ANALYSIS: By Jonathan Cook in Middle East Eye

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

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

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

• READ MORE: Other Jonathan Cook articles
• Other Gaza genocide reports

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other prominent cabinet ministers echoed him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Waigani National Court has finally handed down a ruling finding Boship Kaiwi guilty of causing the death of his wife Jenelyn Kennedy three years ago.

Despite persistent denials by Kaiwi that he had caused the death of Kennedy, he admitted to the court during the trial that he had elbowed and punched Kennedy around 18 June 2020.

Kaiwi’s defence lawyer had also argued that there was no direct evidence by the state to prove that Kaiwi had caused the death of Kennedy.

• READ MORE: Tragic life and death of Jenelyn — babysitter tells of PNG torture case
• Other Jenelyn Kennedy case reports

However, acting judge Justice Laura Wawun-Kuvi, when handing down the verdict on Thursday, ruled that the court was satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Kaiwi had caused the death of Kennedy.

Justice Wawun-Kuvi was satisfied with the witness statements that Kaiwi actually had an abusive relationship with Kennedy and he did cause the injuries that led to the death of Kennedy.

“I’m satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant (Kaiwi) had caused the death of Kennedy,” Justice Wawun-Kuvi said in her ruling.

The judge therefore found Kaiwi guilty.

A decision on sentence will follow in the coming weeks once the pre-sentence report and other documents are presented to court recommending the type of penalty to be imposed on Kaiwi.

Kaiwi was accused of torturing and assaulting his 19-year-old wife Jenelyn Kennedy between June 18 and 23, 2020, leading to her death.

Her case became a major issue and sparked public outrage and demands for tougher action over domestic violence in Papua New Guinea.

Republished with permission.

Several teachers from a Papua New Guinean school in Porgera, Enga province, are now being investigated by police after they allegedly instigated the torture, burning and interrogation of four women over sorcery accusations on the campus.

The four women who worked as cleaners at the school were attacked after one of the teachers died suddenly last week.

According to Enga police commander acting Superintendent George Kakas, the women had been seen chatting with the teacher last week before he collapsed an hour after being seen with the women.

• READ MORE:  Hunt down PNG’s sorcery torture ‘glassmen’ – charge them, says Juffa
• Other PNG sorcery allegation reports

PPC Kakas said the women were then forced into the home of the deceased teacher and interrogated for 11 hours by the colleagues of the deceased and his relatives.

“Last week the teacher collapsed. He was believed to have conversed in a casual meeting with women earlier on in the day and collapsed in the afternoon,” Superintendent Kakas said.

“Relatives and some teachers and public servants accused the four women of practising sorcery and taking out the deceased’s heart.

“They were taken into the teacher’s house and brutally tortured with bush knives, axes and iron rods from about 5pm that evening until 4am the next day when they were rescued by security force members consisting of Porgera police and PNG Defence Force soldiers.

Relatives barred police
“When police tried to have a look at the body of the deceased, his relatives refused to let police near the body, saying that ‘the glasman was seeing the body and that the teacher was still alive’.

Glasmen are men who claim to be able to identify and accuse women of sorcery.

“I commend the work of the police station commander Porgera, Inspector Martin Kelei, who led the team to the teacher’s house after a tip-off and rescued [the tortured women].

“They were all driven safely to Wabag hospital where they are now undergoing treatment. I immediately instructed my OIC CID Wabag to do a postmortem on the body.

“The next day they confirmed the teacher died of a massive heart attack.”

Superintendent Kakas said: “There you have it. It’s a confirmed heart attack, and the ladies were falsely accused, tortured and nearly killed.

“We know the identities of the key instigators of the torture of the four women and are working to apprehend them.

“I will make it my personal business to ensure these perpetrators are arrested and charged.

I have an investigation team working on that through my OIC [officer in charge] sorcery accusation-related violence unit here in Wabag.”

Republished from the PNG Post-Courier with permission.

One of the survivors of a horrifying sorcery accusation-related violence (SARV) attack and torture of nine women in Papua New Guinea falsely accused last month of using sorcery to kill a leading businessman tells her story of survival. She does not want to be named as the situation is still tense and she is still in hiding and fears for her life. (Translated into English).

On July 22, about 200 women from Enga’s Lakolam village were rounded up by a mob of machete-wielding men following the death of prominent businessman Jacob Luke.

The mob suspected an old woman from the village had used sorcery to “eat Luke’s heart” and causing his death.

She was dragged out of her house, beaten and thrown on top of a tyre and tortured as we all watched, including her family, her children, her sons, who could do nothing to save her.

• READ MORE: Papua New Guinea fails to end ‘evil’ of sorcery-related violence
• Paul Wolffram: Resisting sorcery violence in PNG from the ‘grasruts’
• Other sorcery related attack reports

“They tortured her and told her to name the other women who had helped her. After being beaten and tortured — maybe she got tired — maybe she just wanted to be free from it all, but named us, falsely accusing us as they had accused her.

“Once they got our names, nine of us, they poured kerosene on her and set her on fire.

“Her screams pierced our hearts, I knew I was going to die that day as well.

“All I thought of was my children, my sons, and I prayed.

‘I prayed that they do nothing’
“I prayed that they will do nothing, that the Lord would hold them back from trying to defend me, because I knew, they would be killed too, if they tried to defend me.

“I looked in my son’s eyes, begging him to understand that he must do nothing,” she said.

The survivor said that the nine of them were rounded up by the mob. They were beaten, stripped naked and tortured.

“The pain drowned out the humiliation, as they burnt my nipples and opened my legs and shoved hot iron rods into me.”

“They wanted us, to admit that yes, we had killed him using sorcery so that they could have a reason to pour kerosene on us and burn us as they had the other woman.

“Among us, the nine of us, there was one of our daughters.

“She is in her 30s, mother of two and was four months pregnant.

‘Everyone watched … was happy’
“They didn’t care, they tortured her as well — everyone watched, everyone was happy, as to them, they were only getting justice over the death of Luke, but God is good, she survived,” she said.

She said their houses were all burnt down by the angry mob.

“We saw our homes go up in flames as we were torture.

“I thought of my children, wondering if the little ones were okay, praying that they are safe.

“I must have passed out because when I looked up again, I saw my two elder sons …” she said as she started to sob.

She said husbands, sons, brothers could only watch and do nothing, as Luke was a well-respected man, a leader.

“One man stood there and watched as two of his wives were tortured — one of the wives died during the torture and one survived.

Five women died
“Five women died that morning, the one who falsely accused us of helping her to eat the heart, and another four who died during the torture.

“But five of us made it out of ‘hell’ alive.”

When asked, if she would be willing to testify against the perpetrators and have them prosecuted to get justice for what they did to her and other women, she said, all that mattered was her life.

“I do not think we will ever get justice. What is justice anyway?”

“Luke was a leader — to the mob, we had killed him, and they will kill us.

“I do not care if they get prosecuted, I just want to live.

“Be with my children and hold my grandchildren,” she said.

Situation still tense
The woman said that things were still tense and they were still afraid for her life.

“I do not know what is going to happen now. I do not know where I am going to go to.

“Four of us are old, Lakolam has been our home, and we raised our children and our grandchildren here.

“Only the pregnant mother of two is young, but we are here, they are taking care of us, taking us to the hospital, most of us are still healing.

“I do not know what will happen tomorrow, I do not know if I will still be alive next week, but today I am alive and I thank my God for today.”

Rebecca Kuku is a reporter for The National daily newspaper in Port Moresby. Republished with permission.

The sun rises over a strange landscape. Come with me and meet these people over here.

Even though they have stayed awake all night, now that the sun has risen, they are jumping up and down, singing happy songs and even expressing tears of joy.

Next to them, there is a wooden post freshly buried in the ground. There is carved writing on the post which reads: “Memory of Year 2000″.

• READ MORE: Justice for sorcery accusation related violence in PNG?
• Other sorcery-accusation related reports

It was New Years Day, January 1, 2000, and this small community somehow thought that the sun might not rise, ever again.

Why? Because someone had come to their village and told them stories about the Year 2000, Y2K, and how the sun might not rise, ever again. The villagers believed the stories.

They gathered firewood to prepare for the endless night to come and set up vines to their outhouses so they could find them in the dark. At midnight, they drove the carved pillar into the ground, and then stood awake, praying through their fear, until the sun finally rose and they began to celebrate!

Amazing true story, right? But I wonder what would have happened if someone had told them a different story.

What if …?
What if someone told them that since it is Y2K, the sun might not rise again unless each family sacrificed their oldest child by burying them alive at midnight?

What if someone told them that the right way to ensure the sun will rise again is to blame a witch and torture her, burn her skin, threaten to kill her and terrorise her children? Would they have tortured innocent citizens of Papua New Guinea trying to get the sun to rise?

People have believed the strangest things on the worst evidence. When you believe wrong things, you do wrong things too. My ancestors believed wrong things. Your ancestors believed wrong things.

Anton Lutz on sorcery-related violence in Papua New Guinea in a 2020 video.

The Y2K villagers believed wrong things. Luckily, they didn’t hurt anyone as a result of their wrong beliefs.

Telling the truth
Here’s a thought: What if someone had told the villagers the truth? Planet Earth revolves on an axis and orbits a star. That is the reason why we experience sunrises and sunsets, years and seasons.

Unless the 5.9 sextillion metric tons of planet Earth — spinning at 30km per second — comes to a stop, or unless the star unexpectedly collapses into a black hole, there is every reason — barring a supernatural, multi-dimensional or alien apocalypse — to think there will be sunrises and sunsets on planet Earth for the next 7.6 billion years.

This means that we should use the time we have to be curious and to examine evidence and to educate our children in the truth.

Just because someone came to our village once upon a time and told us an amazing story about how “dangerous” women need to be tortured sometimes, that doesn’t mean we should just believe it.

There will be a sunrise tomorrow. Let’s make sure it’s a better day.

Anton Lutz has lived in Papua New Guinea for 30 years. He works with remote communities on infrastructure development projects, and is a leading advocate against sorcery accusation-related violence. This article was first published on the PNG Post-Courier and is republished with permission.

Former political prisoner Cristina Bawagan still has the dress she wore the day she was arrested, tortured and sexually abused by soldiers during the late Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos’s brutal era of martial law.

Bawagan fears the horrors of Marcos’s rule would be diminished if his namesake son wins the presidency in Monday’s election, a victory that would cap a three-decade political fightback for a family driven out in a 1986 “people power” uprising.

Also known as “Bongbong”, Marcos Jr has benefited from what some political analysts describe as a decades-long public relations effort to alter perceptions of his family, accused of living lavishly at the helm of one of Asia’s most notorious kleptocracies.

• READ MORE: Other Philippines election reports
• More pictures from the NZ Kakampink rally for democracy today

As Philippine president, Marcos could control hunt for his family’s wealth

Rivals of the family say the presidential run is an attempt to rewrite history, and change a narrative of corruption and authoritarianism associated with his father’s era.

“This election is not just a fight for elected positions. It is also a fight against disinformation, fake news, and historical revisionism,” Vice-President Leni Robredo, Marcos’s main rival in the presidential race, told supporters in March.

TSEK.PH, a fact-checking initiative for the May 9 vote, reported that it had debunked scores of martial law-related disinformation it said was used to rehabilitate, erase or burnish the discreditable record of Marcos Sr.

No reply to questions
Marcos Jr.’s camp did not reply to written requests for comment on Bawagan’s story.

Marcos Jr., who last week called his late father a “political genius”, has previously denied claims of spreading misinformation and his spokesperson has said Marcos does not engage in negative campaigning.

Bawagan, 67, said martial law victims like her needed to share their stories to counter the portrayal of the elder Marcos’s regime as a peaceful, golden age for the Southeast Asian country.

“It is very important they see primary evidence that it really happened,” said Bawagan while showing the printed dress which had a tear below the neckline where her torturer passed a blade across her chest and fondled her breasts.

The elder Marcos ruled for two decades from 1965, almost half of it under martial law.

During that time, 70,000 people were imprisoned, 34,000 were tortured, and 3240 were killed, according to figures from Amnesty International — figures which Marcos Jr. questioned in a January interview.

Bawagan, an activist, was arrested on 27 May 1981 by soldiers in the province of Nueva Ecija for alleged subversion and brought to a “safehouse” where she was beaten as they tried to extract a confession from her.

“I would receive slaps on my face every time they were not satisfied with my answers and that was all the time,” Bawagan said. “They hit strongly at my thighs and clapped my ears. They tore my duster (dress) and fondled my breasts.”

“The hardest thing was when they put an object in my vagina. That was the worst part of it and all throughout I was screaming. No one seemed to hear,” said Bawagan, a mother of two.

‘No arrests’
In a conversation with Marcos Jr. that appeared on YouTube in 2018, Juan Ponce Enrile, who served as the late dictator’s defence minister, said not one person was arrested for their political and religious views, or for criticising the elder Marcos.

However, more than 11,000 victims of state brutality during Martial Law later received reparations using millions from Marcos’s Swiss bank deposits, part of the billions the family siphoned off from the country’s coffers that were recovered by the Philippine government.

Among them was Felix Dalisay, who was detained for 17 months from August 1973 after he was beaten and tortured by soldiers trying to force him to inform on other activists, causing him to suffer hearing loss.

“They kicked me even before I boarded the military jeep so I fell and hit my face on the ground,” Dalisay said, showing a scar on his right eye as he recounted the day he was arrested.

When they reached the military headquarters, Dalisay said he was brought to an interrogation room, where soldiers repeatedly clapped his ears, kicked and hit him, sometimes with a butt of a rifle, during questioning.

“They started by inserting bullets used in a .45 calibre gun between my fingers and they would squeeze my hand. That really hurt. If they were not satisfied with my answers, they would hit me,” Dalisay pointing to different parts of his body.

The return of a Marcos to the country’s seat of power is unthinkable for Dalisay, who turned 70 this month.

“Our blood is boiling at that thought,” said Dalisay.

“Marcos Sr declared martial law then they will say nobody was arrested, and tortured? We are here speaking while we are still alive.”

Republished with permission from Rappler.

A Papua New Guinean primary school teacher has been arrested for allegedly torturing a woman with a hot knife in sorcery-related violence in Southern Highlands’ Kagua Erave last year.

Southern Highlands commander Chief Inspector Daniel Yangen said the 35-year-old teacher, from Aiya’s Pawayamo village, was arrested on Monday.

He said the teacher was sighted in Mendi town by an informant who alerted the Mendi Criminal Investigation Department.

• READ MORE: Other PNG sorcery-related reports

The teacher is charged with three counts of murder, two counts of attempted murder and five counts of kidnapping.

Chief Inspector Yangen said the three women who died from the sorcery-torture had been identified as Yondopame Kama, Nancy Gibson and Bale Mana. The two survivors are Magdah Michael and Maria Cedric.

He said the five women were accused of killing a man through sorcery and were held captive on December 4 in Pawayamo village.

Three died from injuries suffered in the ordeal and the two survivors are now under police protection.

Video went viral
Chief Inspector Yangen said the teacher was believed to have pressed a hot knife onto the body of Mana who was crying in the middle of video a that went viral on social media. Mana died.

“The teacher was clearly identified in the last part of the video wearing a black round neck shirt, long trousers carrying a bilum bag,” Chief Inspector Yangen said.

“He is armed with a bush knife with his left hand which he used in the middle of the video with a piece of cloth as mask covering his face to protect his identity and [sunglasses] on his head.

“A well-educated man is supposed to educate and refrain people from humiliating innocent mothers and women in public. We will hunt down his accomplices,” Chief Inspector Yangen said.

“The first arrest in the murders was a ward councillor charged under the Summary Offences Act for obstruction of police duties. He is now out on K500 court bail.

“Our next target is the Usa ward councillor. He was the one who assured Deputy Commissioner (Operations) Anton Billie that he would work with the police to identify the suspects, but has gone into hiding.

‘More arrests soon’
“We will continue with investigations and more arrests will be made soon. We will not rest until the uncivilised perpetrators are arrested.”

He said police needed help from the local government presidents, councillors, village court magistrates, women leaders and church groups to provide information to arrest the suspects.

The video of the torture of the women posted on social media prompted urgent police investigations.

The United Nations condemned the recent sorcery accusation-related violence and called for the immediate prosecution of those responsible.

Republished with permission.

Papua New Guinea’s “glassmen” — men who claim to identify and accuse women of sorcery — must be hunted down and charged with their crimes, says Northern Governor Gary Juffa.

He said PNG should not just continue expressing concern and outrage while doing nothing to address sorcery accusation-related violence (SARV).

He made these comments in response to a video showing five women being stripped naked, tied to poles and tortured being released on social media last week. The cruelty portrayed in the video has shocked the nation.

• READ MORE: Inhumane: PNG police call for more information on the torture video
• Horror torture of women in PNG

Both daily newspapers — the PNG Post-Courier and The National — published horrifying front page pictures of the torture today with the Post-Courier carrying a banner headline “Inhumane”.

An editorial note on the Post-Courier front page said: “This horrendous crime must not be seen as an isolated incident and such tortures and killings must be reported prominently.”

According to The National, Police Commissioner David Manning described the torture as “vile, inhumane, uncivilised, void of any human decency”.

The torture is believed to have occurred in Kagua, Southern Highlands Province.

Juffa said the perpetrators were visible in the video and it was not hard to identify them.

“They must all be rounded up and they must all be charged,” he said.

‘They are the guiltiest’
“And not only them, but those who claim to be ‘glassmen’, must also be brought in and charged.

“They are the guiltiest and must be apprehended and charged.”

Juffa also said the video was debated and discussed among MPs at great length.

“Member for Porgera has already assured us that he has sent this video to the provincial police commander of Enga.

“The Minister of Police has also advised us that he has already informed the Commissioner of Police and they are investigating.

“But now, something must be done, we must take action.”

Deputy Commissioner Police Operations Anton Billie called on the public to come forward with any information they had about the torture.

He also called on churches, youth groups, community leaders and women’s groups to come forward and assist the police with any information they might have on the perpetrators or the status of the five women — and whether they were still alive.

According to Cultural Survival, traditional PNG spiritualists are known in the Tok Pisin language as ol glas man — “glassmen”, or seers — who practise soul travel characteristic of shamanism.

Rebecca Kuku is a a PNG Post-Courier reporter. Republished with permission.

The military’s brutality is a daily reality for all the people of Myanmar. As Myanmar’s army prepares to deploy and reinforce its bases with hundreds of extra troops, the country’s media workers remain exposed to Covid-19 and under extreme threat, writes Phil Thornton.

Myanmar’s military leaders used its armed forces to launch its coup and take control of the country from its elected government on 1 February 2021. In protest, millions of people took to the streets.

The military responded to these protests by sending armed soldiers and police into residential areas to arrest defiant civilians, workers, students, doctors and nurses.

In March, martial law was enforced in Yangon, snipers were used, and protesters were shot on sight.

• READ MORE: Other Myanmar coup articles

To restrict news coverage of their crimes and to impede the organisatiojn of protests, the military ordered telecommunication companies to restrict internet and mobile phone coverage. Independent media outlets had their licences withdrawn, offices were raided and trashed.

Journalists were targeted and hunted by soldiers and police. Obscure laws were added to the penal code and used to restrict freedom of speech and expression. State-controlled media published pages of arrest warrants and photographs of the wanted, including journalists.

To avoid arrest, independent journalists went underground or sought refuge with border based ethnic armed organisations.

Myanmar journalists are well aware that being “arrested” and held in detention by the military doesn’t come with respect for their legal or human rights. The military uses a wide range of obscure laws, some dating back to colonial times, to detain, intimidate and silence its critics — academics, medics, journalists, students and workers.

95 journalists arrested
Independent website, Reporting ASEAN, recorded that, as of August 18, 95 journalists had been arrested and 42 were being held in detention.

The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) estimated by August 29 that the military has now killed at least 1026 people, arrested 7627, issued warrants for 1984 and are still holding 6025 in detention.

They want names
Those arrested are taken to interrogation centres and held indefinitely without contact with family or legal representation. Torture is used to extort names and contacts from the detained to be added to the military’s long list of those to be hunted down and suppressed into silence.

One of those names on the military’s wanted list is that of journalist Nyan Linn Htet, now in hiding, after a warrant under Section 505 (a) was issued for his arrest.

Nyan Linn Htet, managing editor of Mekong News, in an interview with the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) explains the impact of being hunted has had on both him and his family.

“If I’m arrested it means I lose everything. When we had to run and go into hiding, we lost our home and our possessions. You lose your income. Your equipment. You never feel safe when hiding. Living like this affects all of us. If the military does not find me, they will pressure and threaten my family with arrest.”

Nyan Linn Htet said he is still working despite the risk of arrest.

“Losing a journalist is a big loss for our struggle for democracy. We’re only doing our job as reporters, but our news coverage exposes the military and its abuses – this is why we’re the enemy.”

Despite the danger to him and his family, Nyan Linn Htet worries about the safety of those who helped him avoid arrest.

‘Caught in hiding’
“If I’m caught in hiding, the SAC (military-appointed State Administration Council) will persecute the people who gave me a place to live. I’m afraid they [the military] will arrest those who helped me.”

His fears are well founded.

Journalist and political analyst Sithu Aung Myint was high on the military’s wanted list for his political commentary and published opposition to the coup.

On Sunday, August 15, the military raided the home of his colleague, BBC freelance producer, Htet Htet Khine, and arrested both of them.

A week later, in its Sunday, August 21, edition, the military-run newspaper, Global New Light of Myanmar, said Sithu Aung Myint had been charged with sedition, spreading “fake news” and being critical of the military coup leaders and its State Administration Council under Sections 505 (a) and 124 (a) of the Penal Code.

He could be sentenced to life in jail under Section 124 (a) of the penal code.

Htet Htet Khine was arrested for giving shelter to Sithu Aung Myint, and charged under section 17(1) of the Unlawful Association Act for working with the recently formed National Union Government’s radio station, Federal FM.

Held in interrogation centre
Friends and colleagues of Sithu Aung Myint and Htet Htet Khine told IFJ they are concerned both journalists were held at an interrogation centre for more than a week before having access to either legal help or contact with colleagues or family.

Nyan Linn Htet told IFJ he is aware his legal and human rights will not be respected if he is arrested.

“They will not let us get legal help until they’ve got what they want from us. The military amended 505 (a) of the Penal Code to prevent giving us bail. We know they will jail us even if we have legal representation.

“We know SAC is torturing journalists because of the work we do.”

Reports by local and international humanitarian groups have detailed the severe beatings — hours of maintaining stressed positions, use of sexual violence — and killing of people while held in detention.

Nyan Linn Htet said if arrested, he knows it will come with beatings. He admits that the thought of being tortured keeps him awake at night.

“They will jail me, but only after they torture me. I will not be released until I sign a statement that I will never criticise them. I’m not afraid of being arrested, but torture scares me. There are nights when I’m too afraid to sleep.”

International media drop Myanmar
He and other local journalists told the IFJ it was disappointing that international media has dropped Myanmar from its news agenda and moved on to cover other stories.

Nyan Linn Htets said despite access difficulties, the international media can use local reporters who are willing to help.

“We know the difficulties media has getting ground access to Myanmar. Covid-19 restrictions also make it impossible to legally cross borders from neighboring countries, but we are already here in the country and are capable of doing the job.”

Despite the fear of arrest and torture, he is still reporting and urged local journalists to keep doing the same.

“It’s important we use what we can to still work and report news events of interest to people. People are accessing news and information in many different ways now.”

The military, while trashing local and international laws and ignoring its constitution, is quick to use and amend laws to jail its opponents for being critical of the coup and for reporting military violence, abuse and corruption.

We have no rights
Nan Paw Gay, editor-in-chief at the Karen Information Center, says the military council has no respect for journalists or their right to publish information in the public interest.

“There is no freedom of the press. If journalists try to report news or seek information from the military’s opponents — CRPH, NUG, CDM, G-Z and PDF — the State Administration Council prosecutes them under Section 17/1 of the Illegal Association Act.

“Since the military launched its coup, sources we use have had their freedom of speech and expression made illegal and they now risk arrest for talking to us and… we can be arrested for speaking with them.

“Independent media groups have been outlawed and totally lost their right to speak freely or write about news events.”

Nan Paw Gay points out if journalists are “critical of the military, its appointed State Administration Council or its lack of a public health plan to tackle the covid-19 pandemic now ravaging the country, section 505 (a) is used to arrest journalists for spreading false news.”

Essentially torture is used to terrorise journalists, he says.

“When the military council arrests and detains journalists, the torture is both physical and psychological. Even before being detained threats are issued and then during the arrest the violence becomes real – shootings, people being kicked and dragged from homes by their hair and beaten.”

Women journalists tortured
Nan Paw Gay says women journalists are more likely to be “tortured using psychological abuse – kept in a dark room and constantly told that they will be killed tomorrow – to mess and generate fear with their thoughts. You can see the effects of the tortured on some journalists when they appear in court – shaking hands and body spasms.”

Military brutality is a daily reality for Myanmar’s people. At the time of writing, the army is preparing to deploy and reinforce its bases with hundreds of extra troops into areas of the Karen National Union-controlled territory and where anti-coup protesters, striking doctors and politicians have been offered refuge and safety.

A senior ethnic Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) soldier told the IFJ that army drones and helicopters have been surveying the area in recent months.

“We know they’ve sent munitions and large troop numbers to our area… last time we had drones flying over our area, they later attacked villages and our positions with airstrikes. They’re already fighting in our Brigade 5 and 1 and have started in 6 and 2.”

Since the military launched its coup on February 1, there has been at least 500 armed battles between the KNU and the military regime and 70,000 Karen civilians have been displaced and are hiding in makeshift camps as a direct result of these attacks.

Fighter jets have flown into Karen National Union-controlled areas 27 times and dropped at least 47 bombs, killing 14 civilians and wounding 28.

Naw K’nyaw Paw, general secretary of the Karen Women Organisation, in an interview with Karen News, said villagers displaced by the Myanmar Army attacks are now in desperate need of humanitarian aid.

‘Shoot at villagers’
“They shoot at villagers if they see them on their farms, burning down their rice barns and killing the livestock left behind. The Burma Army also arrests people when they see them and use them as human shields to protect them when attacked by Karen soldiers.”

Naw K’nyaw Paw said accessing the displaced villagers is difficult, especially during the wet season.

“The only accessible way in is on foot, supplies have to be carried through jungle. Given the restrictions due to covid-19 as well as the increasing Burma Army military operations, villagers are unable to return to their homes and they will need food, clothing and medicine, especially the young and old.”

Nan Paw Gay says the military’s strategy to muzzle the media is a familiar tactic that has been used before.

“Stop international media getting access to conflict areas, shut down independent media, hunt local journalists and when there’s no one to left to report, launch attacks in ethnic regions, displacing thousands of villagers.”

Phil Thornton is a journalist and senior adviser to the International Federation of Journalists in South East Asia. This article was first published by the IFJ Asia-Pacific blog and is republished with the author’s permission. Thornton is also a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

WARNING: This article contains graphic content that some readers may find disturbing.

Unexplained deaths spark sorcery claims, torture and murder, as fears build of a Covid-19 ‘time bomb’ in Papua New Guinea.

When a young boy died suddenly in Tatape Village in Papua New Guinea’s highlands, his relatives said dark forces were at work.

Four women were accused of using sanguma — a local term for sorcery or witchcraft — to kill the child.

• READ MORE: Other articles about Papua New Guinea and sorcery
• Jo Chandler: Gender, human rights and power investigations in Papua New Guinea — Pacific Journalism Review

Sergeant Daniel Olabe from the Hela Police Command alleges the boy’s father and others led their tribesmen to where the women were selling baked flour in a local market.

“Eventually they got one of the ladies… and tortured her,” he said.

“They hung her up, tied her arms and legs, beat her and started cutting her really badly.

“They did it until 10pm and she died eventually.”

Her dismembered body was left beside a road some kilometres away.

A video of the torture and murder shows a crowd of people watching on.

There have so far been no arrests in relation to the murder, with police saying suspects have fled into nearby bush and mountains, and fighting between groups in the aftermath has made it difficult to go into the area.

The case is one of a string of sorcery-accusation killings across PNG in recent months.

While many parts of the country have a long history of belief in sorcery, what concerns authorities is that many recent killings have occurred in regions where there isn’t a tradition of witchcraft.

“This torturing and killing is very serious to us, it’s like a first of its kind to us,” sergeant Olabe said.

In another case in the same month, a man was killed by a mob in Daru after being accused of using sorcery.

“Sorcery-related killing is unheard of in Daru Town,” Daru Police Commander Inspector Soiwa Ricker told local daily newspaper The National.

How traditional beliefs turned into murder
Accusations of sorcery usually follow a sudden or unexplained death, with a grieving village becoming convinced someone among them is to blame.

An accusation can swiftly end in torture, reprisals and lynchings.

But Ruth Kissam, an advocate and expert in the field who works with local NGO the Tribal Foundation, said the violence did not have a cultural background, even in areas where belief in sorcery was traditional.

“Sorcery-accusation-related violence picked up about 10 to 15 years ago,” she said.

“Culturally, there is a deep belief in sorcery in many parts of Papua New Guinea, but it was never violent.

“The belief system was sorcery against sorcery, and mostly it was believed that the village sorcerer was a man.”

Kissam said now the people generally accused were women, often those who were already marginalised or vulnerable and were “easily targeted”.

“Now the dynamics have changed, it’s become more about power plays,” she said.

Con artists’ claim they can identify ‘witches’
Kissam said the horrific violence being seen had “absolutely nothing to do with culture” and instead was “a law and order problem that is arising from a broken health system”.

She believed disenfranchisement among people who were unable to get adequate healthcare and left school with no jobs to go to was contributing to the problem.

And increased connectivity in PNG, through new roads and easier travel, has also been attributed with spreading sorcery beliefs into regions where it isn’t traditional.

Another major concern has been the rise of people called glassmen, or glassmeri for women, who claim to be able to identify a witch.

The Tribal Foundation warned a recent parliamentary inquiry into gender-based violence in PNG they were partly responsible for spreading sorcery into new areas.

“We have people who are glassman and glassmeri who will go into the community and they are profiteering off their [claimed] special ability to say who in the community is the sanguma [or witch],” Tribal Foundation director Gary Bustin said.

“These are just con artists profiting from torture.”

It had become a profitable business model for the glassmen, who asked for payment from a community to identify a “witch”.

Coronavirus could be a sorcery ‘time bomb’
There are also concerns that deaths related to covid-19 could lead to an increase in sorcery accusations — and one such case has already been recorded.

A community health worker in the town of Goroka contracted Covid-19 and died at home earlier this year.

“The family in his tribe said the wife used sorcery to kill her husband, so the community got hold of the lady, stripped her naked and tortured her with hot irons,” local MP Aiya Tambua said.

Someone alerted the police to the lynching as it was in progress. Before officers arrived, the woman was thrown off a bridge.

She survived but Tambua said while the woman was in hospital, her daughter was also attacked and needed to be rescued by police.

“[The hospital] found that the mother is covid positive and the child is covid positive and the father died from covid-19,” he said.

Kissam said covid-19 was a potential “time bomb” for sorcery-related violence.

“Covid poses a very critical risk right now,” she said.

There are reports of “countless” accusations of sorcery following suspected covid-19 deaths, but the case in Goroka is the only confirmed act of violence so far.

Kissam warned that an accusation was still a mark against someone and that a “build-up” of accusations could see people attacked later, especially when covid-19 was out of the headlines.

She said the PNG government needed to run an aggressive education campaign explaining the science of the pandemic.

Why won’t police intervene?
In the wake of the horrific murder of the woman in Hela, PNG’s Parliament is asking questions.

A newly formed special parliamentary committee on gender-based violence has written to the country’s Police Commissioner, asking for information about the investigation and potential arrests.

The letter, written by the committee’s chairman Charles Abel also highlights concerns that the police response to sorcery-accusation violence is “often insufficient”.

He said the committee had been told “police [were] not attending cases in a timely manner and little or no action [was] being taken to investigate or arrest alleged perpetrators”.

A shortage of police in PNG can make investigating the cases difficult, especially as officers are often met with armed and violent community members. PNG’s police-to-civilian ratio is about one officer per 2000 people.

“Most of the police are in urban centres and some of them are guarding the mines, they’re attached to the resource sector,” Kissam said.

“The police could be one [officer] in a catchment of area of 20,000 to 30,000 people.”

Amid the focus on better enforcing existing laws, there are also calls to introduce new legislation specifically targeting glassmen and glassmeri.

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