A day before the first State of the Nation Address (SONA) of President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr in Quezon City, a shooting incident inside the Ateneo de Manila University claimed the lives of at least three individuals, including the former mayor of Lamitan, Basilan, Rose Furigay.

Furigay was supposed to attend the graduation of her daughter, Hannah, when she was shot about 3.30 pm yesterday. Furigay suffered gunshot wounds in her head and chest.

Graduation rites of the Ateneo Law School were cancelled by the university.

Aside from Furigay, her long-time aide, Victor George Capistrano was also shot and died on the scene.

Ateneo security guard Jeneven Bandiala also died, Quezon City Police District (QCPD) director Brigadier-General Remus Medina said during his briefing on Sunday.

Hannah was also wounded in the incident and was immediately taken to the Quirino Memorial Medical Center. Medina said she was currently in stable condition.

Suspect Dr Chao Tiao Yumol was also wounded and suffered a gunshot wound. The police said they were still determining who shot the suspect.

The police recovered bullets and two guns — one with a silencer. Medina said Yumol used the gun with a silencer in killing the victims.

Yumol and his motive
Yumol, 38, is a general practitioner doctor and a native of Lamitan City. The police said the doctor had personal motives for killing Furigay.

“Initially, sa pagtatanong namin sa kanya, meron na silang long history ng away sa Lamitan, Basilan. So according to them, eh nagpapalitan na sila ng kaso. Itong si doktor naman ay laging nape-pressure sa pamilya ng Furigay. So lumalabas, personal ang away nila,” Medina said during his briefing.

(Initially, based on our interrogation of the suspect, they have a long history of conflict in Lamitan, Basilan. According to them, they filed cases against each other. The doctor was always pressured by the Furigay family. So it turned out that they had a personal conflict.)

Medina said Furigay filed 76 counts of cyber libel against Yumol, which temporarily prevented the suspect from practising medicine, according to the police. The suspect was detained for his libel cases, but was able to post bail, Medina added.

According to the QCPD director, Yumol also alleged that Furigay had a history of corruption:

“May ina-allege din si Doctor Yumol na katiwalian ng mayor. According to him, iyon po ang mga ina–allege niya, that is now subject for verification (Doctor Yumol is also alleging that the slain mayor was involved in corruption. According to him, that is what he is alleging, that is now subject for verification).”

The suspect was currently in the custody of the QCPD and undergoing custodial investigation.

No mention of human rights
Meanwhile, Rappler reports that was zero mention of human rights when Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr delivered his inaugural speech as president of the Philippines on June 30, and he went on to serve his first month in Malacañang without appointing anyone to the board vacancy of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR).

For his first State of the Nation Address (SONA) today, there is a mix of optimism and pessimism from the human rights community.

Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of international group Human Rights Watch, urged Marcos to seize the “chance to distance himself from the rampant rights violations and deep-seated impunity of the Rodrigo Duterte administration”.

“President Marcos has a golden opportunity to get the Philippines on the right track by setting out clear priorities and policies to improve human rights in the country,” Robertson said in a statement.

The progressive Filipino lawyer Edre Olalia, president of the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL), in a forum that the human rights prospects under Marcos “quite candidly [do] not look good.”

Jairo Bolledo is a Rappler reporter. Republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Tensions are running high in the Middle East in the waning days of the Trump administration.

Over the weekend, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif claimed Israeli agents were planning to attack US forces in Iraq to provide US President Donald Trump with a pretext for striking Iran.

New intelligence from Iraq indicate that Israeli agent-provocateurs are plotting attacks against Americans—putting an outgoing Trump in a bind with a fake casus belli.

Be careful of a trap, @realDonaldTrump. Any fireworks will backfire badly, particularly against your same BFFs.

— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) January 2, 2021

Just ahead of the one-year anniversary of the US assassination of Iran’s charismatic General Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards also warned his country would respond forcefully to any provocations.

Today, we have no problem, concern or apprehension toward encountering any powers. We will give our final words to our enemies on the battlefield.

Israeli military leaders are likewise preparing for potential Iranian retaliation over the November assassination of senior Iranian nuclear scientist Dr Mohsen Fakhrizadeh — an act Tehran blames on the Jewish state.

Both the US and Israel have reportedly deployed submarines to the Persian Gulf in recent days, while the US has flown nuclear-capable B-52 bombers to the region in a show of force.

And in another worrying sign, the acting US Defence Secretary, Christopher Miller, announced over the weekend the US would not withdraw the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz and its strike group from the Middle East — a swift reversal from the Pentagon’s earlier decision to send the ship home.

Israel’s priorities under a new US administration
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would like nothing more than action by Iran that would draw in US forces before Trump leaves office this month and President-elect Joe Biden takes over. It would not only give him the opportunity to become a tough wartime leader, but also help to distract the media from his corruption charges.

Any American military response against Iran would also make it much more difficult for Biden to establish a working relationship with Iran and potentially resurrect the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

It’s likely in any case the Biden administration will have less interest in getting much involved in the Middle East — this is not high on the list of priorities for the incoming administration.

However, a restoration of the Iranian nuclear agreement in return for the lifting of US sanctions would be welcomed by Washington’s European allies.

This suggests Israel could be left to run its own agenda in the Middle East during the Biden administration.

Israel sees Iran as its major ongoing security threat because of its support for Hezbollah in Lebanon and Palestinian militants in Gaza.

One of Israel’s key strategic policies is also to prevent Iran from ever becoming a nuclear weapon state. Israel is the only nuclear weapon power in the Middle East and is determined to keep it that way.

While Iran claims its nuclear programme is only intended for peaceful purposes, Tehran probably believes realistically (like North Korea) that its national security can only be safeguarded by possession of a nuclear weapon.

In recent days, Tehran announced it would begin enriching uranium to 20 percent as quickly as possible, exceeding the limits agreed to in the 2015 nuclear deal.

This is a significant step and could prompt an Israeli strike on Iran’s underground Fordo nuclear facility. Jerusalem contemplated doing so nearly a decade ago when Iran previously began enriching uranium to 20 percent.

How the Iran nuclear deal fell apart
Iran’s nuclear programme began in the 1950s, ironically with US assistance as part of the “Atoms for Peace” programme. Western cooperation continued until the 1979 Iranian Revolution toppled the pro-Western shah of Iran. International nuclear cooperation with Iran was then suspended, but the Iranian programme resumed in the 1980s.

After years of negotiations, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was signed in 2015 by Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany (known as the P5+1), together with the European Union.

The JCPOA tightly restricted Iran’s nuclear activities in return for the lifting of sanctions. However, this breakthrough soon fell apart with Trump’s election.

In April 2018, Netanyahu revealed Iranian nuclear programme documents obtained by Mossad, claiming Iran had been maintaining a covert weapons program. The following month, Trump announced the US withdrawal from the JCPOA and a re-imposition of American sanctions.

Iran initially said it would continue to abide by the nuclear deal, but after the Soleimani assassination last January, Tehran abandoned its commitments, including any restrictions on uranium enrichment.

Israel’s history of preventive strikes
Israel, meanwhile, has long sought to disrupt its adversaries’ nuclear programs through its “preventative strike” policy, also known as the “Begin Doctrine”.

In 1981, Israeli aircraft struck and destroyed Iraq’s atomic reactor at Osirak, believing it was being constructed for nuclear weapons purposes. And in 2007, Israeli aircraft struck the al-Kibar nuclear facility in Syria for the same reason.

Starting in 2007, Mossad also apparently conducted an assassination program to impede Iranian nuclear research. Between January 2010 and January 2012, Mossad is believed to have organised the assassinations of four nuclear scientists in Iran. Another scientist was wounded in an attempted killing.

Israel has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement in the killings.

Iran is suspected to have responded to the assassinations with an unsuccessful bomb attack against Israeli diplomats in Bangkok in February 2012. The three Iranians convicted for that attack were the ones recently exchanged for the release of Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert from an Iranian prison.

The Mossad assassination programme was reportedly suspended under pressure from the Obama administration to facilitate the Iran nuclear deal. But there seems little doubt the assassination of Fakhrizadeh was organised by Mossad as part of its ongoing efforts to undermine the Iranian nuclear programme.

Fakhrizadeh is believed to have been the driving force behind covert elements of Iran’s nuclear programme for many decades.

The timing of his killing was perfect from an Israeli perspective. It put the Iranian regime under domestic pressure to retaliate. If it did, however, it risked a military strike by the truculent outgoing Trump administration.

It’s fortunate Moore-Gilbert was whisked out of Iran just before the killing, as there is little likelihood Iran would have released a prisoner accused of spying for Israel (even if such charges were baseless) after such a blatant assassination had taken place in Iran.

What’s likely to happen next?
Where does all this leave us now? Much will depend on Iran’s response to what it sees (with some justification) as Israeli and US provocation.

The best outcome would be for no obvious Iranian retaliation or military action despite strong domestic pressure for the leadership to act forcefully. This would leave the door open for Biden to resume the nuclear deal, with US sanctions lifted under strict safeguards to ensure Iran is not able to maintain a covert weapons program.

By Dr Clive Williams, Campus visitor, ANU Centre for Military and Security Law, Australian National University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The commander of the Indonesian Army Military Police (Danpuspomad), Lieutenant-General Dodik Widjanarko says TNI AD soldiers in Papua have committed acts of violence, including burning bodies to erase traces of their killing.

General Widjanarko said bodies were burned after in an incident that led to two civilians, Luther Zanambani and Apinus Zanambani, detained at the Sugapa Koramil, Papua, on 21 April 2020 dying without trace, reports CNN Indonesia.

The two brothers are reportedly the family of Pastor Yeremia Zanambani, who was shot dead in Intan Jaya, Papua, on September 19.

General Widjanarko described the chronology of the deaths of the two civilians.

The incident began when the Raider Battalion Unit 433 JS Kostrad carried out a sweeping operation on April 21. During the operation, they suspected the two brothers were part of an alleged “Armed Criminal Group” (KKB).

The KKB, or the Armed Separatist Criminal Group (KKSB), is how law enforcers in Indonesia label the militant group of the pro-independence Free Papua Organisation (OPM).

On the basis of this suspicion, several members who were on duty at that time immediately interrogated the two people at Sugapa Koramil Paniai Kodim, said General Widjanarko.

Yellow public truck
“During the interrogation, there was excessive action beyond the limits of propriety which resulted in Apinus Zanambani’s death and Luther Zanambani’s critical death at that time,” General Widjanarko told a media conference at the Army Puspom Building, Jalan Medan Merdeka Timur, Central Jakarta, on Wednesday.

At first the two civilians were about to be transferred to Kostrad’s Yonif PR 433 JS Kotrad by using a yellow public truck, said the general.

However, while riding a vehicle with police number B 9745 PGD in the middle of the journey, Luther Zanambani, who was previously critical, died.

General Widjanarko said that in order to erase any trace of the deaths of the two civilians, members of the Indonesian Army who were ainvolved in the incident tried to remove the two bodies.

“When arriving at Kotis Yonif Pararider 433 JS Kostrad to leave a trail, the victim’s bodies were then burned and the ashes dumped in the Julai River in Sugapa sub-district,” said the three-star TNI general.

Regarding the deaths of the two Zanambani brothers, General Widjanarko said that the Joint Army Police Headquarters Team together with the Cenderawasih XVII Military Command had named nine suspects.

The nine suspects, comprised two Paniai Kodim personnel and seven personnel from Yonit Pararider 433 JSD Kostrad.

Nine suspects named
“The suspects comprise two personnel from the Paniai Military Command, Major Inf ML and the FTP Special Officer as well as seven personnel from the Yonif Para Raider 433 JS Kostrad, namely Major Inf YAS, Lettu Inf JMTS, Serka B, Seryu OSK, Sertu MS, Serda PG, and Kopda MAY,” said General Widjanarko.

The suspects’ determination was carried out after examining 21 witnesses, both from the TNI and civilians, said the general.

The investigation was carried out on 19 members of the Indonesian Army comprising five personnel from the Paniai Kodim, 13 personnel from Yonif Para Raider 433 JS, and one personnel from Denintel Kodam XVII Cenderawasih.

Even though nine suspects had been named, General Widjanarko said that his party was still conducting an in-depth examination of several personnel of Yonif Para Raider 433 JS, which needed further investigation.

This article was translated by a Pacific Media Watch correspondent from the original report. 

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The family of Pastor Yeremia Zanambani, who was shot dead in Hitadipa district, Intan Jaya regency, Papua, three months ago are asking that the case be tried in a human rights court.

They oppose having the trial being taken to a military tribunal, reports CNN Indonesia.

“They [Yeremia’s family] want the case to be heard in a human rights court, so that the perpetrator can be tried in accordance with his actions and there will be justice for the victim. The victim’s family has no faith in the legal process of a military tribunal,” said a member of the team of lawyers representing Zanambani’s family, Yohanis Mambrasar.

In early October the government formed the Intan Jaya Joint Fact Finding Team (TGPF) to investigate the killing of Pastor Zanambani on September 19.

The team found allegations of the involvement of security personnel in the murder of the religious figure.

In a press release on Wednesday, the commander of the Army’s Military Police Centre, Lieutenant General Dodik Widjanarko, said that the Army Headquarters Legal Process Reinforcement Team was in the process of attempting to question 21 personnel from the 400 Raider Military Battalion in relation to the shooting.

Aside from questioning the 21 personnel, Widjanarko said that they had also questioned 14 personnel from the Cendrawasih XVII Regional Military Command’s (Kodam) Penebalan Apter Military Operational Unit Task Force.

Legal handling deplored
Mambrasar said that he deplored the legal handling of the case which should already be at a more advanced stage in the investigation.

“Like arresting and declaring suspects, because there’s already enough evidence. There are many witnesses and the indicating evidence is already very strong [and enough] to explain the case and the perpetrator,” he said.

He also said other such cases which had occurred in Papua recently, such as the murder of two youths named Luter Zanambani and Apinus Zanambani on April 21, the torching of a healthcare office on September 19 and the shooting of Agus Duwitau on October 7 must also be resolved by a human rights court.

Mambrasar said that as regulated under Article 9 in conjunction with Article 7(b) of Law Number 26/2000 on a Human Rights Court, the elements of a gross human rights violation in these cases — including Zanambani’s shooting — had already been met.

“As referred to under Article 7, namely that there were acts of violent killing which took in a systematic and broad manner”, he said.

IndoLeft News reports:
Although the government sanctioned TGPF only said that it found indications of the involvement of security personnel in Zanambani’s murder, an investigation by the government’s own National Human Rights Commission (Komnas HAM) explicitly alleged Zanambani’s murderer as being Hitadipa sub-district military commander Chief Sergeant Alpius Hasim Madi.

Komnas HAM said Zanambani was killed while being interrogated on the whereabouts of an Indonesian military assault rifle two days earlier during an exchange of fire with the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB).

Translated by James Balowski for IndoLeft News. The original title of the article was “Keluarga Korban Minta Kasus Intan Jaya Diadili Pengadilan HAM”.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The West Papua Council of Churches wants an end to what it says is the re-militarisation of the region.

It wrote to Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo and also asked him to follow through on his commitment to meet with Papuan pro-referendum groups.

The churches said they were writing because of the escalation in violence in recent weeks, including the repressive response to peaceful protests rejecting any extension of Special Autonomy, and the killing of a Papuan pastor, Reverend Yeremia Zanambani, two weeks ago in Intan Jaya regency.

The death of the pastor has been blamed by churches on the Indonesian military, although the military initially denied it.

However, according to the churches, the remilitarisation that has occurred in the region over the past year is aimed at turning Papua into a military operations area, with the military taking control of the natural resources on a large scale.

The churches documented how Indonesia strove in the 1960s to destroy Papuan culture and said an apartheid ideology was applied to Papuans with the people subjugated.

They said the President, as Indonesia’s supreme military commander, along with the member countries of the UN’s Human Rights Council, needed to resolve the issue of Papua peacefully through negotiations.

This article is republished by the Pacific Media Centre under a partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A teenager held her phone steady enough to capture the final moments of George Perry Floyd’s life as he apparently suffocated under the weight of a Minneapolis police officer’s knee on his neck. The video went viral.

What happened next has played out time and again in American cities after high-profile cases of alleged police brutality.

Vigils and protests were organised in Minneapolis and around the United States to demand police accountability. But while investigators and officials called for patience, unrest boiled over. News reports soon carried images of property destruction and police in riot gear.

READ MORE: US police seen as using excessive force as outrage over George Floyd’s death rises

The general public’s opinions about protests and the social movements behind them are formed in large part by what they read or see in the media. This gives journalists a lot of power when it comes to driving the narrative of a demonstration.

They can emphasiSe the disruption protests cause or echo the dog whistles of politicians that label protesters as “thugs.”

But they can also remind the public that at the heart of the protests is the unjust killing of another black person. This would take the emphasis away from the destruction of the protests and toward the issues of police impunity and the effects of racism in its many forms.

The role journalists play can be indispensable if movements are to gain legitimacy and make progress. And that puts a lot of pressure on journalists to get things right.

My research has found that some protest movements have more trouble than others getting legitimacy. My co-author Summer Harlow and I have studied how local and metropolitan newspapers cover protests. We found that narratives about the Women’s March and anti-Trump protests gave voice to protesters and significantly explored their grievances. On the other end of the spectrum, protests about anti-black racism and indigenous people’s rights received the least legitimizing coverage, with them more often seen as threatening and violent.

Forming the narrative
Decades ago, scholars James Hertog and Douglas McLeod identified how news coverage of protests contributes to the maintenance of the status quo, a phenomenon referred to as “the protest paradigm.” They held that media narratives tend to emphasize the drama, inconvenience and disruption of protests rather than the demands, grievances and agendas of protesters.

These narratives trivialise protests and ultimately dent public support.

Here’s how this theoretically plays out today:

Journalists pay little attention to protests that aren’t dramatic or unconventional.

Knowing this, protesters find ways to capture media and public attention. They don pink “pussy” hats or kneel during the national anthem. They might even resort to violence and lawlessness.

Now the protesters have the media’s attention, but what they cover is often superficial or delegitimising, focusing on the tactics and disruption caused and excluding discussion on the substance of the social movement.

We wanted to explore if this classic theory fit coverage from 2017 – a year of large-scale protests accompanying the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency.

To do so, we analysed the framing of protest reporting from newspapers in Texas. The state’s size and diversity made it a good proxy for the country at large.

In all, we identified 777 articles by searching for terms such as “protest,” “protester,” “Black Lives Matter” and “Women’s March.” This included reports written by journalists in 20 Texas newsrooms, such as the El Paso Times and the Houston Chronicle, as well as syndicated articles from sources like the Associated Press.

We looked at how articles framed the protests in the headline, opening sentence and story structure, and classified the reporting using four recognized frames of protest:

• Riot: Emphasizing disruptive behavior and the use or threat of violence.
• Confrontation: Describing protests as combative, focusing on arrests or “clashes” with police.
• Spectacle: Focusing on the apparel, signs or dramatic and emotional behavior of protesters.
• Debate: Substantially mentioning protester’s demands, agendas, goals and grievances.

We also kept an eye out for sourcing patterns to identify imbalances that often give more credence to authorities than protesters and advocates.

Overall, news coverage tended to trivialize protests by focusing most often on dramatic action. But some protests suffered more than others.

Reports focused on spectacle more often than substance. Much was made of what protesters were wearing, crowd sizes – large and small – celebrity involvement and flaring tempers.

The substance of some marches got more play than others. Around half of the reports on anti-Trump protests, immigration rallies, women’s rights demonstrations and environmental actions included substantial information about protesters’ grievances and demands.

In contrast, Dakota Pipeline and anti-black racism-related protests got legitimising coverage less than 25 percent of the time and were more likely to be described as disruptive and confrontational.

In coverage of a St Louis protest over the acquittal of a police officer who killed a black man, violence, arrest, unrest and disruption were the leading descriptors, while concern about police brutality and racial injustice was reduced to just a few mentions.

Buried more than 10 paragraphs down was the broader context: “The recent St. Louis protests follow a pattern seen since the August 2014 killing of Michael Brown in nearby Ferguson: the majority of demonstrators, though angry, are law-abiding.”

As a consequence of variances in coverage, Texas newspaper readers may form the perception that some protests are more legitimate than others. This contributes to what we call a “hierarchy of social struggle,” in which the voices of some advocacy groups are lifted over others.

Lurking bias
Journalists contribute to this hierarchy by adhering to industry norms that work against less-established protest movements. On tight deadlines, reporters may default to official sources for statements and data.

This gives authorities more control of narrative framing. This practice especially becomes an issue for movements like Black Lives Matter that are countering the claims of police and other officials.

Implicit bias also lurks in such reporting. Lack of diversity has long plagued newsrooms.

In 2017, the proportion of white journalists at The Dallas Morning News and the Houston Chronicle was more than double the proportion of white people in each city.

Protests identify legitimate grievances in society and often tackle issues that affect people who lack the power to address them through other means. That’s why it is imperative that journalists do not resort to shallow framing narratives that deny significant and consistent space to air the afflicted’s concerns while also comforting the very comfortable status quo.

Dr Danielle K. Kilgo is an assistant professor of journalism at Indiana University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

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Pacific Media Watch

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has called on Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s government to end the “absurd situation” in which Australian investigative journalist Mary Ann Jolley is banned from visiting New Zealand because she was deported from Malaysia in 2015 in connection with her reporting.

“I’m basically regarded by New Zealand as a criminal,” Mary Ann Jolley said after New Zealand Immigration last week prevented her from boarding a flight from Sydney to Auckland, where she wanted to go for personal reasons, reports RSF.

The ban is the result of a very literal interpretation of Section 15 of New Zealand’s Immigration Act, which prohibits the entry of a person “who has, at any time, been removed, excluded, or deported from another country”.

READ MORE: NZ bars Australian investigative journalist

Jolley’s deportation from Malaysia in 2015 was a result of her investigative reporting in Kuala Lumpur for Al Jazeera on a corruption scandal involving the sale of French submarines and a related political murder, in which then Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak was allegedly implicated.

She has since returned many times to Malaysia.

– Partner –

When she contacted New Zealand’s consulate in Sydney, she was told that she would have to request a “special direction” every time she wanted to visit New Zealand.

Kafkaesque situation
“As Australian citizens can travel freely to New Zealand, it is unacceptable that Mary Ann Jolley is being penalised in this way for her reporting in a third country five years ago,” said Asia-Pacific director Daniel Bastard.

“We call on immigration minister Iain Lees-Galloway to intervene immediately on her behalf in order to end this utterly Kafkaesque situation.”

When travelling, Jolley always carries Malaysian government documents explaining the reason for her deportation in 2015 and certifying that she committed no crime.

It is the height of absurdity that she is now banned although she was allowed into New Zealand with no problem last year to cover the Christchurch mosque shootings.

New Zealand is ranked 7th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2019 World Press Freedom Index.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

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