Philippines police unlawfully targeted protesters with unnecessary and excessive force during anti-corruption marches in September, according to harrowing new testimony gathered by the human rights watchdog Amnesty International ahead of fresh protests planned across the country this weekend.

Ten people interviewed by Amnesty International detailed physical abuse — including violations that may amount to torture and other ill-treatment — by state forces following demonstrations in the capital Manila on 21 September 2025.

The research comes as thousands prepare to return to the streets on November 30 in renewed protests against government corruption, said the Amnesty International report.

“The disturbing evidence we have gathered of unlawful force unleashed by the police against protesters and others on September 21 makes a mockery of the Philippine government’s repeated claim that it exercises ‘maximum tolerance’ during protests,” said Jerrie Abella, Amnesty International regional campaigner.

“Victims have described how police punched, kicked and hit people — including children — with batons as they were arrested, with appalling ill-treatment continuing in detention. The police must change course and respect people’s right to protest on November 30 and beyond.”

Police only stopped beatings “when they saw the media coming”.

The Philippines’ biggest demonstrations in years took place on September 21, as tens of thousands in Manila and elsewhere protested against corruption by government officials, high-level politicians and contractors in flood-control and infrastructure projects.

Isolated incidents
Isolated incidents of violence from some protesters, including setting vehicles on fire and throwing stones at the police, were reported in Manila.

Manila police said they arrested and detained 216 people who were allegedly involved in the violence, including 91 children. Many are facing criminal charges.

However, Amnesty’s research indicates that peaceful protesters and bystanders were also violently targeted by the police.

Rey*, 20, recounted how three men in plain clothes — who he believes were police as they later handed him to uniformed officers — grabbed and punched him in the face as he tried to run away while holding a sign calling on people to take to the streets.

The assault on Rey was captured in a video, by an unknown individual, which he found online and showed to Amnesty International.

“Police in uniform joined in to punch, kick and hit me with their batons. I briefly lost consciousness but woke up to pain as they dragged me by my hair,” Rey told Amnesty International.

He said police accused him of taking part in violence that killed two officers, despite the fact that no police were killed in the protests.

Beating stopped when media came
Rey said the beating only stopped when one officer warned the others that members of the media were approaching. He also described how he and his friend were taken by uniformed police into an ambulance, where they were beaten further.

Omar*, 25, said he was watching the protests with relatives in Mendiola Street, Manila, when he was arrested.

Police accused him of being among those who caused violence, including attacking the police.

While walking with the police who arrested him, Omar said they passed other officers who punched and hit him with batons.

He said he was then held in a tent with about 14 other people, one of whom “had blood dripping from a head wound” which he said was from being hit with a gun by a police officer.

Ahmed*, 17, was arrested alongside his relatives Yusuf*, 18, and Ali*, 19, who all live and do construction work near the protest site.

They said they went out to buy rice and were waiting for police to allow them to pass through a protest area on their way back to the construction site when they were arrested.

‘Hit with batons, kicked’
“The police took us to a tent where they hit us with their batons. They punched us in the face and kicked our torsos,” Ali told Amnesty International. He said they were accused of attacking the police and subsequently detained.

‘I saw people coming out of the tent bloodied and bruised’

Greg*, 18, and Ryan*, 22, were arrested in separate incidents in Mendiola and Ayala Bridge in Manila for their alleged involvement in attacks against the police. Like all those interviewed, they were brought by the police to a blue tent in Mendiola, where police beat them further.

Lawyer Maria Sol Taule, from a legal aid group representing those interviewed, said the “notorious blue tent” served as a temporary holding area for those arrested. While it showed no outward sign of police affiliation, it appeared to be supervised by the police, according to the group’s investigation.

“I was so scared. I saw people coming out of the tent bloodied and bruised. Inside, they made me spread my hands and repeatedly hit both sides with their batons,” said Greg, who showed Amnesty International welts on his back where he said he was struck.

Ryan said police hit him on his head and neck. “They saw me lift my head up and accused me of ‘verifying’ or looking at the faces of police to identify them,” he said. Others interviewed reported being similarly hit following the same accusation by police.

“I told myself, I was done for. I’d never make it out of this tent alive,” said Michael*, 23, who described being punched, kicked and hit with batons by police. He was arrested with his girlfriend Sam*, 21, and their friend Lena*, 22, before all three were detained at a police station. They said they went to the protest just to watch and take videos but were arrested for allegedly committing violence.

Sam and Lena were not hurt but could hear people being beaten nearby. “Even now, I can still hear the cries coming from the tent. I have problems sleeping, imagining how they beat up Michael,” Sam said.

Needed medical treatment
The beatings were so severe that some victims needed medical treatment, according to Taule. She said one individual sustained injuries including a dislocated jaw when he was hit by the police with a baton in the face. Others – including Michael, Sam and Lena – lost their jobs after failing to report to work as they were detained.

All those interviewed maintained they were not involved in the violence of which they were accused by the police.

On November 4, police said 97 individuals had been charged with conspiracy, sedition and other crimes over the protests.

*Names were changed in the Amnesty International report upon request for safety reasons

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Israeli prison guards punish the prisoners “by breaking their thumbs” said a released detainee as lawyers speak out about torture, abuse, rape, starving and killings in a notorious underground Israeli prison facility where detainees are held without sunlight, brutalised.

And nobody in New Zealand says a word.

Scores of detainees from Gaza have also been held in a notorious Israeli military detention camp known as Sde Teiman, where reports of killings, torture and sexual violence, including rape, have been rife since the Gaza war began in October 2023.

There’s about 9200 Palestinians being held in detention by Israel but there’s no word from Prime Minister Christopher Luxon about them like there was over 20 Israeli hostages.

And Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters has not said anything about a new law that Israel just voted for that would impose the death penalty for so-called “terrorism” offences based on “racist” motives against Israelis.

That’s a law exclusively aimed at Palestinians while Israeli settlers are exempt.

Go ahead, terrorise the people living there.

Winston Peters is silent on behalf of you and me. He’s representing us on the world stage.

We not only do not condemn this, we don’t even mention it. New Zealand doesn’t care.

They are not us, they are not “we”.

Gerard Otto is a digital creator, satirist and independent commentator on politics and the media through his G News column and video reports. This article is an excerpt from a G News commentary and republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Israel and the West pretend they want a real peace in Israel-Palestine yet the Israelis have beaten unconscious the man most likely to help realise a sustainable end to the conflict: Marwan Barghouti.

The ethnocentrism of Western culture is such that 20 Israeli hostages received vastly more coverage than thousands of Palestinian hostages, nearly 2000 of whom were released as part of the recent exchange.

These prisoners, physically emaciated, most emotionally shattered, many children, most having never been charged, some held for decades, emerged from the Dantesque Inferno of the Israeli prison system. Most had some kind of disease, commonly scabies, due to the infested and infected conditions of the gulag.

Five Palestinian detainees released and exiled to Egypt brought with them terrible news: the great Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti — the person most likely to lead a free Palestine — had recently been beaten unconscious by his captors.

According to the Times of Israel, Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir who oversees the Israeli Prison System says he is “proud that Barghouti’s conditions have changed drastically”.

What Nelson Mandela would say about the beating of Marwan
Marwan Barghouti — Palestine’s most loved and revered leader, a living symbol of the resistance — was beaten unconscious by 8 Israeli guards, according to the testimony of fellow prisoners on arrival in Cairo. The attack left the 66-year-old with broken ribs and head injuries.

When called on to demand his protection, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and other Western leaders yawned and looked the other way. That response defined the depths that the Western world has reached in its permissiveness of violence towards Palestinian prisoners.

Marwan Barghouti is commonly referred to as the Palestinian Mandela, a man who has the attributes to not only unite the many Palestinian factions but also negotiate a lasting peace, if given the opportunity.

Mandela couldn’t have been “Mandela” without him surviving and being released — which is a tribute to the ANC and other fighters for freedom, as well as to the global boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns that finally convinced the regime to negotiate.

The same was true of the Good Friday Agreement for Northern Ireland which saw the release of prisoners that one side considered terrorists. The British also came to accept that negotiation with leaders like Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness of the IRA was essential precisely because they had the street credibility to deliver peace.

It is worth pointing out that Mandela said he was not personally beaten during his 27 years of captivity by the racist South African apartheid regime.

Barghouti, who has spent the last 23 years in prisons has had at least four beatings by the Israelis in the past three years alone. The Israelis have shown nothing but contempt for the Geneva Conventions, the laws of war, Red Cross requests, or any benchmark of human decency.

They are our “friends and allies” with whom we share values.

‘He has been in a struggle for 50 years’.           Video: TRT News

Rules on prisoner treatment
After leaving Robben Island to eventually become South Africa’s first black President, the convicted terrorist and revolutionary Prisoner 46664 helped author the Nelson Mandela Rules on prisoner treatment, adopted by the United Nations in 2015. He had seen the mistreatment of many of his comrades by racist white South Africa, a close ally of most of our governments.

The scale of what is being done by Israel in its mass torture centres would be beyond anything Mandela could have imagined. Unlike morally repellent leaders like New Zealand’s Luxon, UK’s Starmer, France’s Macron or Germany’s Merz, he would never have failed to act.

A central tenet of the Mandela Rules is that people behind bars are not beyond human rights. Countries — and, yes, that includes Israel — must adhere to minimum standards such as, “No prisoner shall be subjected to, and all prisoners shall be protected from, torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, for which no circumstances whatsoever may be invoked as a justification.”

Recently released Palestinians, most in shocking physical condition, talked of having to drink toilet water, beatings, being denied medical treatment, constant humiliations, including sexual violence, committed by the Israelis.

This kind of behaviour has long been documented by international human rights organisations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch — and largely ignored by the mainstream media.

The Israelis, never forget, are our close friends, with whom we share “values”.

I have written a number of articles about Marwan and, to avoid repetition, I recommend those unfamiliar with his astonishing story to read them. My last article, Saving Marwan Barghouti is our duty, in August, was part of a global push to prevent Marwan facing further mistreatment. I was shocked at the time to see the video that Israeli Minister Ben-Gvir posted to show the power he personally had over Marwan whose physical condition had obviously deteriorated to a terrible extent. Now he has been beaten, for the fourth time.

“It is a clear declaration that they are threatening my father’s life,” his son Arab Barghouti said this week.

Prisons are ‘Israeli sadism in a nutshell’
One person who watched the release of the prisoners last week was veteran Israeli journalist Amira Hass, correspondent on the Occupied Palestinian Territories for Israel’s leading newspaper Haaretz.

“It was a kind of parade of skeletons,” Hass said. “These last two years, it’s like the Israeli prisons have become Israeli sadism in a nutshell,” she told Democracy Now!.

“The way that prisoners were treated during these two years is unprecedented in Israel. They didn’t only come out emaciated; they came out ill, sick. Some of them have lost limbs. It’s indescribable.”

Hass’s own parents were Holocaust survivors, her mother surviving nine months in the notorious Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Now, along with all of us, she is witness to genocide.

She makes the fine observation that people aren’t born cruel; they become so. I would add: we in the West helped the Israelis become so depraved by ignoring their abuses for so long. Former human rights lawyer Keir Starmer is a case in point.

In the UK Parliament on October 14, Green MP Ellie Chowns asked Starmer:

“Can I ask the Prime Minister what recent representation his government has made in the last few days to secure the immediate release of Mr Barghouti, given his widespread popularity as a unifying voice for Palestinian rights, dignity and freedom, and therefore his potential crucial role in securing a meaningful and lasting peace in the region?”

Starmer is an avatar for the West: complicit in genocide and disturbingly detached from the suffering of the Palestinian people.

Starmer, who has less human decency in his entire being than Nelson Mandela had in one nostril hair, refused to even mention Barghouti by name. His lawyerly reply:

“Thank you for raising the individual case. We offer to provide such further information as we can, as soon as we can, in relation to that particular case.”

Western leaders, including in my own country, have refused to even reply to requests that petitions/insistences be made to the Israelis to save the great Palestinian leader. They have shown more empathy for the remains of deceased Israeli hostages crushed under the rubble of buildings bombed by the Israelis, hypocritically blaming Hamas for not releasing the remains fast enough!

Such is the moral calibre of our leaders.

None of them, it should be pointed out, had anything to say when footage appeared of Israeli soldiers committing gang rape at Sde Temein Prison last year. Not only were the men not punished but by week’s end they had been blessed by Benjamin Netanyahu’s spiritual mentor Rabbi Meir Mazuz who assured one of the rapists that he had done “no wrong” and “In another country they would have given him an award”.

Never forget, the Israelis are our close friends and allies with whom, our leaders tell us, we share values.

‘Israel doesn’t want peace – they want ethnic cleansing’
Such is Marwan Barghouti’s standing that he is respected by all Palestinian factions and acknowledged as a unifying figure, a peacemaker and someone who should be leading Palestine not getting his head punched by Israeli thugs.

“That’s why they see him as a danger,” says his son, Arab Barghouti. “Because he wants to bring stability, he wants to end the cycle of violence.

“He wants a unifying Palestinian vision that is accepted by everyone, and the international community as well. But they’re [Israelis] not interested in any political settlement; they’re only interested in ethnically cleansing the Palestinian people.”

True words, those — and they demolish the fake narrative peddled by Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders that there was “no partner for peace” on the Palestinian side.

The Israelis have killed so many Palestinian negotiators, so many Palestinians leaders that the opposite is now clear: the Israelis and the West are the true enemies of peace.

I’ll give the last word to another Palestinian. I dedicate it to Keir Starmer, Christopher Luxon, Anthony Albanese and all those other leaders who stand deaf, dumb and blind to Marwan Barghouti and the thousands of Palestinian souls still suffering in Israeli captivity:

“Then He will also say to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels: for I was hungry and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink; I was a stranger and you did not take Me in, naked and you did not clothe Me, sick and in prison and you did not visit Me.’

– Matthew 25, King James Bible

Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region, and he contributes to Asia Pacific Report. He hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Hundreds of Palestinians released from Israeli prisons in recent days have described scenes of systematic torture, starvation, and humiliation.

Their accounts, gathered by The Guardian, TRT, Al-Mayadeen, Quds News Network, and Palestine Online, among others, offer a rare glimpse into what human rights organisations call a “policy of abuse” targeting Palestinian detainees.

According to the reports, many of the freed prisoners returned to Gaza emaciated, injured, and traumatised, some learning only after their release that their families had been killed during Israel’s war on the besieged Strip.

In testimony published by The Guardian, 33-year-old Naseem al-Radee recalled the moment Israeli prison guards “gave him a farewell gift” before his release.

“They bound his hands, placed him on the ground and beat him without mercy,” the report said, describing how Radee’s first sight of Gaza after nearly two years was “blurry,” the result of a boot to the eye.

Radee, a government employee from Beit Lahia, was kidnapped by Israeli soldiers at a displacement shelter in Gaza in December 2023. He spent 22 months in detention, including 100 days in an underground cell, before being released alongside 1700 other Palestinians this week under the ceasefire agreement.

A freed Palestinian prisoner speaks in pain about the horrors and inhumane treatment inside Israeli occupation prisons. pic.twitter.com/KqNJjX2mza

— PALESTINE ONLINE 🇵🇸 (@OnlinePalEng) October 13, 2025

“They used teargas and rubber bullets to intimidate us, in addition to constant verbal abuse and insults,” The Guardian cited Radee as saying regarding his time in Nafha prison in the Naqab desert.

“They had a strict system of repression; the electronic gate of the section would open when the soldiers entered, and they would come in with their dogs, shouting ‘on your stomach, on your stomach,’ and start beating us mercilessly”, the testimony continued.

According to the report, cramped and unsanitary cells, fungal infections, starvation, and routine beatings defined his captivity. Upon release, Radee tried to call his wife, only to learn that she and all but one of his children had been killed during his detention.

“I was very happy to be released because the date coincided with my youngest daughter Saba’s third birthday,” he said.

“I tried to find some joy in being released on this day, but sadly, Saba went with my family, and my joy went with her.”

Sound torture
Also speaking to The Guardian, 22-year-old university student Mohammed al-Asaliya described contracting scabies in prison and being denied treatment.

“There was no medical care,” he said. “We tried to treat ourselves by using floor disinfectant on our wounds, but it only made them worse. The mattresses were filthy, the environment unhealthy, our immunity weak, and the food contaminated.”

He recalled an area “they called ‘the disco,’ where they played loud music nonstop for two days straight.”

The sound torture, he said, was combined with physical abuse: “They also hung us on walls, sprayed us with cold air and water, and sometimes threw chilli powder on detainees.”

By the time of his release, Asaliya’s weight had dropped from 75 kg to 42 kg.

‘We died a thousand times a day’
In testimony recorded by Palestine Online, journalist and former detainee Shadi Abu Sido described what he called “unimaginable torture”.

“They used to say: ‘Take, eat.’ But I didn’t want anything for myself. About 1800 of us were released, and thousands are still inside,” Abu Sido recounted.

“If you die once a day, we have died a thousand times a day, each day. We didn’t know the day, the hour, or even the date.

“We forgot what sleep feels like, how food tastes. In the middle of the night, they would splash water on us, in our cells.”

In another video posted by Palestine Online, Abu Sido added:

“They torture and abuse us in every possible way, physically and psychologically. We don’t sleep; they threaten us about our children. ‘We killed your children, we killed your children. There is no Gaza’.”

“I entered Gaza and I found a scene from the Day of Judgment,” he said.

‘I made this for my daughter’
In a video published by Al-Mayadeen, another recently freed detainee collapsed in tears as he learned that his entire family had been killed. Holding a handmade toy he crafted in prison, he said:

“My children are dead. I made this for my daughter. Her birthday was on October 18; my daughter was two years old. Bara is eight years old.

“My beloved ones have been killed.”

‘They amputated my leg’
Speaking to TRT World, Palestinian prisoner Jibril al-Safadi described the brutality that cost him his leg:

“My leg was amputated in prison due to severe torture. The situation was tough: relentless suffering. There were savage beatings and horrible torture,” he said. “They transferred me to Sde Teiman.

“There was no medical care. They amputated my right leg.

We faced everything you can expect, even the dogs’ raping, torturing of detainees. Killing men is usual, like it’s an ordinary thing.”

A system of abuse
The Guardian report cited Palestinian medical officials in Gaza who confirmed that many detainees arrived “in poor physical health,” bearing “bruises, fractures, wounds, and marks from restraints that had bound their hands tightly.”

Eyad Qaddih, the director of public relations at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, reportedly said many of the released prisoners had to be transferred to the emergency room.

“The signs of beating and torture were clearly visible,” he told The Guardian.

The report cited the Israeli NGO Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI), as saying that about 2800 Palestinians from Gaza remain in Israeli prisons without charge.

Most were detained under emergency laws amended after October 7, 2023, allowing for indefinite administrative detention of anyone deemed an “unlawful combatant”.

PCATI’s executive director, Tal Steiner, said that “the amount and scale of torture and abuse in Israeli prisons and military camps has skyrocketed since October 7.”

She described the escalation as “part of a policy led by Israeli decision-makers such as Itamar Ben-Gvir and others.”

Ben-Gvir, Israel’s far-right National Security Minister, has repeatedly bragged about providing Palestinian prisoners with “the minimum of the minimum” food and supplies.

The Guardian reports: In total, 88 Palestinians were released from Israeli prisons and sent to the occupied West Bank on Monday – the other nearly 2000, a number that includes about 1700 Palestinians seized from Gaza during the war and held without charge, were sent back to Gaza, where a minority would travel on to neighbouring countries.

Before Monday’s release, 11,056 Palestinians were held in Israeli prisons, according to statistics from the Israeli NGO HaMoked in October 2025. At least 3500 of those were held in administrative detention without trial. An Israeli military database has indicated that only a quarter of those detained in Gaza were classified as fighters.

Republished with permission from The Palestine Chronicle

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Kia ora koutou,

I’m a Kiwi journo in occupied Bethlehem, here’s a brief summary of today’s events across the Palestinian and Israeli territories from on the ground.

At least 79 killed and 391 injured by Israeli forces in Gaza over the last 24 hours, including 33 killed and 267 injured while seeking aid at the US-Israel “humanitarian” centres.

*

Three killed and 7 injured by settler pogrom on the town of Kafr Malik, northeast of Ramallah; setting fire to houses and cars, and protected by soldiers. Israeli forces shot and killed 15-year-old Rayan Houshia west of Jenin as they retreated from resistance fighters, after using a civilian home as military barracks; also invading several towns across the West Bank, firing teargas into al-Fawar refugee camp south of Hebron, sound-bombs near the Jenin Grand Mosque in the north, and arresting several Palestinians.

Al Quds/Jerusalem’s old city faced low visitor numbers even after restrictions were lifted by the Israeli occupation. Jerusalem Governate reported 623 homes and facilities demolished by Israel since October 2023.

*

Palestinian political prisoner Amar Yasser Al-Amour was released after 2.5 years without charge or trial in Israeli prisons. Thousands remain detained illegally in this way. Another freed prisoner Fares Bassam Hanani mourned his mother who passed away while he was imprisoned. Mohammad al-Ghushi, also freed, was taken to hospital to have his kidney removed due to torture and medical neglect he faced in Israeli prisons.

*

The unexpected ceasefire between Israel, America, and Iran appears to be holding for now. Iranian officials say the US “torpedoed diplomacy” and have passed a bill to halt cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog IAEA.

Cole Martin is an independent New Zealand photojournalist based in the Middle East and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Paolo* was just 15 years old when he witnessed the Philippine National Police (PNP) mercilessly kill his father in 2016.

Nearly nine years later, the scales are shifting as Rodrigo Duterte, the man who unleashed death upon his family and thousands of others, now faces the weight of justice before the International Criminal Court (ICC).

“Finally, naaresto din, [pero] dapat isama si [Senator Ronald dela Rosa], dapat silang panagutin sa dami ng pamilyang inulila nila. (Finally, he’s arrested but Dela Rosa should’ve been with him, they should be held accountable for how many families they left in mourning),” he said.

Paolo, then a minor, was also accosted and tortured by Caloocan police — from the same city police who would kill 17-year-old Kian delos Santos less than a year later.

He was threatened not to do anything else or else end up like his father. Paolo carried the threats and the fear over the years, even as he hoped for justice.

This hanging on for hope in the face of devastation was not for nothing.

Duterte was arrested today by Philippine authorities following the issue of a warrant by the ICC in relation to crimes against humanity committed during his violent war on drugs.

The ICC has been investigating the killings under Duterte’s flagship campaign, which led to at least 6252 deaths in police operations alone by May 2022. The number reached between 27,000 to 30,000, including those killed vigilante-style.

The Presidential Communications Office said that the government received from the Interpol an official copy of a warrant of arrest.

Duterte was presented by the Philippine government’s Prosecutor-General with the ICC notification of an arrest over crimes against humanity upon his arrival from Hong Kong on this morning.

Slow but sure step to justice
Paolo is not the only one rejoicing over Duterte’s arrest. Many families, including those from drug war hot spot Caloocan City, see this as the long-awaited step toward the justice they have been denied for years.

When the news broke, Ana* was overcome with joy and thanked God for giving families the strength and unwavering faith to keep fighting for justice. She knew the weight of loss all too well.

In 2017, police stormed into their home in Caloocan City and brutally killed her husband and father-in-law in a single night.

Ana, who was five months pregnant at that time, was caught in the violence and was hit by a stray bullet. She and other victims have since been supported by the In Defence of Human Rights and Dignity Movement.

“Sa wakas, unti-unti nang nakakamit ang hustisya para sa lahat ng biktima (At last, justice is slowly being achieved for all the victims),” she recalled thinking when she read that Duterte had been arrested.

But Ana is wishing for more than just imprisonment for Duterte, even as she welcomed the long-awaited accountability from the former president and his allies.

“Sana din ay aminin niya lahat ng kamalian at humingi siya ng kapatawaran sa lahat ng tao na biktima para matahimik din ang mga kaluluwa ng mga namatay (I hope he also admits to all his wrongdoings and asks for forgiveness from every victim, so that the souls of those who were killed may finally find peace),” she said.

Brutality they endured
For the families, the ICC’s move and the government’s action are an acknowledgment of the brutality they endured. The latest development is also a validation of their grief and provides a glimmer of hope that accountability is finally within reach. After years of being silenced and dismissed, they see this moment as the start of a reckoning they feared would never come.

Celina, whose husband was shot dead in a drug war operation, feels overwhelming joy but is wary that the arrest is just part of a long process at the ICC.

“Ang sabi nga po, mahaba-habang laban ito kaya hindi po sa pag-aresto natatapos ito, bagkus ito ay simula pa lamang ng aming mga laban [at] naniniwala kami at aasa sa kakayahan at suporta na ibinibigay sa amin ng ICC [na] sa huli, mananagot ang dapat managot, maparusahan ang may mga sala,” she said.

(As they say, this is a long battle, so it does not end with the arrest. Rather, this is only the beginning of our fight. We believe in and will rely on the ICC’s capability and support, knowing that in the end, those who must be held accountable will face justice, and the guilty will be punished.)

It is a stark contrast to the reality they have lived following the deaths of their loved ones. They were constantly under threat from the police who pulled the trigger. Many families had to flee to faraway places, leaving behind their own communities and source of livelihood.

“Nakakaiyak ako, hindi ko alam ang dapat kong maramdaman na sa ilang taon naming ipinaglalaban ay nakamit din namin ang hustisyang aming minimithi (I’m in tears — I don’t know what to feel. After years of fighting, we have finally achieved the justice we have long been yearning for),“ said Betty, whose 44-year-old son and 22-year-old grandson were killed under Duterte’s drug war.

For Jane Lee, the arrest only underscores the glaring disparity between the powerful and the powerless.

“Mabuti pa siya, inaresto ng mga kapulisan. Ang aming mga kaanak, pinatay agad,” she said. “Napakalaki ng pagkakaiba sa pagitan ng makapangyarihan at ordinaryong taong tulad namin.”

(At least he was arrested by the police. Our loved ones were killed on the spot. The difference between the powerful and ordinary people like us is enormous.)

Lee’s husband, Michael, was gunned down by unidentified men in May 2017, leaving her to raise their three children alone. Since then, she has volunteered for Rise Up for Life and for Rights, a group composed mostly of widows and mothers who remain steadfast in demanding justice for drug war victims.

Collective rage
Families from Rise Up in Cebu also voiced their collective rage against Duterte who ordered killings from the presidential pulpit for six years. They hope that Duterte will feel the same pain they felt when their loved ones were forcibly taken away from them.

This afternoon, Duterte condemned the alleged violation of due process following his arrest. His allies are also echoing this messaging, calling the arrest unlawful.

His longtime aide, Senator Bong Go, Go, tried to access Duterte in Villamor Air Base, asking the guards to let him deliver pizza since they hadn’t eaten yet.

“Katiting lang iyan sa ginawa mo sa amin na sinira mo ang aming buhay at hanapbuhay dahil sa iyong pekeng war on drugs,” the families of drug war victims in Cebu said. “Wala kang karapatan na kumuha ng buhay ng iba [kasi] Diyos lang may karapatan kaya sa ginawa mo, maniningil ang taumbayan lalo na kaming mga pamilya ng mga naging biktima.”

(That is nothing compared to what you did to us. You destroyed our lives and livelihood because of your fake war on drugs. You have no right to take another person’s life; only God has that right. Because of what you have done, the people will demand justice, especially we, the families of the victims.)

There is still no clear information on what comes next, whether Duterte will be immediately transferred to the International Criminal Court headquarters in The Hague, Netherlands, or if legal battles will delay the process.

But Mila*, whose 17-year-old nephew was killed by police in Quezon City in 2018, hopes for one thing if the former president finds himself in a detention cell soon: “Sana huwag na siya lumaya (I hope he is never set free).” 

Republished from Rappler with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

“Detainees endure physical, psychological and sexual abuse as well as starvation and medical neglect amounting to torture,” the report said, denouncing a “deeply ingrained policy”.

Healthcare workers were beaten, threatened, and forced to sign documents in Hebrew during their detention, according to the report based on 20 testimonies collected in prison.

“Medical personnel were primarily questioned about the Israeli hostages, tunnels, hospital structures and Hamas’s activity,” it said.

“They were rarely asked questions linking them to any criminal activity, nor were they presented with substantive charges.”

Where does Trump stand on the Gaza ceasefire?
With phase one of the ceasefire due to end today and negotiations barely started on phase two, serious fears are being raised over  the viability of the ceasefire.

President Donald Trump took credit for the truce that his Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff helped push across the finish line after a year of negotiations led by the Biden administration, Egypt and Qatar, reports Al Jazeera.

However, Trump has since sent mixed signals about the deal.

Earlier last month, he set a firm deadline for Hamas to release all the captives, warning “all hell is going to break out” if it didn’t.

But he said it was ultimately up to Israel, and the deadline came and went.

Trump sowed further confusion by proposing that Gaza’s population of about 2.3 million be relocated to other countries and for the US to take over the territory and develop it.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the idea, but it was universally rejected by Palestinians and Arab countries, including close US allies. Human rights groups said it could violate international law.

Trump stood by the plan in a Fox News interview over the weekend but said he was “not forcing it”.

Responding to DAWN’s referral of Biden, Blinken & Austin to the ICC for investigation for aiding Israeli war crimes, @alhaq_org‘s @SJabaren says:

“Finally, we see an effort to hold” accountable “US officials who have armed, financed and politically defended Israeli atrocities.” pic.twitter.com/yCpRaogE2I

— DAWN MENA (@DAWNmenaorg) February 28, 2025

‘Finally’ an effort to hold the US accountable, says Al-Haq director
Palestinian human rights activist Shawan Jabarin has welcomed a plea by the US-based rights group DAWN for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate Joe Biden and senior US officials for aiding Israeli war crimes in Gaza.

In a video posted by DAWN, Jabarin, director of the Palestinian rights group Al-Haq, said the effort was long overdue.

“For decades we have called on the international community to hold Israel accountable for its violations of international law, but time and again, the US has used its power and influence to block that accountability, to shield Israel from consequences and to ensure that it can continue its crimes with impunity,” Jabarin said.

“Now, finally, we see an effort to hold not just Israeli officials accountable but also those who have made these crimes possible: US officials who have armed, financed, and politically defended Israeli atrocities.”

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Two Palestinian resistance groups have condemned “the brutal assault” on prisoners at Ofer Prison, saying it was “barbaric criminal behaviour that reflects the fascist and terrorist nature of” Israel.

In the joint statement, Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ) called the attack a “miserable attempt” by Israel “to restore its shattered prestige”, reports Al Jazeera.

They called on the world to expose “these inhuman crimes against the prisoners”, which “blatantly violate all international conventions and norms”.

The statement called on the international community to intervene to protect the “prisoners, stop criminal violations against them, document them and work to hold the criminal occupation leaders accountable”.

The statement came after Palestinian authorities said Israeli forces had raided a section of Ofer Prison, west of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, and assaulted detainees.

“Prisoners were beaten and sprayed with gas,” the Palestinian Prisoners Media Office said.

Persistent serious allegations of torture and abuse of Palestinian prisoners — many who have not been charged or are held on administrative detention — and beatings right up until the release of detainees under the ceasefire have been made over all six exchange events so far.

Medical director severely tortured
Last week, lawyers representing Kamal Adwan Hospital’s medical director Dr Hussam Abu Safiya met him for the first time since he was detained by Israeli forces in north Gaza last December 27.

He told them he was severely tortured with electric shocks and was being denied needed medication.

Lawyer spells out torture allegations over Israeli detention of doctor.  Video: Al Jazeera

Samir Al-Mana’ama, a lawyer with the Al Mazan Center for Human Rights, described his brutal torture in a failed attempt to “extract a confession” from him in an interview with Al Jazeera.

Al-Mana’ama said Dr Abu Safiya suffered from “an enlarged heart muscle and from high blood pressure” and was beaten up and refused treatment for the heart condition.

Transferred to Ofter Prison on January 9, he was held in solitary confinement for 25 days and interrogated nonstop by the Israeli army, Israeli intelligence and police, the lawyer added.

There was “no legal justification” for Abu Safia’s arrest and no evidence against him, the lawyer said.

Since the interview, Israeli authorities said he was being held under an “unlawful combatant” law — despite his status as a civilian doctor — stripping him of any rights as a detainee.

Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh, reporting from Amman in Jordan, said the doctor was one of hundreds of medical workers taken from Gaza by Israeli forces to the notorious Sde Teiman detention camp and other Israeli military prisons.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Celebration time. Some Palestinian prisoners have been released. A mother reunited with her daughter. A young mother reunited with her babies.

Still in prison are people who never received a fair trial, people that independent inquirers say are wrongly imprisoned. Still in prison kids who cursed soldiers who walked into their villages wielding guns.

Still imprisoned far too many Palestinians who threw stones against bullets. Still imprisoned thousands of Palestinian hostages.

Many of us never knew how many hostages had been stolen, hauled into jails by Israel before 7 October 2023. We only heard the one sided story of that day. The day when an offence force on a border was taken by surprise and when it panicked and blasted and bombed.

When that army guarding the occupation did more to lose lives than save lives.

Many never knew and perhaps never will know how many of the Palestinians who were kidnapped before and after that day had been beaten and tortured, including with the torture of rape.

We do know many have been murdered. We do know that some released from prison died soon after. We do not know how many more Palestinians will be taken hostage and imprisoned behind the prison no reporter is allowed to photograph.

Israelis boast over prison crime
The only clue to what happens inside is that Israelis have boasted this crime on national television. The clue is that Israeli soldiers have been tried for raping their own colleagues.

Make no mistake, this is a mean misogynist mercantile army. No sensible rational caring person would wish to serve in it.

No mother on any side of this conflict should lose her child. No father should bury his daughter or son. No grandparent should grieve over the loss of a life that should outlive them.

The crimes need to be exposed. All of them. Our media filters the truth. It does not provide a fair or full story. If you want that switch for pity’s sake go to Al Jazeera English.

When Radio New Zealand reports that people who fled are returning to Gaza it should report the full truth and not redact any part of the statement.

The Palestinian people were forced to flee their homes in Gaza. Those who were never responsible for any crime were bombed out of their homes, they fled as their families were murdered, burned to death, shot by snipers. They fled while soldiers mocked their dead children.

They return home to ashes. If we want peace we must face the truths that create conflict. We are all connected in peace and war and peace.

Peace is the strongest greeting. It sears the heart and soars the soul.

It can only be achieved when we recognise and stop the anguish that causes oppression.

Saige England is a freelance journalist and author living in the Aotearoa New Zealand city of Ōtautahi.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Democracy Now!

AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show with Syria and the aftermath of the historic collapse of the Assad regime. Israeli forces are continuing to attack key military sites, airports and army air bases in cities across Syria, including the capital Damascus.

In just the last 48 hours, Israel has carried out 340 airstrikes, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. A resident from Qamishli in northeastern Syria described the strikes that took place Monday night.

ABDEL RAHMAN MOHAMED: [translated] The strikes happened at night. We went out after hearing the sounds, and we saw a fire there. Then we realized that Israel struck these locations. We didn’t get a break from Turkey, and now Israel came. Israel has been striking the area for a while now.

AMY GOODMAN: Turkey and the United States have also continued to strike targets in Syria since the lightning offensive led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

In a message posted to Telegram on Tuesday, the rebel commander Ahmed al-Sharaa vowed to hold senior officials in the Assad regime accountable for “torturing the Syrian people”.

As different factions of armed groups vie for power and their international backers defend their interests, Syrians are grappling with the enormity of what has happened to their country and what comes next.

In 13 years of war, more than 350,000 people have been killed, according to the United Nations, more than 14 million displaced.

President Bashar al-Assad has fled to Russia, where he has been granted political asylum with his family. Syrians are adjusting to the new reality of life after 50 years of rule by the Assad family, Hafez al-Assad and his son Bashar.

MAHMOUD HAYJAR: [translated] Today we don’t give our joy to anyone. We have been waiting for this day for 50 years. All the people were silenced and could not speak out because of this tyranny. Today we thank and ask God to reward everyone who contributed to this day, the day of liberation.

We were living in a big prison, a big prison that was Syria. It’s been 50 years during which we couldn’t speak, nor express ourselves, nor express our worries. Anyone who spoke out was detained in prisons, as you saw in Sednaya.

AMY GOODMAN: For more on the dramatic changes in Syria, we’re joined by Omar Dahi, Syrian American economics professor at Hampshire College, director of the Security in Context research network, where he focuses on political economy in Syria and the social and economic consequences of the war.

He was born and raised in Syria and involved in several peace-building initiatives since the conflict began. Professor Omar Dahi joins us now from Amherst, Massachusetts.

Professor, welcome to Democracy Now! First, your response to Assad’s departure, him fleeing with his family to Russia, and what this means for Syria?

In Syria, what’s next?         Video: Democracy Now!

OMAR DAHI: Hi, Amy. Thank you so much for having me.

Yeah, I’ve been watching, like many others from outside the country, in shock and disbelief in this past two weeks, and with mixed emotions in many ways. First, shock and disbelief at the collapse of the Syrian regime and the way it happened after 13 or more years of conflict, where there were frontlines that were frozen for the past several years, but suddenly they disappeared.

Of course, incredible joy at the personal level and also for millions of Syrians who were directly hurt by the regime, both through the violence of the war, the displacement, the killings and tortures that were taking place, as well as previously, before the war.

It’s been incredible watching the scenes of the liberation of prisoners from prisons like Sednaya, which have been referred to, I think correctly, as “human slaughterhouses.” It’s been incredibly moving to see people celebrating in the streets, people saying that they can finally go home, they can finally speak their mind.

So, all that has been really a joy to watch and witness as we kind of see the sequence of events unfold with the — you know, Bashar al-Assad fleeing to Russia.

Thankfully, this process, which we can talk more about, happened, finally, with as minimal bloodshed as possible, even though there was plenty of bloodshed over the past years. But in the way it had happened, it actually provided a possibility for positive change, at least at the moment.

But this joy is also tempered with lots of other feelings, as well, primarily the costs at which this happened. And I would say the costs are the human costs, that you outlined, which may be even more in terms of the people killed.

Entire generations have been destroyed. There is a generation of Syrians that grew up in displacement, in refugee camps, the destruction that happened to the country. All the human cost and the physical cost, I think, it’s hard to say that it was not too high. It’s impossible to say that it was OK that all this happened.

There are other costs, of course. The other cost is the loss of sovereignty of Syria, which has been a process ongoing for 10 years. Syria was occupied and invaded by the United States, by Turkey, on the opposition side. And on the Syrian government side, it drew on its allies to defend itself, Russia and Iran, which came to place the regime in a position of dependency.

So, there were multiple foreign types of occupations in the country, which we see what is happening now in the Israeli airstrikes as a continuation of that loss of sovereignty. And I think this is something that Syrians have to grapple with.

There are other costs of the war, as well. There are the empowerment of actors that are not acceptable to a wide variety of Syrian society. Not that there isn’t some backing for them, particularly because they have a certain legitimacy for many Syrians because they fought the government.

But the current government in power or the current, you know, HTS, is not acceptable to large parts of Syrian society, and there’s already warnings that it’s acting as a de facto power, and people are warning against that.

And, of course, there’s the final thing, which is that this is tempered by the regional context, which is the ongoing Israeli genocide in Palestine that is empowered by the US And we’ve seen over the past couple days a complete destruction of what was remaining of Syrian Army military assets by Israel, with complete impunity.

So, all of those, we’re trying to take all those contradictions together — joy for the people, joy for the moment that many millions had dreamed of, which is the departure of the Assad family from power, and the feeling that politics is finally possible in Syria.

Despite all these contradictions, there is a chance for political life to resume. There’s a chance for advocacy for a collectively better future. And this is something that we all have to try and hold and support.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Professor, I’m wondering if you could talk briefly about your own family’s history. In the 1990s, your father helped smuggle out names of political prisoners, many of them accused of belonging to the League of Communist Labor, yet the Ba’athist party and the government of your country often talked about being socialist.

OMAR DAHI: Yeah, this was a kind of a spur-of-the-moment post that I did on social media to share these documents that I received after my father passed away three or four years ago. And basically, my father was a lawyer and was among two or three or maybe four lawyers who stepped up in the 1990s to defend a large group of political prisoners, many of them communists, many of them who were accused of being members of the Muslim Brotherhood.

They were basically detained without a trial — or not even just a trial, but without a formal charge. They were accused of belonging to this outlawed party of Communist Labor, which was accused by the government of mounting an insurrection against it in the late 1970s and 1980s. So, most of those who were detained were detained in the 1980s. They had been “disappeared”.

Their families didn’t know anything about them. Most people didn’t know — like many of the people we’re discovering in Sednaya prison today, were not aware whether they were dead or alive or their whereabouts.

So, my father would basically meet with some of those prisoners, when allowed to do so. And really, it was the courage of the prisoners to assemble a lot of this data, to write down their names, their dates of birth, their professions, where they were — when they were arrested, what’s their charge, where they were being held — mostly, in this case, in Sednaya prison — and also if they were in — you know, they needed medical attention, they were traumatised or they were injured in some way.

And I asked my dad why he did this, actually, because, you know, there was no sense that these prisoners would be freed. So, most of them ended up being put on trial en masse and convicted. So, he told me that he had no expectation of justice at that time, but that he felt it was necessary to do it, to use any opening and any chance to expose the hypocrisy of the government, for the same reasons that you mentioned, that he didn’t expect them to actually be — you know, receive a fair trial, which they didn’t, but there has to be a chance to basically put the government’s declared principles against its actions and expose the government.

So, this was a historical document that I was kind of moved to share when the images of the prisoners who were being released from Sednaya. Most of those names in those documents have either, unfortunately, passed away or were released from the prison, so I didn’t expect that there would be some of those people actually there.

But, yeah, that’s why I shared that.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, I wanted to ask you also — you mentioned the foreign presence in Syria. Hasn’t the country, effectively, during this civil war been already partitioned, with Turkish troops creating a buffer zone in the north, the Israelis not only recently, in the past few days, entering Syrian territory, but conducting military operations in the territory previous to that, with the Kurds backed by the US, ISIS still controlling portions of territory, and the Russian bases in the country?

Do you have any sense of the integrity of the country being reconstituted anytime soon?

OMAR DAHI: I don’t think so. I think it’s going to be a long-term struggle, and partly because of the reasons you mention, because this is something that has been happening for a decade, and there are kind of entrenched interests that have developed, not just in terms of a foreign occupation, but in terms of the connection of various parts of Syrian society and their ties to those countries in ways that they’ve come to basically be affiliated or allied with them.

And this is reminiscent, for people who observe Syria, of the post-independence period in Syrian history, when Syria was a site of struggle by external powers because it was weak, it was politically divided, and various regional powers basically came to have significant influence in the country through Syrian political elites.

This was transformed by the Assad family and the Ba’ath Party in ways that actually flipped this around, where Syria consolidated its power and projected its power, at least regionally. But it came at a price, I think, that was high and unsustainable, particularly for Syrian society.

Now this is actually completely shattered. And I think there’s going to be an attempt to rewrite the history of the Syrian conflict in ways that pin the blame completely on the Assad regime, which I don’t think is the case. I think they are primarily at fault for this, not just because of their governance, which was brutal and tyrannical and maintained an exclusive monopoly on power for decades, without recognising any dissent, without recognising any political opposition; not just because of their reaction to the uprising when it first started, where they completely closed down any meaningful political transition; but also because even after they won the war, they spent many years refusing any political initiative to reconcile, after they had, with the help of Russia and Iran, won the war, basically.

So, the frontlines had been frozen for many years.

But all the other international actors also contributed to the destruction of the country. I think there were ways in which, you know, this fragmentation didn’t just imply an obvious loss of sovereignty in the abstract sense, but also destroyed the economy and fragmented the Syrian national economy.

It created kind of perverse war economies in the country. And as you said, Israel has been bombing Syria for the past decade. This bombing escalated after the collapse of the government. They further invaded Syrian territory, and we saw the incursions and the devastation that took place in the last couple days.

AMY GOODMAN: If you can talk about who Mohammed al-Bashir is, the man who’s been appointed the temporary prime minister right now of Syria, and also HTS, its role, listed as a terrorist movement by the US, the EU, the UK and Turkey — the UN special envoy for Syria told The Financial Times that international powers seeking a peaceful transition in the country would have to consider lifting this designation — who Abu Mohammad al-Julani now is — his birth name is Ahmed al-Sharaa?

OMAR DAHI: Yes. Well, I mean, I’m not an expert on Ahmed al-Sharaa’s personal history. Some of that has come out in recent days about his birth in Syria. He claims he was radicalised by the Palestinian intifada, and he joined al-Qaeda in Syria and Iraq.

And Hayat Tahrir al-Sham is basically a splinter group from al-Qaeda that had basically come — it was based in Iraq and then came back to Syria after the uprising started. And there was a period of time, which maybe your audience will remember, when Syria fragmented into various militias.

And there was just as much infighting among those militias, among themselves, between the opposition groups, just as much as they were fighting the Syrian government. So, basically, groups similar to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham were fighting each other. And then there was a period of reconsolidation, particularly in the aftermath of the attack on ISIS, and the kind of permanent or the, you know, more or less, consolidation of Syria into various spheres of influence, with a US presence and Kurdish-led political and military groups in the northeast, Turkish control in the northwest.

Under the areas that were generally under Turkish influence, there were areas that were directly tied to Turkey and areas in which Turkey had influence, and this is the area that came to be consolidated by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. So, they have a bloody history not just prior to the war, but actually during the war, with respect to even other opposition groups, and kind of, basically, you know, during the time of the rule in the province of Idlib.

Right now and during these past two weeks, there’s been a lot of positive signs in terms of the way they approached the collapse of the Syrian regime, the signs that were verbal, the signs that were actually in actions in terms of trying to protect all government institutions, all public institutions, despite the fact that there have been incidents of looting and sabotage in various ways, but at least they’ve been trying to speak of a national interest in some ways.

That, of course, has to be put to the test. There’s already critiques of their rule, because they unilaterally imposed a transitional government on Syria, which most Syrians would reject as something that they don’t have the authority to do.

It’s also happening in a context where, of course, Syria is still under economic sanctions, so you’ve had devastation from many years of the war, and you’ve had also devastation of Syrian society because of the crippling economic sanctions, primarily imposed by the U.S. and the European Union. So —

AMY GOODMAN: We just have 30 seconds.

OMAR DAHI: So, all of that is really going to be, basically, coming into play over the coming days, basically, and months. And we’ll see how the regional context basically influences what’s happening domestically.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you so much for being with us. Of course, we’re going to continue to follow what happens with Syria. Omar Dahi, Syrian American economics professor at Hampshire College and director of the Security in Context research network.

Coming up, we go to the West Bank to a new report by B’Tselem. As thousands of Syrians are being released from Syrian prisons, we’ll look at a new report on Palestinian prisoners in Hebron, in the occupied West Bank. It’s called “Unleashed: Abuse of Palestinians by Israeli Soldiers in the Center of Hebron.”

This article was first published by Democracy Now! on 10 December 2024 and is republished under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States Licence.

This article was first published on Café Pacific.

Racism, torture and arbitrary arrests are some examples of discrimination indigenous Papuans have dealt with over the last 60 years from Indonesia, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch.

The report, If It’s Not Racism, What Is It? Discrimination and other abuses against Papuans in Indonesia, said the Indonesian government denies Papuans basic rights, like education and adequate health care.

Human Rights Watch researcher Andreas Harsono said Papuan people had been beaten, kidnapped and sexually abused for more than six decades.

“I have heard about this day to day racism since I had my first Papuan friend when I was in my 20s in my college, it means that over the last 40 years, that kind of story keeps on going on today,” Harsono said.

“Regarding torture again this is not something new.”

The report said infant mortality rates in West Papua in some instances are close to 12 times higher than in Jakarta.

Pemerintah Indonesia seharusnya meninjau kebijakan soal Papua Barat, mengakui dan mengakhiri sejarah rasisme sistematis terhadap orang asli Papua, minta pertanggungjawaban dari mereka yang bertanggung jawab atas pelanggaran hak-hak orang Papua https://t.co/JfnAZhsi0E pic.twitter.com/lzB6n0zrJ5

— Andreas Harsono (@andreasharsono) September 19, 2024

Papuan children denied education
Papuan children are denied adequate education because the government has failed to recruit teachers, in some instance’s soldiers have stepped into the positions “and mostly teach children about Indonesian nationalism”.

It said Papuan students find it difficult to find accommodation with landlords unwilling to rent to them while others were ostracised because of their racial identity.

In March, a video emerged of soldiers torturing Definus Kogoya in custody. He along with Alianus Murib and Warinus Kogoya were arrested in February for allegedly trying to burn down a medical clinic in Gome, Highland Papua province.

According to the Indonesian army, Warinus Kogoya died after allegedly “jumping off” a military vehicle.

President-elect Prabowo Subianto’s takes government next month.

Harsono said the report was launched yesterday because of this.

“We want this new [Indonesian] government to understand the problem and to think about new policies, new approaches, including to answer historical injustice, social injustice, economic injustice.”

Subianto’s poor human rights record
Harsono said Subianto has a poor human rights record but he hopes people close to him will flag the report.

He said current President Joko Widodo had made promises while he was in power to allow foreign journalists into West Papua and release political prisoners, but this did not materialise.

When he came to power the number of political prisoners was around 100 and now it’s about 200, Harsono said.

He said few people inside Indonesia were aware of the discrimination West Papuan people face, with most only knowing West Papua only for its natural beauty.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

ANALYSIS: By Jonathan Cook in Middle East Eye

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other prominent cabinet ministers echoed him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Fiji’s Prime Minister, Sitiveni Rabuka, says he will “apologise” to fellow Melanesian leaders later this month after failing to secure agreement from Indonesia to visit its restive West Papua province.

At last year’s Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) leaders meeting in Cook Islands, the Melanesian Spearhead Group appointed Rabuka and PNG Prime Minister James Marape as the region’s “special envoys” on West Papua.

Several Pacific officials and advocacy groups have expressed anguish over alleged human rights abuses committed by Indonesian forces in West Papua, where an indigenous pro-independence struggle has simmered for decades.

Rabuka and Marape have been trying to organise a visit to West Papua for more than nine months now.

But in an exclusive interview with the ABC’s Pacific Beat, Rabuka said conversations on the trip were still “ongoing” and blamed Indonesia’s presidential elections in February for the delay.

“Unfortunately, we couldn’t go . . .  Indonesia was going through elections. In two months’ time, they will have a new substantive president in place in the palace. Hopefully we can still move forward with that,” he said.

“But in the meantime, James Marape and I will have to apologise to our Melanesian counterparts on the side of the Forum Island leaders meeting in Tonga, and say we have not been able to go on that mission.”

Pacific pressing for independent visit
Pacific nations have been pressing Indonesia to allow representatives from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to conduct an independent visit to Papua.

A UN Human Rights committee report released in May found there were “systematic reports” of both torture and extrajudicial killings of indigenous Papuans in the province.

But Indonesia usually rejects any criticism of its human rights record in West Papua, saying events in the province are a purely internal affair.

West Papua Resistance Leader, Victor Weimo: I must thank the colonialists for continuously teaching us to aspire to true humanity by means of rebellion. pic.twitter.com/h9n4rN9yyN

— Sina Brown-Davis سينا 🔻🇵🇸 🇳🇨 (@uriohau) December 1, 2022

Rabuka said he was “still committed” to the visit and would like to make the trip after incoming Indonesian president Prabowo Subianto takes power in October.

The Fiji prime minister made the comments ahead of a 10-day trip to China, with Rabuka saying he would travel to a number of Chinese provinces to see how the emerging great power had pulled millions of people out of poverty.

He praised Beijing’s development record, but also indicated Fiji would not turn to China for loans or budget support.

“As we take our governments and peoples forward, the people themselves must understand that we cannot borrow to become embroiled in debt servicing later on,” he said.

“People must understand that we can only live within our means, and our means are determined by our own productivity, our own GDP.”

Rabuka is expected to meet Chinese president Xi Jinping in Beijing towards the end of his trip, at the beginning of next week.

Delegation to visit New Caledonia
After his trip to China, the prime minister will take part in a high level Pacific delegation to Kanaky New Caledonia, which was rocked by widespread rioting and violence earlier this year.

While several Pacific nations have been pressing France to make fresh commitments towards decolonisation in the wake of a contentious final vote on independence back in 2021, Rabuka said the Pacific wanted to help different political groups within the territory to find common ground.

“We will just have to convince the leaders, the local group leaders that rebuilding is very difficult after a spate of violent activities and events,” he said.

Rabuka gave strong backing to a plan to overhaul Pacific policing which Australia has been pushing hard ahead of the PIF leaders meeting in Tonga at the end of this month.

Senior Solomon Islands official Collin Beck took to social media last week to publicly criticise the initiative, suggesting that its backers were trying to “steamroll” any opposition at Pacific regional meetings.

Rabuka said the social media post was “unfortunate” and suggested that Solomon Islands or other Pacific nations could simply opt out of the initiative if they didn’t approve of it.

“When it comes to sovereignty, it is a sovereign state that makes the decision,” he said.

Republished with permission from ABC Pacific Beat.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Hanan Ashrawi, a Palestinian political leader and a former member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) Executive Committee, says Israel’s “gangster style assassination and extrajudicial executions” are designed to “inflame the whole region”, reports Al Jazeera.

The killings of the Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and Hezbollah military commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut, Lebanon, were carried out to “sabotage any chances” of a ceasefire deal in Gaza and regional de-escalation, Ashrawi said.

Haniyeh was a chief Hamas negotiator for a ceasefire in Israel’s genocidal war and had built up formidable diplomatic credentials across the region.

While Israel and the United States regarded him as a “terrorist”, thousands mourned him across the Middle East yesterday, demonstrated huge and widespread support and respect.

“These are attacks not just on the capitals of sovereign states but also on significant leaders to ensure total provocation [and] destabilisation,” Ashrawi wrote on social media.

“Israel is a rogue state that represents a real [and] present danger globally,” she said.

‘Maddening and shameful’
Marking the 300th day of Israel’s war on Gaza yesterday, Palestinian-American scholar Noura Erakat said it was “maddening and shameful” that the world had not been able to stop one of the “grossest, most blatant colonial genocides”.

In a post on social media, Erakat said Israel’s genocide in Gaza had featured the use of advanced weapons as well as the spread of disease, “poisoning of the earth” as well as sexual assault and torture, reports Al Jazeera.

Israel’s genocide must be remembered for what it is, Erakat said, adding “we cannot afford to lose the next battle over narrative”.

“A blight on all humanity, to ascribe shame to all who let it happen [and] glory to those who fought so that the future indeed ensures: never again,” she said.

Day 300. Its maddening and shameful we have not been able to end one of the grossest, most blatant colonial #genocides feat disease, poisoning of the earth, sexual assualt, torture, & advanced weapons. This will end & we cannot afford to lose the next battle over narrative (1/2)

— Noura Erakat (@4noura) August 1, 2024

According to an analysis of data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), Israel is responsible for 17,081 incidents of air/drone raids, shelling/missile attacks, remote explosives and property destruction in eight countries since October 7, including the occupied Palestinian territory, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Yemen, Jordan, Iran and Iraq.

A majority of these attacks were on the Palestinian territory, specifically the Gaza Strip, with 10,389 incidents accounting for more than 60 percent of the total offensives.

There were at least 6,544 incidents of Israeli attacks on Lebanon (38 percent), followed by Syria with 144 such incidents recorded.

Haniyeh funeral final ceremonies in Qatar.           Video: Al Jazeera

Released 15 Palestinian prisoners tortured
Israeli forces have released 15 Palestinian prisoners into Gaza. They were dropped off at a military checkpoint near Deir el-Balah in central Gaza. Many spoke of abuse and torture while detained.

Israel has detained thousands of Palestinians during the war in Gaza and stands accused of numerous cases of torture, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights says in a new report.

The 23-page report, released on Wednesday, noted allegations of widespread abuse of prisoners being held incommunicado in arbitrary, prolonged detention.

It was published during a tense standoff in Israel as far-right politicians and demonstrators opposed an investigation into alleged sexual abuse of Palestinian detainees by Israeli soldiers.

The death toll in the genocidal war at the 300 day mark has topped 40,000 Palestinians, including more than 16,000 children.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

On Friday, March 22, a video circulated of TNI (Indonesian military) soldiers torturing a civilian in Papua. In the video, the victim is submerged in a drum filled with water with his hands tied behind his back.

The victim was alternately beaten and kicked by the TNI members. The victim’s back was also slashed with a knife.

The video circulated quickly and was widely criticised.

Gustav Kawer from the Papua Association of Human Rights Advocates (PAHAM) condemned the incident and called for the perpetrators to be brought to justice.

This was then followed by National Human Rights Commission (Komnas HAM), Indonesian Human Rights Watch (Imparsial), the Diocese, the church and students.

Meanwhile, Cenderawasih/XVII regional military commander (Pangdam) Major-General Izak Pangemanan tried to cover up the crime by saying it was a hoax and the video was a result of “editing”.

This argument was later refuted by the TNI itself and it was proven that TNI soldiers were the ones who had committed the crime. Thirteen soldiers were arrested and accused over the torture.

The torture occurred on 3 February 2024 in Puncak Regency, Papua.

Accused of being ‘spies’
The victim who was seen in the video was Defianus Kogoya, who had been arrested along with Warinus Murib and Alianus Murib. They were arrested and accused of being “spies” for the West Papua National Liberation Army-Free Papua Organisation (TPNPB-OPM), a cheap accusation which the TNI and police were subsequently unable to prove.

Indonesia human rights: 13 soldiers arrested after torture video. Video: Al Jazeera

The three were arrested when the TNI was conducting a search in Amukia and Gome district. When Warinus was arrested, his legs were tied to a car and he was dragged for one kilometre, before finally being tortured.

Alianus, meanwhile ,was also taken to a TNI post and tortured. After several hours, they were finally handed over to a police post because there was not enough evidence to prove the TNI’s accusations.

Defianus finally fainted, while Warinus died of his injuries. Warinus’ body was cremated by the family the next day on February 4.

Defianus is still suffering and remains seriously ill. This is a TNI crime in Papua.

But that is not all. On 22 February 2022, the TNI also tortured seven children in Sinak district, Puncak. The seven children were Deson Murib, Makilon Tabuni, Pingki Wanimbo, Waiten Murib, Aton Murib, Elison Murib and Murtal Kurua.

Makilon Tabuni died as a result.

Civilians murdered, mutilated
On August 22, the TNI murdered and mutilated four civilians in Timika. They were Arnold Lokbere, Irian Nirigi, Lemaniel Nirigi and Atis Tini.

The bodies of the four were dismembered: the head, body and legs were separated into several parts, put in sacks then thrown into a river.

Six days later, soldiers from the Infantry Raider Battalion 600/Modang tortured four civilians in Mappi regency, Papua. The four were Amsal P Yimsimem, Korbinus Yamin, Lodefius Tikamtahae and Saferius Yame.

They were tortured for three hours and suffered injuries all over their bodies.

Three days later, on August 30, the TNI again tortured two civilians named Bruno Amenim Kimko and Yohanis Kanggun in Edera district, Mappi regency. Bruno Amenim died while Yohanis Kanggun suffered serious injuries.

On October 27, three children under the age of 16 were tortured by the TNI in Keerom regency. They were Rahmat Paisel, Bastian Bate and Laurents Kaung. They were tortured using chains, coils of wire and water hoses.

The atrocity occurred in the Yamanai Village, Arso II, Arso district.

On 22 February 2023, TNI personnel from the Navy post in Lantamal X1 Ilwayap tortured two civilians named Albertus Kaize and Daniel Kaize. Albertus Kaize died of his injuries. This crime occurred in Merauke regency, Papua.

95 civilians tortured
Between 2018 and 2021, Amnesty International recorded that more than 95 civilians had been tortured and killed by the TNI and the police. These crimes target indigenous Papuans, and the curve continues to rise year by year, ever since Indonesia occupied Papua in 1961.

These crimes were committed one after another without a break, and followed the same pattern. So it can be concluded that these were not the acts of rogue individuals or one or two people as the TNI argues to reduce their crimes to individual acts.

Rather, they are structural (systematic) crimes designed to subdue the Papuan nation, to stop all forms of Papuan resistance for the sake of the exploitation and theft of Papua’s natural resources.

The problems in Papua cannot be solved by increasing the number of police or soldiers. The problems in Papua must be resolved democratically.

This democratic solution must include establishing a human rights court for all perpetrators of crimes in Papua since the 1960s, and not just the perpetrators in the field, but also those responsible in the chain of command.

Only this will break the pattern of crimes that are occurring and provide justice for the Papuan people. A human rights court will also mean weakening the anti-democratic forces that exist in Indonesia and Papua — namely military(ism).

Garbage of history
A prerequisite for achieving democratisation is to eliminate the old forces, the garbage of history.

The cleaner the process is carried out, the broader and deeper the democracy that can be achieved. This also includes the demands of the Papuan people to be given the right to determine their own destiny.

This is not a task for some later day, but is the task of the Papuan people today. Nor is the task of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) political elite or political activists alone, but it is the task of all Papuan people if they want to extract themselves from the crimes of the TNI and police or Indonesian colonialism.

Independence can only be gained by the struggle of the ordinary people themselves. The people must fight, the people must take to the streets, the people must build their own ranks, their own alternative political tool, and fight in an organised and guided manner.

Sharon Muller is a leading member of the Socialist Union (Perserikatan Sosialis, PS) and a member of the Socialist Study Circle (Lingkar Studi Sosialis, LSS). Arah Juang is the newspaper of the Socialist Union.

Translated by James Balowski for Indoleft News. The original title of the article was “Kejahatan TNI di Papua dan Solusi Demokratis Untuk Rakyat Papua dan Indonesia”.

References
Gemima Harvey’s report The Human Tragedy of West Papua, 15 January 2014. This reports states that more than 500,000 West Papua people have been slaughtered by Indonesia and its actors, the TNI and police since 1961.

Veronica Koman’s chronology of torture of civilians in Papua. Posted on the Veronica Koman Facebook wall, 24 March 2024.

Jubi, Alleged torture of citizens by the TNI adds to the long list of violence in the land of Papua. 23 March 2024.

VOA Indonesia, Amnesty International: 95 civilians in Papua have been victims of extrajudicial killings.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz