ANALYSIS: By Jonathan Cook in Middle East Eye

There should be nothing surprising about the revelation that troops at Sde Teiman, a detention camp set up by Israel in the wake of Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel, are routinely using rape as a weapon of torture against Palestinian inmates.

Last month, nine soldiers from a prison unit, Force 100, were arrested for gang-raping a Palestinian inmate with a sharp object. He had to be hospitalised with his injuries.

At least 53 prisoners are known to have died in Israeli detention, presumed in most cases to be either through torture or following the denial of access to medical care. No investigations have been carried out by Israel and no arrests have been made.

Why should it be of any surprise that Israel’s self-proclaimed “most moral army in the world” uses torture and rape against Palestinians? It would be truly surprising if this was not happening.

After all, this is the same military that for 10 months has used starvation as a weapon of war against the 2.3 million people of Gaza, half of them children.

It is the same military that since October has laid waste to all of Gaza’s hospitals, as well as destroying almost all of its schools and 70 percent of its homes. It is the same military that is known to have killed over that period at least 40,000 Palestinians, with a further 21,000 children missing.

It is the same military currently on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the highest court in the world.

No red lines
If there are no red lines for Israel when it comes to brutalising Palestinian civilians trapped inside Gaza, why would there be any red lines for those kidnapped off its streets and dragged into its dungeons?

I documented some of the horrors unfolding in Sde Teiman in these pages back in May.

Months ago, the Israeli media began publishing testimonies from whistleblowing guards and doctors detailing the depraved conditions there.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has been denied access to the detention camp, leaving it entirely unmonitored.

The United Nations published a report on July 31 into the conditions in which some 9400 captive Palestinians have been held since last October. Most have been cut off from the outside world, and the reason for their seizure and imprisonment was never provided.

The report concludes that “appalling acts” of torture and abuse are taking place at all of Israel’s detention centres, including sexual violence, waterboarding and attacks with dogs.

The authors note “forced nudity of both men and women; beatings while naked, including on the genitals; electrocution of the genitals and anus; being forced to undergo repeated humiliating strip searches; widespread sexual slurs and threats of rape; and the inappropriate touching of women by both male and female soldiers”.

There are, according to the investigation, “consistent reports” of Israeli security forces “inserting objects into detainees’ anuses”.

Children sexually abused
Last month, Save the Children found that many hundreds of Palestinian children had been imprisoned in Israel, where they faced starvation and sexual abuse.

And this week B’Tselem, Israel’s main human rights group monitoring the occupation, produced a report — titled “Welcome to Hell” — which included the testimonies of dozens of Palestinians who had emerged from what it called “inhuman conditions”. Most had never been charged with an offence.

It concluded that the abuses at Sde Teiman were “just the tip of the iceberg”. All of Israel’s detention centres formed “a network of torture camps for Palestinians” in which “every inmate is intentionally condemned to severe, relentless pain and suffering”. It added that this was “an organised, declared policy of the Israeli prison authorities”.

Tal Steiner, head of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, which has long campaigned against the systematic torture of Palestinian detainees, wrote last week that Sde Teiman “was a place where the most horrible torture we had ever seen was occurring”.

In short, it has been an open secret in Israel that torture and sexual assault are routine at Sde Teiman.

The abuse is so horrifying that last month Israel’s High Court ordered officials to explain why they were operating outside Israel’s own laws governing the internment of “unlawful combatants”.

The surprise is not that sexual violence is being inflicted on Palestinian captives. It is that Israel’s top brass ever imagined the arrest of Israeli soldiers for raping a Palestinian would pass muster with the public.

Toxic can of worms
Instead, by making the arrests, the army opened a toxic can of worms.

The arrests provoked a massive backlash from soldiers, politicians, Israeli media, and large sections of the Israeli public.

Rioters, led by members of the Israeli Parliament, broke into Sde Teiman. An even larger group, including members of Force 100, tried to invade a military base, Beit Lid, where the soldiers were being held in an attempt to free them.

The police, under the control of Itamar Ben Gvir, a settler leader with openly fascist leanings, delayed arriving to break up the protests. Ben Gvir has called for Palestinian prisoners to be summarily executed — or killed with “a shot to the head” — to save on the costs of holding them.

No one was arrested over what amounted to a mutiny as well as a major breach of security.

Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister, helped whip up popular indignation, denouncing the arrests and describing the Force 100 soldiers as “heroic warriors”.

Other prominent cabinet ministers echoed him.

Three soldiers freed
Already, three of the soldiers have been freed, and more will likely follow.

The consensus in Israel is that any abuse, including rape, is permitted against the thousands of Palestinians who have been seized by Israel in recent months — including women, children and many hundreds of medical personnel.

That consensus is the same one that thinks it fine to bomb Palestinian women and children in Gaza, destroy their homes and starve them.

Such depraved attitudes are not new. They draw on ideological convictions and legal precedents that developed through decades of Israel’s illegal occupation. Israeli society has completely normalised the idea that Palestinians are less than human and that any and every abuse of them is allowed.

Hamas’s attack on October 7 simply brought the long-standing moral corruption at the core of Israeli society more obviously out into the open.

In 2016, for example, the Israeli military appointed Colonel Eyal Karim as its chief rabbi, even after he had declared Palestinians to be “animals” and had approved the rape of Palestinian women in the interest of boosting soldiers’ morale.

Religious extremists, let us note, increasingly predominate among combat troops.

Compensation suit dismissed
In 2015, Israel’s Supreme Court dismissed a compensation suit from a Lebanese prisoner that his lawyers submitted after he was released in a prisoner swap. Mustafa Dirani had been raped with a baton 15 years earlier in a secret jail known as Facility 1391.

Despite Dirani’s claim being supported by a medical assessment from the time made by an Israeli military doctor, the court ruled that anyone engaged in an armed conflict with Israel could not make a claim against the Israeli state.

Meanwhile, human and legal rights groups have regularly reported cases of Israeli soldiers and police raping and sexually assaulting Palestinians, including children.

A clear message was sent to Israeli soldiers over many decades that, just as the genocidal murder of Palestinians is considered warranted and “lawful”, the torture and rape of Palestinians held in captivity is considered warranted and “lawful” too.

Understandably, there was indignation that the long-established “rules” — that any and every atrocity is permitted — appeared suddenly and arbitrarily to have been changed.

The biggest question is this: why did the Israeli military’s top legal adviser approve opening an investigation into the Force 100 soldiers — and why now?

The answer is obvious. Israel’s commanders are in panic after a spate of setbacks in the international legal arena.

‘Plausible’ Gaza genocide
The ICJ, sometimes referred to as the World Court, has put Israel on trial for committing what it considers a “plausible” genocide in Gaza.

Separately, it concluded last month that Israel’s 57-year occupation is illegal and a form of aggression against the Palestinian people. Gaza never stopped being under occupation, the judges ruled, despite claims from its apologists, including Western governments, to the contrary.

Significantly, that means Palestinians have a legal right to resist their occupation. Or, to put it another way, they have an immutable right to self-defence against their Israeli occupiers, while Israel has no such right against the Palestinians it illegally occupies.

Israel is not in “armed conflict” with the Palestinian people. It is brutally occupying and oppressing them.

Israel must immediately end the occupation to regain such a right of self-defence — something it demonstrably has no intention to do.

Meanwhile, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the ICJ’s sister court, is actively seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, for war crimes.

The various cases reinforce each other. The World Court’s decisions are making it ever harder for the ICC to drag its feet in issuing and expanding the circle of arrest warrants.

Countervailing pressures
Both courts are now under enormous, countervailing pressures.

On the one side, massive external pressure is being exerted on the ICJ and ICC from states such as the US, Britain and Germany that are prepared to see the genocide in Gaza continue.

And on the other, the judges themselves are fully aware of what is at stake if they fail to act.

The longer they delay, the more they discredit international law and their own role as arbiters of that law. That will give even more leeway for other states to claim that inaction by the courts has set a precedent for their own right to commit war crimes.

International law, the entire rationale for the ICJ and ICC’s existence, stands on a precipice. Israel’s genocide threatens to bring it all crashing down.

Israel’s top brass stand in the middle of that fight.

They are confident that Washington will block at the UN Security Council any effort to enforce the ICJ rulings against them — either a future one on genocide in Gaza or the existing one on their illegal occupation.

No US veto at ICC
But arrest warrants from the ICC are a different matter. Washington has no such veto. All states signed up to the ICC’s Rome Statute – that is, most of the West, minus the US — will be obligated to arrest Israeli officials who step on their soil and to hand them over to The Hague.

Israel and the US had been hoping to use technicalities to delay the issuing of the arrest warrants for as long as possible. Most significantly, they recruited the UK, which has signed the Rome Statute, to do their dirty work.

It looked like the new UK government under Keir Starmer would continue where its predecessor left off by tying up the court in lengthy and obscure legal debates about the continuing applicability of the long-dead, 30-year-old Oslo Accords.

A former human rights lawyer, Starmer has repeatedly backed Israel’s “plausible” genocide, even arguing that the starvation of Gaza’s population, including its children, could be justified as “self-defence” — an idea entirely alien to international law, which treats it as collective punishment and a war crime.

But now with a secure parliamentary majority, even Starmer appears to be baulking at being seen as helping Netanyahu personally avoid arrest for war crimes.

The UK government announced late last month that it would drop Britain’s legal objections at the ICC.

That has suddenly left both Netanyahu and the Israeli military command starkly exposed — which is the reason they felt compelled to approve the arrest of the Force 100 soldiers.

Top prass pretexts
Under a rule known as “complementarity”, Israeli officials might be able to avoid war crimes trials at The Hague if they can demonstrate that Israel is able and willing to prosecute war crimes itself. That would avert the need for the ICC to step in and fulfil its mandate.

The Israeli top brass hoped they could feed a few lowly soldiers to the Israeli courts and drag out the trials for years. In the meantime, Washington would have the pretext it needed to bully the ICC into dropping the case for arrests on the grounds that Israel was already doing the job of prosecuting war crimes.

The patent problem with this strategy is that the ICC isn’t primarily interested in a few grunts being prosecuted in Israel as war criminals, even assuming the trials ever take place.

At issue is the military strategy that has allowed Israel to bomb Gaza into the Stone Age. At issue is a political culture that has made starving 2.3 million people seem normal.

At issue is a religious and nationalistic fervour long cultivated in the army that now encourages soldiers to execute Palestinian children by shooting them in the head and chest, as a US doctor who volunteered in Gaza has testified.

At issue is a military hierarchy that turns a blind eye to soldiers raping and sexually abusing Palestinian captives, including children.

The buck stops not with a handful of soldiers in Force 100. It stops with the Israeli government and military leaders. They are at the top of a command chain that has authorised war crimes in Gaza for the past 10 months – and before that, for decades across the occupied territories.

What is at stake
This is why observers have totally underestimated what is at stake with the rulings of the ICC and ICJ.

These judgments against Israel are forcing out into the light of day for proper scrutiny a state of affairs that has been quietly accepted by the West for decades. Should Israel have the right to operate as an apartheid regime that systematically engages in ethnic cleansing and the murder of Palestinians?

A direct answer is needed from each Western capital. There is nowhere left to hide. Western states are being presented with a stark choice: either openly back Israeli apartheid and genocide, or for the first time withdraw support.

The Israeli far-right, which now dominates both politically and in the army’s combat ranks, cares about none of this. It is immune to pressure. It is willing to go it alone.

As the Israeli media has been warning for some time, sections of the army are effectively now turning into militias that follow their own rules.

Israel’s military commanders, on the other hand, are starting to understand the trap they have set for themselves. They have long cultivated fascistic zealotry among ground troops needed to dehumanise and better oppress Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. But the war crimes proudly being live-streamed by their units now leave them exposed to the legal consequences.

Israel’s international isolation means a place one day for them in the dock at The Hague.

Israeli society’s demons exposed
The ICC and ICJ rulings are not just bringing Israeli society’s demons out into the open, or those of a complicit Western political and media class.

The international legal order is gradually cornering Israel’s war machine, forcing it to turn in on itself. The interests of the Israeli military command are now fundamentally opposed to those of the rank and file and the political leadership.

The result, as military expert Yagil Levy has long warned, will be an increasing breakdown of discipline, as the attempts to arrest Force 100 soldiers demonstrated all too clearly.

The Israeli military juggernaut cannot be easily or quickly turned around.

The military command is reported to be furiously trying to push Netanyahu into agreeing on a hostage deal to bring about a ceasefire — not because it cares about the welfare of Palestinian civilians, or the hostages, but because the longer this “plausible” genocide continues, the bigger chance the generals will end up at The Hague.

Israel’s zealots are ignoring the pleas of the top brass. They want not only to continue the drive to eliminate the Palestinian people but to widen the circle of war, whatever the consequences.

That included the reckless, incendiary move last month to assassinate Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran — a provocation with one aim only: to undermine the moderates in Hamas and Tehran.

If, as seems certain, Israel’s commanders are unwilling or incapable of reining in these excesses, then the World Court will find it impossible to ignore the charge of genocide against Israel and the ICC will be compelled to issue arrest warrants against more of the military leadership.

A logic has been created in which evil feeds on evil in a death spiral. The question is how much more carnage and misery can Israel spread on the way down.

Jonathan Cook is a writer, journalist and self-appointed media critic and author of many books about Palestine. Winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. Republished from the author’s blog with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

He is the most popular Palestinian leader alive today — and yet few people in the West even know his name. Absolutely no one in Gaza or the West Bank does not know him.

That difference speaks volumes about who dominates the media narrative that we are spoon-fed every day.

Marwan Barghouti — known to many as “the Palestinian Mandela” — has spent more time in captivity than Nelson Mandela did.

Barghouti, the “terrorist”, rotting in jail. Barghouti, the indomitable leader who has not given up on peace. Barghouti, loved by ordinary people as “a man of the street”. Barghouti, supporter of the Oslo Accords.

Barghouti, the 15-year-old youth leader standing beside Yasser Arafat. Barghouti, once a member of Parliament and Fatah secretary-general. Barghouti, leader of Tanzim, a PLO military wing, choosing militancy after the betrayal of the Oslo promise by the Americans and Israelis became fully clear.

Barghouti, a leader of the intifada that restored hope to a broken people. Barghouti, the scholar and thinker. Barghouti, the political strategist and unifier.

Marwan Barghouti is also that most powerful thing: a living symbol of an oppressed people. Why do so few in the West even know his name? He declared:

“Resistance is a holy right for the Palestinian people to face the Israeli occupation.

“Nobody should forget that the Palestinian people negotiated for 10 years and accepted difficult and humiliating agreements, and in the end didn’t get anything except authority over the people, and no authority over land, or sovereignty.”

Prison a defining part of Palestinian national consciousness
Researcher-writer Emad Moussa says imprisonment has become a defining part of the Palestinian national consciousness. In a 2021 article for The New Arab, he says that Marwan Barghouti proves you can imprison the Palestinians but not their struggle.

It’s not hard to understand why imprisonment is a central part of Palestinian consciousness.

Norman Finkelstein describes October 7 as more like a slave revolt than a terrorist attack.

Fellow Jewish scholar Masha Gessen likens Gaza to a Nazi-era Jewish ghetto.

In fact, all 7.5 million Palestinians are prisoners of the Zionist state. They are all prisoners of the history imposed on them by the powerful white nations of the West. Between 1967 and 2015 over 850,000 Palestinians had been detained by the Israelis.

According to the Israeli human rights group B’tselem more than 8000 Palestinians are held by the Israelis. Many are held in secret Israeli Defence Force (IDF) facilities and there have been verified cases of torture, sexual abuse and limb amputations due to prolonged shackling.

Many children are also held in grim captivity.

Denies the charges
Barghouti, returned to jail in 2002, and was convicted by an Israeli court on five counts of murder in 2004. He denies the charges and does not recognise the court.

Like many who see all non-violent avenues to peace shut off, Barghouti watched the Israelis relentlessly steal more and more Palestinian land and Palestinian homes, build hundreds of illegal settlements in defiance of international law and strangle his people with draconian controls — all while America and the powerful Western countries turned a blind eye.

“How would you feel if on every hill in territory that belongs to you a new settlement would spring up? I reached a simple conclusion. You, Israel, don’t want to end the occupation and you don’t want to stop the settlements — so the only way to convince you is by force.”

Lawyer and activist Fadwa Barghouti, Marwan’s wife, says: “Marwan’s goal has always been ending the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories.

“Marwan Barghouti believes in politics. He’s a political and national leader loved by his people.

“He fought for peace with bravery and spent time on the Palestinian street advocating for peace. But he also believes in international law, which gives the occupied people the right to fight for their independence and freedom.”

Israeli journalist Gideon Levy at Haaretz agrees: “Marwan was not born to kill . . .  because he is not a violent person, but Israel pushed him and the entire Palestinian people.”

‘The ultimate leader’
Alon Liel, formerly Israel’s most senior diplomat, proposed freeing Barghouti because he is “the ultimate leader of the Palestinian people,” and “he is the only one who can extricate us from the quagmire we are in.”

He is not alone in this view. Jerome Karabel, professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, details Netanyahu’s support for Hamas (for example, facilitating money via Qatar to Hamas) as a way to neutralise the threat posed by pro-peace, pro-two-state figures like Barghouti to the Zionists’ own single Jewish supremacist state solution.

“In this context, the popular and charismatic Barghouti has posed a unique threat to Israel and its persistent claim that it had no plausible interlocutor with whom to negotiate,” Karabel says.

Was Barghouti involved in terror attacks? Quite possibly.

He rejects such a label: “My crime is not “terrorism” — a term apparently only used to describe the deaths of Israeli civilians but never the deaths of Palestinians. My crime is that I insist on my freedom, freedom for my children, freedom for the entire Palestinian people.

“And if indeed that is a crime, I proudly plead guilty.”

The standard he is held to — five life sentences — bears no comparison with the impunity that Israelis enjoy — settlers who kill Palestinians are often rewarded with stolen land, through to political leaders greenlighting mass killings, even genocide, with the support of the US and the white Western countries.

Abandon the myth
“Israelis must abandon the myth that it is possible to have peace and occupation at the same time; that peaceful coexistence is possible between slave and master.

“The lack of Israeli security is born of the lack of Palestinian freedom. Israel will have security only after the end of occupation, not before.”

Beaten and abused in captivity, now being shunted from prison to prison and held in solitary confinement, Barghouti’s name only grows in stature as the US-Israeli violence against his people becomes clearer and clearer to a hitherto uncaring world.

According to a March 2024 poll conducted by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research, “In presidential elections against current president Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas’ leader Ismail Haniyeh, Barghouti wins the majority of those participating in the elections.”

It is the strange fate of the Palestinian people that most of their leaders — those that haven’t already been murdered — are either in Israeli jails, hiding from Israeli death squads or living in exile.

One of the most incredible — and for Westerners virtually unknown — political moments in the Israel-Palestinian conflict was the creation of The Prisoners’ Document in 2006 – a break-through in negotiations, led by Barghouti, between the fractious factions that divide the Palestinian polity.

In 18 points, the document calls for the unification of Palestinian factions and a revival of the PLO as the representative organisation of Palestine. It calls for the withdrawal of Israeli forces to the 1967 borders, the right of return, and the release of prisoners.

Freedom fighter and the options
“The Palestinian Mandela” is a useful shorthand and there is some merit to the comparison. Nelson Mandela visited Gaza in 1999 and raised his voice to condemn racist, apartheid Israel.

The freedom fighter who was jailed for terrorism in his own country made clear what options lay before the Palestinian people. He told his audience, which included Yasser Arafat:

“Choose peace rather than confrontation, except in cases where we cannot move forward. Then, if the only alternative is violence, we will use violence.”

“I was called a terrorist yesterday,” Mandela once said, “but when I came out of jail, many people embraced me, including my enemies, and that is what I normally tell other people who say those who are struggling for liberation in their country are terrorists.”

Barghouti said: “Once Israel and the rest of the world understand this fundamental truth, the way forward becomes clear: End the occupation, allow the Palestinians to live in freedom and let the independent and equal neighbours of Israel and Palestine negotiate a peaceful future with close economic and cultural ties.”

The Mandela comparison has its limits. Ahmed Abu Artema, one of the organisers of the Great Marches of Return in 2018 and 2019 in which thousands of peaceful Palestinian protesters were shot and hundreds killed by Israeli snipers, replied when asked, ‘Where is the Palestinian Mandela?’: “The simple answer to that is that the Israelis have killed many Mandelas.”

Marwa Fatafta, a policy director at Access Now also dismisses the need for a Palestinian Mandela: “I don’t subscribe to the mythology. I don’t think Palestinians need a ‘saviour’ or one man to run the show. This Mandela idea dismisses the fact that Israel has one goal and one goal only: to establish an ethno-nationalist Jewish state — and that stands in complete contradiction with the idea of co-existence, peace and justice.

Building from ground up
“What we need on the Palestinian side is to build a movement from the ground up,” Fatafta said in 2022.

That said, Barghouti has an immense standing in the Palestinian community and, in a slightly kinder, saner world, could play a significant role.

In the racist narrative of Israel and the West, the only hostages are those held by Hamas. It’s time to free the Palestinian hostages, starting with Marwan Barghouti — the longest-suffering of thousands of hostages. All of the hostages should be freed — including the remaining 100 held by Hamas.

To riff on The Specials 1984 song ‘Free Nelson Mandela’:

“27 years in captivity

“His body abused but his mind is still free

“Are you so blind that you cannot see?

“Free Marwan Barghouti, I’m begging you”

Republished from Eugene Doyle’s website Solidarity with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has hailed the news that Narges Mohammadi — an Iranian journalist RSF has been defending for years — has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her “fight against the oppression of women in Iran,” her courage and determination.

Persecuted by the Iranian authorities since the late 1990s for her work, and imprisoned again since November 2021, she must be freed at once, RSF declared in a statement.

“Speak to save Iran” is the title of one of the letters published by Mohammadi from Evin prison, near Tehran, where she has been serving a sentence of 10 years and 9 months in prison since 16 November 2021.

She has also been sentenced to hundreds of lashes. The maker of a documentary entitled White Torture and the author of a book of the same name, Mohammadi has never stopped denouncing the sexual violence inflicted on women prisoners in Iran.

It is this fight against the oppression of women that the Nobel Committee has just saluted by awarding the Peace Prize to this 51-year-old journalist and human rights activist, the former vice-president of the Defenders of Human Rights Centre, the Iranian human rights organisation that was created by Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian lawyer who was herself awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003.

It is because of this fight that Mohammadi has been hounded by the Iranian authorities, who continue to persecute her in prison.

She has been denied visits and telephone calls since 12 April 2022, cutting her off from the world.

White Torture: The infamy of solitary confinement in Iran with Narges Mohammadi.

New charges
At the same time, the authorities in Evin prison have brought new charges to keep her in detention.

On August 4, her jail term was increased by a year after the publication of another of her letters about violence against fellow women detainees.

Mohammadi was awarded the RSF Prize for Courage on 12 December 2023. At the award ceremony in Paris, her two children, whom she has not seen for eight years, read one of the letters she wrote to them from prison.

“In this country, amid all the suffering, all the fears and all the hopes, and when, after years of imprisonment, I am behind bars again and I can no longer even hear the voices of my children, it is with a heart full of passion, hope and vitality, full of confidence in the achievement of freedom and justice in my country that I will spend time in prison,” she wrote.

She ended the letter with a call to keep alive “the hope of victory”.

RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said:

“It is with immense emotion that I learn that the Nobel Peace Prize is being awarded to the journalist and human rights defender Narges Mohammadi.

At Reporters Without Borders (RSF), we have been fighting for her for years, alongside her husband and her two children, and with Shirin Ebadi. The Nobel Peace Prize will obviously be decisive in obtaining her release.”

On June 7, RSF referred the unacceptable conditions in which Mohammadi is being detained to all of the relevant UN human rights bodies.

During an oral update to the UN Human Rights Council on July 5, the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran expressed concern over the “continued detention of human rights defenders and lawyers defending the protesters, and at least 17 journalists”.

It is thanks to Mohammadi’s journalistic courage that the world knows what is happening in the Islamic Republic of Iran’s prisons, where 20 journalists are currently detained.

They included three other women: Elaheh Mohammadi, Niloofar Hamedi and Vida Rabbani.

Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

However, South Australia’s new law carries the harshest financial penalties in Australia.

Thirteen Upper House Labor and Liberal MPs voted for the Bill, opposed by two Green MPs and two SABest MPs. The government faced down the cross bench moves to hold an inquiry into the bill, to review it in a year, or add a defence of “reasonableness”.

The Summary Offences (Obstruction of Public Places) Amendment Bill 2023 was introduced into the House Assembly by Premier Peter Malinauskas the day after Extinction Rebellion protests were staged around the Australian Petroleum and  Exploration Association (APPEA) annual conference on May 17.

The most dramatic of these protests was staged by 69-year-old Meme Thorne who abseiled off a city bridge causing delays and traffic to be diverted.

Meanwhile, the gas lobby APPEA which is financed by foreign fossil fuel companies has stopped publishing its (public) financial statements. Questions put for this story were ignored but we will append a response should one be available.

The APPEA conference is a major gathering of oil and gas companies that was bound to attract protests. Its membership covers 95 pecent of Australia’s oil and gas industry and many other companies who supply goods and services to fossil fuel industries.

The dramatic climate protest staged by 69-year-old Meme Thorne who abseiled off an Adelaide bridge last month. Video: The Independent

The principal sponsors of this year’s conference were corporate giants Exxon-Mobil and Woodside.

Since March, Extinction Rebellion South Australia has been openly planning protests to draw attention to scientific evidence showing that any expansion of fossil fuel industries risks massive global disruption and millions of deaths.

The new laws will not apply to those arrested last week, several of whom have already been sentenced under existing laws.

In fact, when SA Attorney-General Kyam Maher was asked about the protests on May 17 shortly after the abseiling incident, he told the Upper House that “there are substantial penalties for doing things that can impede or restrict things like emergency services. I know that (police) . . .  have in the past and will continue to do, enforce the laws that we have.”

Sensing that something was in the wind, he said he would be open to suggestions from the opposition.

Fines up 66 times, prison sentence introduced
That afternoon, SA Opposition Leader and Liberal David Speirs handed the government a draft bill. This was finalised by parliamentary counsel overnight and whipped through the Lower House on May 18, without debate or scrutiny.

It took 20 minutes from start to finish: as one Upper House MP said, it would take “longer to do a load of washing”.

While Malinauskas and Speirs thanked each other for their cooperation, some MPs had not seen the unpublished bill before they passed it.

The new law introduces maximum penalties of A$50,000 (66 times the previous maximum fine) or a prison sentence of three months.

The maximum fine was previously $750, and there was no prison penalty.

If emergency services (police, fire, ambulance) are called to a protest, those convicted can also be required to pay emergency service costs. The scope of the law has also been widened to include “indirect” obstruction of a public place.

This means that if you stage a protest and the police use 20 emergency vehicles to divert traffic, you could be found guilty under the new section and be liable for the costs.

Even people handing out pamphlets about vaping harm in front of a shop, or workers gathering on a footpath to demand better pay, could fall foul of the laws.

An SABest amendment to the original bill removing the word “reckless” restricts its scope to intentional acts.

Peter Malinauskus told Radio Fiveaa on Friday that the new laws aimed to deter “extremists” who protested “with impunity” by crowd sourcing funds to pay their fines.

In speaking about the laws, Malinaukas, Maher and their right-wing media supporters have made constant references to emergency services, and ambulances. But no evidence has emerged that ambulances were delayed.

The author contacted SA Ambulances to ask if any ambulances were held up on May 17, and if they were delayed, whether Thorne was told. SA Ambulance Services acknowledged the question but have not yet answered.

The old ambulance excuse
Significantly, the SA Ambulance Employees Union has complained about the “alarming breadth” of  the laws and reminded the Malinauskas government that in the lead-up to last year’s state election, Labor joined Greens, SABest and others in protests about ambulance ramping, which caused significant traffic delays.

The constant references to emergencies are reminiscent of similar references in NSW. When protesters Violet Coco and firefighter Alan Glover were arrested on the Sydney Harbour Bridge last year, police included a reference to an ambulance in a statement of facts.

The ambulance did not exist and the false statement was withdrawn but this did not stop then Labor Opposition leader, now NSW Premier Chris Minns repeating the allegation when continuing to support harsh penalties even after a judge had released Coco from prison.

It later emerged that the protesters had agreed to move if it was necessary to make way for an ambulance.

The new SA law places a lot of discretion in the hands of the SA police to decide how to use resources and assess costs. The SA Police Commissioner Grant Stevens left no doubt about his hostility to disruptive protests when he said in reference to last week’s abseiling incident, “The ropes are fully extended across the street. So we can’t, as much as we might like to, cut the rope and let them drop.”

In Parliament, Green MP Robert Simms condemned this statement, noting that it had not been withdrawn.

In court, the police prosecutor (as NSW prosecutors have often done)  argued that Thorne, who has been arrested in previous protests, should be refused bail.

Her lawyer Claire O’Connor SC reminded that courts around the country had ruled bail could not be denied to protesters as a form of punishment.

Shock jocks, News Corp, back new laws
She said that, at worst, her client faced a maximum fine of $1250 and three-month prison term if convicted — but added she intended to plead not guilty.

“You cannot isolate a particular group of offenders because of their motivation and treat them differently because of their beliefs,” she said. The magistrate granted Thorne bail until July.

For now the South Australian government has satisfied the radio shock jocks, Newscorp’s Adelaide Advertiser (which applauded the tough penalties), authoritarian elements in the SA police, and the Opposition.

But it has been well and truly wedged. After a fairly smooth first year in power, it now finds itself offside with a massive coalition of civil society, environmental groups, South Australian unions, the SA Law Society and the Council for Social Services, the Greens and SA Best.

In less than two weeks, Premier Malinkauskas’s new law was condemned by a full page advertisement in the Adelaide Advertiser that was signed by human rights, legal, civil society,  environmental and activist organisations; faced two angry street rallies organised to demonstrate opposition to the laws; and was roundly criticised by a range of peak legal and human rights organisations.

Back to the past
Worst of all from the government’s point of view, SA Unions accused Malinkaskas of trashing South Australia’s proud progressive history.

“South Australian union members have fought for over a century to improve our living standards and rights at work. It took just 22 minutes for the government to pass a Bill in the House of Assembly attacking our rights to take the industrial action that made that possible.

“Their Bill is a mess and must be stopped,” SA Unions stated in a post on their official Facebook page.

In hours long speeches during the night, Green MPs Robert Simms and Tammie Franks and SABest Frank Pangano and Connie Bonaros detailed the history of protests that have led to progressive changes, including in South Australia.

They read onto the parliamentary record letters from organisations condemning both the content and unprecedented manner in which the laws were passed as undermining democracy.

Their message was crystal clear — peaceful disobedience is at the heart of democracy and there can be no peaceful disobedience without disruption.

Simms wore a LGBTQI activist pin to remind people that as a gay man he would never have been able to become a politician if it was not for the disruptive US-based Stonewall Riots and the early Sydney Mardi Gras, in which police arrested scores of people.

Protest is about “disrupting routines, people are making a noise and getting attention of people in power . . .  change is led by people who are on the street, not made by those who stand meekly by,” he told Parliament.

Simms read from a letter by Australian Lawyers for Human Rights president Kerry Weste, who wrote, “Without the right to assemble en masse, disturb and disrupt, to speak up against injustice we would not have the eight-hour working day, and women would not be able to vote.

“Protests encourage the development of an engaged and informed citizenry and strengthen representative democracy by enabling direct participation in public affairs. When we violate the right to peaceful protest we undermine our democracy.”

At the same time as it was thumbing its nose at many of its supporters, the South Australian government left no one in doubt about its support for the expansion of the gas industry.

SA Energy Minister Tom Koutsantonis told the APPEA conference, “We are thankful you are here.

“We are happy to a be recipient of APPEA’s largesse in the form of coming here more often,” Koutsantonis said. “The South Australian government is at your disposal, we are here to help and we are here to offer you a pathway to the future.”

‘Gas grovelling’ not well received
This did not impress David Mejia-Canales, senior lawyer at the Human Rights Law Centre, whose words were also quoted in Parliament:

“Two days after the Malinauskas government told gas corporations that the state is at their service, the SA government is making good on its word by rushing through laws to limit the right of climate defenders and others to protest. Australia’s democracy is stronger when people protest on issues they care about

“This knee-jerk reaction by the South Australian government will undermine the ability of everyone in SA to exercise their right to peacefully protest, from young people marching for climate action to workers protesting for better conditions. The Legislative Council must reject this Bill.”

During his five-hour speech in the early hours of Wednesday, SA Best Frank Pangano told Parliament that he could not recall when a bill has “seen so much wholesale opposition from sections of the community who are informed, who know what law making is about.

“You have got a wide section of the community saying in unison, ‘you are wrong’ to the Premier, you actually got it wrong. But we are getting a tin ear.”

And it was not just the climate and human rights activists who were “getting the tin ear”: the SA Australian Law Society released a letter expressing “serious concerns with the manner in which the [bill] was rushed through the House of Assembly”.

It wrote, “This is not how good laws are made.

“Good laws undergo a process of consultation, scrutiny, and debate before being put to a vote. The public did not even have a chance to examine the wording of the Bill before it passed the House of Assembly.

“This is particularly worrying in circumstances where the proposed law in question affects a democratic right as fundamental as the right to protest, and drastically increases penalties for those convicted of an offence.”

The Law Society also sent a list of questions to the government which were not answered.

One of the last speeches in the early morning was by SABest MLC Connie Balaros who, wearing a t-shirt that read “Arrest me Pete”, vowed to continue to campaign against the laws and accused Labor MPs of betraying their members, the community and their own history.

No more baby steps. No more excuses. No more greenwashing. No more bottomless greed of the fossil fuel industry and its enablers.

Early this year, UN Secretary-General Antonio Gutierrez declared, “2023 is a year of reckoning. It must be a year of game-changing climate action.

“We need disruption to end the destruction. No more baby steps. No more excuses. No more greenwashing. No more bottomless greed of the fossil fuel industry and its enablers.”

Climate disasters mount
Since he made that statement, climate scientists have reported that Antarctic ice is melting faster than anticipated. This week, there has been record-beating heat in eastern Canada and the United States, Botswana in Africa, and South East China.

Right now, unprecedented out-of-control wildfires are ravaging Canada.

An international force of 1200 firefighters including Australians have joined the Canadian military battling to bring fires under control. Extreme rain and floods displaced millions in Pakistan and thousands in Australia in 2022.

Recently, extreme rain caused rivers to break their banks in Italy, causing landslides and turning streets into rivers. Homelessness drags on for years as affected communities struggle to recover long after the media moves on.

Is it any wonder that some people don’t continue as if it is ‘business as usual’. Protesters in London invaded Shell’s annual conference last week and in Paris, climate activists were tear gassed at Total Energies AGM.

Is it any wonder that some people don’t continue as if it is “business as usual”. Protesters in London invaded Shell’s annual conference last week and in Paris, climate activists were tear gassed at Total Energies AGM.

In The Netherlands last weekend, 1500 protesters who blocked a motorway to call attention to the climate emergency were water-cannoned and arrested.

On Thursday, May 30, Rising Tide protesters pleaded guilty to entering enclosed lands and attempting to block a coal train in Newcastle earlier this year. They received fines of between $450 and $750, most of which will be covered by crowdfunding.

Three of them were Knitting Nannas, a group of older women who stage frequent protests.

This week the Knitting Nannas and others formed a human chain around NAB headquarters in Sydney. They called for NAB to stop funding fossil fuel projects, including the Whitehaven coal mine.

Knitting Nannas, Rising Tide
Two Knitting Nannas have mounted a legal challenge in the NSW Supreme Court seeking a declaration that the NSW anti-protest laws are invalid because they violate the implied right to freedom of communication in the Australian constitution.

A similar action is already been considered in South Australia.

In this context, fossil fuel industry get togethers may no longer be seen as a PR and networking opportunity for government and companies.

Australian protesters will not be impressed by Federal and State Labor politicians reassurances that they have a right to protest, providing that they meekly follow established legal procedures that empower police and councils to give or refuse permission for assemblies at prearranged places and times and do not inconvenience anyone else.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Papua New Guinea’s National Court has sent a strong message and warning to those accused of sorcery-related violence when it jailed six people for 40 years each for killing a father and his son in Northern province three years ago.

Acting Judge Camillus Sambua jailed Cameron Jovu, Mike Jofo, Clenty Orotu, Branden Asiko, Andrew Sariko and Jesse Akuma, all from Ambene village in Kokoda, last Thursday for the murder of Bartholomew Umbu and his son Siko.

The six killers had accused Umbo and Siku of practising sorcery.

Defence lawyer Emmanuel Yavisa from the Public Solicitor’s Office submitted that his clients be jailed 20 to 25 years because sorcery was a mitigating factor.

However, state lawyer Solomon Kuku argued that sorcery was not a mitigating factor as it was based on assumptions and not facts.

Kuku submitted that a term of 30 years to life imprisonment should be imposed as the killings were gruesome with disregard for human life.

Judge Samua then jailed all the six 40 years each.

‘Life a gift from God’
“Life is a gift from God,” he said.

“It should be kept sacred as it is very precious.

“The act by the six accused [was] barbaric with no regard to life,” he added.

Cameron Jovu will serve 40 years concurrently for two counts of murder.

Mike Jofo, Clenty Orotu, Smith Asiko and Brendan Asiko, were jailed for one count of murder, while Jesse Akuma and Andrew Sariko, for two counts of murder.

A total of 18 people were accused of being involved in the sorcery-related killing.

Eleven were acquitted on Tuesday.

Those acquitted were Emmanuel Koviro, Humphrey Konene, Bobby Jovu, Timothy Jofo, Howard Pou, Zebedee Akuma, Frank Johnson, Loide Koiko Sawa, Smith Ariko, Tadiu Roko and Robert Jovu.

Clarissa Moi is a reporter for The National. Republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By RNZ News

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced today a staggered move for New Zealand into alert level 2 starting on Thursday, with schools and bars reopening later and groups limited to 10 people.

She said retail, malls, cafes, restaurants, cinemas and other public spaces including playgrounds and gyms would be able to reopen on Thursday, May 14.

Schools would return to normal classes from next Monday, May 18, while bars would have to wait until Thursday, May 21, to reopen.

READ MORE: Al Jazeera coronavirus live updates – Saudi Arabia announces new austerity drive

She warned that groupings would also be restricted to just 10 people.

“Why 10? simple. If something goes wrong, that’s much easier to contain, much easier to contact trace,” Ardern said.

She warned that things were going to get tougher before they got better.

“Irresponsible behaviour will take us backwards.”

What alert level 2 means

Case update
There were three new cases of Covid-19 and no further deaths announced in a written statement from the Ministry of Health today.

The total number of confirmed and probable cases in this country is now 1497, with active cases at just 90.

Two of the cases were linked to the St Margaret’s Hospital and Rest Home in Auckland, both nurses at Waitākere Hospital.

The Ministry of Health said both were asymptomatic throughout a stand-down period which they spent in precautionary self-isolation at home.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz