25 May 2014
3 Jan 2014
The Shift towards an Authoritarian Future: Why the West Slowly Abandons its Civil Liberties
Politicians on both sides of the Atlantic who construct an image of toughness – tough on crime, on terrorism, on humanistic-inspired idealism etc. – are tapping into a sensitive spot that blocks critical thought among the public. Obama’s brute and harsh reaction on Edward Snowden’s revelations is just another example. Somehow it seems like “We, the people…” lost track of ourselves. Four main reasons why we abandon our once hard fought civil rights.
Many countries in the West, like Britain, France, Spain the US and the Netherlands have experienced in recent years an exponential increase in technological surveillance and a resolute decline in parliamentary and judicial control over state police and secret service.
Issues like the ban on torture, the possibility of detention without charge, privacy and freedom of speech were in the public debate reframed in favour of state control. And everybody accepted it. To be fair, there was some opposition – but it lacked intensity. Why is this happening?
To give an example, under former British Prime Minister Tony Blair 45 criminal laws were approved creating 3000 new criminal offences. British writer John Kampfer argues that in the past ten years more criminal offences were made in his country than in a hundred years before. All this was legitimized by the idea that a ‘terroristic’ virus attacked Western civilization. Of course, there is some truth in it – but these risks were grossly exaggerated. Still, we fearfully went along with the proposed measures.
This cultural shift towards perhaps a more authoritarian future for the West is no coincidence of nature. It is manmade. If the opportunity is there, top down induced shifts happen only if politicians, corporations, media pundits and other cultural icons are able to find the right symbols and techniques to get a new message across.
13 Dec 2013
Kim Jong-un orders execution of uncle - now it emerges that victim's wife was involved in decision to execute him
The final decision to execute Jang Song Thaek, last seen publicly being frog-marched by armed guards from a special party session last week, was probably made by Kim, his nephew, and Kim Kyong-hui, his wife, according to several sources.
News of Jang's execution was accompanied by a string of extraordinary insults, branding him a "traitor for all ages" and "despicable human scum" who was "worse than a dog." A 2,700-word state media report of his trial in a special military tribunal on Thursday said he had admitted to plotting insurrection and a string of other crimes. "He let the decadent capitalist lifestyle find its way to our society by distributing all sorts of pornographic pictures among his confidants since 2009." The report said Jang led a "dissolute, depraved life" and had squandered at least 4.6 million euro from state coffers on gambling. He was executed, probably by firing squad, immediately after the tribunal.
Jang's killing is the highest-level purge since Kim Jong-un inherited power from his father Kim Jong-il in 2011 and has left opinion divided on what it means. Many experts say Kim had no choice but to remove his powerful but corrupt uncle if he wanted to graduate from young pretender to dictator "He had to go," says veteran Pyongyang watcher Andrei Lankov. "To really start running the country Kim must get rid of the old guard. They are so much older; they are in their sixties and seventies and he is in his thirties."
But even if Jang's removal was operationally logical, the violence of his public humiliation and disposal was highly unusual, accepts Lankov. "One possibility is that he wanted to terrify everyone, to show that he is young but someone to be afraid of, to show that nobody is immune," he says. "It might also reflect his personal animosity to Jang. He did not like the man, who probably bossed him around."
22 May 2013
Abuse of prison regulations against imprisoned human rights defender in Belarus
On 16 May 2013, the wife of Belarus human rights defender Mr Ales Bialiatski went to the Bobruysk colony No.2, where her husband has been held since February 2012, in order to bring him a food parcel. However, the food parcel was refused by prison officials, who informed her that in March 2013 Ales Bialiatski's right to receive food from visitors had been suspended for six months.
Ales Bialiatski is the Chairman of Human Rights Centre Viasna. On 24 November 2011, he was found guilty of tax evasion on a large scale by the Pervomayski District Court of Minsk following an unfair trial, and was condemned to four and a half years imprisonment as well as the confiscation of all property including belongings registered in the name of other persons. The court also fined the human rights defender 721 million Belarusian Rubles (approx 82,700 USD) for alleged unpaid taxes and 36 million Belarusian Rubles (approx 4,100 USD) for state costs.
This incident is not the fist time that disciplinary measures have been used against Ales Bialiatski. Between March and June 2012, he received three reprimands, one of which resulted in the loss of visitation rights. Following the three reprimands, in June 2012 the human rights defender was named a 'malicious disturber', which resulted in his exclusion from the 2012 amnesty for economic crimes.
More on Front Line and on Viasna
1 Mar 2013
After 40 Years in Solitary, Prisoner Ordered Freed for 3rd Time in Louisiana
A federal judge has once again ordered the state of Louisiana to release Albert Woodfox, a former Black Panther who has spent more than 40 years in solitary confinement. Woodfox and Herman Wallace, another prisoner of the "Angola 3," were convicted of murdering a guard at Angola Prison. The Angola 3 and their supporters say they were framed for their political activism. On Tuesday, the same federal judge that ordered Woodfox’s release in 2008 again ruled Woodfox should be set free on the basis of racial discrimination in his retrial. It was the third time Woodfox’s conviction has been overturned, but prosecutors successfully reversed the two previous victories. The state is expected to appeal once again to keep Woodfox behind bars.
30 May 2012
New Face of Terror: FBI creates bogeyman out of Occupy
From disorganised slackers to terrorists - the Occupy movement has seen its media image go from bad to worse over its nine months of existence. Protesters now even face accusations that they pose a threat not just to Corporate America, but to the country as a whole. But activists say it's all just scaremongering to stifle the movement.
20 May 2012
Anti-NATO Activists Charged With "Providing Material Support for Terrorism"
Well this is a deeply screwed up story, even for someone who reads about police wrongdoing and unjust anti-activist measures all the time. Some anti-NATO protesters in Chicago have been arrested and charged with “possession of incendiary or explosive device, conspiracy to commit terrorism & providing material support for terrorism," in apparent retaliation for being involved with a recent video that shed light on Chicago police intimidation practices.
Firedoglake's Kevin Gosztola wrote a post late last night about how a group of activists were detained, with some of them released on Friday night:
Two of the nine activists arrested in a preemptive raid of an apartment in Bridgeport on the south side of Chicago were finally released Friday night. They joined four activists that were released earlier. Three activists remained in jail without charge.
The activists had been held without charge for close to thirty-six hours and had been disappeared by Chicago police on Wednesday night. They were moved from the Organized Crime Division to Kedzie-Homan in District 4 of Chicago.
Gosztola writes about how the activists, who had been part of a "Fuck the Police" march earlier in the week, were shackled, taunted, called "junkies," and threatened with felony conspiracy charges after the home they were staying in was ransacked by police wielding guns. One activist said the cops "destroyed everything" in the apartment.
2 May 2012
IKEA 'used East German political prisoners to make its furniture
Furniture giant IKEA used political prisoners arrested by the dreaded Stasi secret police of former East Germany to make its products in the 1970s and 80s, it has been alleged. Initially the company denied the reports but then said it had requested documents from the Stasi archive.
During the 1970s, Ikea developed a strong manufacturing base in East Germany with 65 factories producing parts and furniture. A 2011 doumentary in Germany cited documents claiming that IKEA had a 'thorough co-operation' with East German authorities.
Ikea's popular Klippan sofa was produced in East Germany at a plant situated next to a prison in Waldheim. A former prison chief said that prison labour was an 'expected part of furniture production'.
Read more at Daily Mail - We knew this last year… – We also knew that the founder of the Ikea furniture chain, Ingvar Kamprad is a not so nice guy…
3 Jan 2012
American and British Police Chiefs Step Up Repression in Bahrain
Two former police chiefs from the US and Britain have brought discernible Western “expertise” to the Bahraini force only weeks following their appointments – a surge in repression and state terrorism.
Former Miami police chief John Timoney and his British counterpart, John Yates, formerly commander at London’s Scotland Yard, were assigned last month by Bahrain’s royal rulers to “oversee reform” of the Persian Gulf kingdom’s security forces. Officially, the appointment of the American and Briton was to bring Western professional policing to the Bahraini force and specifically to upgrade the human rights record of Bahrain’s ministry of interior and National Security Agency.
The assignments were announced by King Hamad Al Khalifa following a report by an international commission of inquiry into widespread human rights violations in the US-backed oil kingdom since pro-democracy protests erupted there last February.
Human rights activists and several political sources say that state forces have dramatically stepped up violence towards protesters and targeting of the Shia community generally. The diminutive island state of less than 600,000 nationals is comprised mainly of Shia muslims (70 per cent) who are ruled over by a Sunni elite installed by Britain when the kingdom gained nominal independence in 1971. American and British government support for the unelected Al Khalifa monarchy is viewed by the majority of Bahrainis as being at odds with their claims for democratic rights.
Over the past year, Bahraini state forces have killed some 50 people; thousands have been maimed, wounded and detained, many of the latter tortured. Proportionate to its population, such state violence is comparable to what Washington and London have loudly denounced the Libyan and Syrian regimes for – indeed mounting a military invasion of the former and threatening to do so in the latter – under the guise of “protecting human rights”. By contrast, there is hardly a word of denunciation from Washington or London towards the Bahraini regime, which hosts the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet.
26 Nov 2011
Syrian military vows to 'cut every evil hand' of attackers
The Syrian military has said it will "cut every evil hand that targets Syrian blood", and warned that recent attacks on elite security forces marked a dangerous escalation in the country's eight-month-old crisis. Six elite pilots and four technical officers were killed in an ambush on Thursday in Homs, the military said, in an unusually high-level strike.
"Our armed forces [will] continue to carry out our mission to defend the country's security, and we will hit back against anything that threatens us," the statement said. It is not clear who was behind the attacks. A largely peaceful uprising against the president, Bashar al-Assad, began in March and has become more violent as defectors from the army turn their guns on security forces and some protesters take up arms to protect themselves.
20 Nov 2011
Violent clashes in Cairo leave two dead and hundreds injured
Egypt has been hit by another wave of major violence ahead of parliamentary elections after security forces opened fire on thousands of protesters demonstrating against the military junta.
Two people were reported dead and more than 600 injured in central Cairo after riot police sent volleys of tear gas, rubber bullets and "birdshot" pellet cartridges into the crowds. The clashes put further pressure on the ruling generals and cast doubt on the ability of police to secure the poll, scheduled to begin on 28 November.
"The scenes are reminiscent of the Friday of Anger," said journalist and pro-change activist Hossam el-Hamalawy, referring to 28 January, the day protesters beat Mubarak's security forces off the streets during the uprising against his regime. "We are being hit with showers of US-made tear gas canisters, and I've watched with my own eyes at least five people being struck by rubber bullets."
12 Oct 2011
Burma's political prisoners
Burma has said it is set to release prisoners, apparently including political detainees. More than 2,000 political prisoners – including monks, students, journalists, lawyers, MPs and over 300 members of Aung San Suu Kyi's opposition National League for Democracy – are incarcerated in horrendous conditions. Former prisoners are photographed with the name of a current political prisoner written on their palm. The photographs are taken from Abhaya - Burma's Fearlessness, by James Mackay.
Khin Cho Myint was involved in the democracy uprisings of 1988 as a first year student and participated in the 1991 10D movement, but went into hiding to avoid arrest. She was arrested in September 1998 for her role in the student demonstrations, and was sentenced to 10 years in prison, serving six in Insein and Moulmein prisons before being released in 2004. She is currently living in the Nupo refugee camp on the Thai-Burma border, awaiting resettlement. Myo Min Htike, a student leader, was sentenced to 52 years in prison for distributing leaflets and organising demonstrations during the student uprising of 1998.
28 Sept 2011
What media coverage omits about U.S. hikers released by Iran
Two American hikers imprisoned for more than two years by Iran on extremely dubious espionage charges and in highly oppressive conditions, Joshua Fattal and Shane Bauer, were released last week and spoke yesterday in Manhattan about their ordeal. Most establishment media accounts in the U.S. have predictably exploited the emotions of the drama as a means of bolstering the U.S.-is-Good/Iran-is-Evil narrative which they reflexively spout. But far more revealing is what these media accounts exclude, beginning with the important, insightful and brave remarks from the released prisoners themselves.
In prison, every time we complained about our conditions, the guards would remind us of comparable conditions at Guantanamo Bay; they'd remind us of CIA prisons in other parts of the world; and conditions that Iranians and others experience in prisons in the U.S.
We do not believe that such human rights violation on the part of our government justify what has been done to us: not for a moment. However, we do believe that these actions on the part of the U.S. provide an excuse for other governments - including the government of Iran - to act in kind.
6 Sept 2011
Jailed Native American activist wins human rights prize
Leonard Peltier, an indigenous rights activist jailed in the United States for decades, has received the first Mario Benedetti Foundation international human rights prize, the group said Monday. The group called Peltier, a Native American activist convicted in 1977 for the murder of two US FBI agents, the longest serving political prisoner in the Americas. The case stemmed from a shootout at a reservation in the US state of South Dakota.
"Leonard Peltier, who on September 12, 2011 will turn 67, has spent more than half his life in prison. He is a symbol of resistance to repressive state policies by the United States, where there are people in jail for ethnic, racial, ideological and religious reasons," a foundation statement said. Ricardo Elena, a member of the foundation's honorary board, said Peltier's case "is one that is repeated over and over: violation (of rights); persecution, eviction, invasion and expropriation of the indigenous people from the time it was 'discovered' until now.