An alleged plot involving firearms and threatening the life of New Zealand pilot Philip Mehrtens when held hostage in Papua this year is being investigated by the Australian Federal Police.

The case involves “advancing a political cause by the separation of West Papua from Indonesia . . . with the intention of coercing by intimidation the governments of New Zealand and Indonesia”.

Named in the AFP search warrant seen by MWM is research scholar Julian King, 63, who has studied and written extensively about West Papuan affairs.

He has told others his home in Coffs Harbour, Queensland, was raided violently earlier this month by police using a stun grenade and smashing a door.

During the search, the police seized phones, computers and documents about alleged contacts with the West Papua rebel group Organisasi Papua Merdeka, OPM (Free Papua Organisation) and a bid to seek weapons and ammunition.

However, no arrests are understood to have been made or charges laid.

King, a former geologist and now a PhD student at Wollongong University, has been studying Papuan reaction to the Indonesian takeover since 1963. He has written in a research paper titled “A soul divided: The UN’s misconduct over West Papua” that West Papuans:

‘live under a military dictatorship described by legal scholars and human rights advocates as systemic terror and alleged genocide.’

Also named in the warrant alongside King is Amatus Dounemee Douw, confirmed by MWM contacts to be Australian citizen Akouboo Amatus Douw, who chairs the West Papua Diplomatic and Foreign Affairs Council, an NGO that states it seeks to settle disputes peacefully.

Risk to Australia-Indonesia relations
The allegations threaten to fragment relations between Indonesia and Australia.

It is widely believed that human rights activists and church organisations are helping Papuan dissidents despite Canberra’s regular insistence that it officially backs Jakarta.

Earlier this year, Deputy PM Richard Marles publicly stressed: “We, Australia, fully recognise Indonesia’s territorial sovereignty. We do not endorse any independence movement.”

In August, Douw alleged Indonesian troops shot Kiwi Glen Conning on August 5 in Central Papua. The government version claims that the pilot was killed by “an armed criminal group” after landing his helicopter, ferrying local people who fled unharmed.

When seized by armed OPM pro-independence fighters in February last year, Mehrtens was flying a light plane for an Indonesian transport company.

He was released unharmed in September after being held for 593 days by the West Papua National Liberation Army (Tentara Pembebasan Nasional Papua Barat – TPNPB), the military wing of the OPM.

AFP is investigating alleged firearms plot which threatened the life of New Zealand pilot Philip Mehrtens when held hostage in West Papua this year #auspol https://t.co/8ZXFIB1fre

— 💧Michael West (@MichaelWestBiz) November 18, 2024

Designated ‘terrorist’ group, journalists banned
OPM is designated as a terrorist organisation in Indonesia but isn’t on the Australian list of proscribed groups. Jakarta bans foreign journalists from Papua, so little impartial information is reported.

After Mehrtens was freed, TPNPB spokesman Sebby Sambom alleged that a local politician had paid a bribe, a charge denied by the NZ government.

However, West Papua Action Aotearoa spokesperson Catherine Delahunty told Radio NZ the bribe was “an internal political situation that has nothing to do with our government’s negotiations.”

Sambom, who has spent time in Indonesian jails for taking part in demonstrations, now operates out of adjacent Papua New Guinea — a separate independent country.

Australia was largely absent from the talks to free Mehrtens that were handled by NZ diplomats and the Indonesian military. The AFP’s current involvement raises the worry that information garnered under the search warrants will show the Indonesian government where the Kiwi was hidden so that locations can be attacked from the air.

At one stage during his captivity, Mehrtens appealed to the Indonesian military not to bomb villages.

It is believed Mehrtens was held in Nduga, a district with the lowest development index in the Republic, a measure of how citizens can access education, health, and income. Yet Papua is the richest province in the archipelago — the Grasberg mine is the world’s biggest deposit of gold and copper.

OPM was founded in December 1963 as a spiritual movement rejecting development while blending traditional and Christian beliefs. It then started working with international human rights agencies for support.

Indigenous Papuans are mainly Christian, while almost 90 percent of Indonesians follow Islam.

Chief independence lobbyist Benny Wenda lives in exile in Oxford. In 2003 he was given political asylum by the UK government after fleeing from an Indonesian jail.  He has addressed the UN and European and British Parliaments, but Jakarta has so far resisted international pressure to allow any form of self-determination.

Questions for new President Prabowo
Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto is in the UK this week, where Papuans have been drumming up opposition to the official visit. In a statement, Wenda said:

‘Prabowo has also restarted the transmigration settlement programme that has made us a minority in our own land.’

“For West Papuans, the ghost of (second president) Suharto has returned — (his) New Order regime still exists, it has just changed its clothes.”

Pleas for recognition of Papuan’s concerns get minimal backing in Indonesia; fears of balkanisation and Western nations taking over a splintered country are well entrenched in the 17,000-island archipelago of 1300 ethnic groups where “unity” is considered the Republic’s foundation stone.

Duncan Graham has a Walkley Award, two Human Rights Commission awards and other prizes for his radio, TV and print journalism in Australia. He now lives in Indonesia. He has been an occasional contributor to Asia Pacific Report and this article was first published by Michael West Media.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Pacific Media Watch newsdesk

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has condemned yesterday’s police raid on Hong Kong media outlet Apple Daily’s headquarters — the second time in less than one year — and has urged the release of the five arrested senior staff.

On 17 June, 2021 independent Hong Kong media outlet Apple Daily’s chief editor Ryan Law, chief executive Cheung Kim-hung, chief operating officer Royston Chow, associate publisher Chan Pui-man and director of Apple Daily Digital Cheung Chi-wai were arrested on suspicion of “conspiracy to collude with foreign forces”, a crime that bears a life sentence under the National Security Law imposed last year by the Chinese regime.

Approximately 500 police officers also raided the media outlet’s headquarters, forcing journalists to leave the newsroom, seizing their computers, phones and other devices.

Authorities have also frozen Apple Daily’s HK$18 million assets (about €2 million).

“Today’s arrests and raid on Apple Daily’s headquarters show that the government will do anything in their power to silence one of the last independent media outlets and symbols of press freedom in Hong Kong”, said Cédric Alviani, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) East Asia bureau head.

He called for “all charges to be dropped and all defendants immediately released”.

This is not the first time that Hong Kong police have raided the media outlet’s headquarters: in August 2020, 200 police officers searched Apple Daily’s premises, blocked its journalists from entering the newsroom and obstructed several major news outlets from covering the incident.

Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai, 2020 RSF Press Freedom Awards laureate, has been detained since December 2020 and was recently sentenced to a total of 20 months in prison for taking part in three “unauthorised” pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.

He also faces six other procedures, including two charges under the National Security Law for which he risks life imprisonment.

Hong Kong, once a bastion of press freedom, has fallen from 18th place in 2002 to 80th place in the 2021 RSF World Press Freedom Index.

The People’s Republic of China, for its part, has stagnated at 177th out of 180.

Pacific Media Watch is an associate of Reporters Without Borders.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Fiji’s NGO Coalition on Human Rights today condemned police for it called heavy-handed intimidation of students and staff at the regional University of the South Pacific, saying it was “deeply troubled” by the leadership saga.

“It is appalling to see the continued interventions and intimidation by the Fiji government and Fiji police at such a crucial time,” it said in a statement.

Police yesterday served a search warrant on The Fiji Times newspaper and confiscated at least three photographs of students protesting in support of their whistleblower vice-chancellor Professor Pal Ahluwalia.

READ MORE: Secret report reveals widespread salary and allowance rorts at USP

He was suspended by the USP Council executive committee on Monday in controversial circumstances.

“We strongly believe that a sustainable and working democracy must protect and ensure good governance, accountability and transparency at all levels,” said the coalition chair Nalini Singh.

“This has been incredibly lacking in the past few days, as we’ve seen the removal of USP vice-chancellor Professor Pal Aluwhalia and ongoing serious allegations of corruption and financial mismanagement.”

Peaceful protests and solidarity actions have been organised at campuses of the 12-nation university in Fiji and the Pacific in support of Professor Aluwhalia.

Students warned not to protest
Police have warned students against holding protests, said the USP Student Association.

“It is appalling to see police deny students and USP staff their fundamental right to freedoms of association and assembly,” said Singh.

“There is also concern on how this impacts on our regional relations as USP is a regional entity.

“This must be investigated by the relevant body without any heavy-handed intimidation from our government and the security forces.”

The coalition called on the Fiji government to “stop this harassment of USP students and staff” and ensure better accountability so that their grievances are met.

The police must also work within human rights standards, the coalition added.

In yesterday’s search of The Fiji Times, the warrant authorised of­fi­cers to ob­tain “video footage and pho­to­graph ar­ti­cles of USP staff and stu­dent protest dated 9 June 2020”.

Edi­tor-in-chief Fred Wes­ley said the news­pa­per was forced to hand over to po­lice three protest pho­to­graphs which were published in Wednesday’s news­pa­per.

He said other in­for­ma­tion re­quested by the po­lice re­lat­ing to the pho­to­graphs had been referred to the news­pa­per’s lawyers.

Forum chair says ‘work together’
Meanwhile, the Pacific Islands Forum (PIR) chair, Tuvalu Prime Minister Kausea Natano, today called on members to “work together, to chart a course forward” for the region’s premier tertiary education institution.

He said in a statement that USP was a “highly valued institution for educating the young minds of future leaders of our Blue Pacific”.

“As Pacific leaders and custodians of this vital institution of higher learning, we take pride in what the university stands for – a shining example of regionalism, and the benefits from pooling our collective resources for the betterment of our Pacific people,” Natano said.

He added that it was important to uphold the principles that bound the Pacific Islands Forum together – “good governance, respect, transparency, accountability and the rule of law”.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Fiji police have raided the headquarters of Fiji’s National Federation Party, apparently in search of information related to social media posts.

In a video shared to the party’s social media, it showed several plain clothes officers rifling through files, papers and storage last night.

Speaking to RNZ Pacific shortly after the raid, leader Professor Biman Prasad said the officers from the Suva CID spent about an hour searching.

READ MORE: Police threaten arrests over USP protests

Professor Prasad said a warrant was provided, but he was not sure what exactly the raid was in relation to.

“We don’t really know what this is about,” he said.

Professor Prasad said the officers said they were looking for documents relating to the party’s social media posts, and possible payments regarding them.

“We don’t pay people to do our media,” he said, adding the party was weighing its next options.

With the Sodelpa party suspended, the NFP and its three MPs are the only opposition still in the Fiji Parliament.

Some of the scenes from the search earlier this evening. #teamnfp #nfpfiji #fijipol pic.twitter.com/pw3togGgSU

— NFP (Fiji) (@FijiNfp) June 9, 2020

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Press freedom groups are sounding the alarm over a pair of police raids on journalists in Australia. Video: Democracy Now!

By Democracy Now!

Press freedom groups are sounding the alarm over a pair of police raids on journalists. Last week, Australian Federal Police swept into the headquarters of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in Sydney, reviewing thousands of documents for information about a 2017 report The Afghan Files that found Australian special forces soldiers may have committed war crimes in Afghanistan.

The raid came on Wednesday, one day after police in Melbourne raided the home of Annika Smethurst, a reporter with the Herald Sun newspaper.

Democracy Now! speaks to Australian journalism professor Joseph Fernandez – correspondent of Reporters Without Borders and Pacific Journalism Review – and Peter Greste, founding director of the Brisbane-based Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom.

Greste was imprisoned for 400 days in 2013 to 2014 while covering the political crisis in Egypt.

READ MORE: Asia Pacific Report stories on the police ABC raids

Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Press freedom groups in Australia are sounding the alarm over a pair of police raids on journalists. On Wednesday last week, Australian Federal Police swept into the headquarters of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in Sydney, reviewing thousands of documents for information about a 2017 report that found Australian special forces may have committed war crimes in Afghanistan.

ABC investigations executive editor John Lyons spoke on his own network just minutes after police served a warrant naming a news director and the two reporters who broke the story.

JOHN LYONS: They have downloaded 9,214 documents. I counted them. And they are now going through them. They’ve set up a huge screen, and they’re going through, email by email. It’s quite extraordinary.

And I feel—as a journalist, I feel it’s a real violation, because these are emails between this particular journalist and his boss, her boss, its drafts, its scripts of stories.

I’ve never seen an assault on the media as savage as this one we’re seeing today at the ABC. … And the chilling message is not so much for the journalists, but it’s also for the public.

AMY GOODMAN: Wednesday’s raid on the ABC came one day after police in Melbourne raided the home of Annika Smethurst, a reporter with the Herald Sun newspaper. Police served a warrant related to Smethurst’s reporting on a secret effort by an Australian intelligence service to expand its surveillance capabilities, including against Australian nationals.

Australia’s acting Federal Police Commissioner Neil Gaughan defended the raids, saying journalists could face prison time for holding classified information.

COMMISSIONER NEIL GAUGHAN: No sector of the community should be immune for this type of activity or evidence collection, more broadly. This includes law enforcement itself, the media or, indeed, even politicians.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, for more, we’re joined by two guests in Australia. With us from Brisbane is Peter Greste. He is the UNESCO chair in journalism and communications at University of Queensland. He is founding director of Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom.

He was imprisoned for over a year, for 400 days, in 2013 to 2014, while covering the political crisis in Egypt.

And joining us from Perth, Australia, Professor Joseph Fernandez is with us, a media law academic at Curtin University, Australia’s correspondent for Reporters Without Borders.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Joseph Fernandez, let’s begin with you. Lay out exactly what happened and when it took place, all the details as you know them, both the raiding of ABC and the journalist’s home.

JOSEPH FERNANDEZ: Thank you for having me on your show. The two raids happened within 48 hours of each other. It began with a raid on Annika Smethurst’s home. You have introduced her.

At her home, the Australian Federal Police spent seven-and-a-half hours going through every nook and cranny of her belongings, including the rubbish bin outside the house. And they sought to access her email messages, phone messages and anything they could lay their hands on, including what she might have kept away in her undies drawer.

Annika obviously was very traumatised by this, but she has held her head up high, in the knowledge that the story about which she was being investigated was really something very arguably and very strongly in the public interest or of legitimate public concern.

The second raid, the following day …

AMY GOODMAN: And that story was?

JOSEPH FERNANDEZ: Sorry. Can you say that again, please?

AMY GOODMAN: And that story was, Joseph?

JOSEPH FERNANDEZ: The story was that there was a discussion, a discussion about a plan to expand state surveillance, that would have possibly included surveillance of ordinary citizens. And this was quite an unprecedented idea.

And the objective of such a plan was obviously going to be justified on the premise of protecting national security.

The second raid happened at the headquarters of the national broadcaster ABC, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, in Sydney. And police officers entered the premises armed with a warrant with an exhaustive inventory of things that they were looking for.

And as you have noted, they scoured hundreds and thousands of documents and materials, and left with a small collection of materials in a sealed package, with the agreement not to use them until a possible challenge is considered in the days ahead.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Joseph Fernandez, these raids coming within a day of each other, was there any coordination, or were these related in any way?

JOSEPH FERNANDEZ: That’s an interesting question. One of the first questions that sprung into people’s minds was whether they were related, whether this was instigated by the government. The prime minister quickly moved to distance himself and his government from the raids, claiming that the two agencies and the police were acting entirely of their own accord.

And the police themselves are on record as saying that the two events are unrelated. And so, it’s left to be seen, you know, whether new light will be shed on the real circumstances that led to these raids. It’s quite hard to accept, without inquiry as to whether there was absolutely no notice given, whether informally or formally, to the bosses in government.

AMY GOODMAN: And for people to understand, I mean, the ABC is the leading broadcaster throughout Australia. I wanted to bring Peter Greste into this conversation. We had you here in our studio after you were imprisoned for well over for year by Egypt with your two Al Jazeera colleagues.

You were working with Al Jazeera at the time. You certainly knew what it meant to be arrested, to not have rights, not to be even told at the beginning why the Egyptian authorities were holding you. Now you see the situation in Australia.

And I was wondering if you can talk about the laws around press freedom, if you have them in Australia. Amazingly, in this warrant, the warrant gave the police wide-ranging authority to view, seize, edit and destroy virtually any document it saw fit.

PETER GRESTE: Yeah, that’s right. Look, there are a whole host of questions in there, Amy, but let me deal with the very beginning of it, and that’s the way I felt when I heard about the news, because it did—I mean, even now I can feel my skin pricking up, thinking about the raids and what that would have felt like, because I know exactly what it was like to have agents burst into your room looking for evidence, and all of the confusion that surrounds that, the outrage that surrounds that.

But I never really honestly expected to see it take place here in Australia. And it seems to me that even though I’m not suggesting Australia is about to become an authoritarian state like Egypt anytime soon, I think that we are being pushed in the same direction by the same kind of imperatives around national security, the prioritising of national security over the human rights and democratic rights of citizens, largely because it’s much easier to make the political case for national security legislation, particularly when you see attacks in the streets and the consequences of that, but much harder to make the more abstract case for human rights and citizens’ rights, freedom of speech, freedom of the press and so on, until you see what that means in practical terms.

And that’s what we saw last week with these two raids. I think it’s very, very concerning to me, and I’m deeply worried.

Now, as you mentioned, we don’t have in Australia any explicit protection for press freedom written into the law, nothing about freedom of speech. Australia has no bill of rights. All we have is an implied right of political communications, that the High Court decided that was there as a function of our democracy.

They said that we live in a representative democracy, and you can’t have an effective representative democracy without political communication, therefore, that right is somehow inferred in the Constitution.

But without anything like the First Amendment in the United States here in Australia, without any explicit protection for press freedom, what we’re seeing is a lot of scope for our legislators to draft laws that really intrude on press freedom in all sorts of deeply troubling ways that make it much harder for journalists to protect their sources, make it much harder even for journalists to contact sources within government.

And so, what we’re seeing is a vast web of interconnected national security laws that, in all sorts of ways, make these kinds of raids that we saw last week possible.

I’m not so critical of the Federal Police for carrying out the raids. I accept that they were probably doing their jobs. And as we’ve been hearing, there may well have been some kind of political involvement in there.

But let’s take what the Federal Police have been saying at face value, that there was nothing political. If there was nothing political, if they were simply fulfilling their duties under the law, then, clearly, the law needs to change. And that’s what we need to start talking about.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Peter Greste, we have about a minute left, but I wanted to ask you, in terms of—who determines the violations of state secrets? Is there one centralised agency, or can various federal agencies decide to conduct these kinds of raids in Australia?

PETER GRESTE: No. Look, it’s quite difficult to know quite how the laws come into effect or come into force. I mean, let’s take a look at the data retention laws, the metadata. In any number of more than 20 agencies, government agencies can look into any Australian’s metadata without a warrant.

Now, they need to apply for a special journalist warrant if they want to investigate journalists’ metadata in a search for sources, but, otherwise, there is no—there is no warrant system. They can look anywhere, anywhere that they want.

And I think that’s the kind of scope that we’re talking about. That’s overreach. You talk to any lawyer, any civil rights activist, anyone who knows about the way the law operates, and they’ll acknowledge that that’s overreach. And we need to really start a vigorous conversation within this country about the limits of state power and the kind of ways that we need to encourage and support press freedom, and also the protection of whistleblowers, because, ultimately, these raids were in the hunt for the sources of these stories, for the journalists’ sources, for the whistleblowers that felt that these stories needed to be told.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we have to wrap up right now, but we want to continue the vigorous discussion, and we’re going to bring folks Part 2 at democracynow.org under web exclusives.

Peter Greste, we want to thank you, UNESCO chair in journalism and communications, University of Queensland, founding director of the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom, imprisoned for more than 400 days.

Also, Joseph Fernandez, a media law academic at Curtin University, Australia’s correspondent for Reporters Without Borders. Stay with us. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

COMMENTARY: By Alexandra Menzies of Central News in Sydney

As I stood out the front of the ABC’s Sydney headquarters on Wednesday morning (June 5), I couldn’t help but feel the conflicting senses of both pride and anxiety.

Just moments earlier, a group of first-year UTS Journalism students, including myself, had raced from our lecture upon learning that the Australian Federal Police (AFP) were conducting a raid of the ABC building next door. It was over the 2017 story “The Afghan Files”.

We waited with perched phones in the middle of an eager scrum of professional journalists from organisations such as Sky News, Channel 9, Channel 7 and Reuters News.

READ MORE: The Afghan Files – Defence leak exposes deadly secrets of Australian special forces

We took photographs and short videos before posting them to our Twitter accounts and watching as audience responses flooded in.

It wasn’t until I saw the comments from international news organisations requesting to use my footage, that I understood the significance of where I was, and what I was doing.

I checked my tweet engagement and interaction statistics and realised that people were following my posts for breaking information.

Hi Allie, I’m a journalist with Storyful News. OK to clear this for use in broadcast/online news with attribution to you and UTS News? Thanks! Details: https://t.co/FDYxmeYB08

— StoryfulNews (@StoryfulNews) June 5, 2019

I was at the scene and, to the best of my ability, I was responsible for letting the world know the truth and facts of the events that were unfolding.

Feeling accomplished and alive
It was the first time that I had been in such a position. Indeed, it was the first time that I had felt what it is like to be a journalist. And to tell you the truth, I had never felt so accomplished and alive.

The videos of fellow journalism students were also picked up by top news organisations. For instance, a video of ABC News director Gaven Morris, shot by Nicholas Rupolo, was reposted by The Australian and news.com.au.

RELATED STORY: AFP Raids: ‘Journalism is not a crime’ says ABC News boss

Through to the afternoon, I was constantly refreshing my feed to check for updates from the ABC’s Head of Investigative Journalism, John Lyons, who was live tweeting from inside the ABC building. He was sharing information on what the AFP officers were searching for, as they rummaged through 9214 files that belonged to the ABC, and were considered of interest in their investigation.

It may sound melodramatic, but my heart became heavy when Lyons posted two photographs of the search warrant that the police had obtained. I was truly astounded by the scope and broadness of what information the AFP had the power to search and seize.

I thought back to how I had felt earlier that day; the immense zest I’d felt for journalism had now been replaced with a fear for it’s future.

I was confronted with the true irony of the fact that I was reporting freely on an investigation that epitomised the gradual restrictions on my chosen career.

Using this as my incentive, I continued to follow the raid as it stretched into the night.

By 7:30pm, there were six journalists and photographers, seven including myself, who remained out the front of the ABC building.

Keeping an eye out
We chatted among ourselves while keeping an eye out for any movements or updates on the raid. Lyons then tweeted photographs of the AFP filling out paperwork. He approximated that the raid would be concluding in 45 minutes.

At 8:14pm, one of the photographers sighted the AFP officers walking through the security gates of the ABC building.

“Get your cameras ready!,” he yelled.

Remembering the tips and tricks that I had learnt about shooting videos on a mobile phone, I captured the AFP as they made a swift exit from the building across Harris Street, taking with them bags that were filled with what we can only assume to be evidence.

I returned to the ABC building along with the other journalists and photographers. We sat and looked through the photographs and videos that we’d been able to get, and in doing so, I was relieved.

Admittedly, it’s a strange emotion to have felt. But I was relieved by the determination of those who I’d waited with. For over eight hours, some without a break, they had stayed to break the news that the raid had finally ended.

Their sheer perseverance gave me hope in the otherwise grim future of journalism.

Scrolled through Twitter
When I went home, I scrolled through Twitter and noticed another post from Lyons.

“Bravo to this country’s media for taking on the government over the new war on the media”, he said.

“I’ve never seen such a united front. Old rivalries put aside. Journalism matters”.

I owe a great deal of gratitude to Lyons and the other news organisations who showed their support for journalism in the wake of the ABC raid.

It is comforting to know that, as long as people continue to fight for its freedom, journalism will survive.

Befitting what Wednesday’s events taught me – and as quoted by former Washington Post president and publisher Philip L. Graham – “Journalism is the first rough draft of history”.

Alexandra Menzies is a first year journalism student at the University of Technology Sydney with a passion for politics and human rights. This article was first published by the UTS Central News journalism lab

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By Denis Muller of University of Melbourne

In their raids on media organisations, journalists and whistleblowers, the Australian Federal Police have shown themselves to be the tool of a secretive, ruthless and vindictive executive government.

Secretive because the extensive web of laws passed under the rubric of national security, on top of the secrecy provisions of the Commonwealth Crimes Act, gives the executive wide powers to classify as secret anything it wishes to hide.

As the former investigative reporter Ross Coulthart once memorably said, it could include the office Christmas card.

READ MORE: Why the raids on Australian media present a clear threat to democracy

Ruthless because the stories revealed by whistleblowers and reporters targeted by the AFP and other security agencies have offered accounts of cruelty, misconduct, dishonesty and slyness. These include:

Real threat lacking
Vindictive because in the most recent two cases it has taken more than a year after publication for the AFP to take action, revealing how utterly lacking in any real threat to national security the leaks and publications were.

It follows that these raids are a naked attempt to take revenge on whistleblowers and intimidate the journalists who published their stories.

As for the AFP, while it is true they are acting in response to references from other government agencies, it raises questions about the way they exercise their vaunted operational independence.

What weight do they give to how real a threat to national security is posed by any particular leak? What weight do they give to the imperative that leakers be made an example of and journalists be intimidated?

Or do they just want to show the rest of the executive branch that they are on the team?

In addition to this question of AFP culture, many interrelated factors have brought Australia to this point – a clear and present danger to freedom of the press.

One is the catch-all nature of section 70 of the Commonwealth Crimes Act. This makes it an offence punishable by up to two years’ jail for a public servant or former public servant to make an unauthorised disclosure of any fact or document they come across in their role as a public servant.

70 national security laws
Another is the vast body of national security laws — about 70 of them at last count.

In the context of press freedom, one of the most oppressive is the so-called metadata law of 2015, which makes it relatively easy for the police and security forces to carry out electronic surveillance of communications between journalists and their sources.

Not only do these laws provide for the criminal prosecution of journalists, they also contain very limited public-interest defences. In many instances, they reverse the onus of proof, so the journalist has to prove a defence rather than the prosecution having to prove guilt.

A third factor is the Commonwealth’s weak whistleblower protection law, the Public Interest Disclosure Act. This offers no specific protection for a whistleblower who goes to the media, even after he or she has tried to get the wrongdoing corrected internally.

We are seeing this play out in the courts now with the prosecution of Tax Office whistleblower Richard Boyle.

Three government ministers — Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and Attorney-General Christian Porter — have all batted away questions about the latest police raids, taking refuge in saying it is the law taking its course.

That is not the point. The point is that the politicians have constructed a repressive legal regime designed to protect the executive branch of government, impede accountability to the public and exert a chilling effect on the press.

Labor support
This is not a party-political argument. Labor has largely supported the creation of this regime, although to be fair it has forced through some amendments to give some protection to journalists.

A fourth factor is that Australia is alone among the “Five Eyes” countries that make up the West’s main intelligence network in having no constitutional protection for freedom of the press. The US, Britain, Canada and New Zealand all have this protection in some form.

Finally, laws that do exist in Australia to protect journalists’ sources offer no protection from police raids and electronic surveillance.

These laws – called “shield laws” because they are designed to shield the identity of confidential sources – apply only in court proceedings. They allow a journalist to claim a privilege against disclosing information that may identify a confidential source. The court then has to weigh up the consequences of forcing the journalist to identify the source.

If a source is identified by electronic surveillance or seizure of files or electronic devices, the journalist is powerless to keep any promise of confidentiality.

We are back to the days when communicating with confidential sources can be done safely only through snail mail or – after leaving mobile devices behind – in underground car parks.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

How Al Jazeera reported yesterday’s raid by Australian police on the offices of the national public broadcaster ABC. The raid was over a series of stories from 2017 on killings allegedly carried out by Australian special forces in Afghanistan. Video: Al Jazeera

By RNZ News

An Australian police raid on public broadcaster ABC risks having a chilling effect on freedom of the press, its editorial director says.

Police officers left the ABC’s Sydney headquarters more than eight hours after a raid began over allegations it had published classified material.

It related to a series of 2017 stories known as The Afghan Files about alleged misconduct by Australian troops in Afghanistan.

READ MORE: Why the raids on Australian media present a clear threat to democracy

ABC editorial director Craig McMurtrie told RNZ Morning Report the message the raids sent to sources and whistleblowers who wanted to reveal things in the public interest was concerning.

LISTEN: ‘Chilling effect on freedom of the press’ – Morning Report

“We’re concerned obviously about a chilling effect it has on freedom of the press,” he said.

The stories, by ABC investigative journalists Dan Oakes and Sam Clark, revealed allegations of unlawful killings by Australian special forces in Afghanistan and were based on hundreds of pages of secret Defence documents leaked to the ABC.

McMurtrie said the ABC believed it had acted lawfully and stood by its reporters.

‘Not cavalier’
“It’s not as though we’re cavalier about these things. We have exhaustive quality control and checking processes and we always strive to act in the public interest.

“It is our job as journalists to hold government authorities and agencies to account and that is why this is so important.”

Police officers leaving the ABC’s Sydney headquarters took with them two USB drives containing a small number of electronic files, which were sealed in plastic bags pending a review by ABC’s lawyers, the broadcaster reported.

AFP technicians password-protected the files and police will be unable to access them until the two-week period of review is over.

Police searched for article drafts, graphics, digital notes, visuals, raw television footage and all versions of scripts related to The Afghan Files stories. Thousands of items were found which matched search terms listed in the warrant.

ABC investigations editor John Lyons ended up live tweeting the raid and said it was a “bad, sad and dangerous day” for Australia.

Australian police raided the Canberra home of a News Corp journalist on Tuesday but said the raids were not linked.

Unauthorised leak
They alleged there had been an unauthorised leak of national security information in a story by Annika Smethurst in April 2018 which said the government was considering giving spy agencies greater surveillance powers.

News Corp, controlled by media baron Rupert Murdoch, called the raid “outrageous and heavy handed”, and “a dangerous act of intimidation”.

Police questioning of journalists is not new, but raids on two influential news organisations sparked warnings that national security was being used to justify curbs on whistleblowing and reporting that might embarrass the government.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Pacific Media Watch Newsdesk

Two raids by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) on journalists and media organisations within the last 24 hours represent a disturbing attempt to intimidate legitimate news journalism that is in the public interest, says the union for Australian journalists, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA).

Yesterday’s raid on a News Corporation Australia journalist, and today’s raid on the public broadcaster ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) and three of its journalists, suggest that no media organisation is immune from government attacks on press freedom.

“A second day of raids by the AFP sets a disturbing pattern of assaults on Australian press freedom. This is nothing short of an attack on the public’s right to know,” said MEAA media section president Marcus Strom in a statement.

READ MORE: ABC’s Sydney headquarters raided by Australian Federal Police over Afghan Files stories

“Police raiding journalists is becoming normalised and it has to stop.

“These raids are about intimidating journalists and media organisations because of their truth-telling.

“They are about more than hunting down whistleblowers that reveal what governments are secretly doing in our name, but also preventing the media from shining a light on the actions of government,” Strom said.

“It is equally clear that the spate of national security laws passed by the Parliament over the past six years have been designed not just to combat terrorism but to persecute and prosecute whistleblowers who seek to expose wrongdoing.

‘Poisonous laws’
“These laws seek to muzzle the media and criminalise legitimate journalism. They seek to punish those that tell Australians the truth.

“Yesterday’s raid was in response to a story published a year ago. Today’s raid comes after a story was published nearly two years ago.

“Suddenly, just days after a federal election, the Federal Police launches this attack on press freedom. It seems that when the truth embarrasses the government, the result is the Federal Police will come knocking at your door,” Strom said.

“MEAA demands to know who is responsible for ordering these coordinated raids, and why now. We call for the government and opposition to take collective responsibility for the legal framework they’ve created that is allowing for what appears to be politically motivated assault on press freedom,” Strom said.

“For years the Liberal and Labor parties have engaged in a high-stakes game of bluff which has seen the introduction of anti-democratic laws in the guise of national security legislation.

“It is time that the government and opposition had a common sense approach to defusing these poisonous laws that are effectively criminalising journalism. This attack on the truth must end.”

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz