US Takes Back Signature on Arms Trade Treaty

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UNITED NATIONS, Apr 29 2019 (IPS) – The United States dropped a political bombshell when President Donald Trump announced his administration would withdraw from the historic Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) which the former Obama administration signed in September 2013.

“We are taking our signature back”, said Trump April 26, addressing a meeting of the National Rifle Association (NRA), one of the most powerful gun lobbies in the US.

The US, in effect, joins three other “rogue states” – North Korea, Iran and Syria – who voted against the treaty at the UN General Assembly back in April 2013, along with 23 countries that abstained on the voting, including China, Russia, India, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia.

Jayantha Dhanapala, a former UN Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs and ex-President of the Pugwash, told IPS that President Trump “continues to create mayhem in the field of disarmament by wrecking the legal regime created by the international community at the behest of vested interests in the gun lobby sacrificing the humanitarian norms of the world to which the US has contributed.”

The US, which has increasingly shown virtual contempt for multilateralism, has already scuttled the 2015 multilateral nuclear agreement with Iran, refused to participate in the global migration compact, pulled out of the 2015 Paris climate change agreement, abandoned the 12-nation Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, and revoked the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia.

Dr. Natalie J. Goldring, a Senior Fellow and Adjunct Full Professor with the Security Studies Program in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, told IPS President Trump is pandering to the National Rifle Association yet again.

She said his announcement that the United States is “un-signing” the Arms Trade Treaty is yet another example of this administration’s abdication of responsibility in the arms control sphere.

In the fact sheet announcing this decision, the Trump Administration stated, “The ATT is simply not needed for the United States to engage in responsible arms trade.”

“The Trump Administration has not been engaged in responsible arms trade in any way, shape, or form. There is indisputable evidence that Saudi Arabia, for example, consistently violates international human rights and humanitarian law”.

“But the Trump Administration continues to pursue arms sales agreements with the Saudi regime,” said Dr Goldring, who is also a Visiting Professor of the Practice in the Duke University Washington DC program.

She pointed out that the United States is the world’s largest arms dealer. It’s long past time for the United States to show leadership on the global arms trade, rather than merely treating arms sales as economic transactions, she added.

The ATT, which was adopted by the United Nations in April 2013 and entered into force in December 2014, was initiated by the UK, a NATO ally of the US.

As of last week, the Treaty has 101 state parties with ratifications, and 45 countries which have signed but not ratified.

Responding to questions at a press briefing April 26, UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters that the Arms Trade Treaty is the only global instrument aimed at improving transparency and accountability in the international arms trade.

“It is a landmark achievement in the efforts to ensure responsibility in international arms transfers. This is particularly important in present times, when we witness growing international tensions and renewed interest in expanding and modernizing arsenals,” he added.

Credit: Sarah Myers

Rachel Stohl, Managing Director at the Stimson Center and a consultant who helped draft the text of the treaty, said that President Trump has “once again walked away from America’s leadership role in the world and undermined international efforts to reduce human suffering caused by irresponsible and illegal arms transfers”.

In statement released here, Stohl said “Un-signing the Arms Trade Treaty will undermine international peace and security, increase irresponsible and illegal sales of conventional weapons, and harm the American economy”.

A transparent, responsible arms trade fundamentally serves U.S. national security, promotes U.S. foreign policy objectives, and supports American values.

The ATT facilitates transparency and accountability in a global arms trade worth nearly $90 billion a year, building confidence among governments and ending decades of impunity, she declared.

Dr Goldring said the US government regularly claims to have the strongest global standards for arms transfers. Yet it seeks to abandon the only legally binding treaty that addresses these issues.

“This may seem like a symbolic step, because the Trump Administration had already made clear its lack of support for the treaty,” she added.

But this act has substantive implications as well.

It’s in the US interest to be part of the ATT and to work with other countries to increase their standards for importing and exporting weapons, she noted.

‘Unsigning’ the ATT decreases our leverage with these countries. ‘Do as I say, not as I do’ is a cynical and unpersuasive policy approach,” said Dr Goldring who also represents the Acronym Institute at the United Nations on conventional weapons and arms trade issues.

Abby Maxman, President of Oxfam America, said Trump’s decision to un-sign the Arms Trade Treaty “is a reckless, self-inflicted wound that continues to demonstrate the Administration’s desire to turn its back on global norms, standards and US leadership. It is one more misguided step to dismantle the international partnerships that keep us all safe.”

Just last week, the Administration held hostage a UN Security Council resolution to address sexual violence in conflict– until language about the need for sexual & reproductive health services was removed.

And, it’s no coincidence that this comes on the heels of President Trump’s veto of the Yemen War Powers Resolution and continued military support for Saudi Arabia in the war in Yemen, said Maxman.

President Trump is sending a clear message to civilians caught in the crossfire: “we don’t care.”

The United States will now lock arms with Iran, North Korea and Syria as non-signatories to this historic treaty whose sole purpose is to protect innocent people from deadly weapons.

“The Arms Trade Treaty was developed and signed by the US and others to keep deadly weapons out of the hands of those who may use them to commit genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The treaty has the power to save millions from death, rape, assault and displacement. Each year an estimated 500,000 people are killed as a result of the unregulated and under-regulated arms trade,” said Maxman.

“The Treaty does not infringe on Americans’ right to bear arms or hamper the country’s ability to defend itself or its allies, despite what groups like the NRA, and the Trump Administration may claim.”

Last week’s announcement, he said, “is an empty play to pander to those who resisted this Treaty from the beginning.”

Meanwhile, in a report released April 29, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said total world military expenditure rose to $1,822 billion in 2018, representing an increase of 2.6 per cent from 2017.

The five biggest spenders in 2018 were the United States, China, Saudi Arabia, India and France, which together accounted for 60 per cent of global military spending.

Military spending by the US increased for the first time since 2010, while spending by China grew for the 24th consecutive year. The comprehensive annual update of the SIPRI Military Expenditure Database is accessible from at www.sipri.org.

The report also said that US military spending grew—for the first time since 2010—by 4.6 per cent, to reach $649 billion in 2018.

The US remained by far the largest spender in the world, and spent almost as much on its military in 2018 as the next eight largest-spending countries combined.

‘The increase in US spending was driven by the implementation from 2017 of new arms procurement programmes under the Trump administration,’ said Dr Aude Fleurant, the director of the SIPRI AMEX programme.

Link to ATT Secretariat data on ratification:
https://thearmstradetreaty.org/hyper-images/file/List%20of%20ATT%20States%20Parties%20(alphabetical%20order)(10%20April%202019)/List%20of%20ATT%20States%20Parties%20(alphabetical%20order)(10%20April%202019).pdf

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

 

Muslim Terrorists Heading Towards a Jihadist Hell Hole

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Opinion

H.L.D. Mahindapala is a Sri Lankan journalist who was Editor, Sunday Observer (1990-1994), President, Sri Lanka Working Journalists’ Association (1991-1993) and Secretary-General, South Asia Media Association (1994).

MELBOURNE, Apr 26 2019 (IPS) – The history of terrorism in Sri Lanka reveals a clear pattern. The first to take up arms in the post-Independent era were the misguided Sinhala youth. They were educated youth desperately running in search of a quick solution to establish their classless paradise. Their violence did not take them anywhere.

The Tamil youth were the second to take up arms. Most of their cadres too consisted of educated Tamil youth running in search of a speedy route to establish their mono-ethnic paradise. At the end of a three-decade war they sank to the bottom of the Nandikadal Lagoon.

Now the Muslim youth have bombed their way into the global headlines. They shot into the limelight on the morning of Easter Sunday taking everyone by surprise. Unlike the two preceding terrorist groups the local Muslim terrorists who carried backpacks loaded with explosives seems to be dummies carrying out the orders and agenda of a hidden hand directing them from abroad.

H.L.D. Mahindapala

To begin with they were echoing the imported hate politics fed to them by the extremist local agents running fragmented jihadist cells. Nor have they produced a calculated, well-defined ideology against the state, like the other two terrorist organisations, arguing that it should be destroyed and replaced with their political models.

However, it is known that the preachers in their cells and madrassas have been indoctrinating the youth with violent interpretations of the Koran with the aim of converting Sri Lanka into an Islamic Caliphate. That constitutes a part of the larger agenda of ISIS, without any local content in it.

Running through all three violent movements of the youth is a manufactured ideology tailored to radicalise and convert them into violent politics as the solution to their indoctrinated, imagined and real problems.

The Sinhala youth took to Marxists revolutionary ideology reduced to five lectures. The Tamil youth took to the ideology of the Saivite Jaffna Vellala supremacists to create Eelam – the paradise of mono-ethnic extremism. And the Muslim youth seems to have jumped into a similar ideology believing that they could achieve their Islamic salvation at the end of violence.

If history is any guide then the preceding two violent movements point to a bitter end. Like the other two preceding terrorist groups the Muslim terrorists too are doomed to end up achieving nothing. Besides, the odds are tilted heavily against the Muslim terrorists, both internationally and locally.

They have begun with a big bang which had echoed round the world. That is about all they could achieve: making big noises if they are to continue down this path of violence. Whether they have the capacity to sustain the violence of the Easter Massacre on a mass scale for a prolong period is questionable.

Based more on the historical evidence of the past two youth revolts than on the skimpy details available on the Muslim youth, my conclusion is quite simple: neither the prevailing hostile international climate against every kind of Muslim violence, nor the national ethos of a thriving and conservative Muslim trading community dependent on peace and stability, is conducive for the Muslim youth to sustain their campaign of violence for long.

Besides the wobbly Yahapalanaya Sri Lankan government, which was going softly– softly on rising Muslim radicalisation and violence– has at last woken up to the grim and destabilising realities that had blown their tops off. It is the magnitude of the simultaneous explosions hitting three points of the compass – east, west and the immediate north – that shook the foundations of Sri Lankan establishment

The Easter Sunday blast is likely to change – at least in the short run — the conventional image of the Muslims. They were seen as the more emancipated and liberal Muslims not committed to radical Islam. But after the East Sunday Massacre it is likely that they will be bundled with the rest of the ideologically driven Muslim fanatics abroad committed to irrational violence.

The latest Reuter’s report which reveals the ISIS hand behind the Easter Massacre can only reinforce the image of being ruthless religious fanatics.

Radicalisation takes sense and sensibility out of the minds of the impatient youth looking for instant solutions. And politicised religion is packed with hate. Both are incendiary forces that can drive the impulsive youth into insane fits of violence.

Of course, the initial blast that shook Easter Sunday was massive and impressive. The (1) precision timing that went off like clockwork, (2) the gigantic scale of the blasts hitting targets in east, west and the near north simultaneously,(3) the selected targets of Christian Churches and hotels packed with Western tourists (4) the organisation capacity to piece together the various arms of the military-style operation that exploded on Easter Sunday (5) the blind faith of the suicide bombers that walked the lethal distance to their fatal end and that of 350 other victims, point clearly to hidden brains beyond the borders of the local Muslims.

There is, no doubt, that the suicide bombers were on a political mission. But what was it? Also, terrorist acts are executed to convey a political message. What is the message behind the biggest ever terrorist operation on Sri Lanka soil?

This explosion which hit like a bolt from the blue makes no sense in the Sri Lankan context. Apart from sporadic tensions – some of which have been caused by National Thowheeth Jamaat (NTJ) – the Sinhala-Muslim relations had not stretched to breaking point to provoke an attack of this magnitude.

Mainstream Muslim politics was for co-existence without resorting to extremist violence. Interventions at the highest levels from both sides have succeeded in snuffing out any communal conflagration and containing the violence.

In fact, Muslim leaders have been complaining to the authorities that the NTJ is a serious threat to their lives too. Nor has there been a mass following for Islamic extremism either at the top or at the bottom layers of Muslim society.

As of now Muslim violence has been confined to a minority. But it is a minority that has crept up, sedulously and surreptitiously, to parts of the higher layers of the Muslim hierarchy. If allowed to go unchecked it can become the majority.

The description of this group given by Ruwan Wijewardene, State Minister of Defence, is revealing and alarming, to say the least. He said: “What I can also say about this group of suicide bombers is that most of them were well-educated and come from middle or upper middle class, so they are financially independent and their families are quite stable financially. That is a worrying factor in this. Some of them studied in other countries, they hold degrees and were quite well-educated people.”

This explains the background and the potential threat to the future but not the cause behind the stunning Easter Sunday massacre. Invariably political protests and violence target the state. But the Muslim suicide bombers did not target the state per se.

They went straight to two non-state, non-Sinhala-Buddhist targets: 1. Christian churches packed with Easter Sunday devotees and 2. hotels packed with Western holiday-makers lining up for their Sunday breakfast. Both targets were selected to make global headlines in the Christian West.

Any harm to the Christian worshippers inside churches in one of the holiest days in the Christian calendar and Western holiday-makers would instinctively tug the heart strings and the conscience of the West.

It is the selection of these two targets that do not make sense. Why should local suicide bombers target the Churches and the hotels when their grievances are supposed to be against the Sinhala-Buddhists with whom they have been having some sporadic sparring in recent times?

Besides, none of these two institutions has rubbed against the local Muslims. So why did the strategists behind Operation Easter Massacre target the Churches and the hotels? Isn’t the message coded in these two targets?

It is at this point that Ruwan Wijewardene’s explanation gains credibility. He said that the targets were chosen as retaliation for the massacre of the Muslims at Christchurch by the Australian white-supremacist Brenton Hanson Terrant. But is the local Muslim that concerned about what happened in far-away New Zealand to blow up Churches and hotels? No.

But the vindictive politics of their masters in the failed Islamic State, pursuing anti-American, anti-Christian agenda, are bent on targeting the sacred symbols of the West. Since the Sri Lankan Muslims are committed ideologically to follow the political line laid down by their Islamic masters abroad, they became the latest suicidal messengers of death to the West. They even went as far as imitating their counterparts abroad by videoing their martyrdom, a la the jihadists in the Middle East.

Second, the Easter Massacre was to deliver a political message to Donald Trump. He was boasting that the ISIS is dead. On the morning of Easter Sunday, they told him that they are still alive and kicking. The ideology behind the Easter Massacre is clearly expressed in the two main targets allied to Western interests. It also contains a direct message to Trumpian braggadocio and arrogance.

They picked Sri Lanka because it was fast turning into a base for American expansion in the Indian Ocean. The signals radiated by the bombs have already hit the American radar. They have now cancelled the joint naval exercises scheduled to be held in the east.

Like all terrorists they have picked the most iconic targets for maximum impact in the minds of the West. Targeting them selectively on one of the holiest days of the Christian world delivers an unambiguous political message to the West saying: If we can’t get you in the West we can get you in soft spots prepared by incompetent, complacent and back-biting rulers in the East who, incidentally, are cozying up to the West.

The tattered remnants standing as sad ruins of churches and hotels and the 350 victims debunk the usual fiction spun by some local political pundits who continue to blame the Sinhala-Buddhists. Their spin is to white-wash the Muslim terrorists saying that the suicide bombers were on a mission to get even with the Sinhala-Buddhists for sporadic attacks that had occurred in recent time.

This line of attack on the Sinhala-Buddhist runs against the evidence of the bloody ruins staring in their face. If the Easter Massacre was to teach the Sinhala-Buddhist a lesson why did they attack the Christian Churches and hotels packed with Westerners? This is the most notable facet of the Easter Sunday attack.

The suicide bombers skipped the Sinhala-Buddhists, they skipped the Hindu Tamils and they went straight for the Christians in churches and the Westerners holidaying in hotels.

If the Easter Sunday massacre was to send a clear message to the West then the international and local agents have succeeded beyond their expectations. This initial message is now reverberating globally. It says un-mistakeably that the Jihadist power, packed with religious fanaticism, has found a new base to attack the West. But what is going to be their next step? Will they turn inward and intensify their attacks against the other religionists?

Violence of any sort will not take the Muslim terrorist anywhere. If the other two varieties of terrorism (Sinhala and Tamil youth) failed to win against the state what are the chances of the Muslim variety winning?

The state is sufficiently prepared and experienced now to meet challenges of terrorists having beaten the world’s deadliest terrorist, the LTTE. Most of all, it has the tacit support of the majority of the Muslims in the mainstream.

ISIS and its local agents have had some beginners luck by taking the state by surprise. But the chances of Muslim terrorists becoming a formidable challenge to the state are very remote. Besides, before they take on the state they will have to grab power from the established Muslim hierarchy. They will also have to combat the anti-Muslim counter-terror forces of the West and also India.

The upshot of the Easter Massacre has been to increase and reinforce Islamophobia. Until Easter Sunday the Muslims in the democratic mainstream have been a formidable force negotiating craftily behind the scene, with both main parties, bargaining with the non-violent votes.

But the exploding bombs have devastated their image and reduced the power of bargaining with both major parties. They cannot be seen to be honeymooning, or playing footsy with the Muslims after the backlash of Easter Sunday sweeping the nation. The government, in particular, will have to face the charge of putting Bodu Bala Sena in jail and letting NTJ run amok without any restraint.

The state is now in a favourable political climate to crack down on Muslim extremism with hardly any pressure from international or national interventionists. Besides, the Muslim terrorists can never reach the militarised power of the Tamil Tigers and challenge the state to yield to their demands, whatever they may be. Of the three varieties of terrorism the Muslims will be the weakest, purely on demographic counts.

When the dust settles down, the democratic state of Sri Lanka will rise again triumphantly, hoping that the last remaining Indian Tamil youth will not decide to go the way of the other three failed terrorists

 

Sri Lanka’s Easter Sunday Carnage: Quo Vadis?

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Opinion

Dr. Purnaka L. (“PL”) de Silva is Director, Institute for Strategic Studies and Democracy (ISSD) Malta

 

“If we believe in absurdities we shall commit atrocities” – Voltaire

NEW YORK, Apr 22 2019 (IPS) – I returned from attending a three-hour Easter Sunday mass at the Fordham University Church around midnight New York time on May 20, 2019, when my phone rang and a colleague asked me what’s going on in Sri Lanka? I said what is going on?

He said there were a series of coordinated terrorist bombings with multiple fatalities and scores of injuries in my native country. For the next four and a half hours I was on the phone trying to piece together what happened, including reaching out to Sri Lanka’s Secretary of Defence Hemasiri Fernando.

The toll as of Monday, April 22 is 290 dead and 500 injured. Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed that 36 foreigners died, with 20 still unidentified; and those identified include: 5 British (2 with dual US nationality), 3 Danes, 1 Dutch, 1 Portuguese, 2 Turks, 3 Indians and 1 Japanese.

This is the second time in history that the Indian Ocean island of Sri Lanka has been bombed on an Easter Sunday morning when the faithful were at prayer. The first was a coordinated air attack on the capital Colombo, launched from aircraft carriers of the Imperial Japanese Navy at 7:30 a.m. on Easter Sunday, April 5, 1942 – the same date that the U.S. Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor was also attacked in a different time zone.

Timeline in infamy – April 21, 2019

Around 8:45 a.m. on Easter Sunday morning five massive explosions simultaneously rocked Colombo, western Sri Lanka:

    • 18th century St. Anthony’s Shrine Roman Catholic Church in Kochchikade, near Colombo harbor, 3.4 km from Colombo.
    • St. Sebastian’s Roman Catholic Church in Katuwapitiya, Negombo, 10.2 km north of Sri Lanka’s Bandaranaike International Airport (32.4 km north of the capital).
    • Shangri-La 500 room 5-star hotel downtown Colombo
    • Kingsbury 229 room 5-star hotel downtown Colombo
    • Cinnamon Grand 483 room 5-star hotel downtown Colombo

9:05 a.m.

    • Zion Protestant Christian Church in Batticaloa on the eastern seaboard of Sri Lanka, 318.1 km from Colombo.

1:45 p.m.

    • Tropical Inn Guest House in Dehiwala near the zoo, 10.2 km south of Colombo.

2:15 p.m.

    • Two explosions at suspected safe house in Dematagoda on the northwestern outskirts 3.1 km from Colombo, owned by a spice trader, allegedly the father of one of the suicide bombers. At least three police officers died in the blasts including Special Task Force (STF) police commandos, with seven suspects arrested.

Late Sunday night

    • A 6-foot pipe bomb was located and destroyed near Bandaranaike International Airport by the Sri Lanka Air Force.

 
Perpetrators

An internal Sri Lanka Police circular dated April 11, 2019 issued by Deputy Inspector General Srilal Dassanayake noted: “warning of plan to launch a campaign of suicide attacks led by Mohammed Zahran of National Thawheed Jama’ath (NTJ) has been received by intelligence sources, and request extreme precautions be taken.”

A fact commented on in the aftermath of the first wave of bombings by Defence Secretary Hemasiri Fernando, who confirmed that some of the attacks were carried out by suicide bombers.

Sri Lankan authorities have arrested 24 suspects and at least 1 woman as of Monday in an ongoing investigation to root out all the terrorists, who may number 30 with 20-30 targets, according to a suspect arrested down Ramakrishna Road, Wellawatte, 8.0 km south of Colombo.

At least three of the suicide terrorist bombers have been identified, all local Sri Lankan Muslims allegedly from eastern Sri Lanka:

    • Mohamed Azzam Mohamed registered as a guest the previous night and blew himself up during the Easter breakfast buffet in Taprobane Restaurant – Cinnamon Grand Hotel. Apparently he queued patiently before triggering his explosives.
    • Zahran Hashim – Shangri-La hotel.
    • Abu Mohammad – Zion Protestant Christian Church, Batticaloa.

Active measures taken

    • 3:00 p.m. curfew lifted at 6:00 a.m. Monday morning to enable security forces to apprehend wanted terror suspects in ongoing hunt and stop escapees.
    • Blocking all major social media platforms and messaging Apps to prevent spread of misinformation and rumors.
    • Maintaining law and order to stop any retaliation (e.g. Mosque petrol bombed in Putlam, 132.9 km north of Colombo; arson attacks on two Muslim owned shops in Kalutara, 43.5 km south of Colombo).
    • U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Australian police teams in place to help with forensic investigations.

National Thawheed Jama’ath (NTJ)

Five years ago on March 24, 2014 the Peace Loving Moderate Muslims in Sri Lanka (PLMMSL) urged the Government of Sri Lanka to ban without delay an Islamic religious movement calling itself the (National) Thawheed Jama’ath “because it was fast becoming a cancer within Sri Lanka’s Muslim community.”

It is alleged that NTJ headed by Moulavi Zahran had holed up in Kattankudi, 327 km east of Colombo, and recruited impressionable Muslim high school students to travel to Syria via Turkey. The hypothesis is that following military defeat at the hands of multinational forces, these Daesh or so-called Islamic State (IS) associated recruits had returned to Sri Lanka.

These allegations are yet to be proven beyond reasonable doubt in a court of law. Having said that I would argue that the spectacular terrorist bombings on Easter Sunday perpetrated on wholly unsuspecting Christians, tourists and citizens could be a last hurrah from Daesh to demonstrate to their supporters and the world at large that they are not defeated. Every suicide bombing though is a defeat for Daesh as they are losing cadres on each occasion.

Quo Vadis?

So where do we all go from here? Sri Lanka will recover, as it has done commendably from the decades long brutal civil wars and bloodletting that ended ten years ago. What of the human spirit and fragile inter-communal harmony between minority Christians, Muslims and majority Buddhists in Sri Lanka, and beyond?

That is the greatest challenge moving forward and Sri Lanka’s fractious political leaders have to demonstrate true statesmanship, and invest the required time, effort and resources in partnership with all faith leaders to make a difference.

Thereby, defeating the forces of darkness, ignorance and evil, and bringing enlightenment, peace and harmony to a beleaguered land. Similar actions must be taken by world leaders to overcome growing dystopia and unchecked authoritarianism that is haunting the 21st century, putting the planet and liberal democracy in dire peril.

 

UN’s Empty Promises to World’s Indigenous Peoples

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Tupac Enrique Acosta is a member of the Nahuatl Nation and serves as firekeeper for the Nahuacalli, Embassy of Indigenous Peoples in Phoenix, Arizona.

The 18th Session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) will take place 22 April 3 May 2019. The theme of the session will be: “Traditional knowledge: Generation, Transmission and Protection”

PHOENIX, Arizona, Apr 19 2019 (IPS) – The United Nations, as in so many other areas, gives lip service in support of Indigenous issues while lacking the political will and enforcement power over individual member states to comply with the protection of fundamental human rights for the Original Nations of Indigenous Peoples of the world.

It took 47 years since the 1960’s UN declaration in support of the right of “all peoples” to self-determination to be extended to Indigenous Peoples, with the adoption of the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

But twelve years later, those words have not moved far off the paper on which they are written. Indigenous issues are still being subsumed under the individual domestic rubric of the member states of the UN Nations General Assembly, in defiance of the commitment to universal human rights that self-determination invokes and professes for all humanity.

It is no accident that the last four nation states to support the Declaration – Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States – were precisely those nations where the Anglo-European colonizers of the British Empire globally entrenched their colonial relationship with the Indigenous Peoples subsequent to the decline of Great Britain as a world power.

The devastation and genocide of Indigenous Nations and territories continues till today, but under a new mantle of progress called “Development”

For the Original Nations of Indigenous Peoples of the Great Turtle Island Abya Yala [Americas], we know that the subjugation of Indigenous Peoples started 526 years ago with the sword and the cross are now perpetrated with trade agreements and the empty promises of dead letters from the United Nations.

It is all a reflection of the continuing pernicious influence of the Doctrine of Discovery, the series of 15th century papal bulls in which a succession of popes authorized European explorers “discovering” lands in the New World that were not occupied by Christians to consider those lands vacant – terra nullius, in the words of the Doctrine – and to seize those lands in the names of their sovereign and enslave those people who lived there.

Pope Francis, the first pontiff from the Americas, in a 2015 speech in Bolivia went so far as to apologize for the sins of the Church – not individual conquistadores, but the Church itself – in the subjugation and colonization of Indigenous peoples during the conquest of the Americas.

But even as the Pope denounced the “new colonialism” of global capital oppressing Indigenous peoples, he ignores the pleas by a wide array of Christian denominations, including the World Council of Churches, for the Church to renounce the Doctrine. It is ancient history; the Papal Nuncio at the United Nations has said.

But it is not ancient history. It remains the basis of all Indigenous land law in the United States, and across the continent. In Mexico, the entire legal infrastructure since independence from Spain in 1836 is also based on the dictates of the Doctrine, known as the legaloid concept of Original Property of the State.

That is why Indigenous peoples take Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s recent letter to the Spanish king and the Pope asking for apologies for those genocidal colonial campaigns with little more than a grain of salt.

We know the Doctrine of Discovery’s impact is still pernicious. We see it in the Trump Administration’s racist immigration and refugee policies in the United States, which refuses to even recognize the historical reality of the descendants of those Indigenous peoples who have traveled freely across the US-Mexican border region before it even existed.

We see it in Brazil, where President Jair Bolsinairo has emboldened racist attacks on Indigenous Amazonian communities in the name of promoting even more destruction of ancient forest and waterways that sustain the entire planet.

We see it in Mexico, where President Lopez Obrador has pushed ahead with the tourism-promoting “Maya Train” across the Yucatan peninsula, tearing through the jungles and rivers in Indigenous homelands without even legitimately consulting the indigenous peoples who have lived there since time immemorial.

And we see it in the continuing devastation that a capital-centered economy, with its extractive industries that destroy the air and water we all rely on for survival, threatens the very future of global humanity. The stakes could not be higher.

We had hoped the UN’s creation of the Permanent Forum and passage of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples had started to turn the battleship of oppression at long last, but we have been disappointed. Instead of extending the universal human rights enshrined in those actions to include protection for Indigenous Peoples, the UN member states have subsumed them to the interests of the nation states that wield the most power with the UN’s halls.

That is why we will take to the streets on Monday, April 22, in New York across from the UN on the first day of this year’s session of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues to let delegates know that we will not be quiet, and we will not ignore the continuing impact of the racist and white-supremacist policies let loose on the Western Hemisphere by the Doctrine of Discovery.

And we will continue to call on the United Nations to live up to the commitments it has made to ensuring that the universal human rights it professes to champion before the world extends to the Indigenous peoples as it has, at least in word, committed. We call for world peace, and peace with Mother Earth.

We know the United Nations is far better at its words than at its deeds. We are here to say that is not enough.

 

Nicaraguans “Will Not Be Silenced”

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Active Citizens

A year since Nicaragua spiralled into a socio-political crisis, human rights leaders have called on the country to refrain from violence and uphold the human rights of its citizens. Credit: Eddy López/IPS

UNITED NATIONS, Apr 17 2019 (IPS) – A year since Nicaragua spiralled into a socio-political crisis, human rights leaders have called on the country to refrain from violence and uphold the human rights of its citizens.

In light of blatant, persistent human rights violations, United Nations agencies and human rights groups have urged the Nicaraguan government to halt its brutal crackdown on its citizens.

“Throughout the last year, the government of President Ortega has brutally and repeatedly repressed anyone who dares to stand up to his administration. The Nicaraguan authorities continue to violate the rights to justice, truth and reparation of hundreds of victims, while also preventing civil society organisations and international human rights monitors from working freely in the country,” said Amnesty International’s Americas Director Erika Guevara-Rosas.

“This has got to stop,” she added.

“Violations…coupled with the lack of accountability for unlawful excesses by members of the security forces, have stoked rather than reduced the tensions in the country,” said High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet.

After thousands took to the streets to protest controversial social security reforms in April 2018, demonstrations were quickly met with violence by state security forces and pro-pro-government armed groups.

According to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, over 300 people have been killed, more than 2,000 injured, and 2,000 arrested.

The Central American country has also since banned all protest and censored media in order to prevent any government criticism.

In December, Nicaraguan police raided TV station 100% Noticias and arrested station director Miguel Mora and news director Lucia Pineda Ubau, both of whom are being held on charges of “inciting hate and violence.”

At least 300 others, including human rights defenders, face charges of terrorism.

The High Commissioner particularly expressed concern over reports of torture and ill-treatment of detainees, including recent reports of authorities beating and using dogs and tear gas on detained protestors in La Modelo prison.

Government police and shock troops besiege a protest by medical students trying to organise on Sept. 12 in the city of León, 90 km west of Managua. Credit: Eddy López/IPS

As major protests are expected to mark the anniversary of the start of the crisis later this week, many fear another violent reaction.

The targeting of dissidents and protestors have prompted a massive exodus as an estimated 60,000 people have fled to neighbouring countries, including Costa Rica.

Among those seeking asylum are students, opposition figures, journalists, doctors, human rights defenders and farmers.

According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), many families are taking extreme measures to cross the border after being persecuted or receiving threats making it “overwhelmingly a refugee flow.”

After several attempted attacks and being informed that he was wanted “dead or alive,” Manuel left his banana plantations and fled to Costa Rica with his pregnant wife Andrea and their two children.

“We lived with the anxiety of not knowing when they would break into the house to get us…I’m sure if I go home they will hurt me,” Manuel told UNHCR.

Taking great lengths to avoid police, Manuel took a small boat along the Pacific Coast while Andrea walked through a back route of muddy fields with the children.

While they are now safe in the neighbouring country, Manuel and Andrea’s children are still haunted by their last days in Nicaragua where they were hunted by gun-carrying men in uniform.

“My youngest son hugs me every time he sees the Costa Rican police because they look like the officials who attacked us. He hugs me and says that he takes care of his daddy,” Manuel said.

While the Nicaraguan government and the opposition Civic Alliance for Justice and Democracy negotiated two pacts, including one on the release of detained protestors, the agreements have still yet to be implemented in its entirety and further negotiations have stalled.

“The fact that the negotiations have come to a standstill and the Government is not honouring the agreements reached so far, is undermining the possibility of establishing a genuine inclusive dialogue to solve the serious social, political and human rights crisis facing the country,” Bachelet said.

“A solution to the crisis must address the institutional flaws and strengthen the rule of law…it is of paramount importance that a thorough and transparent accountability process is established to ensure justice, truth and reparations, as well as a clear guarantee of non-repetition,” she added, highlighting the need to put victims of human rights violations at the heart of negotiations.

Guevara-Rosas urged the government to respect the public’s rights including the right to assembly, stating: “The Nicaraguan government must put an immediate end to its strategy of repression and release all the students, activists and journalists detained solely for exercising their rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly….the brave people of Nicaragua will not be silenced.”

 

Why the Prosecution of Julian Assange is Troubling for Press Freedom

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Civil Society, Crime & Justice, Democracy, Featured, Global, Headlines, Human Rights, Press Freedom, TerraViva United Nations

Opinion

Alex Ellerbeck* is North America Program Coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists & Avi Asher-Schapiro* is North America Research Associate

NEW YORK, Apr 16 2019 (IPS) – After a seven-year standoff at the Ecuadorean embassy in London, British police last week arrested WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange–a development press freedom advocates had long feared.

For years, journalists and press freedom advocates worried the U.S. would prosecute Assange under the Espionage Act for the publication of classified information, a scenario that potentially would have set a devastating legal precedent for U.S. news organizations that regularly publish such material.

During the Obama administration, officials ultimately said they would not prosecute because of the possible consequences for press freedom.

It was unclear whether the Trump administration would have the same compunction: while Trump praised WikiLeaks, then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo labeled it a “non-state hostile intelligence service.”

Trump has shown little concern for freedom of the press, once allegedly urging then-FBI Director James Comey to jail journalists. (In response to news of Assange’s arrest, Trump said he would leave it to the Justice Department).

In this context, the charge on which Assange was arrested seemed modest: A single count of conspiracy (with former Army Pfc. Chelsea Manning) to “commit computer intrusion” under the U.S. Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, with a maximum penalty of five years.

Unlike the publication of classified information, hacking computers is not a tool for reporters. Some journalists were quick to point out this out.

“[The] charge here is attempting to help crack a password to steal classified material. Didn’t work but would news orgs do that? (Not in my experience.),” said Greg Miller, a national security reporter at The Washington Post, said on Twitter.

But press freedom advocates, and some journalists, have not expressed relief based on the indictment. A host of organizations, including CPJ, spoke out against the prosecution. Here’s why:

(1) The indictment is flimsy and could simply be a pretext to punish Assange for publishing classified information.

The diplomatic time and resources expended between three countries to detain Assange strikes some observers as disproportionate to the single computer misuse charge.

The indictment is vague about the exact nature of the aid Assange allegedly provided Manning in the course of their interaction, but it does not appear that Assange successfully hacked any password.

Even if his attempts were successful, they would have helped Manning cover her tracks, but not let her break into a system to which she didn’t already have access.

Prosecutors have wide range of latitude; it’s worth remembering that the Obama administration likely had all the same information, but declined to pursue an indictment.

Matthew Miller, a former Justice Department spokesperson in the Obama administration, told The New York Times that he thought the charge was justified but “This is not the world’s strongest case.”

So, is it just a pretext on the part of the U.S. government to punish Assange for the publication of classified information — a practice that should be constitutionally protected? The issue comes in a time of heightened concern for investigative journalists and national security reporters.

Since the September 11 attacks, the government has increasingly classified large amounts of material and punished those who share it with the press. CPJ has written extensively about the chilling effect of this crackdown on reporting in the public interest.

“Given the nature of the charge — a discussion 9 years ago about an unsuccessful attempt to figure out a password — I think it’s fair to debate whether this is a fig leaf for the government punishing someone for publishing stuff it doesn’t want published,” tweeted Scott Shane, a national security reporter for The New York Times.

“If it wasn’t Julian Assange, it would be very unlikely you’d see this prosecution,” Cindy Cohn, executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told CPJ. “This is what over-broad discretion in prosecution does, it gives them a pretext for going after people they don’t like.”

(2) The charge could be a placeholder, with more to come.

Another reason why the charge may seem so modest: It could be the first of several. Last week, CNN cited U.S. officials promising additional charges against Assange. The press freedom implications of any future charges could be significant–especially if they involve the Espionage Act.

“It may be part of a larger case,” Ben Wizner the director of the American Civil Liberties Union, told CPJ. The current indictment already cites the Espionage Act and describes the cracking of a password as part of a conspiracy to violate it.

The DOJ’s legal strategy could be to pile on more charges after Assange is extradited. The extradition treaty between the U.S. and the U.K. says an individual can only be charged for the “offense for which extradition was granted” or similar offenses, but it also stipulates how governments can waive this rule.

Assange has an extradition hearing on May 2, which gives the U.S. government time to develop new charges.

(3) The language of the case seems to criminalize normal journalistic activities.

While the charge against Assange relates to the alleged conspiracy to hack a password, the language of the indictment sweeps in a broad range of legally protected and common journalistic activity.

Count 20 of the indictment states, “It was part of the conspiracy that Assange encouraged Manning to provide information and records from departments and agencies of the United States.”

The indictment goes on to characterize a number of journalistic practices as part of a criminal conspiracy, including use of a secure message service, use of a cloud-based drop box, and efforts to cover Manning’s tracks.

The cultivation of sources and the use of encryption and other means to protect those sources are essential to investigative journalism. While the government may include these details to show intent or to describe the means and context for the alleged criminal action, they seem to go beyond what is necessary.

Barton Gellman, who led The Washington Post’s Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting on the Snowden documents, told CPJ, “If asking questions and protecting a source are cast as circumstantial evidence of guilt, we’ll be crossing a dangerous line.”

“A lot of the way the crime is described here could be applied to other journalists,” Wizner, at the ACLU, told CPJ. “If the government wanted to just target the attempted intrusion, they could have written a very different complaint.”

(4) The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is incredibly broad.

In all of the concern over the Espionage Act, journalists may not have sufficiently raised alarm over the law under which the U.S. charged Assange: the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). “Thinking we should breathe a sigh of relief because it was the CFAA instead of the Espionage act is premature.” Cohn, of Electronic Frontier Foundation, told CPJ.

The CFAA carries its own set of free expression issues. While it encompasses clearly illegal behavior like hacking, it also criminalizes “unauthorized access to a computer.”

Manning was prosecuted under the CFAA in addition to the Espionage Act, but prosecuting a publisher under the under the CFAA for conspiracy in obtaining the classified information could potentially create a dangerous legal model.

While reporters do not conspire to decrypt passwords, they are often aware of, and might actively discuss with sources, activities that could fall under the broad frame of “unauthorized access.”

As the Cato Institute’s Julian Sanchez wrote on Twitter, “The way ‘helping to hack’ is being charged is as a conspiracy to violate 18 USC §1030 (a)(1) [of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act]. And good reporters conspire with their sources to do that constantly.”

“For almost every reporter working with a source, the source is providing information in digital form. Anyone who is working with a source who obtained that info in a way that they weren’t supposed to has a CFAA risk,” Cohn said.

She added that any journalists who don’t think there are broader press freedom implications to the Assange prosecution are “whistling past the graveyard.”

(5) Ecuador’s withdrawal of asylum raises questions.

Assange’s arrest came after Ecuador withdrew his asylum protection. In a tweet on April 11, Ecuadorean President Lenin Moreno said the decision came after Assange’s “repeated violations to international conventions and daily-life protocols.”

In a video statement accompanying the tweet, he cited Assange’s repeated “intervening in the internal affairs of other states” via WikiLeaks publications.

Ecuador had previously restricted Assange’s access to the internet based on allegations that he was interfering in U.S. elections and in the referendum for Catalan independence from Spain.

While Assange’s unusual presence in a diplomatic mission created tensions–both inside the embassy and in Ecuador’s broader international relations–withdrawing asylum is an extreme measure, and one that could have troubling implications if it was done in response to publishing.

*Alexandra Ellerbeck, CPJ’s North America program coordinator, previously worked at Freedom House and was a Fulbright teaching fellow at the State University of Pará in Brazil. She has lived in Chile, Bolivia, and Brazil.

*Asher-Schapiro is CPJ’s research associate for North America. He is a former staffer at VICE News, International Business Times, and Tribune Media, and an independent investigative reporter who has published in outlets including The Atlantic, The Intercept, and The New York Times.