kim Jong Il’s birthday, the streets were so quiet that I could hardly see the shadow of a person,” she said.

Regarding the absence of “gifts” from the government, she said that normally there’s a special supply order coming from the Central Committee of the ruling Korean Workers' Party, but no such order was made this year.

‘Depressing social climate’

People were still expected to visit and offer condolences to statues of Kim Jong Il and his father and predecessor, national founder Kim Il Sung, a government official from the same province told RFA.

“After residents visited the statues, they went home, and the streets became empty,” he said. “The reason Kim Jong Il’s birthday, the nation’s biggest holiday, became so empty was not only due to the absence of holiday supplies, but also due to the depressing social climate.”

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He said the people were anxious due to increased censorship and government crackdowns.

“About 20 residents here in Ryanggang province were arrested by the Ministry of State Security for possessing illegal cell phones,” he said, adding that hundreds more were fined 300,000 won (US$13) -- an enormous sum for North Koreans -- for using electricity illegally.

Due to power shortages, almost everywhere in North Korea is subject to rolling blackouts, but people can sometimes tap into power lines meant for factories or other state-owned facilities that receive power around the clock.

“The people are worried that they may be arrested under some kind of pretext,” the official said.

Celestial holidays for deceased leaders

The Day of the Shining Star, along with Kim Il Sung’s birth anniversary on April 15, known as the Day of the Sun, are, according to the government, the two most important holidays in North Korea.

They take precedence even over the Lunar New Year holiday, known in Korean as Sollal, and the autumn harvest holiday, known as Chusok.

The latter two holidays had been the most important throughout the Korean peninsula for centuries, but the celestial holidays for the former leaders have been pushed to reinforce the cult of personality surrounding the three-generation Kim Dynasty that has ruled the country for nearly eight decades.

The lack of celebration for the Day of the Shining Star is jarring, considering that at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, authorities still made the people attend public events to celebrate.

It’s quite a departure from the early days of Kim Jong Un’s reign.

He took over when Kim Jong Il died in 2011, and authorities at that time sought to solidify his legitimacy by emphasizing ties to the previous leaders, said Oh Kyung-seop, a research fellow at the Seoul-based Institute for Unification Studies.

“But after (his) power base was established, they have been moving in the direction of putting (him) at the forefront,” Oh told RFA Korean.

He also said that the de-emphasis on the previous generations of the Kim Dynasty these days can be interpreted as an expression of confidence that the current leader’s power base is solid.

South Korea’s Ministry of Unification, meanwhile, noted on New Year’s Day that Kim skipped the customary visit to the mausoleum where his father and grandfather are buried. He had been visiting the mausoleum five times per year, including on the celestial holidays, but this pattern began to change in 2022.

Travel applications denied

The government also denied holiday travel applications, even for important family events, a resident of the northeastern province of North Hamgyong told RFA on condition of anonymity to speak freely.

The restricted travel areas include areas near the border with China and Russia, the border with South Korea, the capital Pyongyang, and areas near munitions factories.

It was not immediately clear why these areas were restricted, but the resident said that the border areas might have been off limits for travel to prevent people from escaping so close to such an important holiday.

“The residents living near the border areas are allowed to travel to other areas of the country, so I don’t understand why they are trusted, but people who live in other areas aren’t trusted to travel near the border areas,” he said. “It seems like they want to prevent serious incident, like crossing the river (to escape to China) during the month of Kim Jong Il’s birthday.

Residents told RFA that they knew of specific cases where travel to important family events was denied.

“In early February, my younger brother tried to go to the funeral for his wife’s uncle who lived in the border area, but he was unable to go,” the North Hamgyong resident said. “Even though all processes and documents were completed, he did not receive the travel certificate.”

He said the procedure is far more difficult now. In the past it was only necessary to present the certificate of death, but now authorities are more thorough.

According to the North Hamgyong resident, in this case, the officer in charge of the application called the police station in the area of the deceased’s residence to confirm his death, and only upon receiving approval did he sign the application.

Although the application was signed and approved by this officer, the travel application was ultimately denied by the Ministry of Social Security in Pyongyang. RFA was unable to determine exactly why.

A resident of nearby South Hamgyong told RFA that he was unable to visit his aunt on her 70th birthday. She lives in Taehongdan, Ryanggang Province, which borders China

“I went through all the procedures, I prepared and submitted all of the documents, but I gave up on travelling after hearing that entry to the border area would not be approved on the occasion of Kim Jong Il’s birthday,” he said.

The South Hamgyong resident said that his family rarely sees his aunt, his mother’s only sibling, and it’s usually when she is able to come to South Hamgyong, not the other way around.

But now she is in poor health due to her advanced age, he said.

“We thought that this might be the last time we could see her,” he said. “I tried to go this time to celebrate her birthday, but I could not. We said hello over the phone.”

Translated by Claire S. Lee. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Ahn Chang Gyu and Moon Sung Whui for RFA Korean.

The “Shining Star” wasn’t quite as lustrous this year in North Korea, as celebrations for the birthday of supreme leader Kim Jong Un’s late father and predecessor came and went without much fanfare, residents told Radio Free Asia.

In years past, the “Day of the Shining Star ”-- Feb. 16, the birthday of Kim Jong Il -- was called the “nation’s greatest holiday,” celebrated with crowded public events like gymnastics exhibitions, military parades and fireworks displays.

Plus families received extra food rations and supplies as “gifts” to commemorate the late Dear Leader’s life.

But this year there were no gifts, and the streets were empty, residents said. Experts, meanwhile, said the lack of celebratory atmosphere was an indication that Kim Jong Un is trying to downplay the significance of his father to boost his own reputation.

The empty streets were a shocking sight, a resident from the northern province of Ryanggang told RFA Korean on condition of anonymity for safety reasons.

“This year on February 16th, Kim Jong Il’s birthday, the streets were so quiet that I could hardly see the shadow of a person,” she said.

Regarding the absence of “gifts” from the government, she said that normally there’s a special supply order coming from the Central Committee of the ruling Korean Workers' Party, but no such order was made this year.

‘Depressing social climate’

People were still expected to visit and offer condolences to statues of Kim Jong Il and his father and predecessor, national founder Kim Il Sung, a government official from the same province told RFA.

“After residents visited the statues, they went home, and the streets became empty,” he said. “The reason Kim Jong Il’s birthday, the nation’s biggest holiday, became so empty was not only due to the absence of holiday supplies, but also due to the depressing social climate.”

RELATED STORIES

North Korea Mobilizes Citizens for Kim Jong Il Birth Celebration Amid Covid-19, Cold Temperatures

North Koreans forced to attend lectures to solidify personality cult of Kim family

North Koreans gather cigarette butts to sell to clothing makers

He said the people were anxious due to increased censorship and government crackdowns.

“About 20 residents here in Ryanggang province were arrested by the Ministry of State Security for possessing illegal cell phones,” he said, adding that hundreds more were fined 300,000 won (US$13) -- an enormous sum for North Koreans -- for using electricity illegally.

Due to power shortages, almost everywhere in North Korea is subject to rolling blackouts, but people can sometimes tap into power lines meant for factories or other state-owned facilities that receive power around the clock.

“The people are worried that they may be arrested under some kind of pretext,” the official said.

Celestial holidays for deceased leaders

The Day of the Shining Star, along with Kim Il Sung’s birth anniversary on April 15, known as the Day of the Sun, are, according to the government, the two most important holidays in North Korea.

They take precedence even over the Lunar New Year holiday, known in Korean as Sollal, and the autumn harvest holiday, known as Chusok.

The latter two holidays had been the most important throughout the Korean peninsula for centuries, but the celestial holidays for the former leaders have been pushed to reinforce the cult of personality surrounding the three-generation Kim Dynasty that has ruled the country for nearly eight decades.

The lack of celebration for the Day of the Shining Star is jarring, considering that at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, authorities still made the people attend public events to celebrate.

It’s quite a departure from the early days of Kim Jong Un’s reign.

He took over when Kim Jong Il died in 2011, and authorities at that time sought to solidify his legitimacy by emphasizing ties to the previous leaders, said Oh Kyung-seop, a research fellow at the Seoul-based Institute for Unification Studies.

“But after (his) power base was established, they have been moving in the direction of putting (him) at the forefront,” Oh told RFA Korean.

He also said that the de-emphasis on the previous generations of the Kim Dynasty these days can be interpreted as an expression of confidence that the current leader’s power base is solid.

South Korea’s Ministry of Unification, meanwhile, noted on New Year’s Day that Kim skipped the customary visit to the mausoleum where his father and grandfather are buried. He had been visiting the mausoleum five times per year, including on the celestial holidays, but this pattern began to change in 2022.

Travel applications denied

The government also denied holiday travel applications, even for important family events, a resident of the northeastern province of North Hamgyong told RFA on condition of anonymity to speak freely.

The restricted travel areas include areas near the border with China and Russia, the border with South Korea, the capital Pyongyang, and areas near munitions factories.

It was not immediately clear why these areas were restricted, but the resident said that the border areas might have been off limits for travel to prevent people from escaping so close to such an important holiday.

“The residents living near the border areas are allowed to travel to other areas of the country, so I don’t understand why they are trusted, but people who live in other areas aren’t trusted to travel near the border areas,” he said. “It seems like they want to prevent serious incident, like crossing the river (to escape to China) during the month of Kim Jong Il’s birthday.

Residents told RFA that they knew of specific cases where travel to important family events was denied.

“In early February, my younger brother tried to go to the funeral for his wife’s uncle who lived in the border area, but he was unable to go,” the North Hamgyong resident said. “Even though all processes and documents were completed, he did not receive the travel certificate.”

He said the procedure is far more difficult now. In the past it was only necessary to present the certificate of death, but now authorities are more thorough.

According to the North Hamgyong resident, in this case, the officer in charge of the application called the police station in the area of the deceased’s residence to confirm his death, and only upon receiving approval did he sign the application.

Although the application was signed and approved by this officer, the travel application was ultimately denied by the Ministry of Social Security in Pyongyang. RFA was unable to determine exactly why.

A resident of nearby South Hamgyong told RFA that he was unable to visit his aunt on her 70th birthday. She lives in Taehongdan, Ryanggang Province, which borders China

“I went through all the procedures, I prepared and submitted all of the documents, but I gave up on travelling after hearing that entry to the border area would not be approved on the occasion of Kim Jong Il’s birthday,” he said.

The South Hamgyong resident said that his family rarely sees his aunt, his mother’s only sibling, and it’s usually when she is able to come to South Hamgyong, not the other way around.

But now she is in poor health due to her advanced age, he said.

“We thought that this might be the last time we could see her,” he said. “I tried to go this time to celebrate her birthday, but I could not. We said hello over the phone.”

Translated by Claire S. Lee. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Ahn Chang Gyu and Moon Sung Whui for RFA Korean.

Local S.A. TVHD Online’s Akhara and Cambodia Star Daily News 24/24’s Socheat were detained on January 21 after their outlets shared the video that was allegedly filmed at a cyberscam compound in the capital Phnom Penh, according to news reports and local rights group Licadho. 

Phnom Penh police issued a statement accusing the journalists of spreading false information that caused social chaos, jeopardized national security, and affected the dignity of national leaders. Both have apologized for publishing the video, according to S.A. TVHD Online, which posted copies of their apology letters to Prime Minister Hun Manet on its Facebook page.

“Cambodian authorities must drop the incitement charges against journalists Duong Akhara and Lay Socheat and free them immediately,” said Shawn Crispin, CPJ’s senior Southeast Asia representative. “Journalists should never be imprisoned for merely doing their jobs of reporting the news.”

The journalists face charges of incitement to commit a felony under Article 495 of the Criminal Code, which carries a maximum penalty of two years in prison, a Licadho representative told CPJ on condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisal. The journalists are being detained at Phnom Penh’s Correctional Center 1 prison, the Licadho source said.

Journalists who have reported on Cambodia’s criminal cyberscam centers — where workers are often trafficked, held by force, and forced to defraud their online victims — have faced threats and reprisals, according to news reports and CPJ reporting.

Neither news outlet immediately replied to CPJ’s emailed request for comment. Cambodia’s Ministry of Information did not reply to CPJ’s emailed request for comment.  

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

An exiled West Papuan leader has called for unity among his people in the face of a renewed “colonial grip” of Indonesia’s new president.

President Prabowo Subianto, who took office last month, “is a deep concern for all West Papuans”, said Benny Wenda of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP).

Speaking at the Oxford Green Fair yesterday — Morning Star flag-raising day — ULMWP’s interim president said Prabowo had already “sent thousands of additional troops to West Papua” and restarted the illegal settlement programme that had marginalised Papuans and made them a minority in their own land.

• READ MORE: Civil society groups call on Pacific leaders to ‘take responsibility’ over Papua injustices
• West Papua: Once was Papuan Independence Day, now facing ‘ecocide’, transmigration
• Papua’s Awyu tribal homeland at risk after losing court battle
• Other West Papua reports

“He is continuing to destroy our land to create the biggest deforestation project in the history of the world. This network of sugarcane and rice plantations is as big as Wales.

“But we cannot panic. The threat from [President] Prabowo shows that unity and direction is more important than ever.

Indonesia doesn’t fear a divided movement. They do fear the ULMWP, because they know we are the most serious and direct challenge to their colonial grip.”

Here is the text of the speech that Wenda gave while opening the Oxford Green Fair at Oxford Town Hall:

Wenda’s speech
December 1st is the day the West Papuan nation was born.

On this day 63 years ago, the New Guinea Council raised the Morning Star across West Papua for the first time.

We sang our national anthem and announced our Parliament, in a ceremony recognised by Australia, the UK, France, and the Netherlands, our former coloniser. But our new state was quickly stolen from us by Indonesian colonialism.

This day is important to all West Papuans. While we remember all those we have lost in the struggle, we also celebrate our continued resistance to Indonesian colonialism.

On this day in 2020, we announced the formation of the Provisional Government of West Papua. Since then, we have built up our strength on the ground. We now have a constitution, a cabinet, a Green State Vision, and seven executives representing the seven customary regions of West Papua.

Most importantly, we have a people’s mandate. The 2023 ULMWP Congress was first ever democratic election in the history. Over 5000 West Papuans gathered in Jayapura to choose their leaders and take ownership of their movement. This was a huge sacrifice for those on the ground. But it was necessary to show that we are implementing democracy before we have achieved independence.

The outcome of this historic event was the clarification and confirmation of our roadmap by the people. Our three agendas have been endorsed by Congress: full membership of the MSG [Melanesian Spearhead Group], a UN High Commissioner for Human Rights visit to West Papua, and a resolution at the UN General Assembly. Through our Congress, we place the West Papuan struggle directly in the hands of the people. Whenever our moment comes, the ULMWP will be ready to seize it.

Differing views
I want to remind the world that internal division is an inevitable part of any revolution. No national struggle has avoided it. In any democratic country or movement, there will be differing views and approaches.

But the ULMWP and our constitution is the only way to achieve our goal of liberation. We are demonstrating to Indonesia that we are not separatists, bending this way and that way: we are a government-in-waiting representing the unified will of our people. Through the provisional government we are reclaiming our sovereignty. And as a government, we are ready to engage with the world. We are ready to engage with Indonesia as full members of the Melanesian Spearhead Group, and we believe we will achieve this crucial goal in 2024.

The importance of unity is also reflected in the ULMWP’s approach to West Papuan history. As enshrined in our constitution, the ULMWP recognises all previous declarations as legitimate and historic moments in our struggle. This does not just include 1961, but also the OPM Independence Declaration 1971, the 14-star declaration of West Melanesia in 1988, the Papuan People’s Congress in 2000, and the Third West Papuan Congress in 2011.

All these announcements represent an absolute rejection of Indonesian colonialism. The spirit of Merdeka is in all of them.

The new Indonesian President, Prabowo Subianto, is a deep concern for all West Papuans. He has already sent thousands of additional troops to West Papua and restarted the illegal settlement programme that has marginalised us and made us a minority in our own land. He is continuing to destroy our land to create the biggest deforestation project in the history of the world. This network of sugarcane and rice plantations is as big as Wales.

But we cannot panic. The threat from Prabowo shows that unity and direction is more important than ever. Indonesia doesn’t fear a divided movement. They do fear the ULMWP, because they know we are the most serious and direct challenge to their colonial grip.

I therefore call on all West Papuans, whether in the cities, the bush, the refugee camps or in exile, to unite behind the ULMWP Provisional Government. We work towards this agenda at every opportunity. We continue to pressure on United Nations and the international community to review the fraudulent ‘Act of No Choice’, and to uphold my people’s legal and moral right to choose our own destiny.

I also call on all our solidarity groups to respect our Congress and our people’s mandate. The democratic right of the people of West Papua needs to be acknowledged.

What does amnesty mean?
Prabowo has also mentioned an amnesty for West Papuan political prisoners. What does this amnesty mean? Does amnesty mean I can return to West Papua and lead the struggle from inside? All West Papuans support independence; all West Papuans want to raise the Morning Star; all West Papuans want to be free from colonial rule.

But pro-independence actions of any kind are illegal in West Papua. If we raise our flag or talk about self-determination, we are beaten, arrested or jailed. The whole world saw what happened to Defianus Kogoya in April. He was tortured, stabbed, and kicked in a barrel full of bloody water. If the offer of amnesty is real, it must involve releasing all West Papuan political prisoners. It must involve allowing us to peacefully struggle for our freedom without the threat of imprisonment.

Despite Prabowo’s election, this has been a year of progress for our struggle. The Pacific Islands Forum reaffirmed their call for a UN Human Rights Visit to West Papua. This is not just our demand – more than 100 nations have now insisted on this important visit. We have built vital new links across the world, including through our ULMWP delegation at the UN General Assembly.

Through the creation of the West Papua People’s Liberation Front (GR-PWP), our struggle on the ground has reached new heights. Thank you and congratulations to the GR-PWP Administration for your work.

Thank you also to the KNPB and the Alliance of Papuan Students, you are vital elements in our fight for self-determination and are acknowledged in our Congress resolutions. You carry the spirit of Merdeka with you.

I invite all solidarity organisations, including Indonesian solidarity, around the world to preserve our unity by respecting our constitution and Congress. To Indonesian settlers living in our ancestral land, please respect our struggle for self-determination. I also ask that all our military wings unite under the constitution and respect the democratic Congress resolutions.

I invite all West Papuans – living in the bush, in exile, in refugee camps, in the cities or villages – to unite behind your constitution. We are stronger together.

Thank you to Vanuatu
A special thank you to Vanuatu government and people, who are our most consistent and strongest supporters. Thank you to Fiji, Kanaky, PNG, Solomon Islands, and to Pacific Islands Forum and MSG for reaffirming your support for a UN visit. Thank you to the International Lawyers for West Papua and the International Parliamentarians for West Papua.

I hope you will continue to support the West Papuan struggle for self-determination. This is a moral obligation for all Pacific people. Thank you to all religious leaders, and particularly the Pacific Council of Churches and the West Papua Council of Churches, for your consistent support and prayers.

Thank you to all the solidarity groups in the Pacific who are tirelessly supporting the campaign, and in Europe, Australia, Africa, and the Caribbean.

I also give thanks to the West Papua Legislative Council, Buchtar Tabuni and Bazoka Logo, to the Judicative Council and to Prime Minister Edison Waromi. Your work to build our capacity on the ground is incredible and essential to all our achievements. You have pushed forwards all our recent milestones, our Congress, our constitution, government, cabinet, and vision.

Together, we are proving to the world and to Indonesia that we are ready to govern our own affairs.

To the people of West Papua, stay strong and determined. Independence is coming. One day soon we will walk our mountains and rivers without fear of Indonesian soldiers. The Morning Star will fly freely alongside other independent countries of the Pacific.

Until then, stay focused and have courage. The struggle is long but we will win. Your ancestors are with you.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

By Te Aniwaniwa Paterson of Te Ao Māori News

On 1 December 1961, West Papua’s national flag, known as the Morning Star, was raised for the first time as a declaration of West Papua’s independence from the Netherlands.

Sixty-three years later, West Papua is claimed by and occupied by Indonesia, which has banned the flag, which still carries aspirations for self-determination and liberation.

The flag continues to be raised globally on December 1 each year on what is still called “Papuan Independence Day”.

• READ MORE: Papua’s Awyu tribal homeland at risk after losing court battle
• Other West Papua reports

Region-wide protests
Protests have been building in West Papua since the new Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto announced the revival of the Transmigration Programme to West Papua.

This was declared a day after he came to power on October 21 and confirmed fears from West Papuans about Prabowo’s rise to power.

This is because Prabowo is a former general known for a trail of allegations of war crimes and human rights abuses in West Papua and East Timor to his name.

Transmigration’s role
The transmigration programme began before Indonesia gained independence from the Dutch colonial government, intended to reduce “overcrowding” in Java and to provide a workforce for plantations in Sumatra.

After independence ended and under Indonesian rule, the programme expanded and in 1969 transmigration to West Papua was started.

This was also the year of the controversial “Act of Free Choice” where a small group of Papuans were coerced by Indonesia into a unanimous vote against their independence.

In 2001 the state-backed transmigration programme ended but, by then, over three-quarters of a million Indonesians had been relocated to West Papua. Although the official transmigration stopped, migration of Indonesians continued via agriculture and development projects.

Indonesia has also said transmigration helps with cultural exchange to unite the West Papuans so they are one nation — “Indonesian”.

West Papuan human rights activist Rosa Moiwend said in the 1980s that Indonesians used the language of “humanising West Papuans” through erasing their indigenous identity.

“It’s a racist kind of thing because they think West Papuans were not fully human,” Moiwend said.

Pathway to environmental destruction
Papuans believe this was to dilute the Indigenous Melanesian population, and to secure the control of their natural resources, to conduct mining, oil and gas extraction and deforestation.

This is because in the past the transmigration programme was tied to agricultural settlements where, following the deforestation of conservation forests, Indonesian migrants worked on agricultural projects such as rice fields and palm oil plantations.

Octo Mote is the vice-president of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP). Earlier this year Te Ao Māori News interviewed Mote on the “ecocide and genocide” and the history of how Indonesia gained power over West Papua.

The ecology in West Papua was being damaged by mining, deforestation, and oil and gas extraction, he said. Mote said Indonesia wanted to “wipe them from the land and control their natural resources”.

He emphasised that defending West Papua meant defending the world, because New Guinea had the third-largest rainforest after the Amazon and Congo and was crucial for climate change mitigation as they sequester and store carbon.

Concerns grow over militarisation
Moiwend said the other concern right now was the National Strategic Project which developed projects to focus on Indonesian self-sufficiency in food and energy.

Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE) started in 2011, so isn’t a new project, but it has failed to deliver many times and was described by Global Atlas of Environmental Justice as a “textbook land grab”.

The mega-project includes the deforestation of a million hectares for rice fields and an additional 600,000 hectares for sugar cane plantations that will be used to make bioethanol.

The project is managed by the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Agriculture, and the private company, Jhonlin Group, owned by Haji Andi Syamsuddin Arsyad. Ironically, given the project has been promoted to address climate issues, Arsyad is a coal magnate, a primary industry responsible for man-made climate change.

Recently, the Indonesian government announced the deployment of five military battalions to the project site.

Conservation news website Mongabay reported that the villages in the project site had a population of 3000 people whereas a battalion consisted of usually 1000 soldiers, which meant there would be more soldiers than locals and the villagers said it felt as if their home would be turned into a “war zone”.

Merauke is where Moiwend’s village is and many of her cousins and family are protesting and, although there haven’t been any incidents yet, with increased militarisation she feared for the lives of her family as the Indonesian military had killed civilians in the past.

Destruction of spiritual ancestors
The destruction of the environment was also the killing of their dema (spiritual ancestors), she said.

The dema represented and protected different components of nature, with a dema for fish, the sago palm, and the coconut tree.

Traditionally when planting taro, kumara or yam, they chanted and sang for the dema of those plants to ensure an abundant harvest.

Moiwend said they connected to their identity through calling on the name of the dema that was their totem.

She said her totem was the coconut and when she needed healing she would find a coconut tree, drink coconut water, and call to the dema for help.

There were places where the dema lived that humans were not meant to enter but many sacred forests had been deforested.

She said the Indonesians had destroyed their food sources, their connection to their spirituality as well destroying their humanity.

“Anim Ha means the great human being,” she said, “to become a great human being you have to have a certain quality of life, and one quality of life is the connection to your dema, your spiritual realm.”

Te Aniwaniwa Paterson is a digital producer for Te Ao Māori News. Republished with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

President-elect Donald Trump has tapped several TV personalities for key posts in his incoming administration, including Dr. Mehmet Oz to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, an agency that oversees health coverage for 150 million people. Oz, who ran an unsuccessful campaign for Senate in Pennsylvania in 2022, supports privatizing Medicare. “His background really has nothing to do with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services,” says Dr. Robert Steinbrook, director of the Health Research Group for Public Citizen.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

An exiled West Papuan leader has called on supporters globally to show their support by raising the Morning Star flag — banned by Indonesia — on December 1.

“Whether in your house, your workplace, the beach, the mountains or anywhere else, please raise our flag and send us a picture,” said United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) interim president Benny Wenda.

“By doing so, you give West Papuans strength and courage and show us we are not alone.”

• READ MORE: Other West Papua reports

The plea came in response to a dramatic step-up in military reinforcements for the Melanesian region by new President Prabowo Subianto, who was inaugurated last month, in an apparent signal for a new crackdown on colonised Papuans.

January 1 almost 63 years ago was when the Morning Star flag of independence was flown for the first time in the former Dutch colony. However, Indonesia took over in a so-called “Act of Free Choice” that has been widely condemned as a sham.

“The situation in occupied West Papua is on a knife edge,” said the UK-based Wenda in a statement on the ULMWP website.

He added that President Prabowo had announced the return of a “genocidal transmigration settlement policy”.

Indigenous people a minority
“From the 1970s, transmigration brought hundreds of thousands of Javanese settlers into West Papua, ultimately making the Indigenous people a minority in our own land,” Wenda said.

“At the same time, Prabowo [is sending] thousands of soldiers to Merauke to safeguard the destruction of our ancestral forest for a set of gigantic ecocidal developments.

West Papuan students in Wamena reject the settler-colonial transmigration plan today (13/11/24).

Bigger rallies are coming. pic.twitter.com/Vt4tjBAe8Y

— Veronica Koman 許愛茜 (@VeronicaKoman) November 13, 2024

“Five million hectares of Papuan forest are set to be ripped down for sugarcane and rice plantations.

“West Papuans are resisting Prabowo’s plan to wipe us out, but we need all our supporters to stand beside us as we battle this terrifying new threat.”

The Morning Star is illegal in West Papua and frequently protesters who have breached this law have faced heavy jail sentences.

“If we raise [the flag], paint it on our faces, draw it on a banner, or even wear its colours on a bracelet, we can face up to 15 or 20 years in prison.

“This is why we need people to fly the flag for us. As ever, we will be proudly flying the Morning Star above Oxford Town Hall. But we want to see our supporters hold flag raisings everywhere — on every continent.

‘Inhabiting our struggle’
“Whenever you raise the flag, you are inhabiting the spirit of our struggle.”

Wenda appealed to everyone in West Papua — “whether you are in the cities, the villages, or living as a refugee or fighter in the bush” — to make December 1 a day of prayer and reflection on the struggle.

“We remember our ancestors and those who have been killed by the Indonesian coloniser, and strengthen our resolve to carry on fighting for Merdeka — our independence.”

Wenda said the peaceful struggle was making “great strides forward” with a constitution, a cabinet operating on the ground, and a provisional government with a people’s mandate.

“We know that one day soon the Morning Star will fly freely in our West Papuan homeland,” he said.

“But for now, West Papuans risk arrest and imprisonment if we wave our national flag. We need our supporters around the world to fly it for us, as we look forward to a Free West Papua.”

• Wenda appealed to people to send their flag-raising pictures to: office@freewestpapua.org

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Anger and fear have greeted the return to power of former US strongman Donald Trump, a corrupt far-white extremist coup plotter who is also a convicted felon and rapist, following this week’s shock presidential election result.

Ethnic tensions have been on the rise with members of the historically oppressed minority Black ethnic group reporting receiving threatening text messages, warning of a return to an era of enslavement.

In a startling editorial, the tension-wracked country’s paper of record, The New York Times, declared that the country had made “a perilous choice” and that its fragile democracy was now on “a precarious course”.

• READ MORE: Kamala Harris’s support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza ‘betrayal of true feminism’
• ‘All-out catastrophe’: Famine fears as Israeli siege of north Gaza tightens
• Pacific nation leaders look forward to strengthened US relations with Trump
• All in all, Trump’s election is a calamity in he making — Paul Buchanan
• Other Israeli war on Gaza reports

President-elect Trump’s victory marks the second time in eight years the extremist leader, who is awaiting sentencing after being convicted of using campaign funds to pay off a porn star he had cheated on his wife with, has defeated a female opponent from the ruling Democratic Party.

Women continue to struggle to reach the highest office in the deeply conservative nation where their rights are increasingly under attack and child marriage is widespread.

This has prompted traumatised supporters of Vice-President Kamala Harris, who had been handpicked to replace the unpopular, ageing incumbent, Joe Biden, to accuse American voters of racism to sexism.

“It’s misogyny from Hispanic men, it’s misogyny from Black . . . who do not want a woman leading them,” insisted one TV anchor, adding that there “might be race issues with Hispanics that don’t want a Black woman as president of the United States.”

Hateful tribal rhetoric
The hateful tribal rhetoric has also included social media posts calling for any people of mixed race who failed to vote for Harris to be deported and for intensification of the genocide in Gaza due to Arab-American rejection of Harris over her support for the continued provision of weapons to the brutal apartheid state committing it.

America Makes a Perilous Choice https://t.co/sKW5ZZa3Q3

— Xandre Rodríguez (@xandrerodriguez) November 6, 2024

“Victory has many fathers but defeat is an orphan,” goes the saying popularised by former US President John F Kennedy, who was shot 61 years ago this month.

The reluctance to attribute the loss to the grave and gratuitous missteps made by the Harris campaign has mystified America-watchers around the world.

As an example, analysts point to her wholesale embrace of the Biden regime’s genocidal policy in the Middle East despite opinion polls showing that it was alienating voters.

Harris and her supporters had tried to counter that by claiming that Trump would also be genocidal and that she would ameliorate the pain of bereaved families in the US by lowering the price of groceries.

However, the election results showed that this was not a message voters appreciated. “Genocide is bad politics,” said one Arab-American activist.

Worried over democracy
As the scale of the extremists’ electoral win becomes increasingly clear, having taken control of not just the presidency but the upper house of Congress as well, many are worried about the prospects for democracy in the US which is still struggling to emerge from Trump’s first term.

Despite conceding defeat, Harris has pledged to continue to “wage this fight” even as pro-democracy protests have broken out in several cities, raising fears of violence and political uncertainty in the gun-strewn country.

This could imperil stability in North America and sub-Scandinavian Europe where a Caucasian Spring democratic revolution has failed to take hold, and a plethora of white-wing authoritarian populists have instead come to power across the region.

However, there is a silver lining. The elections themselves were a massive improvement over the chaotic and shambolic, disputed November 2020 presidential polls which paved the way for a failed putsch two months later.

This time, the voting was largely peaceful and there was relatively little delay in releasing results, a remarkable achievement for the numeracy-challenged nation where conspiracy theorists remain suspicious about the Islamic origins of mathematics, seeing it is as a ploy by the terror group “Al Jibra” to introduce Sharia Law to the US.

In the coming months and years, there will be a need for the international community to stay engaged with the US and assist the country to try and undertake much-needed reforms to its electoral and governance systems, including changes to its constitution.

During the campaigns, Harris loyalists warned that a win by Trump could lead to the complete gutting of its weak democratic systems, an outcome the world must work hard to avoid.

However, figuring out how to support reform in the US and engage with a Trump regime while not being seen to legitimise the election of a man convicted of serious crimes, will be a tricky challenge for the globe’s mature Third-World democracies.

Many may be forced to limit direct contact with him. “Choices have consequences,” as a US diplomat eloquently put it 11 years ago.

Patrick Gathara is a Kenyan journalist, cartoonist, blogger and author. He is also senior editor for inclusive storytelling at The New Humanitarian. This article was first published by Al Jazeera and is republished under Creative Commons.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

In December 2008, I visited the Abepura prison in Jayapura, West Papua, to verify a report sent to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture alleging abuses inside the jailhouse, as well as shortages of food and water.

After prison guards checked my bag, I passed through a metal detector into the prison hall, joining the Sunday service with about 30 prisoners. A man sat near me. He had a thick beard and wore a small Morning Star flag on his chest.

The flag, a symbol of independence for West Papua, is banned by the Indonesian authorities, so I was a little surprised to see it worn inside the prison.

• READ MORE: ‘If It’s Not Racism, What Is It?’
• Other West Papua reports

He politely introduced himself, “Filep Karma.”

I immediately recognised him. Karma was arrested in 2004 after giving a speech on West Papua nationalism, and had been sentenced to 15 years in prison for “treason”.

When I asked him about torture victims in the prison, he introduced me to some other prisoners, so I could verify the allegations.

It was the beginning of my many interviews with Karma. And I began to understand what made him such a courageous leader.

Born in 1959 in Jayapura, Karma was raised in an elite, educated family.

Student-led protests
In 1998, when Karma returned after studying from the Asian Institute of Management in Manila, he found Indonesia engulfed in student-led protests against the authoritarian rule of President Suharto.

On 2 July 1998, he led a ceremony to peacefully raise the Morning Star flag on Biak Island. It prompted a deadly attack by the Indonesian military that the authorities said killed at least eight Papuans, but Papuans recovered 32 bodies. Karma was arrested and sentenced to 18 months in prison.

Karma gradually emerged as a leader who campaigned peacefully but tirelessly on behalf of the rights of Indigenous Papuans. He also worked as a civil servant, training new government employees.

He was invariably straightforward and precise. He provided detailed data, including names, dates, and actions about torture and other mistreatment at Abepura prison.

Human Rights Watch published these investigations in June 2009. It had quite an impact, prompting media pressure that forced the Ministry of Law and Human Rights to investigate the allegations.

In August 2009, Karma became seriously ill and was hospitalised at the Dok Dua hospital. The doctors examined him several times, and finally, in October, recommended that he be sent for surgery that could only be done in Jakarta.

But bureaucracy, either deliberately or through incompetence, kept delaying his treatment. “I used to be a bureaucrat myself,” Karma said. “But I have never experienced such [use of] red tape on a sick man.”

Health crowdfunding
His health problems, however, drew public attention. Papuan activists started collecting money to pay for the airfare and surgery in Jakarta. I helped write a crowdfunding proposal. People deposited the donations directly into his bank account.

I was surprised when I found out that the total donation, including from some churches, had almost reached IDR1 billion (US$700,000). It was enough to also pay for his mother, Eklefina Noriwari, an uncle, a cousin and an assistant to travel with him. They rented a guest house near the hospital.

Some wondered why he travelled with such a large entourage. The answer is that Indigenous Papuans distrust the Indonesian government. Many of their political leaders had mysteriously died while receiving medical treatment in Jakarta. They wanted to ensure that Filep Karma was safe.

When he was admitted to Cikini hospital, the ward had a small security cordon. I saw many Indonesian security people, including four prison guards, guarding his room, but also church delegates, visiting him.

Papuan students, mostly waiting in the inner yard, said they wanted to make sure, “Our leader is okay.”

After a two-hour surgery, Karma recovered quickly, inviting me and my wife to visit him. His mother and his two daughters, Audryn and Andrefina, also visited my Jakarta apartment. In July 2011, after 11 days in the hospital, he was considered fit enough to return to prison.

In May 2011, the Washington-based Freedom Now filed a petition with the UN Working Group on arbitrary detention on Karma’s behalf. Six months later, the Working Group determined that his detention violated international standards, saying that Indonesia’s courts “disproportionately” used the laws against treason, and called for his immediate release.

President refused to act
But President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono refused to act, prompting criticism at the UN forum on the discrimination and abuses against Papuans.

I often visited Karma in prison. He took a correspondence course at Universitas Terbuka, studying police science. He read voraciously.

He studied Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King on non-violent movements and moral courage. He also drew, using pencil and charcoal. He surprised me with my portrait that he drew on a Jacob’s biscuit box.

His name began to appear globally. Chinese artist Ai Weiwei drew political prisoners, including Karma, in an exhibition at Alcatraz prison near San Francisco. Amnesty International produced a video about Karma.

Interestingly, he also read my 2011 book on journalism, “Agama” Saya Adalah Jurnalisme (My “Religion” Is Journalism), apparently inspiring him to write his own book. He used an audio recorder to express his thoughts, asking his friends to type and to print outside, which he then edited.

His 137-page book was published in November 2014, entitled, Seakan Kitorang Setengah Binatang: Rasialisme Indonesia di Tanah Papua (As If We’re Half Animals: Indonesian Racism in West Papua). It became a very important book on racism against Indigenous Papuans in Indonesia.

The Indonesian government, under new President Joko Widodo, finally released Karma in November 2015, and after that gradually released more than 110 political prisoners from West Papua and the Maluku Islands.

Release from jail celebration
Hundreds of Papuan activists welcomed Karma, bringing him from the prison to a field to celebrate with dancing and singing. He called me that night, saying that he had that “strange feeling” of missing the Abepura prison, his many inmate friends, his vegetable garden, as well as the boxing club, which he managed. He had spent 11 years inside the Abepura prison.

“It’s nice to be back home though,” he said laughing.

He slowly rebuilt his activism, traveling to many university campuses throughout Indonesia, also overseas, and talking about human rights abuses, the environmental destruction in West Papua, as well as his advocacy for an independent West Papua.

Students often invited him to talk about his book.

In Jakarta, he rented a studio near my apartment as his stopping point. We met socially, and also attended public meetings together. I organised his birthday party in August 2018. He bought new gear for his scuba diving. My wife, Sapariah, herself a diving enthusiast, noted that Karma was an excellent diver: “He swims like a fish.”

The resistance of Papuans in Indonesia to discrimination took on a new phase following a 17 August 2019 attack by security forces on a Papuan student dormitory in Surabaya, Indonesia’s second largest city, in which the students were subjected to racial insults.

The attack renewed discussions on anti-Papuan racial discrimination and sovereignty for West Papua. Papuan students and others acting through a social media movement called Papuan Lives Matter, inspired by Black Lives Matter in the United States, took part in a wave of protests that broke out in many parts of Indonesia.

Everyone reading Karma’s book
Everyone was reading Filep Karma’s book. Karma protested when these young activists, many of whom he personally knew, such as Sayang Mandabayan, Surya Anta Ginting and Victor Yeimo, were arrested and charged with treason.

“Protesting racism should not be considered treason,” he said.

The Indonesian government responded by detaining hundreds. Papuans Behind Bars, a nongovernmental organisation that monitors politically motivated arrests in West Papua, recorded 418 new cases from October 2020 to September 2021. At least 245 of them were charged, found guilty, and imprisoned for joining the protests, with 109 convicted of “treason”.

However, while in the past, Papuans charged with political offences typically were sentenced to years — in Karma’s case, 15 years — in the recent cases, perhaps because of international and domestic attention, the Indonesian courts handed down much shorter sentences, often time already served.

The coronavirus pandemic halted his activism in 2020-2022. He had plenty of time for scuba diving and spearfishing. Once he posted on Facebook that when a shark tried to steal his fish, he smacked it on the snout.

On 1 November 2022, my good friend Filep Karma was found dead on a Jayapura beach. He had apparently gone diving alone. He was wearing his scuba diving suit.

His mother, Eklefina Noriwari, called me that morning, telling me that her son had died. “I know you’re his close friend,” she told me. “Please don’t be sad. He died doing what he liked best . . . the sea, the swimming, the diving.”

West Papua was in shock. More than 30,000 people attended his funeral, flying the Morning Star flag, as their last act of respect for a courageous man. Mourners heard the speakers celebrating Filep Karma’s life, and then quietly went home.

It was peaceful. And this is exactly what Filep Karma’s message is about.

Andreas Harsono is the Indonesia researcher at Human Rights Watch and the author of its new report, “If It’s Not Racism, What Is It?”: Discrimination and Other Abuses Against Papuans in Indonesia. This article was first published by RNZ Pacific.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Published in the Christchurch Star newspaper yesterday — this was the advert rejected last week by Stuff, New Zealand’s major news website, by an editorial management which apparently thinks pro-Israel sympathies are more important than the industrial-scale slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza and Lebanon.

Stuff told the Palestinian Solidarity Movement Aotearoa (PSNA) on Thursday last week it would not print this full-page “genocide in their own words” advertisement which had been booked and paid to go in all Stuff newspapers this week.

Stuff gave no “official” reason for banning the advert about Israel’s war in Gaza aside from saying they would not do so “while the ongoing conflict is developing”.

• READ MORE: UN inquiry accuses Israel of crime of ‘extermination’ in Gaza
• Stop telling us porkies – appeal to NZ media to stop reporting debunked Israeli war propaganda as though it was true – John Minto
• One year of Israel’s war on Gaza: Key moments since October 7

It seems that for Stuff, pro-Israel sympathies are more important that Palestinian realities.

It’s worth pointing out that Stuff has, over many years, printed full page advertisements from a Christian Zionist, Pastor Nigel Woodley, from Hastings.

Woodley’s advertisements have been full of the most egregious, fanciful, misinformation and anti-Palestinian racism.

Our advertisement on the other hand is 100 percent factual and speaks truth to power – demanding the New Zealand government hold Israel to account for its war crimes and 76-years of brutal military occupation of Palestine.

• We would like the public to judge our advertisement – it is online here in the Christchurch Star on Page 9.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

On the evening of Saturday, May 18, Iraqi Kurdistan Asayish security forces arrested Star, a presenter at local media agency Tiwar News, while he traveled from the eastern city of Sulaymaniyah with his wife and two children at a checkpoint near Koysinjaq city in Erbil province, according to his outlet and an Asayish statement. The Asayish security forces seized Star’s car and took the journalist to their headquarters in Sulaymaniyah.

The Kurdistan Region Security Agency said Star was charged with preparing and presenting “false and misleading news reports” on an informal social media page that incited chaos and terror. If convicted of insulting government officials and public authorities, Star faces up to seven years in prison or an unspecified fine.

The Asayish forces are the primary security and intelligence agency in Iraqi Kurdistan, and its forces are significantly influenced by the two main Kurdish political parties: the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). Koysinjaq is the only district in Erbil province that is under PUK control and is secured by its Asayish forces.

Asayish security forces have detained, raided, and harassed dozens of journalists in the last three years.

“Iraqi Kurdish authorities have made a habit out of jailing journalists critical of the ruling parties, and the practice must end,” said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna, in New York. “Iraqi Kurdish authorities must immediately release journalist Shakar Star and all others imprisoned.”

Rebaz Abdullah, head of Tiwar News, told CPJ via messaging app that he thinks Star’s arrest stems from a series of four news reports published in April and May on Tiwar News’ social media titled “Welcome to the Emirate of Smuggling [Sulaymaniyah], which documented information about the smuggling of gold, U.S. dollars, weapons, drugs, and human trafficking, and implicated Sulaymaniyah security forces.

Tiwar News issued a Sunday statement saying Star had not received a formal arrest warrant, only a verbal summons, which they “viewed as a threat rather than a legal action.” The statement also said Star only presented the reports, which were written by a team of professional editors.

“Star only read them; he didn’t write them,” Abdullah told CPJ.

Reached by phone, Salam Abdulkhaliq, spokesperson of the Kurdistan Region Security Agency, told CPJ, “I have nothing more [to say] than the statement.” CPJ called Saadi Ahmed Pira, a PUK party spokesperson, for comment but received no response.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Wu was approached by the film crew after wrapping up filming of the online drama "Hey! Come a bit closer" in China last year, and told to sign the agreement or the show would never be aired, her agent Chen Hsiao-chih told several Taiwanese media outlets in recent days.

According to Wu's agent, the practice is now commonplace when Taiwanese artists work in China, and plenty of other stars have been forced to sign agreements pledging that Taiwan is "a part of China," and that there can be no independence for the island, according to reports in the island’s Central News Agency, Liberty Times and TVBS.

Taiwan has never been ruled by the Chinese Communist Party, nor formed part of the 74-year-old People’s Republic of China, and most of its 23 million people have no wish to give up their sovereignty or democratic way of life to be ruled by China, according to multiple public opinion polls in recent years.

The news about the agreements has highlighted concerns over China's "soft power" influence over Taiwan, as Beijing vows to achieve "peaceful unification" with the island through propaganda and economic pressures.

Signing agreements

A former film and television industry worker who gave only the surname Chen for fear of reprisals said such requests are common, and don't typically come from Chinese officials, but from the production team of the show that Taiwanese artists are working on.

"The Chinese producers have put a lot of money into filming these shows, and they're afraid that if the artist gets into trouble after filming is done, the whole drama will be thrown out [by ruling Chinese Communist Party censors]," Chen told RFA Mandarin in an interview on May 9. "So they ask the artists to make a commitment in that regard."

He said all artists, including Chinese nationals, are asked to sign commitments to refrain from drugs or pornography or anything else that could endanger the reputation of the show.

The version of the agreements handed to Taiwanese artists also includes a commitment to support Beijing's claim on China, or to refrain from supporting independence for Taiwan, Chen said, adding that anyone who doesn't comply will likely be added to a Chinese government blacklist, which means the huge and lucrative Chinese market is closed to them.

"Artists need to be very clear about this — it's unreasonable to criticize them and to still want to make money from them," Chen said, adding that most artists "aren't very political," and are willing to comply.

"The Chinese market is so big, that they don't see the need to offend people just to make a fuss about something," Chen said. 

He said the deals have become more ubiquitous with the rise in tensions across the Taiwan Strait that followed the landslide victory of ruling Democratic Progressive Party President Tsai Ing-wen in 2016.

'Forced to take sides'

While it has refused to rule out invading Taiwan by military force, Beijing vowed in January to step up its efforts to achieve "peaceful unification" with the island after Taiwanese voters in January elected Beijing's least favorite candidate Lai Ching-te — Tsai's right-hand man — as their next president.

"Peaceful unification" refers to the Chinese Communist Party's attempts to bring the island under its control through propaganda, threats and infiltration rather than armed invasion, analysts have told RFA in recent interviews.

"They wouldn't be asking artists to sign such deals if the leaders on both sides of the Taiwan Strait were in a state of harmony," Chen said. "When there are high-level political tensions, then people further down are unlucky enough to be forced to take sides."

An employee of Taiwan's terrestrial broadcaster TTV who asked to be identified only by the surname Wang said she, too, would steer clear of hiring people with known political views to make entertainment shows.

"We're a purely commercial TV station with no political affiliation, so we would definitely consider when filming TV shows and movies whether someone we hire has a specific political orientation," Wang said. "We would avoid hiring politicians."

"While professional criteria are given priority, we would still be concerned if the political overtones were too strong," she said.

She said some shows that do showcase political themes simply won't sell in the heavily restricted Chinese market.

"There are a lot of people in the film and TV industry who are unable to sell their shows or movies due to political leanings," Wang said. 

"But it's a choice — some see the Chinese market as very important, so won't go anywhere near politics, while others give politics top priority," she said.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Roseanne Gerin.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Jenny Tang for RFA Mandarin.

But the woke overlords of showbiz aren’t getting the message. Ever since the bold and the beautiful of Hollywood paraded before the cameras in the solemn chic of designer black at the 2017 Golden Globe awards—a brazenly narcissistic turn of sanctimony amid the then-burgeoning me-too movement—the monied players of Tinseltown have doubled and redoubled their contortions of subservience to the orthodoxies of woke, the preferred modality of hipster posturing among the neoliberal corporate and cultural elites.

Chris Hedges, in his essay “Woke Imperialism,” has aptly labeled this kind of empty moral exhibitionism as “boutique activism … an advertising gimmick, a brand, used to mask mounting social inequality and imperial folly.” Christopher Lasch noted that “the new social movements—feminism, gay rights, welfare rights, agitation against racial discrimination—have nothing in common, but their only coherent demand aims at inclusion in the dominant structures rather than at a revolutionary transformation in social relations.”

What gives the sham away, of course, is the hearty embrace of woke by corporate establishment, not least in its fostering of the illusion of social mobility through the cosmetic application of a purely representational “diversity” in leadership positions in companies, universities, and public office. As Lasch noted, “High rates of mobility are by no means inconsistent with a system of stratification that concentrates power and privilege in a ruling elite. Indeed, the circulation of elites strengthens the principle of hierarchy, furnishing elites with fresh talent and legitimating their ascendancy as a function of merit rather than birth.” Or, as Walter Benn Michaels succinctly put it, “You definitely know you’re in a world that loves neoliberalism when the fact that some people of color are rich and powerful is regarded as a victory for all the people of color who aren’t.”

Behind its facade of representational sensitivities, “woke” betrays a troubling elitist propensity for bureaucratic-authoritarian modalities of thought and action: the by-now obligatory, chilling university speech codes; the mandated skittishness over psychological “safety”; and the endlessly ramifying codification of gender and racial quotas for the staffing of corporate and educational hierarchies and public offices. Far from challenging entrenched power, this ominous extension of the modern administrative-bureaucratic Leviathan—by means formal and informal, tacit and explicit—conforms all too well to the authoritarianism of modern governance.

In this amalgam of bureaucratic remedies and elite heterogeneity, one searches in vain for a glimmer of authentic progressivism of the kind that has traditionally addressed itself to the plight of those at the bottom. Like the rest of the neoliberal agenda, woke ideology benefits the few at the expense of the many: in brief, a pseudo-progressive, society-wide PR stunt that ignores ever-widening economic inequality and aims to redress only one social/political problem: the ruling elite’s growing crisis of legitimacy.

It is hardly surprising, then, to find among the Hollywood executives, the past masters of PR stunts, the most dramatic and ostentatious examples of this trend, taken to a serio-comic pitch of pettifogging detail and high-toned arrogance for this year’s Oscars in the form of RAISE: the Representation and Inclusion Standards Entry form, an impressively dystopian-sounding word salad that comprises four DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) “standards” that must be met for a film to qualify for a best picture nomination.

Three of the four RAISE standards (B, C, and D) apply mainly to the makeup of staff and supervisory criteria behind the camera. It is, however, Standard A — “On-Screen Representation, Themes, and Narratives”—that sets off the alarm bells of cultural regimentation. Especially unsettling are the art-destroying implications of A3, the standard that seeks to restrict creative decisions in casting, story, and theme to an iron cage of identarian regulations. This presumption to impose paint-by-the-numbers woke edicts on critical creative decisions is plainly a sacrifice of artistic freedom on the altar of ideological conformity. Nowhere in A3, seemingly a parody from the pen of Orwell, is there a hint of any understanding of the creative and visionary freedom that distinguishes art from propaganda.

It is cold comfort that best picture nominees need follow only one of these three sets of Standard A marching orders: even one is a brazen affront to dignity of the free artistic imagination. It’s bad enough that commercial pressures have imparted to Hollywood’s output an increasing standardization of visual and narrative technique: now the Academy proposes to add woke insult to commercial injury.

A critical sampling of three of this year’s nominees for best picture (Barbie, Maestro, Anatomy of a Fall)—the first crop subject to this heavy hand of bureaucratic interference—confirms one’s worst fears. In the spirit of the age, I will dispense with the conventional rating system of one to four stars, used in the hopelessly dated criteria of evaluating films for artistic merit and audience appeal; I will, instead, get with the program and will rate each film by its RAISE rating: one to three RAISEs for the work’s obedience to the all-important Standard A of the Academy’s Ministry of Truth.

Barbie: I made it to exactly the 52:59 mark, and then shouted, “No mas!” For me it was unendurable, one of the worst movies I have seen outside of high school health class. It manages to combine the two most dreaded tendencies of Hollywood groupthink: demographic pandering (in this case, to preadolescent girls) and woke hectoring—the latter on the grand scale, as though you had been blown by a hurricane from Kansas and landed not in Oz but in a hyperreal, candy-colored seminar on gender theory at Brown University—and with about the same entertainment value. I will award it a special chutzpah Oscar for taking product placement to a new level of blatancy: for the first time in my memory, the entire movie was a product placement, with the word “Mattel” popping up with about the same frequency as “the,” “it,” and “patriarchy.” I rate this one at three RAISEs, sweeping Standard A with a wretched excess of all of the key steps to ideological purity: A1 (a surfeit lead or significant supporting actors from “underrepresented” groups [but with RAISEd standards, under-represented no more!]); A2: (minor supporting cast) a veritable rainbow coalition of buoyant singers and dancers; A3: (main storyline/subject matter)—DING! DING! DING! Jackpot! Women good/men bad from here to eternity.

Maestro: Despite my re-education-camp drubbing in identarian ideology from Barbie, I still could not quite believe the producers turned a film purportedly about Leonard Bernstein into a feminist parable about his thwarted, anguished, and long-suffering wife. There are only sidelong, obligatory nods to Lenny’s earnestness and devotion as an artist. But even granting the absurd woke premise of the screenplay, the whole business smacks of the dilettantism so typical of Hollywood’s recent output: the acting, scripting, directing, and cinematography are all feverishly busy but random, as though the director imagined that a profusion of rapidly flashing images and scenes would somehow magically conjure something like profundity or even minimal entertainment value—but the film achieves neither.

This frenetic fast-forwarding of jump cuts is by now an obligatory Hollywood mannerism, devoid of aesthetic integrity or purpose and cynically contrived to pulse in tandem with the fleeting attention span of viewers with an itchy finger on the remote. We are left with what seem like shards rather than scenes, much less a coherent narrative line, with a predictable over-emphasis on Bernstein’s homoerotic private life obscuring any serious evocation of his evolution as an artist. But sex sells, and art not so much. So if you expect to see robust streaming numbers on Netflix, go big on the gay scenes and mute the Mahler. And we are put on notice of the following identarian hierarchy of martyrdom: gay men rank somewhere near the top, but not as high as women betrayed by men, whether gay or straight.

There are two stunning and telling biographical lapses: there is only a passing glimpse of Jerome Robbins, a major creative force in Bernstein’s life as the choreographer of Bernstein’s first theatrical success, the musical On the Town, and as the director-choreographer of the original Broadway production of West Side Story. Even more astonishingly, there is not one scene with Stephen Sondheim, who was intertwined with Bernstein every day for months, forging the score for West Side Story, which in retrospect seems to be Bernstein’s signal achievement. Not one scene. You learn much more about Lenny from the ninety-minute interview with Sondheim on Bernstein that you can find on YouTube for free. That interview probably cost a hundred dollars to produce and gives us more of Bernstein than the $80 million squandered on Maestro.

This misfire was directed and cowritten by Bradley Cooper, who has scant experience in either field and is not a great actor either; if nightclub impressionists were still a thing, his impersonation of Bernstein would relegate him to a day job. As for Maestro’s RAISE rating: in standard A1 (lead or significant supporting actors): this seemed promising at first, with a gay male and a woman in the leading roles, but it loses credit for making both lead characters white, with the male attaining the rare hat trick of over-representation: white, male, and Jewish —so only a half star; A2 (general ensemble cast): the film flunks this one, with scarcely a person of color in sight, not even a token Pacific Islander; A3 (storyline, theme, or narrative) warrants another half star for dwelling at such length on the angst of the overshadowed if undertalented wife, but at the expense of the title character. So only one RAISE for Maestro—just enough to qualify for a nomination, but a close call.

Anatomy of a Fall: The jury at Cannes must have overdone the red wine this year to have awarded the Palme d’or to Anatomy of a Fall, as protracted, amateurish, and anticlimactic an exercise in tedium and PC psychobabble as you are likely to encounter this or any other year. (Trivial RAISE-rating spoiler alert: the hero is the woman, and the fall guy—literally, in this case—is the querulous loser of a husband.) So the identarian credentials are in perfect order—including its candidacy for finest achievement in trendy victimology by making the sainted son of this dysfunctional marriage a half-blind sensitive lad who taps out fragments of Chopin in his spare time between family crises and courtroom appearances.

This nominee never really gelled even as a basic murder mystery, much less as the probing family psychodrama it aspired to be. Its character insights seem typed out in boldface rather than developed organically, steeped in a therapeutic never-land where the lingua franca seems to consist mostly of zingers out of Penguin Freud, and from all directions: the spouses, the lawyers, even from the tormented preadolescent son, so preternaturally gifted in that vein that he’s sure to be soon hosting his own call-in show for troubled teens.

The element of suspense is diluted and finally defeated by the filmmaker’s refusal to divulge, once and for all, the circumstances of the death. The scenarists make us privy in minute visual detail to every intimate scene of family life, including, retroactively. the climactic dust-up between the husband and wife, but somehow the film or video of the actual death must have been misplaced, because the literal-minded exposition stops in its tracks for that most important detail.

Through this fog of vaporous suspense, TV-talk-show couples therapy, and maudlin victimology, I couldn’t detect a scintilla of an original or heartfelt truth; the closest the film comes to an actual idea is its pandering to the woke prejudice that any male writer whose wife is more successful than he must be so consumed with resentment and jealousy that life is no longer worth living. It’s the usual PC shiv between the ribs of the uncool side of the identity game, along with the sentimental kvelling over the doughty, long-suffering woman who not only triumphs and yes, even laughs through her tears in surmounting every adversity, but is a part-time lesbian to boot, just to round out the smorgasbord of idpol virtues.

This entry sweeps the RAISE ratings: the lead character is both a woman and bisexual with a visually impaired son, surely this year’s outstanding achievement in RAISE A1 casting; for A2, there are sufficient notes of ethnic correctness in the minor roles; and for A3, the main story line celebrates the superior emotional stamina of the successful woman over the prematurely dispatched male failure: surely as fully realized a PC cartoon for adults as any ideological fashionista could hope for. Three RAISEs.

Yet all three of these underwhelming productions scored well with the professional movie reviewers: the critical approval ratings on Rotten Tomatoes are as follows: Barbie 88 percent; Maestro 79 percent; and Anatomy of a Fall 96 percent. This is only a small sample size of a widespread dilution of standards among film critics, a regression noted by Pauline Kael (one of the few great critics of the past half century) in her final interview in 2001. She attributed this in part to the encroachment of political correctness in the culture, engendering what she called “the cinema of good intentions,” which career-minded critics, educated in woke ideology and opportunistically attuned to public taste, are all too ready to embrace.

In the United States, identity politics originated as an obscure postmodernist fashion of the professoriate at the elite universities. Its real birthplace, however, was France, in the abstruse writings of Foucault, Derrida, and Lacan, purveyors of a historicist-relativist epistemology that disputes the objectivity of knowledge—especially theories of society and culture—and reduces it to a byproduct of prevailing power relations. Migrating from sociology to literature and history departments and thence, in adulterated variants, to the broader society, the power-knowledge equation has promoted a facile, culture-wide reductivist outlook that seeks to debunk any universal aspirations to truth and accepts only the validity of “my” truth—an ideological complement and spur to the narcissistic proclivities of contemporary society. The insistence on a pluralistic, relativist theory of knowledge undermines any search for meaningful realities or truths that are common to all humans, one of the traditional functions and glories of the arts. The tragedies of ancient Greece and Shakespeare, like the films of Ingmar Bergman, stir us because they evoke profound realities of the human condition, not merely those of fifth-century BC Athens, sixteenth-century England, or twentieth-century Sweden.

Alternately reviling and exalting the “other”—depending on its perceived status in the woke hierarchy of over/under representation—identarian ideology has, ironically, undermined diversity in academic studies, promoting instead a parochial confinement to the limited horizons of one’s own milieu in the comfort zones of women’s studies for women, black studies for blacks, and so on. Philip Roth was dismayed by these developments when he addressed a class of mostly female literature students at Bard College in 1999. One young woman stated, “I think that it’s important to maybe understand that for people our age, for women . . . most of the literature that we’re exposed to and read growing up is about men.” Roth replied, “I grew up in an extremely Jewish environment. And when I read English literature, there were no Jews in it—except in T. S. Eliot there were Jews to make fun of…. Do I have to read books with just Jews in them? What would I have read? Sholem Aleichem until the cows come home?”

Likewise, Christopher Lasch noted a hypocrisy lurking in the woke insistence that an identity tribe should experience mainly or only works populated by people who “look like me” or that privileged whites should be required to assimilate the culture of “under-represented” groups but not the other way around—the unspoken but glaring assumption behind Hollywood’s RAISE standards.

At best, exposure to “otherness” turns out to be a one-way street. The children of privilege are urged—even required—to learn something about “marginalized, suppressed interests, situations, traditions,” but blacks, Hispanics, and other minorities are exempted from exposure to “otherness” in the work of “Western white males.” An insidious double standard, masking as tolerance, denies those minorities the fruits of the victory they struggled so long to achieve: access to the world’s culture. The underlying message that they are incapable of appreciating or entering into that culture comes through just as clearly in the new academic “pluralism” as in the old intolerance and exclusion.

Lasch cites the example of Frederick Douglass, whose reading of eighteenth-century English authors such as Pitt, Sheridan, Burke, and Fox helped to inspire his awakening to the world of ideas and his hunger for freedom for himself and his people. “The reading of these speeches,” he said, “added much to my limited stock of language, and enabled me to give tongue to many interesting thoughts, which had recently flashed through my soul, and died away for want of utterance.”

In fostering a relativist fracturing of notions of truth, the woke sensibility undermines the possibility of arriving at a unifying social/political theory and practice among the oppressed majority most in need of it.

As many commentators and filmmakers have noted, the straightjacketing of artistic invention by the ethos of woke is far from the only reason for the steady deterioration in the quality of American movies; it is merely the latest in a long series of extra-artistic pressures and mass-marketing exigencies: the post-Star Wars profit-hungry tilt toward big blockbusters, followed by the rise of VHS, DVD, and streaming video, have all taken their toll on what was long deemed the preeminent art form of the twentieth century. Pauline Kael wrote a piece for The New Yorker titled “Why Movies Are So Bad? or, The Numbers.” The year was 1980. Sixteen years later, the outlook for the art of film was even bleaker when The New York Times published Susan Sontag’s variation on the same theme, “The Decay of Cinema.”   These obituaries for cinema have continued to unfurl at a steady pace: in 2022 Ross Douthat of The New York Times brought the bad news up to date with an op-ed elaborately titled “We Aren’t Just Watching the Decline of the Oscars. We’re Watching the End of the Movies.”

In her 2001 interview, Kael summarized the downfall of film in a few brisk strokes, saying that she retired from reviewing movies in 1991 because “[Movies] were just so terrible, and I’d already written about so many terrible movies.” She added that around 1980, “a few movies made inordinate amounts of money, and everything we hoped for from movies went kerplooie…. [W]ith Star Wars… that awful Star Wars and its successors—movies have just never been the same. The direction in which we thought they were moving, they’ve gone the other way. There are hardly any small movies that people go to, and some of the more interesting ones they won’t go to.”

Sontag also noted the cumulative force of commercial pressures, “the norms and practices that now govern movie making everywhere in the capitalist and would-be capitalist world—which is to say, everywhere. And ordinary films, films made purely for entertainment (that is, commercial) purposes, are astonishingly witless,” the byproduct of “a policy of bloated, derivative film-making, a brazen combinatory or recombinatory art, in the hope of reproducing past successes,” a process that has fostered “the reduction of cinema to assaultive images, and the unprincipled manipulation of images (faster and faster cutting) to make them more attention-grabbing.” The result has produced “a disincarnated, lightweight cinema that doesn’t demand anyone’s full attention.”

This was the grim reality of 1996, twenty years before the onrush of streaming media submerged first-run films into a steady junk stream of TV series/reality shows/game shows/news channels/home-made videos that bleed into one other 24/7, blurring genres, truncating attention spans, and breeding a dulling, market-tested leveling and uniformity of taste among an increasingly stupefied audience. That cascade of nonstop, flashing images, at once chaotic and hypnotic, is where excellence in cinema as an entertainment medium, much less as an art form, goes to drown and die.

With so many toxins, commercial and cultural, depleting the elan vital of cinema as an art form or even as a mass entertainment, why emphasize the influence of woke? The problem is that pressures for standardization from any source discourage freshness and inventiveness; the dictates of the RAISE politburo intensify the already-stifling industry pressures toward the standardization of “product.” Art—even compelling entertainment—thrives on bold freedom of expression and untrammeled imagination, not the routine replication of a stock of pre-approved formulas, whether they emanate from the accounting or woke-enforcement divisions of the corporate bureaucracy.

Herein lies the lost promise and potential of cinema as an art form, which reached its creative peak in the quarter century from the mid-1950s through the late 1970s, when the great auteurs of international cinema seemed to turn out masterpieces every year and American independent mavericks like Robert Altman, Elaine May, Nancy Savoca, Carl Franklin, and Alan Rudolph were pushing the boundaries of commercial possibility in American movies. These innovators and visionaries challenged inherited visual cliches, re-imagined narrative conventions, and managed to transform a technology of external appearances, of ephemeral sound and light and shadow, into a vehicle of interior truth, a visionary quest that is inimical to the contemporary woke demands for starkly arrayed good guys and bad guys and guaranteed social/political uplift.

It seems now that the entire epoch of the cinema as an art form is now irretrievably lost: surf and click as you will through today’s glutted cinematic multiverse of replicant streaming sedatives, but you will never see a contemporary production that comes close to rivaling treasures like Antonioni’s Red Desert, Godard’s Weekend, Bergman’s Cries and Whispers, or Fellini’s 8 ½, and so on. Let’s consider briefly the case of Red Desert: It is surely one of the most visceral and uncanny conjurings of our environmental/industrial hell ever committed to film—not in the lurid, sensational way you might expect, but as an encroaching spiritual claustrophobia that envelops every pore of being, external and internal, to the point that inner and outer, mind and body, consciousness and world meld into each other in an unyielding hallucination of despair. It is one of the most powerful cinematic evocations of the merciless technological assault on the natural world, its haunting cinematography blending beauty and dread in luring the viewer ever deeper into the protagonist’s waking nightmare—but quietly, insistently, in hypnotically leisurely takes, like a dream that seems more real as it becomes more absurd and disconnected. As the woman at the center of the nightmare says, “Reality is terrible, but I don’t know why. No one will tell me.”

Released in 1964, this masterwork could not find financial backing or a receptive audience now even though the lead character is a woman, for she succumbs to madness, whereas our current officially mandated zeitgeist of cheap solace and reassuring bedtime stories requires women who triumph over every adversity, laughing through their tears. Watching the current crop of Hollywood woke films—which describes nearly all of them—you get the feeling that the entire depth dimension of life has been run through Google Gemini to emerge as a thin Dick and Jane primer on DEI, yielding a “truth” so sanitized and simplified that it has turned into a comforting lie. As Saul Bellow put it, “[T]he truth is not loved because it is improving or progressive. We hunger and thirst for it—for its own sake.”

The issue, then, is whether any kind of art, cinematic or otherwise, can survive in a culture marching in ideological lockstep. Woke, with its stark polarities of good and evil, heroes and villains, conflict and resolution, repels perplexity in favor of reductive, illusory simplicities and stereotypes; art, in its highest expressions, dwells in perplexity, revels in it, exalts and distills it as the essence of being human—any color or gender of human. Ideology and propaganda dispense the opiate of certainty, the infallibility of “my” truth. Art, by contrast, is a leap into the unknown—hence the ethos of woke is its death knell.

Immersed in a world of symbols and rhetoric, cloistered from the real material suffering of real masses of people, these identity-politics shock troops—in Hollywood, Big Tech, the universities, and politics—are the enforcers of a leaden standardization of word and deed that crushes the critical thought and independence of spirit needed for truly radical change. Notwithstanding their modish leftish posturing, they are a new breed of conservatives, the ideological vanguard of the neoliberal elites. They are our new culture commissars. Welcome to the dark night of the mind.

List of sources not embedded as hyperlinks:

Bailey, Blake. Philip Roth: The Biography. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2021.

Bellow, Saul. There Is Simply Too Much to Think About: Collected Nonfiction. Edited by Benjamin Taylor. New York: Penguin Books, 2015.

Davis, Francis. Afterglow: A Last Conversation with Pauline Kael. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2002.

Lasch, Christopher. The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1995.

Michaels, Walter Benn, and Adolph Reed, Jr. No Politics but Class Politics. Edited with a foreword by Anton Jager and Daniel Zamora. London: Eris Press, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by William Kaufman.

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Rat’s in the Trap

The day before Michael Beckcom was arrested for murder, a Texas Ranger spotted his red Ford Explorer parked in a small town not far from the Gulf Coast. On its tailpipe was a silver substance that looked like the remnants of melted duct tape. It was evidence that would link Beckcom to the grisly killing of a federal witness.

On June 4, 1996, Beckcom was jailed on a $10 million bond for his role in the slaying of George “Nick” Brueggen. Brueggen had been cooperating with federal authorities to build a fraud and tax evasion case against Beckcom and his associates, who fancied themselves a sort of South Texas Mafia. Beckcom and several others, including Mark Crawford, the former mayor of sleepy Ingleside, Texas, locked Brueggen in a large metal storage box. Using duct tape, they attached one end of a garden hose to the box and the other end to the tailpipe of Beckcom’s SUV. According to the Texas Rangers’ report, Beckcom then revved the engine, asphyxiating Brueggen.

Facing a capital murder charge, Beckcom cut a deal with prosecutors, becoming the government’s key witness against Crawford, the mastermind behind the murder.

Beckcom’s testimony was vivid. “Nick was kicking the box and making noise; he was panicking,” he testified in federal court, recalling one of his associates offering a pithy aside: “The rat’s in the trap.” When it was all over, his friends were eager to open the box, Beckcom said, while he “looked from the distance” as fumes wafted from its lid. Brueggen’s “eyes were open, and he had a blank stare. He was frozen there.”

Beckcom was critical to convicting Crawford, and while a federal district judge ultimately signed off on his plea deal, he also made clear that Beckcom had lied under oath. “The court believed you in part,” the judge said at Beckcom’s sentencing hearing. “But there were certainly areas where you gave false statements either to the investigating officers or your testimony on the witness stand was false.”

Despite the apparent perjury, Beckcom went on to play an equally crucial role in convicting Jeffrey Prible, who was sent to death row for the murder of his friends Steve Herrera and Nilda Tirado, along with their three kids. The family was found dead in their Houston home on April 24, 1999. Two years later, Prible was indicted for the killings while serving a five-year sentence at the federal correctional institution in Beaumont for a string of bank robberies.

There was no direct evidence tying Prible to the murders. Instead, Harris County prosecutor Kelly Siegler’s case was based on the thinnest of circumstantial evidence, which made Beckcom’s testimony indispensable even if his credibility was questionable: He was the only witness who could connect Prible to the crime.

Beckcom said that he and his cellmate, Nathan Foreman, had befriended Prible while imprisoned at Beaumont. One evening, according to Beckcom, the three men were sitting in a field on the rec yard when Prible confessed to the killings.

Once again, Beckcom’s testimony was cinematic. He described Prible as a modern-day ninja who boasted about his ability to carry out the murders undetected. “Anybody that can go in a house and take out a whole family and get out without being seen is a bad motherfucker,” Beckcom recalled Prible saying. “And I’m that motherfucker.”

The information Beckcom provided also sewed up the gaping holes in Siegler’s case. Prible lacked a motive — until Beckcom said he was angry with Herrera for hoarding cash from the bank robberies. Beckcom explained away the missing murder weapon by implying that Prible had buried it under some newly poured concrete. “Asphalt’s good sometimes for hiding things,” he said Prible told him. And he countered Prible’s alibi witness — a neighbor who saw Prible dropped off at home hours before the murders — by suggesting that Prible had snuck back into his friend’s house to kill the family.

In early 2017, Prible’s defense lawyers, James Rytting and Gretchen Scardino, sought Beckcom out to learn more about the deal he’d cut with Siegler. The first time he was scheduled to be deposed, Beckcom didn’t show up. Perhaps it shouldn’t have come as a surprise; when a defense investigator went to serve him with a subpoena, Beckcom was outwardly hostile to the notion of having to answer any questions.

The investigator persuaded Beckcom to meet him at a Starbucks outside a gated community in Florida. Beckcom rolled up on a Harley Davidson. Still fit, with his dark hair now graying around the temples, he was furious to learn about the subpoena. “If I have to,” the investigator recalled Beckcom saying, “I’ll kill the son-of-a-bitch lawyer and go back to prison, but I’m not going to get involved in this case anymore.”

The threat unnerved Scardino. She hired a retired federal marshal to sit outside the room when they finally got Beckcom in for his deposition. Scardino steadied her nerves as the questioning began, but it was Beckcom who broke the ice. Was he on anything that might impair his memory? Scardino asked. “Just age,” Beckcom joked.

For his role in the Crawford prosecution, Beckcom had been handsomely rewarded: just 11 years for a slaying that could have netted him the death penalty. Still, as he served his time at Beaumont, he hoped that his cooperation in the Prible case would swing the prison doors wide open. He expected as much from Siegler, he told Scardino. Instead, he got a year shaved off his sentence. Nearly two decades later, he was still vexed.

“You thought you’d be walking out the door?” Scardino asked.

“For a house full of bodies? Yeah,” he replied, crossing his arms. “Children? Sure.”

In a video deposition taken by Jeffrey Prible’s lawyers in October 2017, Michael Beckcom revealed that “fricking 10 guys” inside Beaumont were competing to inform on Prible, but “somehow I ended up with the information.” He expressed dissatisfaction that his reward was just one year shaved off his sentence.

Still, Scardino could see why Beckcom made an effective witness; he remained unflappable and calm over more than five hours of questioning. He said he’d gotten Siegler’s name from Foreman but couldn’t recall how he knew that Prible was coming to the unit before he arrived. “Someone would have had to tell you that he was coming, right?” Scardino asked. “Yeah, I would assume so,” Beckcom replied. Nor could he recall whether Siegler had shared details about Prible’s case, like the problem of the alibi witness.

At some point, Beckcom said, he realized there were multiple men vying to inform on Prible, “like fricking 10 guys,” but “somehow I ended up with the information.”

“The details Jeff Prible gave me he gave completely and explicitly to me and Nathan Foreman one night,” he said. “He just rolled it out.”

At trial, Siegler had introduced a photo of Beckcom, Foreman, and Prible alongside their parents in the Beaumont visitation room. During his deposition, Beckcom acknowledged that the photo was staged to corroborate his story that the men were so close that Prible would confess. But while the photo was dated the same day as the alleged confession, it was taken hours earlier, before Prible had said anything. “You had nothing to corroborate yet,” Rytting said. “No,” Beckcom agreed.

Rytting asked Beckcom about the affidavit Foreman had provided in 2016, which characterized Beckcom as one of the men looking to sink Prible in exchange for a time cut. Foreman said that Prible never confessed in his presence, contrary to Beckcom’s trial testimony. “In fact, I never heard Prible say anything bad about the victims,” Foreman said. “When he talked about Herrera, he talked about him like he was a friend he had lost.”

“Wow,” Beckcom remarked. “I mean, it makes no sense. Why would he be trying to gather information and then say, ‘I didn’t get the information, no, that’s not true’? He either heard these things or he didn’t hear them, so he can’t have it both ways.”

“That’s correct,” Rytting replied. “And he states he didn’t hear them.”

2

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Underground Market

Kelly Siegler sat in a leather office chair, a bottle of Diet Coke in hand, staring down a videographer’s camera. Throughout more than nine hours of questioning, her expressions traversed a spectrum of impassive to dismissive to haughty as she repeatedly denied doing anything wrong.

In her decades at the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, Siegler had been the one asking questions. Now, during a sworn deposition in October 2017, Prible’s lawyers had the chance to confront her about the measures she took to convict their client.

It was a significant turn of events for the hot shot prosecutor-turned-reality TV star, but not unprecedented. A few years earlier, she’d spent five bruising days on the witness stand answering questions about her prosecution of David Temple, the high school football coach sentenced to life in prison for murdering his pregnant wife, Belinda. Temple’s conviction, based on circumstantial evidence, was Siegler’s final cold case victory at the DA’s office. Months later, in the wake of her failed campaign to become the next DA, she resigned.

More than just a personal defeat, Siegler’s election loss signaled the start of Harris County’s ongoing shift away from the lock-them-all-up politics of her mentors. And while it ultimately fed the narrative of Siegler’s phoenix-like ascent to a larger stage, the loss also seemed to animate her with the notion that subsequent allegations of prosecutorial misconduct were some sort of political payback.

In challenging his conviction, Temple argued that Siegler had withheld a raft of records from the defense, including those related to an alternate suspect. Confronted with the alleged improprieties in court, Siegler was pugnacious. She was only required to turn over evidence related to “truly, truly” alternate suspects, she said, not “ridiculous” information that came from sources she deemed “kooky.”

Assistant District Attorney Kelly Siegler takes the stand during a hearing for a new trial in the case of David Temple on Jan. 14, 2008.

She intimated that the questions swirling around Temple’s conviction were all thanks to her opponent in the DA’s race years earlier, whom Siegler claimed had made a deal with Temple’s trial attorney to reopen the case, presumably as part of a plot to besmirch her reputation.

Siegler’s testimony did not sit well with the district court, which concluded that her actions had deprived Temple of a fair trial. The notoriously conservative Texas Court of Criminal Appeals agreed, vacating the conviction. While Temple would eventually be retried and convicted, the public rebuke was still fresh when Siegler sat down to answer questions about the Prible case.

Siegler insisted that the lawyers’ petition challenging Prible’s conviction was full of lies.

Can you name one of the allegations that “stands out as being false?” Rytting asked.

“Well, the overarching lie is that I orchestrated a ring of informants from the Beaumont federal prison,” she said. “That is a lie … that you made up.”

Siegler also denied hiding anything from Prible’s lawyers at trial. All the evidence the state had developed was in a file that was open to the defense, she said, including any notes.

It was an odd position given that federal District Judge Keith Ellison had only recently unearthed notes from Siegler’s files documenting her meetings with Nathan Foreman, who positioned himself early on as an informant against Prible and was later described as the ringleader of the Beaumont snitches. The notes also showed that she had consulted a forensic expert who undermined her assertion at trial that the sperm found in Nilda Tirado’s mouth could only have been deposited moments before she was shot.

Siegler’s colleagues, meanwhile, had different takes on her willingness to turn over evidence. “Kelly didn’t give up anything she didn’t have to,” Johnny Bonds, the DA investigator who went on to become Siegler’s “Cold Justice” co-star, said in a deposition. Vic Wisner, her co-counsel on the Prible case, said the DA’s office “always had an open file policy unless there was some extraordinary need not to,” but that it didn’t include notes.

There were other contradictions. Siegler denied that Beckcom played a “vital role” at Prible’s trial, even though that was the precise language she used to describe his participation. In a Rule 35 letter, Siegler had implored the federal prosecutor who handled the Brueggen murder case to advocate for a time cut for Beckcom. The prosecutor was reluctant; Beckcom’s plea deal was generous, he told Siegler. But her case “involved the vicious murder of FIVE people,” she wrote in a second letter. And Beckcom had “played a vital role in obtaining a conviction.”

Siegler conceded at her deposition that she and Bonds first met with Foreman to discuss Prible’s case in August 2001, long before the casual rec yard encounter presented at trial. Foreman offered dubious details of Prible’s alleged crime, which Siegler and Bonds memorialized on several sheets of lined paper. Still, Siegler insisted that Foreman played no role in the case, becoming increasingly hostile each time his name was brought up. “Mr. Foreman was not involved in Jeffrey Prible’s case,” she told the lawyers. “I know you want him to be, but he was not.”

Siegler claimed, for the first time, that she and Bonds left the meeting convinced that Foreman was not credible. “We walked out of there saying we didn’t believe a word he had to say.” This echoed what Bonds said in his deposition; as he recalled, Foreman could not even describe what Prible looked like. Siegler did not explain why she continued to meet with Foreman, who introduced her to his cellmate, Beckcom, the man she decided was credible enough to put on the witness stand.

In a video deposition taken by Jeffrey Prible’s lawyers in October 2017, Kelly Siegler defended her use of informants and stated that the petition challenging Prible’s conviction was full of lies.

As it turns out, Siegler had been talking about Prible with a Beaumont informant even earlier than her notes reflected. At the deposition, she revealed that in July 2001 she had discussed Prible’s case with Jesse Moreno, the informant who gave her Foreman’s name and later served as her star witness against Hermilo Herrero. The admission suggested it was Siegler who set in motion the high-stakes competition to inform on Prible. And all of it started before Prible had even been charged with murder or transferred to the unit where the snitch ring operated.

There was also the matter of the letters Siegler had received from three other men at Beaumont volunteering accounts of Prible’s jailhouse confession. Like Siegler’s notes, the letters were only disclosed via judicial intervention years after Prible’s trial. They would never have come to light without Carl Walker, one of the would-be informants who withdrew from the scheme after a crisis of conscience and prompted the lawyers to seek a review of Siegler’s records. Nevertheless, Siegler said that the letters would also have been in her “open” file.

She dismissed their significance, seemingly unfazed by the idea that so many people angling to inform on Prible might cast doubt on any confession narrative coming out of Beaumont. “Federal inmates audition for any role … on any case they can think of with any information they might hear to try to get a time cut,” she said. “That’s what federal inmates do all day long 24 hours a day.”

“So you knew that they were doing this before Mr. Prible’s trial?” Scardino asked.

“I’m not stupid,” Siegler replied.

Rytting questioned whether Siegler had engaged with the Beaumont informants in an effort to gin up evidence. Siegler was having none of it. “Your witnesses’ affidavits were lies,” she stated. “You have not one shred or iota or piece of credible evidence from a credible witness that supports any of these allegations.”

“And these are the type of witnesses that you used to put people on death row?” Rytting asked.

“I’m calling you a liar, sir,” she replied.

“And I’m calling you one.”

Undisclosed records in Kelly Siegler’s file showed communications with the same group of Beaumont informants about two cold murder cases she was prosecuting nearly simultaneously. Siegler heard from at least five men at Beaumont volunteering accounts of Jeffrey Prible’s jailhouse confession. Meanwhile, her meetings with Jesse Moreno and Nathan Foreman included discussion of both the Prible and Hermilo Herrero cases.

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A Mark

In 2018, Scardino and Rytting filed an amended petition in federal court challenging Prible’s conviction. “For over 15 years, the state has denied any conspiracy to frame Prible for the murders of the Herrera/Tirado family through the use of false jailhouse informant testimony,” it began. “Now, lead prosecutor Kelly Siegler’s own handwritten notes … confirm that this was in fact the case.”

“Prible’s trial was a master class in obfuscation by omission,” the lawyers wrote. Had jurors been privy to the extent of Siegler’s interactions with the Beaumont informants, they would have seen the state’s case for what it was. “The jury would have figured out that the whole thing was a set-up.”

A year later, Ellison granted their request for a hearing to consider the evidence. For so long, Prible’s suspicions about the Beaumont informants had been dismissed as paranoid speculation. Now a federal judge was giving them a chance to prove their case. “We knew we had a story to tell,” Scardino said.

A few days before the evidentiary hearing was scheduled to begin in downtown Houston, Ellison convened a conference call with the lawyers for each side. The topic: Kelly Siegler.

“I am concerned with the fact that Ms. Siegler seems to be unavailable,” he said.

For months, Scardino and Rytting had been trying to serve Siegler with a subpoena to appear at the hearing. They tried her at her office and at home. She never responded.

Tina Miranda, the Texas assistant attorney general tasked with defending Prible’s conviction, spoke up: Siegler had contacted her to say that she “travels a lot for her taping of her show” and would be unavailable. The judge was irritated. “That’s the kind of thing that a witness avoiding appearing would say,” Ellison said. “I really would have expected much more from an officer of the court.”

On the morning of the hearing, Prible sat in a high-backed chair in Ellison’s courtroom. He turned to smile at his family, which was out in force. His three grown children were there, along with his mother, sister, and other relatives. Scardino had two witnesses waiting to testify: Nathan Foreman and Carl Walker. The judge assumed the bench at 10 a.m. There was just one problem. “Has anybody heard from Ms. Siegler?” Ellison asked.

Miranda had: Siegler was still out of town. “I wish she would cover this case on her TV show and explain to the nation why she couldn’t be present,” Ellison quipped. The hearing would start without her.

Scardino launched into Prible’s case. Prosecutors had declined to indict anyone for the Herrera and Tirado murders based on the limited evidence collected by the summer of 1999, she said. Yet, without uncovering anything new, Siegler asked a grand jury to indict Prible two years later. By the time she took the case to trial, there was only one additional element: Michael Beckcom.

To believe Beckcom’s story about Prible’s confession, Scardino told the judge, you’d have to place faith in Foreman, whom Beckcom said was by his side when Prible owned up to the crime. Siegler had met with Foreman at least twice in connection with Prible’s case, although she failed to inform the defense. Despite this, Siegler claimed Foreman was irrelevant and untrustworthy.

Siegler’s files showed that she’d heard from at least five men at Beaumont jockeying for informant status in the hopes of securing time cuts, which should have raised red flags. Yet Siegler simply buried the communications.

The “sordid backstory” of the prosecutor and the informants would never have come to light, Scardino said, if “one of the informants that Siegler decided not to use,” Carl Walker, hadn’t come forward and “spilled the beans on the ring of snitches.”

“There’s only one reason she would avoid being here in person today to clear her name,” Scardino said. “That is because her name can’t be cleared.”

Miranda conceded that “at face value,” it was “disturbing” that so many people were trying to snitch on Prible, but she said there was no proof that Siegler put them up to it or even understood what was going on.

The judge seemed skeptical of Miranda’s take. “What was the alternative thesis?” he asked. “Why would these inmates become so enthusiastic about trying to pin a capital crime on Mr. Prible?”

That’s just what they do, Miranda responded. If that were the case, Ellison said, “Wouldn’t that cause a seasoned prosecutor to be especially wary about this kind of evidence?”

Miranda insisted that Siegler was attuned to the problem. After all, she only put Beckcom on the stand as a witness against Prible — not the four others who also supposedly heard him confess.

Jeffrey Prible, bottom center, poses for a group photo at FCI Beaumont. He is surrounded by a group of informants, including Carl Walker, top left, Michael Beckcom, top center, and Nathan Foreman, top right.

After being released from Beaumont, Foreman had landed in legal trouble again with a conviction for aggravated kidnapping and robbery. When he took the stand at the evidentiary hearing, he was out on bond as his case made its way through the appeals process. Although he’d played an outsize role behind bars in the scheme to snitch on Prible, in court Foreman was almost timid; he spoke so quietly that the court reporter asked him to pull the microphone closer.

At Beaumont, Foreman had every incentive to offer up incriminating information about his neighbors, true or not. Now he was facing 50 years in state prison — the rest of his life — and no amount of self-dealing would change the sentence.

Foreman testified that he’d first heard the names Kelly Siegler and Jeffrey Prible from Jesse Moreno, the informant who met with Siegler about Prible’s case and became her star witness against Hermilo Herrero. It was Herrero who first alerted Prible that the same band of informants was behind their convictions. Two months before Prible’s trial started, Siegler traveled to Louisiana to testify in favor of a drastic time cut for Moreno, whose sentence was reduced from 78 months in prison to just one.

While incarcerated in Beaumont, Foreman and Moreno both wound up in the Special Housing Unit, where Foreman was working as a janitor and orderly, delivering meals. It was there that Moreno told him about Prible — before Prible had even arrived. Moreno suggested that he reach out to Siegler about becoming an informant. Foreman testified that what he knew about Prible’s case came not only from Moreno, but also from Siegler, who told him that Prible’s DNA had been found in Tirado’s mouth.

Foreman said he never heard Prible confess to the murders of Herrera, Tirado, and their kids. And since he was eager for a time cut, he’d remember a confession. Beckcom’s statement at trial sounded scripted, he added. “All I could say is that he should have been a book writer or something.” When Rytting read aloud Beckcom’s line about Prible being trained in the Marines for “high-intensity, low-drag” maneuvers, Foreman laughed. “I’ve never heard that one,” he said. “It really sounds like he got it off television.”

The judge wanted to know if men at Beaumont regularly discussed the crimes they had committed. Wouldn’t that be risky business? “That is correct,” Foreman replied. People might talk about past crimes — if they were of little consequence — but never about pending charges and certainly not about murdering children. That could get you killed.

As Prible recalled, Foreman winked at him on his way out of the courtroom. Prible took it as a conciliatory gesture, as if to admit he’d done wrong but tried to make it right. “So he’s OK with me.”

In contrast to Foreman, Carl Walker had created a prosperous new life for himself after leaving federal prison, becoming a tech entrepreneur in Houston. He was, Scardino thought, the moral center of their case, sharing what he knew about the ring of informants even when doing so might have put him in jeopardy. “He struck me as someone who has a very clear understanding of right and wrong,” she said.

“He was going to be a scapegoat for several individuals to have an opportunity to get out of prison sooner than later.”

The courtroom was silent as Walker testified. He’d been recruited as one of a handful of snitches who would inform on Prible, he said, and was told details of the alleged offense before Prible was transferred to the prison unit.

“It was already mapped out” by the time Prible arrived, Walker said. Beckcom and Foreman were the ones corralling things on the inside, but there was clearly someone pulling the strings on the outside: “The details they knew … was so vivid or so in depth that, like I say, I knew before he got there, and they knew even more than I knew.”

“Was Mr. Prible a mark?” Rytting asked.

“In every sense of the word,” Walker replied. “He was going to be a scapegoat for several individuals to have an opportunity to get out of prison sooner than later.”

Did Walker know anyone else at Beaumont who was the target of a similar plot? Yes, Walker said: Hermilo Herrero. A bunch of guys who tried to get a piece of the Prible case had eyed Herrero as well. “Some of them were working on the twofer aspect.”

By the time Terry Gaiser appeared at the hearing, he had nearly 50 years of criminal defense experience in Harris County under his belt. Gaiser represented Prible at his 2002 trial. Back then, he told the court, what was shared with the defense was “what they put in the file.” The whole discovery process relied on a foundation of trust, and jailhouse informants were “fundamentally unreliable,” Gaiser said. Had he known Siegler was communicating with a network of men competing to inform on Prible, as the undisclosed letters and meeting notes revealed, he could have used these items to dismantle the basis of the state’s case.

Kelly Siegler in a “Cold Justice” press photo.

By the time the hearing convened again, arrangements had been made for Siegler to appear via video. It was a less-than-ideal setup. There were transmission delays, and Siegler was positioned so that part of her face was out of the frame, making it hard to read her expressions. At one point, the connection was lost altogether. “She do it intentionally?” Ellison asked. “Can we tell?”

Cheryl Peterson, Prible’s aunt, recalled this as the one moment Ellison seemed close to losing his cool. “He was so restrained,” she said. She had watched with growing disbelief as Siegler tested his patience in the run-up to the hearing. “Like, how the hell does she thumb her nose at a federal judge?”

Siegler was unapologetic about her failure to appear in court. Miranda hadn’t told her where to be or when, she said. And she claimed to have no idea that Prible’s team had repeatedly attempted to serve her with a subpoena.

Pressed about her failure to disclose her dealings with Foreman to Prible’s defense, Siegler again insisted that Foreman was not connected to the case. But he was her original snitch, Scardino said, and according to Beckcom, he was there when Prible confessed, which made him a corroborating witness even if he didn’t take the stand. “Because he’s standing there, it doesn’t mean he’s credible,” Siegler snapped. “It doesn’t mean he has information.”

Siegler seemed invested in painting Foreman as a liar, not just in their previous interactions, when he was angling for a time cut, but also at the hearing, when he was undermining the basis of her case against Prible. When Ellison suggested that Foreman’s testimony struck him as sincere, Siegler assured him she knew better. “Of all the inmates I’ve ever dealt with, he’s at the top of the list for not being credible.”

On cross-examination, Miranda pitched a series of softball questions: When Siegler got the case in 2001, there was already enough evidence to take it to trial, right? Was she even looking for an informant? “No, ma’am,” Siegler replied.

If her case was already solid, the judge asked, why did she use Beckcom at all? “There are five victims here,” Siegler said. While she believed her case was “strong enough for a jury to convict,” she worried that some of the jurors might not see it that way. “I wanted to be sure.”

Scardino pounced on Siegler’s statement as an admission that the case was too weak to prosecute without Beckcom. “Siegler didn’t just use Beckcom to testify that he heard a confession,” Scardino told the judge. She used his “highly scripted and choreographed” testimony to “explain away all of the problematic aspects of the state’s case.” Beckcom, she said, was Siegler’s case.

A courtroom at the Harris County Criminal Justice Center in Houston on May 18, 2018.

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Ethical Duties

A year after the evidentiary hearing, Ellison vacated Prible’s conviction. The prosecution had engaged in a “pattern of deceptive behavior and active concealment” that could have changed the outcome of Prible’s trial, he wrote. The evidence Siegler withheld revealed an “orchestrated effort by a ring of informants to fabricate a confession from Prible in return for sentence reductions.”

Ellison concluded that Beckcom had acted as an agent of the state in working with Siegler to elicit a confession from Prible, implicating the prosecution in a violation of Prible’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel.

And while the evidence did not prove that Siegler knew Beckcom was lying nor “completely” verify Prible’s argument that she was running a snitch scheme, Ellison nonetheless found that Siegler had hidden the full extent of her dealings with the informants and “was far from credible in her federal court testimony.”

“This court does not endorse the cavalier attitude Siegler has displayed regarding her constitutional duty to preserve the fundamental fairness of the trial proceedings,” Ellison wrote.

Scardino was elated. She felt confident that the judge would rule in their favor, but she didn’t anticipate how powerful the ruling would be. “It really vindicated Jeff,” she said.

News of the order came in the early months of the pandemic. “We were all just stumbling into one of our first of many covid lockdowns when I heard the news about Jeff’s reversal,” Thomas Whitaker, the incarcerated writer who investigated Prible’s case, wrote. “I remember standing at my door, paper in hand, arms raised in triumph.”

Prible’s sense of vindication was bittersweet. His father, who suffered bouts of depression over his son’s wrongful conviction, had died without seeing the legal victory. Prible’s own son, 27-year-old Ronald Jeffrey Prible III, whom he called “Little Jeff,” was struck by a train and killed six months after attending the evidentiary hearing. For Prible, who had seen hundreds of neighbors taken to the execution chamber, there was no court order that could restore what he had lost.

Still, he began to imagine a life outside prison walls. Peterson, his aunt, used to send him photos of the sunsets from her waterfront property on Lake Conroe, north of Houston. Prible dreamed of working the grounds and watching the sun go down over the water. From his colorless death row cell, the images of future sunsets sustained him. But just when it started to feel like freedom might be within reach, a whole new nightmare began.

Ellison ordered the state to retry or release Prible within six months. Instead, Texas balked at the ruling and asked the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn it.

According to Texas Assistant Solicitor General Ari Cuenin, the allegations of the snitch ring were “incoherent and unproven,” and federal law barred the judge from even allowing Prible’s lawyers to present them in court. In the state’s reading, any argument Prible wanted to pursue about the Beaumont informants should have been made by his state post-conviction attorney, Roland Moore, back in 2004. At the time, Prible was only aware that a Black man named Walker might have some information about how he was framed for a crime he didn’t commit.

To Rytting and Scardino, this was absurd. Prible had no proof precisely because Siegler failed to disclose evidence of her communication with the Beaumont informants. After all, the state knew where the elusive Carl Walker was all along: His full name and inmate number were included on the letter he’d signed, which was sequestered in Siegler’s file.

It was the state’s actions that prevented Prible from raising the claims earlier, the lawyers maintained. If Prible’s trial attorneys had known there was a band of informants scheming to set him up — and that Siegler deemed Foreman unreliable, even as Beckcom testified that Foreman could corroborate his account of Prible’s confession — then they could have gutted Beckcom’s testimony, leaving Siegler’s otherwise circumstantial case in tatters.

In late 2021, the lawyers for each side traveled from Texas to New Orleans, where the 5th Circuit is based, for oral arguments. Presiding over the panel was Judge James Dennis. Now 87 and on senior status, he is one of a handful of judges appointed by a Democratic president left on the ultra-conservative court. Dennis, participating remotely amid the pandemic, asked no questions of either side; all queries would come from a pair of Republican-appointed judges who appeared to see the case in radically different terms.

A former Texas assistant solicitor general and Trump appointee known for his far-right views, Judge Kyle Duncan leaned into Cuenin’s position that Prible should have raised the informant issues years earlier. Duncan asked whether the defense had sent anyone to Beaumont to look for a man named Walker, prompting a long pause from Rytting: “That is not how the Bureau of Prisons works,” he said. “What, the investigator goes in and says, ‘You got a guy named Walker here?’”

Prible did what he could with the scant information available behind bars, Rytting said. But it all amounted to rumor and hunch, which was not enough to raise a concrete legal claim back in 2004.

Jennifer Elrod, who was a civil court judge in Houston before being appointed to the bench by George W. Bush, appeared to understand Prible’s dilemma.

She took issue with the state’s dismissal of Siegler’s note about the DNA, which Cuenin said had no bearing on the case given Prible had admitted to having sex with Tirado early on the morning of her murder. The note would have to say more than it did — “Pamela McInnis — semen lives up to 72 hours” — to be relevant to Prible’s defense, Cuenin argued.

“It is very relevant whether it happened on the edge of the killing or whether it happened several hours before,” Elrod said. At trial, Siegler asserted that the amount of semen on the swab proved that Prible had forced Tirado to perform oral sex moments before shooting her. The note showed that the director of a local crime lab she consulted would not have been willing to back up her argument. “That matters tremendously in inflaming the jury and … whether you get the death penalty because you’re such a monster that you have sex and then have just an overwhelming desire to kill,” Elrod said. “And that was ginned up to be very relevant.”

“Do we have any ethical duties if we believe that there’s unethical conduct?” Elrod asked Cuenin as the arguments came to a close.

“As lawyers we all have ethical duties,” he replied.

“I’m just wondering, has that been handled?” she pressed. “We don’t have any duty to report anything we learn in this case to the bar?”

“That’s not a part of this case,” Cuenin said.

Peterson remembers feeling encouraged by Elrod’s line of questioning. She was optimistic that the court might rule in Prible’s favor. Instead, nine months later, a unanimous panel ruled in favor of Texas, reinstating Prible’s death sentence. “That was devastating,” she said. “After that, we didn’t have much hope.”

Scardino and Rytting were dismayed. Elrod had expressed concern about unethical conduct on the part of the state. For her to join Duncan’s majority opinion, which fully embraced the state’s position, was confounding. The judges did not address whether Siegler had withheld evidence critical to Prible’s defense, ruling only that the lawyers had raised the claim too late.

“Jeff was gaslighted for years,” by Siegler, by the courts, by the attorney general’s office, Scardino said, “all of whom were saying, ‘This guy is delusional, this conspiracy is all a figment of his imagination.’” And once he was finally able to prove it, “the 5th Circuit says, ‘Too bad, it’s too late, he should’ve figured it out years earlier.’”

The lawyers asked the full court to reconsider the panel’s ruling, and when it declined, they asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene. In June, it too declined to get involved.

5

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Truth Will Come Out

If Siegler was paying attention to Prible’s case as it made its way through the courts, there was no sign of it on her Twitter feed. As Prible’s fate hung in the balance at the Supreme Court, Siegler posted a landscape photo taken from an airplane. “Hello America! First case, Season 7 we start working tomorrow,” she wrote. ““Wish us luck!”

The new season of “Cold Justice” is set to air next year. In the meantime, Siegler is promoting the inaugural season of “Prosecuting Evil.” At CrimeCon in Orlando, she was welcomed with uproarious cheers and a standing ovation. “When you’re not here you’re so missed,” said the Oxygen correspondent who introduced Siegler. “When you’re back here it feels like a reunion.”

Siegler took the stage with the showrunner from “Cold Justice” and the executive producer of “Prosecuting Evil.” They teased the new show’s premiere with a clip revisiting Siegler’s most notorious moment: straddling her colleague on a bloody mattress to reenact a defendant stabbing her husband to death.

“I can truly say that probably is what led to all this,” Siegler said of the bed stunt. It was the point where her real life as a hard-driving prosecutor produced the parallel life she would later inhabit, turning her into a reality TV star. There were members of the legal community who thought she went too far, she told the audience, but that didn’t bother her. “I care more about what people like you think.”

Asked about the advice she would give someone “passionate about a career in the legal system,” Siegler said it was all about ethics. “Every decision you make comes back to your own integrity.” From filing charges to “every time you talk to a witness,” she said, you’re “always really, really” trying to do the right thing. “And you don’t let your damn ego get in the way. And you don’t worry about winning or losing the trial, you just do what’s right. It’ll keep your reputation always intact.”

Five episodes in, “Prosecuting Evil” appears to be about fortifying Siegler’s reputation and ensuring her legacy as a prosecutor who pulled no punches in the pursuit of justice. The show prominently features the families of homicide victims, who show deep gratitude for the work done on behalf of their loved ones. In the episodes focused on her old cases, Siegler is more defiant than reflective, reveling in court victories and evincing scorn for defendants, defense attorneys, and attempts to overturn her convictions. “That’s inflammatory and that’s over the top and that’s grandstanding,” she said in the premiere, mocking her critics. “Gimme a break.”

To Prible’s supporters, Siegler’s continued celebrity is less disturbing than the lack of accountability she’s faced. Ward Larkin, the anti-death-penalty activist, has made it a point never to watch “Cold Justice.” “It’s obvious she’s extremely intelligent,” he said. “But she’s also a horrible person. … She has no compunction about the horrors she inflicts on people.”

Hermilo Herrero is now in his 50s. Despite Rytting’s efforts on his behalf, his appeals have been denied. He continues to insist on his innocence for the murder of Albert Guajardo in 1995. “Albert was a friend and never my enemy and I have been living with that lie they made up,” he wrote in a letter to The Intercept. He blames Siegler for her drive to win at all costs, even if it meant sending innocent people to die in prison and “stealing the justice from the victims or the victim’s families that they so much need and deserve.”

“It is not just Herrero and myself where the only evidence presented against us is a jailhouse snitch who says that we confessed to them,” Prible wrote in an open letter after his conviction was vacated. “There are others. … The truth will come out. It has already started.”

Jeffrey Prible and his son “Little Jeff” in a photo taken at FCI Beaumont in 2001.

If the state wanted to reinvestigate Prible’s case, there are some obvious places to start. A man named Philip Brody shared recollections with The Intercept that could have been critical to law enforcement had there been a thorough investigation two decades ago. Brody was friends with both Prible and Steve Herrera in the years leading up to Herrera’s death. Some six months before the killings, Brody said, Herrera told him about a man in the “drug game” who owed him money. The man had been arrested before paying Herrera back. So “we took my truck and emptied out everything in his whole house,” Brody recalled. Then Herrera sold the man’s belongings.

The man was just one person who had a motive to kill Herrera. But there were others, Brody said. Shortly after that incident, Herrera asked Brody to do something that “kind of put the nail in the coffin for our friendship.” According to Brody, Herrera asked if he would be willing to arm himself with tactical gear and an assault weapon and break into a drug dealer’s house to steal money, drugs, and whatever else they could find. “And I was like, ‘Hell no.’”

To Brody, it seemed obvious that Herrera was making dangerous enemies. He believes this is what got him killed in the end. Murdering an entire family was something members of a drug cartel would do. Prible had children of his own. “I couldn’t see Jeff doing that to the innocent kids, you know?”

It should also have been obvious to police that Herrera’s drug dealing likely played a part in the murders. Among the documents the state failed to turn over to Prible’s defense before trial was an anonymous letter that Herrera’s parents received days after their son’s murder. “OK Fuckheads this is not a cordial greeting,” it began, before demanding that the couple get rid of the “thieves and drug dealers” living in a rental property they owned. The letter threatened to burn down 11 properties the Herreras maintained as rentals if the alleged drug dealing continued. “This is your only warning!!!!” the letter concluded.

The letter did not include the house where Herrera and Tirado lived. Still, the threats dovetailed with the circumstances surrounding the murders and appeared to offer a viable lead. But contemporaneous reports suggest police did nothing with the letter aside from putting it in a manila envelope and marking it as evidence.

It isn’t clear when Prible’s attorneys received a copy of the letter. When Gaiser, Prible’s trial attorney, was shown a copy during the 2019 evidentiary hearing, he testified that he’d never seen it. He said he would have used it as a jumping off point for his own investigation. “That was extremely relevant to whether there was another motive,” he testified.

Bill Watson, the state’s DNA analyst at trial, told The Intercept that he would testify differently if called to the stand today. He has more experience now, he said, and some of his answers sounded more “definitive” than they should have. As the state’s expert witness, he didn’t intend to endorse the theory that the DNA could only have been deposited at the time of Tirado’s death, but that’s how the state used his testimony. During his closing argument, Vic Wisner, Siegler’s co-counsel, told the jury that there was “no way in the world that semen wasn’t deposited either moments before or seconds after Nilda died.” Watson called that an “overstatement.” “‘No way in the world’ is not something I would’ve said.”

In a phone call with The Intercept, Johnny Bonds, the DA investigator turned “Cold Justice” star, defended Siegler, saying his longtime friend and colleague is one of the most “upstanding” people he’s met. Bonds said he was reassured when he learned that Prible’s death sentence had been reinstated. “I can’t imagine her doing anything like [what] she’s accused of.” Upon reflection, he believes Nathan Foreman was behind the allegations that fueled Prible’s litigation. Foreman was indignant that Bonds and Siegler wouldn’t let him on the “bandwagon” of informants against Prible, Bonds said. “He wanted something out of it, and when he didn’t get anything out of it, he said, ‘Well, I’ll show you.’”

Scardino, meanwhile, is hard at work on a new state court appeal. While the 5th Circuit ruled against Prible, it didn’t disturb the district judge’s findings that Prible had been denied a fair trial. Scardino plans to take those findings and the wealth of evidence backing them up to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. “I really do believe that in the end, the system will correct the colossal miscarriage of justice that has taken place,” she said.

Michael Beckcom has been out of prison for nearly two decades and lives a quiet life. He rides a motorcycle, plays in a band, and loves dogs. He still carries himself with confidence, though years of bodybuilding have left significant aches and pains.

He doesn’t like to talk about his time in prison or his turn as a snitch for Kelly Siegler. Working with her put him in danger behind bars, he said, netting him several years of solitary confinement, which was meant to keep him safe. Beckcom is still angry with Siegler. He expected that his testimony against Prible would spring him from prison. He was counting on that. And he needed to get home to take care of his daughter and aging mother.

It was Siegler who screwed him over, he said over a cup of coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts, but it was Foreman who “roped me” into the whole mess to begin with. Foreman was working with Siegler on the Herrero case, he recalled, when he pulled Beckcom in on the Prible case. Foreman then told Siegler that Beckcom was the one who “knew the whole story,” he said. “And it all came to fruition.” Foreman did not respond to The Intercept’s requests for an interview.

Beckcom acknowledged that his testimony against Prible might have sounded fishy. He understands that it was the only new piece of evidence Siegler turned up after taking over the cold case. But he insists that Prible confessed to him. At least that’s how he remembers it. “It is what it is from my perspective, and that’s the way it happened to me,” he said. “Anybody can take that, do with it what they want.”

“Your ass is in a jam because she’s going to get 12 people to say you did it.”

At the same time, he believed Siegler provided him with a road map to the information she needed to convict Prible. “She may give you, I’m not going to say evidence, but she can give you certain things that he wouldn’t have given you,” Beckcom said. “It’s all in the framing.” She would say something like, “‘Did he mention anything about such and such’ and then maybe give you an idea. If you had more than one brain cell kicking, you could figure it out what she was talking about.”

“This was her forte,” he added. Which is “not good if you’re on the fucking receiving end. Your ass is in a jam because she’s going to get 12 people to say you did it.”

When asked if it was possible that his story of Prible’s confession wasn’t all above board — that it was embellished with information Siegler provided — Beckcom said no. But he also demurred, saying maybe Prible was just telling stories to make himself look tough behind bars. “If everything he said was a fabrication to make him look like a gangster because he was in prison, then that’s on him,” Beckcom said. “He shouldn’t have said anything.”

Prible has never stopped talking about his case. In correspondence, he often writes at a frenzied pace, joking frequently, alluding to literature and music, and peppering his emails with exclamation points.

Prible makes no excuses for his past. “I did drugs and was involved in criminal activity! I was a womanizer! I am not like that anymore!” He maintains his innocence and adamantly denies ever confessing to Beckcom, “an obvious fake” who carried himself like an Italian mobster, saying “stupid shit” like he knew who killed Jimmy Hoffa. Prible said he only tolerated Beckcom because he was friendly with Foreman. “I did not want to say ‘your friend’s full of shit.’”

Prible rejects the notion that the state never considered any other suspects in the murders, as Siegler emphasized to his jury. “They just got rid of anything that was useful to my defense!” While he’s eager to discuss aspects of his case that he feels have not been sufficiently investigated, he’s just as anxious to convey the urgency of his circumstances. Living on death row for 21 years has been a “rollercoaster ride through hell.”

Prible’s mental health has ebbed and flowed over his decades at Polunsky. During one period, Larkin said, “he was having episodes, mental health episodes, where it would just paralyze him.” Prible asked Larkin to research the impact of long-term solitary confinement — “he was convinced that there was something to that.” He was right. Solitary confinement has been shown to be psychologically devastating. Many experts consider it torture. The research became a survival tool for Prible, a way to recognize what was happening to his mind.

Prible’s earliest emails to The Intercept were strikingly upbeat. He was hopeful that the Supreme Court would take his case, even though it was a long shot, and seemed undeterred when it was rejected. “Jeff, in spite of all of this, is an eternal optimist,” Scardino said. “He’s able to recover from the repeated blows to his legal case — to his life.”

But more recently, Prible has struggled to ward off the torment of his surroundings. In early November, a series of panic attacks sent him spiraling. “You know I was fine until they locked me in a tiny cage for so fucking long and killed everyone around me I come to care for!” he wrote in one email. In another, he remembered a friend executed years ago, whom he believed was waiting for him “at the end of the Green Mile. … He comes to me in my dreams and always makes me smile like only he can!” In the wake of the panic attacks, Prible sent a letter asking the judge in his case for an execution date.

Legally, it would take more than such a letter to put Prible in imminent danger of execution. And he’s not actually ready to give up. “In the Marine Corps, they teach you contingency plans for everything,” he said in a recent phone call, discussing a possible hearing in state court. As Christmas approached, he shared recipes from a holiday-themed issue of Southern Living.

Despite bouts of rage and despair, Prible expresses constant gratitude for those who have helped him, whom he describes as heaven-sent. Though he does not consider himself religious, he takes comfort in passages from the Bible. One, from the book of Jeremiah, promises freedom from captivity: “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to give you hope and a future. … I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you … and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.”

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Jordan Smith.

On 1 December each year, in cities across Australia and New Zealand, a small group of West Papuan immigrants and refugees and their supporters raise a flag called the Morning Star in an act that symbolises their struggle for self-determination.

Doing the same thing in their homeland is illegal.

This year is the 62nd anniversary of the flag being raised alongside the Dutch standard in 1961 as The Netherlands prepared their colony for independence.

• READ MORE: Why Indonesia fails to address the West Papua conflict

Formerly the colony of Dutch New Guinea, Indonesia controversially took control of West Papua in 1963 and has now divided the Melanesian region into seven provinces.

In the intervening years, brutal civil conflict is thought to have claimed hundreds of thousands of lives through combat and deprivation, and Indonesia has been criticised internationally for human rights abuses.

The Morning Star will fly in Ronny Kareni’s adopted hometown of Canberra and will also be raised across the Pacific region and around the world.

“It brings tears of joy to me because many Papuan lives, those who have gone before me, have shed blood or spent time in prison, or died just because of raising the Morning Star flag,” Kareni, the Australian representative of the United Liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP) in Australia told SBS World News.

‘Our right to self-determination’
“Commemorating the anniversary for me demonstrates hope and also the continued spirit in fighting for our right to self-determination and West Papua to be free from Indonesia’s brutal occupation.”

Indonesia’s diplomats regularly issue statements criticising the act, including when the flag was raised at Sydney’s Leichhardt Town Hall, as “a symbol of separatism” that could be “misinterpreted to represent support from the Australian government”.

“It’s a symbol of an aspiring independent state which would secede from the unitary Indonesian republic, so the flag itself isn’t particularly welcome within official Indonesian political discourse,” says Professor Vedi Hadiz, an Indonesian citizen and director of the Asia Institute at the University of Melbourne.

“The raising of the flag is an expression of the grievances they hold against Indonesia for the way that economic and political governance and development has taken place over the last six decades.

“But it’s really part of the job of Indonesian officials to make a counterpoint that West Papua is a legitimate part of the unitary republic.”

The history of the Morning Star
After World War II, a wave of decolonisation swept the globe.

The Netherlands reluctantly relinquished the Dutch East Indies in 1949, which became Indonesia, but held onto Dutch New Guinea, much to the chagrin of President Sukarno, who led the independence struggle.

In 1957, Sukarno began seizing the remaining Dutch assets and expelled 40,000 Dutch citizens, many of whom were evacuated to Australia, in large part over The Netherlands’ reluctance to hand over Dutch New Guinea.

The Dutch created the New Guinea Council of predominantly elected Papuan representatives in 1961 and it declared a 10-year roadmap to independence, adopted the Morning Star flag, the national anthem – “Hai Tanahku Papua” or “Oh My Land Papua” – and a coat-of-arms for a future state to be known as “West Papua”.

The West Papua flag was inspired by the red, white and blue of the Dutch but the design can hold different meanings for the traditional landowners.

“The five-pointed star has the cultural connection to the creation story, the seven blue lines represent the seven customary land groupings,” says Kareni.

The red is now often cited as a tribute to the blood spilt fighting for independence.

Attending the 1961 inauguration were Britain, France, New Zealand and Australia — represented by the president of the Senate Sir Alister McMullin in full ceremonial attire — but the United States, after initially accepting an invitation, withdrew.

Cold War in full swing
The Cold War was in full swing and the Western powers were battling the Russians for influence over non-aligned Indonesia.

The Morning Star flag was raised for the first time alongside the Dutch one at a military parade in the capital Hollandia, now called Jayapura, on 1 December.

On 19 December, Sukarno began ordering military incursions into what he called “West Irian”, which saw thousands of soldiers parachute or land by sea ahead of battles they overwhelmingly lost.

Then 20-year-old Dutch soldier Vincent Scheenhouwer, who now lives on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, was one of the thousands deployed to reinforce the nascent Papua Volunteer Corps, largely armed with WW2 surplus, arriving in June 1962.

“The groups who were on patrol found weapons, so modern it was unbelievable, and plenty of ammunition,” he said of Russian arms supplied to Indonesian troops.

He did not see combat himself but did have contact with the local people, who variously flew the red and white Indonesian or the Dutch flag, depending on who controlled the ground.

“I think whoever was supplying the people food, they belonged to them,” he said.

He did not see the Morning Star flag.

“At that time, nothing, totally nothing. Only when I came out to Australia (in 1970) did I find out more about it,” he said.

Waning international support
With long supply lines on the other side of the world and waning international support, the Dutch sensed their time was up and signed the territory over to UN control in October 1962 under the “New York Agreement”, which abolished the symbols of a future West Papuan state, including the flag.

The UN handed control to Indonesia in May 1963 on condition it prepared the territory for a referendum on self-determination.

“I’m sort of happy it didn’t come to a serious conflict (at the time), on the other hand you must feel for the people, because later on we did hear they have been very badly mistreated,” says Scheenhouwer.

“I think Holland was trying to do the right thing but it’s gone completely now, destroyed by Indonesia.”

The so-called Act Of Free Choice referendum in 1969 saw the Indonesian military round up 1025 Papuan leaders who then voted unanimously to become part of Indonesia.

The outcome was accepted by the UN General Assembly, which failed to declare if the referendum complied with the “self-determination” requirements of the New York Agreement, and Dutch New Guinea was incorporated into Indonesia.

“Rightly or wrongly, in the Indonesian imagination, unlike East Timor for example, Papua was always regarded as part of the unitary Indonesian republic because the definition of the latter was based on the borders of colonial Dutch East Indies, whereas East Timor was never part of that, it was a Portuguese colony,” says Professor Hadiz.

“The average Indonesian’s reaction to the flag goes against everything they learned from kindergarten all the way to university.

Knee-jerk reaction
“So their reaction is knee-jerk. They are just not aware of the conditions there and relate to West Papua on the basis of government propaganda, and also the mainstream media which upholds the idea of the Indonesian unitary republic.”

In 1971, the Free Papua Movement (OPM) declared the “republic of West Papua” with the Morning Star as its flag, which has gone on to become a potent binding symbol for the movement.

The basis for Indonesian control of West Papua is rejected by what are today fractured and competing military and political factions of the independence movement, but they do agree on some things.

“The New York Agreement was a treaty signed between the Dutch and Indonesia and didn’t involve the people of West Papua, which led to the so-called referendum in 1969, which was a whitewash,” says Kareni.

“For the people, it was a betrayal and West Papua remains unfinished business of the United Nations.”

Raising the flag also raises the West Papua issue on an international level, especially when it is violently repressed in the two Indonesian provinces where there are reportedly tens of thousands of troops deployed.

“It certainly doesn’t depict Indonesia in very favourable terms,” Professor Vedi says.

“The problem for the West Papua [independence] movement is that there’s not a lot of international support, whereas East Timor at least had a significant measure.

‘Concerns about geopolitical stability’
“Concerns about geopolitical stability and issues such as the Indonesian state, as we know it now, being dismembered to a degree — I think there would be a lot of nervousness in the international community.”

Australia provides significant military training and foreign aid to Indonesia and has recently agreed to further strengthen defence ties.

Australia signed the Lombok Treaty with Indonesia in 2006 recognising its territorial sovereignty.

“It’s important that we are doing it here to call on the Australian government to be vocal on the human rights situation, despite the bilateral relationship with Indonesia,” says Kareni.

“Secondly, Australia is a member of the Pacific Islands Forum and the leaders have agreed to call for a visit of the UN Human Rights Commissioner to carry out an impartial investigation.”

Events are also planned across West Papua.

“It’s a milestone, 60 years, and we’re still waiting to freely sing the national anthem and freely fly the Morning Star flag so it’s very significant for us,” he says.

“We still continue to fight, to claim our rights and sovereignty of the land and people.”

Stefan Armbruster is Queensland and Pacific correspondent for SBS News. First published by SBS in 2021 and republished by Asia Pacific Report with minor edits and permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Yet, it is the old vibe that Hong Kong officials are aspiring to recover. In mid-September, the government launched “Night Vibes Hong Kong,” involving night markets, food stalls, movie screenings and live music events over weekends.

Over the past 12 months, it has rolled out campaigns including a six-month program to bring tourists back and also gone on global roadshows to win back investors. 

The effectiveness of the efforts remains elusive, despite Chief Executive John Lee’s vow to a year ago in his maiden policy speech to go all out to draw back talent and businesses to a city battered by a stringent zero-COVID policy and Beijing’s hardened grip.

Tell the world the good stories of Hong Kong was the mantra, he quipped.

As Lee prepares to make his second policy address this week, analysts say the good stories are few, and the issues that have eroded Hong Kong’s unique competitiveness continue to chip away.

The city’s international financial center and economic hub positions are crumbling under the weight of Beijing’s tightened grip of the special administrative region where the “one country, two systems” principle is taking a new form under Chinese President Xi Jinping.

“Hong Kong’s major indicators – freedom, rule of law, international financial center status, international standards of practices, property market, stock market, government’s financial reserves – are all on the decline, and it is a Hong Kong government problem,” points out Lew Mon-hung, a businessman and former Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference committee member.

‘Promoting Marxism’

To be exact, it’s a problem stemming from Beijing, Lew says, because Hong Kong’s progress and fate are intricately tied to China’s continuous reforms as they have been the past four decades. 

That path, however, has been stymied by the shift in political climate in the mainland, and the Chinese National People’s Congress’s passing of the National Security Law in June 2020 – bypassing Hong Kong’s legislature – to quell months of anti-government protests.

“In China now, they are promoting Marxism – having gotten into the philosophy of struggle, wolf warrior diplomacy,” which Lew says comes at the expense of economic and thought regressions.

These weighed on the “one country, two systems,” China’s constitutional principle to govern Hong Kong under a mini-constitution called the Basic Law, where the city is allowed freedom of assembly and speech, an independent judiciary and some democratic rights – except in the areas of diplomacy and defense. 

“Beijing reckons that Hong Kong only needs to play an economic role after its return to Chinese rule,” says Hong Kong current affairs commentator Johnny Lau Yui-siu. 

“But Hong Kong people’s view of the world is different from mainland China’s political awareness and consciousness. And Beijing wants Hong Kong to align.” 

Hong Kongers, he says, are outward-looking, used to international practices, free flow of information and speech, unlike their Chinese counterparts who are restricted by the boundaries that the Chinese Communist Party had set. 

As China stalls in its convergence towards international standards, Hong Kong became the by-product of that stagnation, Lau says.

The numbers add up

The numbers tell the same story. China’s exports fell 14.3% and 8.8% in July and August respectively, while Hong Kong’s fell 9.1% and 3.7%. The benchmark stock index has lost about 12% since the beginning of 2023 and Hong Kong’s property prices are forecast to fall 5% for the year, according to a commercial real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield. 

The uncertainties that keep foreign investors guessing about where the political winds blow in China also reverberate in Hong Kong. China’s crackdown on industries such as the technology sector, as well as its more recent position to let an indebted property industry go into a free fall, have done little to assure investors.

The latest annual survey by the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai published in September showed that the percentage of U.S. firms optimistic about their outlook on China over the next five years slid to 52%, the lowest level since the annual report was introduced in 1999.

In Hong Kong, a member sentiment survey by the AmCham in Hong Kong released in March found that American businesses’ three biggest challenges are U.S.-China tensions, a weakening global economy and the overseas perception of Hong Kong, a factor that was previously absent.

“If the HKSAR Govt can reassure international investors that the rule of law will prevail, and the NSL will not put their staff in jeopardy, it will go a long way.  But it is at the moment delivering neither,” says Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute at SOAS University of London.

Rebuilding reputation

The chamber has urged Hong Kong chief Lee to provide “straightforward interpretations and applications” of the law in his upcoming policy speech. In its written submission in September to the public consultation for the policy address, the chamber wants Lee to reassure businesses that the law will be applied narrowly and be consistent with the principles of an independent judiciary.

The ramifications of the national security law, which criminalizes any act of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign or external forces, have never ceased since it was implemented.

How the Hong Kong government has used the law to change the political and civic institutions in the city has alarmed a wide spectrum of the society. Opposition parties and media outlets were shuttered, while pro-democratic figures have either been arrested or have fled the city.

An earlier post-COVID reopening by longtime rival Singapore didn’t help. Toeing Beijing's stringent zero-COVID policy was a death knell for Hong Kong as cross-border transactions and exchanges fell to a minimum. 

“One of the most striking indicators that we've been looking at is really that the size of the labor force has shrunk quite significantly. A large reason for it has got to do with Hong Kong's handling of the pandemic,” says Sheana Yue, China economist from Capital Economics. 

The labor force has shrunk to 3.826 million, nearly the same size as it was in 2013, a decade ago.

Wooing investors

Hong Kong officials are traveling the world to woo investors and visitors, while introducing various programs to entice talents to the city.

The spokesperson attributed the city’s disrupted talent inflow to travel restrictions during the pandemic between 2020 and early this year. The intensified global competition for talent didn’t help. 

“The various talent-related initiatives have received positive responses since implementation,” the spokesperson said in an email response to Radio Free Asia.

General estimates are that at least 300,000 Hong Kongers have emigrated. Many of the Hong Kong diaspora are in the United Kingdom, Singapore and Taiwan.

“Taiwan sees Hong Kong’s change as a big failure – a negative example,” says Lau. “Mainland China knows that the ‘one country, two systems’ is no longer a model or draw, but it will still persist in it.” 

Policy address

In his policy speech on Wednesday, Lee is expected to announce the creation of an office to publicize Chinese culture, alongside plans for a Hong Kong anti-war memorial hall, all towards nurturing patriotism, according to reports in pro-government media including Sing Tao Daily and Hong Kong Commercial Daily citing people in the know. 

Lee is also likely to give out HK$20,000 (US$2,556) to new parents with newborn children to persuade Hong Kongers to have children, as a counter to the emigration trend and an aging population.

The economy, flanked by the housing crisis, is also likely to hold center stage. In the weeks of run-up to the address, property agents and investors have called for a relaxation of measures that were implemented to curtail price hikes to revive a sluggish market.

Hong Kong has increasingly veered towards being subsumed into the Greater Bay Area, or the GBA – Beijing’s strategy to promote development of a regional economic bloc that included Macau and nine Chinese cities in the southern Guangdong province.

“Xi made it clear he wanted Hong Kong to be part of GBA in 2017, but he didn’t have time to see to it that this was implemented beyond superficially,” says Tsang at SOAS. 

“After the 2019 protests, Xi has required this to be implemented, so it has. On the current trajectory, Hong Kong’s future is within the GBA – not what many or most people in Hong Kong would have liked.”

Lau says it is only a matter of time before the gap between Hong Kong and China narrows, or even when the divergent political stances converge because the government controls the education system and information flow. “When it becomes all one single structure.” 

Meanwhile, the regular citizens are unimpressed with the various government campaigns to rejuvenate the Hong Kong spirit. Cosmetic, they concluded. 

“Everyone says ‘Night Vibes, Hong Kong’ is a silly idea,” says a Mong Kok resident who gave her name only as Wing. “Look, even the famous Women’s Street, a former night market tourist destination here in Mong Kok, is dead.” 

Edited by Taejun Kang, Mike Firn and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Elaine Chan for RFA.

The Pacific region’s focus will shift briefly to Port Vila next week when Vanuatu hosts the heads of governments from Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and the leader of the FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) of New Caledonia for the 22nd Melanesian Spearhead Group Leaders’ Summit.

The regional sub-group had met on the sidelines of the Pacific Islands Forum leaders’ meeting in July last year for the handover of the chair’s role from PNG to Vanuatu.

But next week will be its first full meeting since the leaders last gathered pre-covid in Port Moresby in February 2018.

• READ MORE: West Papua liberation group praises support for MSG – ‘keep going’ plea
• MSG Leaders’ Summit next week
• The Melanesian Spearhead Group website

The theme for this year’s meet is “MSG, Being Relevant and Influential”. It will be 15 years since Vanuatu last hosted the Leaders’ Summit, which is the pre-eminent decision-making body of the MSG.

It is a group fundamentally established 35 years ago to represent and advance the interests of Melanesia and its people.

While the agenda for the meeting is yet to be released by the chair, one issue guaranteed to be on the table is West Papua full membership.

Momentum never stronger
The Leaders’ Summit has for the past decade dabbled with the issue of indigenous Papuan calls for the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) to become a full member of the MSG.

But the momentum for that to happen seems to have never been stronger.

In 2018, the MSG leaders’ approved the application by the ULMWP for full membership and referred it to the MSG Secretariat “for processing” under its new membership guidelines.

This week, Vanuatu’s Prime Minister Alatoi Ishmael Kalsakau confirmed to RNZ Pacific that as the chair, Vanuatu would “appeal to the open mindedness of the MSG” concerning the atrocities in West Papua, adding that “hopefully it will go alright”.

“It will be a two-day meeting where we can discuss issues of concern among the Melanesian family and come up with resolutions that will be able to assist us in maintaining and sustaining our membership as a group,” Kalsakau said.

West Papua for full member of Melanesia Spearhead Group MSG. pic.twitter.com/vS3dlJfxvD

— Benny Wenda (@BennyWenda) August 15, 2023

‘In Melanesia’s hands’
Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka caused a stir in February when he met ULMWP’s leader Benny Wenda in Suva on the margins of a special session of the Pacific Islands Forum.

Rabuka, wearing an independence flag Morning Star-branded bilum, became the first Fiji prime minister in 16 years to meet with Wenda for a one-on-one meeting, and assured his government’s backing of the ULMWP bid to become a full member of the MSG, subject to “sovereignty issues”.

“We will support them because they are Melanesians,” he said.

Papua New Guinea, on the other hand, intends to continue building its relations with Indonesia, a MSG associate member.

Prime Minister James Marape believes Indonesia’s control over Papua must be respected.

“We do not want to offset the balance and tempo,” Marape said.

Decisions made at the MSG are by consensus of all the leaders. If they do not agree on any issue, they must continue to dialogue until they arrive at a decision.

This means Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and the FLNKS of New Caledonia will all need to agree that ULMWP can become a full member.

Pacific churches and civil society groups continue to campaign and call for MSG leaders to back the Free West Papua Movement’s bid.

Wenda was present at the 7th Melanesian Festival of Arts and Culture — MGS’s flagship event — last month to further lobby for support.

According to one West Papuan academic, the absence of “Indonesian flags or cultural symbols” at MACFEST “spoke volumes of the essence and characteristics of what constitutes Melanesian cultures and values”.

“The Melanesian people must decide whether we are sufficiently united to support our brothers and sisters in West Papua, or whether our respective cultures are too diverse to be able to resist the charms offered by outsiders to look the other way,” writes Yamin Kogoya, who is from the Lani tribe in the Papuan highlands.

However, Wenda is under no illusions that for indigenous Papuans to be accepted into the Melanesian family: “The issue now is in Melanesia’s hands.”

• The Leaders’ Summit will take place on August 23 and 24, and be preceeded by a senior officials meeting on Saturday and a foreign ministers meeting on Monday.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The complaint, which CPJ reviewed, was filed by Md Shahinur Islam, who identified himself to The Daily Star as a reporter for the newspaper Amar Somoy, which supports the ruling Awami League party. It accused the journalists and other unnamed members of the opposition Jamaat-e-Islami party and Bangladesh Nationalist Party of working together to commit “anti-state crimes” and disseminate “conspiratorial news” in a July 27, 2023, Dainik Fulki article.

That article, titled “Asia’s longest-serving prime minister is finally resigning,” covered the resignation announcement of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen but mistakenly used a photo of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, president of the Awami League. The next day, the newspaper published a correction and apology, which CPJ reviewed.

Haque left Dainik Fulki around 2019 and was not involved in the article, the journalist told CPJ.

Sakib said he believed he was being targeted to undermine his campaign in the election for Savar Press Club president, which is set to be held in the coming months. He is opposed by about five journalists who strongly support the Awami League, he said.

Similarly, Haque said he believed he was being targeted for his campaign to be the press club’s organizing secretary. He is opposed by two journalists who strongly support the ruling party, he told CPJ.

The Savar Press Club is a trade group in the Dhaka district that advocates for issues, including wage distribution, labor rights, and journalist safety.

Sakib and Haque said they do not know Islam. Islam told CPJ via messaging app that his complaint was “accurate” and claimed the two journalists were involved in “information terrorism.” Islam did not respond to CPJ’s follow-up question about his journalistic background. CPJ called, messaged, and emailed the Amar Somoy newspaper for comment, but did not receive any replies.

Separately, on July 30, Sakib received a notice from the Dhaka district deputy commissioner’s office, reviewed by CPJ, ordering the journalist to explain within seven days why Dainik Fulki’s license to operate should not be canceled following an application filed by Manjurul Alam Rajib, chair of a local government unit and an Awami League leader in Savar. The notice alleges that the July 27 article “achieved the task of tarnishing the image of the state.”

Sakib’s response, dated August 6 and reviewed by CPJ, denied that allegation, expressed regret over the “unintentional mistake,” and mentioned the published correction and apology. Haque told CPJ that he did not receive a similar notice at that time.

Bangladesh’s next national election is set for January 2024 and expected to be met with increasing violence. In late July 2023, police fired at opposition party protesters with tear gas, rubber bullets, water cannons, and beat them amid mass arrests of Bangladesh Nationalist Party leaders and activists.

In response to the government’s announcement on August 7 that the Digital Security Act will be replaced, CPJ called on authorities to ensure the new Cyber Security Act complies with international human rights law.

Hasan Mahmud, Bangladesh’s information minister and Awami League joint secretary, and Dipak Chandra Saha, officer-in-charge of the Savar Model Police Station, did not respond to CPJ’s requests for comment sent via messaging app. CPJ also contacted Rajib and Anisur Rahman, Dhaka district deputy commissioner, via messaging app for comment, but did not receive any replies.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

We get an update from the Texas border, where human rights advocates are condemning Republican Governor Greg Abbott’s “Operation Lone Star” for its human rights abuses. Texas troopers have reportedly separated over two dozen migrant families at the U.S.-Mexico border in a major change of policy. This comes amid a deadly heat wave and after the first deaths linked to floating barrels wrapped in razor wire that Abbott put in the Rio Grande to block asylum seekers from crossing. “We’re calling for an end to the use of all of these detractions that are getting in the way of people being able to seek protection,” says Marisa Limón Garza, executive director of Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, which is based in El Paso, Texas.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

The post Kirk and Spock’s Response to Racism in Star Trek’s “Balance of Terror” appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Roger Thompson.

But it is almost impossible to see how the existing political machinery — the two-party system, fueled by vast sums of money, and lubricated with the influence of a toadying, sensationalist media — can generate any real answers to these challenges.

The system’s apologists like to write and speak of “our democracy” — in supposed contrast to the shifty authoritarians. But what kind of democracy requires a billion-dollar-or-more war chest to gain access to the state’s highest executive position? Under those terms, only a handful of rich and powerful people could realistically become President of the US by convincing other rich and powerful people to support and sustain their effort. Isn’t this akin to the “democracy” of the Roman Senate?

Of course, on the lower rungs of the political hierarchy, there are elected officials who are able to fund their campaigns for far less — entry level costs are much lower. It is possible to parlay social activism, media exposure, and a popular base into a modest fund-raising apparatus that propels some representative faces into government. But they are quickly seduced and obsessed into building an even greater fund-raising machine and locating themselves in the narrowly defined political space occupied by the two parties. The weight of the system and its conventions soon drains their independence.

It is hard to find optimism under these circumstances.

Faced with a Democratic Party that has inexorably moved to the right from its New Deal roots, many argue for nonetheless uniting behind the Democratic Party to halt the Republican Party’s inexorable movement to the right. It is a strange strategy.

Odd as it may be, it is sold to the left as building a buttress — a united front — against fascism.

It is the word “fascism” that conjures up the notion of a united front across class, across identity, and across political loyalty. For those with some minimal knowledge of twentieth-century history, fascism triggers memories of powerful nationalist movements that arose in response to a potent anti-capitalist workers’ movement and a crisis of capitalist rule, even a challenge to the very existence of capitalism. These were alone or together sufficient conditions for the rise, the threat, or the political success of historical fascism.

The post-World War One economic crisis and the rise of a militant industrial class in Italy and intense class struggle in the Italian countryside gave birth to the first self-described fascist movement in Europe. The Italian ruling class awarded it power when it accepted Mussolini as the decisive barricade against intensifying class struggle.

Similarly, of the many nationalist movements that sprung up in Germany, the Nazi Party was the one best equipped to address the rise of a growing, powerful Communist Party during the economic collapse of the Great Depression. German industrialists showered the Nazis with money, and their representatives expeditiously turned over power to Adolf Hitler.

We may extend the term “fascism” to other 1930s regimes in Europe — Mannerheim, Pilsudski, Antonescu, Admiral Horthy, Franco, Salazar, Petain, etc. — because they were puppets of Naziism or shared the same anti-Communist zeal which was sparked by intense class conflict within their respective countries.

Whether one prefers to confer the terms “quasi-fascist” or “semi-fascist” instead of “fascist” on the military coups — Greece, Chile, Indonesia, etc. — arising from political instability and left insurgency since World War II is a matter of little import. Nonetheless, they all share — perhaps with some nationally specific differences — the conditions that gave rise to fascism in the 1930s. Significantly, they also all established an “open, terroristic dictatorship” as defined by the Seventh Congress of the Communist International in 1935 — a political edifice built on the ashes of the previous structure.

It would take an enormous stretch of the imagination to suggest that the US ruling class is under siege from a revolutionary workers’ movement, that US politics has reached a stage of lethal instability, that the US economy is on the verge of collapse, or that there is a force empowered and dedicated to the elimination of bourgeois democracy.

Confronted with these historical anomalies, it is hard to see the danger of fascism as anything imminent in the US. Certainly, there are fascists in the US, even fascist organizations. Moreover, there are many fascist-minded people and people with fascistic ideas, even in positions of power. But fascism is neither around the corner nor on the near horizon.

Yet the unjustified threat of fascism is a useful tool in uniting the left behind a soulless, gutless Democratic Party — a shell organization built around fundraising and fright-mongering. If there were no fascist bogeyman, or Communist bogeyman, or Russian bogeyman, today’s Democratic Party would have little on which to base a campaign.

That is not to deny that the people in the US are in crisis. It is certainly true that there is growing dissatisfaction in the US, as in Europe and other advanced capitalist countries. Opinion polls show a broad, deep distrust in long-established institutions. From the courts to the political parties, citizens have lost confidence in the old ways of doing things (for example, in a Quinnipiac University poll, 47% of respondents indicated that they would vote for a third party in the US, should there be one).

Nor should this argument be taken to mean that there is no threat from the right. In response to the mass dissatisfaction, movements and parties have sprung up, exploiting the thirst for the new, speaking to the neglect of various economic, class, and regional interests, and promising to voice the concerns of the majority against the arrogance of elites. Quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Professor Thomas Greven of the Free University of Berlin noted that “A right-wing populist backlash… was inevitable.” A scholar of right-wing populism in the US and Europe, the professor then points to the key reason: “For me, it goes back to the failure of center-left, social democratic parties to manage, in a socially acceptable way, increased global competition.”

The breadth of dissatisfaction is shown by the rise of right-populism in many countries. And, as Professor Greven argues, it is the failure of the center, especially the left center, that allows right-populism to grow. Today, as in the 1930s, the cravenness of social democracy creates a political vacuum. The opportunist right has only to fill it. In the case of the 1930s, the ruling classes saw stark choices between revolutionary socialism and fascism. They too often picked fascism and nursed it into power.

Today, there are no stark choices. In Europe, faddish, rebranded social democratic parties like Podemos, Syriza, The Five Star Movement, or The Greens fall as quickly as they arise. In the US and the UK, Labour and the Democrats don’t bother to rebrand, they simply put “New” in front of “Labour” and “Democrats,” offering their services as the acquaintance that you know as opposed to the other that you should fear.

So, if we are to understand Professor Greven, then it would make no sense to embrace social democracy– including the Democratic Party in the US and Labour in the UK — when the rise of right-wing populism is itself a response to social democracy’s failings! How can clinging to the Democratic Party — the party that betrayed the cause of working people– be the answer to the rise in popularity of its right-wing movement posing as an alternative? Surely, this is like pouring gasoline on a fire.

But once again, as in so many election cycles, leaders of labor, civil rights organizations, environmental groups, and other worthy causes are lining up to support the Democratic Party– regardless of its betrayal of working people.

Those wise enough to recognize the Democratic Party’s many decades of spinelessness propose that the left conspire to infiltrate or take over the party, to operate both outside and inside the Democrat apparatus.

But to what effect?

In its long history, the Democratic Party only embraced working-class interests when pressed by independent forces outside of the Democratic Party who directly threatened the party’s most urgent agenda — to retain or gain power. That is the story of the Democrats’ moments of glory: the New Deal and the Great Society. In both cases, the social movements led and the Democrats followed. Today’s urgency to rally behind the Democrats is foolish — counterproductive foolishness.

Plenty of charlatans and hucksters join with the misinformed and delusional to pressure the left to steer clear of third-party movements and back the Democrats for one more round. Like the serial abuser, they ask the victims to give them one more chance.

Another apologist grants the need for separation, but suggests something called a “dirty break” instead of a divorce. Citing the long, tortured break with the UK Liberal Party that spawned the Labour Party in 1906, he recommends supporting the Democrats until the pain is so great that working people will flee the Democrats and form their own party, a process that may need several decades to ferment. Of course, that is the same Labour Party that recently ambushed its progressive wing and banished its left agenda back to the margin of UK politics.

The same author urged the same patience with the Democrats in 2017, then based on the long transitional “dirty break” that the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party made with the Democrats. The Farmer-Labor Party is long gone, but we will probably hear of the “dirty break” again in 2027.

It is a striking fact that most of our self-described left does not want to have a discussion of a third-party campaign. The mere thought of an alternative to the Democrats is seen as an assault on Enlightenment values, endangering the chances of defeating whatever candidate the Republicans turn up! It is inconceivable to them that pressure from the left might even strengthen their candidates in the distant election. It’s too risky…

For the rest of us, there is no way to begin to break the fatal chokehold that the Democrats have on the left other than supporting an outsider, an independent voice. It must be understood that the process will be long, tortured, and with many setbacks. Yet there will never be a better time when it will not be long, tortured, and with many setbacks.

It is not so important that we have the best standard-bearer or that we agree with every position he or she holds. But a good candidate does exist with good positions on the most important questions: Cornel West!

For a strong case for a third party and Cornel West’s candidacy, I recommend Chris Hedges’ article: “Cornel West and the Campaign to End Political Apartheid.”

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Greg Godels.

Jeffrey Clark, then assistant attorney general for the environment and natural resources division at the U.S. Department of Justice, speaks during a news conference in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 14, 2020.

Photo: Susan Walsh/AP

The man with no pants is the unnamed star of Donald Trump’s latest indictment.

Jeffrey Clark was an obscure government lawyer in the waning days of the Trump administration when he very nearly seized control of the Justice Department to help the president overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Clark is not identified by name in Thursday’s indictment, which accuses Trump of being at the heart of a conspiracy to fraudulently upend the election and prevent Joe Biden, the legitimate victor, from taking office. But the 45-page indictment’s description of “Co-Conspirator 4” matches Clark, who comes across as the most cinematic villain in the latest criminal conspiracy laid out by special counsel Jack Smith. (Filed in federal court in Washington, the indictment is Trump’s third this year.) Clark’s hunger for power and his contempt for democracy drip from the indictment’s pages.  

The first time most Americans ever saw Jeffrey Clark, he was in his underwear. When the FBI raided his house in July 2022 in connection with the criminal investigation into Trump’s attempts to stay in power, Clark was only half dressed; he asked if he could go put some pants on, but they ordered him to come outside immediately while they searched his house. Videos of a Clark standing in his doorway and then his driveway, wearing a blue dress shirt and what appeared to be black boxer briefs, were all over cable news.

Clark was a top environmental lawyer in the Justice Department during most of the Trump administration but was clearly eager for bigger things. After the election, when Trump was pressuring top Justice Department officials to cooperate with his efforts to overturn the vote, Clark saw his opportunity to move up. While his bosses at the Justice Department refused to get involved with Trump’s scheme, Clark went directly to the president behind their backs with a brazen scheme designed to weaponize the Justice Department to help reverse Biden’s victory.

The indictment offers an astonishing, blow-by-blow account of Clark’s attempt to help Trump and, in the process, help himself by hijacking the Justice Department while leaping over his superiors to become acting attorney general.

On December 22, 2020, Clark began to secretly conspire with Trump without the knowledge of his superiors at the Justice Department, according to the indictment. He met that day with Trump at the White House, but “Co-Conspirator 4 had not informed his leadership at the Justice Department of the meeting, which was a violation of the Justice Department’s written policy restricting contacts with the White House to guard against improper political influence.”

On December 26, Clark spoke on the phone with Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and lied about the circumstances of his meeting with the president, “falsely claiming that the meeting had been unplanned,” according to the indictment. Rosen told him not to have any further unauthorized contacts with the White House, and Clark promised he wouldn’t.

But the next day, according to the indictment, Clark talked to Trump on the phone. That afternoon, Trump called Rosen and Richard Donoghue, the acting deputy attorney general, and told them: “People tell me [Co-Conspirator 4] is great. I should put him in,” suggesting that he was considering putting Clark in charge of the Justice Department. At the same time, Trump followed up on his earlier efforts to pressure Rosen and Donoghue to use the Justice Department to help him overturn the election results, telling them: “Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.”

On December 28, Clark sent a draft of a letter to Rosen and Donoghue for them to sign. The letter was addressed to officials in Georgia, but he proposed sending versions of the same letter to officials in other key swing states as well. The letter stated that the Justice Department had “identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple states,” and claimed that two valid slates of electors had gathered and voted at the legally required time and place, and that both sets of ballots had been sent to Congress. That was Clark’s way of claiming that the Justice Department considered that fake slates of electors, created illegitimately by Republicans in states Trump had lost, were actually valid and should be accepted by state officials.

“Co-Conspirator 4’s letter sought to advance [Trump’s] fraudulent elector plan by using the authority of the Justice Department to falsely present the fraudulent electors as a valid alternative to the legitimate electors,” the indictment says. The letter also called on state legislatures to hold special sessions to choose fraudulent electors who would vote for Trump in the Electoral College instead of Biden.  

As soon as he read the proposed letter, Donoghue emailed Clark and told him it was filled with lies. Rosen and Donoghue once again told Clark not to have any further contact with the White House. But once again, Clark disobeyed.

On December 31, Trump called Rosen, Donoghue, and other Justice Department officials to the White House and repeated that they were overlooking widespread voter fraud, adding ominously that he was thinking about a leadership change at the Justice Department.

On January 2, Clark raised the pressure on his bosses. He told Rosen and Donoghue that Trump was considering making him acting attorney general, but that he would turn down the job if they would sign his proposed letter to the states. They refused, according to the indictment.  

On January 3, Clark met with Trump at the White House again, and accepted the president’s offer to become acting attorney general.

Right after that meeting, Patrick Philbin, the deputy White House counsel, told Clark not to accept the job and to drop his attempts to use the Justice Department to overturn the election, warning Clark that doing so would lead to “riots in every major city in the United States.” The indictment says that “Co-Conspirator 4 responded: “[W]ell, [Deputy White House Counsel] that’s why there’s an Insurrection Act.”

Later that day, Clark met with Rosen and told him he was taking over as acting attorney general. Rosen shot back that he would refuse to accept being fired by him, and immediately called the White House and scheduled a meeting with Trump for that night. 

During that meeting, Rosen and other Justice Department officials told Trump that if Clark were named acting attorney general, there would be mass resignations from the Justice Department. Clark was sitting right there with them in the meeting when they issued their warning, the indictment says. Trump finally backed down and agreed not to turn the Justice Department over to Clark.

But Clark persisted; during the same meeting, he said that the Justice Department could issue an opinion saying that Vice President Mike Pence had the power to change the election outcome during the certification proceedings on January 6. When another Justice Department official said the department shouldn’t do that, Trump interrupted. “No one here should be talking to the Vice President,” he said, according to the indictment. “I’m talking to the Vice President.”

That ended the conversation, and Jeffrey Clark’s reach for power. The next time Clark was heard from, he was trying to reach for his pants.    

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by James Risen.

A major daily newspaper in Solomon Islands received nearly US$140,000 in funding from the Chinese government in return for pledges to “promote the truth about China’s generosity and its true intentions to help develop” the Pacific Islands country, according to a leaked document and interviews.

The revelation comes amid Western alarm over growing Chinese influence over the strategically located country, which switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China in 2019 and then signed a surprise security agreement with Beijing last year.

Solomon Islands journalists have complained of a worsening media environment, as well as what is perceived to be a growing pro-China slant from local outlets that have accepted funding from the People’s Republic.

• READ MORE: How China’s creeping influence undermines Pacific media freedom — Shailendra Singh
• Other Pacific media and China reports
• The OCCRP website

A document obtained by OCCRP shows how one of these outlets, the Solomon Star newspaper, received Chinese assistance after providing repeated and explicit assurances that it would push messages favorable to Beijing.

Reporters obtained a July 2022 draft funding proposal from the Solomon Star to China’s embassy in Honiara in which the paper requested SBD 1,150,000 (about $137,000) for equipment, including a replacement for its aging newspaper printer and a broadcast tower for its radio station, PAOA FM.

The Solomon Star said in the proposal that decrepit equipment was causing editions to come out late and “curtailing news flow about China’s generous and lightning economic and infrastructure development in Solomon Islands.”

The document shows the Chinese embassy had initially offered SBD 350,000 in 2021, but revised this number upward in recognition of the newspaper’s needs.

A dozen pledges
In total, the proposal contains roughly a dozen separate pledges to use the Chinese-funded equipment to promote China’s “goodwill” and role as “the most generous and trusted development partner” in Solomon Islands.

In interviews, both the Solomon Star’s then-publisher, Catherine Lamani, and its chief of staff, Alfred Sasako, confirmed the paper had made the proposal, but declined to speak in detail about it.

Sasako said the newspaper maintained its independence. He said any suggestion it had a pro-Beijing bias was “a figment of the imagination of anyone who is trying to demonise China.”

Sasako said the paper had tried unsuccessfully for more than a decade to get assistance from Australia’s embassy in the country. Other Western countries, such as the United States, had neglected Solomon Islands for decades and were only now showing interest because of anxiety over Chinese influence, he added.

“My summary on the whole thing is China is a doer, others are talkers. They spend too much time talking, nothing gets done,” he said.

Press delivered
OCCRP was able to confirm that the printing equipment the Solomon Star had requested was indeed purchased and delivered earlier this year.

“I can confirm what was quoted was delivered in February and the payments came from the Solomon Star,” said Terry Mays, business development manager of G2 Systems Print Supply Division, the Brisbane, Australia, based supplier named in the proposal.

The Solomon Star funding is just one part of a regional push to get China’s message out in the Pacific Islands, as well as build relationships with the region’s elites, reporters have found.

Earlier this month, OCCRP reported on an aborted deal in the northern Pacific nation of Palau involving the publisher of the country’s oldest newspaper and a Chinese business group with links to national security institutions.

Bernadette Carreon and Aubrey Belford report for the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). OCCRP is funded worldwide by a variety of government and non-government donors. OCCRP’s work in the Pacific Islands is currently funded by a US-government grant that gives the donor zero say in editorial decisions.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

“Rebuilding our Melanesia for our future” is the theme chosen by the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) for their 7th Melanesian Arts and Cultural Festival (MACFEST) this year.

Vanuatu hosted the event in Port Vila, which opened last Wednesday and ends next Monday.

The event was hosted by the MSG, which includes Fiji, New Caledonia’s Front de Libération Nationale Kanak et Socialiste (FLNKS), Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu.

• READ MORE: Other MACFEST and Melanesian culture reports

Aside from the MSG’s official members, West Papua, Maluku and Torres Straits have also been welcomed with their own flags and cultural symbols.

Although Indonesia is an associate member of the MSG, there were no Indonesian flags or cultural symbols to be seen at the festival.

A beautiful array of colours was displayed today in at the official opening of the 7th Melanesian Arts & Culture Festival (MACFEST). #MSG #StorianBloYumi#wanpipolwanrijan #unityindiversity pic.twitter.com/vow2i2M85L

— MSG Secretariat (@MsgSecretariat) July 19, 2023

This action — Indonesian exclusion — alone spoke volumes of the essence and characteristics of what constitutes Melanesian cultures and values.

This event is a significant occasion that occurs every four years among the Melanesian member countries.

The MSG’s website under the Arts and Culture section says:

The Arts and Culture programme is an important pillar in the establishment of the MSG. Under the agreed principles of cooperation among independent states in Melanesia, it was signed in Port Vila on March 14, 1988, and among other things, the MSG commits to the principles of, and holds respect for and promotion of Melanesian cultures, traditions, and values as well as those of other indigenous communities.

MACFESTs

• 1998: The first MACFEST was held in the Solomon Islands with the theme, “One people, many cultures”.
• 2002: Vanuatu hosted the second MACFEST event under the theme, “Preserving peace through sharing of cultural exchange”.
• 2006: “Living cultures, living traditions” was the theme of the third MACFEST event held in Fiji.
• 2010: The fourth MACFEST event was held in New Caledonia with the theme “Our identity lies ahead of us”.
• 2014: Papua New Guinea hosted the fifth MACFEST, with the theme “Celebrating cultural diversity”.
• 2018: The Solomon Islands hosted the sixth edition of MACFEST with the theme “Past recollections, future connections”.
• 2023: Vanuatu is the featured nation in the seventh edition, with the slogan “Rebuilding our Melanesia for our future”.

Imagery, rhetorics, colours and rhythms exhibited in Port Vila is a collective manifestation of the words written on MSG’s website.

There have been welcoming ceremonies united under an atmosphere of warmth, brotherhood, and sisterhood with lots of colourful Melanesian cultural traditions on display.

Images and videos shared on social media, including many official social media accounts, portrayed a spirit of unity, respect, understanding and harmony.

West Papuan flags have also been welcomed and filled the whole event. The Morning Star has shone bright at this event.

The following are some of the images, colours and rhetoric displayed during the opening festive event, as well as the West Papua plight to be accepted into what Papuans themselves echo as the “Melanesian family”.

Wilayah Lapago,14 Juli 2023
“West Papua For Full Membership MSG 2023. pic.twitter.com/ys88iksqa5

— Mully Numa (@mully_numa) July 17, 2023

When stars aligned,
It’s time.
Melanesia has to make a stand to safe West Papua and the entire region. Bring West Papua back to the Melanesian family. pic.twitter.com/ilTZDNlW8Z

— Oridek Ap (@Oridek) July 19, 2023

Wamena – West Papua on 19 July 2023
For West Papuans, July 2023 marks a time when the stars seem to be aligned in one place — Vanuatu. July this year, Vanuatu is to chair the MSG leaders’ summit, hosting the seventh MACFEST, and celebrating its 43rd year of independence. Vanuatu has been a homebase (outside of West Papua) supporting West Papua’s liberation struggle since 1970s.

Throughout West Papua, you will witness spectacular displays of Melanesian colours, flags, and imagery in response to the unfolding events in the MSG and Vanuatu.

Melanesian brethren also displayed incredible support for West Papua’s plight at the MACFEST in Port Vila — a little hope that keeps Papuan spirits high in a world where freedom has been shut for 60 years.

This support fosters a sense of solidarity and offers a glimmer of optimism that one day West Papua will reclaim its sovereignty — the only way to safeguard Melanesian cultures, languages and tradition in West Papua.

Although geographically separated, Vanuatu, West Papua and the rest of Melanesian, are deeply connected emotionally and culturally through the display of symbols, flags, colours, and rhetoric.

Emancipation, expectation, hope, and prayer are high for the MSG’s decision making — decisions that are often marked by “uncertainty”.

A contested and changing Melanesia
The Director-General of MSG, Leonard Louma, said during the opening:

The need to dispel the notion that Melanesian communities only live in Fiji, New Caledonia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu and acknowledge and include Melanesians that live elsewhere.

I am reminded that there are pockets of descendants of Melanesians in the Micronesian group and the Polynesian group. We should include them, like the black Samoans of Samoa — often referred to as Tama Uli — in future MACFESTs.

In the past, Timor-Leste, Indonesia, Australia, and Taiwan were invited to attend. Let us continue to build on these blocks to make this flagship cultural event of ours even bigger and better in the years to come.

MSG leaders may perceive their involvement in defining and redefining the concept of Melanesia, as well as addressing date postponements and criteria-related matters, as relatively insignificant.

Similarly, for MSG members, their participation in the Melanesian cultural festival could be considered as just one of four events that rotate between them.

For West Papuans, this is an existential issue — between life or death as they face a bleak future under Indonesian colonial settler occupation — in which they are constantly reminded that their ancestral land will soon be seized and occupied by Indonesians if their sovereignty issues do not soon resolve.

The now postponed MSG’s leaders’ summit will soon consider an application proposing that West Papua be included within the group.

Regardless of whether this proposal is accepted by the existing member countries of the MSG, the obvious international pressures that impel this debate, must also prompt us to ask ourselves what it means to be Melanesian.

Decisions around unity?
Does the primacy of maintaining good relations with a powerful country like Indonesia, the West and China supersede Melanesian solidarity, or are we able to transcend these pressures to redefine and “rebuild our common Melanesia for our future”?

The Melanesian people must decide whether we are sufficiently united to support our brothers and sisters in West Papua, or whether our respective cultures are too diverse to be able to resist the charms offered by outsiders to look the other way.

The imminent decision to be made by the MSG leaders in Port Vila will be a crucial one — one that will affect the Melanesian people for generations to come. Does the MSG stand for promoting Melanesian interests, or has it become tempted by the short term promises of the West, China and their Indonesian minions?

What has become of the Melanesian Way — the notion of the holistic and cosmic worldview advocated by Papua New Guinea’s Bernard Narakobi?

The decision to be made in Port Vila will shine a light on the MSG’s own integrity. Does this group exist to help the Melanesian people, or is their real purpose only to help others to subjugate the Melanesian people, cultures and resources?

The task of “Rebuilding our Melanesia for our future” cannot be achieved without directly confronting the predicament faced by West Papua. This issue goes beyond cultural concerns; it is primarily about addressing sovereignty matters.

Only through the restoration of West Papua’s political sovereignty can the survival of the Melanesian people in that region and the preservation of their culture be ensured.

Should the MSG and its member countries continue to ignore this critical issue, “Papuan sovereignty”, one day there will be no true Melanin — the true ontological definition and geographical categorisation of what Melanesia is, (Melanesian) “Black people” represented in any future MACFEST event. It will be Asian-Indonesian.

Either MSG can rebuild Melanesia through re-Melanesianisation or destroy Melanesia through de-Melanesianisation. Melanesian leaders must seriously contemplate this existential question, not confining it solely to the four-year slogan of festival activities.

The decisive political and legal vision of MSG is essential for ensuring that these ancient, timeless, and incredibly diverse traditions and cultures continue to flourish and thrive into the future.

One can hope that, in the future, MSG will have the opportunity to extend invitations to world leaders who advocate peace instead of war, inviting them to Melanesia to learn the art of dance, song, and the enjoyment of our relaxing kava, while embracing and appreciating our rich diversity.

This would be a positive shift from the current situation where MSG leaders may feel obliged to respond to the demands of those who wield power through money and weapons, posing threats to global harmony.

Can the MSG be the answer to the future crisis humanity faces? Or will it serve as a steppingstone for the world’s criminals, thieves, and murders to desecrate our Melanesia?

Yamin Kogoya is a West Papuan academic who has a Master of Applied Anthropology and Participatory Development from the Australian National University and who contributes to Asia Pacific Report. From the Lani tribe in the Papuan Highlands, he is currently living in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.

• Other Yamin Kogoya articles

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

“Rebuilding our Melanesia for our future” is the theme chosen by the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) for their 7th Melanesian Arts and Cultural Festival (MACFEST) this year.

Vanuatu hosted the event in Port Vila, which opened last Wednesday and ends next Monday.

The event was hosted by the MSG, which includes Fiji, New Caledonia’s Front de Libération Nationale Kanak et Socialiste (FLNKS), Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu.

• READ MORE: Other MACFEST and Melanesian culture reports

Aside from the MSG’s official members, West Papua, Maluku and Torres Straits have also been welcomed with their own flags and cultural symbols.

Although Indonesia is an associate member of the MSG, there were no Indonesian flags or cultural symbols to be seen at the festival.

A beautiful array of colours was displayed today in at the official opening of the 7th Melanesian Arts & Culture Festival (MACFEST). #MSG #StorianBloYumi#wanpipolwanrijan #unityindiversity pic.twitter.com/vow2i2M85L

— MSG Secretariat (@MsgSecretariat) July 19, 2023

This action — Indonesian exclusion — alone spoke volumes of the essence and characteristics of what constitutes Melanesian cultures and values.

This event is a significant occasion that occurs every four years among the Melanesian member countries.

The MSG’s website under the Arts and Culture section says:

The Arts and Culture programme is an important pillar in the establishment of the MSG. Under the agreed principles of cooperation among independent states in Melanesia, it was signed in Port Vila on March 14, 1988, and among other things, the MSG commits to the principles of, and holds respect for and promotion of Melanesian cultures, traditions, and values as well as those of other indigenous communities.

MACFESTs

• 1998: The first MACFEST was held in the Solomon Islands with the theme, “One people, many cultures”.
• 2002: Vanuatu hosted the second MACFEST event under the theme, “Preserving peace through sharing of cultural exchange”.
• 2006: “Living cultures, living traditions” was the theme of the third MACFEST event held in Fiji.
• 2010: The fourth MACFEST event was held in New Caledonia with the theme “Our identity lies ahead of us”.
• 2014: Papua New Guinea hosted the fifth MACFEST, with the theme “Celebrating cultural diversity”.
• 2018: The Solomon Islands hosted the sixth edition of MACFEST with the theme “Past recollections, future connections”.
• 2023: Vanuatu is the featured nation in the seventh edition, with the slogan “Rebuilding our Melanesia for our future”.

Imagery, rhetorics, colours and rhythms exhibited in Port Vila is a collective manifestation of the words written on MSG’s website.

There have been welcoming ceremonies united under an atmosphere of warmth, brotherhood, and sisterhood with lots of colourful Melanesian cultural traditions on display.

Images and videos shared on social media, including many official social media accounts, portrayed a spirit of unity, respect, understanding and harmony.

West Papuan flags have also been welcomed and filled the whole event. The Morning Star has shone bright at this event.

The following are some of the images, colours and rhetoric displayed during the opening festive event, as well as the West Papua plight to be accepted into what Papuans themselves echo as the “Melanesian family”.

Wilayah Lapago,14 Juli 2023
“West Papua For Full Membership MSG 2023. pic.twitter.com/ys88iksqa5

— Mully Numa (@mully_numa) July 17, 2023

When stars aligned,
It’s time.
Melanesia has to make a stand to safe West Papua and the entire region. Bring West Papua back to the Melanesian family. pic.twitter.com/ilTZDNlW8Z

— Oridek Ap (@Oridek) July 19, 2023

Wamena – West Papua on 19 July 2023
For West Papuans, July 2023 marks a time when the stars seem to be aligned in one place — Vanuatu. July this year, Vanuatu is to chair the MSG leaders’ summit, hosting the seventh MACFEST, and celebrating its 43rd year of independence. Vanuatu has been a homebase (outside of West Papua) supporting West Papua’s liberation struggle since 1970s.

Throughout West Papua, you will witness spectacular displays of Melanesian colours, flags, and imagery in response to the unfolding events in the MSG and Vanuatu.

Melanesian brethren also displayed incredible support for West Papua’s plight at the MACFEST in Port Vila — a little hope that keeps Papuan spirits high in a world where freedom has been shut for 60 years.

This support fosters a sense of solidarity and offers a glimmer of optimism that one day West Papua will reclaim its sovereignty — the only way to safeguard Melanesian cultures, languages and tradition in West Papua.

Although geographically separated, Vanuatu, West Papua and the rest of Melanesian, are deeply connected emotionally and culturally through the display of symbols, flags, colours, and rhetoric.

Emancipation, expectation, hope, and prayer are high for the MSG’s decision making — decisions that are often marked by “uncertainty”.

A contested and changing Melanesia
The Director-General of MSG, Leonard Louma, said during the opening:

The need to dispel the notion that Melanesian communities only live in Fiji, New Caledonia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu and acknowledge and include Melanesians that live elsewhere.

I am reminded that there are pockets of descendants of Melanesians in the Micronesian group and the Polynesian group. We should include them, like the black Samoans of Samoa — often referred to as Tama Uli — in future MACFESTs.

In the past, Timor-Leste, Indonesia, Australia, and Taiwan were invited to attend. Let us continue to build on these blocks to make this flagship cultural event of ours even bigger and better in the years to come.

MSG leaders may perceive their involvement in defining and redefining the concept of Melanesia, as well as addressing date postponements and criteria-related matters, as relatively insignificant.

Similarly, for MSG members, their participation in the Melanesian cultural festival could be considered as just one of four events that rotate between them.

For West Papuans, this is an existential issue — between life or death as they face a bleak future under Indonesian colonial settler occupation — in which they are constantly reminded that their ancestral land will soon be seized and occupied by Indonesians if their sovereignty issues do not soon resolve.

The now postponed MSG’s leaders’ summit will soon consider an application proposing that West Papua be included within the group.

Regardless of whether this proposal is accepted by the existing member countries of the MSG, the obvious international pressures that impel this debate, must also prompt us to ask ourselves what it means to be Melanesian.

Decisions around unity?
Does the primacy of maintaining good relations with a powerful country like Indonesia, the West and China supersede Melanesian solidarity, or are we able to transcend these pressures to redefine and “rebuild our common Melanesia for our future”?

The Melanesian people must decide whether we are sufficiently united to support our brothers and sisters in West Papua, or whether our respective cultures are too diverse to be able to resist the charms offered by outsiders to look the other way.

The imminent decision to be made by the MSG leaders in Port Vila will be a crucial one — one that will affect the Melanesian people for generations to come. Does the MSG stand for promoting Melanesian interests, or has it become tempted by the short term promises of the West, China and their Indonesian minions?

What has become of the Melanesian Way — the notion of the holistic and cosmic worldview advocated by Papua New Guinea’s Bernard Narakobi?

The decision to be made in Port Vila will shine a light on the MSG’s own integrity. Does this group exist to help the Melanesian people, or is their real purpose only to help others to subjugate the Melanesian people, cultures and resources?

The task of “Rebuilding our Melanesia for our future” cannot be achieved without directly confronting the predicament faced by West Papua. This issue goes beyond cultural concerns; it is primarily about addressing sovereignty matters.

Only through the restoration of West Papua’s political sovereignty can the survival of the Melanesian people in that region and the preservation of their culture be ensured.

Should the MSG and its member countries continue to ignore this critical issue, “Papuan sovereignty”, one day there will be no true Melanin — the true ontological definition and geographical categorisation of what Melanesia is, (Melanesian) “Black people” represented in any future MACFEST event. It will be Asian-Indonesian.

Either MSG can rebuild Melanesia through re-Melanesianisation or destroy Melanesia through de-Melanesianisation. Melanesian leaders must seriously contemplate this existential question, not confining it solely to the four-year slogan of festival activities.

The decisive political and legal vision of MSG is essential for ensuring that these ancient, timeless, and incredibly diverse traditions and cultures continue to flourish and thrive into the future.

One can hope that, in the future, MSG will have the opportunity to extend invitations to world leaders who advocate peace instead of war, inviting them to Melanesia to learn the art of dance, song, and the enjoyment of our relaxing kava, while embracing and appreciating our rich diversity.

This would be a positive shift from the current situation where MSG leaders may feel obliged to respond to the demands of those who wield power through money and weapons, posing threats to global harmony.

Can the MSG be the answer to the future crisis humanity faces? Or will it serve as a steppingstone for the world’s criminals, thieves, and murders to desecrate our Melanesia?

Yamin Kogoya is a West Papuan academic who has a Master of Applied Anthropology and Participatory Development from the Australian National University and who contributes to Asia Pacific Report. From the Lani tribe in the Papuan Highlands, he is currently living in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.

• Other Yamin Kogoya articles

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The NBA’s Chinese subsidiary is worth about US$5 billion, according to analysis from ESPN. The league has also proven especially protective of the market, rebuking a team executive who in 2019 tweeted “Stand with Hong Kong” and triggered a ban on NBA broadcasts in China. 

Speaking at a hearing on U.S. corporate complicity in Chinese rights abuses, Freedom – who grew up in Turkey before being picked at No. 3 in the 2011 NBA draft – noted he never faced issues across a 748-game career while speaking against the Turkish government’s rights abuses, and had been even encouraged to do so.

But it changed, he said, when his focus turned to China after a chance meeting with a young fan at a basketball camp a few years ago.

“His parents called me out in front of everybody, and said, ‘How can you call yourself a human rights activist when your Muslim brothers and sisters are getting tortured and raped every day in concentration camps in China?’” said Freedom, who became a U.S. citizen in 2021. 

“I was like, ‘I promise I'm gonna get back to you,’” he said.

Free Tibet and Free Uyghurs

After learning more about the persecution of Uyghurs, which the U.S. government has labeled a genocide, and the plight of the Tibetans, Freedom said he noticed other NBA players were writing out political messages like “Black Lives Matter” on their playing shoes.

He said he decided to do the same, writing out “Free Tibet” on his shoes before a Boston Celtics clash with the New York Knicks.

Though he was not allowed to play in the shoes by team managers – who he said threatened to ban him – he remained courtside for the first half before heading into the locker room to check phone messages.

One from his manager stood out in particular.

“He said every Celtics game is banned in China. It literally took them 24 minutes – first quarter 12 minutes, second quarter 12 minutes – to ban every Celtics game on television,” Freedom told the hearing.

He subsequently agreed not to wear the shoes again.

“They were pressuring me and my manager so much, I was like, ‘You know what, I promise: I'm never going to wear ‘Free Tibet’ shoes ever again,’” Freedom said. “The next game, I wore ‘Free Uyghurs’ shoes.”

“One of my teammates walked up to me and said, ‘You know this is your last game in the NBA, right? You're never gonna get any contract after this,'” he said, adding the comment was prophetic. “February came, I got released [by the Celtics], and it was over for me.”

The 32-year-old, 208-centimeter (6-foot-10-inch) center has not played since. 

Other NBA players, meanwhile, have sought to avoid any criticism of Beijing, with Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James – the league’s all-time leading scorer – infamously pledging to not talk about China.

“I won't talk about it again,” James told ESPN during the 2019 Hong Kong protests. “I'd be cheating my teammates by continuing to harp on something that won't benefit us. We're trying to win a championship.”

Malign influence

NBA officials have denied any links between Freedom’s dumping from the Celtics and the league’s vast business interests in China.

“We spoke directly about his activities this season,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver told The New York Times last year, “and I made it absolutely clear to him that it was completely within his right to speak out on issues that he was passionate about.”

But Freedom has questioned the sudden evaporation of suitors after he spoke out against Beijing. Prior to joining the Celtics in 2021, he played for the Utah Jazz – who drafted him – as well as the Oklahoma City Thunder, New York Knicks and Portland Trail Blazers. 

In his testimony, he noted he was picked to play in every Celtics game in the 2021/22 season prior to wearing the shoes, and reiterated past criticism that the NBA was two-faced about his criticism of China.

“If they were really supporting me,” he said of the NBA and Silver in an interview with CNN in 2021, “they would have put something out there. They would have put out some kind of statement.”

At Tuesday’s hearing, Rep. Chris Smith, a Republican from New Jersey and chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, argued it was clear why Freedom is no longer in the NBA.

He noted that the star was no slouch, and remains the 61st highest ranked all-time player in terms of the catch-all player efficiency rating statistic, “a metric that basketball fans will absolutely recognize.”

“His commitment to speaking truth to power has led him to becoming ousted from the NBA,” Smith said, “but rather than buckling under or yielding, Mr. Freedom continued to stand tall and firm.” 

The New Jersey representative slammed “the NBA’s willingness to acquiesce to the dictates of the Chinese Communist Party.” 

It is a prime example, he said, of how Beijing “has leveraged its economic clout to demand political ideological compliance across American corporations, Hollywood and academic institutions.”

Edited by Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Alex Willemyns for RFA.

Papua New Guinea and Indonesia say the economic and social ties between them are closer than ever.

Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo visited Port Moresby last week with trade, border arrangements and education foremost on the agenda.

Widodo agreed to sponsor 2000 Papua New Guinean students to attend university in Indonesia, and pledged about US$15 million to upgrade Port Moresby’s hospital.

• LISTEN TO RNZ PACIFIC WAVES: Indonesian President’s visit to PNG
• READ MORE: Author condemns Canberra ‘collusion’ with Jakarta on West Papua atrocities
• Other West Papua reports

“This is a very, very warm, in fact, one of the warmest meetings I’ve ever had as head of state,” Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape said at a joint media conference.

“We [Papua New Guinea] have not been utilising the powerhouse economy that is on the other side — the world’s 16th biggest economy right now . . . they’re our link to commerce and trade in Asia.”

On the day following the visit, Indonesia state news agency Antara reported Trade Minister Zulkifli Hasan stating that Indonesia would offer training to 1000 businesses in Papua New Guinea.

Marape welcomed Widodo at Jackson’s International Airport in Port Moresby last Wednesday with a gun salute from the Papua New Guinea Defence Force and a cultural blessing from traditional dancers

Elephant in the room
But one topic that wasn’t discussed was West Papua which weighs heavily among many Papua New Guineans, unsettled by the widespread reports of mistreatment of their Melanesian brethren across the border.

One media report said the authorities in Papua New Guinea had clamped down on displays of the West Papuan independence flag ahead of Widodo’s visit.

Last week, at the 53rd session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Human Rights Council special adviser on the prevention of genocide, Alice Wairimu Nderitu, called for a humanitarian assessment in West Papua.

“The human rights situation in West Papua remains deeply concerning,” she said.

“This includes alleged harassment, arbitrary arrests, and detention of Papuans . . . that has resulted in the alleged appropriation of non-indigenous lands.”

However, many pro-independent West Papua advocates in Papua Guinea also supported the visit.

Port Moresby Governor Powes Parkop, a vocal critic of Indonesia and long-time advocate for indigenous West Papuans, said in a video statement last week that the visit was an opportunity for dialogue.

“I would like to advise the President that we, on the side on the advocacy for West Papua, are ready for talks — we want to move forward in terms of addressing this decades-long issue.

“We are open to talks and I want to invite him [President Widodo] in regard to this, to think about the future and not be defined by the past,” Parkop said.

“The past we can’t change, there is a lot of pain and there are a lot of issues and history that we are not proud of, but in the future we can redefine and make it better.”

It is a sentiment shared by fellow Papua New Guinean activist Jacob Marcos, who has participated in demonstrations against Indonesia’s role in West Papua in the past.

“Diplomatically, the PNG government has to maintain its line and discuss only the issues the Indonesian President arrives for . . . about the needs of the country,” Marcos said.

But for Papua New Guinea’s West Papuan community, the visit and generous economic agreements were a blunt reminder of Indonesia’s foreign relations prowess.

An estimated 10,000 West Papuan refugees live in Papua New Guinea, escaping a bloody conflict between armed pro-independence fighters and the Indonesian army.

The conflict has escalated over the last few months following the kidnapping of New Zealand pilot Philip Mehrtens by a rebel group last February 7.

Mangi Lufa-Apo is one of those refugees. He arrived in Papua New Guinea as a child after his parents fled the territory.

Lufa-Apo said he was frustrated by the sight of Pacific nations fostering ties with Indonesia, saying believed the Pacific nations should be emulating the regional solidarity that European countries were displaying with Ukraine.

“We’ve seen how European countries have rallied for Ukraine,” he said.

“The Pacific Island countries are not doing that, why are they so silent?

“There’s a genocide on their doorstep . . . I don’t know why Papua New Guinea and Pacific Islands can’t just take this to the UN and tell them that there’s a genocide going on and something needs to be done about it.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Olympic track star Tori Bowie was eight months pregnant and in labor when she died on May 2, according to an autopsy. She was alone in her home at the time and may have suffered from respiratory distress and eclampsia, a rare but life-threatening pregnancy complication. Her baby also died. Bowie, a three-time Olympic medalist, was just 32 years old, and her death has led to an outpouring of grief and anger from friends and supporters who say it’s part of a larger Black maternal health crisis. Across the United States, Black women are three times more likely to die from pregnancy and childbirth complications than white women. “What they’re failing to do is listen to Black women,” says Dr. Carla Williams, a doula and OB-GYN who says she opted for home births after a negative hospital experience with her first pregnancy. “More work needs to be done in order to take care of the birthing population the way that it should be.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

The trial of three Papuan “free speech” students accused of treason has resumed at the Jayapura District Court this week.

The defendants — Yoseph Ernesto Matuan, Devio Tekege, and Ambrosius Fransiskus Elopere — have been charged with treason for organising a free speech rally where they were accused of raising the banned Morning Star flags of West Papuan independence at the Jayapura University of Science and Technology (USTJ) on November 10, 2022.

During the hearing on Thursday, linguist Dr Robert Masreng testified as an expert witness presented by the public prosecutor.

• READ MORE: Other Papuans on treason trial reports

He said the Morning Star flags displayed in the event were “merely an expression”.

The students organised a protest to voice opposition against the Papua dialogue plan initiated by the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM).

However, the event was broken up by police and several participants were arrested.

Dr Masreng, a faculty member at Cenderawasih University’s Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, clarified the definitions of treason, independence, Morning Star, conspiracy, and the meanings of writings displayed during the free speech rally.

Treason ‘definitions’
He said that according to the Indonesian Thesaurus dictionary, “treason” referred to engaging in deceitful actions or manipulating others to achieve personal objectives.

It could also denote rebellion, expressing a desire to prevent something from happening.

Additionally, Dr Masreng noted that treason could signify an intention to commit murder.

In court, Dr Masreng explained that treason involved deceptive actions, rebellion, and an intention to commit murder.

He emphasised that the Morning Star flag was a symbol that gained meaning when it was used for a specific purpose. Without a clear intention behind its use, the flag lost its importance.

Dr Masreng said that the Morning Star flag was often used as a symbol to express ideas.

He said that the meaning of the flag could be understood based on how it was used in different situations, and different people might interpret it in their own unique ways.

‘Independence’ clarified
Dr Masreng clarified the term “independence” by explaining that it represented a perspective of freedom that had a wide-ranging and abstract significance when it was used.

The understanding of the word relied on the specific situation and how different people perceived it, especially in relation to the core concept of freedom.

Dr Masreng said this meant that when someone expressed themself, it implied being free from criticism and oppression.

He also provided an interpretation of the chant “referendum yes, dialogue no.”

He said the chant conveyed a decision to the general public without involving Parliament.

Rejecting dialogue was an expression of the speaker’s unwillingness to engage in a dialogue.

Regarding the statement requesting intervention of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Papua, Dr Masreng said this signified that the problems in Papua were not limited to domestic concerns, but were matters that should be acknowledged by the international community.

“It means an expression of asking the government to be open to the international community, allowing them to enter Papua and observe the dire human rights situations in the region,” he said.

Republished from Jubi with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The trial of three Papuan “free speech” students accused of treason has resumed at the Jayapura District Court this week.

The defendants — Yoseph Ernesto Matuan, Devio Tekege, and Ambrosius Fransiskus Elopere — have been charged with treason for organising a free speech rally where they were accused of raising the banned Morning Star flags of West Papuan independence at the Jayapura University of Science and Technology (USTJ) on November 10, 2022.

During the hearing on Thursday, linguist Dr Robert Masreng testified as an expert witness presented by the public prosecutor.

• READ MORE: Other Papuans on treason trial reports

He said the Morning Star flags displayed in the event were “merely an expression”.

The students organised a protest to voice opposition against the Papua dialogue plan initiated by the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM).

However, the event was broken up by police and several participants were arrested.

Dr Masreng, a faculty member at Cenderawasih University’s Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, clarified the definitions of treason, independence, Morning Star, conspiracy, and the meanings of writings displayed during the free speech rally.

Treason ‘definitions’
He said that according to the Indonesian Thesaurus dictionary, “treason” referred to engaging in deceitful actions or manipulating others to achieve personal objectives.

It could also denote rebellion, expressing a desire to prevent something from happening.

Additionally, Dr Masreng noted that treason could signify an intention to commit murder.

In court, Dr Masreng explained that treason involved deceptive actions, rebellion, and an intention to commit murder.

He emphasised that the Morning Star flag was a symbol that gained meaning when it was used for a specific purpose. Without a clear intention behind its use, the flag lost its importance.

Dr Masreng said that the Morning Star flag was often used as a symbol to express ideas.

He said that the meaning of the flag could be understood based on how it was used in different situations, and different people might interpret it in their own unique ways.

‘Independence’ clarified
Dr Masreng clarified the term “independence” by explaining that it represented a perspective of freedom that had a wide-ranging and abstract significance when it was used.

The understanding of the word relied on the specific situation and how different people perceived it, especially in relation to the core concept of freedom.

Dr Masreng said this meant that when someone expressed themself, it implied being free from criticism and oppression.

He also provided an interpretation of the chant “referendum yes, dialogue no.”

He said the chant conveyed a decision to the general public without involving Parliament.

Rejecting dialogue was an expression of the speaker’s unwillingness to engage in a dialogue.

Regarding the statement requesting intervention of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Papua, Dr Masreng said this signified that the problems in Papua were not limited to domestic concerns, but were matters that should be acknowledged by the international community.

“It means an expression of asking the government to be open to the international community, allowing them to enter Papua and observe the dire human rights situations in the region,” he said.

Republished from Jubi with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

An Australian advocacy group has called for West Papua to be reinscribed on the United Nations list of “non self-governing territories”, citing the “sham” vote in 1969 and the worsening human rights violations in the Indonesian-ruled Melanesian region.

The UN Special Committee on Decolonisation began its 2023 Pacific Regional Seminar in Bali, Indonesia, today and will continue until May 26.

Tomorrow the annual International Week of Solidarity with the Peoples of Non-Self-Governing Territories is due to begin tomorrow and will end on May 31.

• READ MORE: The UN Decolonisation Committee on Kanaky New Caledonia
• The UN committee on Tahiti
• Other West Papua reports

“Although West Papua is not on the list  of  Non-Self-Governing Territories, it should be,” said Joe Collins of the Australia West Papua Association (AWPA).

“It’s 60 years since UNTEA transferred West Papua to Indonesian administration, which then unceremoniously removed it from the list.

“As for the so-called Act of Free Choice held in 1969, it was a sham and is referred to by West Papuans as the ‘act of no choice’.”

‘Seriously deteriorating’
Collins said in a statement today that the situation in West Papua was “seriously deteriorating” with ongoing human rights abuses in the territory.

“There are regular armed clashes between the Free Papua Movement [OPM] and the Indonesian security forces,” he said.

“West Papuans continue to be arrested at peaceful demonstrations and Papuans risk being charged with treason for taking part in the rallies.

“The military operations in the highlands have created up to 60,000 internally displaced people (IDPs), many facing starvation because they fear returning to their food gardens because of the Indonesian security forces.

“Recent armed clashes have also created new IDPs.

Collins cited New Zealand pilot Philip Mehrtens, who has been held hostage by the West Papuan National Liberation Army (TPNPB) for more than three months.

According to Mehrtens as quoted by ABC News on April 26, the Indonesian military had been “dropping bombs” in the area where he was being held, making it “dangerous for me and everybody here”.

‘French’ Polynesia an example
“We cannot expect the [UN Decolonisation Committee] to review the situation of West Papua at this stage as it would only bring to attention the complete failure by the UN to protect the people of West Papua.

However, territories had been reinscribed in the past as in the case of “French” Polynesia in 2013, Collins said.

But Collins said it was hoped that the UN committee could take some action.

“As they meet in Bali, it is hoped that the C24 members — who would be well aware of the ongoing human rights abuses in West Papua committed by the Indonesian security forces — will urge Jakarta to allow the High Commissioner for Human Rights to visit West Papua on a fact-finding mission to report on the deteriorating human rights situation in the territory.”

“It’s the least they could do.”

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

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The federal government is planning to reform a workplace safety program that was scrutinized in a recent ProPublica investigation.

The Star Program recognizes workplaces with strong safety programs and rewards them by curtailing the number of times government regulators show up randomly. It is based on the theory that motivating companies to adhere to best practices on their own is more effective than punishing them when they fall short.

But last year, workers at one chlorine plant in New York state told ProPublica that they were “swimming” in asbestos while their plant took part in the program from 1996 to 2021, and that participating had helped the company conceal the issue from the public.

After ProPublica revealed problems at other asbestos-dependent chlorine plants, the American Public Health Association questioned whether plants that use the carcinogen should be allowed to apply.

“On its face, a company whose business model relies on using asbestos does not have an exceptional health and safety management system,” the group wrote in a letter to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which runs the program. “There are alternative processes available and used by [chlorine] plants in the U.S. and in other nations.”

At the time, OSHA declined to comment on the content of the letter. The agency released a statement saying it was “focused on improving our efforts and looking at ways to protect workers from occupational exposure to asbestos moving forward.”

More recently, however, OSHA has signaled that big changes may be coming to the Star Program and other initiatives included in its Voluntary Protection Programs. The agency has said it wants to “modernize” the initiative as it works to expand it, and it is asking the public to answer a series of questions to help with the effort.

The questions range from technical to broad. Some touch on the issues raised in ProPublica’s reporting, including a question that asks if the exemption from random inspections creates concerns about workplace safety and health at the facilities.

Another echoes the question posed by the public health association about workplaces that use hazardous materials.

In a statement, OSHA said that it had started the process of modernizing the program before ProPublica’s stories were published, but that several of its questions were informed by ProPublica’s reporting. OSHA will hold a meeting for stakeholders on the subject on June 15, and comments from the public are due by Sept. 30.

The Star Program dates to the Reagan administration. To participate, plants must prove they follow best practices and submit to a rigorous inspection. But after that, they are no longer subject to random inspections.

OSHA reevaluates the facilities every three to five years.

Former workers at the facility in New York, an OxyChem chlorine plant in Niagara Falls, told ProPublica they spent months preparing for visits and shut down the dirtiest, most dangerous parts of the plant when OSHA evaluators were on site.

Still, records show that during one visit in 2011, evaluators found asbestos “scattered in certain areas of the floor” and covering much of the mechanical equipment. The plant did not receive a formal citation. It was readmitted to the program anyway.

OxyChem has repeatedly told ProPublica it complies with federal regulations and noted that OSHA has never cited its chlorine plants for asbestos-related violations.

In its letter to OSHA, the public health association raised concerns that the plant’s management had used its status in the Star Program “to game the system” to hide asbestos problems. The group pointed out that other chlorine plants using asbestos were also in the program, and it asked to meet with OSHA leaders.

The February meeting took place just before OSHA posted its questions for the public.

So far, the agency has received several dozen replies from company representatives, industry groups and safety experts. Many expressed satisfaction with the program while also offering suggestions for improvements. One individual, a self-described contractor who said he worked for multiple participants, called the program “a joke.”

A joint response from OSHA’s former Deputy Assistant Secretary Jordan Barab and former Assistant Secretary David Michaels questioned whether the program was worth the resources the agency puts into it.

Addressing the issue of plants that use hazardous substances like asbestos, Barab and Michaels said it was “inevitable” that some companies would use, store or manufacture dangerous materials and that that alone should not preclude their involvement in the program.

“If, however, there are safer alternatives to certain exceptionally hazardous substances or processes that can be feasibly implemented, OSHA should expect [program] participants to set an example by implementing those safer alternatives, even if the hazardous substance — such as asbestos — is still legally permitted to be used in the workplace,” they wrote.

Asked to respond, OSHA said in a statement: “It is premature for OSHA to comment on public comments as we are still engaging in the process, but we value the input and the important point that all employers should strive for safer alternatives.”

ProPublica’s reporting on asbestos has resonated widely. Late last year, it prompted public health advocates and two U.S. lawmakers to renew calls for Congress to ban the carcinogen, a move that would put the country in line with dozens of others across the world.

The lawmakers cited ProPublica’s work when reintroducing the bill this March.

In addition, the Environmental Protection Agency, which is finalizing its own ban, asked the public to weigh in on new information it had received on the issue, including ProPublica’s reports. Soon after, in a dramatic turnaround, one of the few U.S. manufacturers still using asbestos, Olin Corp., said it would support outlawing the carcinogen.

The EPA has said it is “moving expeditiously” to finalize the action this year.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Kathleen McGrory and Neil Bedi.

The post What would Aristotle Say About the Star Trek Episode “The Enemy Within”? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Roger Thompson.

The post What would Aristotle Say About the Star Trek Episode “The Enemy Within”? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Roger Thompson.

On the afternoon of Tuesday, April 4, a group of around 10 men associated with a local criminal group beat Meahzi with machetes, iron rods, and sticks, at the computer training institute that he operates in the Chandanaish administrative region of the southeast Chattogram district, according to The Daily Star and the journalist, who spoke with CPJ by phone.

The men then threw Meahzi off the roof of the two-story building, according to those sources and CCTV security footage of the incident reviewed by CPJ. The men also smashed Meahzi’s two mobile phones, vandalized the institute—breaking and looting computers—and stole 50,000 taka (US$467) in cash, he said. Meahzi said he was hospitalized and sustained numerous injuries, including a fracture to his back, three broken ribs, and a head injury from being hit with a machete. He was released from the hospital.

Meahzi told CPJ that he believes the attack was retaliation for his recent reporting, including a December 30, 2022, Daily Janobani newspaper print article, which CPJ reviewed, and a March 10, 2023, Daily Janobani report, both of which alleged that local government officials with ties to the criminal group had engaged in hill-cutting, which is soil excavation and selling that negatively impacts the environment, in the Dohazari area of Chandanaish. Meahzi, who also has reported for The Daily Shangu newspaper, also informed the local government administration about the hill-cutting, leading to a fine on the perpetrators, according to the journalist and his reporting.

“The attack on Bangladeshi reporter Ayub Meahzi reflects the dangerous atmosphere for journalists reporting on actions detrimental to the environment,” said Beh Lih Yi, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator. “Authorities must immediately and thoroughly investigate this heinous attack and take steps to reverse a dangerous trend of impunity regarding violence against journalists.”

Chandanaish police initially declined to register a complaint filed by Meahzi’s father about the incident, Meahzi said, adding that police only registered the complaint around nine hours later, following the intervention of the Chandanaish Press Club.

Anwar Hossain, Chandanaish police officer-in-charge, told CPJ via messaging app that the complaint was registered without any delay and the investigation was ongoing.

A man who Meahzi said was not involved in the attack was arrested shortly following the incident and then released on bail. Meahzi added that he believed police targeted that man because he is Rohingya, and wanted to delay pursuing the real perpetrators behind the attack.

Hossain said the man was identified by CCTV footage and by Meahzi’s brother. Meahzi denied that his brother identified that man to the police.

Two additional suspects, including the head of the criminal group, were arrested on Monday, April 10, and sent to jail following a court order on Tuesday, April 11, according to Meahzi and Hossain. The two suspects remain in jail as of late April 11.

In December, Bangladeshi journalist Abu Azad was abducted and severely beaten in the Rangunia region of Chattogram district after photographing brick kilns that were allegedly operating illegally.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Since late January, authorities have suspended 15 foreign media outlets operating in Somali Regional State, and also revoked the license of a regional journalists’ association, according to news reports and people familiar with the cases.

“The recent suspensions of 15 media outlets the ban on a media association in Ethiopia’s Somali Regional State have eroded reporting in the region, and paint a picture of a government unwilling to make room for dissenting voices,” said CPJ Sub-Saharan Africa Representative Muthoki Mumo. “Authorities should allow journalists from these outlets to resume their jobs, ensure that enforcement of licensing regulations is not used to muzzle the media.”

On January 28, the Somali Regional State Communication Bureau,  a government office that oversees the region’s media, indefinitely suspended the 15 media outlets and their representatives from operating in the state, saying that they did not have the licensing required for foreign media outlets, according to a letter from the bureau reviewed by CPJ and multiple media reports.

Those outlets, all of which broadcast in the Somali language and have their headquarters outside of Ethiopia, include BBC Somali, Kalsan TV, Universal TV, Horyaal TV, Eryal TV, CBA TV, Horn Cable TV, Star TV, RTN Somali TV, STN TV, Goobjoog TV, Saab TV, Sahan TV, MM TV, and Five Somali TV, according to those sources.

In the letter, the communication bureau said it was complying with an earlier directive from the federal Ethiopian Media Authority to enforce federal licensing requirements. Federal regulations on foreign media registration, which came into force in May 2022, require foreign broadcasters opening a branch in the country to register with the media authority and prohibit journalists from contributing to foreign outlets without a registration certificate.

Abdulrazaq Hassan, chair of the Somali Region Journalists Association, a local media rights group, told CPJ via messaging app that most of those outlets did not have offices in Ethiopia, but instead worked with correspondents in the country.

The SRJA was quoted in those media reports saying that licensing was being used as pretext to shutter independent outlets, and that journalists from the 15 media companies had previously operated with permits from the regional communication bureau.

Abdulkadir Reshid Duale, the head of the Somali communication bureau, told CPJ in a statement that his office had issued temporary permits to the outlets in 2018, which had since expired. He said the media outlets had been warned about the need for federal licensing, and would be allowed to resume working once they had the federal license.

Journalists and managers from eight of the suspended outlets told CPJ that they had been previously granted permission to operate by regional authorities, that the steps to receive a federal license were not clear, and that the suspensions were enforced without adequate warning.

Also, on January 31, the Somali Region Justice Bureau, which oversees the registration of civil society organizations in the region, revoked the SRJA’s license and accused it of having “acted inappropriately,” according to a letter from the bureau reviewed by CPJ and a statement by the Center for Advancement of Rights and Democracy, an Ethiopian nongovernmental organization.

In a February 3 letter reviewed by CPJ, the communication bureau asked police and state security to take “appropriate action” against the SRJA, which it accused of operating illegally and “spreading incorrect and misleading messages.”

Separately, regional police detained Muhiyadin Mohammed Ali, a reporter with the U.K.-based broadcaster Kalsan TV, after he published a video on his personal Facebook page protesting the suspensions. He was released on February 2 without charge, according to news reports, a statement by the SRJA, and a person familiar with the case who spoke to CPJ on the condition of anonymity, citing fear of retaliation.  In his statement, Abdikadir said Muyihadin threatened a government official in the video.

The Ethiopian Media Authority did not respond to CPJ’s queries sent via messaging app and email.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

Judith Leyster adds a bouquet to Google in the Doodle for December 18th, 2022.

Just before Christmas a Google Doodle offered tribute to the Dutch Golden Age painter, Judith Leyster (1609-1660). Leyster fell into obscurity in the centuries after her death partly because she did not sign her work. In her lifetime she had enjoyed early fame, mentioned when she was just nineteen in a guide to her native Haarlem, a city rich in artists. Later, a history of Haarlem from 1647-8 praised her by punning on her name, calling her a “leading-star in art” (Leyster=lodestar, taken from the family brewery’s brand in Haarlem).

Leyster’s monogram, rediscovered in several paintings by the Dutch art historian Cornelis Hofstede de Groot only in 1893, overlays a curving J with the L and bisects the figure with the tail of a shooting star—a clever and confident logo.

That the artist revealed by this research was a woman has increasingly bolstered the value of, and interest in, the paintings and their creator—hence the recent Google Doodle in Leyster’s honor, which also serves as a not-so-covert advertisement for Google Arts & Culture.

Perhaps the teenage Leyster had been released from domestic oversight and parental plans for a more predictable female path because her father had gone bankrupt in 1624. Kept wives and daughters were a privilege of wealth. Working meant that Leyster would have the chance to develop as an artist and become a businesswoman in her own right as head of her own atelier.

Along the way to that independence Leyster may have studied with Haarlem’s preeminent painter Frans Hals, though if she did the only evidence is pictorial—the influence of his style on hers.

By 1633 she had become a member of the painters’ Guild of St. Luke, the first woman with a surviving body work to be admitted. Not only an influence but also a competitor, Hals poached a student from Leyster’s studio later in the 1630s. The guild ruling in her favor in the ensuing dispute.

Her St. Luke’s admission piece, a self-portrait, is in the permanent collection of the National Gallery in Washington and serves as the basis for last months’ doodle.

Judith Leyster, Self-Portrait, c. 1630, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

Leyster captures herself while at work, turned away from her easel to look directly at us. On the easel is a picture of a violinist in light blue costume, his little finger raised off the bow, his head cocked playfully. The musician’s buoyant expression suggests Leyster’s own attitude towards her subjects and her craft. Her right hand with its brush is placed exactly in the center of the picture: hands are not only as meaningful as faces for this artist, but the position and execution show that this is the crucial tool for executing what the dark eyes looking straight at the viewer themselves see. The fingers of the artist must be as talented and trained as those of the musician, indeed the brush could be a violin bow and has to be wielded with like musicality.

Though Leyster pictures herself at her easel, she is certainly not in her work clothes. Not a speck of the paint from her palette flecks her dark bodice. The lace of her wispy cuffs, thin wide ruff, and starched bonnet is all done in exquisite detail, all signaling artistic and financial success. The lush purples and reds of her satin sleeves and her dark hair shimmer beneath the scrim of white fabric. Her expression is one of amusement, as if the idea of catching herself at her work unmasks the game of illusion she is playing with us and with herself.

Infrared reflectography of the picture revealed that the fiddler was painted over a previous image of a young woman, Leyster perhaps depicting herself depicting herself—a self-portrait of a self-portrait.

The violinist on the easel appears as one of the three youths in The Merry Trio that she painted one or two years earlier. (I saw the painting, now in a private collection, at the National Gallery in Washington in 2009 in an exhibition marking the quadricentennial of Leyster’s birth.)  One lad in a red outfit and feathered cap holds a full glass of wine at a precarious angle and regards the viewer with an unashamedly tipsy grin; the violinist, pictured here in full length, kicks up a leg as if drunk with his own music, the imaginary sound ornamented by alcohol. A somewhat plumper companion basks in the bright spirit of song and drink. A grinning child, her mother, and father enjoy the scene from a small nearby window.

Judith Leyster, The Merry Trio, c. 1629, private collection.

In Leyster’s work children not only listen to music, but as in Hals, make it. Leyster’s Young Flute Player from 1635 (once attributed, like several of her pictures, to Frans Hals) sits in a chair in front of a wall reflecting natural light coming from an unseen window.  On the wall behind hang a recorder and a violin with its bow wedged between the strings.  The background explores the hues of these wooden instruments against a gray-brown plaster wall whose texture felt by the light.  In front of this, the boy plays a transverse flute, more darkly finished then either of the instruments on the wall behind. His coat is a greenish brown that perfectly modulated to the subdued tones around him. The subject is music and the composition musical in its harmony and counterpoint.

His red hat adds color, but it too is modulated towards the earthen. The boy’s face is the bright spot in the picture, and his eyes are once again cast upward towards the radiant source: though the picture is muted, the music he plays cannot be. Like sight, the sound in Leyster’s pictures also seeks the light.

Judith Leyster, The Young Flute Player, 1630s, National Museum, Stockholm.

Leyster’s adults retain the same musical exuberance as the young. Serenade from 1629 pictures a lutenist in a big hat of fur and feather that seems to have grown from the player’s own luxurious curls. While the hat is lavish not in color but materials and shape, the lutenist himself is clad in radiant clothes: a green-silver shirt with narrow strips glowing like mother-of-pearl and trousers with red and black swathes—almost as if he were wearing a Clifford Still canvas on his legs. The face is aglow with light and music. The immediacy of the unheard sound of private performance—akin to the private performance of the painter—draws us in even as the eyes of the lute player look towards an ideal world beyond. And so our thoughts go there also: these paintings and their music are always about themselves and something else, too, even if what that something else will remain a mystery.

Judith Leyster, Serenade, 1629, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

In 1636 Leyster married the Haarlem painter Jan Molenaer, and the usual line is that she devoted herself increasingly to motherhood and domestic life, curtailing her activities so as not to compete with her husband, who also specialized in portraits and genre paintings. Of the pair’s five children, only two outlived their parents. But why would an entrepreneurial painter like Molenaer prematurely retire his prime asset? Composers and artists alike made good use of spouses with shared interests and abilities, and Leyster was far more than simply capable. The reference to Leyster as a “leading star” in that history of Haarlem cited above came in the second decade of her marriage and seems to confirm her continued fame and activity as a painter. The inventory of Molenaer’s estate after his death in 1668, eight years after that of his wife, lists many works by her, most now lost.

Molenaer’s Violinist from the early 1630s lacks the natural ease and fluency of his wife’s treatment of the subject. In the musical self-portrait from the year of his marriage to Leyster he wears cavalier’s cloak, his high-heeled shoes accented by an extravagant red bow. He tunes his lute, apparently getting set for a postprandial music-making; the pipe too has been smoked, and the remains of the feast are arrayed on the table at his side. His is a self-confident face, unsmiling.  The lute music shortly to ensue seems intended more to achieve digestive calm than distracting amusement.  There is a hint of melancholy: the respected male painter will not be seduced by the pleasures of song and dance. Music is here a form of contemplation, a representation of accomplishment and seriousness of purpose in art as in life. Maybe Judith Leyster put her expert hand to this painting and many others attributed to her husband, Dutch paintings produced by studios not single auteurs.

Jan Miense Molenaer, Self-Portrait, c. 1636/7, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

Leyster takes herself far less seriously. The Concert is yet another self-portrait, one which finds the artist singing to the accompaniment of two men: a violinist to her right and lutenist in a red outfit lifted from the Merry Company.

Judith Leyster, The Concert, 1631, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC.

Here it is the artist whose gaze is cast aloft.  Unlike The Singing Girl of her teacher Hals, she does no need to look at the music book in her lap. What this charming and lively trio confirms is that Leyster would not have been able to capture the pleasures of music, both quiet and exuberant, alone or with others, had she not enjoyed its uplift herself. With the surety of great technical accomplishment and enlivened by an imaginative approach to music as social pleasure, Leyster still allowed herself to get carried away.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by David Yearsley.

Some researchers who have long studied the technology are deeply troubled that the company, Make Sunsets, appears to have moved forward with launches from a site in Mexico without any public engagement or scientific scrutiny. It’s already attempting to sell “cooling credits” for future balloon flights that could carry larger payloads.

Several researchers MIT Technology Review spoke with condemned the effort to commercialize geoengineering at this early stage. Some potential investors and customers who have reviewed the company’s proposals say that it’s not a serious scientific effort or a credible business but more of an attention grab designed to stir up controversy in the field. (A startup says it’s begun releasing particles into the atmosphere, in an effort to tweak the climate)

There are so many words and concepts that can be leveled against these people, and there are literally millions of millionaires and billionaires and the legions of BlackRock/Forbes/City of London/JP Morgan Chase/Blackstone economic hitmen and hitwomen on board with pummeling planet earth, planet people, planet biodiversity with their venereal disease of the spirit. Economicus-Sapiens.

Many of my colleagues and I believe that our global civilization is on an economic path that is environmentally unsustainable, one that is leading us toward economic decline and eventual collapse… Our global situation is incredibly challenging today because of the adoption of the western economic model (e.g., materialism, consumerism, and throw-away mentality) throughout much of the developed and developing economies of the world. (Kitty Hawk Apollo 14 lunar captain, Edgar Mitchell — inspired by Robert Hunziker’s Dissident Voice piece, “Astronaut Edgar Mitchell’s “State of the Planet” Message Revisited”)

Robert cites a bunch of UFO activity in 2022: LiveScience article — “US Military Reports ‘several hundred’ UFO Sightings in 2022, Pentagon Officials Claim” — “UFO reports from U.S. military personnel are flooding the government’s new All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). The U.S government’s brand-new UFO-tracking office has been open for half a year, but business is already booming.”

We talk about that in a minute.

Imagine, the idea of all of us being connected through quantum mechanics, molecular consciousness, those waves and particles that we in our ignorance call instinct and ESP. You do not have to go onto the Internet too long to find dogs, with cameras and mics in the house, getting excited and sensing master coming home, with these tools tracking their activity when the “masters” are on their way, or about to get on their way, miles from home, at random times, before getting inside the car and putting pedal to the metal.

Do you feel a connection to a tree, a coral reef, a crow, an eagle, a forest? Get real and belief you and I and those places are all masses of energy, molecules, waves, and consciousness, making a stew of humanity, a whole smorgassborg of the universe.

Dr. Mitchell founded Noetics Foundation to investigate consciousness, ongoing for 38 years, eventually coming up with a quantum hologram. “The universe is self-organizing, intelligent, creative, trial and error interactive learning participatory informationally nonlocally interconnected evolving quantum system. . . .

“Energy, we know is the foundation of all matter; information is the foundation of knowing. Both were present at the moment of creation, whether in a big bang, or in a continuous process of creation in galaxies. It is likely that just as energy produced the physical structure that we recognize as waves and particles, in our macro-world, the seeds of consciousness were also present to produce awareness and intentionality.” Ibid, p. 196. (Source: Edgar D. Mitchells’ Consciousness Presentation, University of Advancing Technologies induction into the Leonardo DaVinci Society for The Society of Thinking, 2011; from the Hunziker piece)

Recall, the peace makers. The lovers of humanity and planet. For now, his is the time of the prince of peace — “Jesus Christ is called the Prince of Peace because He restores every broken relationship, provides a well-ordered and balanced life, and offers the assurance of eternal life.”

Was his message going out globally, through galaxies? And, those who received and saw peace as peace, were they enough to stunt the ones who see war as peace?

We are at war with cultures, language, people, planet. War, so we need new connections to peace, more peace makers. NOW.

Think about what the “economy” means: it’s war against nature . . . . the driving force of Civilization after we pummeled our hunter and gatherer lives, after mother culture was fenced off for wheat and meat and forced labor and disharmony.

“There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with people. Given a story to enact that puts them in accord with the world, they will live in accord with the world.”

“The gazelle and the lion are enemies only in the minds of the Takers. The lion that comes across a herd of gazelles doesn’t massacre them, as an enemy would. It kills one, not to satisfy its hatred of gazelles but to satisfy its hunger, and once it has made its kill the gazelles are perfectly content to go on grazing with the lion right in their midst.” (Daniel Quinn’s “Ishmael.”)

Ahh, the collective consciousness of humanity, with that belief in our interconnectedness, oh where oh where is that now in this world of planned pandemics, bioweapons from hell, or ferrets a la bat cornonavirus manipulation? All those bioweapons labs in Ukraine, run by the DOD/CIA, and alas, that precautionary principle and do no harm ethos?

In a world of PayDay loans (as in loan sharking) and one where a fine of a $1000 for front yard grass too long, or homes and land forefeitured for back taxes unpaid, for all the uglinesss of millions spent on ZioAzovNaziLensky to get into jets for shopping sprees or photo ops with the Demons of Peace, the US Senate and US Congress and US Administration and the MIC, we are at a point where most people give up, hold up their hands, mutilated by materialism, and then tell me there’s nothing they can do about another trillion dollars for war, or nothing they can do about the homelessness issue, or climate disturbance, etc.

Hands in the air all the way to the Post-Christmas bargain basement sales.

I am hearing from so many people who are damaged, full of the trauma of capitalism, battered and stunted by daily living in a world of dog-eat-dog, where the concept of taking a village to raise a child and taking a village to protect the infirm, old and sick is laughed at. We can get a crypto coin guy a bail hearing for $250 million, and we can see the obscenities of the Wolves of Wall Street dictating who and when and how we, the 80 Percent, pay pay pay for their dirty deals, and we can get Sunday Un-News shows yammering on and on on why there is a food crisis, why there is an energy crisis, and on and on, but what do we really need to solve the problems. We need economics under the umbrella of people, planet, biology, equity.

Steady State Economics, as the Apollo 14 pilot might have advocated:

A steady state economy features relatively stable size. It is ideally established at a size that leaves room for nature and provides high levels of human wellbeing. The term typically refers to a national economy, but it can also be applied to the economy of a city, region, or the entire planet. The size of an economy is generally determined by multiplying population by the amount that each person consumes. This quantity in a steady state economy neither grows nor contracts from year to year. Herman Daly, the dean of ecological economics, defines a steady state economy as… “an economy with constant stocks of people and artifacts, maintained at some desired, sufficient levels by low rates of maintenance throughput, that is, by the lowest feasible flows of matter and energy from the first stage of production to the last stage of consumption.” (Source)

This equitable concept, please believe,  is not the wet dream of Kissinger or the World Economic Forum or the Billionaire Gates Class who want all nature under their control, as we are useless eaters to them. This steady state economy is not the Faustian bargain of eugenics, not of one world government controlling Big Brother AI-VR-AR style, not the sort of  one NeoLiberal Dictator determining who gets what, where we live, how much space is too much space, for us etc. It is, however, an economy of peace and leaver mentality, this classic connectivity, the interconnectedness of us, the universe, with the mountains, forests, plains, wetlands, coral reefs, and on and on. Again, the Apollo pilot:

Mitchell listed critical planetary boundaries under siege:

(1) rapid population growth beyond sustainability: 1 billion in 1804, 2 billion in 1927, 3 billion in 1960, 8 billion in 2022;

(2) degradation of life-sourcing ecosystems;

(3) excessive resource depletion such as shrinking forests;

(4) eroding soils;

(5) failing freshwater resources;

(6) more frequent crop-withering heat waves;

(7) collapsing fisheries;

(8) expanding desertification;

(9) frequency of extraordinary powerful storms;

(10) shrinking natural resources;

(11) melting glaciers.

Again, thinking and acting globally, but also being and believing as a nationstate, and binding cultures and languages as closely to what a people’s history and family tree are worth. Out with the dirty and old, but in with the retrofitted, in with the classic and the things that make sense for clean air, clean water, clean soil, peace and as diseas-free as possible.

But letting science run amok, well, that is the current state, and the economists and propagandists and marketers are believing in their own religious cultism capacity to pull the wool over the collective eyes of us, the 80 Percent.

“The current state of science is not good enough … to either reject, or to accept, let alone implement” solar geoengineering, wrote Janos Pasztor, executive director of the Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative, in an email. The initiative is calling for oversight of geoengineering and other climate-altering technologies, whether by governments, international accords or scientific bodies. “To go ahead with implementation at this stage is a very bad idea,” he added, comparing it to Chinese scientist He Jiankui’s decision to use CRISPR to edit the DNA of embryos while the scientific community was still debating the safety and ethics of such a step.

Shuchi Talati, a scholar in residence at American University who is forming a nonprofit focused on governance and justice in solar geoengineering, says Make Sunset’s actions could set back the scientific field, reducing funding, dampening government support for trusted research, and accelerating calls to restrict studies.

These are very fragile times, and if indeed there is more UFO “activity” for 2022, I wonder what those star people are seeing in us? All those radio and television signals beaming out into space of Hitler, of the killing fields of World War I and II, and Vietnam, and the genocides throughout just the last 122 years. And now, all that negative energy coming from the Nulands, Kagans, Blinkens, Zelenky’s, this Hebrewization of war-economics-poverty, and then all those useless generals and CIA, both the political parties, goy or Jew, it doesn’t matter.

This nuclear posturing by Biden, and now talk of winning and controlling a controlled strategic nuclear strike into Russia, we can you imagine the universe feeling the pain of Homo bellum (war) never learning, always destroying, until we have every fetus incubating inside human or mammal or other species with dozens of forever chemicals, PCBs, hormone disruptors, neuro-destroying toxins. Star people cranking up at light speed, they know the sickenss of this dominant species.

Shall I repeat how destructive this species is, without the Prince of Peace or MLK or the lot of them being listened to and shepherding us into a state of collective whole consciousness? Neurotoxicity occurs when the exposure to natural or manmade toxic substances (neurotoxicants) alters the normal activity of the nervous system. This can eventually disrupt or even kill neurons, key cells that transmit and process signals in the brain and other parts of the nervous system.

Is that not the definition of insanity for star people? There is no way the star people had anything to do with Mayan temples, as the Mayans destroyed their civilization because they wanted plaster for the pyramids and buildings. Burning down the low slung jungle and forests to produce lime. There is no way in hell any star person, and Rosewell alien would shepderd that as their goal. The thin epidermis of our atmosphere, the fragility of the combo of nitrogen, carbon dioxide, oxygen, and the rest, whew, only star people would know THEN burning recklessly would punch holes into our life giving and live enhancing heavens.

Law of time, and the noesphere. Go to my blog, and look for Charles Miller and the Law of Time Interview.

Here is another hyper-fear but creative look at how to get out of this mess: (Elizabeth G. Boulton, PhD)

I’ll take all this with a grain of lithium salt, as we know the greenies like 350.org and Bill McKibben as all for Biden-Blinken-KIagan-Nuland warmongering. Read Matthew Ehret:

Prince Charles has just given the world 18 months to save the world. Over the past years, the prince and his father (among other inbred aristocrats of Europe) have taken an incredible interest in the safety of the earth from the pollution emitting machines who greedily consume and reproduce without any consideration for Mother Gaia. In recent months this green transformation of the globe has taken the form of the “Green New Deal” promoted in the U.S. by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders. A children’s campaign endorsed by pope Francis and led by Greta Thunberg has spread across Europe and America while a Billionaires Club under the guidance of Al Gore, and George Soros is funding a Sunrise Movement to fight global warming.

Is this passion to save the planet from humanity genuine? Do these oligarchs and billionaires really care so much that their support for a Green New Deal is as benevolent as the media portrays… or is something darker at play? To answer these questions, we will have to first quickly review what the Green New Deal IS, then where it came from and then finally what its architects have stated they wish to accomplish with its implementation. (source)

Again, science, with no limits, with no deep holism, without any regard for consequences is devilish. But expecting Indians and nations in Africa to stay in the mud, in huts, with no technology that the West has, is the ultimate of racism.

Writing his 1982 “There are no Limits to Growth” as an early publication of the Club of Life, LaRouche wrote:

“It is not the growth of industry which destroys the world’s forests. In most cases, the cause is a lack of industrial output, a lack of good industrial management of the ecosphere. Over the past fifteen years, the greatest single cause for destruction of the world’s “ecology” has been the toleration of the policies demanded by the so called “ecologists,” the so-called “neo-Malthusians” of the Club of Rome, of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), of the World Wildlife Fund, the Aspen Institute, the Ford Foundation, the ‘Rockefeller Foundation, the U.S. Sierra Club, and so forth and so on. We are not putting enough industrially-produced energy, in the form of water management, chemicals, and so forth, into the farming of the Earth’s biosphere. At the same time, we are using biomass for fuel and other “traditional” uses, in cases we should be using nuclear-generated energy supplies, and using modern, industrially produced materials in place of timber for housing and so forth.”

Case closed now. There is no balance, no alternative view, not robust critical thinking, no deep teach-in’s, no debates, no smart people with different perspectives in the same room. The only way to harmonize the quantum us is to bring us back into dialogue, health, peace. Until then, we will be held captive by the monsters, and you know who they are: So, climate change, and no new deal for nature, and really this lock up of the world for the West is the same chavanism of the West and Russia. There is no Plan E for a planet run by Hollywood, Banks, Military, Media, Billionaires, Rotten Digital Gulags.

Our natural world is facing the most serious threats she has ever known.

At the forefront is the accelerating loss of biodiversity, upon which all life depends.

Worse still, this very real threat is now being marketed and exploited in order to reboot the global economy.

​Behind the call for a New Deal for Nature—recently rebranded Nature Positive, also referred to as a Global Deal for Nature, a Global Goal for Nature, or a Paris Agreement for nature—lie the world’s most powerful capitalist interests, behavioural change organisations such as Avaaz,  and big conservation NGOs such as the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and The Nature Conservancy (TNC) who partner with the world’s biggest polluters.

Human rights violators WWF lead the charge for this deal, which essentially consists of a neocolonial land grab from the most self-sufficient peoples on the planet, principally in Africa and Asia.

Check it out, No Deal for Nature.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Paul Haeder.

The woman, who uses the handle "Lia the Anxious Housewife," already has the right of permanent residency in democratic Taiwan after marrying a Taiwanese man.

But the island's labyrinthine immigration processes require all Chinese nationals to show documents issued in China proving that their household registration -- which allows access to public services in a specific location -- has been canceled, which usually involves a trip back to a person's place of birth.

"Lia" traveled back to her hometown in the northeastern port city of Dalian, where she had hoped to get the documents she needed relatively quickly and return to Taiwan this month.

But the transfer of her case further up the official hierarchy and a prolonged official silence on her case has sparked fears that the authorities may be preventing her from returning to Taiwan.

"At first, things all went very smoothly, and I'd been hoping to go back to Taipei pretty soon. The people at the local police station were very helpful," she said in a Dec. 2 upload to her YouTube channel.

"I had been coming and going using a pass for residents of mainland China wanting to come in and out of Taiwan," she said. Now that my household registration has been canceled here in Dalian, it turns out the entry and exit bureau needs to issue me with a one-way pass ... to leave the country. But I haven't managed to get this one-way pass," she said.

She said local police had tried to follow up the matter for her, but the application for the pass was now at the provincial level of government, and Lia has been left in limbo with no Chinese ID card, which she had to turn into the authorities as part of the process.

The concerns for Lia's safety come after Taiwanese rights activist and NGO worker Lee Ming-cheh was jailed for five years for "subversion" in China, after being suddenly detained by state security police during a trip to buy medicines for his ailing mother-in-law. 

Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council said it had been in contact with Lia and would "handle the matter," amid growing concern that the mainland Chinese spouses of Taiwanese nationals could be increasingly vulnerable to persecution by the Chinese authorities amid ongoing tensions and the threat of a Chinese invasion to force "unification" on Taiwan.

“We have obtained the relevant information and are using existing channels and mechanisms to keep in touch ... and provide the necessary assistance," a council spokesman told a news briefing in Taipei on Monday.

Taiwan has never been ruled by the Chinese Communist Party, nor formed part of the 73-year-old People's Republic of China, and opinion polls have repeatedly shown that its 23 million people have no wish to surrender their sovereignty or give up their democratic way of life under Chinese rule, which is being offered under the same "one country, two systems" formula used to take back control of Hong Kong.

Democratic Progressive Party president Tsai Ing-wen won a landslide election victory in 2020 on a platform of standing up to China, prompting Beijing to step up pressure for "unification," repeated military incursions around the island and a program of disinformation and propaganda targeting the country's media and social media.

Taiwan's government will provide assistance to any Chinese nationals with permanent residency in Taiwan who are facing problems in returning after having gone to China to give up their Chinese household registration, a mainland affairs spokesman told journalists on Monday.

Current immigration law requires Chinese people who apply for household registration in Taiwan to give up their original household registration in China, the Central News Agency reported.

It said "special consideration" had previously been given to Chinese applicants for Taiwan permanent residency who were unable to return to China to apply for relevant documents for various reasons, including fears for their personal safety.

'Hostage diplomacy'

Wu Chien-chung, associate professor of general education at the Ocean University of Science and Technology in Taipei, said he believes Li is being prevented from leaving China due to her volunteer work for the Democratic Progressive Party.

"Absolutely, [that is likely]" Wu said, adding that Lia has likely become the latest victim of China's "hostage diplomacy."

He also noted that a more recent YouTube video on Lia's channel had been posted and then deleted, a behavior he said was "not normal."

He said Lia had been reported to the Chinese authorities by pro-Beijing Taiwan nationals as soon as she had arrived back in China.

"China has seized an opportunity here after some people tipped them off using their real names," Wu said. "We can see from the case of Lee Ming-cheh and Yang Chi-yuen [currently detained in China] that the Chinese Communist Party does engage in hostage diplomacy."

"They've found a vulnerability of Taiwan's, and so this is what they do."

Pro-government social media comments about Lia, who is currently quarantined in the southeastern port city of Xiamen, accused her of being a supporter of "Taiwan independence," an epithet also frequently applied by Communist Party supporters and media commentators to the island's ruling party and President Tsai.

Repeated calls to the Taiwan Affairs Offices for Liaoning province and Dalian city rang unanswered during office hours on Tuesday.

An official who answered the phone at Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council said they had no further comment when contacted for an update on Tuesday.

Taiwanese 'at risk'

Fellow Taiwanese social media star Shangguan Luan said Lia is in a vulnerable position.

"Specifically, those of us who voluntarily speak up for Taiwan, agree with Taiwan's stance [rejecting China's offer of 'unification'] and use their online influence to promote Taiwan's freedom and democratic system to China ... get a lot of trolling from the Little Pinks," she said, in a reference to Communist Party supporters online.

"That could make things difficult for us when we go back there," she said.

Wu said China is an increasingly risky place for anyone from Taiwan to travel to.

"Any Taiwanese person will be at risk if they travel to China now," Wu said. "It may become the norm in future."

He said even the content of social media comments or messages with someone in China could be used as evidence to support politically motivated charges against Taiwanese nationals who travel there.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Hwang Chun-mei for RFA Mandarin.

Comprehensive coverage of the day’s news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice.

• House gives final Congressional approval to federal law protecting same sex marriage
• Russia releases WNBA star Brittney Griner in prisoner swap
• Federal marshals seize KPFA bank account to pay defamation judgment against its New York sister station
• Tribes and officials celebrate impending removal of four Klamath River dams
• House Democrats urge binding ethics rules for Supreme Court justices

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The post Same sex marriage bill heads to President Biden for signature; WNBA star Brittney Griner freed in prisoner swap; Federal marshals seize KPFA assets to satisfy a judgment against its parent Pacifica Foundation: The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – December 8, 2022 appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

This is a breaking story… Please check back for possible updates...

U.S. Women's National Basketball Association player Brittney Griner on Thursday was freed from a Russian penal colony and is headed home thanks to a prisoner exchange for arms dealer Viktor Bout.

"Moments ago I spoke to Brittney Griner," tweeted U.S. President Joe Biden, who also spoke about the development from the White House alongside Cherelle Griner, the WNBA star's wife. "She is safe. She is on a plane. She is on her way home."

Cherelle Griner expressed her "sincere gratitude" for Biden and others in his administration—including Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken—and said that "today's just a happy day for me and my family."

The American basketball star has for years played for Russia's team during the WNBA's offseason. Earlier this year, she was sentenced to nine years in prison after cannabis oil was found in her suitcase at Sheremetyevo International Airport near Moscow.

"Her status as a gay Black woman, locked up in a country where authorities have been hostile to the LGBTQIA+ community, infused gender, racial and social dynamics into her legal saga and made each development a matter of international importance," ESPN noted.

As CNN reported, "Bout, nicknamed the 'Merchant of Death,' is a former Soviet military officer serving a 25-year prison sentence in the United States on charges of conspiring to kill Americans, acquire and export anti-aircraft missiles, and provide material support to a terrorist organization."

Biden confirmed that the swap did not include Paul Whelan, another American imprisoned by Russia, but vowed to continue negotiations to free him. As the U.S. president put it: "We are not giving up. We will never give up."

His brother, David Whelan, said that "I am so glad that Brittney Griner is on her way home. As the family member of a Russian hostage, I can literally only imagine the joy she will have, being reunited with her loved ones, and in time for the holidays."

"The Biden administration made the right decision to bring Ms. Griner home, and to make the deal that was possible, rather than waiting for one that wasn't going to happen," he added. 

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

Activists have protested at Indonesia’s Ternate Police headquarters in North Maluku demanding that the security forces release eight people arrested while commemorating West Papua Independence Day on December 1.

December 1 marked 61 years since the first raising of West Papua’s symbol of independence, the Morning Star flag.

Tabloid Jubi reports Anton Trisno of the Indonesian People’s Front for West Papua (FRI-WP) saying the demonstration where the group was arrested was a peaceful one.

• READ MORE: Ternate police urged to release eight activists commemorating December 1
• Happy West Papua Day – and the brutal truth about where we are now
• Pacific marks 61st year flying of Papua’s banned Morning Star flag
• The Morning Star flag background
• Revelations on the murky fate of flag ‘treason’ prisoners in West Papua
• Oceania Indigenous ‘guardians’ call for self-determination on West Papua day
• Other West Papua reports

“We expressed our aspirations peacefully. Some ojek (motorcycle taxi) drivers infiltrated the crowd to disperse the protesters. This is a violation to our freedom of speech,” he said.

Trisno asked the police to immediately release eight of his colleagues.

“We urge the Ternate police chief to immediately release the eight activists who are still detained. We demand the police release them unconditionally,” he said.

Different tactic
Meanwhile, an activist group has reported a different tactic used by the security forces, which it says is concerning.

“The Papuan People’s Petition Action (PRP) in commemoration of the 61st anniversary of the ‘West Papua Declaration of Independence’ received escort and security unlike usual actions from the Indonesian Security (colonial military),” a statement said.

“Apart from vehicles such as patrol cars, dalmas, combat tactical vehicles, sniffer dogs, intelligence/bin, bais, and tear gas launchers or other weapons.

“There is also security in the form of hidden security, such as a [sniper] placed on the balcony of Ramayana Mall and Hotel Sahit Mariat which are near the location or point of action.

“This certainly shows that there is something planned to actually push back and close the democratic space for the people and resistance movements in the Land of Papua, especially in the city of Sorong.”

In Port Vila, Vanuatu’s Minister of Climate Change and a long-time supporter of the West Papua people, Ralph Regenvanu, attended the West Papua flag-raising day.

In line with Vanuatu’s stand in support of West Papua freedom, the Morning Star flag was raised to fly alongside the Vanuatu flag outside the West Papua International Office.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ. 

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

On 30 June 2022, the Indonesian Parliament in Jakarta passed legislation to split West Papua into three more pieces.

The Papuan people’s unifying name for their independence struggle — “West Papua” — is now being shattered by Jakarta’s draconian policies. Under this new legislation, the two existing provinces have been divided into five, which include South Papua, Central Papua, and Highland Papua.

Indonesia’s Vice-President, Ma’ruf Amin said while addressing an audience at the Special Autonomy Law Change in Jayapura, Papua’s capital, on Tuesday, 29 November 2022, “right now, we are building Papua better”,  reported the Indonesian news agency Antara.

• READ MORE: Pacific marks 61st year flying of Papua’s banned Morning Star flag
• The Morning Star flag background
• Revelations on the murky fate of flag ‘treason’ prisoners in West Papua
• Oceania Indigenous ‘guardians’ call for self-determination on West Papua day
• Other West Papua reports

“Changes to special autonomy are a natural thing and are in the process of the national policy cycle to make things even better,” continued the Vice-President.

While Jakarta is busy tearing apart West Papua with these deceitful words, Papuans everywhere are called to raise the banned Morning Star flag today, December 1, to commemorate West Papua’s 61st Independence Day, stolen by Jakarta in May 1963.

The day is significant and historic because it was on 19 October 1961 that the first New Guinea Council, known as Nieuw Guinea Raad, named West Papua as the name of a new modern nation-state — the Papuan Independent State was founded.

It was before Papua New Guinea (PNG) gained independence in 1975 from Australia.

Papuans were subjected to all kinds of abuse and violations due to how this island of New Guinea was named and described in colonial literature.

Foreign reinventions
Foreign powers continue to dissect West Papua, renaming it, creating new identities, and reinventing new definitions by making it merely an outpost of foreign imperialism in the periphery where abundant food and minerals are extracted and stolen, without penalty or consequence.

Papuans do not appear to give up their sacred ancestral land without a fight.

The name “West Papua”, however, remains a burning flame in the hearts of all living beings who yearn for freedom and justice. The name was chosen 61 years ago because of this reason. This is the name of a newborn nation-state.

After Indonesia invaded West Papua on May 1, 1963, the name West Papua was changed to Irian Jaya. West Papua had been called The Netherlands New Guinea up to the point of the first New Guinea Council in 1961.

The year 2000 marked another significant period in the history of West Papua. The former Indonesian president, Abdurrahman Wahid — famously known as Gusdur — renamed it from Irian Jaya to Papua, a move that etched a special place in the hearts of Papuans for Gusdur.

In 2003, not only did West Papua’s name change. But West Papua was split in half — Papua and West Papua. This fragmentation was achieved by Megawati Sukarnoputri, daughter of the first Indonesian president, Sukarno, the man responsible for 60 years of Papuan bloodshed.

She violated a provision of the Special Autonomy Law 2001, which was based on the idea that Papua remain a single territory. As prescribed by law, any division would need to be approved by the Papuan provincial legislature and local Papuan cultural assembly.

Tragic turning point
They were institutions set up by Jakarta itself to safeguard Papuan people, language, and culture.

One significant aspect of the first Special Autonomy Law was, any new policy introduced by the central government in relation to changing, adjusting, or creating a new identity of the region (West Papua) must be approved by the Papuan People’s Assembly (MRP). But this has never happened to date.

The year 2022 marks another tragic turning point in the fate of West Papua. West Papua is being divided again this year under President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, in the same manner that Jakarta did 20 years ago.

It is common for Jakarta elites to act inconsistently with their own laws when dealing with West Papua. Jakarta violated both the UN Charter and the New York Agreement, which they themselves agreed to and signed.

For example, chapters 11 (XI), 12 (XII), and 13 (XIII) of the UN Charter governing decolonisation and Papua’s right to self-determination, as specified in the New York Agreement’s Articles 18 (XVII), 19 (XIX), 20 (XX), 21 (XXI), and 22 (XXII) have not been followed. The words, texts and practices all contradict each other — demonstrating possible psychological disturbance — traumatising Papuans by being administered by such a pathological entity.

The disdain and demeaning behaviour shown by Indonesian governments towards Papuans in West Papua over the past 60 years are unforgivable and stained permanently in the soul of every living being in West Papua and New Guinea island.

“Right now, we are building Papua better,” declared Indonesia’s Vice-President, a narcissistic utterance from the highest office of the country, and this illustrates Jakarta’s complete disconnect from West Papua.

What led to this tragic situation?
West Papua has endured a lot for more than half a century, having been renamed and re-described numerous times by foreign invaders, from “IIha de papo” and “o’ Papuas” to “Isla de Oro”, or “Island of Gold”, to New Guinea, and New Guinea to Netherlands, English and German Papua and New Guinea. From this emerged Papua New Guinea, West Papua and Irian Jaya, and from Irian Jaya to Papua and West Papua.

As a result of renaming and colonial descriptions of Papuans as unintelligent pygmies, cannibals, and pagan savages; people without value, different foreign colonial intruders were able to enter West Papua and exploit and treat the Papuan people and their land, in accordance with the myth they created based on these names.

In addition to fostering a racist mindset, this depiction misrepresented reality as it was experienced and understood by Papuans over thousands of years.

The Jakarta settler colonial government continues to engage with West Papua with these profoundly misconstrued ideas. Hence the total disregard for what Papuans want or feel regarding their fate is a result of colonial renaming and accounts.

Now the eastern half remains under one name: Papua New Guinea. Jakarta’s settler colonial rulers just created five more settler provinces on the Western side of the island: South Papua Province, Central Papua Province, and Central Highlands Papua Province.

All these new settler colonial provinces are in the heart of New Guinea. Looking at West Papua’s history, we see so many marks and bruises of abuse and torture on her sacred body. In the future, West Papua is likely to suffer yet another grim fate of more torture with such dishonest words from Indonesia’s Vice-President.

Another sacred day
Today, December 1, marks yet another sacred day where we hold West Papua in our hearts and rally to her defence as her enemy marches to cut her into pieces on the settler colonial’s bed of Procrustes.

Let us remember and give glory to West Papua with the following words:

West Papua is an ancient and original particle, an atom of light and hope. It is a story about survival, resistance, betrayal, destruction, genocide, and survival against the odds. It is the last frontier where humanity’s greatness and wickedness are tested, where tragedy, aspiration, and hope are revealed. Papua is an innocent sacrificial lamb, a peace broker among the planet’s monsters, but no one knows her story — hidden deep beneath the earth – supporting sacred treaties between savages and warlords. West Papua is the home of the last original magic, the magic of nature. West Papua is the home of our original ancestors, the archaic Autochthons, the spiritual ancestors of our dream-time spiritual warriors — the pioneers of nature — the first voyageur across dangerous seas and land — the first agriculturalist — the most authentic, the original — we are the past and we are the future. West Papua is the original dream that has yet to be realised — a dream in the process of restoration to its original glory.

This is where West Papua is now. You cut me into pieces millions of times in millions of years, I will rebuild West Papua with these pieces a million times over again.

Happy West Papua Independence Day!

Yamin Kogoya is a West Papuan academic who has a Master of Applied Anthropology and Participatory Development from the Australian National University and who contributes to Asia Pacific Report. From the Lani tribe in the Papuan Highlands, he is currently living in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.

• Other Yamin Kogoya articles

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist

Reports of threats by Indonesia against “Free West Papua” activists have come to light on the anniversary of the first raising of West Papua’s emblem of independence.

“The security level is increased, they send direct threats, phone calls or SMS and in the past three days many of our West Papuan activists have [had] phone messages, propaganda messages,” says Canberra-based Free West Papua activist and musician Ronny Ato Buai Kareni.

December 1, 2022, marks 61 years since the first raising of West Papua’s symbol of independence, the Morning Star flag.

• READ MORE: The Morning Star flag background
• Revelations on the murky fate of flag ‘treason’ prisoners in West Papua
• Oceania Indigenous ‘guardians’ call for self-determination on West Papua day
• Other West Papua reports

“The Morning Star flag brings a lot of emotions, it is about honouring those who have fought and died, assassinated in the name of that Morning Star flag. It is also a symbol of resistance and hope that West Papua will be free one day,” Kareni said.

In previous years, the Indonesian military and police have responded with increased violent oppression around this day, arresting and killing those they perceive as pro-independence activists in West Papua, a spokesperson from Peace Movement Aotearoa said.

The flag has been raised in solidarity with freeing West Papua from occupation by Indonesia, at events around the world.

“Seeing the young Papuans coming out today, it’s heartening,” Kareni said.

Events have been held across the Pacific, Aotearoa and Australia.

Decolonisation MOU signed
A memorandum of understanding has been signed by youth and elders fighting for decolonisation in the Pacific.

“We wanted to strengthen, renew efforts, that vision that was already established in the 1970s, 1980s,” Kareni said.

Kareni presented the Morning Star flag to Hilda Halkyard-Harawira, known by the next generation of activists as “Aunty Hilda”, at the Nuclear Connections Across Oceania conference.

“As renewed strength between young and old and to continue the legacies of the Pacific solidarity and more so in the indigenous solidarity of the national liberation struggles,” Kareni said.

Halkyard-Harawira was a co-organiser for the first Te Hui Oranga o Te Moana Nui a Kiwa in 1982.

Decades on, she is still fighting for freedom from colonisation.

“We have failed because of our mad allegiance to the Indonesian government who are illegal occupiers of West Papua,” Halkyard-Harawira said.

Ōtepoti Declaration on oppression
A call for coordinated action for campaigns that impact the human rights, sovereignty, wellbeing and prosperity of Pacific peoples across the region has been made by the Indigenous Caucus of the Nuclear Connections Across Oceania Conference.

“We remain steadfast in our continuing solidarity with our sisters and brothers in West Papua, who are surviving from and resisting against the Indonesian genocidal regime, injustice and oppression.

“We affirm the kōrero of the late Father Walter Lini, “No-one is free, until everyone is free!,” said in a joint statement released by the Indigenous Caucus.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ. 

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Seven West Papuan makar — “treason” — convicts who were found guilty of raising the Morning Star flag were released on September 27 this year after completing their prison term of 10 months.

Until today, Papua activist and treason convict Melvin Yobe still does not know the result of his medical check-up at Dian Harapan Hospital earlier this year on February 16.

Maksimus Simon Petrus You also doesn’t know what punishment was given to the prison guard who brutally beat him.

• READ MORE: The full five-part article series at Tabloid Jubi [English-language version]
• Part One
• Part Two
• Part Three
• Part Four
• Part Five

Even more disturbing, however, is the fate of Zode Hilapok. He was unable to stand trial as his health continued to deteriorate due to tuberculosis. Zode Hilapok died while undergoing treatment at Yowari Regional General Hospital in Jayapura Regency on October 22.

Since detaining Zode Hilapok on December 2, 2021, law enforcement officials at all levels failed to provide adequate health services for his recovery and he was never put on trial.

Violating human rights
A law faculty lecturer at Cenderawasih University, Melkias Hetharia, says treason charges against Papuan activists violated human rights — namely the right to freedom of speech and expression. He argues the treason law enforced against Melvin Yobe and his seven friends was enacted by the Dutch colonial government to punish coups and revolutions and was based on the experience of the Russian revolution.

Hetharia told Jubi that the enforcement of the Dutch East Indies’ Criminal Code did not consider the social, cultural and philosophical aspects of the Indonesian nation.

“The formation of treason articles in the Criminal Code did not consider aspects of human rights, therefore it is oppressive and injures a sense of justice,” Hetharia said.

He said the term “treason” as regulated in articles 104, 106, 107, 108 and 110 of the Criminal Code had been interpreted very broadly and was not in line with the meaning of aanslag as intended in Dutch, which means “attack”. An attack in that sense was using full force in an attempt to seize power.

“If the term treason in the articles is interpreted not as aanslag or attack, then the articles on treason are indeed contrary to human rights guaranteed and protected in the 1945 Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia,” he said.

In fact, Melvin Yobe, Zode Hilapok, and their six friends are not the only Papuan activists who peacefully protested but have been charged with treason.

From 2013 to 2022, at least 44 Papuan activists have been charged with treason. Among them — from Jayapura District Court data — from 2013 to 2022 there were 31 people, while in Balikpapan District Court in 2020 seven people and in the Central Jakarta Court in 2019 six people.

Treason ‘structural criminalisation’
Emanuel Gobay, director of the Papua Legal Aid Institute (LBH Papua), who is also the legal counsel for Melvin Yobe and his friends, believes the treason charges against Papuan activists are part of a systematic and structural criminalisation.

“The majority of those accused of treason are human rights activists and political activists,” Gobay told Jubi.

Gobay said the Morning Star flag was a cultural symbol of the Papuan people. According to Gobay, these cultural symbols are guaranteed under Papua Special Autonomy Law No, 21/2001.

Gobay said the raising of the Morning Star by Melvin Yobe and other Papuan activists was part of the demand for the government to resolve Papua’s political problems.

“They are asking the state to immediately implement the Special Autonomy Law,” said Gobay.

On that basis, Gobay considered the use of the treason article against Papuan activists as a form of criminalisation. He also emphasised that the raising of the Morning Star flag did not automatically make Papua independent from Indonesia, therefore the element of treason was not fulfilled.

Apart from the controversy on the use of treason legal articles for Papuan activists, the discriminative treatment received by prisoners of treason cases is also inappropriate, argues Gobay.

Prisoners treated badly
Gobay, who often provides legal assistance to Papuan activists suspected or charged with treason, said his clients were often treated badly.

Zode Hilapok’s health condition was the worst of all, said Gobay. During his detention in Abepura Prison, Hilapok’s health condition deteriorated and he lost weight rapidly.

Gobay said Abepura Prison was not suitable for detainees with a history of tuberculosis, such as Melvin Yobe and Zode Hilapok.

“After we surveyed and compared the condition of the prison with the guidelines on handling tuberculosis patients, the prison is not suitable for accommodating prisoners with tuberculosis,” he said.

Minister of Health Regulation No. 67/2016 on Tuberculosis Patient Treatment Guideline states that the treatment centre for tuberculosis patients must be open and have good air circulation and sunlight.

Gobay said the regulation also stipulated that local health offices and hospitals provide special units to treat tuberculosis patients.

“We hope that judges, prosecutors, and hospitals can implement the regulation,” he said.

This report is supported by Transparency International Indonesia (TII), The European Union and the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) in the Anticorruption Residency programme “Reporting Legal Journalism”. It is the final article in a five-part series in Tabloid Jubi and is republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The chair of the Papua Customary Council (DAP), Dominggus Surabut, says the council along with a coalition of civil organisations have formed an investigation team to examine Tuesday’s death of Papuan independence leader Filep Karma.

“We have coordinated with various parties in the Papuan struggle, as well as with families and lawyers to conduct an independent investigation into the death of Papuan leader Filep Karma,” he told Jubi.

“We think Karma died not because of an accident.”

• LISTEN TO RNZ PACIFIC WAVES:  Human rights researcher Andreas Harsono talks about the death of West Papuan activist Filep Karma
• Papua activist’s daughter happy with post-mortem, but suspicions linger
• Farewell Filep Karma, the revered West Papuan leader who could have ushered in unity
• Papuan ex-political prisoner Filep Karma found dead on Jayapura beach
• Filep Karma’s death as reported in Tabloid Jubi – Bahasa Indonesian
• Papuan activist dies in ‘apparent diving incident’ in Jayapura
• Filep Karma: A Papuan human rights hero and huge loss to the Pacific
• Other Filep Karma reports

Surabut said Filep Karma’s death could not be minimised or based only on external examination and family statements.

He said Filep Karma’s daughter Andrefina Karma spoke about her father’s death in a state of grief. The official version is that he died in a diving accident.

“We need a more serious investigation to find out why and how he died. After that we will convey to the public who are still unsure of the cause of death of their leader,” he said.

An activist of the West Papua National Committee (KNPB), Ogram Wanimbo, said the authorities must reveal to the public a complete chronology of Filep Karma’s death.

Dissatisfied with post-mortem
“We are very dissatisfied with the post-mortem results. We need an explanation of who went to the beach with him and what exactly happened,” he said.

The spokesperson for the Papuan People’s Petition, Jefri Wenda, said the same.

“We are asking for a more detailed explanation,” he said.

“Filep Karma is the leader of the West Papuan nation from the Biak tribe. He was no ordinary person.

“We ask that all parties respect his struggle.”

Karma was buried at the Expo Public Cemetery in Jayapura city on Wednesday. The funeral of the Bloody Biak survivor was attended by thousands of mourners who came from Jayapura city, Jayapura regency and surrounding areas.

Filep Karma left home to go diving on Sunday and was found dead at Base G Beach on Tuesday morning. He allegedly died from a diving accident.

Thousands attend funeral
Thousands of people attended Filep Karma’s funeral.

Church leaders, traditional leaders, and activists escorted the body to his resting place. The funeral process was also closely guarded by the police.

Filep Karma’s coffin was covered in a Morning Star independence flag.

During the funeral procession, six Morning Star flags were raised. The Morning Star that covered the coffin was then handed over to the family.

“Filep Karma taught us about everything. We leave the flag to the family as a symbol that the struggle continues to live,” said Eneko Pahabol, while handing the flag over to Karma’s children, Fina Karma, Audrin Karma and Since Karma.

On behalf of the family, Since Karma said: “Thank you very much for your love. We are grateful to have Mr Filep. He taught us to be brave.

“Filep Karma didn’t want us to live in fear. Let’s stay brave. He’s gone but his spirit hasn’t left. The spirit lives in us.”

The Morning Star flag is banned by Indonesian authorities and raising it carries a jail sentence of up to 15 years.

Republished with permission.

Morning Star raised at the funeral of Filep Karma

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Human rights campaigner Filep Karma, the most famous West Papuan former political prisoner, was found dead early today on a beach in the Melanesian region’s capital Jayapura.

His death has shocked Papuans and the grassroots activist communities in Indonesia and around the Pacific.

“It is true that a body was found by a resident on the beach at Bse G, suspected to be Filep Karma, but to be sure, the police are still waiting for confirmation from his family,” North Jayapura police chief Police Adjunct Commissioner Yahya Rumra told Antara News.

• READ MORE: Filep Karma’s death as reported in Tabloid Jubi – Bahasa Indonesian
• Papuan activist dies in ‘apparent diving incident’ in Jayapura
• Other Filep Karma reports

The head of the Papuan Human Rights Commission, Frist Ramandey, confirmed Karma’s body had been found on the beach, reports CNN Indonesia.

However, he said his group was still investigating the circumstances of Karma’s death.

“He was a father figure for West Papuans and respected by many Indonesian people. He was gentle, loving, courageous, and full of wisdom,” said human rights lawyer Veronica Koman in a tweet.

“Grassroots are shaken.”

‘I’m crushed beyond words’
In a later tweet, she added: “We first met when I visited him in prison. We would spend days and days together when he visited Jakarta or I visited Jayapura.

“He laid the foundation of how I, as an Indonesian, view West Papua. He called me ‘child’ and I called him ‘father’.

“I’m crushed beyond words.”

Filep Karma, 67, led the raising of the Morning Star flag of independence — banned by Indonesian authorities — in Biak in 1998 and was eventually imprisoned.

He was released two years later.

In 2004, he again carried out a similar act and was accused of “treason”.

On that occasion he was jailed for 15 years but released in 2015.

Filep Karma, the most famous West Papuan ex political prisoner, was found dead on a beach in Jayapura this morning.

He was a father figure for West Papuans and respected by many Indonesian people. He was gentle, loving, courageous, and full of wisdom.

Grassroots are shaken. pic.twitter.com/GExI8EG4F6

— Veronica Koman 許愛茜 (@VeronicaKoman) November 1, 2022

Papuans Behind Bars website said Filep Karma was “undoubtedly the best-known political prisoner in West Papua”.

“Sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment for the act of simply raising a flag . . . his release on 19 November 2015 was widely celebrated among Papuan civil society.”

The son of a prominent local politician, originally from Biak island, Karma studied political science in Java before working as a civil servant in Papua.

Indonesian police investigators at the beach scene in Jayapura where the body of Filep Karma was recovered.  Video: Jack Caryota

Watch how fully armed paramilitary police officers approached this unarmed brave West Papuan man carrying the banned Morning Star flag. “Respect us! This is our father!” referring to the passing of Leader Filep Karma.

The man could face treason which carries life imprisonment. pic.twitter.com/TI7niKrZhp

— Veronica Koman 許愛茜 (@VeronicaKoman) November 1, 2022

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

One of eight West Papuan activists who raised the banned Morning Star flag of independence in a protest last December has died.

Zode Hilapok’s death was confirmed by a relative, Christianus Dogopia, who said that since being detained, Hilapok’s health had been deteriorating.

Dogopia said that on 12 December 2021 his relative began experiencing symptoms of illness, feeling fatigued and sleepy.

• READ MORE: TAPOL’s Condolences upon the Death of Zode Hilapok
• Other Morning Star flag protests

At that time, Hilapok lost weight dramatically.

“At that time he ate only rice, without side dishes, or with vegetables but in small portions. Otherwise, his stomach hurt or he would become nauseated. His bowel movements were bloody,” Dogopia said.

Hilapok and seven friends, all aged between 18 and 29, were arrested by police on December 1, 2021, when they marched in front of the Papua police headquarters carrying Morning Star flags and banners.

The flag is considered a symbol of the West Papua struggle for independence and has been strictly banned by the Indonesian authorities with jail sentences of up to 15 years for offenders.

The treason case against Zode Hilapok was never tried because he was ill.

He died at Yowari Hospital on October 22.

In August, the other seven were found guilty of treason and sentenced to 10 months in prison from the day they were detained.

They were released in September.

Hilapok’s death comes after a West Papuan leader, Buchtar Tabuni, was arrested by Indonesian police.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Miriam Zarriga, one of Papua New Guinea’s top experienced journalists, has been appointed as the PNG Post-Courier’s new chief-of-staff.

With more than 10 years working with the Post-Courier, Zarriga has extensive experience in political, security and general news reporting.

She replaces Lawrence Fong, a fellow stalwart of the Post-Courier who has held the position of chief-of-staff for the last three years.

• READ MORE: Stories by Miriam Zarriga on Asia Pacific Report

Fong welcomed Zarriga’s appointment and issued his unwavering support on behalf of the newsroom as she moves into her new role. He now shifts to become online content editor of the masthead.

Prior to her appointment, Zarriga played a key role in Post-Courier’s 2022 National General Election coverage alongside senior political journalist Gorethy Kenneth.

Her involvement provided extensive election coverage on election-related violence around the country, and in some cases facing the brunt of tribal warfare in daring situations.

‘No walk in the park’
Post-Courier’s editor Matthew Vari congratulated Zarriga on her appointment, saying the role embodied the challenges of running a modern newsroom.

“The chief-of-staff position is no walk in the park,” Vari said. “But I have every confidence in Ms Zarriga’s capabilities in ensuring we produce the best content for our readers.

“Her experience over the many years on the frontline of mainstream media provides Ms Zarriga with a wealth of understanding of what’s needed to be produced for our readers.”

The chief-of-staff role handles the content of the newspaper, and the day-to-day operations of the newsroom and its reporters.

Republished with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

In mid-August, Sierra Leone’s broadcast media regulator, National Telecommunications Commission, suspended the licenses of privately owned broadcasters Star Radio and Star TV for over two weeks and denied workers access to the broadcasters’ transmitters in Brookfields, a neighborhood in western Freetown, the capital, according to an August 19 commission statement and Philip Neville, the broadcasters’ founder who holds 70% ownership of shares and handles the finances.

Neville, who spoke with CPJ by phone, said that in mid-August, commission officers arrived at the offices of the broadcasters’ transmitters and ordered all the staff to vacate the premises. Neville also said the officers told him that they gave the order because the broadcasters failed to pay about 140 million leones (US$10,000) of allegedly accumulated debt that the broadcasters owed to the commission for broadcast licenses, including some licenses no longer in use. Before the commission officers’ visit and the suspension of licenses, the broadcasters believed payments to the commission were up to date and there was no debt, according to Neville.

“Authorities in Sierra Leone should allow Star television and radio stations to continue reporting the news and provide the public with information,” said Muthoki Mumo, CPJ’s sub-Saharan Africa representative, in Nairobi. “Media regulators are too often used as tools to gag the media and the suspension of Star raises concern over freedom of the press in Sierra Leone.”  

The commission’s statement said that the broadcasters failed to comply with sections 30 and 65 of the country’s telecommunications laws. According to CPJ’s review, Section 30 allows the commission to suspend or cancel broadcast licenses for various violations, including fraud, treason, or “where the suspension or cancellation is in the public interest”; Section 65 requires broadcasters to obtain “a general or specific license” to operate a radio transmitter. Neither section indicated penalties for violations and CPJ could not determine how the commission calculated the US$10,000 amount.

On August 25, Neville said that the broadcasters were permitted to resume usage of the transmitters and begin broadcasting again after his office paid 74 million leones, the equivalent of about US$5,300, to the regulator on August 23, adding that the regulator still expected the broadcasters to pay the remaining amount.

According to Neville and a copy of a 2017 letter he wrote to the commission, which CPJ reviewed, authorities granted the broadcasters separate licenses to operate in five regions—Freetown, Mile 91, Makeni, Bo, and Kenema—at the cost of US$700 annually for each radio frequency and US$2,000 annually for one television frequency.

Neville’s 2017 letter also said he had informed the commission that year that the broadcasters no longer used three of the frequencies in Bo, Kenema, and Makeni to reduce production costs, but continued to pay 6 million leones (about US$430) monthly to cover the licenses still in use. However, Neville told CPJ that the commission continued to bill his office for renewal of licenses no longer in use. Neville told CPJ that the broadcasters had always paid for the licenses used. 

Neville told CPJ that he did not understand how the US$10,000 amount had been determined. He added that paying that full amount would place financial strain on the broadcasters’ operations.

Daniel Kaitibi, commission director general, and Abdul Ben-Foday, commission director of corporate and industry affairs, both confirmed to CPJ over the phone that the broadcasters’ licenses were suspended because they allegedly owed the commission US$10,000. Ben-Foday told CPJ that the commission was empowered by law to make access to the licenses conditional on payment.

Neville alleged that the commission’s decision to suspend his broadcasters’ licenses was in reprisal for Star TV’s August 13 airing of an episode of a Facebook talk show “Tell It To Racheal,” by U.S.-based journalist Racheal Bangura Davies.  

Participants on the episode, which CPJ reviewed, blamed the Sierra Leonean government for causing violence that erupted during a nationwide protest on August 10.

Neville said the airing of the talk show episode “did not go down well” with the government, which accused the broadcasters of inciting the public against authorities. The government used the commission to punish the broadcasters, Neville said.

In a text message to CPJ, Sierra Leone information minister Mohamed Rahman Swaray denied that the suspension of the broadcasters’ licenses was connected to the airing of the talk show episode.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Kiwi-born and Fiji-raised France rugby centre Virimi Vakatawa has revealed that he has a heart condition that has forced him to retire from the game.

The Naluwai, Naitasiri man made the announcement during the Paris rugby club Racing 92’s media conference last night attended by France coach Fabien Galthié, who choked back tears while giving a tribute.

Vakatawa, 30, said: “Rugby is my passion. The hardest moment of all of this was yesterday in front of my teammates.

• READ MORE: Other reports about Virimi Vakatawa
• Other French rugby reports

“It was very difficult to tell all those with whom I’d spent time both on and off the field.”

The 31 test international arrived in France in 2010 and represented both Racing 92 and the France 7s team as well as playing for France in the 2019 World Cup in Tokyo. He was expected to play a big role in the French team for the Paris World Cup next year.

Racing 92’s club doctor Dr Sylvain Blanchard said that a “cardiological anomaly” had been found in 2019 “just before the Rugby World Cup in Japan”.

It had been monitored closely by the Parisian club’s medical team but its “pathology had evolved” since.

Health in jeopardy
The cardiac problem jeopardised the health of Vakatawa and medical officials have banned him from playing in France.

Dr Blanchard said the condition was first diagnosed before Tokyo in 2019, but it was decided at the time that Vakatawa could continue playing under extra surveillance.

However, the medical experts now say his condition is too risky.

“It is a pathology that is likely to put him at risk in intense sports activities,” Dr Blanchard said. “And, obviously, professional rugby is part of those activities.”

The 30-year-old Vakatawa was born in Rangiora, New Zealand, raised in Fiji — the country of his heritage — and arrived in France at 17.

He was out injured while France won the Six Nations Grand Slam this year but was back as the starting centre in both test wins in Japan in July.

“It’s tough to leave this family, but I never had regrets,” Vakatawa said.

Rodney Duthie is Fiji Times sports editor. Republished with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Seven people have been found guilty of “treason” after raising the banned Morning Star flag in West Papua, a Melanesian region of Indonesia.

In the Jayapura District Court this week, the seven were each jailed for 10 months and fined.

The flag is considered a symbol of the West Papua struggle for independence and has been strictly barred by the Indonesian authorities.

• READ MORE: Other West Papua independence reports

The group, one aged 19 and the others in their 20s, had raised the flag at the Cenderawasih Sports Centre, and although they were not carrying weapons they were convicted of treason.

The Jubi website reported the judge said raising the Morning Star flag and marching while shouting “Free Papua” and “We are not Red and White, we are the Morning Star“, amounted to treason.

And the act of unfurling banners with the words “Self Determination For West Papua, Stop West Papua Militarism” and “Indonesia Immediately Open Access for the UN Human Rights Commission Investigation Team to West Papua” was also considered treason.

‘Intention of separating’
The verdict read “the defendants already have the intention of separating Papua and West Papua from the territory of Indonesia. The defendants have committed the beginning of treason as stipulated in Article 87 of the Criminal Code”.

After the trial, the defendant’s lawyer Emanuel Gobay told Jubi “we firmly reject” the court’s verdict of treason.

During the trial Gobay said no expert witnesses had been presented to explain their perspectives on the charges.

According to Gobay, the conclusions drawn by the panel of judges seemed subjective because there was no information from expert witnesses.

“We question the basis on which the panel of judges concluded the treason. It is as if the panel of judges acted as experts, interpreting and concluding themselves without relying on expert testimony,” Gobay said.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Sixty years ago today — on 15 August 1962 — the fate of a newly born nation-state West Papua was stolen by men in New York. The infamous event is known as “The New Agreement”, a deal between the Netherlands and Indonesia over West Papua’s sovereignty.

A different fate had been intended for the people of West Papua in early 1961 when they elected their national Council from whom the Dutch were asking guidance for the transfer of administration back to Papuan hands.

Shockingly, the threat of colonialism came from America several months later when a journalist advocating liberty denounced a secret Washington proposal to betray America’s Pacific War ally Papua to an Asian colonial power.

• READ MORE: Other West Papua self-determination reports

The Council’s response was to present to the Dutch a flag and manifesto of independence asking all the peoples of West Papua to unite as one people under their new Morning Star flag.

On 1 December 1961, the Dutch raised the Morning Star flag, and for more than 60 years the people have united as one raising their Morning Star flag.

But declassified American records reveal horrific deceptions. A group inside the White House had begun secret negotiations with the Republic of Indonesia around a proposal for an illegal use of the International Trusteeship System, or to quote the US, “a special United Nations trusteeship of West New Guinea” that irrespective of Papua’s objections would then ask Indonesia to assume control.

The “special” nature of the US proposal had the opposite intent than that of the international law. The International Trusteeship System, Chapter XII of the United Nations Charter is meant protect a people’s right of independence and have the UN prepare annual reports about their welfare and progress towards independence for each territory the United Nations has become responsible for, including those invaded and subjugated by UN troops.

West Papua is both.

Instead of protection and annual reports, the United Nations by omission of duty is enabling Indonesian impunity for military campaigns of terror and administrative suspension of all human rights.

West Papuans have suffered hundreds of thousands of extrajudicial deaths, disappearances and looting of many hundreds of billions of dollars throughout the UN appointed administration by Indonesia.

Weekly stories of horror hidden from international news media by an ongoing Indonesian declaration that Papua is a quarantine zone requiring special permission for NGOs and journalists to enter.

It is beyond time that the UN took steps to put right the wrongs of the past. #selfdetermination pic.twitter.com/vsWBO0wXpo

— Free West Papua (@FreeWestPapua) August 7, 2022

Fiscal and geopolitical deceptions
Every principle written into the UN’s charter, the Rules of Procedure of the Trusteeship Council, and even Indonesia’s own New York Agreement have been violated by the ongoing Indonesian conduct, international mining and United Nations omission of lawful conduct.

These events proceeded against the backdrop of a global movement calling for decolonialisation that rippled across Asia, Africa and the Pacific, with the West and the Communist bloc supporting or opposing one another to gain influence in these movements.

The newly independent nation of Indonesia, which had been under Dutch rule for more than 300 years, declared independence on 17 August 1945. Sukarno was the man of this era, leading the outburst of a long-awaited human desire for freedom and equality.

In the same era, wars broke out in Korea and Vietnam; the world endured the Cuban missile crisis as forces of the West and the Communist bloc continued to clash and reshape the destiny of these new nation-states.

Leading up to the final recognition of their new republic in December 1949, Indonesians experienced another brutal, protracted war with the Dutch. The Netherlands side wanted to reclaim their past colonial glory, and the Indonesian side wanted to removed Dutch occupation and authority from their nation.

Indonesia’s founding fathers, Sukarno and Suharto, were significant men of their era, with ambitions to match — ambitions that led to the massacre of millions of alleged Indonesian Chinese communists in the mid-1960s; the same ambition that placed the Papuan people on the path they are on now, carved by blood, tears, trauma, war, killing, rape, exploitation, betrayal, and being cheated at every turn by the world’s highest institutions.

Many nations around the world had to face difficult choices, with emerging leaders of all types avoiding the cause of their own imagined nation-state. This was a most turbulent era of development and globalisation.

Arguably, most conflicts around the world today stem from unresolved grievances brought about by this turbulence and divisive historical events.

West Papua’s extended conflicts for the last 60 years are a direct result of being mishandled by Western forces who sought to take Papua’s independence for themselves.

As of today, Indonesians (and those unaware of West Papua’s legal status under international law) think that this is a domestic issue, a narrative which Jakarta elites insist on propagandising to the world.

The truth is that West Papua remains an unresolved issue with international implications. More specifically, the UN still has the responsibility to correct their sixty-year-old mistake.

The UN breached its own charter
At least in principle, all 111 articles of the UN Charter are aimed at promoting peace, dignity, and equality. One of the key elements of the charter (in relation to decolonisation) is its declaration that colonial territories would be considered non-self-governing territories. The United Nations’ responsibility was to provide a “full measure of self-government” to those nations colonised by foreign powers. West Papua’s story as a new nation began within these international frameworks.

West Papua was already listed under the UN’s decolonisation system as a non-self-governing territory before 1962 and the Dutch were preparing Papuans for full independence in accordance with the UN charter guidelines. The public has been deceived by trivialising this agreement and downplaying it as simply two powers — Netherlands and Indonesia — fighting over West Papuan territory.

The UN, as a caretaker of this trust, had a responsibility to provide a measure for Papuans to achieve independence. The UN instead handed (abandoned) this trust to Indonesia, who then abused that international trust by invading West Papua in May 1963. This scandalous historical error has brought unprecedented cataclysm to Papuans to date.

The Indonesian perspective
Most Indonesians have been fooled by their government to think that West Papua’s fate was decided during a referendum, known as “Pepera” or “Act of Free Choice” in 1969, which Papuans now refer to as the “Act of No Choice”. Indonesians assume that Indonesian occupancy is good for West Papua, but this is not true: they are unaware that Indonesia is illegally occupying West Papua and their government is in breach of many international laws.

It seems that the Western powers have no issue turning a blind eye when one of their endorsed global players are breaking their laws.

During the period of July to September 1969, the Act of Free Choice was carried out by the Indonesian government. The UN was there but did not act or speak against it. This referendum was one of the items stipulated in the New York Agreement seven years earlier.

About 2025 Papuan elders among the one million Papuans who were handpicked at gunpoint and forced to say “yes” to remain with Indonesia. The UN acted as a bystander, unwilling to interfere with the tyranny taking place before them.

What we seem to forget is the fact that before the referendum in 1969, Indonesia had already launched a large-scale martial and administrative operation throughout West Papua, instilling fear and setting the stage for the rubber stamp referendum to proceed.

What happened in 1969 was a tragedy and a farce of human autonomy. The UN and international community betrayed West Papua on the world’s stage.

The New York Agreement
Andrew Johnson and Julian King, Australian researchers who specialised in this case, have argued that West Papua is still a non-self-governing territory, and that Indonesia has no legal or moral right to claim sovereignty over West Papua. These researchers insist that West Papua is still a non-self-governing territory, and Indonesia is only there temporarily as an administrator — they have no legal basis to introduce any law or policy towards West Papua.

In their ground-breaking seminal work West Papua Exposed: An Abandoned Non-Self-Governing or Trust Territory, Johnson and King conclude that:

Either as a Non-Self-Governing Territory or a Trust Territory, the legal rights of the people of West Papua have been denied with every UN Member responsible and legally bound to uphold the Charter in order to correct this breach of international law.

No Papuan was invited or included during the agreement. This act itself speaks volumes – the complete denial of Papuans’ intrinsic worth as human beings to have any input into their fate is the basis for all kinds of violence, abuse, torture and mistreatment towards Papuan people.

This is the first violation and the most egregious because the Indonesian government’s draconian policies towards Papuans have consistently exhibited and reinforced this prejudiced behaviour over the past 60 years. Indonesians do not treat Papuans as equal human beings, therefore, what Papuans think, desire and feel doesn’t matter.

It was the right move for the UN to accept West Papua as a Trust Territory. However, the UN abandoned this sacred trust to Indonesia a year later, even though Indonesia’s behaviour prior to, during, and after this agreement had already been in breach of many UN charters and principles.

For example, Chapters 11 (XI), 12 (XII), and 13 (XIII) of the UN Charter governing decolonisation and Papua’s right to self-determination, as specified in the New York Agreement’s Articles 18 (XVII), 19 (XIX), 20 (XX), 21 (XXI), and 22 (XXII) have not been followed.

Additionally, the UN’s failure to uphold its principles and its silence on its disastrous mistake constitutes a serious breach of international law.

Secret documents
Declassified documents from the United States, Australia, and the United Nations reveal irrefutable evidence of what went wrong behind the scenes prior to, during, and after the Netherlands-Indonesia agreement.

The idea of exploiting the UN Trusteeship system to transfer the sovereignty of West Papua to Indonesia was already proposed in 1959 by the US embassy in Jakarta.

Now-declassified document titled “A proposal for Settlement of the West New Guinea Dispute”, dated on May 26, 1959, stated:

Our position of neutrality has served its purpose. It is time we developed a formula to remove this major irritant to Indonesian relations with the West.

In the US minds, the formula was exploiting the UN’s mechanisms to give West Papua sovereignty to Indonesia.

A year later on 3 March 1961, the US embassy wrote:

Unless New Guinea question can be promptly removed as source of Soviet strength and US weakness, as incipient cause of war and as platform for variety of unhealthful isms within Indonesia, our best efforts in any other direction will fail to achieve our objectives here.

According to King and Johnson, the 1962 New York Agreement story has been a deception for 60 years; the agreement was not drafted after the Indonesian invasion in 1962. The agreement was proposed by an American lawyer in May 1959, modified in 1960, proposed to Indonesia in March 1961, and executed in 1962.

West Papua is not sold or traded under the Agreement. It is an agreement between UN members to share the responsibility for the welfare of West Papuan people (trusteeship), and it asks the UN to be the “administrator” (occupying force) in 1962. When the United Nations backed the agreement, Pakistani troops were appointed to administer West Papua in 1962, followed by Indonesian troops in 1963.

As it turns out, armies of secret dealers in UN uniforms were behind the scenes setting agendas, proposing solutions, and implementing them without consequences.

It appears then that the New York Agreement itself, the terms of reference upon which the UN General Assembly voted on the agreement, the UN’s role from 1962 to 1963, the final Act of Free Choice in 1969, and the UN General Assembly vote on the Act of Free Choice’s outcome were all facades — a treacherous performance fit for a tragic drama.

A carefully orchestrated plan was devised to sacrifice West Papua to Indonesia by manipulating the UN’s system by the United States — the leader of the free democratic world and the tyrant flexing its vast military power.

The fight to reclaim stolen sovereignty lives on
Papua played an important role in reshaping geopolitical arrangements between the West and the communist bloc, and it will continue to do so if this issue remains unresolved.

The future in which West Papua will play a critical role has arrived. The US and its allies will have to face China or any other power or ideological forces that are challenging the liberal world order.

The responses, criticisms, or reactions arising from nations around the world — whether it be on the issues of covid-19, the Ukraine war, Taiwan, Solomon Islands-China security deals, or any other global issue — suggest that the grand narrative of the West as the saviour of mankind pushed by the US is being questioned and rejected.

Another new grand narrative is now emerging, and that is China.

West Papua at a crossroads
What role will West Papua play in the current geopolitical tussle between the West and China is impossible to predict. This is something that must be dealt with by regional and international communities. West Papua’s issues do not dominate the headlines like Ukraine, Solomon Islands, or Taiwan, but they have their own significance in reshaping regional and global geopolitical arrangements.

The world of Papuans 60 years ago was different from now. More than half of a country abused, tortured and mistreated under Indonesia occupation is driving Papuans to become a minority in their own homeland. It has also strengthened their will to live and fight, and most Papuan youth are equipped with knowledge of the crimes against their people and what they can do to bring about justice and facilitate change.

Papuan resistance groups are increasingly becoming anti-Western, believing that the West is exploiting them while supplying arms to the Indonesian military. West Papuan students across Indonesia often wear revolutionary hats or t-shirts displaying socialist and communist revolutionary leaders such as Fidel Castro, Lenin, Che Guevara, and Ho-Chi Mi — they are well-versed in Leftist literatures.

The attitude of the general population in West Papua is also changing. Where previous generations have had a strong connection with the West due to shared experiences of World War II and influence by Western missionaries, young people are now questioning everything about the current state of affairs and asking why they are in this predicament.

Papua’s governor also praised Russia for its generous sponsorship of Papuans to study in the country. The Governor is currently building Russian and Papuan museums to strengthen this relationship and honour Russian anthropologist Nicholai Nicholaievich Mikluho Maklai, who advocated for the rights of New Guinea People 150 years ago.

The West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB)
The armed wing of the Free Papua Movement (OPM), the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB), has also been changing its armed resistance strategy against Indonesian occupation.

They are shooting and killing anyone they consider a traitor or an invader, an attitude never seen before. It is dangerous because of not only their drastic approach, but the retaliation from heavily armed Indonesian security forces, who are aggressively shooting, burning, rampaging, and bombing anyone they consider to be OPM.

The TPNPB and Indonesian security forces have been at war for many years, and Jakarta has responded with heavy handed security measures by sending thousands of soldiers to hunt down the alleged perpetrators.

Recently, this has intensified, resulting in the displacement of thousands of Indigenous Papuans.

West Papua civilians could be subjected to an unprecedented mass atrocity if (or when) this situation escalates. According to a report published by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, structural factors behind conflict in the region are showing signs of events that could trigger mass atrocities against civilians.

As reported by the UCA News, Gadjah Mada University researchers in Yogyakarta reported 348 violent acts in Papua between 2010 and March of this year. There were at least 464 deaths, including 320 civilians, and 1654 injuries, mostly civilians.

There are far more human tragedies unfolding in West Papua each day than what this figure represents. Unfortunately, Jakarta has blocked independent journalists from entering the region, making it difficult to verify these claims.

International voices for human rights investigation
In March 2022, UN experts from the Office of the Human Rights High Commissioner published a report highlighting serious violations and abuses against Papuans.

In addition, Jakarta has not granted a request for a visit by the UN High Commissioner to the region made by the UN Human Rights Council.

Despite the Tuvalu resolution of the Pacific Island Forum in 2019 and another resolution from African Caribbean and Pacific nations requesting Jakarta for a UN visit, the request has not yet yielded results.

On August 3, ABC Radio Australia hosted Benny Wenda, the UK-based exiled West Papua independence leader, to discuss the current situation in his homeland.

According to Wenda, the plight of West Papua to determine its own fate is clouded by the current geopolitical intrigues between the West and China. The status of West Papua is an unresolved international issue that has been swept under the carpet.

Even though the 52nd Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) meeting of heads of state and government held in Suva, Fiji from 11 to 14 July 2022 left West Papua out of the forum’s agenda, Wenda expressed optimism that West Papua would not be forgotten at the next meeting.

Indonesia and West Papua at a crossroads again
Although West Papua has been buried deep within diplomacy for 60 years, it remains the most important issue affecting Jakarta’s relations with China and the US, as well as the way big powers deal with the independent Indigenous nation states across Oceania.

Above all, geopolitical war via chequebook diplomacy, media, or forming military and trade alliances and deals in the Pacific has become a real issue that we all must face.

The peaceful blue Pacific (Oceania), which Australia and New Zealand consider their “backyard” could become a new Middle East.

In response to this fear, the White House invited Pacific leaders to dinner later this year with Joe Biden.

At the outset, West Papua issues might seem insignificant, irrelevant, or forgotten to the world, but in reality, it is one of the most significant issues influencing how Jakarta’s engage with the world and how the world engages with Jakarta.

Once again, Jakarta is caught in the middle between great powers, and they do not have the same leverage to play the same games as their ancestors did so many years ago. Jakarta elites need to recognise that they stole something so precious that belonged to Papuan people, and this must be returned to the rightful owner.

The only appropriate and adequate justice left for Papuans is to be given back their sovereignty. This is the only way for Papua to heal and have decades of violence against them reconciled.

Yamin Kogoya is a West Papuan academic who has a Master of Applied Anthropology and Participatory Development from the Australian National University and who contributes to Asia Pacific Report. From the Lani tribe in the Papuan Highlands, he is currently living in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.

• Other Yamin Kogoya articles

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

We speak with Bishop William Barber, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, about his call for the creation of a diverse, interfaith humanitarian delegation to travel to Russia to bring home WNBA star Brittney Griner, who was sentenced last week to nine years in a penal colony for possessing just two ounces of cannabis oil. “Our priority should be this young lady coming home,” says Barber.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

A Fiji women’s advocacy group has condemned their government for remaining silent over the human rights violations in West Papua amid the Pacific Islands Forum being hosted by Prime Minister Voreqe Bainmarama this week.

Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre (FWCC) coordinator Shamima Ali with other staff members and activists made the criticisms at a ceremony raising the independence flag Morning Star, banned in Indonesia.

The women raised the flag of West Papua on Wednesday to show their solidarity.

• READ MORE: Kiribati ‘cooking something with China’, says ex-Kiribati president
• Fiji police evict two Chinese defence attaches amid Pacific Forum tensions
• US announces major Pacific push, embassies in Tonga, Kiribati
• Climate crisis top Pacific agenda item and it’s a security issue, says Ardern
• $10m climate funding to support Pacific seed crops
• More Pacific Islands Forum summit leaders pull out as crisis grows
• Pacific Islands Forum ‘on course’ as China issue casts shadow
• Kiribati exit from Pacific forum ‘out of order’, says founding president
• Other Pacific Islands Forum reports

Ali said this ceremony was done every Wednesday to remember the people of West Papua, particularly women and girls who were “suffering twofold” due to the increased militarisation of the two provinces of Papua and West Papuan by the “cruel Indonesian government”.

She said this was a perfect time since all the Pacific leaders were in Fiji for the forum but the Fiji government stayed silent on the issue.

Ali added that with Fiji as the chair of the forum, Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama should have negotiated for West Papua to be on the agenda.

Wenda appeals to Pacific Islands Forum
Meanwhile, United Liberation Movement of West Papua interim president Benny Wenda has appealed to Pacific leaders to show “timely and effective leadership” on the great issues facing the Pacific — “the human rights crisis in West Papua and the existential threat of climate change”.

“West Papua is a green land in a blue ocean. Our blue Pacific has always united our peoples, rather than dividing them,” he said in a statement.

Shamima Ali speaking out on West Papua in Suva. Video: Fijivillage

“In this spirit of Pacific solidarity, we are grateful for the support our Pacific family showed for our struggle in 2019 by calling for Indonesia to allow the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, to visit West Papua.”

However, Indonesia continued to undermine the forum by refusing to allow a UN visit to take place.

“For decades, we have been crying that Indonesia is bombing our villages and killing our people, but we have been ignored,” Wenda said.

“Now, the world is taking notice of our struggle. The United Nations has shown that up to 100,000 West Papuan civilians have been internally displaced by Indonesian military operations in the past three years alone.

“They have fled into the bush, where they lack access to shelter, food, water, and proper medical facilities. This is a rapidly worsening human rights disaster, requiring immediate attention and intervention by the United Nations.

“Indonesia hears the increasing calls for a UN visit, but is employing delaying tactics to avoid exposing their crimes against my people to the world.”

Rusiate Baleilevuka is a Fijivillage reporter.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Screenshot of a porg from the movie The Last Jedi – Fair Use

The Sequel Trilogy is controversial in the Star Wars fandom, perhaps even more so than the prequels. I don’t understand this. The themes George Lucas explored in his return to the franchise, about a republic descending into fascism, were interesting. But the actual storytelling was atrocious. The sequels, while flawed, were very watchable.

Maybe we’ve just had more time to digest the Prequel Trilogy, or maybe the people who grew up with them are now old enough to look back on the films with nostalgia. I was young when The Phantom Menace arrived, but not young enough to absorb the movie and the two that followed uncritically. I was aware of the drubbing they received from reviewers and mostly agreed with it.

My criticism of the Sequel Trilogy isn’t unique. In retrospect, it’s clear there was no plan. If neither J.J. Abrams or Rian Johnson wanted to direct three films, I wish one of them would have been put in charge of creating an overall narrative the other would follow. As things turned out, the trilogy feels like a car being driven by two people fighting for control of the wheel.

Personally, I prefer the Abrams movies, even if  The Force Awakens is derivative and The Rise of Skywalker is incoherent. They just feel more like Star Wars to me. Plus, the relationship between Han Solo and Kylo Ren is one of my favorite parts of the trilogy and that mostly plays out in the first and last installments. Their dream reconciliation could be the most moving scene in the whole franchise.

Count me among those who doesn’t appreciate Luke Skywalker’s portrayal in The Last Jedi, or the various ways Johnson undercuts what Abrams establishes in the first film. One thing I do like about the middle entry, however, is that it introduces animal welfarism as a concern in the Star Wars series. I wanted to revisit the movie with this in mind.

I should say that I don’t think cultural analysis is particularly important as a means for activists to change minds. I enjoy it, and it’s a nice break from other, more effective forms of activism. In that sense, it is important. Being an activist, especially in a period of backlash like we’re in now, can be a thankless pursuit. Anything that helps you keep going should be prioritized.

There are two plot lines in The Last Jedi that establish animal welfarism as a concern within the Star Wars franchise. The first involves Chewbacca and the porgs. Chewie travels to the ocean planet Ahch-To with Rey, who is trying to recruit Luke Skywalker to join the Resistance. Off-screen, the wookiee presumably hunts and kills some small bird-like creatures.

We see Chewbacca roasting the porgs’ carcasses over a fire, when he is surrounded by other members of this adorable species, looking at him with horrified disbelief. The scene is played for laughs, but ultimately the wookiee adopts the porgs, allowing them to take up residence in The Millennium Falcon. To borrow a phrase, he comes to see them as friends, not food.

The second relevant storyline involves Rose, Finn, and the fathiers, a species of horse-like creatures used on the Canto Bight racetracks. Explaining her distaste for the city, Rose tells Finn to take a closer look at the treatment of the fathiers, who we see are whipped and abused. Their treatment is used to symbolize the broader moral rot of Canto Bight.

When the opportunity presents itself, Rose and Finn free the fathiers from their stables. The portrayal isn’t ideal from an animal-rights perspective, as the pair ride on the back of one of the creatures as part of their escape. But it’s a step in the right direction. I’m glad The Last Jedi includes both these scenes and the ones with Chewbacca and the porgs.

I can only hope that future Star Wars films — and I do hope we get more films soon, not just television shows — explore the question of animal ethics in greater detail. While I understand the series is really closer to fantasy than science-fiction, I wonder if the universe might have its own version of cultivated meat.

Perhaps certain Jedi branches could be vegan. This would make sense to me, given the overall Jedi ethos, but it probably couldn’t be a universal requirement, given what we know of Obi-Wan Kenobi’s occupation on Tatooine or Luke’s diet on Ahch-To. Then again, both are in exile and disillusioned with the Jedi at these points, so maybe it could be waived away.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Jon Hochschartner.

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This article is co-published with The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages with Texans. Sign up for The Brief weekly to get up to speed on their essential coverage of Texas issues.

The Department of Justice is investigating alleged civil rights violations under Operation Lone Star, a multibillion-dollar border initiative announced last year by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, according to state records obtained by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune.

The Legislature last year directed more than $3 billion to border measures over the next two years, a bulk of which has gone to Operation Lone Star. Under the initiative, which Abbott said he launched to combat human and drug smuggling, the state has deployed more than 10,000 National Guard members and Department of Public Safety troopers to the border with Mexico and built some fencing. Thousands of immigrant men seeking to enter the country have been arrested for trespassing onto private property, and some have been kept in jail for weeks without charges being filed.

Since the operation’s launch, a number of news organizations, including ProPublica and the Tribune, have outlined a series of problems with state leaders’ claims of success, the treatment of National Guard members and alleged civil rights violations.

An investigation by the Tribune, ProPublica and The Marshall Project found that in touting the operation’s accomplishments, state officials included arrests with no connection to the border and statewide drug seizures. The news organizations also revealed that trespassing cases represented the largest share of the operation’s arrests. DPS stopped counting some charges, including cockfighting, sexual assault and stalking, after the publications began asking questions about their connections to border security.

Another investigation by the Tribune and Army Times detailed troubles with the National Guard deployment, including reports of delayed payments to soldiers, a shortage of critical equipment and poor living conditions. Previous reporting by the Army Times also traced suicides by soldiers tied to the operation.

Angela Dodge, a DOJ spokesperson, said she could not “comment on the existence or lack thereof of any potential investigation or case on any matter not otherwise a part of the public court record.”

“Generally, cases are brought to us by a variety of law enforcement agencies — federal, state and local — for possible prosecutorial consideration following their investigation into a suspected violation of federal law,” Dodge wrote in an email. “We consider each such case based on the evidence and what can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt in a federal court of law.”

But at least two Texas agencies involved in carrying out the border initiative have pointed to a DOJ investigation in records obtained by ProPublica and the Tribune through the Texas Public Information Act.

In an internal email in May, DPS officials said that the DOJ was seeking to review whether Operation Lone Star violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin by institutions receiving federal funding.

According to the emails, the federal government requested documents that include implementation plans, agreements with landowners and training information for states that have supported Operation Lone Star by sending law enforcement officers and National Guard members to Texas.

“If you are not already aware, the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ is investigating Operation Lone Star,” Kaylyn Betts, a DPS assistant general counsel, wrote in a May 23 email to a department official. She added that the agency should respond in a timely and complete manner.

In a letter sent Friday to the state’s attorney general, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice also cited a “formal investigation” of Operation Lone Star by the DOJ. The agency, which manages the state’s prison system, pointed to the investigation while fighting the release of public records sought by the news organizations.

In the letter, the department’s deputy general counsel wrote that the DOJ is investigating whether the state agency is subjecting people who are arrested as part of the border operation to “differential and unlawful conditions of confinement based on their perceived or actual race or national origin.”

None of the agencies have publicly released information related to the DOJ’s requests.

Neither DPS nor the Texas office of the attorney general, which is representing the state, responded to requests for comment. Amanda Hernandez, a spokesperson for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, said in an email that her agency provided the DOJ the requested information.

“The agency has and continues to follow all state and federal laws as the state of Texas responds to the ongoing crises at the border,” she wrote in an email to the news organizations.

State and federal lawmakers as well as civil rights and immigrant groups have repeatedly called for investigations into Operation Lone Star. In the letters to the DOJ and the Department of Homeland Security, the groups have cited reporting from the Tribune that shows some immigrants were illegally detained or kept in jail too long due to delays by prosecutors, in violation of state law.

“It is critically urgent that the Biden administration not only investigate but hold agencies accountable for violations of Title VI to protect the civil rights of people in South Texas,” said Kate Huddleston, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union. The nonprofit, along with more than 100 other groups, filed a 50-page Title VI complaint in December with the DOJ asking it to investigate alleged civil rights violations.

Operation Lone Star, Huddleston added, “is targeting individuals for enhanced punishment and subjecting them to a separate state criminal system that is created specifically for this purpose that is riddled with civil rights violations.”

Abbott’s office has said the arrests and prosecutions under the operation “are fully constitutional.”

Lexi Churchill contributed reporting.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Perla Trevizo.

Today we celebrate the 51st anniversary of the independence declaration of the Free Papua Movement (OPM) at Markas Victoria on July 1, 1971.

The declaration, signed by Seth Rumkoren and Jacob Prai — who sadly passed away last month — was a direct rejection of Indonesian colonialism.

It sent a powerful message to Jakarta: “We, the people of West Papua, are sovereign in our own land, and we do not recognise your illegal occupation or the 1969 ‘Act of No Choice’.”

• READ MORE: Yamin Kogoya: Fatal disconnect between Jakarta and West Papua worsens settler-colonial occupation
• Other West Papua independence reports

From that moment on, we have been struggling for the independence of West Papua. Through guerilla warfare, the OPM has helped keep the flame of liberation alive. They are our home guard, defending our land and fighting for the sovereignty that was stolen from us by Jakarta.

This day is an opportunity for all West Papuans to reflect on our struggle and unite with determination to complete our mission. Whether you are exiled abroad, in a refugee camp, a member of the West Papua Army, or internally displaced by colonial forces, we are all united in one spirit and determined to liberate West Papua from Indonesian oppression.

The OPM laid the foundations for the political struggle [that] the Provisional Government is now fighting. As expressed in our constitution, the provisional government recognises all declarations as vital and historic moments in our struggle.

Having declared our provisional government, our cabinet, our military wing, and our seven regional executives, we are ready to take charge of our own affairs.

Two new announcements
I also want to use this moment to make two new announcements about our provisional government.

First, I am announcing the formation of a new government department, the Department of Intelligence Services. As with our existing departments, it will operate on the ground in occupied West Papua, and reinforce our challenge to Indonesian colonialism.

In addition, I am announcing that we have appointed an executive member for each of the seven regional bodies we established in December 2021. With every step forward, we are building our capacity and infrastructure as a provisonal government.

Over 50 years on from the 1971 proklamasi, our people’s mission is the same.

We refuse Indonesian presence in WP, which is illegal under international law. We do not recognise “Special Autonomy”, five new provinces, or any other colonial law; we have our own constitution.

I again reiterate my call for President Joko Widodo to sit down with me and discuss an independence referendum. This remains the only pathway to a peaceful solution.

Benny Wenda, Interim President, United liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP) Provisional Government.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

A week before Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, Russian authorities arrested American basketball star Brittney Griner at the Moscow airport. She was charged with drug smuggling after Russian officials allegedly found vape cartridges containing oil derived from cannabis in her luggage.

Will the U.S. help Brittney Griner the way it helped Trevor Reed?

Since her arrest on Feb. 17, Griner has been locked up in a Russian prison. It’s a stark contrast to her life as a millionaire athlete playing in professional basketball leagues in both the United States and, for the last seven years, Russia, where she earns nearly four times as much as her nearly US$282,000 annual WNBA salary.

Speculation on the reason for Griner’s arrest centers on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s alleged desire to use the American star as a geopolitical pawn at a time when U.S.-Russian relations were at their lowest point since the Cold War. And then the Russian invasion of Ukraine occurred, and U.S.-Russian relations have become worse.

Another American, Paul Whelan, who is white, remains in Russian detention after more than two years since his 2020 conviction on espionage charges.

Though U.S.-Russia relations have gotten worse since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the unexpected release of Trevor Reed on April 28, 2022, was a positive sign for Griner’s supporters.

A former U.S. Marine, Reed was held for the last three years in Russia on charges stemming from an alleged fight with a Russian police officer. He was exchanged for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot serving a 20-year federal sentence for conspiring to smuggle cocaine into the United States.

Such an exchange may be in the works with Griner.

After nearly three months of silence on Griner, the Biden administration on May 3 declared that Griner had been “wrongfully detained” and, as such, the U.S. government would work more aggressively to secure her release even while the Russian legal case against Griner proceeds.

Missing Black women

As a scholar of Black women’s bodies, one of my primary concerns for Griner is whether her identity as a gay Black woman makes her a good or bad pawn.

Historically and even now, Black women have been represented as less than normal by white feminine standards, making the value of Black gay women even less. And given the lack of media attention focused on the disappearance of Black girls and women – estimated in the U.S. to total 90,000 in 2021 – it appeared that Griner’s case would never achieve the publicity that is emerging now.

Started in May 2022 on change.org, a petition drive calling for Griner’s release has nearly reached its goal of 150,000 signatures.

In addition, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said he is working “side by side” with WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert on bringing Griner home.

“We’ve been in touch with the White House, the State Department, hostage negotiators, every level of government and also through the private sector as well,” Silver said during an interview on ESPN. “Our No. 1 priority is her health and safety and making sure that she gets out of Russia.”

The Griner case gained more attention when Bill Richardson, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, joined the team of negotiators.

Richardson has worked privately for years as an international hostage negotiator and helped secure the release of Reed.

An international star

At 6 feet, 8 inches tall, Griner, 31, stands out in a crowd. In her book, “In My Skin: My Life On and Off the Basketball Court,” Griner details her life as an extremely tall Black woman wearing size 17 men’s shoes and whose outstretched arms measure 88 inches from fingertip to fingertip.

She also wrote about the stigma she endured as a gay woman.

During her time at Baylor University, the private Christian university banned homosexual behavior.

“It was hard,” Griner said in an interview. “Just being picked on for being different, just being bigger, my sexuality, everything.”

“I overcame it and got over it,” she continued. “Definitely something that I am very passionate about. I want to work with kids and bring recognition to the problem, especially with the LGBT community.”

Since those early days in college, Griner has become a leading advocate for the LGBT community, publicly speaking about gender, body image, self-esteem and sexuality.

It didn’t hurt that Griner is considered one of the world’s best women’s basketball players.

Her resume includes an NCAA championship in 2012 with Baylor, a 2014 WNBA championship with the Phoenix Mercury, two Olympic gold medals for the U.S., three Russia Women’s Basketball Premier League championships and four EuroLeague championships.

In her seventh season in Russia, Griner’s last game with the Russian club UMMC Ekaterinburg was on Jan. 29, nearly three weeks before her arrest.

Breaking the silence

Part of the initial silence in the Griner case was the reluctance among U.S. State Department officials to publicly discuss it.

The so-called strategic silence by the Biden Administration has also played out among Griner’s supporters, including Engelbert, the WNBA commissioner, who said they heeded advice to remain low key.

U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Democrat representing Griner’s home state of Texas, was one of the few who wasn’t silent and demanded her release.

U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Democrat representing Griner’s home state of Texas, was one of the few who wasn’t silent and demanded her release.

“Under the circumstances,” Lee said on March 3, “I’m obviously concerned and believe the actions of the Russian Federal Customs officers was unnecessary. And it was, in my perspective, targeted and purposeful.”

Meanwhile, at a brief hearing on May 13, 2022, a handcuffed Griner appeared in Russian court wearing an orange hoodie with her face down. Her detention was extended another month before a trial. She faces up to 10 years if found guilty.

Her attorney, Alexander Boykov, told the Associated Press that Griner did not express “any complaints about the detention conditions” during the hearing.

In an earlier statement, Ned Price, a spokesperson for the State Department, said that Griner received a consular visit on March 23 and was in “good condition” and “doing as well as can be expected under these very difficult circumstances.”

Nonetheless, there remains uncertainty on how hard the U.S. will fight for a high-profile gay Black woman at a time of deteriorating relations with Russia.

In my view, the U.S. government has ignored Black women, LGBTQ people and those who exist at the intersections for a long time, but the U.S. will acknowledge and address situations where citizens are white, male and not public figures.

The U.S. must now decide how to protect a citizen who is none of the above.

Prominent sports writer Jemele Hill suggested at this point in U.S.-Russian relations that it would be ironic if Griner’s work in Russia gave her the benefit of the doubt in Russian court.

“If Griner has even a modest amount of leverage in Russia,” Hill writes, “it’s because she has had an extraordinary career with Ekaterinburg.”

Ironic or not, one thing is clear: U.S. public support for her release is finally gaining momentum and is symbolized by the WNBA’s decision in May 2022 to place a floor decal of Griner’s initials and No. 42, her uniform number, on the home court sideline of all 12 of its teams.

While this is a good show of support, will the U.S. help Brittney Griner the way it helped Trevor Reed?

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Rokeshia Renné Ashley.

A week before Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, Russian authorities arrested American basketball star Brittney Griner at the Moscow airport. She was charged with drug smuggling after Russian officials allegedly found vape cartridges containing oil derived from cannabis in her luggage.

Will the U.S. help Brittney Griner the way it helped Trevor Reed?

Since her arrest on Feb. 17, Griner has been locked up in a Russian prison. It’s a stark contrast to her life as a millionaire athlete playing in professional basketball leagues in both the United States and, for the last seven years, Russia, where she earns nearly four times as much as her nearly US$282,000 annual WNBA salary.

Speculation on the reason for Griner’s arrest centers on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s alleged desire to use the American star as a geopolitical pawn at a time when U.S.-Russian relations were at their lowest point since the Cold War. And then the Russian invasion of Ukraine occurred, and U.S.-Russian relations have become worse.

Another American, Paul Whelan, who is white, remains in Russian detention after more than two years since his 2020 conviction on espionage charges.

Though U.S.-Russia relations have gotten worse since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the unexpected release of Trevor Reed on April 28, 2022, was a positive sign for Griner’s supporters.

A former U.S. Marine, Reed was held for the last three years in Russia on charges stemming from an alleged fight with a Russian police officer. He was exchanged for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot serving a 20-year federal sentence for conspiring to smuggle cocaine into the United States.

Such an exchange may be in the works with Griner.

After nearly three months of silence on Griner, the Biden administration on May 3 declared that Griner had been “wrongfully detained” and, as such, the U.S. government would work more aggressively to secure her release even while the Russian legal case against Griner proceeds.

Missing Black women

As a scholar of Black women’s bodies, one of my primary concerns for Griner is whether her identity as a gay Black woman makes her a good or bad pawn.

Historically and even now, Black women have been represented as less than normal by white feminine standards, making the value of Black gay women even less. And given the lack of media attention focused on the disappearance of Black girls and women – estimated in the U.S. to total 90,000 in 2021 – it appeared that Griner’s case would never achieve the publicity that is emerging now.

Started in May 2022 on change.org, a petition drive calling for Griner’s release has nearly reached its goal of 150,000 signatures.

In addition, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said he is working “side by side” with WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert on bringing Griner home.

“We’ve been in touch with the White House, the State Department, hostage negotiators, every level of government and also through the private sector as well,” Silver said during an interview on ESPN. “Our No. 1 priority is her health and safety and making sure that she gets out of Russia.”

The Griner case gained more attention when Bill Richardson, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, joined the team of negotiators.

Richardson has worked privately for years as an international hostage negotiator and helped secure the release of Reed.

An international star

At 6 feet, 8 inches tall, Griner, 31, stands out in a crowd. In her book, “In My Skin: My Life On and Off the Basketball Court,” Griner details her life as an extremely tall Black woman wearing size 17 men’s shoes and whose outstretched arms measure 88 inches from fingertip to fingertip.

She also wrote about the stigma she endured as a gay woman.

During her time at Baylor University, the private Christian university banned homosexual behavior.

“It was hard,” Griner said in an interview. “Just being picked on for being different, just being bigger, my sexuality, everything.”

“I overcame it and got over it,” she continued. “Definitely something that I am very passionate about. I want to work with kids and bring recognition to the problem, especially with the LGBT community.”

Since those early days in college, Griner has become a leading advocate for the LGBT community, publicly speaking about gender, body image, self-esteem and sexuality.

It didn’t hurt that Griner is considered one of the world’s best women’s basketball players.

Her resume includes an NCAA championship in 2012 with Baylor, a 2014 WNBA championship with the Phoenix Mercury, two Olympic gold medals for the U.S., three Russia Women’s Basketball Premier League championships and four EuroLeague championships.

In her seventh season in Russia, Griner’s last game with the Russian club UMMC Ekaterinburg was on Jan. 29, nearly three weeks before her arrest.

Breaking the silence

Part of the initial silence in the Griner case was the reluctance among U.S. State Department officials to publicly discuss it.

The so-called strategic silence by the Biden Administration has also played out among Griner’s supporters, including Engelbert, the WNBA commissioner, who said they heeded advice to remain low key.

U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Democrat representing Griner’s home state of Texas, was one of the few who wasn’t silent and demanded her release.

U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Democrat representing Griner’s home state of Texas, was one of the few who wasn’t silent and demanded her release.

“Under the circumstances,” Lee said on March 3, “I’m obviously concerned and believe the actions of the Russian Federal Customs officers was unnecessary. And it was, in my perspective, targeted and purposeful.”

Meanwhile, at a brief hearing on May 13, 2022, a handcuffed Griner appeared in Russian court wearing an orange hoodie with her face down. Her detention was extended another month before a trial. She faces up to 10 years if found guilty.

Her attorney, Alexander Boykov, told the Associated Press that Griner did not express “any complaints about the detention conditions” during the hearing.

In an earlier statement, Ned Price, a spokesperson for the State Department, said that Griner received a consular visit on March 23 and was in “good condition” and “doing as well as can be expected under these very difficult circumstances.”

Nonetheless, there remains uncertainty on how hard the U.S. will fight for a high-profile gay Black woman at a time of deteriorating relations with Russia.

In my view, the U.S. government has ignored Black women, LGBTQ people and those who exist at the intersections for a long time, but the U.S. will acknowledge and address situations where citizens are white, male and not public figures.

The U.S. must now decide how to protect a citizen who is none of the above.

Prominent sports writer Jemele Hill suggested at this point in U.S.-Russian relations that it would be ironic if Griner’s work in Russia gave her the benefit of the doubt in Russian court.

“If Griner has even a modest amount of leverage in Russia,” Hill writes, “it’s because she has had an extraordinary career with Ekaterinburg.”

Ironic or not, one thing is clear: U.S. public support for her release is finally gaining momentum and is symbolized by the WNBA’s decision in May 2022 to place a floor decal of Griner’s initials and No. 42, her uniform number, on the home court sideline of all 12 of its teams.

While this is a good show of support, will the U.S. help Brittney Griner the way it helped Trevor Reed?

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Rokeshia Renné Ashley.