The Enemy Within, by Maire Leadbeater is many things. It is:

• A family history
• A social history
• A history of the left-wing in Aotearoa
• A chilling reminder of the origin and continuation of the surveillance state in New Zealand, and
• A damn good read.

The book is a great example of citizen or activist authorship. The author, Maire Leadbeater, and her family are front and centre of the dark cloud of the surveillance state that has hung and still hangs over New Zealand’s “democracy”.

What better place to begin the book than the author noting that she had been spied on by the security services from the age of 10. What better place to begin than describing the role of the Locke family — Elsie, Jack, Maire, Keith and their siblings — have played in Aotearoa society over the last few decades.

And what a fitting way to end the book than with the final chapter entitled, “Person of Interest: Keith Locke”; Maire’s much-loved brother and our much-loved friend and comrade.

In between these pages is a treasure trove of commentary and stories of the development of the surveillance state in the settler colony of NZ and the impact that this has had on the lives of ordinary — no, extra-ordinary — people within this country.

The book could almost be described as a political romp from the settler colonisation of New Zealand through the growth of the workers movement and socialist and communist ideology from the late 1800s until today.

I have often deprecatingly called myself a mere footnote of history as that is all I seem to appear as in many books written about recent progressive history in New Zealand. But it was without false modesty that when Maire gave me a copy of the book a couple of weeks back, I immediately went to the index, looked up my name and found that this time I was a bit more than a footnote, but had a section of a chapter written on my interaction with the spooks.

But it was after reading this, dipping into a couple of other “person of interest” stories of people I knew such as Keith, Mike Treen, the Rosenbergs, Murray Horton and then starting the book again from the beginning did it become clear on what issues the state was paranoid about that led it to build an apparatus to spy on its own citizens.

These were issues of peace, anti-conscription, anti-nuclear, de-colonisation, unemployed workers and left trade unionism and socialist and communist thought. These are the issues that come up time and time again; essentially it was seditious or subversive to be part of any of these campaigns or ideologies.

Client state spying
The other common theme through the book is the role that the UK and more latterly the US has played in ensuring that their NZ client settler state plays by their rules, makes enemies of their enemies and spies on its own people for their “benefit”.

It was interesting to read how the “5 Eyes”, although not using that name, has been in operation as long as NZ has had a spying apparatus. In fact, the book shows that 3 of the 5 eyes forced NZ to establish its surveillance apparatus in the first place.

Maire, and her editor have arranged this book in a very reader friendly way. It is mostly chronological showing the rise of the surveillance state from the beginning of the 19th century, in dispersed with a series of vignettes of “Persons of Interest”.

Maire would probably acknowledge that this book could not have been written without the decision of the SIS to start releasing files (all beit they were heavily redacted with many missing parts) of many of us who have been spied on by the SIS over the years. So, on behalf of Maire, thank you SIS.

Maire has painstakingly gone through pages and pages of these primary source files and incorporated them into the historical narrative of the book showing what was happening in society while this surveillance was taking place.

I was especially delighted to read the history of the anti-war and conscientious objectors movement. Two years ago, almost to the day, we held the 50th anniversary of the Organisation to Halt Military Service (OHMS); an organisation that I founded and was under heavy surveillance in 1972.

We knew a bit about previous anti-conscription struggles but Maire has provided much more context and information that we knew. It was good to read about people like John Charters, Ormand Burton and Archie Barrington as well more known resisters such as my great uncle Archibald Baxter.

Within living memory
Many of the events covered take place within my living memory. But it was wonderful to be reminded of some things I had forgotten about or to find some new gems of information about our past.

Stories around Bill Sutch, Shirley Smith, Ann and Wolfgang Rosenberg, Jack and Mary Woodward, Gerald O’Brien, Allan Brash (yes, Don’s dad), Cecil Holmes, Jack Lewin are documented as well as my contemporaries such as Don Carson, David Small, Aziz Choudry, Trevor Richards, Jane Kelsey, Nicky Hager, Owen Wilkes, Tame Iti in addition to Maire, Keith and Mike Treen.

The book finishes with a more recent history of NZ again aping the US’s so-called war on terror with the introduction of an anti and counter-terrorism mandate for the SIS and its sister agencies

The book traverses events such as the detention of Ahmed Zaoui, the raid on the Kim Dotcom mansion, the privatisation of spying to firms such as Thomson and Clark, the Urewera raids, “Hit and Run” in Afghanistan. Missing the cut was the recent police raid and removal of the computer of octogenarian, Peter Wilson for holding money earmarked for a development project in DPRK (North Korea).

When we come to the end of the book we are reminded of the horrific Christchurch mosque attack and massacre and prior to that of the bombing of Wellington Trades Hall and the Rainbow Warrior. Also, the failure of the SIS to discover Mossad agents operating in NZ on fake passports.

We cannot but ask the question of why multi-millions of dollars have been spent spying on, surveilling and monitoring peace activists, trade unionists, communists, Māori and more latterly Muslims, when the terrorism that NZ has faced has been that perpetrated on these people not by these people.

Maire notes in the book that the SIS budget for 2021 was around $100 million with around 400 FTEs employed. This does not include GCSB or other parts of the security apparatus.

Seeking subversives in wrong places
This level of money has been spent for well over 100 years looking for subversives and terrorists in the wrong place!

Finally, although dealing with the human cost of the surveillance state, the book touches on some of the lighter sides of the SIS spying. Those of us under surveillance in the 1970s and 1980s remember the amateurish phone tapping that went on at that time.

Also, the men in cars with cameras sitting outside our flats for days on end. Not in the book, but I have one memory of such a man with a camera in a car outside our flat in Wallace Street, Wellington.

After a few days some of my flatmates took pity on him and made him a batch of scones which they passed through the window of his car. He stayed for a bit longer that day but we never saw him or an alternate again.

Another issue the book picks up is the obsession that the SIS and its foreign counterparts had with counting communists in NZ. I remember that the CIA used to put out a Communist Yearbook that described and attempted to count how many members were in each of the communist parties all around the world.

In NZ, my party, the Workers Communist League, was smaller than the SUP, CPNZ and SAL, but one year near the end of our existence we were pleasantly surprised to see that the CIA had almost to a person, doubled our membership.

We could not work out why, until we realised that we all had code names as well as real names and we were getting more and more slack at using the correct one in the correct place. Anyone surveilling us, counting names, would have counted double the names that we had as members! We took the compliment.

Thank you, Maire, for this great book. Thank you and your family for your great contribution to Aotearoa society.

Hopefully the hardships and human cost that you have shown in this book will commit or recommit the rest of us to struggle for a decolonised and socialist Aotearoa within a peaceful and multi-polar world.

And as one of Jack Locke’s political guides said: “the road may be long and torturous, but the future is bright.”

Robert Reid has more than 40 years’ experience in trade unions and in community employment development in Aotearoa New Zealand. He is a former general secretary the president of FIRST Union. Much of his work has been with disadvantaged groups and this has included work with Māori, Pacific peoples and migrant communities. This was his address tonight for the launch of The Enemy Within: The Human Cost of State Surveillance in Aotearoa New Zealand, by Maire Leadbeater.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Indonesian human rights groups have called for an independent investigation into the death of a New Zealand helicopter pilot in a remote part of Papua province earlier this week.

The pilot, identified as Glen Malcolm Conning, was reportedly killed by an armed group shortly after landing in Alama district in Mimika regency on Monday.

Amnesty International Indonesia’s executive director, Usman Hamid, described the killing as a serious violation of humanitarian law and called for an independent probe into the death.

“We urge the Indonesian authorities to immediately investigate this crime to bring the perpetrators to justice, including starting with a forensic examination and autopsy of the victim’s body,” he said.

“The protection of civilians is a fundamental principle that must always be upheld, and the deliberate targeting and killing of civilians is unacceptable,” Usman told BenarNews in a statement.

The Papuan independence fighters and security forces are blaming each other for the attack and have provided conflicting accounts of what happened on the airstrip.

The West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) — the military wing of the Free Papua Movement (OPM) — ​​has denied it was responsible.

Suspicions of ‘orchestrated murder’
In a statement, a spokesman, Sebby Sambom said: “We suspect that the murder of the New Zealand helicopter pilot was orchestrated by the Indonesian military and police themselves.”

He alleged that the killing was intended to undermine efforts to negotiate the release of another New Zealand pilot, Phillip Mehrtens, who has been held by the rebel group since February last year.

He said photos showing the pilot’s body and the helicopter without apparent signs of burns contradicted the police’s claims that they were burned.

The photos, which Sambom sent to BenarNews, appear to depict Conning’s body collapsed in his helicopter’s seat, with his left arm bearing a deep gash.

Four passengers who Indonesian authorities said were indigenous Papuans, including a child and baby, were unharmed.

Police said the attackers ambushed the helicopter, forcibly removed the occupants, and subsequently executed Conning. They said in a statement that the pilot’s body was burned along with the helicopter.

Responding to the rebel group’s accusations, Bayu Suseno, spokesperson for a counter-insurgency task force in Papua comprising police and soldiers, insisted that the resistance fighters were responsible for the pilot’s death.

“The armed criminal group often justify their crimes, including killing civilians, migrants, and indigenous Papuans working as healthcare workers, teachers, motorcycle taxi drivers, and the New Zealand pilot, by accusing them of being spies,” he told BenarNews.

No response over contradictions
He did not respond to a question about the photos that appear to contradict his earlier claim that Conning’s body was burned with the helicopter.

Sambom said on Monday that if Conning was killed by independence fighters, it was because he should not have been in a conflict zone.

“Anyone who ignores this does so at their own risk. What was the New Zealander doing there? We consider him a spy,” he said.

Bayu said another New Zealand pilot, Geoffrey Foster, witnessed the aftermath of the attack.

Foster approached Conning’s helicopter and saw scattered bags and the pilot slumped in his seat covered in blood, prompting him to take off again without landing, Bayu said.

Executive director of the Papua Justice and Human Integrity Foundation Theo Hesegem expressed concern and condolences for the shooting of the pilot and supported efforts for an independent investigation into the incident.

“There must be an independent investigation team and it must be an integrated team from Indonesia and New Zealand,” he told BenarNews .

Indonesia’s National Human Rights Commission, Komnas HAM, condemned the attack and said such acts undermined efforts to bring peace to Papua.

‘Ensure civilian safety’
“Komnas HAM asks the government and security forces to ensure the safety of civilians in Papua,” said the commission’s chairperson Atnike Nova Sigiro in a statement on Wednesday.

The perpetrators of the attack must be brought to justice, Komnas HAM said.

The attack is the latest by an armed group on aviation personnel in the province where Papuan independence fighters have waged a low-level struggle against Indonesian rule since the 1960s.

Another New Zealand pilot, Phillip Mehrtens, was abducted by insurgents from the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) 18 months ago and remains in captivity.

Mehrtens was seized by the fighters on February 7 in the central highlands of Papua. The rebels burned the small Susi Air plane he was piloting and released the Papuan passengers.

While his captors have released videos showing him alive, negotiations to free him have stalled. The group’s demands include independence for the Melanesian region they refer to as West Papua.

Copyright ©2015-2024, BenarNews. Published with the permission of BenarNews.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Te Kuaka, an independent foreign policy advocacy group with a strong focus on the Pacific, has called for urgent changes to the law governing New Zealand’s security agency.

“Pacific countries will be asking legitimate questions about whether . . . spying in the Pacific was happening out of NZ,” it said today.

This follows revelations that a secret foreign spy operation run out of NZ’s Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) for seven years without the knowledge or approval of the government or Parliament.

RNZ News reports today that the former minister responsible for the GCSB, Andrew Little, has admitted that it may never be known whether the foreign spy operation was supporting military action against another country.

New Zealand’s intelligence watchdog the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security revealed its existence on Thursday, noting that the system operated from 2013-2020 and had the potential to be used to support military action against targets.

The operation was used to intercept military communications and identify targets in the GCSB’s area of operation, which centres on the Pacific.

In 2012, the GCSB signed up to the agreement without telling the then director-general and let the system operate without safeguards including adequate training, record-keeping or auditing.

When Little found out about it he supported it being referred to the Inspector-General for investigation.

Refused to name country
But he refused to say if he believed the covert operation was run by the United States although it was likely to be one of New Zealand’s Five Eyes partners, reports RNZ.

Te Kuaka said in a statement today the inquiry should prompt immediate law reform and widespread concern.

“This should be of major concern to all New Zealanders because we are not in control here”, said Te Kuaka member and constitutional lawyer Fuimaono Dylan Asafo.

“The inquiry reveals that our policies and laws are not fit for purpose, and that they do not cover the operation of foreign agencies within New Zealand.”

It appeared from the inquiry that even GCSB itself had lost track of the system and did not know its full purpose, Te Kuaka said.

It was “rediscovered” following concerns about another partner system hosted by GCSB.

While there have been suggestions the system was established under previously lax legislation, its operation continued through several agency and legislative reviews.

Ultimately, the inquiry found “that the Bureau could not be sure [its operation] was always in accordance with government intelligence requirements, New Zealand law and the provisions of the [Memorandum of Understanding establishing it]”.

‘Unknowingly complicit’
“We do not know what military activities were undertaken using New Zealand’s equipment and base, and this could make us unknowingly complicit in serious breaches of international law”, Fuimaono said.

“The law needs changing to explicitly prohibit what has occurred here.”

The foreign policy group has also raised the alarm that New Zealand’s involvement in the AUKUS security pact could compound problems raised by this inquiry.

AUKUS is a trilateral security pact between Australia, the UK and the US that aims to contain China.

Pillar Two’s objective is to win the next generation arms race being shaped by new autonomous weapons platforms, electronic warfare systems, and hypersonic missiles.

It also involves intelligence sharing with AI-driven targeting systems and nuclear-capable assets.

‘Pacific questions’
“Pacific countries will be asking legitimate questions about whether this revelation indicates that spying in the Pacific was happening out of NZ, without any knowledge of ministers”, said Te Kuaka co-director Marco de Jong.

“New Zealand’s involvement in AUKUS Pillar II could further threaten the trust that we have built with Pacific countries, and others may ask whether involvement in that pact — with closer ties to the US — will increase the risk that our intelligence agencies will become entangled in other countries’ operations, and other people’s wars, without proper oversight.”

Te Kuaka has previously spoken out about concerns over AUKUS Pillar II.

“We understand that there is some sensitivity in this matter, but the security and intelligence agencies should front up to ministers here in a public setting to explain how this was allowed to happen,” De Jong said.

He added that the agencies needed to assure the public that serious military or other operations were not conducted from NZ soil without democratic oversight.”

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia (JERAA) has joined media freedom groups supporting Julian Assange, an Australian citizen whose unjust prosecution continues to undermine press freedoms and human rights.

In light of recent developments and mounting concerns over Assange’s deteriorating health, JERAA said in a statement it had urged the United States to drop all charges against Assange and facilitate his immediate return to Australia.

Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, has been the subject of relentless persecution by the US government for his efforts to expose war crimes and government misconduct.

Assange received a Walkley Award in 2011 for outstanding contribution to journalism through Wikileaks, which included the release of the 2010 “collateral murder” video and the publication of classified US diplomatic cables, shedding light on atrocities committed by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“It is concerning that Assange faces up to 175 years in jail if found guilty of espionage charges — a sentence that would effectively silence whistle-blowers and journalists worldwide,” JERAA said.

The association said it believed that Assange’s indictment set a dangerous precedent and posed a grave threat to the fundamental principles of press freedom and freedom of expression.

‘Enough is enough’
JERAA commended Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for his support in calling for Assange’s release and said it echoed his sentiment that “enough is enough.”

PM Albanese’s recent vote in the federal Parliament for a motion demanding Assange’s return to Australia underscores the legitimacy of our demand. The motion, which received overwhelming support, leaves no room for ambiguity — it is time to bring Assange home.

The WikiLeaks 2010 “collateral damage” video.         Video: Al Jazeera

As the UK High Court prepares to rule on Assange’s appeal against extradition in a two-day hearing next week (February 20-21), and with Prime Minister Albanese’s continued efforts to advocate for Assange’s release, JERAA has urged the US to heed the calls for justice and drop all charges against Assange.

It is imperative that Assange’s rights as an Australian citizen be respected, and that he be afforded the opportunity to return home.

JERAA president Associate Professor Alexandra Wake said that while some members might not agree with all Assange has done in his life, it was clear that his work was central to our “understanding of press freedoms and human rights”.

“JERAA upholds the principles of a free and independent press. It is time to end the trial of global media freedom,” she said.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The release of the threat assessment by the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service (SIS) this week is the final piece in a defence and security puzzle that marks a genuine shift towards more open and public discussion of these crucial policy areas.

Together with July’s strategic foreign policy assessment from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the national security strategy released last week, it rounds out the picture of New Zealand’s place in a fast-evolving geopolitical landscape.

From increased strategic competition between countries, to declining social trust within them, as well as rapid technological change, the overall message is clear: business as usual is no longer an option.

By releasing the strategy documents in this way, the government and its various agencies clearly hope to win public consent and support — ultimately, the greatest asset any country possesses to defend itself.

NZSIS’s first unclassified threat assessment targets competition, public trust, technology https://t.co/5wetaOL1oA

— RNZ News (@rnz_news) August 10, 2023

Low threat of violent extremism
If there is good news in the SIS assessment, it is that the threat of violent extremism is still considered “low”. That means no change since the threat level was reassessed last year, with a terror attack considered “possible” rather than “probable”.

It is a welcome development since the threat level was lifted to “high” in the
immediate aftermath of the Christchurch terror attack in 2019.

This was lowered to “medium” about a month later — where it sat in September 2021, when another extremist attacked people with a knife in an Auckland mall, seriously
wounding five.

The threat level stayed there during the escalating social tension resulting from the government’s covid response. This saw New Zealand’s first conviction for sabotage and increasing threats to politicians, with the SIS and police intervening in at least one case to mitigate the risk.

After protesters were cleared from the grounds of Parliament in early 2022, it was
still feared an act of extremism by a small minority was likely.

These risks now seem to be receding. And while the threat assessment notes that the online world can provide havens for extremism, the vast majority of those expressing vitriolic rhetoric are deemed unlikely to carry through with violence in the real world.

Changing patterns of extremism
Assessments like this are not a crystal ball; threats can emerge quickly and be near-invisible before they do. But right now, at least publicly, the SIS is not aware of any specific or credible attack planning.

Many extremists still fit well-defined categories. There are the politically motivated, potentially violent, anti-authority conspiracy theorists, of which there is a “small number”.

And there are those motivated by identity (with white supremacist extremism the dominant strand) or faith (such as support for Islamic State, a decreasing and “very small number”).

However, the SIS describes a noticeable increase in individuals who don’t fit within those traditional boundaries, but who hold mixed, unstable or unclear ideologies they may tailor to fit some other violent or extremist impulse.

Espionage and cyber-security risks

There also seems to be a revival of the espionage and spying cultures last seen during the Cold War. There is already the first military case of espionage before the courts, and the SIS is aware of individuals on the margins of government being cultivated and offered financial and other incentives to provide sensitive information.

The SIS says espionage operations by foreign intelligence agencies against New Zealand, both at home and abroad, are persistent, opportunistic and increasingly wide ranging.

While the government remains the main target, corporations, research institutions and state contractors are now all potential sources of sensitive information. Because non-governmental agencies are often not prepared for such threats, they pose a significant security risk.

Cybersecurity remains a particular concern, although the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) recorded 350 incidents in 2021-22, which was a decline from 404 incidents recorded in the previous 12-month period.

On the other hand, a growing proportion of cyber incidents affecting major New Zealand institutions can be linked to state-sponsored actors. Of the 350 reported major incidents, 118 were connected to foreign states (34 percent of the total, up from 28 percent the previous year).

NZSIS’s first unclassified threat assessment targets competition, public trust, technology https://t.co/5wetaOL1oA

— RNZ News (@rnz_news) August 10, 2023

Russia, Iran and China
Although the SIS recorded that only a “small number” of foreign states engaged in deceptive, corruptive or coercive attempts to exert political or social influence, the potential for harm is “significant”.

Some of the most insidious examples concern harassment of ethnic communities within New Zealand who speak out against the actions of a foreign government.

The SIS identifies Russia, Iran and China as the three offenders. Iran was recorded as reporting on Iranian communities and dissident groups in New Zealand. In addition, the assessment says:

Most notable is the continued targeting of New Zealand’s diverse ethnic Chinese communities. We see these activities carried out by groups and individuals linked to the intelligence arm of the People’s Republic of China.

Overall, the threat assessment makes for welcome – if at times unsettling – reading. Having such conversations in the open, rather than in whispers behind closed doors, demystifies aspects of national security.

Most importantly, it gives greater credibility to those state agencies that must increase their transparency in order to build public trust and support for their unique roles within a working democracy.

Dr Alexander Gillespie, Professor of Law, University of Waikato. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

MPs confront Iran’s Ambassador to New Zealand over protest crackdowns https://t.co/Mtqr5OLetS

— RNZ News (@rnz_news) August 3, 2023

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The President of the Federated States of Micronesia has made a series of disturbing claims against China, including alleging spying, threats to his personal safety and bribery.

President David Panuelo made the claims to his Congress, governors and the leadership of the country’s state legislatures in a letter which has been leaked to 1News.

Panuelo said the point of his letter was to warn of the threat of warfare.

The president, who has just two months left in office, has publicly attacked China in the past.

“We can play an essential role in preventing a war in our region; we can save the lives of our own Micronesian citizens; we can strengthen our sovereignty and independence,” he said in his latest letter.

President Panuelo said he believed that by informing the leaders of his views he was creating risks to his personal safety along with that of his family and staff.

Outlined in the letter are a series of startling allegations.

Chinese activity within EEZ
The president said there had been activity by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) within his country’s Exclusive Economic Zone.

The “purpose includes communicating with other PRC assets so as to help ensure that, in the event a missile — or group of missiles — ever needed to land a strike on the US Territory of Guam that they would be successful in doing so”.

President Panuelo said he had stopped China research vessels in FSM waters after patrol boats were sent to check “but the PRC sent a warning for us to stay away”.

He also claimed that at the Pacific Islands Forum in Suva in July last year he was followed by two Chinese men, one of them an intelligence officer.

“To be clear: I have had direct threats against my personal safety from PRC officials acting in an official capacity,” he said.

In another claim, Panuelo said that after the first China-Pacific Island Countries Foreign Ministers Meeting, the joint communique was published with statements and references that had not been agreed to “which were false”.

He said he and other leaders such as Niue Premier Dalton Tagelagi and Fiji’s now former prime minister Voreqe Bainimarama had requested more time to review the joint communique before it went out but their requests were ignored.

Trying to strongarm officials
President Panuelo also claimed China had been trying to strongarm officials when it came to bilateral agreements such as a proposed memorandum of understanding (MoU) on the “Deepening Blue Economy” which had “serious red flags”.

One of those was that the FSM “would open the door to the PRC to begin acquiring control over the island nation’s fibre optic cables and ports”.

President Panuelo said in his latest letter that while he advised cabinet to reject the MOU in June last year, in December he learned that it was back in “just mere hours from its signing”.

He said that when Foreign Minister Khandhi Elieisar raised this with Chinese Ambassador Huang Zheng, he suggested “that he ought to sign the MOU anyway and that my knowing about it — in my capacity as Head of State and Head of Government — was not necessary”.

President Panuelo said he found out Ambassador Huang’s replacement, Wu Wei, had been given a mission to shift the FSM away from its allies the US, Japan and Australia. He therefore denied the Ambassador designate his position.

“I know that one element of my duty as President is to protect our country, and so knowing that: our ultimate aim is, if possible, to prevent war; and, if impossible, to mitigate its impacts on our own country and on our own people.”

There are also allegations of bribery. President Panuelo claimed that shortly after Vice-President Aren Palik took office in his former capacity as a Senator, he was asked by a Chinese official to accept an envelope filled with money.

‘Never offer bribe again’
“Vice-President Pakik refused, telling the [official] to never offer him a bribe again,” President Panuelo said.

In October last year, Panuelo said that when Palik visited the island of Kosrae he was received by a Chinese company, which has a private plane.

“Our friends told the Vice-President that they can provide him private and personal transportation to anywhere he likes at any time, even Hawai’i, for example; he need only ask,” President Panuelo claimed.

He said senior officials and elected officials across the whole of the national and state governments had received offers of gifts as a means to curry favour.

The President concluded the letter by saying he wanted to inform his fellow leaders, regardless of the risk to himself, because the nation’s sovereignty, prosperity and peace and stability were more important.

The Chinese embassy in the Federated States of Micronesia and in Wellington have been asked to comment on the allegations by 1News.

Republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Peacemonger is a collection of essays about the much travelled Aotearoa peace activist and researcher Owen Wilkes, who died in May 2005. Wilkes was an extraordinary peace campaigner who discovered a foreign spy base at Tangimoana and was once charged with espionage in Norway and again while on a cycling holiday in Sweden.

After he took up beekeeping near Karamea on the West Coast in 1983, it was discovered that Customs was helping the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service to read his mail, apparently worried about his legendary ability to snuffle out secret installations by foreign powers in countries from New Zealand to Norway.

They were right to note his impact – this book explains just how enormously influential Wilkes was.

Many of these short essays are by big names in the Aotearoa peace firmament, such as Maire Leadbeater, Murray Horton, David Robie, Nicky Hager and Peter Wills. Each chapter contains gems; some hilarious, others sobering.

Wilkes was a rare beast, a man who could be, as Mark Derby writes, “unpretentious, fearless, indefatigable, at times insufferable”.

Hager, a phenomenal investigative journalist, has contributed the chapter “The Wilkes How-to Guide to Public Interest Researching’.

Coming from Hager, one of the greatest public interest researchers in the country, this should be catnip to a new generation of proto-Hagers, Thunbergs and Wilkeses.

The last chapter, “Memories of Owen”, was written by his partner, peace activist May Bass.

It is a heartfelt send-off to a human comet who lit up everything he touched, one who may never have realised in his arc across the sky what a void he left behind him, not just in the peace movement, but in the hearts of his friends and loved ones.

Jenny Nicholls writes reviews for The Listener and this review has been republished from the Waiheke Weekender with permission. She is also a graphic designer: designandtype.org

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Whistleblower Owen Wilkes was a tireless and formidable researcher for the Pacific, peace and disarmament. Before the internet, he combed publicly available sources on weapons systems and defence strategy.

In 1968, he revealed the secretive military function of a proposed satellite tracking station in the South Island, and while working in Sweden he was charged with espionage and deported after photographing intriguing but publicly visible installations.

In a new book about his life, Peacemonger, edited by May Bass and Mark Derby, Nicky Hager writes about Wilkes’ research techniques:

Owen Wilkes was an outstanding researcher, a role model of how someone can make a difference in the world by good research. But how did he actually do it? Owen managed to study complex subjects such as Cold War communications systems, secret intelligence facilities and foreign military activities in the Pacific.

There are many important and useful lessons we can learn from how he did this work. The world needs more public interest researchers, on militarism and other subjects. Owen’s self-taught research techniques are like a masterclass in how it is done.

Lots of information isn’t secret, just hard to find
Owen worked for many years, sitting at his large desk at the Peace Movement office in Wellington, researching the military communications systems set up to launch and fight nuclear war. How was this possible?

We are a bit conditioned currently to imagine the only option would be leaked documents from a whistleblower. The first secret of Owen’s success is that he had learned that large amounts of information on these subjects can be found and pieced together from obscure but publicly available sources.

The heart of his research method was long hours spent poring over US government records and military industry magazines, gathering the precious crumbs of detail like someone panning for gold.

Behind the large desk were shelves and shelves of open-topped file boxes, each with a cryptic title. These boxes were full of photocopied documents and handwritten notes from his researching. This may all sound very pre-internet; indeed it was largely pre-digital.

But what Owen was doing would today be called “open source” research and his work is far superior to that carried out by many people with Google and other digital tools at their fingertips. Probably his favourite source of all was a publicly available US defence magazine called Aviation Week and Space Technology. The magazine (now online) is written for military staff and arms manufacturers, keeping them informed about developments in weapons, aircraft and “C3I” systems, which stands for Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence systems: one of Owen’s main areas of speciality.

The magazine also covered Owen’s speciality of “space based” military systems, such as military communication and surveillance satellites. In Owen’s files, which can be viewed at the National Library in Wellington, Aviation Week and Space Technology appears often. In a file box called USA Space Systems is a clipping from 1983 about the US Air Force awarding a contract for a ballistic missile early warning system (nuclear war-fighting equipment). The article revealed that the early warning system would be based at air force bases in Alaska, Greenland and Fylingdales, England — three clues about US foreign military activities.

By reading and storing away details from numerous such articles, spanning many years, Owen built up a more and more detailed understanding of military and intelligence systems.

The other endlessly useful source Owen used was US Congress and Senate hearings and reports about the US military budget. This is where each year the US military spells out its military construction plans, new weapons, technology programmes and the rest; often with figures broken down to the level of individual countries and military bases.

Senior military officials appear at hearings to explain the threats and strategies that justify the spending. As with the military magazines, Owen systematically mined these reports year after year for interesting detail.

He was especially keen on the US Congress’ Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Military Construction Appropriations. His files on US antisatellite weapons, for instance, contain a document from this subcommittee about new Anti-Satellite System Facilities (project number 11610) based at Langley Air Force base, Virginia. It had been approved by the president in the renewed Cold War of the mid-1980s to target Soviet satellites. Details like this were pieces in a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle.

When he was based at the Peace Movement Aotearoa office in Wellington, from 1983 until about 1992, Owen spent long hours at the US Embassy library studying the Military Construction Appropriations and other US government documents. Each year the library received copies of the documents as microfiche (microphotos of each page on a film). Owen was a familiar visitor, hunched over the microfiche reader making notes and printing out interesting pages.

Many times this gave the first clue of construction somewhere in the world, pointing to that country hosting some new US military, nuclear or intelligence activity. The annual US military appropriation information is available to a researcher today. In fact it is now more easily accessed since it is online. But, if anything, Owen’s pre-digital techniques make it clearer how this research is done well. It’s a good reminder that the best sources of information are most often not in the first 10 or 20 hits of a Google search, the point where many people stop looking.

Experience and persistence
An important ingredient in all these methods is persistence. The methods usually work best if, like Owen, a researcher sticks at them over time. Sticking at a subject means you start to recognise names and places in an otherwise boring document, appreciate the significance of some fragment of information and understand the big picture into which each piece of information fits.

Someone who reads deeply and studies a subject over a number of years can in effect become, like Owen, an expert. They may, like him, have no formal university qualifications. But they can know more about their subject than nearly anyone else, which is a good definition of an expert. They recognise the names and places and appreciate the significance of new evidence.

A textbook example of this was when Owen returned to New Zealand in the early 1980s and went to see a recently discovered secret military site near the beach settlement of Tangimoana in the Manawatu.

Owen, who had spent years studying secret bases around the world, was the New Zealander most likely to know what he was looking at. There, on one side of the base, was a large circle of antenna poles: a CDAA circularly-disposed antenna array. It instantly told him the Tangimoana facility was a signals intelligence base. It had the same equipment and was part of the same networks as the bases he had studied in Norway and Sweden.

Ensuring his research was noticed
The purpose of Owen’s work was to make a difference to the issues he researched. A final and vital part of the work was getting attention for the findings of his research. Owen often spoke in the news and he wrote about the issues he was studying. Research, writing and speaking up are essential ingredients in political change. The part of this he probably enjoyed most was travelling and speaking in public to interested groups.

During the 1980s, he had major speaking tours to countries including Japan, the Philippines, Australia and Canada (and often around New Zealand). During these trips he would present information about military and intelligence activities in those countries. A 1985 trip to Canada, which he shared with prominent Palau leader Roman Bedor, was typical. He was in Canada for seven weeks, speaking in most parts of the country and numerous times on radio and television.

One of the things he emphasised was that Canadians, as residents of a Pacific country, should be thinking about what was going on in the Pacific. One of Owen’s recurrent themes was the importance of being aware of the Pacific.

The final ingredient of a good researcher is caring about the subjects they are working on. This can be heard clearly in everything Owen wrote about the Pacific. He described the Pacific being used for submarine-based nuclear weapons and facilities used to prepare for nuclear war. He talked about the big powers using the Pacific as the “backside of the globe”, epitomised by tiny Johnston Atoll west of Hawai’i where the US military does “anything too unpopular, too dangerous and too secret to do elsewhere”.

He talked about things that were getting better: French nuclear testing on the way out; chemical weapons being destroyed. But also the region being used as a site for great power rivalry; and, under multiple pressures, the small Pacific countries being at risk of becoming “more repressive, less democratic”. He cared, and that was at the heart of being a public-interest researcher for decades.

Many of the problems he described are still occurring today. More research, more good research, on these issues and many others is crying out to be done.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Journalists may face decades in prison for “foreign interference” offences unless urgent changes are made to Australia’s national security laws, according to a University of Queensland researcher.

PhD candidate Sarah Kendall from UQ’s School of Law warned that reporting on issues relating to Australian politics, national security or international relations while working with overseas media organisations could place journalists at risk of criminal prosecution under the Espionage and Foreign Interference Act 2018.

“The law could apply to any journalist, staff member or source who works for or collaborates with foreign-controlled media organisations,” Kendall said.

“There could also be repercussions for journalists working overseas, as any news published in Australia is subject to these laws.”

The Espionage and Foreign Interference Act 2018 covers nine foreign interference offences, with penalties ranging from 10 to 20 years imprisonment.

“While these offences require some part of the person’s conduct to be covert or involve deception, this does not exclude legitimate journalistic activities,” Kendall said.

“Journalists could be acting covertly whenever they liaise with a confidential source using encrypted technologies or engage in undercover work using hidden cameras.”

Public interest protection
In a Foreign Interference Law and Press Freedom briefing paper, Kendall recommended that the government introduce an occupation-specific exemption to protect journalists working in the public interest.

The paper argues that the scope of offences be narrowed to remove “recklessness” and “prejudice to Australia’s national security” as punishable elements.

“For example, a journalist could be accused of recklessly harming national security when they publish a story that reveals war crimes by members of the Australian Defence Force,” Kendall said.

“Journalists and their sources could face up to 20 years in prison if any part of their conduct was covert, even if they are engaged in legitimate, good faith reporting.”

Kendall said the law’s Preparatory Offence, which carries a potential jail term of 10 years, risked creating a dangerous precedent when combined with the offence of conspiracy.

“This offence can capture the earliest stages of investigative reporting so a discussion between a journalist and source about a potential story on Australian politics could see them charged with conspiring to prepare for foreign interference,” Kendall said.

Foreign Interference Law and Press Freedom is the latest report in UQ Law School’s Press Freedom Policy Papers series, a project aimed at laying the groundwork for widespread reform in laws spanning espionage, whistleblowing and free speech as they affect the media.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Owen Wilkes, an internationally renowned peace researcher and Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA) founder, died in 2005, aged 65 (see my obituary in Watchdog 109, August 2005). And yet, 16 years later, I’m still learning more about him and gaining insights into his life and character.

In late 2020 I was contacted, out of the blue, by an octogenarian Kiwi expat in Oslo, who had been a good friend of Owen’s in Scandinavia in the 1970s and 1980s and then for most of the rest of Owen’s life.

In 1978, I and my then partner (Christine Bird, a fellow CAFCINZ founder and first chairperson of CAFCA) accompanied Owen on a “spy trip” through Norway’s northernmost province, the one bordering the former Soviet Union, which gave me my first glimpse of the sort of domes with which I’ve become so familiar at the Waihopai spy base during the last 30 plus years.

We met this expat Kiwi while in Oslo. Although we were strangers, he immediately recognised us as New Zealanders the second we stepped off the train at his station.

Why? Because of the distinctive shabbiness of our dress. I hadn’t heard from him in decades. In 2020, he went to the trouble of contacting an NZ national news website to get my email address.

He told me that he had a small collection of Owen’s letters and other material about him, and as he was decluttering and couldn’t think of any Scandinavian home for them, would I like them?

I was happy to do so. Reading them brought back vivid memories from more than 40 years ago, none more so than in connection with that “spy trip”.

Thrived in Scandinavia
Owen thrived in Scandinavia, and particularly loved his 18 months in Norway, paying Norwegians the highest accolade of being “good jokers”. All up, he lived six years in Scandinavia, most of it in Sweden, where he worked for the world-famous Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

He applied his unique talents to researching in both countries e.g., he identified the entire security police staff by the simple expedient of ringing every block of particular extension numbers.

In 1978, Christine Bird and I did our Big OE, part of which included crossing the former Soviet Union on the Trans-Siberian Express from the Pacific coast and staying with Owen in his Stockholm apartment.

In this most sophisticated of northern European cities, he still dressed and acted like The Wild Man of Borneo (when I inquired about toilet paper, he told me that he used the phonebook). It was quite a sight to visit the SIPRI office full of oh, so proper Swedes and there was Owen working away at his desk, naked except for shorts.

We met up with him for a reason, which was to accompany him on a “spy” trip through Norway’s northernmost Finnmark province, which was chokka with North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) military bases and lots of Waihopai-like spy bases, the first time I ever saw those distinctive domes.

Norway was then one of only two NATO members with a land border with the Soviet Union (the other being Turkey).

Mad Norwegian adventure
Off we went, the three of us, on this mad adventure, travelling by boat, train, bus and hitchhiking. We slept in a tent wherever we could pitch it.

Bird and I went by bus right up to the Soviet border; Owen got the deeply suspicious driver to drop off him beforehand so that he could walk up and check out a spy base in the border zone (photography was strictly forbidden near any of these bases, even at Oslo Airport, because it was also an Air Force base). From memory, he told the bus driver that he was a bird watcher (he had his ever-present binoculars to prove it).

He told us that if he hadn’t rejoined us within a couple of days, it would mean that he had been arrested and to ring the office in Oslo to let them know. Right on time he turned up.

We duly delivered the rolls of film back to the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo (PRIO) and they were used in a book co-authored by Owen and Nils Petter Gleditsch, the PRIO Director. The book, Uncle Sam’s Rabbits (a pun on the rabbit ear aerials used at some of the listening post spy bases) caused such a sensation in Norway that both authors were charged, tried, convicted and fined for offences under the Official Secrets Act.

Much more excitement was to come, not long after, in Sweden. Security agents swooped on Owen as he was returning from a bike trip around islands between Sweden and Finland, he was held incommunicado for several days amid sensational headlines about a Soviet spy being arrested (this was the sort of stuff that gave his poor old Mum palpitations back in Christchurch).

He was eventually released and charged with offences under Sweden’s Official Secrets Act (after his death, NZ media coverage mistakenly said that he was convicted of espionage offences. That means spying for a foreign country. He wasn’t charged with any such offence, let alone convicted).

Forded Arctic river in shorts to covertly enter Soviet Union
This was at the height of the Cold War, when neutral Sweden was being particularly paranoid about Soviet spies (not helped when a Soviet Whiskey class submarine got embarrassingly stuck in Stockholm Harbour, the famous “Whiskey On The Rocks” episode).

Owen’s trial was very high profile, attracting international media attention. At first, he was convicted and sentenced to six months’ prison. He never served a day of that, because he appealed, and the sentence was suspended but he was fined heavily and ordered expelled from Sweden for 10 years (he used to joke that he should have appealed for it to be increased to 20 years).

The 2020 package of material from Oslo added one vital detail I didn’t know about that “spy trip” we did with him. The Kiwi expat wrote to a work mate of Owen’s, after his death: “He once even crossed the Norwegian-Soviet border in the high north, wading across an icy river in his shorts and was there several hours – only a few people know about this.

It doesn’t bear thinking about what could have happened to him, or so-called international relations, if he’d been jumped on by the vodka-sodden Soviet frontier guards. As unshaven as Owen. He would have managed though …

No wonder that bus driver was so suspicious of him. There is great irony in the fact that both the Norwegian and Swedish security agencies suspected Owen of being some sort of a Soviet spy and both prosecuted him; yet if he’d been caught on his covert visit to the Soviet Union, he would have doubtless been presented to the world as a Western spy.

A 1981 letter that Owen wrote to his Oslo mate shed some light on his arrest and detention for several days by the Swedish Security Service (SAPO).

“Overall, it wasn’t such bad fun. I had a clear conscience all along and I wasn’t scared that SAPO would try and plant evidence or anything like that… So, I slept well at night, found the interrogations intellectually stimulating, read several novels. Getting out was fun too…”

I can personally testify as to how much Owen enjoyed being locked up. We were among a group of people arrested inside the US military transport base at Christchurch Airport during a 1988 protest (the base is still there). This is from my 2005 Watchdog obituary of Owen, cited above:

“It was a weekend, so we were bailed after a few hours to appear later in the week”.

“But that didn’t suit Owen, he had things to do and didn’t want to be mucking around with inconvenient court appearances. So, he refused bail and opted to stay locked up for 24 hours so that the cops had to produce him at the next day’s court hearing (which was more convenient for him), where he duly got bail.

“He told me that he’d found some old Reader’s Digests in the cells and had had a wonderful uninterrupted time reading their Rightwing conspiracy theories about how the KGB was behind the 1981 assassination attempt on Pope John Paul 11. In the meantime, I was left to deal with his then partner, who was frantic about how come he’d ended up in custody, as that hadn’t been part of their South Island holiday plans. In the end, we fought the good fight in court, were convicted and got a small fine each”.

Getting to read his Swedish security file
A letter to his Oslo mate at the turn of the century says that he learned that Swedish police files on him would be among those now available to the people who were the subjects of them. He wrote, from New Zealand, asking for access to their files on him from 1978-81.

He got a reply saying he could have access to 1025 pages and that he had two months to do so. Owen had been planning a Scandinavian trip with his partner, May Bass, and this was the icing on the cake for him (“she is going to find something else to do while I am poring through the archives in Stockholm”).

When I last saw Owen, in 2002, he told that me that the file showed that the Swedish authorities were absolutely convinced that he was a Soviet spy and there was circumstantial evidence of which he had been unaware – for instance, he had been monitoring a whole lot of radio frequencies broadcasting from the Soviet Union, and in the case of one, he had apparently stumbled onto the means of communication between the KGB (former Soviet spy agency) and their agent in Sweden.

He had no idea but this reinforced the Swedish spooks’ idea that he was a Soviet spy, rather than an insatiably curious peace researcher.

By contrast, to this day, the NZ Security Intelligence Service has refused to release anything but a fraction of its file on him (see my “Owen Wilkes’ SIS File. A bit more feleased, a decade after first smidgen”, in Watchdog 150, April 2019).

The SIS says it holds six volumes on Owen. It still deems the great majority of that too sensitive to be released, even to his one remaining blood relative – his younger brother.

In 1982, after six years of high drama in Scandinavia, he returned home in a blaze of publicity and CAFCINZ (as CAFCA was then) sent him around the country on an extremely successful speaking tour.

Christchurch academic, Professor Bill Willmott, nominated him for the 1982 Nobel Peace Prize (funnily enough, he didn’t win it. It was never likely that the Scandinavians would ever award their homegrown prize to a peace activist who had been convicted for “spying” on them).

A copy of Willmott’s nomination letter is among the material I was sent. After his involuntary return, Owen never lived overseas again, but he continued to be of ongoing interest to Scandinavian media.

A 1983 Norwegian article reported on Owen from where he was living in the Karamea district. It was titled: “’Spy’ yesterday, farmer today”.

Extreme adventurer, renouncing Peace Movement
Owen wasn’t a big fan of Sweden but he absolutely loved Norway. It gave him full scope for the extreme adventures that he loved, whether on foot, in the water, on skis or on a bike.

His letters describing some of his adventures are wonderful examples of travel writing, although not for the fainthearted reader. This is his description of what happened when he boarded a coastal ferry after one such jaunt through days of unrelenting rain:

“.. I noticed the people were looking rather strangely at me, which I assumed was just because of the way I went squilch-squelch when I walked, and the way a little rivulet would wend its way out from under my chair when I sat down. Then I chanced to look in a mirror, and discovered that my skin had gone all soft and wrinkly and puffy, so that I looked like a cadaver that had been simmered in caustic soda solution”.

He would have fitted right in to any movie about the zombie apocalypse.

His letters shed light on various fascinating aspects of his life and personality. In the 1990s he basically and publicly renounced the Peace Movement (I refer you to my 2005 Watchdog obituary, cited above. See the subheadings “Leaving the Peace Movement” and “Writer of crank letters”). A 1993 letter to his Oslo mate gives a small taste of this.

It lists his disagreements with “Greenpeas [not a typo. MH] …on quite a few issues. Some of their campaigns are just great, but some of them are pretty bloody stupid, I reckon. And it is only recently that they’ve started going screwy” (he then details six areas of disagreement).

“Grumble, grumble, it’s no wonder I am getting offside with the peace movement around these parts, is it… Anyway, I am sort of getting out of the peace movement”.

Another 1993 letter to Oslo (the only handwritten one) is a fascinating, hilarious and white-knuckle account of how – after the unexpected death of his father in Christchurch – he and his brother tried to get their bedridden mother moved by small plane from Christchurch to the brother’s district of Karamea.

A classic Canterbury norwester put paid to that and they had to land at a rural airstrip (after the sheep had been chased off it). The journey had to be finished by ambulance and took 26 hours. Owen’s parents died within a few months of each other, in 1993. I knew both of them and Becky and I attended both funerals.

Owen was a depressive, which played a role in his 2005 suicide. That same 1993 handwritten letter concluded with this: “There’s an election coming up in 3 weeks, but I feel quite detached. Basically, I think we’re all totally doomed + the civilisation is into its final orgy of environmental destruction before the end. Rather than trying to improve the future by changing the present, I plan on documenting the past, just in case civilisation is re-established in some distant future + its people are in a mood to learn from our past. Hence my archaeology. It’s a choice between archaeology or alcoholism, I reckon”.

Pleasure and sadness
Owen Wilkes was a fascinating and simultaneously infuriating man. He has been dead for 16 years and this quite unexpected package of material goes back more than 40 years. But that passage only reinforces for me what a loss he is, both to the progressive movement nationally and globally, but also as a person, an indomitable adventurer, and as a friend and colleague.

It was with both pleasure and sadness that I read through this material. It brought back so many memories.

As for the Oslo expat, he and I went on to have an extensive correspondence in late 2020 and on into 2021. And not just about Owen but about many other people and topics. He has permanently lived outside NZ since the 1960s but we still have people in common.

For example, in 1960s Christchurch he was involved with the Monthly Review and knew Wolfgang Rosenberg. I sent him my Watchdog obituary of Wolf (114, May 2007). The upshot of all this was that he insisted on sending CAFCA a donation.

Thank you, Owen, you’re the gift that keeps on giving.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By Simon Floth in Armidale, NSW

On Monday, September 7, Julian Assange is scheduled to appear in a British court for several weeks of hearings regarding the U.S. attempt to extradite him.

This concerns Wikileaks obtaining and jointly publishing US-classified data with leading outlets in 2010.

Assange remains imprisoned for this, after serving a maximal sentence, ostensibly, for breaching bail in connection with a closed investigation for sexual assault allegations made by Swedish police.

Remand for extradition requires an indictment having been the basis of an arrest. Approval must then come from the Home Office for the Court to process the matter.

But Judge Vanessa Baraitser has scheduled a new arrest of Assange at the first hearing. Her rationale is that she is powerless to reject a superseding indictment – despite its submission a year past the deadline – or to accept it in any way apart from just:

• Presuming future arrest;
• Presuming Home Office approval on the day of the arrest;
• Leaving Assange incarcerated, though the basis for it had been removed when the US decided he would face a different indictment there.

Third indictment files
This third indictment was filed – to the detriment of a year of preparation made by the defence – late last month by US President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice.

His administration has often been described by the media as hostile toward it, in multiple contexts, including editorials in prestigious broadsheets opposing extradition of Assange.

The First Amendment to the US Constitution prohibits any law that abridges “freedom of speech, or of the press”.

Yet the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act have increasingly been used in contravention of that provision. Assange is accordingly facing 175 years in prison, effectively the term of his natural life, under conditions widely denounced as purposely inhumane.

The United Nations maintains that Britain must free and compensate Assange. So why has it not done that and why hasn’t Australia insisted on it?

The reason is essentially pretence, based on a shared agenda with the US.

Britain does not deny that it is bound to uphold the relevant international laws, because it incorporated them into its domestic law by way of ratification. Nor does it dispute the matter in further detail with the UN. It simply acts as if there is nothing to answer for.

Strictly bound
But unless the UN errs regarding their interpretation or application of these laws, the ratifying country is strictly bound to accord with any given ruling.

It can then be held to account, for instance, by journalists. Their role is to seek comment from that government regarding the UN view of how the law applies, report critically on resulting silence or statements as needed and repeat until the matter is resolved.

Yet the press has never seemed to realise that this is its job. As a consequence, many apparently feel there is nothing binding about international law.

Some even entertain the barbarous notion that without corporeal force to back them up, UN rulings and statements are just incidental fluff.

So when the media and society as a whole are negligent, courts and politicians get away with thumbing their noses at that UN and generally carrying on as if it did not exist.

Likewise for civil servants, as shown by a recent comment from Dennis Richardson, formerly Australia’s Director-General of Security, as well as Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Though he nodded to Australian intervention for a journalist in Egypt, that was different in his view, since Assange is in the UK and “last time I looked the UK was a liberal democracy”.

Arbitrary detention
By that line of reasoning, either the UN is mistaken to identify torture and arbitrary detainment in Britain, or there is no actual problem with that being perpetrated on our citizen there.”

In short, nothing calamitous would ever get past the “learned judges” in the UK, as Richardson describes those who preside over Assange’s “fate”.

Yet these judges show contempt for the position of the UN. This is not because they have a better sense of how the law applies in this case or are more impartial. On the contrary, just by virtue of being UK judges, they have a conflict of interest when appraising any ruling applicable to their country.

Nor have they generally been so qualified or familiar with details of the matter as the panel that spent 16 months weighing submissions from all parties. Britain also lost an appeal after having agreed to abide by the decision, which of course, it did not.

But according to Richardson – who effectively spoke for the generally mute leadership of Australia on this matter – so long as the UK is a democracy it should not be accountable to us for its treatment of Assange. If a democracy tortures our citizen, we can live with it.

While some let the matter slide this way, Britain is in violation of legal obligations as determined by the appropriate authority. It is unreasonable to hold that its courts should be left alone to continue in such violation.

The matter should be taken from the courts by the politicians that sent it to them. The prosecutor, judges and politicians should in the meantime be made cognisant of how they need to meet Britain’s obligations under the arrangements it committed to.

Pressured into compliance
Specific details of the case should not be excluded from that education, as the UK needs to be pressured into compliance by all civil means.

Yet the mainstream media has never taken this issue by the horns and is only just coming around from having contributed to the problem. It might have prevented or solved it and could still win the day, contingent on nothing but its own resolve.

Furthermore, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has ample power to successfully intervene for Assange and has been advised to that end by prominent legal experts, among others.

Indeed, how could Britain remain defiant if he so much as hints at commenting openly on its failure to comply with medical advice to move Assange to an adequate hospital?

If the press or Morrison are unprepared to act in these ways, it is mainly because of the catch-22 that Britain’s illegal and unconscionable action goes unremarked in public. Such quietude is no less malefic than meek, as it continues to enable outrages by leaving deferential trust in place.

To reiterate, as the authority to rule on such matters, the UN has found that Britain is mistreating a publisher for the US. This is no trifling technicality.

Australia can even sue Britain in its own courts if it fails to provide medical care that Assange has been determined to require. This would evidently leave the UK with no means to continue the pretence of due process.

Britain would simply capitulate
Yet long before it came to that, Britain would simply capitulate with whatever optics are needed to soften the blow to its pride.

The key phrase is “abuse of process” and the pivotal authority is the UN. With any passable media or parliamentary focus on these concepts, even Morrison will be swept along to rescue Assange. He has no means to improve on Richardson’s attempt to wave British abuses out of view, especially since the media began to reveal aspects of the broader injustice.

Some are apparently too proud of lacking sympathy for Assange to abide any defence of him. Nevermind if such defence is derived from politically motivated retribution for publishing authentic documents, found to be in the public interest by major outlets around the globe.

It seems they would sacrifice any point of difference with totalitarian regimes just to be sure that he doesn’t suffer any less than he might.

The Convention Against Torture (CAT) is ratified in the US, UK and Australia. Its second article states that:

‘No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.’

By article 1 of the CAT, every official who acquiesces with torture anywhere contributes to their state’s culpability for it.

The Australian consulate in London has not assisted or rescued Assange from documented torture. If that was part of its job, then the buck stops with Scott Morrison to ensure it does the job.

Likewise, if that was not its job then the buck stops with Scott Morrison to do the job himself or get Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne to do it.

Dr Simon Floth is an Australian analytical philosopher who has lectured in metaphysics and logic at the University of New England. This work is republished under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia licence.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Opposition National list MP Dr Jian Yang has announced his retirement from New Zealand politics and says he will not stand in the 2020 general election after three terms in the party caucus.

He said politics was “demanding” and he wanted to spend more time with his family.

“Accordingly, I have informed the party president that I should not be considered by the regional list ranking committee of the Northern Region in its meeting tomorrow, hence my announcement today.

READ MORE: Who is National MP Juan Yang – Checkpoint

“I truly believe that New Zealand is a great country.”

Of the 21 years he has been in New Zealand, he has spent 12 years in academia and nine in politics.

“I have been proud to be a part of what I think is a caucus that is truly representative of the ethnic diversity that is modern New Zealand, and to have played my part as a Chinese New Zealander in the governance of our amazing country.”

He said he was honoured to represent the Chinese community in Parliament.

Support for Chinese community
“I am proud that I have been able to assist numerous Chinese constituents and enabled the Chinese community to better understand and participate in New Zealand’s open and democratic politics. And I will continue to support New Zealand’s hard-working Chinese community outside of caucus.

In 2017, Yang confirmed he had taught ‘spies’ in China, but denied that he was a spy himself. A story on the Newsroom website raised questions about his involvement with Chinese military and intelligence.

He was a member of the Communist Party while he was in China but had not been since he left the country, he had said.

He said he enjoyed being part of governments led by Sir John Key and Sir Bill English and to have chaired two select committees.

“My trips to China with Prime Minister John Key, ministers and colleagues are some highlights of my political career. I have witnessed the rapid growth of New Zealand’s trade with China and I am pleased to have played a role in it.

“I wish Todd and the team all the best to win the election. New Zealand needs a National government.”

Last month National MP and ousted deputy leader Paula Bennett had also announced she would not be standing at the upcoming election.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

New Zealand has lost some of its independence within the Five Eyes intelligence alliance and been “drawn in a lot closer” to the US-led spy network, former Prime Minister Helen Clark says.

She made the comments in new RNZ podcast The Service, which looks at the SIS during the Cold War.

Sir Geoffrey Palmer, who was deputy prime minister and then prime minister in the fourth Labour government, between 1984 and 1990, also spoke to the podcast about the Five Eyes, saying for New Zealand there was “always a feeling that we have to earn our stripes”.

THE RNZ PODCAST SERIES: The Service – The state, secrets and spies

“I remember doing things that the Americans wanted done on one occasion. I don’t think I can give the details of it. But it was quite important to them. And we facilitated it, and it was done.”

He also revealed that during the mid-1980s one of the Five Eyes partners knew more than most New Zealand Cabinet ministers about intelligence gathering by the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB).

When then-Australian Defence Minister Kim Beazley visited, he wanted to thank New Zealand Cabinet ministers for establishing the GCSB listening post at Waihopai, near Blenheim.

“I said, ‘Kim, you can’t do that. They don’t know anything about it.’ Only three ministers knew about that; the minister of defence, the prime minister and me,” Palmer said.

Clark said she believed the Five Eyes alliance was a net benefit for New Zealand, but it was vital that the country maintained its independence within the network.

“I think you’re as independent as you want to be. I consider we were independent in my time. I sense there’s been a bit of slippage since then, frankly.”

Clark said “sources in officialdom” had told her New Zealand had “got a lot closer back in” and that could threaten the country’s independent foreign policy, which went right back to the nuclear-free stance of the mid-1980s.

The nuclear-free law, which stopped port visits from US ships and saw New Zealand fall out of the ANZUS security pact, sparked the suspension of military exercises between the two countries.

But while the US and New Zealand parted ways on a political level – the relationship was downgraded from allies to friends – the flow of intelligence continued, according to Sir Bruce Ferguson, a former chief of Defence Force who went on to head the GCSB.

“I got everything I wanted. Right from when I became CDF, if I asked the questions, particularly with reference to Afghanistan, we got the answers, we got the intelligence,” he told The Service.

“There were definitely two levels: there was the political level … and the worker bee level. That was us – the intelligence side.”

Sir Bruce said he was plucked from obscurity to study at a US war college at the height of the anti-nuclear row. After he became GCSB director, he developed close relationships with Five Eyes spy chiefs, even playing golf “many times” with the heads of the NSA, CIA and FBI.

“We had very good, very strong relationships with all the personnel at the top. It was a very personal relationship, actually, with dinner at private houses. I would always be invited to their private houses for dinner with their families.”

Sir Bruce acknowledged there were often complaints – even from ‘friendly’ countries – about Five Eyes tactics, such as allegations that the NSA had hacked German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone.

“All those complaints are public knowledge. And that’s the way of the world. Yes, anyone’s fair game if it’s in your own national interests to look at them. And that could be for economic reasons, or whatever,” he said.

“There’s one very strong club: The Five Eyes. It’s jealously guarded. It’s looked on very enviously by probably every other western nation.”

He said people might ask why this group of five English-speaking countries was special or unique. “Well, they are unique. End of story. And we should safeguard that.”

Security expert Paul Buchanan, a former intelligence analyst for US security agencies, told The Service there were benefits to New Zealand but the downsides to Five Eyes should also be acknowledged.

“It’s made us a target,” he said. “Even though many people here may not think that, we’re squarely in the crosshairs of the intelligence services of adversaries of the UK, the United States, the whole Western alliance structure – we are.”

Because the bonds were so tight, and the eavesdropping equipment and methods so sensitive, Buchanan doubted New Zealand could extricate itself from the alliance, even if it wanted to.

“Trying to get out of the Five Eyes is – how can I put it? – it’s like trying to get out of the mafia.”

The Service was made with the support of New Zealand on Air.

More from this series

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Pacific Media Watch Newsdesk

Chinese authorities should immediately release Australian writer Yang Hengjun and drop all charges against him, says the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

In January, police in Guangzhou detained Yang, a former Chinese diplomat turned blogger and political commentator, who has Australian citizenship, according to news reports.

Yang frequently posted commentaries on Twitter and Weibo about US-China relations, espionage, and political reform.

READ MORE: Yang Hengjun a pivotal case in the increasingly tense Chinese-Australian relationship

Authorities gave no explanation for his detention until yesterday, when Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang told reporters that the National Security Bureau in Beijing had formally arrested Yang on espionage charges, according to the state-run newspaper People’s Daily and CNN.

“Chinese authorities seem to have a basic confusion that writing about espionage is the same thing as practising it,” said Steven Butler, CPJ’s Asia programme coordinator, in Washington, DC.

“Yang Hengjun should be freed immediately and allowed to pursue his work as a commentator.”

Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne told The Guardian that China’s allegation against Yang was baseless and that Australian authorities are concerned for his welfare and the conditions under which he is being held.

In 2011, CPJ reported that Yang disappeared in Guangzhou for several days and was suspected of having been detained by police. Yang later called that disappearance a “misunderstanding,” according to The Sydney Morning Herald.

At least 47 journalists were imprisoned in China for their work as of December 2, 2018, according to CPJ’s annual prison census, making it the second largest jailer of journalists worldwide, after Turkey.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Pacific Media Watch Newsdesk

The party backing a presidential challenger in today’s Indonesian general election claims it is reporting an independent US journalist to police over accusations of spreading “lies or fake news”.

CNN Indonesia reports the deputy chairperson of Prabowo Subianto’s Greater Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra), Arief Poyuono, will report journalist Allan Nairn over the accusations.

The alleged fake news referred to by Poyuono is an article by Nairn revealing Prabowo’s strategy to weaken his political opponents if he is elected as president in the presidential election.

READ MORE: Indonesians await ‘quick count’ after country’s biggest election

Incumbent President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and First Lady Iriana cast their ballots at a polling station during the presidential and legislative elections in Jakarta today. Image: Seto Wardhana/Jakarta Post

Nairn published the report on his blog titled “Minutes of a Closed Meeting Between Prabowo Subianto and His Team” (Notulensi Rapat Tertutup Prabowo Subianto dan Tim).

“We will make the report tomorrow. We will also ask the police to arrest Allan Nairn who is currently in Indonesia. Because he has produced fake news in Indonesia”, Poyuono told CNN Indonesia.

-Partners-

In his report, Nairn- a highly respected journalist writing on Indonesian affairs – said that on December 21 last year Prabowo held a closed meeting at his private residence on Jl Jalan Kertanegara Number 4 in South Jakarta that took place between 9pm and 11.15 pm.

Nairn said that the meeting — which was attended by people in Prabowo’s inner circle including Gerindra deputy chairperson and Fadli Zon and Poyuono — discussed concrete steps to deal with strategic issues such as the Prabowo presidential ticket supporting an Islamic caliphate and political grudges against Gerindra.

List of names
In relation to the caliphate issue, the meeting decided to appoint retired TNI (Indonesian military) Major General Arifin Seman to draft a list of names that would be suitable as the new head of the National Intelligence Agency (BIN).

“A massive internal reshuffle inside BIN will be directed towards an attack on political opponents and to paralyse the HTI [the banned extremist Islamic group Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia], the FPI [the hardline Islamic Defenders Front], JAD [the banned terrorist group Jamaah Ansharut Daulah] and equivalent groups,” wrote Nairn in the report.

“BIN’s other task will be to weaken [Prabowo’s] coalition parties to increase Gerindra’s domination in the administration: the PKS [the Islamic based Justice and Prosperity Party] and the Democrat Party will have their wings clipped completely through various old and new corruption cases,” read the report.

In relation to political grudges, Nairn’s report said that Fadli Zon and PKS politician and current deputy House of Representatives Speaker Fahri Hamzah would be tasked with selecting the next Attorney-General.

“The new Attorney-General’s principle task will be to convict as many political opponents as possible from the PDI-Perjuangan [President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s ruling Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle], NasDem [the National Democrats], the Golkar Party, the PKB [National Awakening Party] and the PPP [the United Development Party],” wrote Nairn in the report.

Nairn claims to have obtained the information about the meeting from an intelligence source. Poyuono on the other hand, who is cited as having attended the meeting, says that Nairn’s report is nothing more than a hoax or fake news.

Poyuono conceded that he was once interviewed by Nairn on March 20, 2019. During the interview, Poyuono said Nairn asked many questions, one of which was about the December 21 meeting at Kertanegara.

‘No meeting’
“He asked me ‘did I take part or not?”. I said no, because there was indeed no meeting on December 21. If there had been a meeting [on that date] I would most certainly have taken part because I am a [party] leader and close to Prabowo,” said Poyuono.

Poyuono said that Nairn is a “made to order” journalist who has been tasked with destroying Prabowo in the lead up to the presidential and legislative elections. Poyuono even claimed to have data which corroborates the accusation that Nairn is a journalist who is paid to write specific reports.

He presented CNN Indonesia with evidence of this in the form of a money transfer receipt of around US$2 million paid into Nairn’s DBS Bank account in Singapore. Poyuono said that the money was part of a payment made to Nairn to slander and build a black campaign against Prabowo and the TNI.

“He has indeed been tasked by people who have placed an order with him. By our political opponents. People still remember when during the Jakarta Pilkada [gubernatorial election in 2017] he said the TNI was planning a coup d’etat, it turned out to be a hoax. The Pilkada proceeded smoothly and peacefully,” said Poyuono.

Nairn himself denies Poyuono’s accusations. On his Twitter account @AllanNairn14, Nairn said Prabowo’s team had sent the press a fake Singapore bank receipt to the press containing the alleged transfer of US$2 million.

“I think that this is an indirect confirmation by Prabowo that the report is accurate and he is trying hard to discredit it,” wrote Nairn.

Translated by James Balowski of Indoleft News. The original title of the article was “Gerindra Polisikan Allan Nairn Soal Dokumen Siasat Prabowo”.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz