Fiji’s Office of the President has confirmed that the Tribunal’s report on allegations of misconduct against suspended Director of Public Prosecutions Christopher Pryde does not need to be made public at this stage.

The tribunal, chaired by Justice Anare Tuilevuka with Justices Chaitanya Lakshman and Samuela Qica, has completed its inquiry and submitted its findings to the President, Ratu Naiqama Lalabalavu.

The President will review the report, conduct consultations, and seek necessary advice before releasing it.

• READ MORE: Suspended Fiji chief prosecutor demands release of findings

Due to holiday leave, this process will continue in the New Year.

“It is acknowledged that the Report does not need to be made public as required in section 112(6) of the Constitution, and His Excellency will do so as soon as he has properly considered it.”

New Zealander Pryde had formally written to the Office of the President, requesting that a copy of the report be made available to him.

Position and pay ‘in limbo’
An earlier Fiji Times report by Shal Devi said Pryde had written to the Office of the President to request an urgent conclusion of the matter that had left his position and pay in limbo.

Pryde was suspended in April 2023 because of allegations of misbehaviour, which were linked to him being photographed with former attorney-general Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum — who was under investigation at the time — at a diplomatic gathering.

Earlier this week, Pryde made public the letter he had written to the Office of the President.

“I have been informed that the tribunal report into allegations of misbehaviour against me was provided to His Excellency, the President, on Monday the 23rd December 2024,” he wrote.

“I have written to the tribunal for a copy of the report, and they have advised me to contact the President’s office directly. I am therefore formally requesting that a copy of the report is provided to me.”

Pryde cited section 112 (6) of the Constitution, which states that the report shall be made public. Pryde said this was a mandatory provision and was not subject to discretion.

“I also note that section 112 (3) (c) of the Constitution provides that the President must act on the advice of the tribunal and that section 112 (5) provides that the suspension shall cease if the President determines that the judicial officer should not be removed.

“In other words, if the report advises that there is insufficient evidence of misbehaviour, then the suspension should be lifted immediately and I should be reinstated to my position as the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).”

Pryde said it had been close to 21 months since he was suspended as the DPP, and nearly six months since his salary was suspended, which had caused him great financial hardship.

“It is a matter of urgency that this matter is brought to a final conclusion since the tribunal has now completed its task.

“I am therefore kindly requesting that His Excellency (i) advise me of the outcome of the report, (ii) provide me a copy of the report and allow it to be published, and (iii), if there is no evidence or insufficient evidence to support the allegations of misbehaviour, lift my suspension as is required under the Constitution and immediately reinstate my salary and entitlements.”

Republished from The Fiji Times with permission.

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

A leader of a major West Papuan political movement has praised the recent judgment of the Permanent People’s Tribunal on the Melanesian region colonised by Indonesia for the past 63 years.

“Indonesia knows they have lost the political, legal, and moral argument over West Papua,” said United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) interim president Benny Wenda.

“Their only remaining tactics are brutality and secrecy — brutality to crush our struggle and secrecy to hide it from the world.”

• READ MORE: PNG’s Parkop tells exiled Papuans ‘don’t lose hope – keep up the freedom struggle’
• West Papuans in Port Moresby host family day
• Other West Papua reports

Saying he welcomed the release of the judgment of the Permanent People’s Tribunal (PPT) on West Papua, he added: “Our independence is not only urgent for West Papua, but for the entirety of Planet Earth.”

After testimonies from West Papuans on the ground and from legal and academic experts, the tribunal found Indonesia guilty on all four counts:

• Taking by various means the ancestral land of the Indigenous Papuan people against their will, employing racial discrimination which leads to the loss of culture, traditions and Indigenous knowledge, erases their history and subsumes them into the Indonesian national narrative;
• Violent repression, including unlawful detention, extra-judicial killing, and population displacement in West Papua as a means of furthering industrial development;
• Organised environmental degradation, including the destruction of eco-systems, contamination of land, the poisoning of rivers and their tributaries and of providing the permits, concessions and legal structure of non-compliance for national and foreign companies to invest in West Papua in a way that encourages environmental degradation; and
• colluding with national and foreign companies to cause environmental degradation, population displacement and sustain violent repression in West Papua.

The Hague,has hosted a Climate Change gathering prior to hearing the ICJ meeting where Koteka Wenda, fwpc spoke person from West Papua spoke, about WP being the 3rd largest rainforest after the Amazon and the Congo. “If you save West Papua, you save the lungs of the world” pic.twitter.com/aUJzV354qG

— Benny Wenda (@BennyWenda) December 7, 2024

“This judgment is a total vindication of everything the West Papuan liberation movement has been saying for decades. We are not safe with Indonesia,” said Wenda.

“If we continue to be denied our right to self-determination, everything that makes West Papua unique will disappear.”

Guilty of ‘ecocide’
The PPT had found the Indonesian state guilty of ecocide, of “rapidly destroying our forest” and “poisoning our rivers” through mines, plantations, and huge agribusiness food estates.

“But not only this: the judges also linked Indonesia’s ecocidal destruction to the systematic destruction of West Papua as a people,” said Wenda.

“As they put it: ‘ecological degradation can’t be disaggregated from state and corporate projects which are tending toward the obliteration of a people, or what was called by more than one witness a ‘slow genocide’.”

The PPT found in West Papua everything that the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights would also find — ecocide, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and mass displacement, said Wenda.

“That is why Indonesia continues to deny the UN access to West Papua, despite more than 110 countries demanding their visit.”

Wenda said thde ULMWP considered this judgment a “significant step forward in our quest for liberation”.

‘Nothing left to save’
“The case for self-determination presented by the PPT is comprehensive and undeniable. We already know that our people want freedom — the West Papuan People’s Petition for self-determination was signed by 1.8 million Papuans, more than 70 percent of our population.

“Now the PPT has shown how urgently we need it.,” Wenda said

“Our independence is not only urgent for West Papua, but for the entirety of Planet Earth.

Because Papuans are the stewards of the third largest rainforest in the world, the Indonesian occupation is one of the most severe threats to a habitable global climate.

“If Indonesia continues to destroy our forest at its current rate, there will soon be nothing left to save.”

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

In the lead up to the inauguration of President Prabowo Subianto last Sunday, Indonesia established five “Vulnerable Area Buffer Infantry Battalions” in key regions across West Papua — a move described by Indonesian Army Chief-of-Staff Maruli Simanjuntak as a “strategic initiative” by the new leader.

The battalions are based in the Keerom, Sarmi, Boven Digoel, Merauke and Sorong regencies, and their aim is to “enhance security” in Papua, and also to strengthen Indonesia’s military presence in response to long-standing unrest and conflict, partly related to independence movements and local resistance.

According to Armed Forces chief General Agus Subiyanto, “the main goal of the new battalions is to assist the government in accelerating development and improving the prosperity of the Papuan people”.

• READ MORE: Indonesia to offer ‘amnesty’ for West Papuans contesting Jakarta’s rule
• Other West Papua reports

However, this raises concerns about further militarisation and repression of a region already plagued by long-running violence and human rights abuses in the context of the movement for a free and independent West Papua.

Thousands of Indonesian soldiers have been stationed in areas impacted by violence, including Star Mountain, Nduga, Yahukimo, Maybrat, Intan Jaya, Puncak and Puncak Jaya.

As a result, the situation in West Papua is becoming increasingly difficult for indigenous people.

Extrajudicial killings in Papua go unreported or are only vaguely known about internationally. Those who are aware of these either disregard them or accept them as an “unavoidable consequence” of civil unrest in what Indonesia refers to as its most eastern provinces — the “troubled regions”.

Why do the United Nations, Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) and the international community stay silent?

While the Indonesian government frames this move as a strategy to enhance security and promote development, it risks exacerbating long-standing tensions in a region with deep-seated conflicts over autonomy and independence and the impacts of extractive industries and agribusiness on West Papuan people and their environment.

Exploitative land theft
The Centre for Climate Crime and Climate Justice, in collaboration with various international and Indonesian human and environmental rights organisations, presented testimony at the public hearings of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT) at Queen Mary University of London, in June.

The tribunal heard testimonies relating to a range of violations by Indonesia. A key issue, highlighted was the theft of indigenous Papuan land by the Indonesian government and foreign corporations in connection to extractive industries such as mining, logging and palm oil plantations.

The appropriation of traditional lands without the consent of the Papuan people violates their right to land and self-determination, leading to environmental degradation, loss of livelihood, and displacement of Indigenous communities.

The tribunal’s judgment underscores how the influx of non-Papuan settlers and the Indonesian government’s policies have led to the marginalisation of Papuan culture and identity. The demographic shift due to transmigration programmes has significantly reduced the proportion of Indigenous Papuans in their own land.

Moreover, a rise in militarisation in West Papua has often led to heightened repression, with potential human rights violations, forced displacement and further marginalisation of the indigenous communities.

The decision to station additional military forces in West Papua, especially in conflict-prone areas like Nduga, Yahukimo and Intan Jaya, reflects a continuation of Indonesia’s militarised approach to governance in the region.

Security pact
The Indonesia-Papua New Guinea Defence Cooperation Agreement (DCA) was signed by the two countries in 2010 but only came into effect this year after the PNG Parliament ratified it in late February.

Indonesia ratified the pact in 2012.

As reported by Asia Pacific Report, PNG’s Foreign Minister Justin Tkatchenko and Indonesia’s ambassador to PNG, Andriana Supandy, said the DCA enabled an enhancement of military operations between the two countries, with a specific focus on strengthening patrols along the PNG-West Papua border.

This will have a significant impact on civilian communities in the areas of conflict and along the border. Indigenous people in particular, are facing the threat of military takeovers of their lands and traditional border lines.

Under the DCA, the joint militaries plan to employ technology, including military drones, to monitor and manage local residents’ every move along the border.

Human rights
Prabowo, Defence Minister prior to being elected President, has a controversial track record on human rights — especially in the 1990s, during Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor.

His involvement in military operations in West Papua adds to fears that the new battalions may be used for oppressive measures, including crackdowns on dissent and pro-independence movements.

As indigenous communities continue to be marginalised, their calls for self-determination and independence may grow louder, risking further conflict in the region.

Without substantial changes in the Indonesian government’s approach to West Papua, including addressing human rights abuses and engaging in meaningful dialogue with indigenous leaders, the future of West Papuans remains uncertain and fraught with challenges.

With ongoing military operations often accused of targeting indigenous populations, the likelihood of further human rights violations, such as extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detentions, and forced displacement, remains high.

Displacement
Military operations in West Papua frequently result in the displacement of indigenous Papuans, as they flee conflict zones.

The presence of more battalions could drive more communities from their homes, deepening the humanitarian crisis in the region. Indigenous peoples, who rely on their land for survival, face disruption of their traditional livelihoods and rising poverty.

The Indonesian government launched the Damai Cartenz military operation on April 5, 2018, and it is still in place in the conflict zones of Yahukimo, Pegunungan Bintang, Nduga and Intan Jaya.

Since then, according to a September 24 Human Rights Monitor update, more than 79,867 West Papuans remain internally displaced.

The displacement, killings, shootings, abuses, tortures and deaths are merely the tip of the iceberg of what truly occurs within the tightly-controlled military operational zones across West Papua, according to Benny Wenda, a UK-based leader of the United Liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP).

The international community, particularly the United Nations and the Pacific Islands Forum have been criticised for remaining largely silent on the matter. Responding to the August 31 PIF communique reaffirming its 2019 call for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights visit to West Papua, Wenda said:

“[N]ow is the time for Indonesia to finally let the world see what is happening in our land. They cannot hide their dirty secret any longer.”

Increased global attention and intervention is crucial in addressing the humanitarian crisis, preventing further escalations and supporting the rights and well-being of the West Papuans.

Without meaningful dialogue, the long-term consequences for the indigenous population may be severe, risking further violence and unrest in the region.

As Prabowo was sworn in, Wenda restated the ULMWP’s demand for an internationally-mediated referendum on independence, saying: “The continued violation of our self-determination is the root cause of the West Papua conflict.”

Ali Mirin is a West Papuan academic from the Kimyal tribe of the highlands bordering the Star Mountain region of Papua New Guinea. He is a contributor to Asia Pacific Report and Green Left in Australia.

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

By David Whyte and Samira Homerang Saunders

Many in the international community are finally coming to accept that the earth’s ecosystem can no longer bear the weight of military occupation.

Most have reached this inevitable conclusion, clearly articulated in the environmental movement’s latest slogan “No Climate Justice on Occupied Land”, in light of the horrors we have witnessed in Gaza since October 7.

While the correlation between military occupation and climate sustainability may be a recent discovery for those living their lives in relative peace and security, people living under occupation, and thus constant threat of military violence, have always known any guided missile strike or aerial bombardment campaign by an occupying military is not only an attack on those being targeted but also their land’s ability to sustain life.

• READ MORE: Other Gaza reports
• Other West Papua reports

A recent hearing on “State and Environmental Violence in West Papua” under the jurisdiction of the Rome-based Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT), for example, heard that Indonesia’s military occupation, spanning more than seven decades, has facilitated a “slow genocide” of the Papuan people through not only political repression and violence, but also the gradual decimation of the forest area — one of the largest and most biodiverse on the planet — that sustains them.

West Papua hosts one of the largest copper and gold mines in the world, is the site of a major BP liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility, and is the fastest-expanding area of palm oil and biofuel plantation in Indonesia.

All of these industries leave ecological dead zones in their wake, and every single one of them is secured by military occupation.

At the PPT hearing, prominent Papuan lawyer Yan Christian Warinussy spoke of the connection between human suffering in West Papua and the exploitation of the region’s natural resources.

Shot and wounded
Just one week later, he was shot and wounded by an unknown assailant. The PPT Secretariat noted that the attack came after the lawyer depicted “the past and current violence committed against the defenceless civil population and the environment in the region”.

What happened to Warinussy reinforced yet again the indivisibility of military occupation and environmental violence.

I’m stand in solidarity with West Papuans rising up against colonialism, racism, state violence, sexual violence, and environmental destruction.

West Papua’s “special autonomy” is another euphemism for control and exploitation pic.twitter.com/cvP7fp2Ml0

— K.Diallo ☭ (@nyeusi_waasi) May 19, 2021

In total, militaries around the world account for almost 5.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions annually — more than the aviation and shipping industries combined.

Our colleagues at Queen Mary University of London recently concluded that emissions from the first 120 days of this latest round of slaughter in Gaza alone were greater than the annual emissions of 26 individual countries; emissions from rebuilding Gaza will be higher than the annual emissions of more than 135 countries, equating them to those of Sweden and Portugal.

But even these shocking statistics fail to shed sufficient light on the deep connection between military violence and environmental violence. War and occupation’s impact on the climate is not merely a side effect or unfortunate consequence.

We must not reduce our analysis of what is going on in Gaza, for example, to a dualism of consequences: the killing of people on one side and the effect on “the environment” on the other.

Inseparable from impact on nature
In reality, the impact on the people is inseparable from the impact on nature. The genocide in Gaza is also an ecocide — as is almost always the case with military campaigns.

In the Vietnam War, the use of toxic chemicals, including Agent Orange, was part of a deliberate strategy to eliminate any capacity for agricultural production, and thus force the people off their land and into “strategic hamlets”.

Forests, used by the Vietcong as cover, were also cut by the US military to reduce the population’s capacity for resistance. The anti-war activist and international lawyer Richard Falk coined the phrase “ecocide” to describe this.

In different ways, this is what all military operations do: they tactically reduce or completely eliminate the capacity of the “enemy” population to live sustainably and to retain autonomy over its own water and food supplies.

Since 2014, the bulldozing of Palestinian homes and other essential infrastructure by the Israeli occupation forces has been complemented by chemical warfare, with herbicides aerially sprayed by the Israeli military destroying entire swaths of arable land in Gaza.

In other words, Gaza has been subjected to an “ecocide” strategy almost identical to the one used in Vietnam since long before October 7.

The occupying military force has been working to reduce, and eventually completely eliminate, the Palestinian population’s capacity to live sustainably in Gaza for many years. Since October 7, it has been waging a war to make Gaza completely unliveable.

50% of Gaza farms wiped out
As researchers at Forensic Architecture have concluded, at least 50 percent of farmland and orchards in Gaza are now completely wiped out. Many ancient olive groves have also been destroyed. Fields of crops have been uprooted using tanks, tractors and other vehicles.

Widespread aerial bombardment reduced the Gaza Strip’s greenhouse production facilities to rubble. All this was done not by mistake, but in a deliberate effort to leave the land unable to sustain life.

The wholesale destruction of the water supply and sanitation facilities and the ongoing threat of starvation across the Gaza Strip are also not unwanted consequences, but deliberate tactics of war. The Israeli military has weaponised food and water access in its unrelenting assault on the population of Gaza.

Of course, none of this is new to Palestinians there, or indeed in the West Bank. Israel has been using these same tactics to sustain its occupation, pressure Palestinians into leaving their lands, and expand its illegal settlement enterprise for many years.

Since October 7, it has merely intensified its efforts. It is now working with unprecedented urgency to eradicate the little capacity the occupied Palestinian territory has left in it to sustain Palestinian life.

Just as is the case with the occupation of Papua, environmental destruction is not an unintended side effect but a primary objective of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. The immediate damage military occupation inflicts on the affected population is never separate from the long-term damage it inflicts on the planet.

For this reason, it would be a mistake to try and separate the genocide from the ecocide in Gaza, or anywhere else for that matter.

Anyone interested in putting an end to human suffering now, and preventing climate catastrophe in the future, should oppose all wars of occupation, and all forms of militarism that help fuel them.

David Whyte is professor of climate justice at Queen Mary University of London and director of the Centre for Climate Crime and Climate Justice. Samira Homerang Saunders is research officer at the Centre for Climate Crime and Climate Justice, Queen Mary University.

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

The Centre for Climate Crime and Justice at Queen Mary University of London will host a Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal on State and Environmental Violence in West Papua later this month.

A panel of eight tribunal judges will hear evidence on June 27-29 from many international NGOs and local civil society organisations, as well as testimonies from individuals who have witnessed human rights violations and environmental destruction, said a statement from the centre.

West Papua is home to the world’s third-largest rainforest, currently under threat from industrial development. Due to its global significance, the ongoing state repression and environmental degradation in the region have far-reaching impacts.

• READ MORE: Other West Papua environmental justice reports

This tribunal aims to bring global attention to the need to protect this crucial rainforest by exploring the deep connection between democracy, state violence, and environmental sustainability in West Papua, said the statement.

“There are good reasons to host this important event in London. London-based companies are key beneficiaries of gas, mining and industrial agriculture in West Papua, and its huge gold and other metal reserves are traded in London,” said Professor David Whyte, director of the Centre for Climate Crime and Justice.

“The tribunal will expose the close links between state violence, environmental degradation, and profiteering by transnational corporations and other institutions.”

The prosecution will be led by Dutch Bar-registered lawyer Fadjar Schouten Korwa, who said: “With a ruling by the eminent Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal on the crimes against the Indigenous Papuan people of West Papua and the failure of the state of Indonesia to protect them from human rights violations and impunity, we hope for a future without injustice for West Papua.”

‘Long history of destruction’
A leading West Papuan lawyer, Gustaf Kawer, said: “The annexation of West Papua into the State of Indonesia is part of a long history of environmental destruction and state violence against Papua’s people and its natural resources.

“Our hope is that after this trial examines the evidence and hears the statements of witnesses and experts, the international community and the UN will respond to the situation in West Papua and evaluate the Indonesian state so that there can be recovery for natural resources and the Papuan people.”

The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal on State and Environmental Violence in West Papua seeks to initiate a series of events and discussions throughout 2024 and 2025, aiming to engage the UN Human Rights Council and international civil society organisations.

The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal on West Papua will take place on Thursday, June 27 – Saturday, 29 June 2024, at Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Campus.

The panel of judges comprises: Teresa Almeida Cravo (Portugal), Donna Andrews (South Africa), Daniel Feierstein (Argentina), Marina Forti (Italy), Larry Lohmann (UK), Nello Rossi (Italy), and Solomon Yeo (Solomon Islands).

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

Anna Solomon, a Papua New Guinean journalist and editor with 40 years experience, is now providing training for journalists at the Wantok Niuspepa.

Wantok is a weekly newspaper and the only Tok Pisin language newspaper in PNG.

Solomon, who spoke during last month’s public inquiry on Media in Papua New Guinea, asked if the Parliamentary Committee could work with the media industry to set up a Complaints Tribunal that could address issues affecting media in PNG.

Anna Solomon talks about the media role to “educate people” at the public media inquiry.  Video: Inside PNG

She also called for better Tok Pisin writers as it was one of two main languages that leaders, especially Parliamentarians, used in PNG to communicate with their voters.

At the start of the 3-day public inquiry (21-24 May 2024), media houses also called for parliamentarians and the public to understand how the industry functions.

The public inquiry focused on the “Role and Impact of Media in Papua New Guinea” and was led by the Permanent Parliamentary Committee on Communication with an aim to improve the standard of journalism within the country.

Republished from Inside PNG with permission.

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

An Australian-born judge in Kiribati could well face deportation later this week after a tribunal ruling that he should be removed from his post.

The tribunal’s report has just been tabled in the Kiribati Parliament and is due to be debated by MPs this week — the last week of the current parliamentary session ahead of the general election.

The Kiribati judiciary has been in turmoil for nearly four years now, with key judges removed and huge backlogs in the system.

• READ MORE: Other reports on Kiribati justice

Historically Kiribati had relied on expatriate judges for its senior courts but the man drawing the government’s ire here is David Lambourne, who, while Australian, has lived in Kiribati for many years, and is married to the current opposition leader, Tessie Lambourne.

What does the case centre on?
There were a number of issues the government raised but the tribunal focused on one in particular and dismissed three others.

It said Lambourne had been remiss in failing to deliver a written decision on a civil court case in 2020.

This delay was at least partly due to covid-19 with Lambourne, in Australia for a judicial conference, unable to get back into Kiribati, which had shut its borders.

When he did get back, he faced myriad accusations, was stood down, and attempts were made to deport him, but a ruling heard by the then chief justice, New Zealand judge Bill Hastings, exonerated him.

An appeal by the government to the Court of Appeal also found in Lambourne’s favour, but the Kiribati government then removed all of those judges.

It should be noted that all of those judges were current or former members of the New Zealand judiciary and are held in high regard.

Where did this tribunal come from?
It was set up by the government in May 2022, but it suspended its work two months later after Lambourne had challenged its existence.

It was staffed by a lay magistrate, a legal practitioner, a former public servant and a retired teacher.

It started work again in 2023 but this was again suspended when the High Court issued an interim injunction.

Then last month the government reconfigured the tribunal and it very quickly produced the report which politicians are shortly to discuss.

What conclusions did the tribunal reach?
Its recommendation is that Parliament should consider removing Lambourne from his role as a Puisne Judge of the Kiribati High Court.

It said he had persistently disregarded the prompt delivery of written judgements, neglected to take thorough measures to prevent any misunderstanding about the fundamental role of a judicial officer, and, by behaving in a manner that created the perception of bias.

Another allegation claimed Lambourne bullied a 57-year-old staffer in the judiciary, by yelling at him. The tribunal said this was unacceptable.

What can Lambourne expect?
Kiribati President Taneti Maamau’s party dominates the Parliament and it will be wanting to eliminate this issue completely ahead of the elections, due in a few months.

So the Parliament could well vote later this week to deport him and for that to happen immediately.

Lambourne would have recourse to appeal the findings of the tribunal but doing that from outside of the country would be an issue.

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.

In a New Year’s Day special broadcast, we air highlights from the Belmarsh Tribunal held last month in Washington, D.C., where journalists, lawyers, activists and other expert witnesses made the case to free Julian Assange from prison in the United Kingdom. The WikiLeaks founder has been jailed at London’s Belmarsh prison since 2019, awaiting possible extradition to the United States on espionage charges for publishing documents that revealed U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Rights groups say the charges threaten freedom of the press and put a chilling effect on the work of investigative journalists who expose government secrets.

The Belmarsh Tribunal, inspired by the Russell-Sartre Tribunals of the Vietnam War, has been convened several times in the U.S., Europe and beyond to press for Assange’s release. The December proceedings were co-chaired by Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman and The Intercept’s Ryan Grim.

Members of the tribunal included:

Ewen MacAskill, journalist and intelligence correspondent (formerly with The Guardian)

*John Kiriakou, former intelligence officer for the CIA

Lina Attalah, co-founder and chief editor of Mada Masr

Abby Martin, journalist and host of The Empire Files

Mark Feldstein, veteran investigative reporter and journalism historian at the University of Maryland

Ben Wizner, lawyer and civil liberties advocate with the ACLU

Trevor Timm, journalist and co-founder of Freedom of the Press Foundation

Rebecca Vincent, director of campaigns, Reporters Without Borders

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

Former MP for Madang Open and anti-corruption campaigner Bryan Kramer has filed a Supreme Court appeal against a National Court ruling dismissing his application for leave to review a Leadership Tribunal’s decision to dismiss him from office.

His appeal to the Supreme Court follows the refusal of a leave to review application in the National Court presided by Justice John Carey on August 18.

Kramer said in a statement that he had filed an application on the 23 May 2023 in the National Court to review the decision of the Leadership Tribunal.

• READ MORE: Anti-corruption crusader guilty of misconduct in office
• ‘I will eventually get killed’: Meet Bryan Kramer, Papua New Guinea’s anti-corruption tsar
• Other Bryan Kramer reports

He later withdrew this and refiled on June 30.

The refiled application raised nine primary grounds, including breach of natural justice, procedural unfairness, apprehension of bias in being denied a fair hearing, unreasonableness and being oppressive and harsh and not “reasonably justifiable in a democratic society”.

After waiting almost three months for a judge to hear his leave application, the matter was listed before Justice John Carey on August 18. However, straight after hearing detailed submission from counsels, Justice Carey delivered an oral judgement refusing Kramer’s application.

Justice Carey ruled that Kramer had not satisfied all the requirements, in particular an arguable case

Further nine grounds
Kramer is now appealing the judge’s ruling on a further nine grounds that include an allegation that the judge had failed to properly deliver a reasoned judicial decision.

He will submit that the judge had erred in directing Kramer’s counsel to narrow his submissions to the ground of apprehension of bias to the exclusion of the issues raised in the eight other grounds.

Further, the judge had failed to consider specific matters raised in each of nine grounds.

The judge had delivered two judgments, the first oral and the second published without indicating to parties, and that was altered and expounded on the reasons in the oral judgement.

He was dismissed in May this year by a a Leadership Tribunal comprising Justice Lawrence Kangwia and senior Magistrates Josephine Nidue and Edward Komia.

The Tribunal found him guilty on seven of thirteen allegations of misconduct in office

Five of the seven misconduct charges were in relation to decisions concerning the Madang District Development Authority (DDA) that he had failed to comply with legislative administrative requirements, and the misapplication of district funds to which they could not be lawfully applied.

Facebook publications
The remaining two misconduct charges were in relation to his Facebook publications that were found to have “scandalised the judiciary”.

The background of the two charges of him scandalising the judiciary were that in October 2019 he had published a three-part series of articles on Facebook concerning an arrest warrant against former Prime Minister Peter O’Neill.

The first charge was over part of his publication insinuating a conflict of interest by Chief Justice Sir Gibbs Salika in publishing the words “a relevant matter to note is that the Chief Justice was only recently appointed by O’Neill late last year”.

The second charge was over publishing the words “What was not anticipated was that O’Neill and his lawyers would solicit the assistance from the Chief Justice and desperate enough to submit fabricated documents to mislead the court that the warrant was defective as a means to obtain a stay order”.

The Tribunal had recommended by majority that Kramer pay a fine of K2000 (about NZ$922) for each for the five charges in relation to the Madang District Development Authority as they were decisions made by the DDA Board and not Kramer alone.

However, it recommended unanimously for his dismissal from office in relation to his Facebook publications in scandalising the judiciary.

Pacific Media Watch reports that in a profile by The Guardian in 2019, Bryan Kramer — BK as he is known — was described as a “rising star in PNG politics” and as an anti-corruption campaigner who was instrumental in bringing to light the UBS scandal that helped to bring down former Prime Minister Peter O’Neill’s leadership.

Republished from the PNG Post-Courier with permission.

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

Former British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and famed linguist and dissident Noam Chomsky joined others earlier this year calling on President Biden to drop charges against Julian Assange. The WikiLeaks founder has been languishing for over four years in the harsh Belmarsh prison in London while appealing extradition to the United States. If he is extradited, tried and convicted, Assange faces up to 175 years in jail for violating the U.S. Espionage Act for publishing documents that exposed U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Belmarsh Tribunal at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., in January was organized by the Progressive International and the Wau Holland Foundation. We spend the hour airing excerpts.

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

Dissident Papua New Guinean politician and former cabinet minister Bryan Kramer has vowed to fight on in his campaign against corruption, saying the National Court ruling to dismiss him as an MP was “the calm before the storm”.

“The decision to dismiss me was expected and of course, it is certainly not the end of the issue as I have already been working on an appeal to challenge both the rulings on verdict and penalty in the National Court,” he told reporters in Port Moresby

Kramer, a former police minister then justice minister, was responding to the decision on recommendations for his dismissal and a fine of K10,000 (NZ$4600).

• READ MORE: Other Bryan Kramer reports

“Today’s decision in no way diminishes my resolve in the fight against corruption nor will it keep me from informing the public on issues of national importance or exposing high-level corruption,” he said.

“In my view it’s the calm before the storm.”

In a statement later in the day Kramer explained the court decision saying: “Today (1/5/23) the Leadership Tribunal handed down its ruling on the penalty in relation to the finding of guilt of the seven (7) counts of misconduct in office against me.

“The Tribunal categorised the seven counts of misconduct into two main categories in determining whether there is serious culpability (wrongdoing on my part) warranting my dismissal from office or recommending a lesser penalty of a fine or suspension of no more than three months without pay.

“Category 1 included counts 1 and 2 that related to my Facebook publications scandalising the judiciary.

Conflict of interest claim
“Count 1 being the publication insinuating a conflict of interest by the Chief Justice.

“Count 2 related to accusing [former prime minister] Peter O’Neill and his lawyer of soliciting the assistance of the Chief Justice and submitting a fabricated document to mislead the court that the warrant of arrest was defective.

“Category 2 included the remaining 5 counts that related to the decisions of the Madang District Development Authority Board in the application of the District Services Improvement Programme (DSIP) Funds in renting office space for the establishment of a project office to deliver district projects at the ward level, paying electoral staff who were involved in implementing the projects and establishing a ward project staff structure without obtaining approval from the Secretary of Personnel Management and engaging an associate company that was paid K3000 [NZ$1400] a fortnight.

“In short, the Tribunal recommended a penalty of dismissal from office in relation to counts 1 and 2 and a fine of K2000 for each of remaining 5 counts, a total fine of K10,000.

“Based on the Tribunal’s finding on guilt on seven counts handed down on 21 February 2023, today’s ruling for dismissal was expected.

“The decision recommending dismissal from office will be delivered to the Speaker who will then recommend to the Governor General (GG) to adopt the Tribunal’s recommendation to dismiss me from office.

“The decision of the GG will be gazetted and takes effect. At that point I will no longer be a Member of Parliament.”

Kramer Report publisher
Bryan Kramer, well known as a social media strategist and publisher of the anti-corruption Kramer Report, has been a cabinet minister in Prime Minister James Marape’s government since 2019, holding the police, justice and then immigration portfolios.

Leader of the Allegiance Party, Kramer was returned to Parliament at last year’s elections with sizable majority in the Madang Open seat.

Republished with permission.

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

Australian Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s recent claim that New Zealand’s Waitangi Tribunal has veto powers over Parliament was met with surprise in New Zealand, especially by the members of the tribunal itself.

That’s because it is just plain wrong.

As the debate around the Voice to Parliament ramps up, we can probably expect similar claims to be made ahead of this year’s referendum. But the issue is so important to Australia’s future that such misinformation should not go unchallenged.

• READ MORE: What Australia could learn from New Zealand about Indigenous representation
• Solicitor-general confirms Voice model is legally sound, will not ‘fetter or impede’ Parliament
• Explainer: the significance of the Treaty of Waitangi
• What actually is a treaty? What could it mean for Indigenous people?

From an Australian perspective, New Zealand may appear ahead of the game in recognising Indigenous voices constitutionally. But that has certainly not extended to granting a parliamentary power of veto to Māori.

The Waitangi Tribunal was originally established as a commission of inquiry in 1975, given the power only to make recommendations to government. And so it remains. The Crown alone appoints tribunal members and many are non-Māori.

As with all commissions of inquiry, it’s up to the government of the day to make a political decision about whether or not to implement those recommendations.

Deceptive and wrong
Price’s claim echoed a February article and paper published by the Institute of Public Affairs, aimed at influencing the Voice referendum. Titled “The New Zealand Māori voice to Parliament and what we can expect from Australia”, it was written by the director of the institute’s legal rights program, John Storey.

The paper makes a number of assertions: the Waitangi Tribunal has a veto over the New Zealand parliament’s power to pass certain legislation; the Waitangi Tribunal was established to hear land claims but its brief has expanded to include all aspects of public policy; and the Waitangi Tribunal “shows the Voice will create new Indigenous rights”.

The last of the statements is deceptive and the others are completely wrong. The Waitangi Tribunal’s jurisdiction was largely set in stone by the New Zealand parliament in 1975 when it was established.

Far from investigating land claims, it initially wasn’t able to examine any claims dating from before 1975. Parliament changed the tribunal’s jurisdiction in 1985, giving it retrospective powers back to 1840 (when the Treaty of Waitangi/te Tiriti o Waitangi was signed).

The tribunal then started hearing land claims. But in its first decade, it focused on fisheries, planning issues, the loss of Māori language, government decisions being made at the time and general issues of public policy.

Historic grievances
Over the past 38 years, the tribunal has focused on what are called “historical Treaty claims”, covering the period 1840 to 1992. In 1992 a major settlement of fishing claims began an era of negotiation and settlement of these claims, quite separate from the tribunal itself.

With the majority of significant historic claims now settled or in negotiation, that aspect of the tribunal’s work is coming to an end. It has returned to hearing claims about social issues and other more contemporary issues.

Far from expanding its jurisdiction, the tribunal’s powers have been steadily reduced in recent decades. In 1993, it lost the power to make recommendations involving private land — that is, land not owned by the Crown.

In 2008, it lost the power to investigate new historical claims, as the government looked to close off new claims that could undermine current settlements.

There is one area where the tribunal was given the power to force the Crown to return land. The 1984-1990 Labour government set a policy to rid itself of what were seen as surplus Crown assets.

A deal was struck between Māori claimants and the Crown to allow the tribunal to make binding recommendations to return land in very special cases.

This compromise was not created by the tribunal but through ambiguity in legislation, which was resolved in favour of Māori claimants in the Court of Appeal. The ability to return land has almost never been used and is being progressively repealed across the country as Treaty settlements are implemented in legislation.

Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price made the erroneous comments while appearing at a debate on the Voice to Parliament referendum in Australia. https://t.co/XGBfteJDaM

— Stuff (@NZStuff) April 27, 2023

Wide political support
Storey quotes a number of tribunal reports, which make findings about the Crown’s responsibilities, as if these findings are binding on the Crown or even on Parliament. This is not the case. The Waitangi Tribunal investigates claims that the Crown has acted contrary to the “principles of the Treaty”.

The Waitangi Tribunal establishes what those principles are, but they are binding on neither the courts nor Parliament. Having made findings, the tribunal makes recommendations — not to Parliament, as Storey suggests, but to ministers of the Crown.

Some recommendations are implemented, others are not.

Where there is a dispute between the Crown and Māori, the tribunal has often recommended negotiation rather than make specific recommendations for redress.

Storey has elsewhere referred to the tribunal as a “so-called advisory, now binding, Māori Voice to Parliament” that has “decreed” certain things. In the longer paper he does admit the “tribunal cannot dictate the exact form any redress offered by government must take”.

But he then falls back on the notion of a “moral veto” — that its status is so elevated that parliament is forced, however reluctantly, to do its bidding.

Yet not only does the Crown ignore tribunal recommendations as it chooses, it refuses even to be bound by the tribunal’s expert findings on history in negotiating settlements.

The Waitangi Tribunal will remain a permanent commission of inquiry because there is wide political support for its work. Nor can be it held solely responsible for increasing Māori assertiveness or political engagement with government, even if this was in any way a bad thing.

A larger social shift has taken place in Aotearoa New Zealand over the past few decades. No fiat from the Waitangi Tribunal has eliminated the cultural misappropriation of Māori faces and imagery — something Storey warns could mean “tea towels with a depiction of Uluru/Ayers Rock, or boomerang fridge magnets, would become problematic”.

The Waitangi Tribunal has often done no more than make Māori histories, Māori perspectives and Māori values accessible to a non-Māori majority. It has certainly had no power to control where debates on Indigenous issues fall.

Dr Michael Belgrave is professor of history, Massey University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

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

With the anniversary of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine around the corner, several European countries are nearing a consensus to set up a special tribunal to prosecute Russia’s leaders, including President Vladimir Putin, for the crime of aggression. Ukrainian officials have been calling for an ad hoc court since the early weeks of the invasion, with Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin, during a recent visit to the U.S., describing such a tribunal as “the most feasible and efficient route for accountability” and a way to “restore the world order.”

While it remains unclear what a potential tribunal will look like in practice and under whose authority it will be established, diplomats and legal experts are actively discussing different scenarios. Many of them have coalesced around a short-term proposal for an interim prosecutor’s office tasked with gathering evidence for a potential future trial, jump-starting the judicial process even as the specifics of where and how the prosecution might take place remain to be defined. Earlier this month, at a joint press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced the establishment of an international center for the prosecution of the crime of aggression in Ukraine to be set up in The Hague and tasked with gathering evidence in support of a potential future prosecution. The center, von der Leyen added, would be a part of an ongoing joint investigation team effort, a European Union framework for international cooperation on criminal justice matters.

“Now we’re kind of admitting the accountability framework is incomplete if we don’t at least try to do something about the crime of aggression.”

Related

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“I’m not sure that everyone understands how toxic this justified perception is that international justice only kicks in against, you know, enemies or outcasts or low-value countries.”

“People should put their money where their mouth is, and if they want to do this, they should amend the Rome Statute of the ICC.”

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This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Alice Speri.

Guatemala's Supreme Electoral Tribunal ruled earlier this week that a leftist presidential ticket headed by Indigenous human rights defender Thelma Cabrera should be barred from the June ballot, prompting fury and vows of mass protests from Cabrera's supporters.

Thursday's ruling—which Cabrera's young political party, the Movement for the Liberation of the Peoples (MLP), is vowing to appeal to the Supreme Court of Justice—stems from Guatemala electoral authorities' refusal to certify the candidacy of Cabrera's running mate, former human rights ombudsman Jordán Rodas.

Reporting indicates that election officials have justified stonewalling Rodas—a longtime target of Guatemala's right-wing political establishment—by citing supposed "anomalies during the collection of compensation" upon his departure from the ombudsman post last year.

But Cabrera and Rodas contend that the electoral tribunal's decision is a politically motivated attempt to keep a left-wing party—whose base is largely rural—off the ballot, which is set to include the daughter of Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt, the former U.S.-backed Guatemalan dictator who was convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity in 2013.

Montt's victims were largely Indigenous peasants.

Last month, the same electoral body that deemed Cabrera and Rodas disqualified from the June ballot ruled that Zury Ríos can participate, despite a constitutional provision barring the relatives of coup leaders from serving as Guatemala's president. Ríos was blocked from the 2019 presidential ballot on those grounds.

That year, as Nick Burns of Americas Quarterly recently reported, Cabrera "gave the Guatemalan political establishment a shock" by winning 10% of the vote in the presidential election.

"It was the most successful presidential run by an indigenous person in Guatemala’s modern history—the only other was by Nobel Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú in 2007, who won 3% of the vote," Burns noted. "Cabrera’s biography is striking. She grew up in a Maya Mam family of poor laborers on a coffee plantation on Guatemala's Pacific coast and was married at 15. She described in a book how she and her sister Vilma went to school through the sixth grade because their mother—who could not read or write—saw education as crucial."

Cabrera's supporters have vowed to "paralyze the country" with large-scale demonstrations if the electoral body's decision isn't reversed.

"If they do not do it, we are going to take over the international airport, the three ports of the country, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, and all state institutions," said one MLP supporter. "We are Indigenous, we are Maya, and we can be out here for a month!"

Daniel Zovatto, a political scientist and expert in Latin American elections, said the tribunal's ruling against the MLP presidential ticket amounts to an "electoral coup" that "vitiates the integrity and credibility" of the upcoming contest.

Rodas, a human rights champion, lamented in response to the decision that "democracy in Guatemala has taken another step back."

"They are afraid of the people and their sovereign decisions," he said.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jake Johnson.

“The first casualty when war comes is truth,” U.S. Senator Hiram W. Johnson of California said in 1929, debating ratification of the Kellogg-Briand Pact, a noble but ultimately failed attempt to ban war. Reflecting on World War I, which ended a decade earlier, he continued, “it begins what we were so familiar with only a brief period ago, this mode of propaganda whereby…people become war hungry in their patriotism and are lied into a desire to fight. We have seen it in the past; it will happen again in the future.”

Time and again, Hiram Johnson has been proven right. Our government’s impulse to control information and manipulate public opinion to support war is deeply ingrained. The past twenty years, dominated by the so-called War on Terror, are no exception. Sophisticated PR campaigns, a compliant mass media and the Pentagon’s pervasive propaganda machine all work together, as public intellectual Noam Chomsky and the late Prof. Ed Herman defined it in the title of their groundbreaking book, “Manufacturing Consent,” borrowing a phrase from Walter Lippman, considered the father of public relations.

One publisher consistently challenging the pro-war narrative pushed by the U.S. government, under both Republican and Democratic presidents, has been the whistleblower website Wikileaks. Wikileaks gained international attention in 2010 after publishing a trove of classified documents leaked from the U.S. military. Included were numerous accounts of war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, the killing of civilians, and shocking footage of a helicopter gunship in Baghdad slaughtering a dozen civilians, including a Reuters journalist and his driver, on the ground below. Wikileaks titled that video, “Collateral Murder.”

The New York Times and other newspapers partnered with Wikileaks to publish stories based on the leaks. This brought increased attention to the founder and editor-in-chief of Wikileaks, Julian Assange. In December, 2010, two months after release of the Collateral Murder video, then-Vice President Joe Biden, appearing on NBC, said Assange was “closer to being a hi-tech terrorist than the Pentagon papers.” Biden was referring to the 1971 classified document release by Daniel Ellsberg, which revealed years of Pentagon lies about U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam.

With a secret grand jury empanelled in Virginia, Assange, then in London, feared being arrested and extradited to the United States. Ecuador granted Assange political asylum. Unable to make it to Latin America, he sought refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. He lived inside the small, apartment-sized embassy for almost seven years. In April 2019, after a new Ecuadorian president revoked Assange’s asylum, British authorities arrested him and locked him up in London’s notorious Belmarsh Prison, often called “Britain’s Guantánamo.” He has been held there, in harsh conditions and in failing health, for almost four years, as the U.S. government seeks his extradition to face espionage and other charges. If extradited and convicted in the U.S., Assange faces 175 years in a maximum-security prison.

While the Conservative-led UK government seems poised to extradite Assange, a global movement has grown demanding his release. The Progressive International, a global pro-democracy umbrella group, has convened four assemblies since 2020 called The Belmarsh Tribunals. Named after the 1966 Russell-Sartre Tribunal on the Vietnam War, convened by philosophers Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sarte, The Belmarsh Tribunal has assembled some of the world’s most prominent, progressive activists, artists, politicians, dissidents, human rights attorneys and whistleblowers, all speaking in defense of Julian Assange and Wikileaks.

“We are bearing witness to a travesty of justice,” Jeremy Corbyn, a British Member of Parliament and a former leader of the Labour Party, said at the tribunal. “To an abuse of human rights, to a denial of freedom of somebody who bravely put himself on the line that we all might know that the innocent died in Abu Ghraib, the innocent died in Afghanistan, the innocent are dying in the Mediterranean, and innocents die all over the world, where unwatched, unaccountable powers decide it’s expedient and convenient to kill people who get in the way of whatever grand scheme they’ve got. We say no. That’s why we are demanding justice for Julian Assange.”

Corbyn is joined in his call by The New York Times, the Guardian, Le Monde, El Pais and Der Spiegel–major newspapers that published articles based on the leaked documents. “Publishing is not a crime,” the newspapers declared.

Never before has a publisher been charged under the U.S. Espionage Act. The Assange prosecution poses a fundamental threat to the freedom of speech and a free press. President Biden, currently embroiled in his own classified document scandal, knows this, and should immediately drop the charges against Julian Assange.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Denis Moynihan.

The Indonesian military says a tribunal has sentenced an army major to life in prison for his involvement in the brutal murder of four Papuan civilians in the Mimika district.

Their mutilated bodies were found in August 2022.

Benar News reports that human rights activists and victims’ relatives welcomed the conviction of Major Helmanto Fransiskus Dakhi as progress in holding members of security forces accountable for abuses in West Papua.

• READ MORE: Killing of four West Papuans ‘brutal reminder of reality’ under Jakarta rule, says Wenda
• Indonesian army major gets life for role in murder of Papuan civilians
• Other West Papuan human rights reports

“The defendant … was found guilty of premeditated murder,” Herman Taryaman, a spokesman for the Indonesian military command in Papua, told journalists.

The tribunal also dismissed Dakhi from the military.

Taryaman said four other soldiers charged in connection with the killings were being tried by a tribunal in the provincial capital of Jayapura.

A sixth military suspect died in December after falling ill, while police say four civilians were also facing trial in a civilian court.

Headless bodies
Asia Pacific Report reported on 31 August 2021 that residents of Iwaka village in Mimika district had been shocked by the discovery of four sacks, each containing a headless and legless torso, in the village river.

Two other sacks were found separately, one containing four heads and the other eight legs. The sacks were weighted with stones.

A spokesman for the victims’ families, Aptoro Lokbere, said he was “satisfied” with the conviction and sentence.

Gustaf Kawer, an attorney for the victims’ families, said the life sentence for the major was a “brave” decision that should be emulated by military and civilian courts in similar cases.

Activists had said the violence degraded the dignity of indigenous Papuans amid allegations of ongoing rights abuses by government security forces in West Papua.

Dakhi is the third Indonesian Armed Forces member to be sentenced to life by a military court in a murder case since June.

Anger as MSG recruits Indonesians
Meanwhile, the Melanesian Spearhead Group’s secretariat in Vanuatu has confirmed it has recruited two Indonesians.

The statement from the group came during a protest against the move in front of the secretariat by the Vanuatu Free West Papua Association.

The group’s director-general, Leonard Louma, said the agency was aiming to strengthen its capacity and this would include the recruitment of two Indonesian nationals, filling the roles of the private sector development officer and the manager of arts, culture and youth programme.

Louma said the secretariat had been directed to “re-prioritise” its activities and was now positioning itself to meet the demands and expectations of the leaders.

The Free West Papua Association said hiring the Indonesians made a mockery of the support Vanuatu had given West Papua for many years.

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.

Former British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, famed linguist and dissident Noam Chomsky and others gave testimony Friday at the Belmarsh Tribunal in Washington, D.C., calling on President Biden to drop charges against Julian Assange. The WikiLeaks founder has been languishing for close to four years in the harsh Belmarsh prison in London while appealing extradition to the United States. If convicted in the United States, Julian Assange could face up to 175 years in jail for violating the U.S. Espionage Act for publishing documents that exposed U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Friday’s event was held at the National Press Club and co-chaired by Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman. We spend the hour featuring compelling excerpts from the proceedings.

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

As Julian Assange awaits the final appeal of his looming extradition to the United States while languishing behind bars in London’s notorious Belmarsh Prison, leading left luminaries and free press advocates gathered in Washington, DC, on Friday for the fourth sitting of the Belmarsh Tribunal, where they called on US President Joe Biden to drop all charges against the WikiLeaks publisher.

“From Ankara to Manila to Budapest to right here in the United States, state actors are cracking down on journalists, their sources, and their publishers in a globally coordinated campaign to disrupt the public’s access to information,” co-chair and Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman said during her opening remarks at the National Press Club.

“The Belmarsh Tribunal… pursues justice for journalists who are imprisoned or persecuted [and] publishers and whistleblowers who dare to reveal the crimes of our governments,” she said.

• READ MORE: Other Julian Assange articles at Asia Pacific Report

“Assange’s case is the first time in history that a publisher has been indicted under the Espionage Act,” Goodman added.

“Recently, it was revealed that the CIA had been spying illegally on Julian, his lawyers, and some members of this very tribunal. The CIA even plotted his assassination at the Ecuadorean Embassy under [former US President Donald] Trump.”

Assange — who suffers from physical and mental health problems, including heart and respiratory issues — could be imprisoned for 175 years if fully convicted of Espionage Act violations.

Among the classified materials published by WikiLeaks — many provided by whistleblower Chelsea Manning — are the infamous “Collateral Murder” video showing a US Army helicopter crew killing a group of Iraqi civilians, the Afghan War Diary, and the Iraq War Logs, which revealed American and allied war crimes.

Arbitrary detention
According to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, Assange has been arbitrarily deprived of his freedom since he was arrested on December 7, 2010. Since then he has been held under house arrest, confined for seven years in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London while he was protected by the administration of former Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa, and jailed in Belmarsh Prison, for which the tribunal is named.

Human rights, journalism, peace, and other groups have condemned Assange’s impending extradition and the US government’s targeting of an Australian journalist who exposed American war crimes.

“That the extradition proceedings against Assange are an unexpected legal outcome — is a lie. Based on my experience as Ecuador’s foreign minister…the British government wanted to extradite him all along.” — @GuillaumeLong

Attend the Belmarsh Tribunal. https://t.co/1au3neo8FD pic.twitter.com/hwshaiiQzM

— Progressive International (@ProgIntl) January 19, 2023

In a statement ahead of Friday’s tribunal, co-chair and Croatian philosopher Srećko Horvat said:

The First Amendment, freedom of the press, and the life of Julian Assange are at stake. That’s why the Belmarsh Tribunal is landing literally just two blocks away from the White House.

As long as the Biden administration continues to deploy tools like the Espionage Act to imprison those who dare to expose war crimes, no publisher and no journalist will be safe.

Our tribunal is gathering courageous voices of dissent to demand justice for those crimes and to demand President Biden to drop the charges against Assange immediately.

Belmarsh Tribunal participants include Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, US academic Noam Chomsky, British parliamentarian Jeremy Corbyn, former Assange lawyer Renata Ávila, human rights attorney Steven Donziger, and WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson.

The Belmarsh Tribunal hearing in Washington DC on January 20, 2023. Video: Democracy Now!

Assange’s father, John Shipton, and the whistleblower’s wife and lawyer Stella Assange, are also members, as are Shadowproof editor Kevin Gosztola, Chip Gibbons of Defending Rights, Selay Ghaffar of the Solidarity Party of Afghanistan, investigative journalist Stefania Maurizi, The Nation publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel, and ACLU attorney Ben Wizner.

Former U.K. Labour Party leader @jeremycorbyn is in Washington for the Belmarsh Tribunal to advocate for Julian Assange’s freedom as he fights extradition from Britain to the United States.

“We’re standing up for the right to know. We’re standing up for journalism,” Corbyn says. pic.twitter.com/A4v6QbNSN0

— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) January 20, 2023

First Amendment foundation
“One of the foundation stones of our form of government here in the United States . . . is our First Amendment to the Constitution,” Ellsberg — whom the Richard Nixon administration tried to jail for up to 115 years under the Espionage Act, but due to government misconduct was never imprisoned — said in a recorded message played at the tribunal.

“Up until Assange’s indictment, the act had never been used… against a journalist like Assange,” Ellsberg added. “If you’re going to use the act against a journalist in a blatant violation of the First Amendment… the First Amendment is essentially gone.”

Ávila said before Thursday’s event that “the Espionage Act is one of the most dangerous pieces of legislation in the world: an existential threat against international investigative journalism.”

“If applied, it will deprive us of one of our must powerful tools towards de-escalation of conflicts, diplomacy, and peace,” she added.

“The Belmarsh Tribunal convened in Washington to present evidence of this chilling threat, and to unite lawmakers next door to dismantle the legal architecture that undermines the basic right of all peoples to know what their governments do in their name.”

The Belmarsh Tribunal, first convened in London in 2021, is inspired by the Russell Tribunal, a 1966 event organised by philosophers Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre to hold the US accountable for its escalating war crimes in Vietnam.

Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

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

As Julian Assange awaits the final appeal of his looming extradition to the United States while languishing behind bars in London's notorious Belmarsh Prison, leading left luminaries and free press advocates gathered in Washington, D.C. on Friday for the fourth sitting of the Belmarsh Tribunal, where they called on U.S. President Joe Biden to drop all charges against the WikiLeaks publisher.

"From Ankara to Manila to Budapest to right here in the United States, state actors are cracking down on journalists, their sources, and their publishers in a globally coordinated campaign to disrupt the public's access to information," co-chair and Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman said during her opening remarks at the National Press Club.

"The Belmarsh Tribunal... pursues justice for journalists who are imprisoned or persecuted [and] publishers and whistleblowers who dare to reveal the crimes of our governments," she continued.

"Assange's case is the first time in history that a publisher has been indicted under the Espionage Act," Goodman added. "Recently, it was revealed that the CIA had been spying illegally on Julian, his lawyers, and some members of this very tribunal. The CIA even plotted his assassination at the Ecuadorean Embassy under [former U.S. President Donald] Trump."

Assange—who suffers from physical and mental health problems including heart and respiratory issues—could be imprisoned for 175 years if fully convicted of Espionage Act violations. Among the classified materials published by WikiLeaks—many provided by whistleblower Chelsea Manning—are the infamous "Collateral Murder" video showing a U.S. Army helicopter crew killing a group of Iraqi civilians, the Afghan War Diary, and the Iraq War Logs, which revealed American and allied war crimes.

According to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, Assange has been arbitrarily deprived of his freedom since he was arrested on December 7, 2010. Since then he has been held under house arrest, confined for seven years in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London while he was protected by the administration of former Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa, and jailed in Belmarsh Prison, for which the tribunal is named.

Human rights, journalistic, peace, and other groups have condemned Assange's impending extradition and the U.S. government's targeting of a journalist who exposed American war crimes.

In a statement ahead of Friday's tribunal, co-chair and Croatian philosopher Srećko Horvat said:

The First Amendment, freedom of the press, and the life of Julian Assange are at stake. That's why the Belmarsh Tribunal is landing literally just two blocks away from the White House. As long as the Biden administration continues to deploy tools like the Espionage Act to imprison those who dare to expose war crimes, no publisher and no journalist will be safe. Our tribunal is gathering courageous voices of dissent to demand justice for those crimes and to demand President Biden to drop the charges against Assange immediately.

Belmarsh Tribunal participants include Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, U.S. academic Noam Chomsky, British parliamentarian Jeremy Corbyn, former Assange lawyer Renata Ávila, human rights attorney Steven Donziger, and WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson.

Assange's father, John Shipton, and the whistleblower's wife and lawyer Stella Assange, are also members, as are Shadowproof editor Kevin Gosztola, Chip Gibbons of Defending Rights, Selay Ghaffar of the Solidarity Party of Afghanistan, investigative journalist Stefania Maurizi, The Nation publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel, and ACLU attorney Ben Wizner.

"One of the foundation stones of our form of government here in the United States... is our First Amendment to the Constitution," Ellsberg—whom the Richard Nixon administration tried to jail for up to 115 years under the Espionage Act, but due to government misconduct was never imprisoned—said in a recorded message played at the tribunal.

"Up until Assange's indictment, the act had never been used... against a journalist like Assange," Ellsberg added. "If you're going to use the act against a journalist in a blatant violation of the First Amendment... the First Amendment is essentially gone."

Ávila said before Thursday's event that "the Espionage Act is one of the most dangerous pieces of legislation in the world: an existential threat against international investigative journalism."

"If applied, it will deprive us of one of our must powerful tools towards de-escalation of conflicts, diplomacy, and peace," she added. "The Belmarsh Tribunal convenes in Washington to present evidence of this chilling threat, and to unite lawmakers next door to dismantle the legal architecture that undermines the basic right of all peoples to know what their governments do in their name."

The Belmarsh Tribunal, first convened in London in 2021, is inspired by the Russell Tribunal, a 1966 event organized by philosophers Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre to hold the U.S. accountable for its escalating war crimes in Vietnam.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

"These statistics highlight the need for the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act and the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act."

The number of workers who held a job covered by a union contract—including those who report no union affiliation—rose by 200,000 to 16 million last year, but the percentage of employees represented dropped from 11.6% to 11.3%, according to the BLS.

The bureau found that though 7.1 million public sector employees belonged to unions in 2022, similar to the 7.2 million private sector workers, the union membership rate was 33.1% for the public sector compared with just 6% for the private sector.

As The Washington Postreported:

The lackluster figures reflect how far unions have to go to see an upsurge in membership, especially in a year of booming job growth. More than 5 million jobs were created in 2022 across the economy, especially in industries where union membership is lower, such as leisure and hospitality, meaning union jobs did not outpace the growth of nonunion jobs. The economy also launched millions of new businesses, where jobs rarely start off unionized. And many of the high-profile victories at Starbucks, Apple, and REI, for example, added a relatively small number of union members. A 2022 Bloomberg analysis of labor data found that the average unionized Starbucks store added 27 workers to union rolls.

Despite the continued low union numbers, labor historians say there's been a major shift underway, propelled by pandemic conditions, in how Americans view unions. More Americans said they approved of unions in 2022 than at any point since 1965—some 71% of those polled, according to Gallup.

Responding to the BLS release, the AFL-CIO, a federation of unions representing 12.5 million workers, asserted, "These statistics highlight the need for the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act and the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act, which will hold union-busting companies and organizations accountable and give workers the negotiating power they deserve."

Specifically pointing to the record-low unionization rate last year, Nina Turner, a former Democratic congressional candidate and senior fellow at the Institute on Race, Power, and Political Economy, said that "this is a move in the wrong direction."

Noting the same statistic, Democrats on the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce tweeted: "Unfortunately, this is not a surprise even though unions are extremely popular among workers. This is a direct result of employers using illegal union-busting tactics and Republicans turning their backs on working people."

The panel's Democrats also called on Congress to pass the PRO Act—a historic proposal to reform U.S. labor laws to better serve workers, spearheaded by the committee's ranking member, Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.).

"Every worker deserves a union," Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), who was elected in November, said in a statement Thursday. "Unions built the middle class and they built America. It's time to pass the PRO Act and drastically expand union membership across this country."

A trio of Economic Policy Institute experts who analyzed recent data from both the BLS and the National Labor Relations Board pointed out Thursday that between October 2021 and last September, the NLRB saw a 53% increase in union election petitions, and "evidence suggests that in 2022 more than 60 million workers wanted to join a union, but couldn't."

"The fact that tens of millions of workers want to join a union and can't is a glaring testament to how broken U.S. labor law is," they wrote. "It is urgent that Congress pass the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act and the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act. State legislatures must also take available measures to boost unionization and collective bargaining."

Despite union-busting efforts from powerful corporations, last year saw a wave of high-profile worker victories. Employees at Apple, Amazon, Chipotle, Google, Starbucks, Minor League Baseball, T-Mobile, Trader Joe's, and beyond successfully organized.

"In 2022, we saw working people rising up despite often illegal opposition from companies that would rather pay union-busting firms millions than give workers a seat at the table," AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler said Thursday. "The momentum of the moment we are in is clear."

"Organizing victories are happening in every industry, public and private, and every sector of our economy all across the country," she added. "The wave of organizing will continue to gather steam in 2023 and beyond despite broken labor laws that rig the system against workers."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Lou Ferreira.

In July, 2006, Israel bombed Lebanon.  The news released fury and anguish in me that was beyond words.  I visualized innocent, helpless babies swimming in their blood as bombs blasted away their lives. I struggled to grasp the needless, wanton destruction of lives, homes, futures, and dreams.  Why? Why had the decision been made to do this? Who made it?   Who benefited?  These questions exploded in my mind.  I was driven to put on canvas what I couldn’t write on paper.

What appeared was a larger-than-life furious woman holding a dead body as she stands knee deep in mangled, blood covered corpses killed by bombs dropped blindly, mindlessly from flying killers 35,000 ft.  from reality.

The disconnect is obvious between indifferent, cold military power and helpless, targeted innocent flesh below.  We are reminded that President Eisenhour warned January 17, 1961 that the military-industrial complex was a danger that had to be kept in check or we would be bound up in endless wars concocted, not  for glory and good, freedom and democracy, but for profit.  His warnings were ignored and now we can see bloated bank accounts of a war machine headed by CEO’s coached and prodded by the Pentagon, the Congress, self-appointed pundits, legions of lobbyists and the media which explains and justifies.  The purveyors of weapons of war are well-known and include Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, General Atomics, and Raytheon.

I’m happy to learn that there is finally an effort to investigate and hold accountable those involved in the war machine.  Such an effort has been taken on by Ban Killer Drones, as well as Kathy Kelly, board president of World BEYOND War and founding member of Voices in the Wilderness, Nick Mottern, founder of BanKillerDrones, and Brad Wolf, founder of Peace Action Network, Lancaster, PA.  They, among others, are planning the Merchants of Death War Crimes Tribunal to be held in November, 2023.   According to Brad Wolf, “It is inspired by Nuremberg trials of German industrialists at the end of World War II, and especially by Bertrand Russell’s International War Crimes Tribunal, addressing U.S. Atrocities committed during the Viet Nam War.”

Brad Wolf  explains that  “Armed conflicts generate enormous profits for corporate weapons manufacturers.  These corporate entities knowingly produce and sell products which maim and kill not only combatants, but noncombatants (civilians) as well.  The officials of these corporations should be held criminally and morally responsible for aiding and abetting the leaders of nation-states in the commission of War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity.” We are pleased that notable experts to testify and serve on the Tribunal include Noam Chomsky, Richard Falk, Mairead Maguire, Ajamu Baraka, Medea Benjamin, Ann Wright and John Pilger.  In addition, it is planned that Afghan, Yemeni, Iraqi, and Somali survivors of war will serve as witnesses and Tribunal members.

I am very honored that my painting, Collateral Damage, has been chosen as the logo for the Merchants of Death War Crimes Tribunal. The painting’s image of the powerful mother represents the power of  the people’s Tribunal, fighting  for the  peace and justice we  demand.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Sallie Latch.

Led by the notorious Pol Pot, the ultra-Maoist Khmer Rouge killed some 1.7 million Cambodians through starvation, overwork, or execution in a bid to create an agrarian utopia. They were finally removed from power by Vietnam, which invaded Cambodia in 1979.

The Khmer Rouge Tribunal, formally called the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), was set up to hold former Khmer Rouge leaders to account for the deaths.

Khieu Samphan, 91, lost his appeal of his 2018 conviction and life sentence for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes for his leadership role in Khmer Rouge.

Khieu Samphan, who is serving a life sentence for a 2014 conviction for crimes against humanity, had argued he was the titular head of state without decision-making powers in the Khmer Rouge regime during its bloody revolution and reign of terror.

His appeal against his 2018 genocide conviction asserted that the lower court had made more than 1,800 errors, but the ECCC Supreme Court rejected virtually all his arguments.

“I am unhappy with the Supreme Court's misunderstanding about the facts of the case that led to the conviction. The misunderstanding including his role in the Khmer Rouge,” said Khieu Samphan’s lawyer, Kong Sam Onn.

A 'clean person'

Khieu Samphan, his lawyer said, was “a clean person among other Khmer Rouge leaders” and “didn’t have the power to make any decisions during meetings.” 

“The court wanted to convict him before he dies. The court wanted to speed up the case to make sure the verdict is released before Khieu Samphan dies,” said Kong Sam Onn.

While many welcomed the verdict, some former Khmer Rouge soldiers defended Khieu Samphan and said members of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP) who were former Khmer Rouge leaders should be brought to trial as well.

Former Khmer Rouge soldier Thong Thun in the western Cambodian province of Pailin said agreed with Khieu Samphan’s defense that he didn’t have power during his time as a ruler.

“The court shouldn’t put him in jail for the rest of his life. It is embarrassing,” he told RFA Khmer.

“Those other killers are still walking free and only a few were convicted,” he said, referring to members of the CPP who were former Khmer Rouge.

Hun Sen, who was a middle-ranking commander with the Khmer Rouge before defecting, has ruled Cambodia with an iron fist since 1985.

Another former soldier, who asked not to be named, dismissed the trial as a show to punish some former Khmer Rouge leaders while letting others get away with crimes.

“The court shouldn’t put (Khieu Samphan) in jail for the rest of life, he is getting old,” he said.

Lasting record

Some observers have questioned the merit of a legal process that took $337 million and 16 years to but convicted only three men, two of whom are dead.

Nuon Chea, the Khmer Rouge's No. 2 leader and chief ideologist, was convicted along with Khieu Samphan and was serving a life sentence when he died in 2019 at age 93.

The tribunal's third convicted Khmer Rouge figure was of Kaing Guek Eav. Also known as Duch, commandant of the notorious Tuol Sleng prison, he died in 2020 at age 77 while serving a life sentence for crimes against humanity, murder and torture. The top Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot, died in the jungle in 1998 at age 72.

Patrick Murphy, the U.S. ambassador in Phnom Penh, issued a statement saying the tribunal “leaves an important legacy detailing some of the worst crimes against humanity in modern history and making contributions to truth, reconciliation, and justice in the Kingdom of Cambodia.”

Former ECCC investigator Craig Etcheson told the Associated Press the court “successfully attacked the long-standing impunity of the Khmer Rouge, and showed that though it might take a long time, the law can catch up with those who commit crimes against humanity."

"The tribunal also created an extraordinary record of those crimes, comprising documentation that will be studied by scholars for decades to come, that will educate Cambodia's youth about the history of their country, and that will deeply frustrate any attempt to deny the crimes of the Khmer Rouge," said Etcheson, who was chief of investigations for the prosecution at the ECCC from 2006 to 2012.

Translated by Samean Yun. Written by Paul Eckert.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Khmer.

After nearly a year of hearings and over fifty witness testimonies from relatives, journalists and experts, the Tribunal will convene for the last time to deliver its verdict in this historically unprecedented application of alternative justice to cases of journalists murdered for their work. Verdicts are expected in the cases of murdered journalists Miguel Ángel López Velasco (Mexico), Lasantha Wickrematunge (Sri Lanka) and Nabil Al-Sharbaji (Syria).

Faced with persistent impunity in more than eight out of ten cases involving the murder of a journalist, this People’s Tribunal was set up by the Committee to Protect Journalists, Free Press Unlimited, and Reporters Without Borders to hold states accountable for their failure to protect journalists and investigate crimes against them.

Experts from the Committee to Protect journalists are available for interviews about this innovative alternative justice model, the three cases on the court’s docket, the verdicts and impunity for the murder of journalists worldwide.

What: Closing Hearing and Verdict of the People’s Tribunal on the Murder of Journalists

When: September 19, 2022, 1:30pm CET, 7:30am EST

Where: The Hague, The Netherlands. You can follow the livestream or register for in-person attendance.

Who: A panel of Judges will lead the proceedings, with a keynote address delivered by Jon Williams, Board Member of the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Media Contact: Radim Dragomaca, press@cpj.org

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

“My Fiji
I offer a vision which sees this beloved land of ours united in its diversity, forged out of its adversity, and built on trust. I offer you a vision of Fiji which historians will say that, in the midst of tragedy, we found courage and wisdom, and foresight and determination to lead the nation away from the precipice into a prosperous future. I can only hope that my vision for this most wonderful of nations will fulfil its promise. I can only pray that we who have the moment at hand will find the courage, the strength and the determination to let the past be the past and build a nation that will stand not just to 20/20, but down through the centuries.”
— Jai Ram Reddy, 1993

This moment asks a lot of me and all of us. I write these words with a heavy heart but also a sense of great pride and privilege which is only afforded to me because I happen to be the daughter of the lawyer, judge, and Indo-Fijian statesman, Jai Ram Reddy, who died in Auckland last night aged 85.

Historians, political commentators, and analysts will define their narratives about my father. I am a daughter who simply seeks to celebrate and mark his life and legacy with a personal perspective about him, his legal and political career.

I am conscious that many of those who will read this piece are, like me, the descendants of indentured labourers “Girmitiyas”, who were brought from India to Fiji during colonial rule.

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Like many of their generation, my grandparents, Pethi and Yenkatamma Reddy were farming folk who wanted a better future for their children. They worked the field and saved with a view to sending their eldest son, Jai Ram, to study law in New Zealand.

Their dreams were realised, and my father was admitted as a barrister and solicitor in 1960.

Further to his admission to the New Zealand bar, Dad returned to Fiji and enjoyed a long and illustrious career as a lawyer. He was the Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of Fiji (during the short-lived Bavadra Labour government of 1987) and President of Fiji’s Court of Appeal in the early 2000s.

I never did have the opportunity to observe my father in the courtroom, but I have heard and read much about his formidable advocacy skills and forensic legal mind. His areas of practice were broad, but he was particularly invested in criminal law and practice.

Unwavering commitment
I understand he could be a pit-bull in the courtroom and had an unwavering commitment to his clients.

In 2003, the United Nations General Assembly elected Dad as a member of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). He was based in Arusha, Tanzania, and my son and I visited him in 2007.

He was sitting on a bench comprised of two other international jurists, one of whom was the President of the Tribunal, Judge Eric Mose. The four defendants were military men accused of genocide against the Tutsi population in Rwanda during the early 1990s.

On the day we attended his court room, I distinctly recall Dad challenging one of the Canadian advocates on a technical point to which the advocate responded, “Judge Reddy always asks the difficult questions”. He was considered one of the finest judges there.

As a lawyer, I found the proceedings fascinating and as a daughter, I felt very proud.

Of course, none of us are defined solely by our professional life or public profile and it would feel incomplete not to mention some of my father’s other interests. He loved the odd gamble on the horses and as a young child, I recall being dragged to the Ellerslie races on more than a few occasions.

Dad also loved literature, philosophy, and comedy. Those who knew him intimately will recall his reverence for the prose of William Shakespeare and his uncanny ability to recite Shakespearean sonnets and soliloquies — even when his Alzheimer’s was quite advanced.

Interest in philosophy
As a young, idealistic student, he developed an interest in philosophy and his outlook and perspectives were shaped by both Eastern and Western writers and intellectuals. Possessing a dry, acerbic wit, he enjoyed satire and comedy — particularly the British variety — and was an ardent fan of all things involving Monty Python and other comics of that tradition.

He also liked old Hindi songs but loved ghazals the most. He wasn’t the greatest singer but after a couple glasses of red wine, he would sing along to those old melodies with much gusto at dinner parties. It made him happy.

Like all of us, my father’s life was punctuated by both highs and deep sadness. My dear brother Sanjai’s untimely death was devastating for Dad, as it was for all of us. Despite his own grief, he remained a devoted and supportive father and grandfather to his three surviving children and five grandchildren whilse continuing a demanding role as a jurist at the ICTR.

It cannot have been easy in the circumstances. Dad undoubtedly had an intellectual disposition and for much of his life, his interests and preoccupations were principally cerebral in nature. However, with age, he became less preoccupied with such matters and his renowned social reticence, and “short fuse” receded and was replaced by a person who was more relaxed, emotionally accessible and at ease with communicating on a more personal level.

I will treasure the memory of some of conversations we shared in his later years.

As to his political life, Dad was initially a senator in the early 1970s before his election as Leader of the Opposition in 1977. Politically he was a social democrat with liberal instincts. Throughout his long political career, he argued for equity, social justice, and racial equality.

Vehemently opposed to the death penalty on the grounds it offends the inalienable right to life, he, among others, advocated for its abolition in Fiji. He also supported the legitimatisation of same-sex unions and led the parliamentary debate against French nuclear testing in the Pacific.

Committed to multi-culturalism
I suspect; however, my father will ultimately be remembered for his commitment to the values of multi-culturalism and pluralism.

When reflecting on his political legacy, I am cognisant of how urgent and prescient my father’s brand of politics might feel given the rise and global reach of ethnic nationalism and identity politics. Dad firmly believed that leadership in the Fijian context required moral courage, an empathy for “the other” and an acute appreciation of how history and context shaped the political and social fabric of the country.

It is through him; I developed an understanding of the importance of adopting a pluralist approach and working across the political aisle for the greater good of all communities in Fiji.

Similarly, I developed an appreciation of how the colonial legacy of divide and rule cultivated and fostered the deep racial divide, mistrust and communalism which have featured so tragically in Fiji’s political landscape. An appreciation of context is obviously so important, but Dad’s message was that we all share a collective responsibility to reflect, critique and overcome the historical legacies, structures and values which impede the art of empathy and compromise.

Following the military coup of 1987, my father had the singular honour of being the first Indo-Fijian to be invited to speak to the Great Council of Chiefs. It was a seminal moment as Fiji was on the precipice of ratifying a progressive new constitution. In that speech, he talked about the respective fears and interests of both the indigenous Fijian and Indo-Fijian communities.

He also spoke of the importance of power-sharing in the context of a politically and socially fractured Fiji following the military coups in 1987. I quote Dad’s final words from that speech:

“In one of his nation’s darkest hours, that courageous and visionary leader, Franklin Roosevelt, said, and I quote: ‘to some generations much is given; of other generations much is asked. This generation has a rendezvous with destiny.’

“Much was asked of Ratu Cakobau’s generation of Chiefs. Much is asked of this generation of Chiefs. Much is asked of us all.

“Let us therefore gather our courage and set ourselves united to the finishing of the noble task to which our history, our heritage and our motherland now call us. This generation must keep its rendezvous with destiny. And to future generations, much will be given.”

Defining moment squandered
From the perspective of many, that defining moment was squandered and the tragic events which have taken place in Fiji over the past two decades speak volumes. I know how profoundly disappointed my father was that his vision of an inclusive society was mercilessly rebuked by what he described as “narrow-minded partisanship”.

Of course, another military coup then took place, and the rest is history. Notwithstanding those events, may the arc of history bend towards that rendezvous he spoke of on that hopeful occasion.

May his dream of a fully democratised Fiji be realised and let it be a Fiji with fair and accessible rights to political representation, education, and economic parity for all its people.

On this saddest of occasions, it feels fitting to conclude with a quote from that great, visionary civil rights leader Dr Martin Luther King Jr:

“There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right”.

Rest in Peace my dear father.
Om Shanti
Gole ena vakacegu

Helen Nalina Reddy
London

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

The complaint stems from a video investigation by Titu, which was broadcast by Ekattor TV on March 1, 2022, alleging that a local shrine’s management committee, led by Shahidul Islam Mollik, general secretary of the Mirzaganj Union Parishad, an administrative government unit, had engaged in corruption.

Mollik’s nephew, Badal Hossain, filed the complaint, which accused the journalist of violating three sections of the Digital Security Act, pertaining to defamation, unauthorized collection of identity information, and publication of false, threatening, or offensive information, according to those sources. Each of those offenses can carry a prison sentence of between three and five years, and a fine between 300,000 taka (US$3,160) and 1,000,000 taka (US $10,530). 

Titu told CPJ that after conducting research for the investigation in Mirzaganj, Hossain had called him on February 19 and urged him not to publish the report.

On February 20, Hossain came to the Ekattor TV office in the town of Patuakhali and offered the journalist a bribe in exchange for agreeing not to publish the report, according to Titu and CCTV footage of the incident, which was shown in Titu’s video investigation.

When reached via messaging app, Hossain denied the allegations that he pressured Titu not to publish the report.

Titu told CPJ that after accepting the complaint, the Barisal Cyber Tribunal subsequently ordered the Mirzaganj police station to investigate the complaint. Anowar Hossain Talukdar, the station’s officer in charge, is the vice president of the shrine’s management, according to Titu and a document issued by the Waqf Administration, a regulatory agency under the Ministry of Religious Affairs, which CPJ reviewed.

Mollik and Talukdar did not respond to CPJ’s requests for comment sent via messaging app.

Titu said that he expects to be summoned for further hearings after the police submits its investigative report to the tribunal. Under Section 40 of the Digital Security Act, investigations are to be completed within 60 days, with the possibility of extension upon court approval. Titu told CPJ that police did not complete the investigation within the 60-day period, adding that he was not informed that they were granted an extension.

Titu said he has repeatedly received direct, in-person threats from politicians and their associates for his extensive reporting on their alleged corruption. He fears these political leaders have banded together in recent months, he told CPJ, and are planning further retaliation against him, including possibly arrest.

CPJ has repeatedly documented the use of the Digital Security Act to harass journalists in retaliation for their work, and has called for the law’s repeal.

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

Madang MP Bryan Kramer, who held the police, justice and later immigration portfolios in the outgoing givernment, is no stranger to publicity stunts.

Yesterday, he “ambushed” Chief Ombudsman Richard Pagen in the State Function Room of the National Parliament during the new MPs’ induction process.

Last week, the Deputy Chief Justice Ambeng Kandakasi had announced the appointment of a leadership tribunal to investigate allegations of misconduct in office against Kramer.

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As Pagen was speaking to the new MPs on their roles and responsibilities and the work of the Ombudsman Commission, Kramer found it an opportune time to pick a “verbal spat’ with Pagen.

After Pagen had finished his presentation, Kramer asked several questions that “pickled” the integrity and reputation of Pagen and the Ombudsman Commission.

Kramer told Pagen that the commission had lost many leadership tribunal cases and that his [Pagen’s] own integrity was also in question when a staff member had raised allegations against him and he was still holding office.

The Chief Ombudsman told Kramer that he was at the Parliament induction programme to talk to collective Members of Parliament and not to debate with him.

‘I don’t want to argue’
“Member for Madang, I’m addressing a crop of leaders and I don’t want to argue with you. Do not raise conflict of interest questions here. Your leadership (tribunal) is coming,” he told Kramer.

Pagen said he was not appointed to be a “briefcase carrier” but to perform his constitutional duties and he performed his duty without fear or favour.

“We are here to work with the leaders. If you fear us then, it is because you have done something wrong,” he said.

The Chief Ombudsman said that as a constitutional office holder his job was not to “carry a whip around” and hunt for leaders to be punished.

He said he made sure that there were prima facie cases to refer members of Parliament to the Leadership Tribunal and so far four cases had been thrown out.

“I have done my job to refer people. We are not here to fight anyone. We are here to support service delivery for the 9 million [people in the country]. We are technical people here to give you advice,” he said.

Pagen said they were there to help make sure the leaders perform their duties of serving the people honestly and transparently.

MPs told to be ‘transparent’
In a separate news story, the Post-Courier reports that Pagen urged MPs to be transparent and not to be involved in actions that would question their integrity and of the office they occupied.

Pagen told new MPs and those who were continuing that the office they held now was for the people and their position must not be demeaned by their actions.

He said the integrity of the office and the position they occupied as leaders must be maintained at all times.

“The integrity of the country must also be preserved,” Pagen said.

“We must not use the office for personal gain.

“In the Melanesian society, we have come from a wider family connection and relations and it is essential that the relationship does not creep into the office.”

Jeffrey Elapa is a PNG Post-Courier reporter. Republished with permission.

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

A Leadership Tribunal has been appointed in Papua New Guinea to enquire into allegations of misconduct against the Member for Madang Bryan Kramer, a cabinet minister in the previous Marape government.

Kramer, a former police and justice minister and Minister of Immigration and Citizenship in the outgoing cabinet, has also been a social media strategist and publisher of the Kramer Report.

The Tribunal will be headed by a senior judge, Justice Lawrence Kangwia, and magistrates, Ms Nidue, Principal Magistrate and Senior Provincial Magistrate for Eastern Highlands, and District Court Magistrate Edward Komia.

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Acting Chief Justice Ambeng Kandakasi announced the composition of the Tribunal yesterday.

Kramer welcomed the opportunity for the misconduct allegations to be heard and determined by the Tribunal.

“Today I was contacted by the Secretariat of the Leadership Tribunal and served the instrument signed by Acting Chief Justice appointing a Leadership Tribunal to enquire into and determine the 14 allegations of misconduct in office filed against me by the Ombudsman Commission,” he said in a statement.

“I was also served a statement of allegations of misconduct in office prepared by the Public Prosecutor.

Without reasons
However, it was served without the statement of reasons by the Ombudsman Commission that was supposed to be attached, Kramer said.

“I’ve taken note of the allegations and find them ridiculous and nonsensical. I look forward to the opportunity to prove the same before the Tribunal.

“The 14 allegations fail to raise any actual elements of dishonesty, material misconduct or personal benefit and appear to be mere administrative issues and or absurd allegations.

“Three allegations relate to social media publications purportedly scandalising the judiciary — namely the conduct of Chief Justice Sir Gibbs Salika — in suggesting a conflict of interest.

“It is further alleged that I published a letter of criminal complaint which was authored by the Chief Justice and addressed to the Commissioner of Police. This letter of complaint alleged that my publication on an interlocutory ruling was ‘inciting trouble and tending to cause trouble or ill feeling among people’.

“The letter went on to request that police investigate the matter and lay appropriate charges against me under Section 11 of the Summary Offences Act.

“Other allegations against me relate to decisions made by the Madang District Development Authority to establish its own company, Madang District Works & Equipment Ltd and Madang Ward Project Limited, to implement the DDA’s own development programs, by funding the wards to construct their own classrooms, aid posts as well as repair of town roads that had failed to be maintained by successive Provincial Administrations.

‘Ethical and transparent’
“The DDA approved completing the work at cost that was not possible with private contractors, is ethical and transparent with no kickbacks paid to government or members and represents value for money for Madang Open constituents.

“It is further alleged that I misappropriated K30.6 million [NZ$14 million] of Madang DSIP funds to a company owned by a member of Madang DDA (Madang District Works & Equipment Ltd). This allegation is wholly ridiculous.

“The company is fully owned by Madang DDA, and a nominated representative of the Madang DDA is listed as the sole director on behalf of the DDA. This is common and correct practice, and complies with Section 7.2 of the DDA Act as well as advice provided by the former Chief Ombudsman back in 2018.

“As for K30.6 million — this is a ridiculous claim and entirely fictitious. K30.6 million was in fact an entire 2020 DDA budget appropriation, which was submitted to the Department of Treasury and approved. It was certainly not spent or paid to a District Works company.

“A simple review of the relevant acts and documents would have shown the Ombudsman and Public Prosecutor that there is no case to answer. I am surprised, and somewhat shocked, that they failed to do their homework before making these allegations.

“Surely it is their job to ascertain the facts supported by credible evidence before pursuing a vexatious allegations.

“Unsubstantiated and vexatious actions like this only serve to further undermine the public’s trust in these important Constitutional offices.

‘Breached constitutional obligations’
“In the Ombudsman Commission’s haste to have me prosecuted over these allegations, it breached its own constitutional obligations by failing to provide me the right to be heard insofar as providing me documents [that] I requested to ascertain the truth of their allegations.

“The Supreme Court, in the case Pruaitch vs Manek in 2019, ruled that ‘any relevant documents are to be furnished to the leader if requested to enable the leader to fully respond to the allegations’.

“On 14 December 2022, I wrote to the Chief Ombudsman requesting the commission provide an extension of time to respond to the allegations and provide the evidence they relied on in forming their opinion that I was guilty of fourteen allegations of misconduct. As reported previously, the Ombudsman refused my request stating that ‘in practice we do not generally release information because all our investigations are confidential’.

“This is clearly in breach of Section 59 of the Constitution, the right to natural justice, and is clearly contrary to the Supreme Court’s own ruling on the issue.

“I now plan to challenge the Ombudsman Commission and hold it accountable to the law it claims to uphold. I look forward to my opportunity to put these vexatious allegations to rest and the opportunity to subpoena and cross examine all relevant persons behind these allegations before the Tribunal.”

Todagia Kelola is a PNG Post-Courier reporter. Republished with permission.

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

A Rangamati magistrate granted Elahi interim bail on June 8, pending an additional hearing at the Chittagong Cyber Tribunal, which adjudicates alleged cybercrime offenses, where he was granted permanent bail on June 14, according to a report in the Dhaka Tribune and the journalist. The next hearing in his case is scheduled for July 31, Elahi said.

Police arrested Elahi in relation to a December 3, 2020, article he published in Pahar24, which detailed alleged irregularities concerning a property rented by Nazneen Anwar, daughter of Furoza Begum Chinu, a former member of parliament with the ruling Awami League and head of the Rangamati District Women’s Awami League, according to those reports and the journalist.

On December 8, 2020, Chinu and Anwar each filed separate complaints, which CPJ reviewed, against Elahi in relation to his article, alleging that the journalist had defamed them, Elahi said.

On March 15, 2021, the Rangamati police submitted a report to a magistrate, which CPJ reviewed, stating that they investigated Elahi under sections of the Digital Security Act related to defamation and publishing offensive, false, or threatening information after receiving those complaints. The police report said it would allow the court to decide a course of action.

On June 7, 2022, the Chittagong Cyber Tribunal issued a warrant for Elahi’s arrest, which CPJ reviewed, under unspecified sections of the Digital Security Act.

Elahi was taken to Rangamati’s Kotwali police station after his June 7 arrest, he said, adding that Anwar was at the scene and demanded the officers put him in a cell when he was placed in a chair in the front office. When reached by phone by CPJ, Anwar said she had asked officers why Elahi was allowed to use his phone in custody.

Anwar told CPJ that she stands by the allegations in the complaint. Chinu did not respond to CPJ’s text message requesting comment. Kabir Hossain, officer-in-charge at the Kotwali police station, did not respond to CPJ’s request for comment sent via messaging app.

In a separate case, on June 7, 2022, the Khulna Cyber Tribunal accepted a police chargesheet that had been filed on August 31, 2021, against Abu Tayeb, Khulna bureau chief for the privately owned broadcaster NTV, and Subir Rana, a reporter for the privately owned newspaper Daily Loksamaj and privately owned news website New Age, according to a copy of the chargesheet, which CPJ reviewed, and the two journalists, who spoke with CPJ by phone.

A hearing in their case is scheduled for September 20, according to Tayeb. The chargesheet accuses the journalists of violating sections of the Digital Security Act related to the publication of offensive, false, or threatening information; defamation; and deterioration of law and order. Those offenses can carry a prison sentence between three and seven years, and a fine of between 300,000 taka (US$3,230) and 600,000 taka (US$6,460).

The chargesheet accuses Tayeb and Rana of violating the Digital Security Act with Facebook posts they each published in April 2021 accusing a local company affiliated with Talukder Abdul Khalek, mayor of the Khulna City Corporation, a municipal agency that oversees the development and maintenance of the city, of evading taxes.

Tayeb made those allegations both in a report for NTV and on his Facebook page, and Rana also published the allegations on his page, according to CPJ research, both journalists, and a screenshot of the posts, which CPJ reviewed. Tayeb told CPJ that within 24 hours after the article and Facebook post were published, Khalek called him and ordered him to remove the report and the post, and he had complied.

On April 20, Khalek filed a complaint against Tayeb and Rana and published a rejoinder in The Daily Purbanchal newspaper, which CPJ reviewed, denying the allegations and warning that legal action would be taken against those who spread the information shared in their posts.

Tayeb was detained in relation to the case from April 20 to May 10, 2021, when he was released on bail, according to CPJ documentation and the journalist. Rana was also detained from June 3 to July 7, when he was released on bail, according to the journalist and the Bangladesh High Court bail order, which CPJ reviewed.

The investigating officer in the case did not respond to CPJ’s request for comment sent via messaging app. Khalek did not respond to CPJ’s text message requesting comment.

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

The seven, all from all from Hlaingtharyar township in the country’s largest city Yangon Region, were ruled guilty of taking part in the March 6 murder of a ward official suspected of being a police informer and sentenced to death on Wednesday under Section 54 of the Anti-Terrorism Law.

As of March 11, military tribunals in the Yangon region had sentenced more than 150 people to death or life imprisonment, RFA reporting has revealed. No executions have yet been reported by the military regime that overthrew Myanmar’s elcted government on Feb. 1, 2022.

The seven were identified as Ye Min Naing, Soe Moe, Thant Zin, Daewa, San Shay, Athay Lay and Aye Aye Min.

Another youth, Htet Myat Naing, Yangon’s North Dagon township, was also sentenced on Wednesday to life in prison under Section 50(j) of the Anti-Terrorism Law for having links to and collecting money for terrorist organizations.

An underground youth activist in Yangon said the military is imposing harsh punishments on young people to discourage them from participating in resistance movements against the junta, the junta newspaper said.

"The deliberate arrests of young people and such harsh sentences are attempts to intimidate the youth not to be involved in the revolution. No matter what they do, young people are already determined to march on with this,” he told RFA.

Lawyers have argued that the sentences imposed by military tribunals handing down highest sentences on the youth are unjust and punishable.

Military spokesman Maj Gen Zaw Min Tun said the government was not targeting young people but was prosecuting violators of the law.

According to Thai-based rights group Assistance Association for Political Prisoners Burma, a total of 10,707 people were arrested and 1072 of them were imprisoned between Feb 1, 2021 to May 19, 2022, among them 72 have been sentenced to death including 2 children. And another 41 are sentenced to death in absentia.

Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written by Paul Eckert.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA’s Myanmar Service.

The two case hearings will feature testimony from experts and journalists speaking to the threats facing the press in both countries. The cases will also consider evidence and testimony in both the murder of Sri Lankan journalist Lasantha Wickrematunge, and the Syrian journalist Nabil Al-Sharbaji. Wickrematunge was a leading independent journalist known for reporting on the Sri Lankan civil war and the Rajapaksa regime, and foresaw his own death at the hands of government assassins in a posthumously published editorial. Al-Sharbaji documented protests in the Syrian city of Darayya and suffered multiple arbitrary arrests, and as a result of torture and prison conditions, died in government custody. The People’s Tribunal has officially notified the Sri Lankan and Syrian governments of the indictment and invited them to represent themselves during the hearing in order to present a defense.

The People’s Tribunals on the Murder of Journalists are a form of alternative justice organized by A Safer World for the Truth, a collaborative project between the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and Free Press Unlimited (FPU). The Syria case is also being supported by the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression. People’s Tribunals are designed to hold states accountable for violations of international law by building public awareness and generating a legitimate evidence record, and play an important role in empowering victims and recording their stories.

In addition to the Syria and Sri Lanka cases, the Tribunal previously heard testimony in a case in Mexico on April 25 and 26. Verdicts in all three cases are expected on June 20, 2022, in The Hague. 

WHAT: People’s Tribunal on the Murder of Journalists – Case of Lasantha Wickrematunge (Sri Lanka) and Nabil Al-Sharbaji (Syria)

WHEN: 

Sri Lanka hearing
May 12 and 13 
09:00-17:00 CET/ 07:00-15:00 GMT

Syria hearing
May 16 and 17
09:00-17:00 CET/ 07:00-15:00 GMT

WHERE:  The Hague, the Netherlands 

RSVP: To attend in person or request the link to join via livestream (in English, Tamil/Sinhala, Arabic), email press@cpj.org 

WHO: Read about the judges
Read about the prosecutors

Witnesses will include:

• Deputy Chair of the High Level Panel of Legal Experts on Media Freedom, Catherine Amirfar
• Syrian journalist, Paul Conroy
• Journalist, lawyer and director of the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression, Mazen Darwish
• Sri Lankan activist, Sandhya Eknaligoda 
• Syrian journalist, Hala Kodmani
• Former UN Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, Juan Mendez

Media Contact:
press@cpj.org

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

The post Toward a Peoples Ukraine Wars Tribunal appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Richard Falk.

The post War Crimes in Ukraine: Time for a People’s Tribunal? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Alfred de Zayas.

Violence against journalists is on the rise worldwide. Since 1992, over 1400 journalists have been killed, and in eight out of ten cases where a journalist is murdered, the killers go free. Across the world, Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries for journalists: more than 150 journalists have been murdered in retaliation of their work since 2000. Responding to this ongoing impunity crisis, the People’s Tribunal on the Murder of Journalists, spearheaded by the Free Press Unlimited (FPU), theCommittee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), and Reporters Without Borders (RSF) will recommence its hearings on 26 and 27 April with the Mexico Case Hearing.

The Mexico Hearing consists of two days. On 26 April, witnesses will present testimony regarding the context of crimes against journalists in Mexico, the systemic persistence of impunity in these cases, and the impact of this impunity for journalists, their relatives and colleagues, and Mexican society as a whole. Witnesses include renowned investigative journalists Anabel Hernández, Jorge Carrasco and Adela Navarro, legal expert Sara Mendiola from Propuesta Civica, federal prosecutor Laura Borbolla Moreno, and journalist and activist Griselda Triana, the widow of journalist Javier Valdez (1967-2017).

On 27 April, the Prosecutor presents the emblematic case of the murders of journalist Miguel Ángel Lopez Velasco, his wife Agustina Solana and their son Misael. Miguel Ángel wrote under the pen name ‘Milo Vela’, and covered crime, corruption and politics for the Veracruz newspaper Notiver. On 20 June 2011, Miguel, Agustina and Misael were brutally murdered in their home in Veracruz. The investigation of their murders remains open, and no one has been arrested to date.

Miguel Ángel’s case represents a wider pattern of the failure of the Mexican government to protect journalists and conduct proper investigations into attacks on their life and work. The case is also emblematic of the dangerous working conditions for journalists in Veracruz, where more than 31 journalists have been killed since 2000. Impunity reigns in 95% of these cases. The Prosecutor has presented these facts in the indictment, which alleges the government’s failure to protect journalists and conduct effective investigations following attacks on their life. The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal has officially notified the Mexican government and invited them to represent themselves during the hearing in order to present a defense.

People’s Tribunals are designed to hold states accountable for violations of international law by building public awareness and generating a legitimate evidence record, and play an important role in empowering victims and recording their stories. Their judgments are not legally binding, but aim to contribute to accountability through documentation and public testimony.

The Mexico Case Hearing will take place from 09:00-17:00 GMT-5 (Mexico) on Tuesday and Wednesday 26 and 27 April in the Cultural Center Casa del Tiempo of the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana in Mexico City. The hearing is Spanish-spoken but translation to English is available. The hearing will also be livestreamed. To attend in person, email jdezeeuw@freepressunlimited.org or tune into the livestream on the Tribunal website.

Media Contact:

Shamari White

cpj@westendstrategy.com

+1 (202) 714-4129

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

The case hearings will feature testimony from Mexican journalists and relatives of journalists murdered in reprisal for their work and expert witnesses who will provide contextual testimony regarding the situation in Mexico. Members of the international diplomatic corps are expected to be in attendance.

The People’s Tribunals on the Murder of Journalists are a form of alternative justice organized by A Safer World for the Truth, a collaborative project between the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and Free Press Unlimited (FPU). Mexico is one of three countries indicted in 2021, along with Syria and Sri Lanka.

Journalists are encouraged to attend or follow the livestream which will be in Spanish with simultaneous English translation. Representatives of the host organizations are available for interviews or comments on this historically first attempt to use the People’s Tribunals model in defense of press freedoms and murdered journalists. Additional documents are available in both English and Spanish.

What: People’s Tribunal on the Murder of Journalists – Case of Miguel Ángel López Velasco – Oral Arguments

When: April 26-27, 2022

Where: RSVP to press@cpj.org for location details in Mexico or a link to register for the livestream.

Who: Read about the judges
Read about the prosecutors

Media Contact:

press@cpj.org

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

The post Troubled Ideas: A Nuremberg Tribunal for Putin appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

On June 10, 2021, the Dhaka Cyber Tribunal referred the case to the cybercrime unit of the Dhaka police’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID) for investigation, Choudhury told CPJ. On August 16, 2021, CID officers interrogated Choudhury for around two hours, during which they repeatedly asked him why he published the articles and demanded he reveal his sources, he said.

Section 40 of the Digital Security Act allows authorities 60 days to complete an investigation, which can be extended with judicial approval. The CID submitted applications to extend the investigation period on June 22, 2021, September 30, 2021, and November 17, 2021, according to Choudhury.

On January 23, 2022, Sub-inspector Mehdi Hassan filed an investigative report at the Dhaka Cyber Tribunal which accused Choudhury of violating three sections of the Digital Security Act pertaining to the publication of offensive, false, or threatening information; defamation; and abetment.

The first two offenses can each carry a prison sentence of up to three years and a fine between 300,000 taka (US$3,500) and 500,000 taka (US$5,815), according to the law, which states that abetment carries the same punishment as committing an offense itself.

On February 17, 2022, the Dhaka Cyber Tribunal issued a summons for Choudhury to appear on April 6, 2022, at which time the journalist’s lawyer will file an application for anticipatory bail, Choudhury said, adding that if anticipatory bail is denied, the tribunal will frame, or determine the nature of, the charges against him.

Sub-inspector Hassan, the investigating officer in the case, did not respond to CPJ’s text message requesting comment. Sanu did not respond to CPJ’s request for comment sent via messaging app.

Choudhury was previously arrested in November 2003 when he tried to travel to Israel to participate in a conference with the Hebrew Writers Association, according to CPJ documentation. He was released on bail in May 2005 before he was convicted of sedition and treason in January 2015 and sentenced to seven years in prison, according to CPJ research and Choudhury. Choudhury was also detained from November 2012 to July 2018, when he served concurrent sentences for fraud, sedition, and treason, he said.

In July 2006, two small devices detonated outside the Weekly Blitz office, as CPJ documented.

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