By Jodesz Gavilan in Manila

The confirmation of charges hearings at the International Criminal Court (ICC) kicked off on Monday this week setting the stage for four days of high-stakes arguments over former President Rodrigo Duterte’s deadly drug war.

The team of prosecutors, victims’ representatives, and the defence are laying out their cases aiming to prove — or challenge — whether Duterte’s actions warrant trial.

After this pre-trial hearing, the ICC judges may decide whether there is enough evidence to move forward to a full trial, a process that could define Duterte’s legacy and signal accountability.

• READ MORE: Other Rodrigo Duterte reports

The past few days have been tense, with prosecutors presenting the systematic anti-illegal drug campaign that led to the thousands of deaths under Duterte, while victims’ representatives described the human toll in stark terms.

The defence team, so far, has painted a portrait of a president who was tough, outspoken, and misunderstood, but whose actions, they argued, were within the law.

Rappler has highlighted some of the most striking statements from the sessions. This will be updated as the confirmation of charges progresses and ends tomorrow.

Day 1 — February 23, 2026

Read the highlights from Day 1 at Rappler

“Mr Duterte’s criminal plan and his intent were no secret. He not only shared them with his co-perpetrators and members of the [Davao Death Squad], but also made them abundantly clear to the general public in the numerous public statements that he made time and again.

“His intent and knowledge are shown by the multiple statements that he made throughout his mayoral and presidential tenure promising to reduce crimes by killing alleged criminals, promoting the common plan, and urging the police and even members of the public to kill alleged criminals.”

— Deputy ICC prosecutor Mame Mandiaye Niang on how Duterte’s public speeches demonstrate his intent and knowledge in promoting drug war killings

“The arrest and detention of Mr Duterte has not stopped impunity in the Philippines. The virus of impunity that he spread all over the country has become a cancer that has metastasised, infecting millions of Filipinos. Mr. Duterte has created clones of himself. He converted millions of peace-loving citizens into bloodthirsty disciples who have become converts to the belief that violence and killings are valid solutions to societal problems.

“The killings masterminded by Mr Duterte continue to have consequences for the victims, even to this day, because of his clones. These mini-Dutertes harass, threaten, or commit outright violence against the victims and their families.”

— Lawyer Joel Butuyan, ICC-appointed common legal representative for victims, on the culture of impunity in the Philippines and the continuing threats faced by families of drug war victims

“If the charges are not confirmed in this case, one of the gravest concerns of the victims is that Mr Duterte will return to the Philippines as a conquering hero. He will resume preaching his gospel of impunity. In fact, if Mr Duterte could threaten to slap the judges of this court — which he did while he was president — this chamber should imagine the kind of terror-filled threats and the violent actions that can easily be used against the victims if the suspect walks free from this court.”

— Lawyer Joel Butuyan, ICC-appointed common legal representative for victims, on the potential risks if Duterte is not tried in court and punished.

“Rodrigo Duterte was, and will always remain, a unique phenomenon. His style of statesmanship was novel and unpalatable to many. His expletives and hyperbole grated, while his honesty and wild popularity irritated. He spoke openly from the heart, sincerely and truthfully. And what a contrast between him and his successor in Malacañang. For [Duterte], his word was his word, and the people knew it. For President Bongbong, his was for the wind and the people will not forget it.”

— Lead defence counsel Nicholas Kaufman on Duterte’s style of leadership and his contrast with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

“[Duterte]’s rhetoric was calculated to arouse fear and obedience, to instill fear in their hearts, and to inculcate a respect for the law in their minds. Nothing more, nothing less. That was his intent, and it was not criminal.”

— Lead defence counsel Nicholas Kaufman on Duterte’s use of rhetoric to enforce law and order.

“The reality is that Mr Duterte’s message was clear, and it was understood by the perpetrators, and it was followed. That message was: commit murder at my direction, and I will protect you, I will pay you, I will promote you. That’s what happened.

“And I’ll say this as well, your Honours, for purposes of this confirmation hearing, disregard every speech ever made by Mr Duterte. Throw them all out. There is still ample evidence of substantial grounds based on the other evidence which we have put on our list of evidence. And the evidence as a whole, when you weigh it together, will show that what [Nicholas Kaufman] said is not correct, that Mr Duterte intended for his subordinates to follow the law and that he was interested and that his speeches were simply bluster.”

— Senior trial lawyer Julian Nicholls of the ICC prosecution team, on why evidence beyond his public speeches demonstrates intent to commit killings.

Day 2 — February 24, 2026

Read the highlights from Day 2 at Rappler

“Mr Duterte goes on to comment on extrajudicial killings. And as he does so, your Honours will note the nonchalant, casual manner in which he draws his finger across his throat . . .  And in this opulent, gilded presentation room, the officials laugh along with their president while he boasts about his skills in extrajudicial killing. Outside, on the streets of the Philippines, the bodies pile up.”

— Lawyer Edward Jeremy of the ICC prosecution team, on the behaviour of Duterte during public speeches that were shown in the confirmation of charges hearing

“And in the face of this public outcry, Mr Duterte was forced to temporarily withdraw police from drug operations . . .  And this led to a reduction in the frequency of killings. In announcing this temporary withdrawal, Mr Duterte sarcastically stated that he hoped that this would satisfy ‘bleeding hearts and the media’. And, in this way, he publicly communicated that this was not a genuine effort to prevent crime, but rather a temporary attempt to placate public criticism. And less than two months later, Mr Duterte decided to once again scale up operations.”

— Lawyer Edward Jeremy of the ICC prosecution team, on Duterte’s response following the killing of 17-year-old Kian delos Santos

“From everything you have heard over the past two days, there can be no doubt about Mr Duterte’s knowledge and intent. He intended that the crimes would be committed and he was aware that they would be committed as a result of implementing the common plan . . .  Mr Duterte knew because he himself established the DDS to kill people. He repeatedly broadcast his intention to implement the common plan nationally if elected president. He made it clear that this would involve killing.

“Once he was president, he moved his trusted co-perpetrators from Davao into key national positions. And as the number of killings rose, Mr Duterte persisted with the common plan. He praised the 32 killings in a one-time big-time operation in Bulacan. He publicly named so-called high-value targets. He promised to protect police and as your Honours have heard, Mr Duterte has admitted to many of these things.”

— Lawyer Robynne Croft of the ICC prosecution team, on the deliberate orchestration of drug war killings and the role of the Davao Death Squad and national officials in executing the common plan.

“We speak for families who cannot be here, mothers who buried their sons, children who lost their parents, the spouses who now raise families alone, and communities that have lived for years under fear and silence and that continue to bear the consequences of violence that swept through their neighborhoods like a storm. These victims appear today before you not as mere statistics or distant figures or images in reports . . . but as human beings whose rights under the Rome Statute have been violated in the most profound ways.”

— Paolina Massida, principal counsel of the Office of Public Counsel for Victims (OPCV), on what the families of drug war victims had to go — and are going — through.

“The shooting could happen immediately, behind closed doors or in the street, or the victims would be taken away by the gunmen, only for shots to be heard minutes later and the body to be discovered by local residents. At times, bodies were dumped elsewhere, sometimes with hands tied or heads wrapped in plastic. Relatives typically found them after being alerted by policemen or by the neighbors.”

— Paolina Massida, OPCV principal counsel, on the pattern of killings during Duterte’s drug war.

“In other cases, victims tried to seek justice. They went to the police, to local officials, to government agencies. They filed reports, they asked for investigation, they begged for answers. Their pleas were ignored, their complaints were dismissed, their testimonies were doubted. In some cases, the very people they approached for help were the same ones involved in the violence. They were left with no path forward. No institution was willing to hear them, no authority was willing to protect them, no system was willing to acknowledge what was happening.”

— Paolina Massida, OPCV principal counsel, on the systemic failure in the Philippines to provide justice or protection for drug war victims.

“The victims have waited years for this moment. They have been silenced, stigmatized, and denied justice in their own country. Today, they stand before you with the hope that justice long denied may finally be within reach. This [ICC] is their last refuge. And today, on their behalf, we ask this chamber to affirm that their suffering matters, that their rights matter, and that the rule of law extends even to the most powerful by confirming all the charges against Mr Duterte and committing him to trial.”

— Paolina Massida, OPCV principal counsel, on the appeal of victims for accountability.

“Mr Duterte’s drug war campaign targeted the very humanity of the victims, of their families, and of their communities. In Filipino, the indirect victims expressed this in one sentence: ‘Inalisan kami ng dangal.’ We were stripped of our dignity.”

— Lawyer Gilbert Andres, ICC-appointed common legal representative for victims, on their dehumanisation and targeting during Duterte’s drug war.

Republished from Rappler with permission.

ANALYSIS: By Chris Hedges

I have seen the masked goons who terrorise our streets before. I saw them during the “Dirty War” in Argentina, where 30,000 men, women and children were “disappeared” by the military junta.

Victims were held in secret prisons, savagely tortured and murdered. To this day, many families do not know the fate of their loved ones.

I saw them in El Salvador, when death squads were killing 800 people a month. I saw them in Guatemala under the dictatorship of José Efraín Ríos Montt.

• READ MORE: Ian Powell: The Nicolás Maduro kidnapping, US imperialist expansion and implications for New Zealand
• Jonathan Cook: From Gaza to Venezuela, the US has been unmasked as the serial villain
• Other state terrorism reports

I saw them in Augusto Pinochet’s Chile and in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. I saw them in Iran under the rule of the ayatollahs where I was arrested and jailed twice and once deported in handcuffs. I saw them in Hafez al-Assad’s Syria.

I saw them in Bosnia, where Muslims were herded into concentration camps, executed and buried in mass graves.

I know these goons. I have been a prisoner in their jails and spent hours in their interrogation rooms. I have been beaten by them. I have been deported, and in several cases banned, from their countries. I know what is coming.

Terror is the engine that empowers dictatorships. It eliminates dissidents. It silences critics. It dismantles the law. It creates a society of timid and frightened collaborators, those who look away when people are snatched off streets or gunned down, those who inform to save themselves, those who retreat into their tiny rabbit holes, pulling down the blinds, desperately praying to be left in peace.

Terror works.

The iron doors have not yet shut. There are still protests. The media is still able to document state atrocities, including the January 7 murder of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Jonathan Ross.

Doors closing fast
But the doors are closing fast. ICE has deported over 300,000 people and detained nearly 69,000 others — as well as been involved in 16 shootings, including four killings — since Trump began his campaign against immigrants.

ICE, our Americanised Gestapo, is being birthed.

Resistance must be collective. We must assert not only our individual rights, but economic, social and political rights — without them we are powerless. Resistance means organising to disrupt the machinery of commerce and government.

It means preventing arrests by patrolling neighborhoods to warn of impending ICE raids. It means protesting outside detention facilities. It means strikes. It means blocking streets and highways and occupying buildings. It means providing photographic evidence.

It means sustained pressure on local politicians and police to refuse to cooperate with ICE. It means providing legal representation, food and financial assistance to families with members detained. It means a willingness to be arrested. It means a nationwide campaign to defy the state’s inhumanity.

If we fail, the dimming flames of our open society will be snuffed out.

Authoritarian states are constructed incrementally. No dictatorship advertises its plan to extinguish civil liberties. It pays lip service to liberty and justice as it dismantles the institutions and laws that make liberty and justice possible.

Sporadic resistance
Opponents of the regime, including those within the establishment, make sporadic attempts to resist. They throw up temporary roadblocks, but they are soon purged.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn in “The Gulag Archipelago” notes that the consolidation of Soviet tyranny “was stretched out over many years because it was of primary importance that it be stealthy and unnoticed.” He called the process “a grandiose silent game of solitaire, whose rules were totally incomprehensible to its contemporaries, and whose outlines we can appreciate only now.”

“What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family?” Solzhenitsyn asks.

“Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?

“After all, you knew ahead of time those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you’d be cracking the skull of a cutthroat. Or what about the Black Maria sitting out there on the street with one lonely chauffeur — what if it had been driven off or its tires spiked? The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!”

Czesław Miłosz, in “The Captive Mind,” also documents the creep of tyranny, how it advances stealthily, until intellectuals are not only forced to repeat the regime’s self-adulating slogans but, as our leading universities did when they caved to false allegations of being bastions of antisemitism, embrace its absurdism.

Manufactured fear engenders self-doubt. It makes a population — often unconsciously — conform outwardly and inwardly. It conditions citizens to relate to those around them with suspicion and distrust. It destroys the solidarity vital to organising, community and dissent.

Effective state terror
The historian Robert Gellately, in his book “Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany,” argues that state terror in Nazi Germany was effective not because of omnipresent state surveillance, but because it fostered a “culture of denunciation”.

Rat out your neighbors and coworkers and survive. If you see something, say something.

The worse it gets, the more established institutions, desperate to survive, silence those who warn us.

“Before societies fall, just such a stratum of wise, thinking people emerges, people who are that and nothing more,” Solzhenitsyn writes of those who see what is coming. “And how they were laughed at! How they were mocked!”

The Austrian writer Joseph Roth, whose early warnings about the rise of fascism were largely dismissed, and who told fellow intellectuals to stop naively appealing to “the remains of a European conscience,” saw his books tossed into the bonfires in the spring of 1933 during the Nazi book burnings.

So far, we have not burned books, but have banned nearly 23,000 titles in public schools since 2021.

The authoritarian state cannibalises the institutions that foolishly aid and abet the witch hunts. It replaces them with pseudo-institutions populated with pseudo-legislators, pseudo-courts, pseudo-journalists, pseudo-intellectuals and pseudo-citizens.

Columbia University is a shining example of this willful self-immolation. Nothing is as it is presented.

Violent kidnappings
There are increasing numbers of violent kidnappings by masked ICE agents in unmarked cars on our city streets. People are ripped from their vehicles and beaten. They are arrested outside schools and day care centers. They are raided at work, thrown onto the floor, handcuffed, driven away in vans and shipped off to concentration camps in countries such as El Salvador.

They are seized when they appear at court for a green card application or interview to finalise a visa.

Once detained, they disappear into the labyrinth of over 200 detention centers, where they are moved from one facility to the next to hide them from family, lawyers and the courts. Due process, once a constitutional right afforded to everyone in the United States, no longer exists.

“Laws that are not equal for all revert to rights and privileges, something contradictory to the very nature of nation-states,” Hannah Arendt writes in “The Origins of Totalitarianism.” “The clearer the proof of their inability to treat stateless people as legal persons and the greater the extension of arbitrary rule by police decree, the more difficult it is for states to resist the temptation to deprive all citizens of legal status and rule them with an omnipotent police.”

The FBI, in an example of how justice is perverted, refuses to cooperate with local law enforcement agencies in Minneapolis, blocking access to any evidence that would allow them to file criminal charges against Jonathan Ross.

Killing of unarmed citizens by the state is carried out with impunity.

ICE has more than doubled the size of its force since early 2025 — to 22,000 agents — hiring 12,000 new officers in four months from a pool of 220,000 applicants.

It plans to spend $100 million over a one-year period to hire even more recruits, part of the $170 billion for border and interior enforcement, including $75 billion for ICE, to be spent over four years. Salaries for these new recruits, poorly trained and often haphazardly vetted, will range from $49,739 to $89,528 a year, along with a $50,000 signing bonus — split over three years — and up to $60,000 in student loan repayments.

New detention centres
ICE is building new detention centers nationwide in 23 towns and cities. It promises that once it is fully operational, it will go door-to-door as part of the largest deportation effort in American history.

ICE agents, intoxicated by the licence to kick down doors while wearing body armor and firing automatic weapons at terrified women and children, are not warriors as they imagine, but thugs. They have few skills, other than weapons training, cruelty and brutality. They intend to remain employed by the state. The state intends to keep them employed.

None of this should surprise us. The repressive techniques used by ICE and our militarised police were perfected overseas in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and Occupied Palestine, and earlier in Vietnam.

The ICE agent who murdered Good was a machinegunner in Iraq. A night raid in Chicago, with agents rappelling from a helicopter to storm an apartment complex filled with terrified families, does not look any different from a night raid in Fallujah.

Aimé Césaire, the Martinician playwright and politician, in “Discourse on Colonialism” writes that the savage tools of imperialism and colonialism eventually migrate back to the home country. It is known as imperial boomerang.

Césaire writes:

And then one fine day the bourgeoisie is awakened by a terrific boomerang effect: the gestapos are busy, the prisons fill up, the torturers standing around the racks invent, refine, discuss.

People are surprised, they become indignant. They say: “How strange! But never mind—it’s Nazism, it will pass!”

And they wait, and they hope; and they hide the truth from themselves, that it is barbarism, the supreme barbarism, the crowning barbarism that sums up all the daily barbarisms; that it is Nazism, yes, but that before they were its victims, they were its accomplices; that they tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, that they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it, because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples; that they have cultivated that Nazism, that they are responsible for it, and that before engulfing the whole edifice of Western, Christian civiliSation in its reddened waters, it oozes, seeps, and trickles from every crack.

Democracy’s last gasps
During the interregnum between the last gasps of a democracy and the emergence of a dictatorship, the nation is gaslighted. It is told the rule of law is respected. It is told democratic rule is inviolate. These lies mollify those being frog-marched into their own enslavement.

“The majority sit quietly and dare to hope,” Solzhenitsyn writes. “Since you aren’t guilty, then how can they arrest you? It’s a mistake!”

Maybe, the fearful say, Trump and his minions are only being bombastic. Maybe they don’t mean it. Maybe they are incompetent. Maybe the courts will save us. Maybe the next elections will end this nightmare. Maybe there are limits to extremism. Maybe the worst is over.

These self-delusions prevent us from resisting while the gallows are being constructed in front of us.

Authoritarian states start by targeting the most vulnerable, those most easily demonised — the undocumented, students on college campuses who protest genocide, antifa, the so-called “radical left,” Muslims, poor people of color, intellectuals and liberals.

They strike down one group after the next. They blow out, one by one, the long row of candles until we find ourselves in the dark, powerless and alone.

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East bureau chief and Balkan bureau chief for the paper. He is the host of show “The Chris Hedges Report”. This article was first published on the Chris Hedges Substack page and is republished with permission.

There is much to understand from the dramatic kidnapping — abduction is perhaps a better word — of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores last weekend by the United States armed forces, combined with the military attack on the country’s capital Caracas.

This understanding is greatly helped by the comments of the US’s first elected insurrectionist and convicted felon (fraud and sexual assault) President, Donald Trump, at and following his inauguration for his second term nearly 12 months ago.

Trump singled out the 25th US president, William McKinley, who was first elected 1896 but assassinated early into his second term, for praise. Some of this praise was because of his promotion of tariffs.

• READ MORE: Venezuela: Trump’s war for oil and domination is a war crime
• Trump’s illegal Venezuela assault means global anarchy
• It’s not the Venezuelan oil – it’s Florida

But it was also because McKinley is regarded as the first imperialist American president. He went to war with Spain and China to claim colonial spoils. Annexations included Puerto Rico and the Philippines (where more than 200,000 Filipinos were killed).

Far and hard right politics, fascism and narcissism
For context, the current US government under Trump’s leadership is a mix of far and hard right politics.

I have discussed this in a previous article (November 3) describing how the far right is successfully cannibalising the mainstream rightwing internationally (including its implications for Aotearoa New Zealand).

Residing within the far right is fascism. Considering Trump and some of his cabinet members and key staff to be fascists is a very reasonable conclusion to draw.

One of the characteristics of many fascists is narcissism; a personality disorder recognised as a mental health condition; an excessive preoccupation with oneself and one’s own needs, often at the expense of others.

Blend narcissism and fascism (or even wider far right beliefs) together and you have an absence of empathy and indifference to harmful consequences of their actions on others.

Even intelligent people within this subset find their narrow paradigms shut out to consideration of the tactical and strategic errors (“own goals”) that might arise out of their decision-making.

Recommended reading and watching
There has been much public commentary on the violent assault on Venezuela and the kidnapping/abduction of its president and First Lady. Three have stood out for me.

One is British leftwing journalist, commentator, author and activist Owen Jones. He speaks with lively empirically based passion. In his Battlelines publication (Substack, January 4) he didn’t pull his punches about global anarchy.

The second commentary digs deep. It is a 31-minute interview by Venezuelanalysis (January 4) with Caracas based analysts Steve Ellner and Ricardo Vaz: Venezuela: Trump’s war for oil and domination is a war crime.

I strongly recommend watching it. In addition to the military violence and abduction, they address Trump’s declaration that Washington will take control of Venezuela’s oil and effectively run the country, warning that the operation constitutes an unlawful use of force.

Venezuela: Trump’s war for oil.

They also refer to the extrajudicial killings on Venezuelan fishing boats at sea as violations of international law and Venezuelan sovereignty.

The third is a recommended read of an online article (January 6) by Helen Yaffe, professor of Latin American political economy (Glasgow University): What is the US doing in Venezuela.

As well as describing the dramatic events, Dr Yaffe puts them in both their historical and current political contexts.

The absurd: Maduro’s machine gun
Trump’s justifications range from the absurd to the manufactured to the overstated. But one justification is absolutely on the mark. His narcissism is ironically beneficial at least from the perspective of analysis.

In openly exposing that that this is all about naked power Trump and his coterie don’t care that he can be easily caught out over fabrication and inconsistencies. If one believes that they are all-powerful, why should they care.

The absurd justification for the legal case against Nicolás Maduro is that he had a machine gun in his possession.

Putting aside the fact that the risk of what might happen (foreign military abduction) did actually occur, arguing this in a country where machine guns are easily and lawfully accessible — really.

The manufactured: narcotrafficking
The biggest fabrication, arguably exceeded the US government’s false “weapons of mass destruction” claim used to justify the disastrous invasion of Iraq over two decades ago, was to blame Venezuela, Maduro in particular, for the US fentanyl epidemic.

It even called it a “weapon of mass destruction”.

Consider the following facts that completely discredit Trump’s fabrication:

• In its March 2025 report the US State Department identified Mexico as the sole source of fentanyl entering the United States. United Nations investigations into fentanyl distribution also don’t identify Venezuela as a producer, let alone a supplier.
• Trump claims that Maduro leads a so-called Venezuelan “Cartel of the Suns” that traffics narcotics, including fentanyl, into the US. In fact, this is a politically manufactured fantasy. There is no such organisation as has just been acknowledged in the last few days by the US Department of Justice.
• In 2024, Honduran ex-president Juan Orlando Hernández was convicted in a US court and sentenced to 45 years for conspiring to smuggle over 400 tons of cocaine into the US. Last November, Trump pardoned this narcotrafficker.

The overstated: oil
Many believe that the US invasion is all or primarily about oil. Certainly Trump’s own words and actions encourage this belief. After all, Venezuela holds the world’s largest proven oil reserves.

However, since Trump’s sanctions targeting its oil sector back in 2017, Venezuela’s exports to the US have plummeted. Instead, China has become its biggest importer.

Last November, Trump released a US National Security Strategy for Latin America. It declared that “Restoring American energy dominance (in oil, gas, coal, and nuclear) and reshoring the necessary key energy components is a top strategic priority”.

However, while important, oil profiteering is not the prime driver of the US assault on Venezuelan sovereignty. Although Venezuela has huge oil reserves, it is heavy oil which is more difficult to fully process.

Instead, its oil reserves are a consequence of a wider geopolitical agenda sometimes called “spheres of influence”. While intricately linked, US oil sanctions are more a weapon than a driver of the imperialist assault on Venezuela.

The on the mark justification
Where the United States’  justification was on the mark comes from Donald Trump’s above-mentioned praise for the first “American imperialist president” William McKinley.

Consistent with this praise, through misrepresentation, Trump has drawn upon what is known as the “Munroe Doctrine”.

This Doctrine was named after President James Monroe who was the fifth US president (1817-1825). Munroe was both an original Founding Father of US independence and the last Founding Father to serve as president.

The Munroe Doctrine was issued in 1823, less than 50 years after US independence was declared and 34 years before its constitution was approved. It was a young developing country; not that long ago itself comprising 13 different British colonies.

The Doctrine was a policy of limiting European colonialism in the Americas but not to replace it with American colonialisation because it lacked both the inclination and means to achieve this. It was more aligned in principle with non-colonial states in the region.

However, Trump is reinventing the Doctrine to extend US colonial power throughout the Americas. This is what the National Security Strategy is all about.

The attack on Venezuela is an endeavour — among other things —  to:

• impose US hegemony in Latin America;
• exploit Venezuela’s natural resources (oil, gas, critical minerals, and rare earth elements) as part of an attempt to build a new supply chain in the Western Hemisphere;
• cut off Latin America’s ties with other countries, particularly its biggest competitor China;
• threaten other leftwing or progressive governments in the continent;
• destroy the project of regional integration in Latin America and the Caribbean; and
• sabotage “Global South” unity over supporting Palestine and other liberation struggles.

Where to next?
I have deliberately not discussed related issues such as the nature of the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela along with the longstanding United States hostility towards it beginning in the latter part of Bill Clinton’s presidency, and the entrenched and violent far right opposition to it.

I have also not discussed the impact of the sudden drop in oil prices in 2014, the impact of accelerating US economic warfare (sanctions) since 2015, and the controversy over last year’s presidential elections.

As an aside these elections in my view were imperfect but legitimate. Further, Trump has been explicit — he isn’t interested in “restoring democracy” or “democratic transition”; nor does he rate the alternative Venezuelan far right led by Maria Corina Machado stating that she didn’t have the support to run the country.

These exclusions are because I don’t want to distract from the greater priority being regional and global seriousness of the US’s military aggression (including abductions) towards the sovereignty of Venezuela and its people.

The US aggression is part of a wider plan to extend US domination across the Americas and beyond, consistent with its above-mentioned National Security Strategy which, in turn, is based on a misrepresentation of the anti-colonial 1823 Munroe Doctrine.

Trump has explicitly signalled Cuba, Mexico, and Columbia as the next likely targets. Brazil and Uruguay can’t be ignored either. Even Greenland is expressly on his list.

Quite simply, the sovereignty of most Latin American and other more vulnerable countries that don’t comply with the US’s narcissistic far right — including fascist — leadership’s agenda are at risk.

What about New Zealand?
New Zealand is in a difficult position. The government’s public response has been underwhelming although not as bad as the sycophantic United Kingdom government.

Luxon’s government, with Winston Peters as foreign minister, has been slowly weaning New Zealand away from its international neutrality position to one increasingly closer to that of the United States.

The extensive exposure of this blatant and violent US display of power-grabbing makes public justifying this policy shift much more difficult.

Robert Patman, professor of international relations at Otago University discusses this in The Conversation (January 5): NZ faces a foreign policy reckoning.

Much more direct is Bryce Edwards’ piece published by the Democracy Project  and Asia Pacific Report (January 7): NZ’s craven stance on the US invasion of Venezuela.

As the narcissism of fascism and the far right continues to push the parameters of their power, an already unsafe world is becoming increasingly more dangerous and our government’s response suggests increasing sycophantic timidity.

Ian Powell is a progressive health, labour market and political “no-frills” forensic commentator in New Zealand. A former senior doctors union leader for more than 30 years, he blogs at Second Opinion and Political Bytes, where this article was first published. Republished with the author’s permission.

In the late 1960s, the prevailing opinion among Israeli Shin Bet intelligence officers was that the key to defeating the Palestinian Liberation Organisation was to assassinate its then-leader Yasser Arafat.

The elimination of Arafat, the Shin Bet commander Yehuda Arbel wrote in his diary, was “a precondition to finding a solution to the Palestinian problem.”

For other, even more radical Israelis — such as the ultra-nationalist assassin Yigal Amir — the answer lay elsewhere. They sought the assassination of Israeli leaders such as Yitzak Rabin who wanted peace with the Palestinians.

• READ MORE: Iran fires missiles at Israel; Trump claims ‘total control of Iran skies’
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Despite Rabin’s long personal history as a famed and often ruthless military commander in the 1948 and 1967 Arab-Israeli Wars, Amir stalked and shot Rabin dead in 1995. He believed Rabin had betrayed Israel by signing the Oslo Accords peace deal with Arafat.

Nothing has changed. Listen to how Yasser Arafat described the media and how they refused to comdemn Israeli war crimes. pic.twitter.com/BNbjp6ZEww

— Unfiltered Muslim (@muslimbants) November 9, 2023

It has been 20 years since Arafat died as possibly the victim of polonium poisoning, and 30 years after the shooting of Rabin. Peace between Israelis and the Palestinians has never been further away.

What Amnesty International and a United Nations Special Committee have called genocidal attacks on Palestinians in Gaza have spilled over into Israeli attacks on the prominent leaders of its enemies in Lebanon and, most recently, Iran.

Since its attacks on Iran began on Friday, Israel has killed numerous military and intelligence leaders, including Iran’s intelligence chief, Mohammad Kazemi; the chief of the armed forces, Mohammad Bagheri; and the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hossein Salami. At least nine Iranian nuclear scientists have also been killed.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly said:

We got their chief intelligence officer and his deputy in Tehran.

Iran, predictably, has responded with deadly missile attacks on Israel.

Far from having solved the issue of Middle East peace, assassinations continue to pour oil on the flames.

A long history of extrajudicial killings
Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman’s book Rise and Kill First argues assassinations have long sat at the heart of Israeli politics.

In the past 75 years, there have been more than 2700 assassination operations undertaken by Israel. These have, in Bergman’s words, attempted to “stop history” and bypass “statesmanship and political discourse”.

This normalisation of assassinations has been codified in the Israeli expression of “mowing the grass”. This is, as historian Nadim Rouhana has shown, a metaphor for a politics of constant assassination.

Enemy “leadership and military facilities must regularly be hit in order to keep them weak”.

The point is not to solve the underlying political questions at issue. Instead, this approach aims to sow fear, dissent and confusion among enemies.

Thousands of assassination operations have not, however, proved sufficient to resolve the long-running conflict between Israel, its neighbours and the Palestinians. The tactic itself is surely overdue for retirement.

Targeted assassinations elsewhere
Israel has been far from alone in this strategy of assassination and killing.

Former US President Barack Obama oversaw the extrajudicial killing of Osama Bin Laden, for instance.

After what Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch denounced as a flawed trial, former US President George W. Bush welcomed the hanging of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein as “an important milestone on Iraq’s course to becoming a democracy”.

Current US President Donald Trump oversaw the assassination of Iran’s leader of clandestine military operations, Qassem Soleimani, in 2020.

Martyr General Qassem Soleimani : No scholar or authority in Shiite history has been able to do what Imam Khomeini did#Baghdad0120#Soleimani pic.twitter.com/FgieLy1Rsu

— Soleimani TV (@Soleimani_TV) February 10, 2021

More recently, however, Trump appears to have baulked at granting Netanyahu permission to kill Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

And it’s worth noting the US Department of Justice last year brought charges against an Iranian man who said he had been tasked with killing Trump.

Elsewhere, in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, it’s common for senior political and media opponents to be shot in the streets. Frequently they also “fall” out of high windows, are killed in plane crashes or succumb to mystery “illnesses”.

A poor record
Extrajudicial killings, however, have a poor record as a mechanism for solving political problems.

Cutting off the hydra’s head has generally led to its often immediate replacement by another equally or more ideologically committed person, as has already happened in Iran. Perhaps they too await the next round of “mowing the grass”.

But as the latest Israeli strikes in Iran and elsewhere show, solving the underlying issue is rarely the point.

In situations where finding a lasting negotiated settlement would mean painful concessions or strategic risks, assassinations prove simply too tempting. They circumvent the difficulties and complexities of diplomacy while avoiding the need to concede power or territory.

As many have concluded, however, assassinations have never killed resistance. They have never killed the ideas and experiences that give birth to resistance in the first place.

Nor have they offered lasting security to those who have ordered the lethal strike.

Enduring security requires that, at some point, someone grasp the nettle and look to the underlying issues.

The alternative is the continuation of the brutal pattern of strike and counter-strike for generations to come.

Dr Matt Fitzpatrick is professor in international history, Flinders University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

It is difficult to be shocked after 18 months of Israel‘s genocidal onslaught on Gaza.

Brazen crimes against humanity have become the norm. World powers do nothing in response. At best, they put out weak statements of concern. Now, the US does not even bother with that.

It is fully on board with genocide.

• READ MORE:  Middle East Eye’s live coverage of the Israeli war on Palestine
• It will take more than an Oscar to stop Israel’s West Bank plans
• Other No Other Land and West Bank reports
• Other Israel’s war on Gaza reports

Israel and the US are planning the violent ethnic cleansing of Gaza, knowing full well that no one will stop them.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) are sitting on their hands, despite what appeared to be significant rulings last year on Israeli war crimes by the ICC and on the “plausible risk” of genocide by the ICJ.

Israeli anti-Zionist commentator Alon Mizrahi posted on X this week:

“As Israel and the US announce and begin to enact plans to ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians, let’s remember that the International Court of Justice has not even convened to discuss the genocide since 24 May 2024, when it was using very blurry language about the planned Rafah action.

“Tens of thousands have been exterminated since then, and hundreds of thousands have been injured. Babies starved and froze to death, and thousands of children lost limbs.

“Not a word from the ICJ. Zionism and American imperialism have rendered international law null and void. Everyone is allowed to do as they please to anyone. The post-World War II masquerade is truly over.”

As Israel and the US announce and begin to enact plans to ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians, let’s remember that the International Court of Justice has not even convened to discuss the genocide since 24 May 2024, when it was using very blurry language about the planned…

— Alon Mizrahi (@alon_mizrahi) March 30, 2025

Under the US Joe Biden administration, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the smirking US spokesperson Matt Miller would make performative statements about “concern” over the killing of Palestinians with weapons they had supplied. (They would never use a word as clear as “killing”, always preferring the perpetrator-free “deaths”).

Today, under the Donald Trump regime, even the mask of respect for the rituals of international diplomacy has been thrown aside.

This is the law of the jungle, and the winner is the government that uses superior force to seize what it believes is theirs, and to silence and destroy those who stand in their way.

Brutally targeted
Last week, a group of Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), civil defence and UN staff rushed to the site of Israeli air strikes to rescue wounded Palestinians in southern Gaza.

PRCS is the local branch of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which, like the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (Unrwa), provides essential health services to Palestinians in a devastated, besieged war zone.

Alongside other international aid groups, they have been repeatedly and brutally targeted by Israel.

That pattern continued on March 23, when Israeli forces committed a heinous, deliberate massacre that left eight PRCS members, six members of Gaza’s civil defence, and one UN agency employee dead.

The bodies of 14 first responders were found in Rafah, southern Gaza, a week after they were killed. The vehicles were mangled, and the bodies dumped in a mass grave. Some were mutilated, one decapitated.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said some of the bodies were found with their hands tied and with wounds to their heads and chests.

“This grave was located just metres from their vehicles, indicating the [Israeli] occupation forces removed the victims from the vehicles, executed them, and then discarded their bodies in the pit,” civil defence spokesperson Mahmoud Basal said, describing it as “one of the most brutal massacres Gaza has witnessed in modern history”.

Under fire: Israel’s war on medics.     Video: Middle East Eye

‘Killed on way to save lives’
The head of the UN Humanitarian Affairs Office in Gaza, Jonathan Whittall, said: “Today, on the first day of Eid, we returned and recovered the buried bodies of eight PRCS, six civil defence and one UN staff.

“They were killed in their uniforms. Driving their clearly marked vehicles. Wearing their gloves. On their way to save lives. This should never have happened.”

Nothing happened following previous lethal attacks, such as the killing of seven World Central Kitchen staff on 1 April 2024, exactly one year ago, when the victims were British, Polish, Australian, Palestinian, and a dual US-Canadian citizen.

Despite a certain uproar that was absent when dozens or hundreds of Palestinians were massacred, Israel was not sanctioned by Western powers or the UN. And so, it continued killing aid workers.

Israel declared Unrwa a “terror” group last October and has killed more than 280 of its staff — accounting for the majority of the 408 aid workers killed in Gaza since October 2023.

The international response to this latest massacre? Zilch.

#GAZA – New images emerge from the execution and burial site of 15 Red Crescent and Civil Defense members in Tal al-Sultan, Rafah, southern Gaza Strip
On March 24, the #IDF surrounded the five ambulances and their crew members, handcuffed them, executed them, buried them in a… pic.twitter.com/KM5DLWpfyH

— Brunella C. (@BrunellaCapitan) April 1, 2025

Official silence
On Sunday, Save the Children, Medical Aid for Palestinians and Christian Aid took out ads in the UK Observer calling for the UK government to stop supplying arms to Israel in the wake of renewed Israeli attacks in Gaza: “David Lammy, Keir Starmer, your failure to act is costing lives.”

The British prime minister is too busy touting his mass deportation of “illegal” migrants from the UK to comment on the atrocities of his close ally, Israel. He has said nothing in public.

Lammy, UK Foreign Secretary, has found time to put out statements on the Myanmar earthquake, Nato, Russian attacks on Ukraine, and the need for de-escalation of renewed tensions in South Sudan.

His last public comment on Israel and Gaza was on March 22, several days after Israel’s horrific massacre of more than 400 Palestinians at dawn on 18 March: “The resumption of Israeli strikes in Gaza marks a dramatic step backward. Alongside France and Germany, the UK urgently calls for a return to the ceasefire.”

No condemnation of the slaughter of nearly 200 children.

In response to a request for comment from Middle East Eye, a Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office spokesperson said: “We are outraged by these deaths and we expect the incident to be investigated transparently and for those responsible held to account. Humanitarian workers must be protected, and medical and aid workers must be able to do their jobs safely.

“We continue to call for a lift on the aid blockade in Gaza, and for all parties to re-engage in ceasefire negotiations to get the hostages out and to secure a permanent end to the conflict, leading to a two-state solution and a lasting peace.”

As this article was being written, Lammy put out a statement on X that, as usual, avoided any direct mention of who was committing war crimes. “Gaza remains the deadliest place for humanitarians — with over 400 killed. Recent aid worker deaths are a stark reminder. Those responsible must be held accountable.”

Age of lawlessness
The new world order of 2025 is a lawless one.

The big powers and their allies are committed to the violent reordering of the map: Palestine is to be forcibly absorbed into Israel, with US backing. Ukraine will lose its eastern regions to Vladimir Putin’s Russia with US support.

Smaller nations can be attacked with impunity, from Yemen to Lebanon to Greenland (no US invasion plan as yet, but the mood music is growing louder with every statement from Trump and Vice-President JD Vance).

This has always been the way to some extent. Still, previously in the post-war world, adherence to international law was the official position of great powers, including the US and the Soviet Union.

Israel, however, never had time for international law. It was the pioneer of the force-is-right doctrine. That doctrine is now the dominant one.

International law and international aid are out.

In the UK last Thursday, a group of youth activists were meeting at the Quaker Friends House in central London to discuss peaceful resistance to the genocide in Gaza.

Police stormed the building and arrested six young women.

Such a police action would have been unthinkable a few years ago, but new laws introduced under the last government have made such raids against peaceful gatherings increasingly common.

This is the age of lawlessness. And anyone standing up for human rights and peace is now the enemy of the state, whether in Palestine, London, or at Columbia University.

Joe Gill has worked as a journalist in London, Oman, Venezuela and the US, for newspapers including Financial Times, Morning Star and Middle East Eye. His Masters was in Politics of the World Economy at the London School of Economics. Republished from Middle East Eye under Creative Commons.

Dozens of Filipinos and supporters in Aotearoa New Zealand came together in a Black Friday vigil and Rally for Justice in the heart of two cities tonight — Auckland and Christchurch.

They celebrated the arrest of former President Rodrigo Duterte by the International Criminal Court (ICC) earlier this month to face trial for alleged crimes against humanity over a wave of extrajudicial killings during his six-year presidency in a so-called “war on drugs”.

Estimates of the killings have ranged between 6250 (official police figure) and up to 30,000 (human rights groups) — including 32 in a single day — during his 2016-2022 term and critics have described the bloodbath as a war against the poor.

• READ MORE: Arrested on ICC warrant: What was Duterte’s ‘war on drugs’?
• Philippines ex-president Rodrigo Duterte arrested on ICC warrant – video
• Other Rodrigo Duterte reports

But speakers warned tonight this was only the first step to end the culture of impunity in the Philippines.

Current President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, son of the late dictator, and his adminstration were also condemned by the protesters.

Introducing the rally with the theme “Convict Duterte! End Impunity!” in Freyberg Square in the heart of downtown Auckland, Bagong Alyansang Makabayan’s Eugene Velasco said: “We demand justice for the thousands killed in the bloody and fraudulent war on drugs under the US-Duterte regime.”

She said they sought to:

• expose the human rights violations against the Filipino people;
• call for Duterte’s accountability; and
• to hold Marcos responsible for continuing this reign of terror against the masses.

Flown to The Hague
The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Duterte on March 11. He was immediately arrested on an aircraft at Manila International Airport and flown by charter aircraft to The Hague where he is now detained awaiting trial.

“We welcome this development because his arrest is the result of tireless resistance — not only from human rights defenders but, most importantly, from the families of those who fell victim to Duterte’s extrajudicial killings,” Velasco said.

“These families fought for justice despite the complete lack of support from the Marcos administration.”

Velasco said their their courage and resilience had pushed this case forward — “even in the face of relentless threats and violence from the police and military”.

“‘Shoot them dead!’—this was Duterte’s direct order to the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). His death squads carried out these brutal killings with impunity,” Velasco said.

But Duterte was not the only one who must be held accountable, she added.

“We demand the immediate arrest and prosecution of all those who orchestrated and enabled the state-sponsored executions, led by figures like Senator Bato Dela Rosa and Lieutenant-Colonel Jovie Espenido, that led to over 30,000 deaths, the militarisation of 47,587 schools, churches, and public institutions — especially in rural areas — the abductions and killings of human rights defenders, and the continued existence of National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict or NTF-ELCAC.”

Fake news, red-tagging
Velasco accused this agency of having “used the Filipino people’s taxes to fuel human rights abuses” through the spread of fake news and red-tagging against activists, peasants, trade unionists, and people’s lawyers.

“The fight does not end here,” she said.

“The Filipino people, together with all justice and peace-loving people of Aotearoa New Zealand, will not stop until justice is fully served — not just for the victims, but for all who continue to suffer under the Duterte-Marcos regime, which remains under the grip of US imperialist interests.

“As Filipinos overseas, we must unite in demanding justice, stand in solidarity with the victims of extrajudicial killings, and continue the struggle for accountability.”

Several speakers gave harrowing testimony about the fate of named victims as their photographs and histories were remembered.

Speakers from local political groups, including Green Party MP Francisco Hernandez, and retired prominent trade unionist and activist Robert Reid, also participated.

Reid referenced the ICC arrest issued last November against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, wanted for war crimes and crimes against humanity related to the Gaza genocide, saying he hoped that he too would end up in The Hague.

Mock corpses surrounded by candles displayed signs — which had been a hallmark of the drug war killings — declaring “Jail Duterte”, “Justice for all victims of human rights” and “Convict Sara Duterte now!” Duterte’s daughter, Sara Duterte is currently Vice-President and is facing impeachment proceedings.

A New Zealand-based Filipino solidarity network has welcomed the arrest of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte by Interpol on charges of crimes against humanity on a warrant by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

“We congratulate the human rights activists — both from the Philippines and around the world — who held the line and relentlessly pursued justice for Filipino victims of the former Duterte regime,” said the Aotearoa-Philippines Solidarity (APS) in a statement.

“This arrest is a long time coming, with Duterte having been complicit in the extrajudicial killings of activists, trade unionists, indigenous peoples’ advocates, peasants and human rights lawyers since he was president back in 2016.

• READ MORE: Drug war victims’ families celebrate Duterte’s arrest, vow to keep fighting
• Duterte arrested on ICC warrant — what was his ‘war on drugs’?
• Special Rappler coverage: The arrest of Rodrigo Duterte
• PHOTOESSAY: Buried in debt only to have their loved ones get a burial — Pacific Journalism Review
• Other Rodrigo Duterte reports

“His brutal and merciless so-called ‘war on drugs’ also led to the deaths of thousands of Filipinos — many of which were not involved in the drug trade at all or were merely drug addicts and low-level drug peddlers.

“Their only ‘crime’ was that they were poor, as documented by many human rights watchdogs that Duterte’s fake ‘drug war’ disproportionately targeted poor Filipinos.”

The APS statement said that Duterte had admitted to these crimes when he faced an inquiry before the Philippines’ House of Representatives in October last year.

“In that hearing, the former president admitted the existence of ‘death squads’ composed of ‘gang members’ and Philippine police personnel who would ‘neutralise’ drug suspects – both when he was president and as mayor of Davao City.

Police ordered to ‘goad suspects’
“He also [revealed] that he [had] instructed members of the Philippine National Police (PNP) to goad suspects to fight back or attempt to escape so they would have a reason to kill them.”

The APS noted that all these actions constituted crimes against humanity, the very charge laid against him by the ICC. Since the initial charges were laid against Duterte in 2017 by human rights activists, many had anticipated the day he would finally face justice.

“This arrest is a historic step towards justice and a reminder to all that no one is above the law. The APS extends our best wishes to the bereaved families of those killed during Duterte’s unjust ‘war on drugs’ and also its survivors,” the statement said.

The APS said challenge now was to ensure that justice was meted out by the ICC and Duterte was punished for his crimes.

“Let us not allow this monumental victory slip from our hands and ensure that all evidence against Duterte is brought to light and he faces consequences for the human rights violations he committed against the Filipino people.”

The statement said that Duterte’s arrest also served as a “warning to the US-Marcos regime” that any abuse of their powers and attacks on human rights would not go unpunished.

The continuation of indiscriminate military operations which violated international humanitarian law would also lead to the downfall of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr — who is the son of the 1970s dictator who declared martial law.

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.

• READ MORE: Special Rappler coverage: The arrest of Rodrigo Duterte
• PHOTOESSAY: Buried in debt only to have their loved ones get a burial — Pacific Journalism Review
• Other Rodrigo Duterte reports

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.

In the lead up to the inauguration of President Prabowo Subianto last Sunday, Indonesia established five “Vulnerable Area Buffer Infantry Battalions” in key regions across West Papua — a move described by Indonesian Army Chief-of-Staff Maruli Simanjuntak as a “strategic initiative” by the new leader.

The battalions are based in the Keerom, Sarmi, Boven Digoel, Merauke and Sorong regencies, and their aim is to “enhance security” in Papua, and also to strengthen Indonesia’s military presence in response to long-standing unrest and conflict, partly related to independence movements and local resistance.

According to Armed Forces chief General Agus Subiyanto, “the main goal of the new battalions is to assist the government in accelerating development and improving the prosperity of the Papuan people”.

• READ MORE: Indonesia to offer ‘amnesty’ for West Papuans contesting Jakarta’s rule
• Other West Papua reports

However, this raises concerns about further militarisation and repression of a region already plagued by long-running violence and human rights abuses in the context of the movement for a free and independent West Papua.

Thousands of Indonesian soldiers have been stationed in areas impacted by violence, including Star Mountain, Nduga, Yahukimo, Maybrat, Intan Jaya, Puncak and Puncak Jaya.

As a result, the situation in West Papua is becoming increasingly difficult for indigenous people.

Extrajudicial killings in Papua go unreported or are only vaguely known about internationally. Those who are aware of these either disregard them or accept them as an “unavoidable consequence” of civil unrest in what Indonesia refers to as its most eastern provinces — the “troubled regions”.

Why do the United Nations, Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) and the international community stay silent?

While the Indonesian government frames this move as a strategy to enhance security and promote development, it risks exacerbating long-standing tensions in a region with deep-seated conflicts over autonomy and independence and the impacts of extractive industries and agribusiness on West Papuan people and their environment.

Exploitative land theft
The Centre for Climate Crime and Climate Justice, in collaboration with various international and Indonesian human and environmental rights organisations, presented testimony at the public hearings of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT) at Queen Mary University of London, in June.

The tribunal heard testimonies relating to a range of violations by Indonesia. A key issue, highlighted was the theft of indigenous Papuan land by the Indonesian government and foreign corporations in connection to extractive industries such as mining, logging and palm oil plantations.

The appropriation of traditional lands without the consent of the Papuan people violates their right to land and self-determination, leading to environmental degradation, loss of livelihood, and displacement of Indigenous communities.

The tribunal’s judgment underscores how the influx of non-Papuan settlers and the Indonesian government’s policies have led to the marginalisation of Papuan culture and identity. The demographic shift due to transmigration programmes has significantly reduced the proportion of Indigenous Papuans in their own land.

Moreover, a rise in militarisation in West Papua has often led to heightened repression, with potential human rights violations, forced displacement and further marginalisation of the indigenous communities.

The decision to station additional military forces in West Papua, especially in conflict-prone areas like Nduga, Yahukimo and Intan Jaya, reflects a continuation of Indonesia’s militarised approach to governance in the region.

Security pact
The Indonesia-Papua New Guinea Defence Cooperation Agreement (DCA) was signed by the two countries in 2010 but only came into effect this year after the PNG Parliament ratified it in late February.

Indonesia ratified the pact in 2012.

As reported by Asia Pacific Report, PNG’s Foreign Minister Justin Tkatchenko and Indonesia’s ambassador to PNG, Andriana Supandy, said the DCA enabled an enhancement of military operations between the two countries, with a specific focus on strengthening patrols along the PNG-West Papua border.

This will have a significant impact on civilian communities in the areas of conflict and along the border. Indigenous people in particular, are facing the threat of military takeovers of their lands and traditional border lines.

Under the DCA, the joint militaries plan to employ technology, including military drones, to monitor and manage local residents’ every move along the border.

Human rights
Prabowo, Defence Minister prior to being elected President, has a controversial track record on human rights — especially in the 1990s, during Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor.

His involvement in military operations in West Papua adds to fears that the new battalions may be used for oppressive measures, including crackdowns on dissent and pro-independence movements.

As indigenous communities continue to be marginalised, their calls for self-determination and independence may grow louder, risking further conflict in the region.

Without substantial changes in the Indonesian government’s approach to West Papua, including addressing human rights abuses and engaging in meaningful dialogue with indigenous leaders, the future of West Papuans remains uncertain and fraught with challenges.

With ongoing military operations often accused of targeting indigenous populations, the likelihood of further human rights violations, such as extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detentions, and forced displacement, remains high.

Displacement
Military operations in West Papua frequently result in the displacement of indigenous Papuans, as they flee conflict zones.

The presence of more battalions could drive more communities from their homes, deepening the humanitarian crisis in the region. Indigenous peoples, who rely on their land for survival, face disruption of their traditional livelihoods and rising poverty.

The Indonesian government launched the Damai Cartenz military operation on April 5, 2018, and it is still in place in the conflict zones of Yahukimo, Pegunungan Bintang, Nduga and Intan Jaya.

Since then, according to a September 24 Human Rights Monitor update, more than 79,867 West Papuans remain internally displaced.

The displacement, killings, shootings, abuses, tortures and deaths are merely the tip of the iceberg of what truly occurs within the tightly-controlled military operational zones across West Papua, according to Benny Wenda, a UK-based leader of the United Liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP).

The international community, particularly the United Nations and the Pacific Islands Forum have been criticised for remaining largely silent on the matter. Responding to the August 31 PIF communique reaffirming its 2019 call for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights visit to West Papua, Wenda said:

“[N]ow is the time for Indonesia to finally let the world see what is happening in our land. They cannot hide their dirty secret any longer.”

Increased global attention and intervention is crucial in addressing the humanitarian crisis, preventing further escalations and supporting the rights and well-being of the West Papuans.

Without meaningful dialogue, the long-term consequences for the indigenous population may be severe, risking further violence and unrest in the region.

As Prabowo was sworn in, Wenda restated the ULMWP’s demand for an internationally-mediated referendum on independence, saying: “The continued violation of our self-determination is the root cause of the West Papua conflict.”

Ali Mirin is a West Papuan academic from the Kimyal tribe of the highlands bordering the Star Mountain region of Papua New Guinea. He is a contributor to Asia Pacific Report and Green Left in Australia.

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.

• READ MORE: Other West Papua reports

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.

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.

• READ MORE: US sends warplanes, battleships to region amid Iran-Israel tension
• Promoting peace and stability in the Middle East by unconditionally backing its worst aggressor
• Other Israel’s war on Gaza reports

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.

A brutal killing of three Papuan civilians in Puncak Jaya reveals that occupied West Papua is a ticking time bomb under Indonesian President-elect Prabowo Subianto, claims the leader of an advocacy group.

And United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) Benny Wenda says the Melanesian region risks becoming “another East Timor”.

The victims have been named as Tonda Wanimbo, 33; Dominus Enumbi, and Murib Government.

• READ MORE: Shooting of human rights defender shows increasing threats in Papua

Their killings were followed by riots in Puncak Jaya as angry indigenous residents protested in front of the local police station and set fire to police cars, said Wenda in a statement.

“This incident is merely the most recent example of Indonesia’s military and business strategy in West Papua,” he said.

“Indonesia deliberately creates escalations to justify deploying more troops, particularly in mineral-rich areas, causing our people to scatter and allowing international corporations to exploit the empty land – starting the cycle of bloodshed all over again.”

According to the ULMWP, 4500 Indonesian troops have recently been deployed to Paniai, one of the centres of West Papuan resistance.

An estimated 100,000 West Papuans have been displaced since 2018, while recent figures show more than 76,000 Papuans remain internally displaced — “living as refugees in the bush”.

Indonesia ‘wants our land’
“Indonesia wants our land and our resources, not our people,” Wenda said.

The Indonesian military claimed that the three men were members of the resistance movement TPNPB (West Papua National Liberation Army), but this has been denied.

Military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Candra Kurniawan claimed one of the men had been sought by security forces for six years for alleged shootings of civilians and security personnel.

“This is the same lie they told about Enius Tabuni and the five Papuan teenagers murdered in Yahukimo in September 2023,” Wenda said.

“The military line was quickly refuted by a community leader in Puncak Jaya, who clarified that the three men were all civilians.”

Concern over Warinussy
Wenda said he was also “profoundly concerned” over the shooting of lawyer and human rights defender Christian Warinussy.

Warinussy has spent his career defending indigenous Papuans who have expelled from their ancestral land to make way for oil palm plantations and industrial mines.

“Although we don’t know who shot him, his shooting acts as a clear warning to any Papuans who stand up for their customary land rights or investigates Indonesia’s crimes,” Wenda said.

Indonesia’s latest violence is taking place “in the shadow of Prabowo Subianto”, who is due to take office as President on October 20.

Prabowo has been widely accused over human rights abuses during his period in Timor-Leste.

“Will he form militias to crush the West Papua liberation movement, as he previously did in East Timor?” asked Wenda.

One year after Al Jazeera’s well known Palestine correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh was fatally shot while reporting in the West Bank on 11 May 2022, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has condemned the lack of progress in the official investigations into her death and the failure to bring anyone to justice.

Several events are being held to pay tribute to Shireen Abu Akleh on the first anniversary of her death while covering an Israeli army raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank.

But justice has yet to be rendered even though many expert reports pointed to direct Israeli Defence Forces responsibility and the IDF even acknowledged that the fatal shot was “very probably” fired by one of their soldiers.

“When there is a will there is a way. Although all the investigations clearly show that Israeli forces were responsible for Shireen Abu Akleh’s death, the absence of political will still prevents justice from being rendered.

The systematic Israeli impunity is outrageous and cannot continue. RSF will remain mobiliSed on all fronts until those responsible have been identified and brought to justice.”

A West Papua rights group claims Indonesian police and soldiers have carried out at least 72 extrajudicial killings over the past year.

The report by the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (KontraS) said the police were responsible for 50 of the unlawful killings, with the remainder committed by military personnel.

The latest report situated the unlawful killings in the context of a “narrowing of democratic space” and “massive violations of rights related to the basic principles of democracy” by President Joko Widodo’s administration.

• READ MORE: Activists blame Indonesian police, soldiers for dozens of extrajudicial killings
• Other West Papua human rights reports

“The widespread practice of extrajudicial killings throughout 2022 by security personnel shows that they are like wolves in sheep’s clothing who are ready to pounce when there’s an opportunity,” KontraS researcher Rozy Brilian told reporters, according to a report by Benar News.

The article quoted Rozy as saying that most of those allegedly killed by police were under criminal investigation and at least 12 of the cases involved torture.

While six Indonesian soldiers were arrested recently for their involvement in the deaths of four Papuans in Mimika regency in the unsettled Papua region, the report claims the security forces still enjoy a high degree of impunity for illegal behavior.

“This is a reminder of the considerable degree of continuity between Suharto’s military-backed New Order, in which the security forces enjoyed political prominence and vast power, and the democratic system that was established after the regime’s fall in 1998,” the authors said.

KontraS said far from investigating or prosecuting those responsible for past rights outrages, the Indonesian government has often promoted them to key positions in government.

In particular, KontraS pointed to the appointment of Major-General Untung Budiharto, the alleged perpetrator of enforced disappearances during the terminal crisis of the Suharto government in 1997 and 1998, as commander of the Greater Jakarta Command Area.

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

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) has analysed thousands of suspicious tweets posted in 2021 relating to the Indonesian region of West Papua and assessed that they are inauthentic and were crafted to promote the policies and activities of the Indonesian government while condemning opponents such as Papuan pro-independence activists.

This work continues ASPI’s research collaboration with Twitter focusing on information manipulation in the Indo-Pacific to encourage transparency around these activities and norms of behaviour that are conducive to open democracies in the region.

It follows our August 24 analysis of a dataset made up of thousands of tweets relating to developments in Indonesia in late 2020, which Twitter had removed for breaching its platform manipulation and spam policies.

• READ MORE: West Papua atrocity – a warning to Jakarta for impartial investigation
• Other West Papua reports

This report on Papua focuses on similar Twitter activity from late February to late July 2021 that relates to developments in and about Indonesia’s easternmost region.

This four-month period was noteworthy for several serious security incidents as well as an array of state-supported activities and events in the Papua region, then made up of the provinces of West Papua and Papua.

These incidents were among many related to the long-running pro-independence conflict in the region.

A report from Indonesia’s Human Rights Commission detailed 53 violent incidents in 2021 across the Papua region in which 24 people were killed at the hands of both security forces and the armed wing of the Free Papua Organisation (OPM) separatist movement, the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB).

‘Armed criminal group’
Jakarta normally referred to this group by the acronym “KKB”, which stands for “armed criminal group”.

This upsurge in violence followed earlier cases involving multiple deaths. The most notorious took place in December 2018, when TPNPB insurgents reportedly murdered a soldier and at least 16 construction workers working on a part of the Trans-Papua Highway in the Nduga regency of Papua province (official Indonesian sources have put the death toll as high as 31).

The Indonesian government responded by conducting Operation Nemangkawi, a major national police (POLRI) security operation by a taskforce comprising police and military units, including additional troops brought in from outside the province.

The security operation led to bloody clashes, allegations of human rights abuses and extrajudicial killings, and the internal displacement of many thousands of Papuans, hundreds of whom, according to Amnesty International Indonesia, later died of hunger or illness.

Besides anti-insurgency actions, an important component of the operation was the establishment of Binmas Noken Polri, a community policing initiative designed to conduct “humanitarian police missions or operations” and assist “community empowerment” through programmes covering education, agriculture and tourism development.

“Noken” refers to a traditional Papuan bag that indigenous Papuans regard as a symbol of “dignity, civilisation and life”. Binmas Noken Polri was initiated by the then national police chief, Tito Karnavian, the same person who created the recently disbanded, shadowy Red and White Special Task Force highlighted in our August 24 report.

A key development occurred in April 2021 when pro-independence militants killed the regional chief of the National Intelligence Agency (BIN) in an ambush. Coming on the back of other murders by independence fighters (including of two teachers alleged to be police spies earlier that month), this prompted the government to declare the KKB in Papua—that is, the TPNPB “and its affiliated organisations”—”terrorists” and President Joko Widodo to order a crackdown on the group.

9 insurgents killed
Nine alleged insurgents were killed shortly afterwards.

In May 2021, hundreds of additional troops from outside Papua deployed to the province, some of which were part of an elite battalion nicknamed “Satan’s forces” that had earned notoriety in earlier conflicts in Indonesia’s Aceh province and Timir-Leste.

During the same month, there were large-scale protests in Papua and elsewhere over the government’s moves to renew and revise the special autonomy law, under which the region had enjoyed particular rights and benefits since 2001.

The protests included demonstrations staged by Papuan activists and students in Jakarta and the Javanese cities of Bandung and Yogyakarta from May 21-24. The revised law was ushered in by Karnavian, who was then (and is still) Indonesia’s Home Affairs Minister.

The period also saw ongoing preparations for the staging of the National Sports Week (PON) in Papua. Delayed by one year because of the covid-19 pandemic, the event eventually was held in October at several specially built venues across the province.

The dataset we analysed represents a diverse collection of thousands of tweets put out under such hashtags as #BinmasNokenPolri, #MenolakLupa (Refuse to forget), #TumpasKKBPapua (Annihilate the Papuan armed criminal group), #PapuaNKRI (Papua unitary state of the Republic of Indonesia), #Papua and #BongkarBiangRusuh (Take apart the culprits of the riots).

Most were overtly political, either associating the Indonesian state with success and public benefits for Papuans or condemning the state’s opponents as criminals, and sometimes doing both in the same tweet.

Papuan Games tweets
Among several tweets under #Papua proclaiming that the province was ready to host the forthcoming PON thanks to Jakarta’s investment in facilities and security, 18 dispatched on June 25 proclaimed: “PAPUA IS READY TO IMPLEMENT PON 2020!!! Papua is safe, peaceful and already prepared to implement PON 2020. So there’s no need to be afraid. Shootings by the KKB … are far from the PON cluster [the various sports facilities] … Therefore everyone #ponpapua #papua”.

Many tweets were clearly aimed at shaping public perceptions of the pro-independence militia and others challenging the state.

Under #MenolakLupa in particular, numerous tweets related to past and contemporary acts of violence by the pro-independence militants. Two sets of tweets from March 22 and 24 that recall the 2018 attack at Nduga are especially noteworthy, in that both injected the term “terrorist” into the armed criminal group moniker that the state had been using hitherto, making it “KKTB”. This was a month before the formal designation of the OPM as a “terrorist” organisation.

As if to stress the OPM’s terrorist nature, subsequent tweets under #MenolakLupa carried through with this loaded terminology. For example, tweets on June 15 stated that in 2017 “KKTB committed sexual violence” against as many as 12 women in two villages in Papua.

A fortnight later, another set of tweets said that in 2018 the “armed terrorist criminal group” had held 14 teachers hostage and had taken turns in raping one of them, causing her “trauma”. Others claimed former pro-independence militants had converted to the cause of the Indonesian unitary state and therefore recognised its sovereignty over Papua.

Some tweets relate directly to specific contemporary events. Examples are flurries of tweets posted on July 24-25 in response to the protests against the special autonomy law’s renewal that highlight the alleged irresponsibility of demonstrations during the pandemic, such as: “Let’s reject the invitation to demo and don’t be easily provoked by irresponsible [malign] people. Stay home and stay healthy always.”

Others are tweets put out under #TumpasKKBPapua after the shooting of the two teachers, such as: “Any religion in the world surely opposes murder or any other such offence, let alone of this teacher. Secure the land of the Bird of Paradise.”

Warning over ‘hoax’ allegations
Other tweets warn Papuans not to succumb to “hoax” allegations about the security forces’ behaviour or other claims by overseas-based spokespeople such as United Liberation Movement of West Papua’s Benny Wenda and Amnesty International human rights lawyer Veronica Koman.

Tweets on April 1 under #PapuaNKRI, for example, warned recipients not to “believe the KKB’s Media Propaganda, let’s be smart and wise in using the media lest we be swayed by fake news.”

Many of the tweets in the dataset are strikingly mundane, with content that state agencies already were, or would have been, publicising openly. A tweet on February 27 under #Papua, for example, announced that the Transport Minister would prioritise the construction of transport infrastructure in the two provinces.

Those under #BinmasNokenPolri often echoed advice that receivers of the tweet could just as easily see on other media, such as POLRI’s official Binmas Noken website.

Some were public announcements about market conditions and community policing events where, for example, people could receive government assistance such as rice, basic items and other support.

Most reflected Binmas Noken’s community engagement purpose, ranging from a series on May 20 promoting a child’s “trauma healing” session with Binmas Noken personnel to another tweeted out on June 20 advising of a badminton contest involving villages and police arranged under the Nemangkawi Task Force.

‘Healthy body, strong spirit’
A further 34 tweets on June 20 advised that “inside a healthy body is a strong spirit”, of which the first nine began with the same broad sentiment expressed in the Latin motto derived from the Roman poet Juvenal, “Mens sana in corpore sano.” (Presumably, after this first group of tweets it dawned on the sender that his or her classical erudition was likely to be lost on indigenous Papuan residents.)

As with the tweets analysed in our August 24 report, based on behavioural patterns within the data, we judge that these tweets are likely to be inauthentic—that is, they were the result of coordinated and covert activity intended to influence public opinion rather than organic expressions by genuine users on the platform.

Without conclusively identifying the actors responsible, we assess that the tweets mirror the Widodo government’s general position on the Papuan region as being an inalienable part of the Indonesian state, as well as the government’s security policies and development agenda in the region.

The vast majority are purposive: by promoting the government’s policies and activities and condemning opponents of those policies (whether pro-independence militia or protesters), the tweets are clearly designed to persuade recipients that the state is providing vital public goods such as security, development and basic support in the face of malignant, hostile forces, and hence that being Indonesian is in their interests.

Dr David Engel is senior analyst on Indonesia in ASPI’s Defence and Strategy Programme. Albert Zhang is an analyst with ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre. His research interests include information and influence operations, and disinformation. Dr Jake Wallis is the Head of Programme, Information Operations and Disinformation with ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre. This article is republished from The Strategist with permission.

Sixty years ago today — on 15 August 1962 — the fate of a newly born nation-state West Papua was stolen by men in New York. The infamous event is known as “The New Agreement”, a deal between the Netherlands and Indonesia over West Papua’s sovereignty.

A different fate had been intended for the people of West Papua in early 1961 when they elected their national Council from whom the Dutch were asking guidance for the transfer of administration back to Papuan hands.

Shockingly, the threat of colonialism came from America several months later when a journalist advocating liberty denounced a secret Washington proposal to betray America’s Pacific War ally Papua to an Asian colonial power.

• READ MORE: Other West Papua self-determination reports

The Council’s response was to present to the Dutch a flag and manifesto of independence asking all the peoples of West Papua to unite as one people under their new Morning Star flag.

On 1 December 1961, the Dutch raised the Morning Star flag, and for more than 60 years the people have united as one raising their Morning Star flag.

But declassified American records reveal horrific deceptions. A group inside the White House had begun secret negotiations with the Republic of Indonesia around a proposal for an illegal use of the International Trusteeship System, or to quote the US, “a special United Nations trusteeship of West New Guinea” that irrespective of Papua’s objections would then ask Indonesia to assume control.

The “special” nature of the US proposal had the opposite intent than that of the international law. The International Trusteeship System, Chapter XII of the United Nations Charter is meant protect a people’s right of independence and have the UN prepare annual reports about their welfare and progress towards independence for each territory the United Nations has become responsible for, including those invaded and subjugated by UN troops.

West Papua is both.

Instead of protection and annual reports, the United Nations by omission of duty is enabling Indonesian impunity for military campaigns of terror and administrative suspension of all human rights.

West Papuans have suffered hundreds of thousands of extrajudicial deaths, disappearances and looting of many hundreds of billions of dollars throughout the UN appointed administration by Indonesia.

Weekly stories of horror hidden from international news media by an ongoing Indonesian declaration that Papua is a quarantine zone requiring special permission for NGOs and journalists to enter.

It is beyond time that the UN took steps to put right the wrongs of the past. #selfdetermination pic.twitter.com/vsWBO0wXpo

— Free West Papua (@FreeWestPapua) August 7, 2022

Fiscal and geopolitical deceptions
Every principle written into the UN’s charter, the Rules of Procedure of the Trusteeship Council, and even Indonesia’s own New York Agreement have been violated by the ongoing Indonesian conduct, international mining and United Nations omission of lawful conduct.

These events proceeded against the backdrop of a global movement calling for decolonialisation that rippled across Asia, Africa and the Pacific, with the West and the Communist bloc supporting or opposing one another to gain influence in these movements.

The newly independent nation of Indonesia, which had been under Dutch rule for more than 300 years, declared independence on 17 August 1945. Sukarno was the man of this era, leading the outburst of a long-awaited human desire for freedom and equality.

In the same era, wars broke out in Korea and Vietnam; the world endured the Cuban missile crisis as forces of the West and the Communist bloc continued to clash and reshape the destiny of these new nation-states.

Leading up to the final recognition of their new republic in December 1949, Indonesians experienced another brutal, protracted war with the Dutch. The Netherlands side wanted to reclaim their past colonial glory, and the Indonesian side wanted to removed Dutch occupation and authority from their nation.

Indonesia’s founding fathers, Sukarno and Suharto, were significant men of their era, with ambitions to match — ambitions that led to the massacre of millions of alleged Indonesian Chinese communists in the mid-1960s; the same ambition that placed the Papuan people on the path they are on now, carved by blood, tears, trauma, war, killing, rape, exploitation, betrayal, and being cheated at every turn by the world’s highest institutions.

Many nations around the world had to face difficult choices, with emerging leaders of all types avoiding the cause of their own imagined nation-state. This was a most turbulent era of development and globalisation.

Arguably, most conflicts around the world today stem from unresolved grievances brought about by this turbulence and divisive historical events.

West Papua’s extended conflicts for the last 60 years are a direct result of being mishandled by Western forces who sought to take Papua’s independence for themselves.

As of today, Indonesians (and those unaware of West Papua’s legal status under international law) think that this is a domestic issue, a narrative which Jakarta elites insist on propagandising to the world.

The truth is that West Papua remains an unresolved issue with international implications. More specifically, the UN still has the responsibility to correct their sixty-year-old mistake.

The UN breached its own charter
At least in principle, all 111 articles of the UN Charter are aimed at promoting peace, dignity, and equality. One of the key elements of the charter (in relation to decolonisation) is its declaration that colonial territories would be considered non-self-governing territories. The United Nations’ responsibility was to provide a “full measure of self-government” to those nations colonised by foreign powers. West Papua’s story as a new nation began within these international frameworks.

West Papua was already listed under the UN’s decolonisation system as a non-self-governing territory before 1962 and the Dutch were preparing Papuans for full independence in accordance with the UN charter guidelines. The public has been deceived by trivialising this agreement and downplaying it as simply two powers — Netherlands and Indonesia — fighting over West Papuan territory.

The UN, as a caretaker of this trust, had a responsibility to provide a measure for Papuans to achieve independence. The UN instead handed (abandoned) this trust to Indonesia, who then abused that international trust by invading West Papua in May 1963. This scandalous historical error has brought unprecedented cataclysm to Papuans to date.

The Indonesian perspective
Most Indonesians have been fooled by their government to think that West Papua’s fate was decided during a referendum, known as “Pepera” or “Act of Free Choice” in 1969, which Papuans now refer to as the “Act of No Choice”. Indonesians assume that Indonesian occupancy is good for West Papua, but this is not true: they are unaware that Indonesia is illegally occupying West Papua and their government is in breach of many international laws.

It seems that the Western powers have no issue turning a blind eye when one of their endorsed global players are breaking their laws.

During the period of July to September 1969, the Act of Free Choice was carried out by the Indonesian government. The UN was there but did not act or speak against it. This referendum was one of the items stipulated in the New York Agreement seven years earlier.

About 2025 Papuan elders among the one million Papuans who were handpicked at gunpoint and forced to say “yes” to remain with Indonesia. The UN acted as a bystander, unwilling to interfere with the tyranny taking place before them.

What we seem to forget is the fact that before the referendum in 1969, Indonesia had already launched a large-scale martial and administrative operation throughout West Papua, instilling fear and setting the stage for the rubber stamp referendum to proceed.

What happened in 1969 was a tragedy and a farce of human autonomy. The UN and international community betrayed West Papua on the world’s stage.

The New York Agreement
Andrew Johnson and Julian King, Australian researchers who specialised in this case, have argued that West Papua is still a non-self-governing territory, and that Indonesia has no legal or moral right to claim sovereignty over West Papua. These researchers insist that West Papua is still a non-self-governing territory, and Indonesia is only there temporarily as an administrator — they have no legal basis to introduce any law or policy towards West Papua.

In their ground-breaking seminal work West Papua Exposed: An Abandoned Non-Self-Governing or Trust Territory, Johnson and King conclude that:

Either as a Non-Self-Governing Territory or a Trust Territory, the legal rights of the people of West Papua have been denied with every UN Member responsible and legally bound to uphold the Charter in order to correct this breach of international law.

No Papuan was invited or included during the agreement. This act itself speaks volumes – the complete denial of Papuans’ intrinsic worth as human beings to have any input into their fate is the basis for all kinds of violence, abuse, torture and mistreatment towards Papuan people.

This is the first violation and the most egregious because the Indonesian government’s draconian policies towards Papuans have consistently exhibited and reinforced this prejudiced behaviour over the past 60 years. Indonesians do not treat Papuans as equal human beings, therefore, what Papuans think, desire and feel doesn’t matter.

It was the right move for the UN to accept West Papua as a Trust Territory. However, the UN abandoned this sacred trust to Indonesia a year later, even though Indonesia’s behaviour prior to, during, and after this agreement had already been in breach of many UN charters and principles.

For example, Chapters 11 (XI), 12 (XII), and 13 (XIII) of the UN Charter governing decolonisation and Papua’s right to self-determination, as specified in the New York Agreement’s Articles 18 (XVII), 19 (XIX), 20 (XX), 21 (XXI), and 22 (XXII) have not been followed.

Additionally, the UN’s failure to uphold its principles and its silence on its disastrous mistake constitutes a serious breach of international law.

Secret documents
Declassified documents from the United States, Australia, and the United Nations reveal irrefutable evidence of what went wrong behind the scenes prior to, during, and after the Netherlands-Indonesia agreement.

The idea of exploiting the UN Trusteeship system to transfer the sovereignty of West Papua to Indonesia was already proposed in 1959 by the US embassy in Jakarta.

Now-declassified document titled “A proposal for Settlement of the West New Guinea Dispute”, dated on May 26, 1959, stated:

Our position of neutrality has served its purpose. It is time we developed a formula to remove this major irritant to Indonesian relations with the West.

In the US minds, the formula was exploiting the UN’s mechanisms to give West Papua sovereignty to Indonesia.

A year later on 3 March 1961, the US embassy wrote:

Unless New Guinea question can be promptly removed as source of Soviet strength and US weakness, as incipient cause of war and as platform for variety of unhealthful isms within Indonesia, our best efforts in any other direction will fail to achieve our objectives here.

According to King and Johnson, the 1962 New York Agreement story has been a deception for 60 years; the agreement was not drafted after the Indonesian invasion in 1962. The agreement was proposed by an American lawyer in May 1959, modified in 1960, proposed to Indonesia in March 1961, and executed in 1962.

West Papua is not sold or traded under the Agreement. It is an agreement between UN members to share the responsibility for the welfare of West Papuan people (trusteeship), and it asks the UN to be the “administrator” (occupying force) in 1962. When the United Nations backed the agreement, Pakistani troops were appointed to administer West Papua in 1962, followed by Indonesian troops in 1963.

As it turns out, armies of secret dealers in UN uniforms were behind the scenes setting agendas, proposing solutions, and implementing them without consequences.

It appears then that the New York Agreement itself, the terms of reference upon which the UN General Assembly voted on the agreement, the UN’s role from 1962 to 1963, the final Act of Free Choice in 1969, and the UN General Assembly vote on the Act of Free Choice’s outcome were all facades — a treacherous performance fit for a tragic drama.

A carefully orchestrated plan was devised to sacrifice West Papua to Indonesia by manipulating the UN’s system by the United States — the leader of the free democratic world and the tyrant flexing its vast military power.

The fight to reclaim stolen sovereignty lives on
Papua played an important role in reshaping geopolitical arrangements between the West and the communist bloc, and it will continue to do so if this issue remains unresolved.

The future in which West Papua will play a critical role has arrived. The US and its allies will have to face China or any other power or ideological forces that are challenging the liberal world order.

The responses, criticisms, or reactions arising from nations around the world — whether it be on the issues of covid-19, the Ukraine war, Taiwan, Solomon Islands-China security deals, or any other global issue — suggest that the grand narrative of the West as the saviour of mankind pushed by the US is being questioned and rejected.

Another new grand narrative is now emerging, and that is China.

West Papua at a crossroads
What role will West Papua play in the current geopolitical tussle between the West and China is impossible to predict. This is something that must be dealt with by regional and international communities. West Papua’s issues do not dominate the headlines like Ukraine, Solomon Islands, or Taiwan, but they have their own significance in reshaping regional and global geopolitical arrangements.

The world of Papuans 60 years ago was different from now. More than half of a country abused, tortured and mistreated under Indonesia occupation is driving Papuans to become a minority in their own homeland. It has also strengthened their will to live and fight, and most Papuan youth are equipped with knowledge of the crimes against their people and what they can do to bring about justice and facilitate change.

Papuan resistance groups are increasingly becoming anti-Western, believing that the West is exploiting them while supplying arms to the Indonesian military. West Papuan students across Indonesia often wear revolutionary hats or t-shirts displaying socialist and communist revolutionary leaders such as Fidel Castro, Lenin, Che Guevara, and Ho-Chi Mi — they are well-versed in Leftist literatures.

The attitude of the general population in West Papua is also changing. Where previous generations have had a strong connection with the West due to shared experiences of World War II and influence by Western missionaries, young people are now questioning everything about the current state of affairs and asking why they are in this predicament.

Papua’s governor also praised Russia for its generous sponsorship of Papuans to study in the country. The Governor is currently building Russian and Papuan museums to strengthen this relationship and honour Russian anthropologist Nicholai Nicholaievich Mikluho Maklai, who advocated for the rights of New Guinea People 150 years ago.

The West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB)
The armed wing of the Free Papua Movement (OPM), the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB), has also been changing its armed resistance strategy against Indonesian occupation.

They are shooting and killing anyone they consider a traitor or an invader, an attitude never seen before. It is dangerous because of not only their drastic approach, but the retaliation from heavily armed Indonesian security forces, who are aggressively shooting, burning, rampaging, and bombing anyone they consider to be OPM.

The TPNPB and Indonesian security forces have been at war for many years, and Jakarta has responded with heavy handed security measures by sending thousands of soldiers to hunt down the alleged perpetrators.

Recently, this has intensified, resulting in the displacement of thousands of Indigenous Papuans.

West Papua civilians could be subjected to an unprecedented mass atrocity if (or when) this situation escalates. According to a report published by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, structural factors behind conflict in the region are showing signs of events that could trigger mass atrocities against civilians.

As reported by the UCA News, Gadjah Mada University researchers in Yogyakarta reported 348 violent acts in Papua between 2010 and March of this year. There were at least 464 deaths, including 320 civilians, and 1654 injuries, mostly civilians.

There are far more human tragedies unfolding in West Papua each day than what this figure represents. Unfortunately, Jakarta has blocked independent journalists from entering the region, making it difficult to verify these claims.

International voices for human rights investigation
In March 2022, UN experts from the Office of the Human Rights High Commissioner published a report highlighting serious violations and abuses against Papuans.

In addition, Jakarta has not granted a request for a visit by the UN High Commissioner to the region made by the UN Human Rights Council.

Despite the Tuvalu resolution of the Pacific Island Forum in 2019 and another resolution from African Caribbean and Pacific nations requesting Jakarta for a UN visit, the request has not yet yielded results.

On August 3, ABC Radio Australia hosted Benny Wenda, the UK-based exiled West Papua independence leader, to discuss the current situation in his homeland.

According to Wenda, the plight of West Papua to determine its own fate is clouded by the current geopolitical intrigues between the West and China. The status of West Papua is an unresolved international issue that has been swept under the carpet.

Even though the 52nd Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) meeting of heads of state and government held in Suva, Fiji from 11 to 14 July 2022 left West Papua out of the forum’s agenda, Wenda expressed optimism that West Papua would not be forgotten at the next meeting.

Indonesia and West Papua at a crossroads again
Although West Papua has been buried deep within diplomacy for 60 years, it remains the most important issue affecting Jakarta’s relations with China and the US, as well as the way big powers deal with the independent Indigenous nation states across Oceania.

Above all, geopolitical war via chequebook diplomacy, media, or forming military and trade alliances and deals in the Pacific has become a real issue that we all must face.

The peaceful blue Pacific (Oceania), which Australia and New Zealand consider their “backyard” could become a new Middle East.

In response to this fear, the White House invited Pacific leaders to dinner later this year with Joe Biden.

At the outset, West Papua issues might seem insignificant, irrelevant, or forgotten to the world, but in reality, it is one of the most significant issues influencing how Jakarta’s engage with the world and how the world engages with Jakarta.

Once again, Jakarta is caught in the middle between great powers, and they do not have the same leverage to play the same games as their ancestors did so many years ago. Jakarta elites need to recognise that they stole something so precious that belonged to Papuan people, and this must be returned to the rightful owner.

The only appropriate and adequate justice left for Papuans is to be given back their sovereignty. This is the only way for Papua to heal and have decades of violence against them reconciled.

Yamin Kogoya is a West Papuan academic who has a Master of Applied Anthropology and Participatory Development from the Australian National University and who contributes to Asia Pacific Report. From the Lani tribe in the Papuan Highlands, he is currently living in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.

• Other Yamin Kogoya articles

A birth of a child usually draws out changes from people. Parents, and even grandparents, recreate themselves in a bid to better address the demands of the new addition to the family.

Julio* knew this all too well. He first became a father at the young age of 17, and went on to work odd jobs to fulfill his responsibilities. But along the way, due to mounting pressure and the vicious cycle of poverty, Julio turned to illegal drugs.

“Sabi niya sa akin hindi ko siya maintindihan kasi ako raw may maayos na trabaho at madali makahanap ng panibagong trabaho kung sakali, samantalang siya, walang ganoong oportunidad para sa kanya,” Cristina, his younger sister, told Rappler in an interview.

• READ MORE: In Duterte’s drug war, justice is ‘nearly impossible’
• Other Philippine killings reports

(He told me I won’t be able to understand him because I have a stable job and can get another job if I want to, while he doesn’t have that opportunity.)

Julio eventually separated from his first wife, and met a new woman who then got pregnant. With a new baby on the way, 39-year-old Julio was determined more than ever to change.

He planned to start a sari-sari store, buy a refrigerator to sell frozen goods, just about anything to start anew.

“Gusto niya na iyong iyong nagawa niyang pagkukulang sa unang pamilya niya, hindi na ulit mangyari doon sa ipinagbubuntis ng kanyang kinakasama,” Cristina recalled. (He wanted to avoid repeating the same shortcomings he had with his first family.)

But President Rodrigo Duterte had other plans for Julio and thousands of others who came from the poorest communities in the Philippines. Drug dependents, for the country’s chief executive, are hopeless and useless to society.

Enemy out of drug users
Duterte made an enemy out of drug users and waged a “war” that smudged gutters, roads, and narrow alleys all over the country with blood.

RealNumberPH, the government’s unitary report on the drug war, shows that at least 6248 people have died at the hands of police during anti-illegal drug operations between July 2016 and April 30, 2022, while human rights groups estimate the total death toll to reach 30,000 to include victims of vigilante-style killings.

But figures obtained by Rappler show that the Philippine National Police (PNP) had already recorded 7884 deaths from July 1, 2016 to August 31, 2020.

On December 11, 2018, Julio became one of the thousands slain. One person told his family that their son was standing outside when he and a companion were abducted by men riding a white van.

Their lifeless bodies were found not long after.

Cristina was sure it was the police who killed his brother, but they feared going public with this allegation. It didn’t help that the sole witness, who talked to them during his brother’s funeral, was also eventually killed.

“Masakit ang pagkamatay niya pero iniisip ko na lang na at least nakita at naiburol namin siya, hindi tulad sa iba na nakikita na putol na ang kamay, wala na balita na bigla na lang nawawala,” she said.

(It hurts that he died but at least we were able to find his body and do a proper burial, unlike others who were dismembered or just disappeared completely.)

Duterte’s war on drugs
This is Duterte’s war on drugs, a key policy in his administration that has been scrutinised by both local and international bodies, including the International Criminal Court.

For Gloria Lai, regional director for Asia of the International Drug Policy Consortium, the bloody trail Duterte will leave behind once his presidential term ends on June 30 was highly unnecessary and preventable.

“[Killing people] is not a solution,” she told Rappler.

“What does success look like for the Duterte administration? It kept changing over time [and] there is no way you can say there is success,” Lai added.

The President and his allies’ rhetoric in the past six years would make one think that the Philippines has become a narcostate where drug users are behind the most violent crimes. For Duterte, they steal, they kill, they take innocent lives.

The Philippines indeed has issues with the proliferation of illegal drugs, but determining how widespread it is has been hard under the Duterte administration, given the overall lack of transparency and accurate data.

Duterte himself has been dropping different figures over the years. But a report released in February 2020 by Vice-President Leni Robredo following her short stint as co-chairperson of the Inter-Agency Committee on Anti-Illegal Drugs stated that there “is no common and reliable baseline data on the number of drug dependents in the country.”

‘Keeping their grip on power’
“It really just seemed to serve the administration well… to obtain power, to keep their grip on power, because it creates fear, it creates enemies, it creates scapegoats that justify really brutal and violent actions,” Lai said, adding that the drug issue was “exploited for political gain”.

Six years into the administration, the Duterte government remains tight-lipped, if not vague, about what it deemed key performance indicators of the bloody war on drugs.

PNP spokesperson Colonel Jean Fajardo said the police used two approaches in addressing the drug problem in the country. For the last six years, it had focused on reducing supplies and targeting their so-called pushers, up to high-value individuals.

“Dalawa po ang lagi nating ginagamit na approach dito po sa ating kampanya laban sa ilegal na droga. Ito po ‘yong tinatawag natin na supply reduction strategy and demand reduction strategy,” Fajardo told Rappler.

(We use two approaches in our campaign against illegal drugs. We call them supply reduction and demand reduction strategies.)

But despite this, the PNP and its partner Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) only managed to clear 25,061 out of 35,471 barangays it identified as being involved in illegal drugs. As of April 30, 2022, there are still 10,410 drug-affected barangays yet to be cleared by the PNP and PDEA.

Spike after start of bloody operations
This means, 29.34 percent of drug-affected barangays are yet to be cleared by drug enforcement authorities. Based on data on drug-affected barangays from 2016 to 2022, the Philippines saw a spike in 2017, a year after the start of bloody operations.

From 19,717 drug-affected villages in 2016, the number rose to 24,424 the following year. The number of drug-affected barangays then significantly dropped between 2020 and 2022 — the pandemic years.

In terms of collected illegal drugs, the authorities were able to seize P89.29-billion worth of illegal drugs from July 1, 2016 until April 30, 2022. PDEA, one of the lead agencies for Duterte’s drug war, boasted that they were able to seize 11,843.41 kilograms or P76.55-billion worth of shabu or crystalline methamphetamine.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has yet to release its 2022 report on synthetic drugs in Southeast Asia. But in their 2021 report, the UNODC reported that shabu was the cause of the majority of drug-related arrests and treatment admissions in the Philippines.

For six years, authorities were able to arrest a total of 341,494 individuals. Of this number, only 15,096 are considered high-value targets.

Based on the PNP’s classification, individuals who are considered high-value targets are those who run drug dens, are on the wanted list, and leaders and members of drug groups, among others.

This means that of the total number of arrested individuals due to illegal drug offences, only 4.42 percent or around four in every 100 people arrested are high-value targets.
Dehumanizing rhetoric, actions

Drug users bacame pawns
Duterte used drug users as pawns in his bid to make violence a norm in state policy and actions, Philippine Human Rights Information Center (PhilRights) executive director Nymia Pimentel-Simbulan said.

“The legacy that he will be leaving behind would be institutionalization of state violence, this particular government has a proclivity towards addressing societal problems using a war framework,” she told Rappler in an interview on Monday, June 13.

Staying true to his violent rhetoric, the President has effectively mobilised state resources to use violence and other punitive measures to address issues. Beyond the problem of illegal drugs, this approach can also be seen in the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.

If the Duterte government was serious about eradicating drugs in the Philippines, Lai said that it should’ve aimed for programs that better suit this intended outcome instead of focusing on killings.

For one, the state should’ve highlighted how drug addiction is a health problem, therefore producing better health programs. For people who use illegal drugs like shabu to stay awake to work long hours, the government should invest in programs that will keep families out of the vicious cycle of poverty.

But as it is, Duterte’s rhetoric and actions further dehumanize drug dependents, lumping them together with those who are part of the illegal drug syndicates.

“If you forced them and placed them into a list where they could be hunted down and randomly interrogated by police, or even just prevent them from getting a job or going to a certain school, you just drastically diminished their life prospects,” Lai said.

Gap in social response
PNP spokesperson Fajardo admitted that there is still really a gap when it comes to social response, as well as rehabilitation facilities to cater to drug personalities.

“Sinasabi natin, we agree on the fact na ito pong drug problem natin ay health problem. Hindi lang social problem. So ‘yong mga pasilidad kulang, ‘yong ating mga livelihood na pupuwede po nating i-offer dito sa mga sumurrender pati na rin po ‘yong mga nagtutulak, ‘yong mga pusher. Hindi po sa wala, pero kulang po talaga ‘yong efforts,” Fajardo said.

(We say that we agree on the fact that this drug problem is a health problem. Not only social problems. So our facilities are lacking, the livelihood that we can offer for the surrenderees, to pushers. It’s not that we don’t have anything, but the efforts are not enough.)

There are 64 drug rehabilitation centers in the Philippines as of 2021 — 16 under the Department of Health, nine with the local government units, and 39 privately-owned. Together, these facilities have 4840 bed capacity.

In a forum in June 2021, DOH’s Dangerous Drug Abuse Prevention and Treatment Programme manager Jose Leabres said there was a need for 11,911 additional in-patient beds for 2021 and 10,629 for 2022.

Data from the Dangerous Drugs Board (DDB) shows an increasing number of admissions to care facilities across the country. In 2021, there were at least 2344 new admissions.

A trail of blood
Duterte is leaving Malacañang on June 30 with a trail of blood from people killed in the name of his violent war on drugs. He also leaves behind thousands of orphaned children in the poorest communities, as well as a much more stigmatised issue of drug dependency in the Philippines.

It now falls on president-elect Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. to “address all the harms done by the Duterte administration” on the issue of illegal drugs in the country, according to Lai, as well as giving justice to thousands of victims.

During the campaign season, Marcos said he will continue Duterte’s drug war, but would focus on its being a health issue. He also hinted about shielding it from the International Criminal Court.

Meanwhile, just this June, during courtesy calls with foreign ambassadors, Swedish Ambassador Annika Thunborg said there was a discussion to continue the drug war within the framework of the law and respect for human rights, among others.

PNP spokesperson Fajardo said the incoming administration should put focus on demand reduction.

“Pero ‘yong isa pa pong approach natin na tinatawag po nating demand reduction program, hangga’t may bumibili po, hangga’t may market po ay talagang meron at meron pong sisibol na panibagong players,” she said.

(But the other approach that we call the demand reduction program, until there are people who purchase drugs, until there is a market for them, there will always be new players.)
DRUG WAR DEATHS. Families of victims of drug-related extrajudicial killings and human rights advocates join a Mass at the Commission on Human Rights headquarters in Quezon City.

Not holding her breath
But Simbulan, whose group PhilRights has documented the victims of Duterte’s war on drugs, is not holding her breath, knowing the Marcos family’s track record and his alliance with Duterte.

“I am not that optimistic that it will adopt a different method or approach,” she said. “Chances are, it will adopt the same punitive violent approach in addressing the drug problem in the Philippines.”

IDPC’s Lai, meanwhile, said it’s going to be a massive turnaround if Marcos decides to do away with what Duterte has done. There is nothing preventing the incoming administration from focusing on drug issues, but it has to make sure to alter government response based on evidence and what communities really need, instead of a blanket campaign that puts a premium on killings.

Most importantly, the new administration should focus their resources on areas that would make a difference on people’s lives for the better.

“[They should] consider that in a lot of cases, the drug policies and the drug laws themselves have caused a lot more harm to people and communities than the actual drugs themselves,” Lai said.

* Names have been changed for their protection

Jodesz Gavilan is a Rappler reporter. Republished with permission.

Many of you will know that I am Filipina. The past few days have been quite a journey following the Philippine elections, culminating with a frightening win of the dictator’s son Bongbong Marcos Jr and Sara Duterte, daughter of the outgoing president Rodrigo Duterte.

There is speculation that their leadership style may be more despotic than their authoritarian parents (with proposals to “rewrite history” on previous dictatorship). I am worried that this is election result will genuinely risk lives in what could be a continued crackdown on activists and a prolonged massacre of the poor.

There are also significant fears around worries related to China’s influence in the South China Sea and beyond, especially on human rights matters.

• READ MORE: Philippines forgets history and sells its soul for another Marcos
• Other Philippine elections reports

This is an election the world should be paying close attention to, as it fortells the result of structural inequality through a lack of civics education and the influence of social media.

I have not yet seen an interpretation of the results for friends who may not be familiar with Filipino politics. I also think I may have a different view, given my family’s heritage as working class rural Filipinos and growing up in the Western world.

The Philippines was, and sadly still is, a place where you can be “redtagged” and assassinated for your political views.

The ousted President Ferdinand Marcos was known for a reign of terror through martial law, widespread torture, politically motivated violence and corruption.

A period of hope
After his rule, there was a period of hope with the Yellow Revolution where the country turned towards democracy and the idea of becoming a cosmopolitian and educated state.

This was the kind of pattern hoped for with this post-Duterte election, moving towards a country free from extrajudicial killings, punitive culture and violence against the poor.

But by Tuesday morning, this was not to be. Outgoing Vice-President Leni Robredo, the opposition leader who our hopes were on to win, fell further and further behind in the results.

Philippines has one of the highest percentage of social media users in the world, the majority of political engagement and general learning happens with the internet.

These past few days, several whistleblowers called into local radio stations and posted on Reddit revelations of mass paid troll farms and social media strategies to deliberately create discord.

One of the most worrying allegations was the use of double agents, which I fear is starting to create a divide within Filipino activist communities.

However, even without troll farms, many Filipino voters, especially in disenfranchised rural areas, are single issue voters or may vote in exchange for food and essentials for their family — this is something I have witnessed personally.

Petri dish for mass disinformation
This, combined with a country of varying levels of access to education and critical thinking, is a petri dish for mass disinformation. We may have seen seeds of this in the West, with the growth of disinformation and movements increasingly willing to turn to political violence.

I am watching the situation with apprehension, I am worried for my extended family. For those with family in the Philippines (or any other authoritarian country) who feels the same, it is high time to secure activist movements.

For those similarly disappointed by the result: Political participation is not just with the ballot box, it’s building awareness, learning as much as we can and thinking about how we can protect and empower vulnerable and disenfranchised people.

The popular campaign against the 1988 “NO” referendum of Chile marked a new era of people’s empowerment free from the dictator Pinochet and neoliberalism. This was documented in an inspirational 2012 film called No. And this is what many Filipinos were hoping for in this election, but alas…

Laban! … Fight on!

Keeara Ofren is a final year law student at the University of Auckland – Waipapa Taumata Rau and a former president of Amnesty On Campus. She works in communications for the Auckland Refugee Council. This article was first published on her Facebook page and is republished here with permission.

A West Papuan advocacy group in Australia has appealed to Foreign Minister Marise Payne to take the cue from a new United Nations Rapporteurs statement this week condemning the “ongoing human rights abuses” in the Indonesian-ruled West Papuan region.

Joe Collins of the Australia West Papua Association (AWPA) said there was an urgent need for Australia to speak out against the Indonesian military abuses in the two Melanesian provinces of Papua and West Papua.

“We are urging the Australian government to join with the UN Rapporteurs in raising concerns about the situation in West Papua, publicly with Jakarta, condemning the ongoing human rights abuses in the territory,” Collins said in a statement.

• READ MORE: ‘Double standards’ claims as world reacts to Ukraine crisis, ignores Papua
• UN report calls for independent probe into ‘shocking’ rights abuses in Papua
• Other West Papua reports at Asia Pacific Report
• LISTEN TO ABC PACIFIC BEAT: Ukraine’s war with Russia has been making world headlines — so why isn’t the conflict in West Papua?

“We know the government has said it raises concerns about the human rights situation in West Papua with the Indonesian government, but have not seen any public statements of concern on the issue unlike the governments concerns about abuses in China and the situation in the Ukraine.

“The issue of West Papua is not going away.”

In a letter to minister Payne, Collins raised the UN rapporteurs’ concerns about the deteriorating human rights situation in Papua and West Papua, “citing shocking abuses against indigenous Papuans, including child killings, disappearances, torture and mass displacement of people.”

The association said it would not go into “all the grave concerns” about human rights abuses in West Papua “as we have written many times on the issue”.

But Collins quoted the rapporteurs’ statement: “Between April and November 2021, we have received allegations indicating several instances of extrajudicial killings, including of young children, enforced disappearance, torture and inhuman treatment and the forced displacement of at least 5,000 indigenous Papuans by security forces.”

It is estimated that the overall number of displaced people in West Papua since the escalation of violence in December 2018 is more than 60,000.

Collins said that “Urgent action is needed to end ongoing human rights violations against indigenous Papuans.”

He also reminded the minister about AWPA’s letter on 12 August 2021 raising concerns about West Papuan activist Victor Yeimo, the international spokesperson for the West Papua National Committee (KNPB).

“He is being charged with treason. We look forward to your reply on this matter.”

Shocking abuses against indigenous Papuans have been taking place in Indonesia, say United Nations-appointed human rights experts who cite child killings, disappearances, torture and enforced mass displacement.

“Between April and November 2021, we have received allegations indicating several instances of extrajudicial killings, including of young children, enforced disappearance, torture and inhuman treatment and the forced displacement of at least 5000 indigenous Papuans by security forces,” the three independent experts said in a statement.

Special Rapporteurs Francisco Cali Tzay,  who protects rights of indigenous peoples,  Morris Tidball-Binz, who monitors extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, and Cecilia Jimenez-Damary,  covering human rights of Internally Displaced Persons, called for urgent humanitarian access to the region and urged the Indonesian government to conduct full and independent investigations into the abuses.

• READ MORE: Other West Papuan reports

They said that since the escalation of violence in December 2018, the overall number of displaced has grown by 60,000 to 100,000 people.

“The majority of IDPs [internally displaced persons] in West Papua have not returned to their homes due to the heavy security force presence and ongoing armed clashes in the conflict areas,” the UN experts explained.

Meanwhile, some IDPs have been living in temporary shelters or stay with relatives.

“Thousands of displaced villagers have fled to the forests where they are exposed to the harsh climate in the highlands without access to food, healthcare, and education facilities,” the Special Rapporteurs said.

Relief agencies have limited access
Apart from ad hoc aid deliveries, humanitarian relief agencies have had limited or no access to the IDPs, they said.

“We are particularly disturbed by reports that humanitarian aid to displaced Papuans is being obstructed by the authorities”.

Moreover, severe malnutrition has been reported in some areas with lack of access to adequate and timely food and health services.

“In several incidents, church workers have been prevented by security forces from visiting villages where IDPs are seeking shelter,” the UN experts said.

They stressed that “unrestricted humanitarian access should be provided immediately to all areas where indigenous Papuans are currently located after being internally displaced.

“Durable solutions must be sought.”

#Indonesia: UN experts concerned by deteriorating human rights situation & abuses against #indigenous Papuans, incl. child killings, disappearances, torture & mass displacement, in Papua & West Papua. They call for humanitarian access & investigations: https://t.co/idEsWJDBvM pic.twitter.com/mwFQyxgkCc

— UN Special Procedures (@UN_SPExperts) March 1, 2022

‘Tip of the iceberg’
On a dozen occasions, the experts have written to the Indonesian government about numerous alleged incidents since late 2018.

“These cases may represent the tip of the iceberg given that access to the region is severely restricted making it difficult to monitor events on the ground,” they warned.

Meanwhile, the security situation in Highlands Papua had dramatically deteriorated since the 26 April 2021 killing of a high-ranking military officer by the West Papua National Liberation Army in West Papua.

The experts pointed to the shooting of two children, aged two and six, on October 26, shot to death by stray bullets in their own homes, during a firefight. The two-year-old later died.

End violations
“Urgent action is needed to end ongoing human rights violations against indigenous Papuans,” the experts said, advocating for independent monitors and journalists to be allowed access to the region.

They outlined steps that include ensuring all alleged violations receive thorough, “prompt and impartial investigations”.

“Investigations must be aimed at ensuring those responsible, including superior officers where relevant, are brought to justice. Crucially lessons must be learned to prevent future violations,” the Rapporteurs concluded.

Special Rapporteurs and independent experts are appointed by the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council to examine and report back on a specific human rights theme or a country situation.

The positions are honorary and the experts are not paid for their work.

A Papua New Guinean woman accused of killing a two-year-old boy through sorcery was assaulted, tortured and killed after her limbs were chopped off in Margarima, Hela, last month, police report.

Hela’s officer-in-charge CID, Sergeant Daniel Olabe, named the dead woman as Mary Kopari who was in her late 30s.

A video obtained by The National showed a horrifying scene of a lone woman, tied spread eagled between two posts and tortured.

• READ MORE: Jo Chandler: Gender, human rights and power investigations in Papua New Guinea  – Pacific Journalism Review
• Strengthening the voices of human rights defenders in the media
• Other PNG sorcery allegations reports

The video shows the woman, dragged between the posts, hands and legs bound by barbed wire.

She screams in pain as her torturers tighten the barb wire around her ankles while other men look on with no one reaching out to assist her.

Kopari was from Halungi village, in South Koroba LLG, Koroba-Kopiago, and was married to a man from Tatape village in the Lower Wage LLG, Komo-Margarima.

The relatives of the boy suspected three women, along with Koparo, had “caused his death”. The other women escaped.

No idea what happened
Sergeant Olabe said Kopari had no idea of what had happened.

She was busy selling potatoes at the Margarima market when she was approached by the boy’s relatives. They confronted Kopari and demanded to know why she was practising sorcery (sanguma), Sergeant Olabe said.

“Mary was rounded up and taken to an area in Margarima where she was tied up between two posts and tortured, hands and legs bound by barbed wire.

The woman was tortured, assaulted and burned for nine hours before her attackers chopped off her limbs, killing her.

“Her severed limbs and body were taken to and left at Tigibi, in the Hulia local level government along the road,” Sergeant Olabe said.

‘Sorcery’ torture cases endemic
Kopari was among five women in two months who had been accused of sorcery in four different provinces of Papua New Guinea with the first reported case of a man accused of sorcery in Daru, Western province.

In Enga last week, a woman who was tortured eventually died from injuries suffered.

It was reported that the woman, who was rescued by police and taken to the Wabag General Hospital, was accused by her late husband’s family, of causing the death of a man in Kopiam.

In Eastern Highlands, a mother and daughter who were rescued by police in Goroka are still recovering with police yet to make an arrest of those implicated on the attack.

In Daru, a man accused of causing the death of five people was dragged out of his home at the Samarai settlement and tortured before police intervened.

However, he died from the injuries he suffered.

In the National Capital District, two women from Eastern Highlands were tortured and rescued by police. Both were found tied and burned after being accused of sorcery.

No arrests made
From these cases, no arrests have been made.

The National has reached out to police investigators with the same report given that while suspects had been identified, it was hard to arrest them because they lived near the accused families or they were related.

Witnesses are also too scared to come forward because of the fear of reprisal.

In a recently concluded Special Parliamentary Committee on Gender-Based Violence public hearing the committee heard about the hardships of those who continue to fight against gender-based violence (GBV) and sorcery cases.

Committee deputy chair and East Sepik Governor Allan Bird told The National that “we should not stand around while women and girls are tortured and killed on suspicion of sorcery”.

“Those who commit horrendous murder should be arrested and charged,” he said.

Miriam Zarriga is a reporter for The National. This article is republished with permission.

National Capital District Governor Powes Parkop has warned Papua New Guinean ethnic groups to stop fighting and killing each other or they will be evicted from the city.

Parkop told the media and settlers living around Moresby South settlements who turned up at Badili police station on Friday that they must stop the fighting and senseless killings.

“I am not bothered where you are from, but if you continue to cause problem attacking each other, I will come and remove you all – simple as that,” he said.

• READ MORE: PNG deploys troops to violence-plagued Alotau

“And if you can’t learn to live with each other then you don’t deserve to live among everybody else.”

A negotiation with landowners at Vadavada along Taurama road was also going on and settlers there who planned to start any fight or killing in the future would be removed, Parkop warned.

“I have the responsibility in terms of development of the city. NCD is planned for development and most of these houses in the settlements are unplanned and have no approval. I have the power to remove them,” he said.

Powers would be used
Parkop said if another fight or killing erupts in Moresby South, his powers would be used and he would not hesitate to remove everyone in the settlements.

He said police were doing their best to fight law and order in the city and he would also play his part to make the city safe for developments.

“I have given an ultimatum to Vadavada settlers and I hope they don’t start any fighting again and the same applies to settlers of Moresby South,” he said.

Parkop added that the authorities had had enough of “this nonsense” in the city with law and order and serious action would be taken.

A 17-year-old youth has become the latest victim of Indonesia’s six-decades-long colonisation of West Papua, alleges the United Liberation Movement of West Papua.

“Killed on March 6, Melianus Nayagau has been murdered in Intan Jaya, where Indonesian military operations have displaced thousands of my people,” said ULMWP interim president Benny Wenda in a statement today.

Separately, a video has shown an Indonesian police chief in Java telling demonstrating West Papuan students that they are “a legitimate target”, and giving the order to “shoot”, said the ULMWP website.

• READ MORE: Indonesian police break up rally after Papuan protesters wreck police truck
• Other West Papua special autonomy and related reports

“This is the reality of what we face in West Papua. As the people of West Papua resist Jakarta’s re-imposition of ‘Special Autonomy’, Papuan students are being beaten by Indonesian nationalist gangs and arrested by colonial police,” Wenda said.

The cold-blooded killing and viral video came just after the Indonesian military killed a 36-year-old deaf disabled man, Donatus Mirip, on February 27.

“As I previously stated, three West Papuan men were tortured and murdered in a West Papuan hospital by Indonesian soldiers on February 15,” Wenda said.

Late last year, West Papuan pastor Yeremia Zanambani, Catholic catechist Rufinus Tigau and other religious figures were tortured, shot and killed by troops, and three school children were executed by an Indonesian state death squad on November 20, 2020, reports the ULMWP website.

Burning bodies
Several soldiers were recently found to have killed two other family members of Pastor Zanambani last year, burning the bodies and throwing their ashes into a local river.

Tens of thousands of West Papuans have been displaced by these military operations since December 2018.

Hundreds have died from lack of water, food and medicine, in the middle of a global pandemic, said Wenda.

“As the largest religious organisation in our nation, the West Papua Council of Churches, has stated, ‘The Land of Papua has become a Military Operation Area’.

“No one can deny that this is an absolute humanitarian catastrophe, a pattern of systematic human rights abuses targeted at the Indigenous population of West Papua by the Indonesian colonial regime.

“This is serial, repeated murder of the young, of religious figures, of displaced women and children. We are treated with inhumanity on our own land.”

The ULMWP website said Indonesia’s response to this undeniable disaster had been to deploy 1350 more highly armed troops to West Papua yesterday, joining the thousands of additional security personnel deployed since 2019.

‘Concealing the blood’
“The Indonesian state is trying to conceal the blood that is dripping from its hands,” said Wenda.

At the UN Human Rights Council last month, the Indonesian Foreign Minister denounced “double standards” and “politicisation” of the council, something Indonesia had done more to promote than any other state, Wenda said.

“While they take a noble stand on the Palestinian and Myanmar struggles, they lie to the world about what they are doing to their own neighbours in West Papua,” he said.

“I’m calling on the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to pay urgent attention to the situation in West Papua. This is not one-off killings and human rights violations.

“This is a systematic attempt to subjugate the Indigenous population, to destroy our will to resist, to eliminate our culture and way of life. But we will not give up until we win back our right to self-determination, stolen from us in the 1960s.

“We need regional leaders in Melanesia and the Pacific to listen to our cry. All 83 countries that support the visit of the UN High Commissioner to West Papua must redouble efforts to ensure the visit takes place as a matter of extreme urgency, before more of my people are murdered.

“As I have stated since 2019, I am ready to sit down with the Indonesian President to find a just solution to live in peace and harmony in West Papua.”

The Indonesian state is causing a renewed humanitarian crisis in West Papua. Three young West Papuan men have been murdered by the Indonesian military in Intan Jaya Regency, and hundreds of residents have now fled the area in fear.

Indonesia must urgently allow the International Committee of the Red Cross and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights into West Papua, says the leader of a “provisional” Papuan government.

The authorities in Jakarta have been blamed for “causing a renewed humanitarian crisis”.

• READ MORE: Other West Papua reports

Benny Wenda, interim president of the United Liberation Movement of West Papua provisional government, said in a statement that three young Papuan men had been murdered by the Indonesian military in Intan Jaya regency.

Hundreds of residents had now “fled the area in fear”.

Wenda also called on Pacific nations to pay close attention to what was happening in West Papua.

The three men, Janius Bagau were, Justinus Bagau and Soni Bagau, were alleged to have been tortured and killed on February 15 in a health centre where one of them was receiving treatment after being shot in the arm by a soldier.

Amnesty statement of concern
Amnesty Indonesia has issued an urgent statement of concern over the killings.

“Fearing more acts of violence, at least 600 men, women and children have been displaced by the military’s actions, seeking shelter in a Catholic compound,” said the statement.

“They join over 50,000 West Papuans internally displaced by Indonesian operations since December 2018. Over 400 have died from a lack of medical treatment and supplies. Indonesia is ethnically cleansing my people.”

Wenda said that people displaced by the operations would have no access to healthcare.

“They cannot tend to their crops. The children cannot go to school. In the middle of a pandemic, Indonesia continues to kill us West Papuans and force us from our homes by our thousands.

“The Indonesian state has imposed martial law, using the covid-19 crisis as a cover to conduct military operations.

“As the West Papua Council of Churches, the four Protestant denominations in our nation, put it in a statement on February 5, ‘The Land of Papua has become a military operation area’.

International monitoring
The ULMWP provisional government demanded that Indonesia immediately allow the international community into West Papua to assist civilians affected by military operations. It said:

• Indonesia must allow the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights into West Papua to conduct an investigation into the human rights situation, in accordance with the call of 83 international states; and
• Indonesia must invite the International Committee of the Red Cross into West Papua. The Red Cross was banned from entering in 2009.

“Regional leaders must pay attention to what is taking place in West Papua,” said Wenda.

“Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific Islands Forum: Indonesia is hiding behind claims of ‘sovereignty’ to crush my people.

“This is not an ‘internal matter’, this is a question of military occupation and colonialism.

“Our right to self-determination under international law is bullet-proof. Indonesia has lost the moral, political and legal argument, and has turned to the last thing it has left: brute violence.

“We need urgent action to protect my people.”

The people of #WestPapua have spoken. We need the UN to oversee a free and fair referendum, once and for all. #Indonesia pic.twitter.com/UVfdIJDXHy

— Free West Papua (@FreeWestPapua) February 23, 2021

A radio journalist has been shot dead outside his home by two gunmen on a motorcycle, Philippines police said – four years after the provincial broadcaster survived a similar attempt to kill him.

Virgilio Maganes, 62, who lived northwest of Manila in the province of Pangasinan, was shot six times yesterday and died at the scene, police said, reports Al Jazeera.

Maganes is the 18th journalist to have been killed since President Rodrigo Duterte took office in 2016, and the 190th since Ferdinand Marcos was overthrown in 1986, according to the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP).

• READ MORE: Philippines media freedom – more fear of warlords, corruption

Few of the perpetrators are ever brought to justice.

Maganes survived the previous attempt on his life by pretending to be dead.

“We demand that authorities work fast to solve his death, which could be related to the botched attempt on his life on November 8, 2016, when motorcycle-riding gunmen fired at him as he rode a tricycle,” the NUJP said.

On that occasion, the gunmen left a note at the scene saying: “I’m a drug pusher, don’t emulate me.”

Such messages were common in extrajudicial killings during the height of Duterte’s war on drugs that led to thousands of deaths.

Police said they had not established a motive for the attack on Maganes. At least two other journalists have been killed for doing their work in 2020, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), and both cases remain unsolved.

Reporters Without Borders said in a Tweet it was “terrible news” and called for an independent investigation to “find the culprits of this gruesome murder”.

Terrible news! In the #Philippines, radio journalist Virgilio Maganes was shot six times this morning in front of his house in Pangasinan (North). He was killed immediately. @RSF_inter calls for an independent investigation to find the culprits of this gruesome murder. @nujp pic.twitter.com/ASHkZFKnt8

— RSF (@RSF_inter) November 10, 2020

The Presidential Task Force on Media Security, which was set up to tackle media murders, described the killing as “an act of cowardice” and vowed to hunt down those responsible, while Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra said both Maganes’s murder and the 2016 attack would be investigated to establish whether they were linked to his work as a journalist.

Media under pressure
The Philippines is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist and the media has found itself under increasing pressure since Duterte was elected president.

ABS-CBN, the country’s largest broadcaster, was ordered to close after the regulator failed to renew the channel’s 25-year operating licence while veteran editor Maria Ressa and her online news site Rappler, are facing numerous court cases on charges ranging from tax evasion to defamation.

Both ABS-CBN and Rappler have been critical of Duterte’s drug war and his government’s policies.

The country’s largest newspaper, the Philippine Daily Inquirer, which has also published stories critical of the drug war, was pressured to be sold to Ramon Ang, an ally of the president, after Duterte threatened its owners with legal consequences.

The newspaper also reported on Duterte’s alleged hidden wealth in the run-up to the 2016 election.

The Duterte administration denies targeting media for its reporting.

Index on Censorship, which campaigns for freedom of expression, condemned Maganes’s killing.

“Press freedom has nosedived under Duterte who heads a constant campaign of harassment,” the organisation said on Twitter. “The world must come together in rage against these awful attacks.”

The Papua Province Humanitarian Team for Cases of Violence Against Religious Figures in Intan Jaya Regency, Haris Azhar, has announced the results of their investigation into the shooting of Pastor Yeremia Zanambani who was allegedly shot by a rogue Indonesian military (TNI) officer in Hitadipa District, Intan Jaya, on September 19, reports CNN Indonesia.

Azhar said that the shooting of Pastor Zanambani began with an incident which occurred on September 17. At the time, an exchange of fire had occurred between TNI personnel and a group from the Free Papua Organisation (OPM) in the Sugapa Lama area.

During the incident, one TNI officer was killed and a TNI assault rifle was seized by the OPM.

• READ MORE: Other reports on the killing of pastor Yeremia Zanamani

Following the incident, the TNI summoned several members of the Hitadipa community one by one. During the meetings, the TNI said they wanted the firearms taken by the OPM to be returned.

“This message was accompanied with the threat that if they’re not returned the Hitadipa district would be bombed. This continued through to the next day, September 18,” Azhar said during a virtual press conference this week on Thursday.

Azhar said that the TNI again gathered community members together on the grounds in front of the sub-district military command (Koramil) on September 19. The Koramil commander gave the community two days to return the firearms.

Later on the same day, about 12 noon, the community was again gathered in front of the Immanuel 1 Church by a TNI officer called Alpius.

Military list of named ‘enemies’
Alpius was said to have already recorded and compiled information on six members of the Hitadipa community who were deemed to be “enemies” and the TNI and the Indonesian police regarded it “appropriate to wage war” on them.

One of the six people named had been Pastor Yeremia Zanambani.

“As a consequence of this statement the housewives and men, including the pastors and shepherds broke down in tears before Alpius,” Azhar said.

Azhar said that a member of Zanambani’s family, Meriam Zoani, held a meeting with the group of TNI soldiers led by Alpius at the end of the Hitadipa landing field at around 2.55 pm. A large number of TNI soldiers had gathered there.

Zoani was shocked and frightened at seeing how large the group of TNI soldiers were and that they were led by Alpius.

Azhar explained that Alpius was a TNI soldier assigned to Hitadipa district who Zanambani had treated as his own son. Alpius often visited Zanambani’s home to shower, eat with the family and to collect water for a garden Alpius tended.

“Alpius himself usually called Merriam ‘Mama’. Mama and the pastor also knew that Alpius often visited and was well known by local residents,” said Azhar.

Soldiers headed to pigpens
According to Azhar, furnished with information that Zanambani was at his pigpen, at 3.50 pm Alpius, along with three other TNI members, headed off to where Zanambani kept his pigs.

Two TNI members remained at a distance of about 25 metres from the Intan Jaya regency main road while two others, including Alpius, headed towards the pigpens.

“Straight away an order of ‘hands up’ [was heard] to which Zanambani with raised hands responded to by saying ‘I am a servant of God'”, said Azhar.

Azhar said that despite this the two TNI soldiers fired two shots in Zanambani’s direction. One shot hit his left arm and the other hit the pigpen wall. Zanambani immediate fell to the ground.

As well as being shot, Zanambani was also allegedly stabbed in the back with a sharp weapon.

Concerned about Zanambani’s whereabouts after he failed to return home, at around 6 pm, Zoani plucked up the courage to go to the pigpen to try to find him.

Upon arriving at the pigpen, Zoani was shocked to find Zanambani sprawled on the ground and covered in blood. Despite this Zanambani was still able to speak.

‘What happened?’
“‘I asked him why? What happened?’. The pastor answered ‘it was the person we gave food to who shot and stabbed [me]'”, said Azhar quoting from the conversation between Zoani and Zanambani.

Azhar said that Zanambani died shortly afterwards.

Azhar said Zanambani had suffered a serious gunshot wound to his left arm which resulted in heavy bleeding. In addition to this, Zanambani was also stabbed in the back of his neck by a military blade. The injury also resulted in significant bleeding.

Azhar said Zanambani was shot by a standard military weapon and it was suspected that he had been shot from a distance of approximately 1 metre. This was because the object that struck his body was a bullet which hit his upper arm.

“A 7-10 cm straight vertical slice was visible on the skin,” Azhar said.

Azhar said that the gunshot was more than just a flesh wound, adding that Zanambani’s armed was almost shot off. But, said Azhar, there were no witnesses or statements from those who initially picked up the victim or who had accompanied him following the attack.

“A bullet was found, a wound was also found on the upper rear part of the victim’s body, suspected to be a result of a sharp weapon. Resulting in an injury which caused serious blood loss,” said Azhar.

Military reluctance to respond
When confirmation was sought by CNN Indonesia from the military, TNI information centre head Major-General Achmad Riad was reluctant to respond to the investigation’s findings. Riad asked that the issue be referred to the Ministry for Security, Politics and Legal Affairs (Kemenko Polhukam).

“Please confirm it with the Kemenko Polhukam in the name of the state which established the official TGPF”, said Riad, referring to the government-sanctioned Intan Jaya Fact Finding Team (TGPF) formed by Security Chief Mahfud MD in early October to investigate Zanambani’s death.

The head of the Intan Jaya TGPF field investigation team meanwhile, Benny Mamoto, stated that they have more complete findings on the incident. He was responding to the presence of the Intan Jaya independent humanitarian team led by Azhar.

“The TGPF’s findings are more complete because the information was sourced from members of Indonesian police (including investigators) and TNI members, as well as the victim’s family and religious figures, social figures,” said Mamoto in a text message sent to CNN Indonesia on Thursday.

Although the TGPF already has findings from the field, Mamoto said that they were not at liberty to cite the names of the parties involved.

He explained that that the TGPF was only tasked with gathering information or data in the field. All of this data has been handed over to the commander of the TNI, the national police chief, the army’s chief of staff, the head of the National Intelligence Agency (BIN) and the Minister for Home Affairs to be followed up on.

“It’s not possible for the TGPF to cite names because it’s not the TGPF’s prerogative,” said Mamoto.

No authority to name suspects
Mamoto said that the TGPF did not have the authority to determine the perpetrators or name suspects and is restricted to gathering data from the field.

“The ones who have the authority to determine the perpetrators or suspects are the investigators after they’ve collected two pieces of evidence [as required under Indonesia’s Criminal Code],” said Mamoto who is also Executive Director of the National Police Commission.

“Up until the last point [in the investigation] we had yet to find an eyewitness to the shooting incident so it would be inelegant to mention the perpetrator’s name,” he added.

Earlier, the Intan Jaya TGPF formed by Mahfud MD finished its investigation into Pastor Yeremia Zanambani’s killing. Mahfud said that there are suspicions of the involvement of the security forces in the killing.

Translated by James Balowski for Indo-Left News. The original title of the article was “Investigasi Tim Kemanusiaan: Pendeta Yeremia Ditembak TNI”.

A pastor has been shot dead at the weekend allegedly by the Indonesian military, sparking protests by church groups and a call for an investigation.

The pastor, Rev Yeremia Zanambani, was killed on Saturday in the Hitadipa district of Intan Jaya regency, Papua.

He was the former chairperson of the GKII Hitadipa district churches, vice-chairman of the Moni Bible translator, and also head of the STA Hitadipa school.

• READ MORE: Churches union condemns shooting that killed pastor in Papua, urges Jokowi to take action

Neighbourhood community sources in Hitadipa village confirmed the shooting.

“This pastor went to to his pig pen in Bomba, a village not far from Hitadipa, to feed pigs. His body was just found this morning with his hand cut and shot,” the source said on Sunday.

Previously, the Indonesian military (TNI) had warned the Hitadipa communities to immediately return two weapons that had been allegedly taken by the National Liberation Army of West Papua (TPNPB) from the Hitadipa Koramil post.

Killing condemned
The Jakarta Post reports that according to leaders of the Indonesian Evangelical Christian Church (GKII) and local media in Papua, the Indonesian Communion of Churches (PGI) chairman, Gomar Gultom, had alleged that Zanambani had been shot by TNI personnel at the same time that a military operation reportedly took place.

“I strongly condemn the shooting that killed pastor Yeremia Zanambani,” Gomar said yesterday.

Gomar said reports that the PGI had received differed from the account of the military, which published a statement on Sunday claiming Zanambani had been shot by an “armed criminal group” in the area.

The GKII, PGI executives and figures of the Moni tribe in Papua – an indigenous group to which Zanambani belonged – were currently investigating the incident, Gomar said.

Suara Papua articles are republished by the Pacific Media Centre with permission.

Rappler publisher and chief editor Maria Ressa was critical today of the Philippines administration under President Rodrigo Duterte for its focus on “security” rather than public health in the global covid-19 coronavirus pandemic.

Speaking on RNZ public radio’s Saturday Morning current affairs programme in a week in which the government closed the country’s top television and radio network, ABS-CBN, Ressa condemned the shooting of three citizens during the Manila lockdown so far.

Asked by presenter Kim Hill how the Philippine capital was faring under the pandemic restrictions, Ressa said the Philippines government was “still more focused on security rather than public health”.

LISTEN: Rappler publisher Maria Ressa talks to RNZ Saturday Morning’s Kim Hill

Acknowledging that levels of testing had increased in her homeland as in many other countries, she added, “It’s just that our president quite early on said, ‘shoot them dead’ if [dissenters] violate the quarantine. It is as crazy as that!”

Kim Hill: “And have there been any shot dead?”

“There have been three cases since President Duterte said that on April 1.

“A 63-year-old farmer was stopped at a checkpoint because he was not wearing a facemask … and shot dead …

‘Just like a blip’
“It is just like a blip. I wrote about it for Time magazine at the time…

“Just a week ago a former colonel in the military with PTSD was stopped at a checkpoint by police – who are dressed like the military and wearing fatigues … and they shot and killed him.

“And then just this Sunday … there was this Spanish man who the police tried to arrest in his own home and that is unconstitutional.”

Ressa added, “Again it is an abuse, an over-reliance on violence and arrests. We have had 30,000 arrests since lockdown at a time when the courts are not working.

“So how do these people post bail?”

READ MORE: We can’t let the virus infect democracy – Maria Ressa

Ressa’s work exposing government corruption and the misdeeds of the powerful has put her on a collision course with the ‘strongman’ government of President Duterte.

Lead investigative journalist
She spent nearly 20 years working as CNN’s lead investigative journalist in Southeast Asia before setting up the independent website Rappler in her homeland.

Now, in what critics describe as a politically motivated prosecution, she’s being accused of cyber-libel and tax evasion. The prominent human rights lawyer Amal Clooney is among her admirers, and is defending her at her trial

“This is my 34th year as a journalist and I would never have thought I would be arrested for doing my job. I was arrested twice in a five-week period, then I was detained once – experiences I wish I didn’t have, but it gave me a clear personal experience of the abuse of power.”

Ressa said they were politically motivated charges meant to stifle press freedom.

“Truth is critical in any democracy,” Ressa said.

“I became the cautionary tale for journalists.”

• Top Philippines TV network forced to close under Duterte pressure
• Journalism educators call for action after new Duterte attack on free press
• Shut down Philippines network journalist tells of ‘the unthinkable’

Pacific Media Centre Newsdesk

Politicians and activists in Manila have welcomed a draft resolution calling for United Nations action against the thousands of killings in Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs, reports Al Jazeera.

The proposal by Iceland, submitted to the 47-member UN Human Rights Council in Geneva late last week, urged the Philippine government to prevent extrajudicial executions and marked the first time the council has been asked to address the crisis.

At least 28 countries, mainly European states, have so far backed the call on Duterte’s government to “carry out impartial investigations and to hold perpetrators accountable”.

READ MORE: Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs is ‘large scale murdering enterprise’, says Amnesty

The Geneva forum is to vote on the resolution before ending its three-week session on Friday. The Philippines is among its current 47 members.

If passed, the council will request UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet to “prepare a comprehensive written report on the human rights situation in the Philippines and to present it to the Human Rights Council at its 44th session, to be followed by an enhanced interactive dialogue.”

Responding to the move, Philippine Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra said on Friday the government need not be told by anyone to stop extrajudicial executions.

“Our government is prepared to face any inquiry if the same becomes necessary to disabuse the minds of those who rely on or give undue credence to selective, if not biased, second-hand information,” Guevarra told reporters.

One Asian ambassador, speaking on condition of anonymity, indicated that his country would not support it, telling Reuters news agency: “There are worse things happening in the world.”

‘Add pressure’
The Duterte government insists the more than 6000 suspected drug dealers killed by police in anti-narcotics operations all put up a fight. But activists say that at least 27,000 have been killed since Duterte was elected in 2016 on a platform of crushing crime.

Myka Ulpina, a three-year-old shot during a police raid last weekend, is among the latest victims, they said.

Police said she was used as a human shield by her father, a suspected drug dealer who resisted arrest and opened fire. The girl’s mother has rejected that version of events.

Francis Pangilinan, senator for Philippines’ main opposition Liberal Party, welcomed the draft text on Friday.

“We hope it will add pressure from the international community so that the Duterte administration will finally see the light and realise that the daily killings is not the solution to the drug menace, and that it will sooner or later be held to account for at the very least failing to stop the killings,” he said in a statement.

‘Critical first step’
Duterte’s critics say his three-year-old campaign has been a failure, intended to create shock and fear and burnish his tough image without making a dent on big narcotics syndicates.

Allegations of police cover-ups, summary executions and planting of drugs and guns are widespread.

In a statement, the Manila-based iDefend group welcomed the draft resolution, saying it “provides a critical first step to help the Philippines”.

The group also expressed hope members of the HRC “will appreciate the urgency of the resolution and vote favourably for its adoption”.

“Widespread impunity is breaking the social fabric of Philippine society, shrinking civic spaces for dialogue and engagement, corroding the rule of law, while impressing on neighbouring states who wish to emulate the violent campaign,” it said.

“International investigation is an imperative if lives are to be saved, if human rights are to be respected and regional human security is to be protected.”

Bodies ‘pile up’
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said the situation in the Philippines was a priority.

“Bodies continue to pile up in Manila and other urban areas, again in the context of the war on drugs which we have seen is very much a war against the poor, impoverished and marginalised communities, which are the biggest victims,” said Laila Matar, deputy director at HRW.

It occurs in a wider context of “attacks on human rights defenders, media activists, journalists, anyone who really dares to speak up against the killings”, she added.

By Jodesz Gavilan in Manila

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet says the violent anti-illegal drugs campaign of the Philippines should not be replicated by other countries.

“The drug policies in place in the Philippines, and its lack of respect for rule of law and international standards, should not be considered a model by any country,” she said in a statement delivered during the 40th session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, this week.

President Rodrigo Duterte’s campaign since 2016 has attracted criticism from local and international human rights groups for the rising number of killings.

READ MORE: The Impunity Series

More than 5000 people have been killed in anti-drug police operations as of February 2019, while human rights groups estimate the number to reach more than 20,000 to include victims of vigilante killings.

Authorities have yet to catch up in prosecuting those responsible. Despite persistent requests, Solicitor General Jose Calida said the government stands firm that it will not publicly release documents on killings linked to the anti-drug campaign.

The UN rights chief called on the Philippine government to “adopt a public health approach, and harm reduction initiatives, that comply with human rights standards.”

‘Trap of drug reliance’
“People who have fallen into the trap of drug reliance need help to rebuild their lives; drug policies should not be more of a threat to their lives than the drugs they are abusing,” Bachelet said.

Duterte, however, has repeatedly said that there is no use in saving addicts, calling them “lost souls”.

Bachelet also highlighted the threats against human rights advocates, opposition politicians, and the media in the Philippines.

She also said she’s “extremely concerned” by moves to reintroduce death penalty and lowering the minimum age of criminal responsibility.

Jodesz Gavilan is a reporter for the online news website Rappler.

• Duterte government allows ‘drug war’ deaths to go unsolved

The massive human rights violations committed against indigenous peoples or Lumads and peasants are designed to silence the opposition to the continuing operations of large-scale mining and plantations in Northern Mindanao and the rest of Caraga Region.

This was the assessment made by the environmental group Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment or Kalikasan PNE.

“The military is trying to flush out the opposition to mining and plantation interests in Northern Mindanao and Caraga region,” said Kalikasan PNE coordinator Leon Dulce.

READ MORE: Philippines had highest number of killed environmental defenders in Asia

Dulce points out that these Lumad and peasant leaders are the environmental defenders that continue to stand and oppose the large-scale mining and plantation operations in areas of Mindanao.

At present, these environmental defenders are protecting around 243,163 ha of forest and agricultural lands within their ancestral domains and farmlands against the encroachment of these extractive and destructive projects in Northern Mindanao and Caraga Region, he said.

Hundreds of Lumad residents from Sitio Manluy-a, Panukmoan, and Decoy in Barangay Diatagon, Lianga town in Surigao del Sur fled from their homes after the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) conducted a series of artillery bombardment and harassments last month.

On January 24, two Manobo farmers identified as Randel Gallego and Emel Tejero, all residents of Km. 16, Brgy. Diatagon went missing after they were allegedly fired upon by soldiers while hauling abaca products.

Dead farmers
The families of the two farmers found their dead bodies at a military detachment six days after they were reported missing.

The 401st Infantry Brigade of the Philippine Army claimed that Gallego and Tejero were killed in a clash between soldiers and the New People’s Army (NPA) rebels.

But human rights advocates belied the military’s claim, saying that the two were unarmed civilians.

“The Lumad communities in Lianga are standing firmly against the coal and gold mining exploration and development projects attempting to grab lands and resources from their ancestral lands ensconced within the Andap River Valley Complex. For this, they are constantly being attacked by the military,” Dulce said.

These areas in Surigao del Sur are one of the largely militarised areas in Caraga region, prompting the exodus of IPs out from their lands due to the continuing presence of soldiers and paramilitary groups in their communities.

Kalikasan PNE also slammed the “illegal arrest” of Datu Jomorito Goaynon, chairperson of the Kalumbay Regional Lumad Organisation and Ireneo Udarbe, chair of Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas in Northern Mindanao Region on January 28.

The police named the two leaders as “top NPA leaders” which Kalikasan PNE said is a “repeated accusation” to justify the illegal arrest.

“Goaynon and Udarbe are stalwarts of the struggles of indigenous people and peasants against agri-industrial plantations in Northern Mindanao. They have also effectively exposed military-affiliated indigenous paramilitary groups such as the New Indigenous People’s Army Reform who have been attacking Lumad lands to pave the way for mining deals,” Dulce said.

Martial law
With the continued declaration of martial rule, Kalikasan PNE said that attacks against environmental defenders continue to worsen.

At least 28 cases of environmental-related killings in Mindanao were recorded by the group since it was first declared by President Rodrigo Duterte in May 23, 2017.

They noted the “growing trend” of killed defenders vilified as members or supporters of the NPA

“The Duterte government is trying to depict our fellow environmental defenders as rebels or terrorists to justify the militarization of their bastions of natural wealth. We demand that Goaynon and Udarbe be freed and that military troops wreaking havoc in Lianga be withdrawn as soon as possible.

“Justice for the murdered defenders must be delivered and the bloody reign of Duterte’s martial law over Mindanao must be lifted immediately,” Dulce said.

• More Philippines stories

The statistics globally are chilling. And the Asia-Pacific region bears the brunt of the killing of journalists with impunity disproportionately.

Revelations in research published in the latest edition of Pacific Journalism Review on the trauma experienced by television journalists in the Philippines covering President Rodrigo Duterte’s so-called ‘war on drugs’ are deeply disturbing.

More than 12,000 people have reportedly been killed – according to Amnesty International, although estimates are unverified – in the presidential-inspired purge.

READ MORE: Killing the messenger

According to UNESCO, about 1,010 journalists globally have been “killed for reporting the news and bringing information to the public” in the 12 years until 2017 – or on average, one death every four days.

Many argue that the Philippines, with one of the worst death tolls of journalists in the past decade, is a prime example of the crisis.

Journalists covering the “graveyard shift” were the first recorders of violence and brutality under Duterte’s anti-illegal drugs campaign.

The first phase in 2016, called Oplan Tokhang, was executed ruthlessly and relentlessly.

Chilling study
This chilling post-traumatic stress study in the latest PJR by ABS-CBN news executive Mariquit Almario-Gonzalez examines how graveyard-shift TV journalists experienced covering Oplan Tokhang.

The Tagalog phase in English means “to knock and plead” and was supposed to be bloodless – a far cry from the reality.

Almario-Gonzalez’s colleague, award-winning photographer Fernando G Sepe Jr, has also contributed an associated photoessay drawn from his groundbreaking ‘Healing The Wounds From the Drug War’ gallery.

He reflects on the impact of Duterte’s onslaught on the poor in his country.

Compared to the Philippines and other Asian countries – such as Cambodia, Indonesia and Myanmar – media freedom issues in the Pacific micro states and neighbouring Australia and New Zealand may appear relatively benign – and certainly not life threatening.

Nevertheless, the Pacific faces growing media freedom challenges.

The phosphate Micronesian state of Nauru banned the Australian public broadcaster ABC and “arrested” Television New Zealand Pacific correspondent Barbara Dreaver while she covered the Pacific Islands Forum leaders summit in September 2018.

Media freedom crises
In this context, Auckland University of Technology’s Pacific Media Centre marked its tenth anniversary in November 2017 with a wide-ranging public seminar discussing critical media freedom crises.

The “Journalism Under Duress in Asia-Pacific” seminar examined media freedom and human rights in the Philippines and in Indonesia’s Papua region – known as West Papua.

Keynote speakers included Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) executive director Malou Mangahas and RNZ Pacific senior journalist Johnny Blades.

Papers from this seminar and 14 other contributing researchers from seven countries on topics ranging from the threats to the internet, post-conflict identity, Pacific media freedom and journalist safety are featured in this edition of PJR.

Unthemed paper topics include representations of Muslims in New Zealand, ASEAN development journalism, US militarism in Micronesia and the reporting of illegal rhino poaching for the Vietnamese market.

The issue has been edited by Professor David Robie, director of the PMC, Khairiah A. Rahman of AUT, and Dr Philip Cass of Unitec. The designer was Del Abcede.

• The November edition of Pacific Journalism Review
• Journalism under duress in Asia-Pacific

When the earthquake and tsunami hit the city of Palu, Central Sulawesi, last weekend, they not only brought wreckage and death. The twin disasters also swept away efforts by activists and the municipal administration to support the survivors of Indonesia’s violent anti-communist purges in 1965-1966.

In the rest of the country, such survivors are still very marginalised.

In Palu, a city of some 350,000 inhabitants and the capital of Central Sulawesi province, activists had convinced local government leaders to work with them in helping these survivors.

READ MORE: One week on, Palu quake survivors begin to worry about the future

Palu is the only place in Indonesia where a government leader has made an official apology to the victims of the anti-communist violence in the area. Some nine days after the devastating natural disaster, the fate of some of those activists is still unknown.

Indonesian people lived under Suharto’s New Order authoritarian regime between 1968 and 1998, when the president was forced to resign. From 1965-66, the army, under Suharto, spearheaded anti-communist operations that killed half a million people and led to the detention of hundreds of thousands.

The army blamed Indonesia’s Communist Party (PKI) for the murder of seven army officers on the night of 30 September and in the early hours of 1 October, 1965, by a group calling itself the Thirtieth September Movement. The 53rd anniversary of these events coincided with the terrible disaster in Central Sulawesi.

In 2012, the Palu mayor, Rusdy Mastura, apologised to the victims of the anti-communist violence. He pledged to provide assistance to them and their families in the interests of “equality, openness and humanitarian considerations”.

In his speech, Mastura recalled how, as a boy scout in 1965, he had been tasked with guarding leftist detainees.

Victims of abuses
Mastura was speaking at an event organised by local human rights group, SKP-HAM (Solidaritas Korban Pelanggaran Hak Asasi Manusia, Solidarity with Victims of Human Rights Abuses).

SKP-HAM was founded in 2004. Its best-known leader is the dynamic secretary, Nurlaela Lamasitudju, the daughter of local Islamic cleric, Abdul Karim Lamasitudju.

SKP-HAM is part of the national Coalition for Truth and Justice (Koalisi Pengungkapan Kebenaran dan Keadilan, KKPK).

In 2012, the KKPK held several public events and community “hearings”, dubbed the “Year of Truth Telling”, to pressure the administration of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to rehabilitate the victims of the violence.

In April 2012, Yudhoyono was reported as having expressed his intention to apologise to victims of human rights abuses committed during the Suharto New Order regime.

Yudhoyono’s promised apology never materialised. However, the “Year of Truth Telling” events yielded some important gains in Palu.

Following his apology, the SKP-HAM lobbied Mastura to deliver on his promises by providing healthcare and scholarships. A mayoral regulation and a Regional Action Plan for Human Rights (Rencana Hak Asasi Manusia, Ranham) were promulgated to enable this.

Autonomy laws
These local government instruments have been made possible through Indonesia’s regional autonomy laws.

The mayoral regulation also established a committee to oversee human rights protection and restoration of victims’ rights. On May 20, 2013, Palu was declared a “Human Rights Aware City”.

Each year, the city holds a series of human rights-related events.

In May 2015, the Palu City Regional Planning Body oversaw the process of checking and verifying the identity of victims and their needs, using the information compiled by human rights groups as a base.

A trailblazing city
SKP-HAM had collected 1200 testimonies about the 1965-66 violence from victims in the area. From these testimonies, it had created and uploaded to YouTube short films of survivors’ testimonies.

It had also published a book about the 1965-66 events in Sulawesi, in collaboration with Indonesian author, Putu Oka Sukanta. Mastura wrote the book’s preface.

The group supported weaving cooperatives involving women survivors and ran a café and meeting space, Kedai Fabula, at its office in Palu. In partnership with religious groups and the municipal administration, members of the group organised social activities to involve abuse survivors in the life of the city.

The activities of SKP-HAM Palu is a reminder of what has been lost. It was a trailblazing city whose achievement in human rights advancement provided a model for the rest of the country.

The people of Palu, with a great deal of assistance, will rebuild, but we still wait for more news from the city.

SKP-HAM leader, Lamasitudju, survived the earthquake and tsunami. With a sprained ankle and having lost several family members in the disaster, she is volunteering to collect and provide information regarding the situation in Palu.

Indonesia needs groups like SKP-HAM that campaign for inclusiveness and equal rights to survive into the future.

Dr Vannessa Hearman is a lecturer in Indonesian studies at Charles Darwin University in the Northern Territory. She is a member of the Asian Studies Association of Australia Council. Charles Darwin University provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU. Asia Pacific Report republishes this article under a Creative Commons licence.

• How Indonesia’s 1965-1966 anti-communist purge remade a nation and the world
• How should Indonesia resolve atrocities of the 1965-66 anti-communist purge?
• Palu disaster: Why Indonesia’s tsunamis are so deadly
• Chaos in Palu after quake and tsunami

Pacific Media Centre Newsdesk

Critics of Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte have called for his prosecution after remarks in which he appeared to take responsibility for extrajudicial killings in the country, reports Al Jazeera.

During a speech at the presidential palace on Thursday, President Duterte said: “What are my sins? Did I steal money? Even just one peso? Did I prosecute somebody I sent to jail? My only sin is extrajudicial killings.”

President Duterte is currently facing two charges of crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court (ICC).

READ MORE: ICC launches crimes against humanity inquiry into Duterte’s war on drugs

In August, activists and families of eight victims of the Philippines’ “war on drugs” called for the president’s indictment over thousands of extrajudicial killings during his crackdown on drugs, reports Al Jazeera.

Yesterday, opposition Senator Rizza Hontiveros said Duterte’s “verbal admission will serve as solid evidence in the people’s quest for justice”.

“It will serve to contribute in moving forward national and international efforts to exact accountability from the president and his cohort,” said Hontiveros.

Meanwhile, Duterte’s spokesperson Harry Roque attempted to backtrack from the comments, reports Al Jazeera.

‘He wasn’t serious’
“You know the president. He wasn’t serious,” Roque told local radio station DZRH yesterday.

“That’s the president being himself, being playful, highlighting the point that he isn’t corrupt.”

In his Thursday speech, Duterte also said there was no evidence to implicate him in the killings.

“Four thousand deaths. When? Where? How? What did I use? Nothing,” he said.

In February, an opposition senator Antonio Trillanes – who was arrested earlier this week over his fierce criticism of the president – said the death toll in the government’s war on drugs had surpassed 20,000 since President Duterte came to office in 2016.

In a speech before the Philippine Senate, Trillanes said the Duterte administration’s own report shows 3,967 “drug personalities” had been killed after allegedly resisting arrest during police operations between July 1, 2016, and November 27, 2017.

Rights groups said the comments should serve as evidence in the ICC probe into Duterte’s role in the deaths.

Damning indictment
“This apparent admission by the President himself highlights the urgent need for international investigations,” Minar Pimple, a senior director at Amnesty International, said in a statement.

“This ‘playful’ comment is a grotesque cruelty at best, and a damning indictment of his government’s murderous campaign at worst.”

In a statement, Human Rights Watch Asia director Brad Adams said: “This admission should erase any doubt about the culpability of the president.”

Duterte unilaterally withdrew from the ICC’s founding treaty in March, saying it skirted due process and the presumption of his innocence, and sought to portray him as a “ruthless and heartless violator of human rights”.

On Tuesday, Senator Trillanes, who has been strongly critical of Duterte’s war on drugs, was arrested in a move which was widely condemned as persecution of the government’s opponents.

• Duterte critic Trillanes second senator to be arrested
• ‘If you are poor, you are killed’ – Amnesty International report

President Duterte vows to continue ‘chilling’ war on drugs. Video: Al Jazeera

Human rights organisation Amnesty International Indonesia has demanded President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo fulfil his promises to resolve the alleged human rights violations in Papua.

Amnesty International Indonesia executive director Usman Hamid said Jokowi had earlier pledged to settle the shooting incidents involving civilians in Paniai, Papua.

“We underline one promise, one commitment delivered by President Joko Widodo following the Paniai incident that the President wants the case to be settled to prevent further incident in the future,” said Usman in a plenary meeting with the House of Representative (DPR)’s Legal Commission in the Parliament Complex, Senayan, Jakarta, last week.

READ MORE: Indonesia’s unresolved police killings in Papua

Usman said that there was an alleged excessive mobilisation of power and weapons from the security apparatus in Papua.

Between January 2010 and February 2018, Amnesty International Indonesia had recorded 69 cases of alleged extrajudicial killings in Papua.

The most dominant perpetrator was the National Police (Polri) officers (34 cases), followed by the Indonesia Armed Forces (TNI) (23 cases), joint officers of TNI and Polri (11 cases) and Public Order Agency (Satpol PP) in one case.

Custom resolution
Usman said a total of 25 cases were not investigated, 26 cases were studied without a conclusive result, and 8 cases were dealh with through custom.

“Usually, it is about certain compensations for the victim’s family,” Usman said.

Usman said this was proof that the government lacked independent, effective, and impartial mechanisms to cope with civilians’ complaints concerning human rights violation performed by the security personnel.

The former coordinator of the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) urged the government to create measures to resolve the human rights violation in Papua and demanded the government admit the incident and draft procedures for security officers in a bid to prevent violence in the region.

“President Jokowi expects Papua to be a peaceful land,” Usman said.

Meanwhile, the House’s Legal Commission deputy speaker Trimedya Panjaitan pledged to follow up the findings issued by Amnesty International Indonesia to the National Police Chief Tito Karnavian in the upcoming session next week.

“We will ask the police chief in the next meeting on September 24,” Trimedya said.

Timika attack, arrests
Meanwhile, Indonesian police and military attacked the West Papua Committee (KNPB) office in Timika at the weekend and arrested seven people, including three teenagers, alleged an unverified social media posting.

The arrested people were named as:

Jack Yakonias Womsiwor (39)
Nus Asso (46)
Urbanus Kossay (18)
Herich Mandobar (18)
Pais Nasia (23)
Vincent Gobay (19)
Titus Yelemaken (46)

This Tempo article is shared through the Asia-Pacific Solidarity Network (APSN).

By Camille Elemia of Rappler in Manila

Opposition Senator Antonio Trillanes IV says only death and isolation can stop his criticisms against Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte.

“Probably they’ll have to put me away physically – either killing me or isolating me from the rest of the world,” Trillanes said in a Rappler Talk interview, when asked what would make him cease going against the President.

Trillanes said he was not afraid of death, as he again claimed that the President wanted him dead.

WATCH: Rappler interview with Trillanes on his fight for democracy

“I don’t fear death per se. It’s just one of the scenarios that they have and in fact we already validated that a few times – that Duterte really wants me killed. So it’s there on their table of options to get rid of somebody like me,” Trillanes said in the interview on Friday.

The opposition senator said he had been asked several times why he was a fierce Duterte critic and he always had the same answer.

“It’s really quite easy to just pledge your support to somebody like Duterte and have an easy life, right? For some reason, I can’t just do that. There’s this inner sense of duty to do what I’m doing,” he said.

The senator is one of the most consistent and fiercest critics of Duterte since the 2016 presidential election campaign, and had since accused the President and his family of amassing billions in illegal wealth. The Dutertes have repeatedly denied this.

Bank waiver challenge
Trillanes repeatedly challenged Duterte to sign a bank waiver to allow scrutiny of his bank accounts but the latter has refused to do so.

In June 2017, Trillanes and Magdalo Representative Gary Alejano filed before the International Criminal Court (ICC) a supplementary complaint against Duterte over the thousands of extrajudicial killings brought about by Duterte’s drug war.

The ICC, born out of the Rome Statute, is an intergovernmental and international tribunal which investigates genocides, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

The ICC started “preliminary examinations” to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to establish that the case against Duterte would fall under its jurisdiction. In response, Duterte withdrew the Philippines from the treaty – the subject of oral arguments in the Supreme Court.

Duterte issued Proclamation 572, ordering the revocation of the amnesty that then-president Benigno Aquino III granted to Trillanes in 2011.

Duterte also initially ordered the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine National Police to immediately arrest the senator even without a warrant. They, however, refused, saying they would defer to civilian courts.

Trillanes questioned Duterte’s order before the SC. The SC denied the senator’s request for immediate relief via a temporary restraining order but asked the Office of the Solicitor General to respond to the senator’s main petition.

Trillanes has been defiantly staying in his Senate office for more than a week now, as two Makati City Regional Trial Courts have yet to act on the justice department’s requests for arrest warrants against him.

Camille Elemia is a journalist working for the independent online news website Rappler.

• What the Supreme Court TRO denial means for Trillanes

Secretary of Foreign Affairs Alan Peter Cayetano claims the Philippines’ withdrawal from the International Criminal Court is “a principled stand” as nongovernmental organisations and politicians supposedly use human rights for political ends.

“The political NGOs and the politicians have taken over human rights,” Cayetano has told GMA News anchor Jessica Soho.

“Now it’s being used in politics. But this is a principled stand,” he added in a mix of English and Filipino.

President Rodrigo Duterte announced earlier on Wednesday that the Philippines would withdraw from the ICC “effective immediately.”

READ MORE: Duterte’s statement on Int’l Criminal Court withdrawal

In his interview with GMA News, Cayetano explained that withdrawing from the ICC was “not a way of evading” an ICC probe into Duterte’s anti-drug campaign.

Cayetano said that even if the Philippines withdraws from the ICC, the court still had jurisdiction over the things the Philippines did when it was a member.

Additionally, he pointed out that withdrawing from the ICC “has been in informal discussions ever since,” even when he was still a senator during Duterte’s term.

‘Internal conflict’
The Philippines’ top diplomat recalled that during the time of then president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, the military did not want the Philippines to ratify the Rome Statute of the ICC.

This was because the Philippines has an “internal conflict” that might “compromise” police and soldiers.

The Philippines ratified the Rome Statute during the time of then president Benigno Aquino III. One of those who pushed for this ratification was human rights lawyer Harry Roque, now Duterte’s spokesman.

“Now the President sees that there is internal conflict, like what happened in Marawi, et cetera. And that’s the same reason that the US, China, Russia did not sign or did not ratify it. The US signed but did not ratify it,” Cayetano said.

Read an excerpt from Cayetano’s interview below:

“The political NGOs and the politicians have taken over human rights eh. So ang problema hindi na katulad dati na prinsipyo talaga sa human rights. Sa ngayon ginagamit sa politika. But this is a principled stand. Ayaw nating maging hipokrito, na ang malalaking bansa hindi sumali dito.

“But to prove that it’s not a way of evading or getting away from the consequences or the jurisdiction ng ICC or nangyari na, even if mag-withdraw tayo, covered pa rin ‘yung actions natin when we were a member.

“So sa mga nagsasabi, ayaw lang ni Presidente maging liable dito, he’s not doing it for himself, kasi we still have obligations during that time. It’s really for the soldiers, the police, and to make a stand sa ating mundo na you know, huwag ‘nyong ipolitika ang human rights.”

Duterte made this declaration more than a month after the ICC opened its “preliminary examination” of the alleged extrajudicial killings in his war on drugs.

The President vowed the ICC cannot have jurisdiction over him, “not in a million years.”

• More Philippines stories

On the eve of Human Rights Day, Philippine Vice-President Leni Robredo called on Filipinos to stand up against all forms of human rights abuses, including extrajudicial killings in the war on drugs, and the oppression of free speech by online trolls.

This was the message of the former human rights lawyer for Human Rights Day, celebrated worldwide today.

“Ang Araw ng Karapatang Pantao ngayong taon ay hindi lamang pagbabalik-tanaw sa ating kontribusyon sa labang ito. Dapat din nating bigyang-diin ang diwa ng pagdiriwang na ito, dahil sa mga nakababahalang balita tungkol sa malawakang paglabag sa karapatang pantao, lalo na sa mga nasa laylayan ng lipunan,” said Robredo.

(Human Rights day this year is not only a time to remember our contributions to this fight. We should commemorate this day because of the disturbing news on the widespread human rights violations that are happening now, especially against people who are on the fringes of society.)

The Vice-President said Filipinos have experienced cases of human rights abuses in the past year.

“Hinahamon ng kasalukuyang panahon ang bawat isa sa atin na paigtingin ang paninindigan para sa karapatang pantao, sa harap ng pinagdaan ng Pilipino nitong nakalipas na taon. Kasama na rito ang mga extrajudicial killings, ang pagsupil sa karapatang magpahayag, pati na sa social media, at ang kahirapan na patuloy na pumipilay sa milyun-milyon nating mga kababayan,” she said.

(We are being challenged by the times to strengthen our fight to uphold human rights, in the face of everything Filipinos experienced in the past year. These include extrajudicial killings, oppression of free speech even on social media, and poverty that continues to cripple millions of our countrymen.)

Robredo is a staunch critic of President Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody war on drugs, where thousands of drug suspects have been killed in legitimate police operations and vigilante-style killings nationwide.

The Vice-President is also against the tactics of online trolls, who use social media to swarm on critics of the President. Robredo herself has been a longtime target of these trolls and government propagandists.

READ MORE: State-sponsored hate: The rise of the pro-Duterte bloggers

She had called fake news spreaders as “unapologetic,” “arrogant,” and an “insult” to other government officials who do their job well.

Standing up to a ‘bully’
Human rights groups echoed Robredo’s message. The In Defence of Human Rights and Dignity Movement (iDEFEND) and the Philippine Alliance of Human Rights Advocates (PAHRA) condemned “in the strongest terms” the Duterte administration’s “anti-human rights policies and actions”.

The two human rights groups hit the drug war and Duterte’s declaration of the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army as “terrorists”.

They also said the killings of activist priest Marcelito Paez of the Rural Missionary in Nueva Ecija and Datu Victor Danyan of South Cotabato “creates a chilling effect that no one is safe and that anyone who gets in his way will be silenced.

“The President’s utter disrespect towards democracy and rule of law is showing no pretense to exhibit his authoritarian streak by denying the voices of dissent. His government is destroying the generations of progress on the respect and protection of human rights in the guise of war on drugs and terror,” said iDEFEND and PAHRA in a statement.

The human rights groups said they hold the Duterte administration accountable “for the systematic violence against human rights defenders.

“But we all know that a person obsessed with power will never listen. Often the bully takes pleasure in seeing a victim’s fear. The only way to stop a tyrant is by standing up firmly together. The only thing necessary for the triumph of tyranny is for us to do nothing,” they said.

Newly formed group Artikulo Trese even held a fun run and a symposium on extrajudicial killings on Saturday.

“We are people of God –a caring and loving society; shepherds who should take care of our flock, not slaughter them or feed them to the wolves,” said Artikulo Trese convenor Bishop Deogracias Iñiquez.

“Everyone deserves due process, even the most ruthless of criminals,” he added.

Climate change and human rights
Senator Loren Legarda, meanwhile, said it was also important for the Philippines to pursue climate justice internationally because Filipinos’ human rights are curtailed by the negative effects of climate change.

READ MORE: Climate change is the new battleground for human rights

Legarda, chairperson of the Senate committee on climate change, said in her Human Rights Day message that the Philippines must strengthen its demand for the full implementation of the Paris Agreement by 2020.

“We always need to contextualise the discussion on climate change with the issue of human rights. We cannot truly address climate change if we do not recognize the fact that climate change impinges on our very basic human rights, such as access to food, water, shelter, livelihood, and the right to life itself,” said Legarda.

“Compared to industrialised countries, the Philippines barely contributes to global warming, and yet we bear its brunt.

“Every year, millions of families get displaced, thousands of lives and livelihoods are lost, and billions worth of agriculture and infrastructure are damaged because of climate change. It is time that we seek justice for these tragedies,” she added.

• Duterte and the trolls: What happens when the government uses Facebook as a weapon?
• More Philippines stories

Church groups and human rights advocates are holding the Duterte administration accountable for the spate of attacks which killed 10 activists in a span of two days.

The slain victims were two religious leaders in Luzon and eight Lumad indigenous activists massacred in Mindanao.

In an protest rally at the Boys Scout Circle in Quezon City on Tuesday, progressives condemned the killings of civilians and activists, either in military operations, or assassination-style by suspected military death squads.

The attacks, they said, were reminiscent of the open fascist rule during the Marcos dictatorship and during the “undeclared martial law” under the administration of President Gloria Arroyo.

The protesters, led by Karapatan, the Promotion of Church People’s Response (PCPR) and Rural Missionaries of the Philippines (RMP) vowed to also raise the level of opposition to “state terrorism” and call for justice in a big protest in Luneta, Manila on December 10 – International Human Rights Day on Sunday.

“Indeed, this fascist and terrorist regime has turned the entire country into a killing field,” said Karapatan secretary general Cristina Palabay in a statement.

Since Sunday, December 3, Karapatan has been sending out one urgent alert after another, about various human rights violations happening all over the country.

‘Open targets’
The human rights group denounced how unarmed civilians have become “open targets by state security forces, emboldened and reassured by their commander-in-chief”.

At 10:45 on Monday night, December 4, Catholic priest Marcelito “Tito” Paez, 72, died from nine gunshot wounds in a hospital where he was rushed after being attacked by motorcycle-riding men. He was the first Catholic priest killed extrajudicially under Duterte.

On December 3, Pastor Lovelito Quiñones, 57, was shot dead by the Police Regional Mobile Group in Mansalay, Oriental Mindoro. Karapatan cited that the Army’s 203rd Brigade claimed the victim was a “New People’s Army guerrilla,” which his relatives rejected and said the RMG planted a .45 calibre pistol as “evidence”.

Quiñones, a pastor of King’s Glory Ministry, was on his motorcycle heading home in Don Pedro village when he was shot in the chest. The Army’s 4th Infantry Division alleged that there was an encounter in the area.

On the same day in South Cotabato province in Mindanao, eight Lumad residents were shot dead by a composite team of soldiers of the 27th Infantry Battalion and Philippine Marines in sitio (subvillage) Datal Bong Langon, Ned village, Lake Sebu.

Killed were: Victor Danyan, Victor Danyan Jr., Artemio Danyan, Pato Celardo, Samuel Angkoy, To Diamante, Bobot Lagase, and Mateng Bantal. Two others were wounded: Luben and Teteng Laod.

• More Philippines stories

Being a journalist in the Philippines has become a lot tougher, riskier and traumatic in the face of  President Rodrigo Duterte’s so-called “war on drugs” which has seen more than 7000 people killed in the Philippines in the last 18 months, says a leading media researcher and advocate.

In a narrative “singularly dominated by the police”, says Malou Mangahas, executive director of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ), the face of journalism in the Philippines has begun to feel the impact.

Mangahas told the audience of the ‘Journalism under duress in Asia-Pacific’ panel during the Pacific Media Centre’s 10th anniversary event one of the “freest” and “most rambunctious” media in Asia was facing serious challenges.

“The media in the Philippines right now is suffering from severe psychological trauma for seeing dead bodies, observing the terrible grief of family members of those who have been killed in the war on drugs by our president of only 16 months,” she said.

Mangahas said journalists in the Philippines had become “first responders” in a war which had seen institutions falter and the rule of law challenged.

“The rule of law is weak in the Philippines. This happens, this aberration – Duterte, the war on drugs, the martial law on Marawi – because we have many broken institutions in the Philippines.”

Although impunity was a problem in the drug war, Mangahas said accountability was a “twin problem” which the media had failed to uphold in a story “written and dramatic in numbers”.

‘Nobody owns up’
“People are getting killed but nobody owns up. Nobody gets jailed for what he has done. Cases are not even filed or pursued in court up to prosecution and conviction.

“I think we have gone wrong, we have not reported enough about our people,” she said.

Mangahas said that reporting on justice and rule of law, a “very difficult thing for a journalist to do”, had become harder under Duterte’s drug war, as journalists had to retrace their steps.

PCIJ’s executive director said that the drug war had called attention to the role of the journalist in the Philippines, which a “virulent social media community” had seized upon.

The war on drugs had seen “trolls” call out reputable media organisations such as Rappler and the Philippine Daily Inquirer as “fake news”.

Mangahas said she did not like to see journalism diminished by the “loose term” and warned fake news was a form of misinformation, propaganda, spin and hate speech.

“People never think about what it includes, what it excludes.

‘Open to opaqueness’
“News is never, ever fake,” she said.

Mangahas said a general shift from “open to opaqueness” now characterised media freedom in the Asia-Pacific region.

“Historically in the last 20 years, nations of the Asia-Pacific region have moved from open to opaque.

“In many parts of the region what we’re observing is a general push-back.”

Johnny Blades, a senior journalist at RNZ Pacific, spoke about the media and Melanesia, especially Indonesian-ruled West Papua.

Among a handful of New Zealand journalists to travel to West Papua, Blades explained that despite President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s best intentions of loosening media restrictions, there was a lack of cohesion about Widodo’s “Papua policy” in various state agencies.

“Out there in Papua it’s not Jokowi running the show, it’s more likely to be the military and the police.

‘Unlikely to quell discontent’
“His focus on development is unlikely to quell the discontent with Indonesian rule among Papuans and that, to a large degree, relates to their historic core grievance about what they see as an illegitimate self-determination process,” Blades said.

Despite the “dominating” presence of security forces and an “uneasy reality” and “terrible tension”, Blades said he was grateful for the chance to have gone there.

“I never thought I’d get to West Papua.

“I was really blown away by the beauty of West Papua. It’s indigenous people are truly magnificent people,” he said.

Introducing the panel, the chair, PMC director Professor David Robie, said how both the Philippine crisis and the Indonesian human rights violations in West Papua had been virtually ignored by the mainstream media in New Zealand.

He said the PMC’s media products Pacific Media Watch freedom project and Asia Pacific Report had tried hard to balance these blind spots.

A minute’s silence was held to remember the victims of extrajudicial killings in the Philippines, while protesters held “Stop the killing” placards.

At the start of the panel, AUT graduate Sasya Wreksono introduced her special video to mark the anniversary, saying “I hope you get the feeling of the commitment, the drive and the passion that goes into the Pacific Media Centre”.

Evening MC Alistar Kata, an honours graduate and former Pacific Media Watch editor, added: “I would imagine, Sasya, it wasn’t easy to fit 10 years of stuff and content into two and half minutes!”.

• Pacific Media Centre turns ten, talks media freedom under violent threat
• PMC journalists, academics, students and mentors celebrate 10 years
• Philippines reporting risks grow under ‘The Punisher’, says PCIJ advocate
• PMC photojournalism book offers ‘window’ into Pacific culture, issues

The “Journalism Under Duress” seminar examined media freedom and human rights in Philippines and Indonesia’s Papua region, otherwise known as West Papua.

The executive director of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, Malou Mangahas spoke about extrajudicial killings and an ongoing spate of murders of journalists in her country.

Threats to journalists in the Philippines have been on the rise since President Rodrigo Duterte came to power last year. However, according to Mangahas, his “war on drugs” has seen more than 7000 people killed, over often spurious allegations that they were drug dealers.

LISTEN: PCIJ’s Malou Mangahas interviewed by RNZ Mediawatch

In the discussion about West Papua, the PMC seminar heard that access to the Indonesian region for foreign journalists, while still restricted, remained critical for helping Papuan voices to be heard.

Many West Papuans did not trust Indonesian national media outlets in their coverage of Papua, while independent journalists in this region face regular threats by security forces for covering sensitive issues.

The Pacific Media Centre and its two associated news and current affairs websites, Pacific Media Watch and Asia Pacific Report (previously Pacific Scoop), are among the few New Zealand media outlets to cover West Papua.

Research, media production
As well as a range of media books over the past decade, the PMC also publishes the long-running research journal Pacific Journalism Review.

“The Pacific Media Centre is rather unique in a New Zealand university context because it combines the attributes of a research and publication unit, and is also a media producer,” said the PMC director Professor David Robie.

“The PMC provides a publishing environment for aspiring and young journalists to develop specialist expertise and skills in the Pacific region which is hugely beneficial for our mainstream media. All our graduates go on to very successful international careers.

“We also provide an important independent outlet for the untold stories of our region,” he said.

Earlier, the head of the School of Communication Studies at AUT, Professor Berrin Yanıkkaya launched the book Conflict, Custom & Conscience: Photojournalism and the Pacific Media Centre 2007-2017, as well as the latest edition of the Pacific Journalism Review.

She said Dr Robie and his PMC colleagues had created “a channel for the voiceless to have a voice, a platform for the unseen to be seen”.

RNZ International report republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.

Journalists in the Philippines take their life in their hands doing their job. What was already one of the world’s riskiest places to be a reporter has become even more difficult under President Rodrigo Duterte and his “war on drugs”, reports RNZ’s Mediawatch.

In today’s Mediawatch programme featuring the executive director of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, Malou Mangahas, who spoke at “Journalism Under Duress in Asia-Pacific”, a summit marking the 10th anniversary of Auckland University of Technology’s Pacific Media Centre, presenter Colin Peacock reports:

When the Philippines appears in the news here these days, it’s not normally good news.

Most stories focus on the maverick president Rodrigo Duterte – nicknamed The Punisher – who is often compared to Donald Trump. Many of those stories also refer to the bloody crackdown of his ‘war on drugs’ launched after he took power last year.

READ MORE: Journalism under duress in Asia-Pacific – an introduction

Thousands of people have been killed by vigilante-style policing since mid-2016.

In her APEC visit to Manila last month, New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the deaths “require investigation . . at the very least” – and in a rather awkward-looking press conference, she also made a point of telling the president New Zealand’s police are unarmed.

The culture of impunity allowing police to kill suspected drug users and sellers in the Philippines is also putting journalists under severe pressure – and in some cases getting them killed too.

The extra-judicial killings are often officially explained as self-defence or the results of shoot-outs. But sometimes media reports show otherwise.

This week, Reuters news agency published a startling multi-media report called Operation Kill detailing the extra-judicial killings of three men and how the circumstances were covered up by police officers.

“The Philippines has one of the most free presses in Asia, and it also one of the rambunctious in its exercise of freedom,” said Malou Mangahas.

“The drug problem is very serious and that is accepted across the country. It is the method of the war on drugs is what has divided it.”

• Listen to the full RNZ Mediawatch report
• Read RNZ Mediawatch
• Read David Robie’s introduction to the “Journalism under duress” summit
• View the Livestreaming video

Pacific Media Watch Newsdesk

Threats to media freedom in the Asia-Pacific region are under the spotlight at the Pacific Media Centre’s 10th anniversary event today.

Since 2007, the PMC has examined whether the region is at a tipping point in media freedom issues and has explored the future of journalism in the Asia-Pacific region.

Carrying news of coups, human rights abuses, disasters and climate change, the centre has been an important independent voice, says Professor Berrin Yanıkkaya, head of AUT’s School of Communication Studies.

“The Pacific Media Centre is a channel for the voiceless to have a voice, a platform for the unseen to be seen, and an arena for the ‘others’ to deliberate their ideas.”

Dr Yanıkkaya will launch an investigative photojournalism book, Conflict, Custom & Conscience: Photojournalism and the Pacific Media Centre 2007-2017, edited by Jim Marbrook, Del Abcede, Natalie Robertson and David Robie.

Marbrook, an award-winning documentary maker, says the PMC’s work is “hitting home”.

“We’ve seen the rise of a journalistic information service that serves the world, but significantly the Asia-Pacific region.”

Journalism under duress
With special guests Malou Mangahas, executive director of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, and RNZ International senior journalist Johnny Blades, the PMC will also discuss the challenges to journalists reporting the Asia-Pacific region under the theme of “Journalism under duress in Asia-Pacific”.

“The Pacific Media Centre’s Pacific Media Watch project has developed a strategy to challenge issues of ethics, media freedom, industry ownership, cross-cultural diversity and media plurality – including in the Philippines,” says PMC founding director Professor David Robie.

“This has had quite an impact over the past decade.”

In the panel chaired by Dr Robie, Mangahas will speak about the culture of impunity in the Philippines and the widely condemned wave of extrajudicial killings by President Rodrigo Duterte’s government, which has claimed more than 7000 lives in the ongoing “war on drugs”.

Although the deadly crackdown reportedly eased last month when action was left to the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA), Mangahas argues there has been no real change in strategy.

Blades, among a handful of New Zealand journalists to visit West Papua, will talk about his ground-breaking assignment in 2015 to the Melanesian nation controversially ruled by Indonesia since the 1960s, where allegations of human rights abuses are rife.

“There’s been a lot of democratic change in Indonesia since the turn of the century but West Papuans are still routinely restricted from exercising their basic rights such as freedom of expression and assembly.

“Meanwhile, the catalogue of violent abuses and intimidation against Papuans grows,” says Blades.

The anniversary also includes the screening of a special video by Sasya Wreksono highlighting the PMC’s achievements over the past 10 years, along with a photographic exhibition.

MC is Tagata Pasifika’s Alistar Kata, a former Pacific Media Watch editor.

Seminar: “Journalism under duress in Asia-Pacific” 
Thursday, November 30, 2017 5.30pm-8pm
WG126, School of Communication Studies, AUT
55 Wellesley St, Auckland
Refreshments will be provided
Free admission

• More information
• The event on Facebook
• Livestreaming link

Three members of a Philippine fact-finding mission team have been shot by armed men in Negros Oriental, reports Karapatan.

The three were shot at 2.40pm yesterday at Barangay San Ramon, Bayawan, Negros Oriental.

Elisa Badayos of Karapatan Central Visayas and Elioterio Moises, a barangay tanod (community leader) and member of local peasant organisation Mantapi Ebwan Farmers Association, were pronounced dead on arrival at a hospital in Bayawan.

A 23-year-old female Kabataan party list member, who was also shot, remained in critical condition, said Karapatan (Alliance for the Advancement of People’s Rights).

The 30-member fact-fining mission team were in the area to investigate and verify reported human rights violations due to intensified military operations in the area.

“The attack on human rights defenders are becoming more rampant, more brutal, more fearless. The perpetrators know they will be dealt with impunity, as human rights have lost force and meaning especially under this regime,” said Karapatan secretary general Cristina Palabay.

“Fact-finding missions are a mechanism for human rights organisations to confirm reports of abuses, and this incident has only proven how fascism works to outrightly kill those who dare to question.”

Rights defenders ‘crippled’
Palabay added that “the space for human rights defenders is fast shrinking, as the Duterte regime is finding more and more ways to cripple defenders on the ground who voice out the real situation experienced by marginalised communities victimised by militarisation.”

She cited the Negros Oriental Provincial Ordinance No. 5, s.2008, known as “An Ordinance Regulating Outreach Activities Through Medical and Fact-Finding Missions in the Countryside of Negros Oriental and for Other Purposes,” wherein non-government organisations and other cause-based organisations are prohibited to conduct any humanitarian mission in Negros Oriental without seeking permission from the governor, municipal government and municipal police.

Violators are sanctioned with six months of imprisonment and a fine of P5000 on participants on the said mission.

The fact-finding team arrived in the mission area in San Ramon, Bayawan at 11am. They were blocked and harassed by elements of the mayor’s private goons, Katapayan said.

Armed men asked about their whereabouts and the purpose of the mission. They were eventually allowed to pass.

About 2.30pm, Bayados, another member of the FFM team, and a member of a Cebu youth organisation decided to go to the police station to file a report regarding the earlier harassment incident.

Armed men open fire
They were accompanied by Moises. While on their way to the police station, they were shot at by unnamed gunmen, suspected of being the same armed men who earlier blocked their entrance to the mission site.

The shooting led to the death of Moises and Badayos.

The 23-year-old KPL member is being taken to a hospital in Dumaguete after sustaining gunshot wounds on her shoulder.

Elisa Badayos is the wife of former union leader Jimmy Badayos.

“We condemn in the strongest terms this recent attack on human rights workers. Even as human rights workers conducting factfinding missions in Batangas, Negros, Mindanao and elsewhere are being subjected to attacks by state forces, we will never relent in struggling alongside with the Filipino people in contending against this murderous Duterte regime,” Palabay said.

• More Philippines stories

Eight years ago on 23 November 2009, 32 journalists were among the 58 who were killed in what is now known as the Maguindanao Massacre, until then the worst and most tragic incident of media lives lost in a single day.

Multiple murder charges have been filed against more than 100 people for the incident but to this day, the presentation of defence witnesses has not finished, and about 80 other respondents remain at large.

Indeed, acute assaults on journalists and media freedom should not pass with impunity.

Today, as the nation marks the 8th anniversary of the Maguindanao massacre, this composite report of the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility, the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines, and the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, illustrates why the press in the Philippines would do well to understand the severity of the challenges it faces under the Duterte administration — a situation of benign and acute impunity, and fettered flow of information.

While we remain a free community in law and theory, and blessed with a Constitution that enshrines protection, a tectonic shift has moved the ground and the foundation of the practice of journalism in the last 16 months.

The press in the Philippines has been described to be among the freest in Asia if not in the world, robust, almost rambunctious in its practice. But in the first 16 months of the Duterte administration, its status and practice have been diminished, shaken down by supporters and trolls of the President who would not tolerate critical coverage.

No less than the President has struck at the heart of the institution with threats of action against major news organisations. He has cursed journalists in public for raising testy questions about his health, catcalled a female reporter, and averred without serving proof that journalists are killed because they are corrupt.

Toxic mix
This toxic mix — over-reaching executive power, the threat of violence and public censure, and divided and fettered newsrooms — has left the flow of information unfree, convoluted, and constrained under the Duterte presidency.

To be sure, the administration has taken steps early in its rule to address the attacks and threats, and a string of unsolved murders of Filipino journalists from earlier years.

Duterte signed Administrative Order No. 1, Creating The Presidential Task Force On Violations Of The Right To Life, Liberty And Security Of The Members Of The Media (PTFoMS), on 11 October 2016. But the agency that is also called PTFoMS lacks resources and personnel to have genuine impact.

The cases of assaults on the media under the Duterte presidency turned bad in succeeding months, however. From May to October this year, the number of casualties among members of the press began to rise again.

In the first 16 months of the Duterte presidency:

• Six journalists have been killed, including the three that had been listed by the Task Force;
• Eight have survived slay attempts and received death threats;
• Three libel cases have been filed, even as a libel case filed in 2015 has led to the arrest of the accused. Other libel cases filed in previous years ended in an acquittal and two convictions; and
• Six major cases of verbal and online threats from local officials or pro-Duterte bloggers have been reported.

These acute and direct attempts to harass and muzzle journalists and media freedom have unfolded alongside more benign but equally grave threats to the practice of journalism and the free flow of information in the Philippines today. For instance:

• Access to information remains problematic for journalists and media agencies covering the war on drugs. Getting information, especially on sensitive and controversial cases, remains constrained;
• Against their will, media personnel are sometimes compelled by police officers to sign on as witnesses in police anti-drug operations, supposedly as mandated by the law;
• Newsroom protection for the safety of journalists covering the war on drugs remains lacking; and
• Psychological trauma overwhelms media coverage teams assigned to the war on drugs on account of their repeated first-hand exposure to revolting images of the dead, the maimed, the enraged, as well as the tremendous grief of the family members of the victims.

Malou Mangahas is executive director of the Philippine Centre for Investigative Journalism(PCIJ). She will be in Auckland next week to address the Pacific Media Centre’s 10th Anniversary seminar on Thursday.

• The Philippine state of the press and freedom of information report
• Justice denied in the Ampatuan massacre – eight years on (IFJ)
• Hundreds of bodies lie unclaimed and unnamed in Philippines’ morgues

The Pacific Media Centre at Auckland University of Technology is highlighting the threats to media freedom in the Asia-Pacific region in an event next week marking its 10th anniversary.

Following the International Day of Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists earlier this month, the PMC is hosting two guest speakers in a panel addressing:

• the so-called “war on drugs” in the Philippines and the extrajudicial killings estimated by officials at more than 7000 while human rights agencies claim a higher figure; and
• human rights violations in West Papua.

The event features Malou Mangahas, executive director of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, speaking on journalist safety and the culture of impunity.

The Philippines is the country with the largest single massacre of journalists – 32 on the island of Mindanao in 2009, where a three-month urban siege against jihadists in Marawi City has recently ended with a toll on many newsrooms.

The deadly crackdown on drugs reportedly eased up last month when President Rodrigo Duterte ordered the police to leave action to the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA), saying the shift was to target “big fish”.

Human rights advocates had accused Duterte of waging a “war on the poor”, but Mangahas argues that there has been no real change in strategy.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said last week in Manila the deaths “require investigation”.

Tabloid Jubi editor Victor Mambor (at wheel) with Johnny Blades in West Papua. Image: RNZ Pacific

Johnny Blades, a senior journalist of RNZ International, will also speak about his challenging experiences in West Papua, especially during an “official” visit to the Indonesian-ruled Melanesian provinces in 2015.

Media freedom
The panel will be chaired by founding PMC director Professor David Robie, who has campaigned for many years on media freedom issues and was in Jakarta for the UNESCO World Press Freedom Day conference in May.

A former Pacific Affairs Minister, Laumanuvao Winnie Laban, who launched the PMC a decade ago this year, will also be attending.

Professor Berrin Yanıkkaya, head of the School of Communication Studies at AUT, will launch a graphic new media book, Conflict, Custom & Conscience: Photojournalism and the Pacific Media Centre 2007-2017, edited by Jim Marbrook, Del Abcede, Natalie Robertson and David Robie.

She will also launch the latest edition of Pacific Journalism Review research journal.

A special video by Sasya Wreksono highlighting the PMC’s achievements over 10 years will be screened along with a photographic exhibition of the research centre’s evolution.

Seminar: “Journalism under duress in Asia-Pacific”
Thursday, November 30, 2017 5.30pm-8pm
WG126, School of Communication Studies, AUT
55 Wellesley St, Auckland
Refreshments will be provided
Admission free
RSVP by November 24 to:
communicate@aut.ac.nz

• More information and invitation
• The event on Facebook
• Livestreaming link

ANALYSIS: Presented by Richard Gizbert

The most violent week yet in President Rodrigo Duterte’s Philippines has seen more than 90 people killed and NGO workers threatened, reports Al Jazeera’s The Listening Post.

Since coming to power in June last year, Duterte has been on a mission to eradicate what he claims is the country’s pandemic drug problem.

The brutal crackdown on the drug trade in the country – described by man critics as a “war on the poor” – is showing no signs of slowing down, says the weekly media analysis programme presented by Richard Gizbert.

Last week, 58 alleged drug dealers and users were killed in and around the capital, Manila, with the total since Duterte came to office being put at more than 13,000 by human rights agencies.

One of the victims, 17-year-old Kian delos Santos, made headlines. Police say he was killed in a two-way firefight. Eyewitnesses, backed by CCTV footage, tell a different story.

President Rodrigo Duterte has dismissed the killings of children as “collateral damage” while labelling anyone who criticises his deadly approach as an “enemy of the state”.

Journalists and now NGOs are on that “enemy” list.

Contributors:
Maria Ressa, CEO, Rappler
Vergel Santos, chairman, Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR)
RJ Nieto, publisher, Thinking Pinoy
Karen Gomez-Dumpit, commissioner, Commission on Human Rights
Felipe Villamor, Philippines reporter, The New York Times

• Murdered teenager Kian delos Santos laid to rest
• ‘Our son Kian – a good, sweet boy’
• CCTV footage showing Caloocan police dragging youth to his death
• Slain Philippine teenager’s family files murder complaint against police
• The Listening Post

Thousands of demonstrators have taken to the streets of the Philippine capital of Manila to denounce President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs, as they marked the death anniversary of one of the country’s pro-democracy heroes.

Human rights advocates, youth groups, and religious communities defied a tropical storm that brought steady rain to gather at the memorial of the 1986 People Power revolution to call for an end to the killings in Duterte’s war on drugs.

Amid public pressure, Duterte admitted on Monday there could have been abuses in his anti-drug war policy.

“There is a possibility that in some of police incidents there could be abuses. I admit that,” Duterte told reporters in Manila. “These abusive police officers are destroying the credibility of the government.”

READ MORE: Duterte says ‘bloodiest’ day of war on drugs ‘beautiful’

Al Jazeera’s Jamela Alindogan, reporting from Manila, said at least 4000 people joined in the rally, adding that a separate protest was also held in another part of the city.

Protesters are demanding an independent investigation into the summary executions and police operations that left thousands of people dead. They said the president should be held accountable for the deaths.

Demonstrators waved Philippine flags and carried banners that read: “Resist the Fascist!”, “Stop the Killings!”, and “We will fight” among others.

Monday marked the 34th anniversary of the assassination of democracy icon Benigno Aquino, who fought the 20-year dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos. Marcos was overthrown in 1986 in a peaceful protest, which saw Aquino’s widow, Corazon, become president. Duterte is an avowed supporter of Marcos.

Leaders of Monday’s protest said the death toll in Duterte’s war on drugs had now reached 13,000 – surpassing the number of deaths of anti-government activists during dictator Marcos’ two decades in office.

Government figures show that since Duterte took office last year, an estimated 3451 “drug personalities” have been killed in gun battles with police up to July 26, 2017.

Another 2000 more died in drug-related homicides, including attacks by motorcycle-riding masked gunmen and other assaults, while 8200 homicide cases are “under investigation”.

17-year-old student killed
At the rally, demonstrators also expressed outrage over the death of 17-year-old student, Kian delos Santos, who witnesses said was falsely accused of being a drug dealer and summarily executed by police earlier this week.

In another part of Manila, hundreds of marching neighbours and activists lit candles near the spot where delos Santos was shot dead during a mass raid that left at least 80 people dead in three days.

“Please be fair,” the student’s father, Zaldy delos Santos, told police. “We are the victims here. We are the ones you should help.”

He made the appeal after authorities went on the offensive to defend the police action, saying there was information indicating the boy was a drug courier and addict.

But initial forensic evidence showed there was no gunfight, and the three bullet wounds indicated the student was shot at close range in the back of the head.

According to reports, there have been at least 30 minors killed in the drug war since June 2016, when Duterte took office.

Arrests ordered
On Monday, Duterte ordered the police to take custody of officers who were involved in the killing of delos Santos, saying he would not condone abuses, and that the police officers would have to face the consequences of their actions if that is the recommendation of a formal investigation.

The head of the Public Attorney’s Office, Persida Acosta, told reporters she was recommending murder charges against the officers involved based on the initial autopsy report.

“Murder charges will most likely be filed because of the location of the entry wounds,” Acosta said in a television interview.

Neighbours, teachers and classmates of the boy also vouched for his good character. The education ministry issued a statement condemning the police action.

• Duterte inspired by ‘Petrus’ shootings

The Intercept, co-founded by Glenn Greenwald, a journalist known for his stories about the US National Security Agency’s mass surveillance, published the story earlier this week.

Citing intelligence documents, unnamed generals and protest leaders, it alleges that huge protests in Jakarta against the capital’s minority Christian governor Ba­suki “Ahok” Tja­haja Pur­nama — defeated in this week’s election — were a front for a movement to unseat Jokowi.

READ MORE: Trump’s Indonesian allies in bed with ISIS-backed militia seeking to oust elected president

READ MORE: Indonesian military denies ‘coup’ claim

The military’s statement yesterday said an account of The Intercept story, written by investigative journalist Allan Nairn, translated and published by the Indonesian site Tirto, was either “not true” or a “hoax”.

It said it was reporting Tirto so it could be “investigated and proceeded against in line with existing laws”.

Democracy Now!‘s Amy Goodman has interviewed Allan Nairn and writes:

“Nairn reveals Indonesians involved in the coup attempt include a corporate lawyer working for the mining company Freeport-McMoRan [which owns the controversial Freeport mine in West Papua], which is controlled by Donald Trump adviser Carl Icahn.

Video has even emerged showing the lawyer at a ceremony where men are swearing allegiance to ISIS. According to Allan Nairn, two of the other most prominent supporters of the coup are close associates of Donald Trump: Fadli Zon, the vice-speaker of the Indonesian House of Representatives, and Hary Tanoe, Trump’s primary Indonesian business partner, who’s building two Trump resorts, one in Bali and one outside Jakarta.

“Nairn’s article is making waves in Indonesia. The Indonesian military is threatening legal action against the news portal tirto.id, after it published a partial translation of the article and ran a profile about Allan Nairn.

“In response, Nairn tweeted a message to the Indonesian military, saying, quote, ‘Dear TNI: If you want to threaten brave Indonesian reporters and publishers, please threaten me too,’ unquote.”

In the interview with Democracy Now!, Nairn said:

“Indonesia is in the midst of a political crisis, in that there is an attempt to stage what people on both sides of the conflict call the coup. And this is a de facto, or even direct, coup against the elected president, the elected government of Indonesia, which is headed by President Widodo — Jokowi.

“Jokowi was the first person from outside the political elite who ever was elected president. He’s—on certain issues, in certain respects, he’s a bit of a reformist.

“He got elected, in an important part because he speaks the language of the poor, and people relate to him. He has been pushing social programs on health and education.

“But, especially in recent months, his government has been fighting for survival. Those backing this coup project include the top generals in the country, who are seeking to escape any whisper of accountability for their past mass murders — mass murders that have been supported by the US — and for their ongoing atrocities in West Papua, also the friends and business partners and political associates of Donald Trump.

“The local Trump people in Indonesia, including his top political backer, the politician Fadli Zon, including his local business partner, Hary Tanoe, and others, have been funding and backing this coup movement.”The instrument they have been using is a—what purports to be a radical Islamist street movement, which has been staging massive demonstrations on the streets of Jakarta, demonstrations drawing out hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people.

“And their hook is what they claimed to be a religious issue, where they are attacking and demanding the death by hanging of the incumbent governor of Jakarta, who happens to be an ethnic Chinese Christian who is currently standing trial for insulting religion, for insulting Islam.

“And he could actually be sent to prison.”

• The Intercept article on the alleged coup plot
• Prosecutors spare Ahok after election defeat
• Asian Correspondent article carries military denial

Curbing illegal drugs “holistically” is now an explicit mandate as provided by the Philippines government’s 2017-2022 Development Plan, released last week.

Chapter 18 of the Development Plan says that government targets the significant reduction of “all forms of criminality and illegal drugs” through a “holistic program that involves combating not only crimes but also the corruption that leads to the perpetuation of such acts”.

The portion on curbing illegal drugs in the PDP comes at a time that President Rodrigo Duterte revived community visits to warn drug users and pushers, called locally as Oplan Tokhang.

At the same time, the Philippine National Police Director General Roland dela Rosa has announced yesterday the launching of “Operation Double Barrel Reloaded”.

The operation is said to be a “kinder, gentler” approach for law enforcers to confront the illegal drug problem, dela Rosa told reporters.

More than 7000 suspected users and pushers have been reported killed since Duterte assumed office on 1 July  2016.

These killings are linked to the rise of extrajudicial killings (EJKs) that have been lambasted by critics — but shrugged off by Duterte supporters as not being the president’s policy —  that have criticised by international human rights groups, former heads of state, and the United Nations.

‘Suppressing the flow’
The Development Policy declares the country’s national anti-illegal drugs strategy included “suppressing the flow of illegal drugs supply through sustained law enforcement operations and reducing consumer demand for drugs and other substances”.

While the PDP mandated drug rehabilitation and massive preventive education and awareness programs, government is set to arrest and prosecute police personnel “involved in the use and trade of illegal drugs through counter-intelligence operations” prosecution.

Noting also the entry of Chinese, African and Mexican drug syndicates to the Philippines, government will also work with local and foreign law enforcement counterparts, as well as other international anti-drug organisations.

All these plans are part of a “holistic” approach to curb the drug problem, the PDP wrote. The plan also noted the data from the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency that there are around four million drug users, and that 47 percent of villages (barangays) nationwide are “drug-affected.”

“The government has therefore adopted a holistic approach in addressing criminality and illegal drugs,” the PDP says. “As these initiatives are expected to result in high incidence of apprehensions, the government must also upgrade its jail faiclities and substantially increase drug rehabilitation centers.”

The PDP also says that “respect for human rights should be upheld and observed at all times” in all of law enforcers’ activities against criminality.

Recently, the US-based Human Rights Watch published a chapter on the Philippines and observed that Duterte could be liable to a lawsuit before local courts and even the International Criminal Court, the latter for alleged “crimes against humanity”.

Narcotics board concern
The UN-aligned International Narcotics Control Board (ICNB), in a March 2 release of its annual report, indicated the board’s concern about extrajudicial killings.

The board called on the Philippines government to “issue an immediate and unequivocal condemnation and denunciation of extrajudicial actions against individuals suspected of involvement in the illicit drug trade or drug abuse; to put an immediate stop to such actions; and to ensure that the perpetrators of such acts are brought to justice in full observance of due process and the rule of law”.

Extrajudicial action “is fundamentally contrary to the provisions of… three international drug control conventions,” the ICNB report said.

The Malacañang called the HRW report “thoughtless and irresponsible” when the group’s report wrote the country had a “human rights calamity” given rising extrajudicial killings — allegedly perpetrated by police.

Such a “human rights calamity,” said Presidential Spokesperson Ernesto Abella, may have been averted due to actions by government.

Abella cited the more than 1.1 million pushers and users who voluntarily surrendered and the construction of drug rehabilitation centers.

“Is it a human rights calamity when the sheer scope and magnitude of an emerging narco-state have been exposed?” Abella said.

‘Ransom scheme’
Dela Rosa recently formed within the PNP the Drug Enforcement Group (DEG) that replaced the old Anti-Illegal Drugs Group (AIDG) given the involvement of several of the latter group’s officers in a reported “Tokhang for ransom scheme”.

The Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) indicated in its 2013 to 2016 figures that anti-illegal drug operations such as entrapments and arrests rose exponentially during the last six months of 2016 (the first six months of Duterte’s presidency).

In 2016, PDEA and partner law enforcement agencies had conducted 34,007 operations,  arrested 28,056 people, and filed 23,887 reports. These total figures are the highest over a four-year period (2013 to 2016).

Contrast the extended statements on illegal drugs 2017-2022 PDP to the 2011-2016 PDP provision on illegal drugs. The latter PDP wrote: “Modernise and upgrade facilities for law enforcers such as the PNP and the NBI (National Bureau of Investigation) crime laboratories, forensic investigation facilities and equipment.

“Improve capacities of prosecutors and law enforcers particularly NBI agents in the investigation and prosecution of special cases involving economic or white-collar crimes such as money laundering, tax evasion, smuggling, human trafficking, violations of intellectual property rights and antitrust laws, illegal drugs and even cases involving extralegal killings and other human rights violations as well as violation of environmental laws.”

Jerome Villanueva is a graduate journalism student of the University of Santo Tomas. Assistant Professor Jeremaiah Opiniano supervises the undergraduate and graduate journalism degree programmes.

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