Mexico Says Troops Will Not Be Questioned Over Ayotzinapa
teleSUR | October 6, 2015
Mexico’s Defense Secretary said Monday night that he will not let the nation’s soldiers be questioned by international investigators over the apparent abduction and massacre of 43 students in Ayotzinapa last year.
“I can’t permit them to interrogate my soldiers, who at this point haven’t committed a single crime,” said Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos in an interview with the Televisa network. He said the soldiers only answer to Mexican authorities.
His comments came after two separate reports, published last month, contradicted government claims that soldiers were not in the area when, a little over a year ago, dozens of students at Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College in the state of Guerrero went missing. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, or IACHR, an autonomous arm of the Organization of American States, and the Mexican magazine Proceso conducted separate investigations that both found soldiers were in fact present at the time of the incident.
IACHR investigators have criticized the government’s investigation of the disappearance and have sought to interview the soldiers who they say were present. Meanwhile, a report from the magazine Proceso revealed that bullet casings from weapons carried by the Mexican army were found at the crime scene.
“We received the order from [name redacted]: ‘arm yourselves, we’re going out,’” one soldier said in a deposition with Mexican prosecutors that was obtained by the magazine. “He told us, ‘get [expletive] ready because there’s armed personnel that are going around killing people.”
The Mexican government has already conceded a state role in the incident, accusing Jose Luis Abarca, mayor of the town of Iguala, of ordering local police to kidnap the students and hand them over to a local gang to be killed. Tomás Zerón de Lucio, head of Mexico’s Criminal Investigations Agency, has claimed the students were mistakenly identified as members of a rival criminal organization. “That was the reason why they were deprived of their freedom, initially, and then of their lives,” he said in January.
The IAHCR report accuses the army of having witnessed the events as they unfolded and failing to intervene. The report in Proceso suggests soldiers actually fired on the students, perhaps mistaking them for criminals.
The Mexican government’s refusal to allow members of its military to be interviewed by international investigators comes just days after Mexicans marked the anniversary of the 1968 Tlatelolco square massacre, when soldiers and police fired into a crowded of unarmed protesters in Mexico City days before the start of the Olympic Games. Witnesses reported seeing dozens of dead bodies. Hundreds of people were arrested, many never to be seen again.
After decades of denying any wrongdoing, the Mexican government conceded there was a systemic cover-up and in 2006 accused former President Luis Echeverría, the interior secretary, of having organized the massacre, charging him with genocide. He was found not guilty.
Saudi Government threatens death penalty for tweeting – reports
Reprieve – October 6, 2015
The Saudi Arabian Government has warned that people could face execution for tweeting “rumours,” according to the state-backed Makkah Newspaper.
In an article published online on October 3rd, the paper said that a “judicial source” at the country’s Ministry of Justice had “confirmed to Makkah Online that the death penalty is the harshest of the penalties that can be enacted upon those who spread rumours which create civil discord, via social media platforms like Twitter.”
Although the report does not use a named source, the nature of state-censorship in the Kingdom makes it unlikely that such claims would be made without the consent of the authorities. In addition, the Makkah Newspaper appears to enjoy government support – according to local news reports, it was launched last year by the Governor of Mecca, in the presence of the Minister for Culture and Information.
The report, translated by human rights charity Reprieve, appears to be the first time that the Saudi authorities have specifically threatened to use the death penalty for ‘offences’ committed on social media such as Twitter.
It comes in the wake of the news that Saudi Arabia plans to execute two people arrested as children: Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, who was arrested aged 17 for alleged involvement in anti-Government protests and faces beheading and ‘crucifixion’; and Dawoud al-Marhoon, who was arrested aged 17, also following protests, and faces beheading. Both have had their final appeals rejected and could face execution at any time.
The UK Government has faced criticism over a bid to provide services to the Saudi prison system – which will be responsible for Ali’s and Dawoud’s executions. Despite calls from Members of Parliament and NGOs to drop the bid, it has continued to pursue it.
Maya Foa, director of the death penalty team at international human rights charity Reprieve said: “Two weeks ago we heard of the Saudi government’s plans to ‘crucify’ Ali al Nimr for attending a protest when he was 17; now it appears they’re threatening social media users with the death penalty. The Kingdom is executing people at double the rate of last year, with many of those facing the swordsman’s blade sentenced to death for drug offences, attending protests or exercising their right to free speech. It is unthinkable that people could face a death sentence for a simple tweet, yet so far, neither the UK nor the US – both key allies of Saudi Arabia – have taken a strong line against this appalling behaviour. Instead, the British Government is bidding to supply services to Saudi prison authorities – those who will be responsible for carrying out the execution of Ali and scores of others like him.”
Second Saudi juvenile to face ‘beheading’ for protests
Reprieve | October 6, 2015
A second juvenile is facing beheading in Saudi Arabia after a court upheld his conviction for a role in protests, days after the case of juvenile Ali al-Nimr sparked a global outcry.
Dawoud al-Marhoon was 17 when he was arrested without a warrant by Saudi security forces in May 2012, at the height of protests in the country’s Eastern Province. He was tortured and made to sign a ‘confession’ that was later relied on to convict him. He has been held in solitary confinement, and has been barred from speaking to his lawyer. Last week, the Specialized Criminal Court – the same body that recently upheld a sentence of ‘crucifixion’ for Ali al-Nimr – upheld Dawoud’s conviction, and sentenced him to death by beheading.
With legal avenues exhausted, both juveniles could now be executed at any time, without prior notification to their families. The executions are expected to go ahead despite concerns about the fairness of both trials; Dawoud was sentenced after a number of secret hearings took place without the presence of his lawyer, who was also blocked from receiving information about appeal hearings.
The case of Ali al-Nimr, who faces a sentence of ‘crucifixion’ – involving beheading and the public display of his body – has prompted strong international criticism, with the French government and a group of UN experts among those calling for a halt to the plans. Asked by the BBC on Sunday, British Prime Minister David Cameron said his message to the Saudi government was “don’t do it”, and that “we never stint in telling them that we don’t agree with them on these human rights issues.”
However, Mr Cameron’s government has been criticized for continuing with a Ministry of Justice bid to provide services to the Saudi prison system. Concerns were also raised last week about the UK’s foreign policy priorities after Sir Simon McDonald, Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Office, told MPs that human rights no longer had the “profile” within his department that they had “in the past”.
Commenting, Maya Foa, director of the death penalty team at the human rights organization Reprieve, said: “Ali al-Nimr’s case has rightly prompted revulsion among the international community – it is therefore horrifying that the Saudi government is pushing ahead with plans to exact a similarly brutal sentence on another juvenile, Dawoud al-Marhoon. It’s also deeply disappointing to see the US and the UK – who are among the Saudis’ closest allies – failing to intervene strongly to stop these executions from going ahead. It is grossly hypocritical for David Cameron to say he opposes these sentences, while his government is bidding to support the very prisons service who will be responsible for carrying them out. The British government must urgently change its priorities – ministers must cancel the bid, and call unequivocally on Saudi Arabia to halt the executions.”
‘We Hope This Information Has Been Helpful’
By Brett Max Kaufman | ACLU | October 2, 2015
The ACLU’s long-running effort to shed light on the government’s “targeted killing” program has had its share of breakthroughs — most importantly, the Second Circuit Appeals Court’s release of a July 2010 Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel memorandum laying out the purported legal justification for the extrajudicial killing of an American citizen.
But while we’ve been at it for more than half a decade, the government continues to stonewall. For years in our Freedom of Information Act lawsuits, the government claimed that it could not even “confirm or deny” the existence of records related to the program — a program that was, even then, openly discussed in the media, in the halls of Congress, and in government officials’ formal speeches. Then the government refused to identify or release records that the courts finally forced it to admit it had.
Today, that — um — changed.
This morning, the ACLU actually received a responsive targeted-killing record from the government. It sums up the government’s current stance with respect to disclosures relating to the program.
Eight pages completely redacted, with this at the end:
How’s that for “helpful”?
Update on Amer Jubran Case: Torture and Denial of Justice
Urgent Action for Amer Jubran Mon 10/5
Members of the Amer Jubran Defense Campaign have recently received trial documents revealing severe human rights violations at every stage in the arrest, trial, and sentencing of Amer Jubran and his co-defendants. Most importantly, the documents show that the defendants were forced to sign prefabricated confessions under torture from agents of the General Intelligence Directorate. According to testimony the defendants submitted at trial, they were not even allowed to read these statements before being forced to sign them.
Methods of torture enumerated in a brief filed by defense attorneys include sleep deprivation, routine and constant humiliation, threats of violence against members of the defendants’ families, physical beatings, and prolonged stress positions. One defendant with a life-threatening illness was denied medication unless he agreed to sign.
The defendants contested these fabricated confessions at trial. In its decision, the State Security Court nevertheless stated that it was not required to consider the defendants’ testimony or any of the defense’s evidence, and used the forced confessions as the primary basis for its ruling.
The confessions that formed the basis for the court ruling defy all credibility. In Amer’s case, we are to believe that a full confession to all the facts in the trial was made voluntarily on May 6, 2014–less than 24 hours after his arrest. (He nevertheless continued to be held for close to two months in incommunicado detention.) According to the GID officer who provided the document, the confession was made without any interrogation, as a simple answer to the question: “Tell us what occurred with you.” A similar procedure was supposedly followed with the other defendants, all of whom confessed to the same facts in statements that frequently used identical language to describe the same events, referring in some cases to events that allegedly took place ten years earlier.
That such confessions should be submitted to the court and accepted by it without question suggests that the use of confessions obtained through torture has become so routine in Jordan–and takes place within such an atmosphere of impunity–that no serious attempt has been made to conceal the fact.
Amer’s case is now in appeal before Jordan’s Court of Cassation (i.e., its Supreme Court). A decision is likely to be issued within the next 1-2 weeks. International pressure at this moment is key, since it is the last opportunity under ordinary procedures in which the unjust decision in this case can be reversed.
Amer has also made us aware that he is concerned about the possibility of retaliatory measures being taken against him in prison–including transfer to a facility with prisoners who have been charged with membership in organizations such as Al-Qaeda, who would have a hostile relationship to a prisoner charged with affiliation with Hizballah. This is further reason to make the Jordanian government aware that people around the world are watching.
Action Call: E-mail Campaign on Monday, October 5:
We are asking Amer’s supporters and all who care about fundamental human rights, to direct e-mails calling for urgent intervention in Amer’s case on Monday, October 5, to:
Minister of Justice, Bassam Talhouni: Feedback@moj.gov.jo .
Please cc’ the following:
Prime Minister and Defense Minister, Abdullah Ensour, info@pm.gov.jo
Minister of Interior, Salamah Hammad, info@moi.gov.jo
Or you can send an e-mail automatically by through the website of the Samidoun Network of Support for Political Prisoners: http://samidoun.net/2015/10/take-action-update-on-amer-jubran-case-torture-and-denial-of-justice/
A sample letter, an open letter from the Amer Jubran Defense Campaign, and more details regarding the human rights violations in Amer’s case are included below.
In addition to torture, some of the other violations of elementary rights to due process and to fair trial included the following:
1) No warrant was presented at the time of his arrest.
2) Amer and other defendants were denied access to lawyers after their arrest. They were specifically threatened with torture if they requested the presence of lawyers when they were ultimately brought before the Public Prosecutor.
3) Defense attorneys at trial were not allowed to summon for questioning GID officers involved in the arrests, in the seizure of evidence, in interrogation, and in drawing up the arrest records. They were thus deprived of their ability to demonstrate that the confessions were false and to contest material evidence used in the trial.
4) Defense attorneys were not allowed to call expert witnesses concerning key issues at stake in the use of material evidence (such as computer forensics) or to request intelligence central to the charges in the trial.
***
Sample Letter:
Dear Minister of Justice Bassam Talhouni,
I am writing to call your attention to the severe miscarriage of justice against Amer Jubran, a Jordanian citizen who currently has a case before Jordan’s Court of Cassation.
⦁ Mr. Jubran was arrested on May 5, 2014 by agents of the General Intelligence Directorate and held in incommunicado detention for close to two months. No warrant was presented at the time of his arrest. The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention sent an urgent appeal on his behalf to your government at that time: See https://spdb.ohchr.org/hrdb/28th/public_-_UA_Jordan_07.07.14_%281.2014%29_Pro.pdf
⦁ During his period in GID detention, Mr. Jubran and six other defendants in the same case were subjected to prolonged periods of torture, including sleep deprivation, beatings, stress positions, and threats of violence against their families. Under these conditions they were forced to sign false confessions to planning a series of “terrorist” actions–confessions they were not even allowed to read before signing them.
⦁ On July 29, 2015, Mr. Jubran was sentenced by Jordan’s State Security Court to 10 years in prison with hard labor. The Court refused to consider the defense evidence in the case, and used the fabricated confessions as the basis for its decision.
Global human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the Al Karama Foundation have condemned the prevalence of torture in Jordan by the General Intelligence Directorate. The lack of independence of State Security Court from the GID and its failure to condemn torture and other fundamental human rights violations by GID agents have been specifically cited as a reason for the persistence of torture in security cases in Jordan. The United Nations Committee Against Torture, and the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention have repeatedly called for the abolition of the State Security Court.
I am writing now to urge that you take all necessary action in the case of Amer Jubran to see that his appeal before the Court of Cassation receives full and independent review. The severe violations of human rights in his case must be condemned and the unjust sentence reversed.
Sincerely,
***
Letter from the Amer Jubran Defense Campaign:
Dear Minister of Justice,
We urgently call your attention to the case of Amer Jubran and his horrendous treatment at the hands of the Jordanian General Intelligence Directorate. Mr. Jubran currently has a case before the Court of Cassation for severe violations of legal process in his arrest, interrogation and trial.
Mr. Jubran was violently arrested in May of 2014 and no crimes were specified at that time. He spent 50 days in a secret detention facility where he was unable to see his lawyer or family. According to the defendants’ testimony at trial, he and six other defendants were repeatedly tortured in this facility. They were forced by torture to sign identical statements that had been prepared in advance by the interrogators–statements they were not even allowed to read before signing them. The torture, led by Colonel Habes Rizk, involved 72 hour periods of sleep deprivation, being forced under cold water, being forcibly revived after fainting, threats, beatings, face-slapping, insults, and humiliation. The intelligence officers threatened to bring Mr. Jubran’s parents, wife, and children into the interrogation. They threatened to assault Mr. Jubran’s wife in front of him in order to force co-operation. Pressure was applied to his shoulder and neck and to his legs for prolonged periods to cause pain. Critical medication and transfer to a hospital was withheld from one defendant suffering from hepatitis and liver disease until such time as he signed his statement. Lawyers were not allowed to see their clients during the entire period of interrogation.
It’s only after this lengthy period of incommunicado detention and torture that charges of “terrorism” were ultimately brought against him.
At the end of Mr. Jubran’s trial in August 2015 the judges of the State Security Court completely ignored a thorough defense by his lawyers, declaring all evidence brought by the defense irrelevant. The Court then sentenced Mr. Jubran to ten years in prison with hard labor.
International human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the United Nations Committee Against Torture, and the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention have been clear in condemning the atmosphere of impunity in Jordan, especially in cases before the State Security Court involving torture by agents of the General Intelligence Directorate.
The actions of the GID, the State Prosecutor and the State Security Court in Mr. Jubran’s arrest, detention and trial violate the most basic standards of international human rights, including protection from torture and the right to a fair trial before an impartial court. It is clear from his case that these agencies are confident that their activities will not be called into question, that they can get away with any and all violations of the rights of Jordanian citizens.
We ask you to demonstrate that this is not so, and to intervene on Mr. Jubran’s behalf. The current appeal is perhaps the only opportunity left for responsible officials in Jordan to reverse this gross violation of Mr. Jubran’s legal and human rights. Amer Jubran has friends and supporters from all over the world who will be watching for your response.
Sincerely,
The Amer Jubran Defense Campaign
The State Tried Kidnapping this Amish Girl to Force Chemo on Her, She Fled and is Now Cancer Free
By John Vibes | The Free Thought Project | October 2, 2015
Akron, OH – After fleeing from government agents who wanted to kidnap her and put her through chemotherapy, an Amish girl who once had cancer is now entirely healthy. Sarah Hershberger, 12, was being treated at Akron Childrens Hospital, a government hospital, when the staff attempted to force her through chemotherapy despite the objections of her and her parents, Andy and Anna Hershberger.
In June of 2013, Sarah was receiving chemotherapy at the hospital and her parents were convinced that it was making her condition worse, and putting her at risk for many other long-term health problems.
“We were pretty sure we were going to lose her if we kept doing the chemo,” Anna Hershberger, Sarah’s mother said.
The parents began to object to the treatment and faced strong resistance from the hospital staff, who even took them to court and attempted to gain guardianship over Sarah. The doctors had testified that without receiving chemotherapy immediately, Sarah would die within six months.
The family stood firm in their denial of the treatment, which prompted an intense legal battle. At one point during the ordeal, the family was forced to flee the country so she was not kidnapped by the hospital. Eventually, the family won in court, and it was decided that they had a legal and constitutional right to treat the cancer as they saw fit.
Now, two years later, Sarah is not only still alive, but she is actually entirely healthy, and cancer-free.
According to court records released this week, Sarah is no longer showing symptoms of lymphoma and she is back to her regular life. This recovery is in spite of the fact that doctors insisted that she would die without chemotherapy, to the extent that they would attempt to take her away from her parents.
The mainstream media has been very pessimistic and cynical about Sarah’s case, and many of the media segments about her suggest that her family is irresponsible and that she is essentially on her deathbed. However, this is not the case, she is now healthy and has beaten cancer because her and her family decided to stand up against the strong-arm tactics of the state.
reason.tv produced a video report during the legal battle in 2013.
Report Examines Widespread Attacks On Palestinian Human Rights Activists On College Campuses
By Kevin Gostzola | ShadowProof | September 30, 2015
A nonprofit legal advocacy organization has documented and responded to nearly 300 incidents of censorship, punishment, and other actions intended to “burden” advocacy for Palestinian human rights. The incidents point to a pervasive problem on American campuses, which is chilling the rights of individuals to engage in free speech.
The incidents are largely a result of pressure from defenders of Israel to the increased success of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israeli military occupation.
Palestine Legal, which was founded in 2012 to support the rights of Americans to speak out for Palestinian freedom, and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) put together a “first of its kind” report focusing on the suppression of speech, expression, and activism over the past two years.
According to the report, the organization “responded to 140 incidents and 33 requests for assistance in anticipation of potential suppression” in the first six months of 2015. In 2014, the organization “responded to 152 incidents” and “68 additional requests for legal assistance in anticipation of such actions.”
“The overwhelming majority of these incidents—89 percent in 2014 and 80 percent in the first half of 2015—targeted students and scholars, a reaction to the increasingly central role universities play in the movement for Palestinian rights,” noted Palestine Legal.
Of incidents from the first six months of 2015, Palestine Legal found more than half involved “false accusations of anti-Semitism” based “solely on speech critical of Israeli policy.” About half of the incidents responded to in 2014 involved accusations of anti-Semitism based solely on criticism of Israeli policy.
Nearly a third of incidents in the first six months of 2015 stemmed from “false accusations of support for terrorism.” This was an increase, as only 13 percent of incidents in 2014 suggested Palestinian advocates supported terrorism.
“The claim that Palestine activists support terrorism frequently relies on anti-Muslim and xenophobic stereotypes about the inherent violence and hateful worldviews of Arab, Muslim, and international students,” the report states.
Most importantly, the accusations are “baseless,” because “no links between terrorism and student activism for Palestinian rights have been substantiated.”
Dima Khalidi, the director for Palestine Legal, noted the organization had interviewed hundreds of students, professors, administrators, and others. Eighty-five percent of the incidents took place on 65 college and university campuses and in 24 different states.
“We’re not just talking about a handful of isolated incidents,” Khalidi declared. “This is really a widespread problem that affects hundreds of people across the country.”
A “primary tool” for pro-Israel groups is vilification
Israel advocacy groups, university administrators, and government officials accuse Palestinian human rights activists of anti-Semitism or “supporting Hamas” to frighten them into abandoning their organizing. Several students informed Palestine Legal false accusations “would hinder their ability to find a job or travel.”
As the report acknowledges, “The speech activities of Palestinian-American, Arab-American, and Muslim students routinely subject them to heightened harassment, intimidation, and discriminatory treatment in the midst of a post-9/11 climate in which their communities already face infringements of their civil liberties.”
Vilification is a “primary tool” for pro-Israel groups. One student falsely accused of associating with terrorists suggested, “The underlying message [is] that if you speak out too loudly or work too hard … anti-Palestinian activist[s] will smear you just like [they] tried to smear me.”
These accusations of anti-Semitism and support for terrorism coerce campus administrators into restricting and punishing students or scholars for their speech.
Fodder for character assassination against Palestinian human rights activists sometimes comes from surveillance of social media. Organizations “identify out-of-context quotations, Facebook posts, and other material.”
In January 2015, as the report highlights, “The Reut Institute reportedly held a ‘hackathon,’ in which Israeli officials and a number of other Israeli advocacy groups participated, aimed at exploring ways to gather intelligence on and target individuals involved in Palestine solidarity work. In its June 2015 strategy document, the Reut Institute highlighted the need to ‘out-name-shame the delegitimizers’ as a strategy to fight BDS, recommending the use of ‘all available firepower—financial, social, legal, etc.’”
A shady outfit called Canary Mission put out a “list of organizations and activists it accused of supporting terrorism, including campus chapters of the Muslim Student Association, which it refers to as a ‘virtual terror factory.”
The list was published for the express McCarthyist purpose of “exposing” individuals and student groups to make it harder for them to obtain positions in school and earn jobs after graduation.
Students have reported being spied upon by Israeli consulate officials. For example, in 2014, students reported members of the Israeli consul general’s entourage “photographed pro-divestment student campaigners as they spoke with other students and leafleted.”
The surveillance was part of acts to disrupt a divestment vote on campus. Students with family and friends in occupied Palestine expressed concern “such surveillance could have serious consequences” as it might allow Israel to block them from entering Israel and the West Bank to visit family.
Additionally, the comprehensive report examines various other tactics used against activists, including: official denunciation, bureaucratic barriers, cancellations and alterations of academic and cultural events, administrative sanctions, threats to academic freedom, lawsuits and legal threats, legislation, and criminal investigations and prosecutions.
“All of these tactics—individually and in the aggregate—threaten the First Amendment rights of people who seek to raise awareness about Palestinian human rights and challenge the dominant perspective in this country, which discounts Israel’s discriminatory and violent government policies,” the report asserts.
Multiple examples of tactics used against activists
The report details several examples of instances when these tactics were wielded to disrupt and stifle actions.
In February 2015, DePaul University’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter sought to hold a fundraising event for Rasmea Odeh, a Palestinian American organizer who was tortured by Israeli forces into confessing that she played a role in a 1967 bombing. The United States government prosecuted her for lying about her past history in immigration documents.
DePaul administrators imposed security fees on the SJP because of a “planned counter-protest,” which led administrators to determine they might need the protection. Four security guards were detailed, and SJP was billed $480. After being forced to subsidize risk from threatened opposition, SJP could not afford to pay the bill and lost the privilege to reserve space for events on campus.
On October 8, 2014, John Jay College instructed the SJP chapter not to “use sheet covered in red paint (representing blood),” as they did during their “Die In/Vigil from Ferguson to Gaza” action. The instruction was a response to pro-Israeli students, who claimed they “felt uncomfortable with the message.”
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign violated Professor Steven Salaita’s academic freedom when they terminated him in 2014 over tweets he sent reacting to Israel’s assault on Gaza.
At Montclair State University, the student government initially sanctioned the university’s SJP for handing out “offensive” pamphlets. The literature led SGA to “fine the group five percent of its fall semester budget” and an order to cease distribution of all “political propaganda.” The brochure focused on Israeli settlements and the loss of Palestinian land from 1946 to 2000.
In April 2013, Northeastern University placed SJP members on “probation” after they walked out of a campus event featuring a soldier from the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Offficials warned the students before the event not to hold signs or engage in “vocal disruption.”
“Students decided to tape the names of Palestinian children killed by the IDF to their shirts and planned a walkout,” the report notes. “During a pause in the presentation, one SJP student stood up and stated, ‘The IDF are war criminals and they are not welcome on our campus,” then proceeded to walk out with other students, who spontaneously chanted ‘Free Palestine’ as they left the room.”
Students were investigated by university administrators, and the university canceled a lecture the SJP had planned with Dr. Abu Sitta. The students were later charged with violations of school codes, and after a hearing, SJP was found to have violated “demonstration policy.” They were on probation until December 2013 and forced to write a “civility statement.”
In November 2010, Rutgers University administrators refused to allow students, who raised money for the Gaza Flotilla, to disburse those funds after Hillel alleged the fundraising constituted “material support for terrorism.”
Rather stunningly, University of California President Mark Yudof issued a rare public statement in February 2012 after activists disrupted an event, which compared Palestinian rights activism to incidents of racism. He likened the “hecklers” to the “hanging of nooses” on black students’ dorm doors or putting “swastikas on Jewish students’ property. He pledged to get the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance involved to “improve campus climate for all students.”
In the spring semester of 2015, the University of Toledo student government caved to Israeli advocacy groups and blocked the public from attending a divestment hearing, a violation of the Open Meetings Act in Ohio. Attendance by SJP members was restricted, as they were forced to sit in a “separate room” away from Hillel students. Student senators were blocked from voting on the resolution. But outcry eventually led to the resolution coming up for a vote and it passed “overwhelmingly.”
One of the more stunning examples involves eleven University of California-Irvine students, who were criminally prosecuted in 2010 for walking out of a speech by then-Israeli ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren. They were charged with misdemeanors for disrupting a public meeting, and the jury found ten of the students guilty.
The numbers do not necessarily tell the full story of how organizing is being suppressed. These are only incidents, which were reported to Palestine Legal so the organization could provide assistance.
“They’re really only the tip of the iceberg with a lot more incidents that go unreported,” Khalidi added.
However, the report clearly demonstrates how heavy-handed tactics are being used to intimidate Palestinian human rights activists and chill their criticism of Israeli policies against Palestinians.
France’s Government Aims to Give Itself—and the NSA—Carte Blanche to Spy on the World
By Danny O’Brien | EFF | September 30, 2015
The United States makes an improper division between surveillance conducted on residents of the United States and the surveillance that is conducted with almost no restraint upon the rest of the world. This double standard has proved poisonous to the rights of Americans and non-Americans alike. In theory, Americans enjoy better protections. In practice there are no magical sets of servers and Internet connections that carry only American conversations. To violate the privacy of everyone else in the world, the U.S. inevitably scoops up its own citizens’ data. Establishing nationality as a basis for discrimination also encourages intelligence agencies to make the obvious end-run: spying on each other’s citizens, and then sharing that data. Treating two sets of innocent targets differently is already a violation of international human rights law. In reality, it reduces everyone to the same, lower standard.
Now France’s government is about the make the same error as the U.S. practice with its new “Surveillance des communications électroniques internationales” bill, currently being rushed through the French Parliament. As an open letter led by France’s La Quadrature du Net and signed today by over thirty civil society groups including EFF, states, France’s legislators’ must reject this bill to protect the rights of individuals everywhere, including those in France.
By legalizing France’s own plans to spy on the rest of the world, France would take a step to establishing the NSA model as an acceptable global norm. Passing the law would undermine France’s already weak surveillance protections for its own citizens, including lawyers, journalists and judges. And it would make challenging the NSA’s practices far more difficult for France and other states.
The new bill comes as a result of France’s Constitutional Council review of the country’s last mass surveillance bill, which passed with little parliamentary opposition in July. The Council passed most of that bill on the basis of its minor concessions to oversight and proportionality, but rejected the sections on international surveillance, which contained no limits to what France might do.
France already spies on the world. In July, the French newsmagazine L’Obs revealed a secret decree dating from at least 2008, which funded a French intelligence service project to intercept and analyze international data traffic passing through through submarine cable intercepts. The decree authorized the interception of cable traffic from 40 countries including Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Iraq, Syria, Sub-Saharan Africa, Russia, China, India and the United States. The report states that France’s intelligence agency, the General Directorate for External Security (DGCE), spent $775 million on the project.
Given that the Constitutional Council implied that such practices are almost certainly unlawful as is, the French government has now scrambled to create a framework that could excuse it.
Under the new proposed law, France’s intelligence agencies still have an incredibly broad remit. The law concentrates the power to grant wide-ranging surveillance permission in the office of the Prime Minister, who can sign off on mass surveillance of communications sent or received from overseas. Such surveillance can be conducted when in the “essential interests of foreign policy” or “[the] essential economic and scientific interests of France”, giving the executive the widest possible scope to conduct surveillance.
The original surveillance law included limits on data retention when spying on French nationals (30 days for the content of communications, four years for metadata, six years for encrypted data). The new international limits are much longer—one year, six years, and eight years respectively. The law’s authors do not justify this longer period, nor do they explain how the intelligence agencies will be able to separate data from each class of target without collecting, analyzing and filtering them all.
The collapsing divide between the lawful, warranted surveillance of ordinary citizens, and the wide-ranging capabilities of the intelligence services to collect signals intelligence on foreign powers and agents, has ended up corroding both domestic and global privacy rights. The U.S. has taken advantage of the lesser protections for non-U.S. persons to introduce the dragnet surveillance of everyone who uses the Internet outside the U.S. Because unprotected foreigners’ data is mixed up with somewhat more protected communications of Americans, the U.S. government believes that it can “incidentally” scoop up its own citizens’ data, and sort it out later under nobody’s oversight but its own.
If the French Parliament passes this bill, it will mean that France has decided to embody and excuse the same practices as the NSA in its own law. It is a short-sighted attempt to cover France’s existing secret practices, but the consequences are far-reaching. The limited protections that were included in the original surveillance bill—including assurances that French journalists, judges and lawyers would be protected from dragnet surveillance—will be undermined by their inevitable inclusion in the vacuuming up of all international traffic.
Any attempt by the EU countries to rein back the NSA’s surveillance plan by calls for the United States to respect international human rights standards, and data protection principles, will provoke the response that the U.S. is simply exercising the powers that an EU member has already granted itself.
By creating and excusing a double standard France’s government dooms everyone to a single, lower standard. It cannot simply shrug off its responsibilities to human rights, its partners in Europe, and the privacy rights of foreigners. If it does so, it will end up undermining the French people’s privacy and security as much as it undermines that of the rest of the world.
Killed by Cops Over Pot: Family Lawsuit Reveals Shocking Details
© Zachary Hammond/Family Photo
Sputnik – 29.09.2015
Highly disturbing new information is coming to light thanks to a lawsuit filed by the family of 19-year-old Zachary Hammond, the South Carolina teen fatally shot in the back by police during a small marijuana bust.
The suit alleges that the officer, Lieutenant Mark Tiller, who shot and killed Hammond, threatened to “blow his head off” before he fired, and another officer high-fived the teen’s lifeless body after he was killed.
Tiller has not yet been charged for the teen’s death, nor has the department released dashcam videos or any other documents pertaining to the case. The family has stated that part of their reason for filing the lawsuit is to force the Seneca Police Department to release the footage.
Solicitor Chrissy Adams and state investigators maintain they will not release the footage while the case is still open.
Hammond’s family is also in the midst of another lawsuit to have Adams removed from the case, as she works with the officers involved. She refuses to decide whether Tiller will face charges until the state supreme court makes their decision in that suit, and “federal and state investigators answer some more questions,” the Associated Press reported.
The family has spoken to the woman who was in the vehicle with Hammond, reviewed private surveillance footage, and has had a private autopsy performed on the teen’s body.
The shooting took place after Hammond took Tori Morton on a first date, on July 26. The lawsuit states that they had visited a McDonald’s to get ice cream, and then went to a Hardee’s so that Hammond could buy a hamburger.
When the pair arrived at Hardee’s, however, undercover police were waiting. They allege that they had arranged a drug deal with Morton.
As the police pulled up to Hammond’s car, he reportedly tried to drive away.
Tiller claims he thought Hammond was going to try to run him over, but the private autopsy confirmed that the teen was shot in his back and in his side, meaning that any perceived threat would have already had passed when he was killed.
The lawsuit also claims that there was a pause between the first and second shots, and that after being shot the first time, Hammond looked over at his date.
“‘I’ll blow your (expletive) head off,’ were the last words heard by Zachary Hammond,” The lawsuit states.
The police claim that small amounts of drugs were found on both of the teens. Morton was charged with misdemeanor drug possession.
Hammond was pronounced dead upon the arrival of paramedics. His body was then left on the ground for 90 minutes, where it was reportedly attacked by ants.
Once other investigators arrived, an officer was reportedly seen high fiving his corpse.
The Seneca Police Department has now hired a public relations firm to represent them.
Copyright Infringement Claim Filed By Sandy Hook Charity Kingpin
Memory Hole Blog | September 22, 2015
On September 17 MHB reported on a copyright infringement claim filed with Facebook by an anonymous party against the “Sandy Hook Hoax” Fb page alleging ownership of the Lenie Urbina/Avielle Richman photographs. The copyright claimant has been revealed in the emails below as one Thomas Bittman, co-founder of the lucrative “Sandy Hook Promise” charity. The 501(c)3 has been a key proponent of gun control and mental health protocols that it argues will curb mass shootings, while pulling on the heartstrings of America to the tune of tens of millions of dollars in the wake of the December 14, 2012 Sandy Hook massacre event.
What’s significant here is whether Bittman actually holds the copyright to the images in question, and if he’s not just prompting Facebook to abuse the entire DMCA process intended to address legitimate copyright claims. If so, Bittman has likely committed perjury and is subject to being sued for filing a false copyright infringement claim. “If you send a cease-and-desist letter to an infringer,” under DMCA,
there is a risk that the infringer may file a lawsuit in the infringer’s jurisdiction naming you as a defendant and seeking a declaratory judgment that your copyright is invalid. One recent court decision found that the sending of a single cease-and-desist letter into the state was enough to subject the defendant to personal jurisdiction in that state.
If you send a DMCA takedown notice that is both false and meant in bad faith (such as to harass, or doesn’t state a real claim), you have committed perjury. Though unlikely, if the party you sent the takedown notice to decided to pursue this in court, you could face all of the consequences that your state imposes on people who lie in court.
Most MHB readers will likely agree that such legal action against parties that have sought to terrorize the US citizenry and enrich themselves on an entirely dubious incident is richly deserved. We do hope Mr. Anthony Mead pursues this matter to the fullest extent provided by law.
Students and Regents Demand University of California Adopt Unconstitutional Policy
By Sarah McLaughlin | Foundation for Individual Rights in Education | September 18, 2015
Yesterday, the University of California Board of Regents held an open meeting allowing students, faculty, members of the UC community, and other interested parties to share their thoughts on UC’s proposed Statement of Principles Against Intolerance.
The statement came about after the UC Regents decided not to adopt the U.S. State Department’s definition of anti-Semitism. Free speech advocates pointed out that a public university’s adoption of this definition as policy would raise serious First Amendment concerns and chill protected speech, including criticism of Israel’s government.
Earlier this week, FIRE’s Will Creeley explained that while the Statement of Principles Against Intolerance doesn’t include the State Department’s definition of anti-Semitism, it still impermissibly chills speech by telling students that certain viewpoints don’t belong at their university, encouraging them to report such views, and promising a “prompt” and “effective” institutional response. Will told the Associated Press yesterday that the policy, if implemented, would create “a kind of race to the bottom, sooner or later, by public universities punishing students or faculty for a particular viewpoint.”
Given the First Amendment concerns over both proposed policies, that this open meeting was held on Constitution Day was fitting. Many speakers at yesterday’s meeting agreed that the new proposed policy was a bad idea—but, unfortunately, for a different reason: they want UC to draft a policy that is even more hostile to speech.
The suggestions put forth and the demands made during the meeting were alarming. Despite having only one minute to share their thoughts, plenty of speakers managed to find time to demand that UC violate its students’ speech rights and ignore its obligations under the First Amendment. (Note: The following may include minor transcription errors.)
Comments from the UC Campus Community
Gary Fouse, an adjunct at UC Irvine, claimed that UC’s current proposed statement against intolerance is “useless” without the incorporation of the State Department’s definition of anti-Semitism:
The Israeli-Palestinian debate has led to an atmosphere where many Jewish students who support Israel are often spending their college years in a climate of intimidation, not just from Pro-Palestinian students but in many cases from professors in the classroom. The problem is not neo-Nazis or skinheads. Rather, it is the pro-Palestinian lobby such as the Students for Justice in Palestine, BDS promoters and other faculty allies. Each year these groups invite speakers to campus, some of whom cross the line from legitimate criticism of Israel to attacking Jews as people.
But it’s not up to public university officials to decide what criticism of a foreign government is legitimate or forbidden, and, in turn, to demand everyone at the university abide by their perceptions of “legitimate criticism.” The idea of a public institution doing so should trouble anyone who believes in the fundamental importance of the right to dissent. In fact, President Obama made similar arguments this week at a town hall meeting when he said “I don’t agree that you, when you become students at colleges, have to be coddled and protected from different points of view,” and that silencing arguments we oppose is “not the way we learn.”
Another commenter, a UC Berkeley alum, pointed out the absurdity of Fouse’s argument:
When I was a student at Berkeley, it was criticizing the US government that wasn’t permitted. In fact, we had to have a free speech movement in 1964 in order to have any political speech on campus. So now apparently criticizing the Israeli government is going to be banned.
As this commenter suggested, it’s noteworthy that students in the UC system have historically fought especially hard for their First Amendment rights—rights that should not be so easily set aside.
A group of UC students made a joint statement together saying that the State Department definition of anti-Semitism is “the only existing definition that is capable of addressing the nuanced hatred that we experienced on our campuses today.” If UC follows the advice of these speakers and a majority of those present at this meeting, it will be adopting a deeply troubling policy.
Another worrisome trend in this meeting was the use of criminal or violent acts as examples of why this policy is needed. Several commenters brought up examples of vandalism, including swastikas drawn on fraternity houses and violence against Jewish students, to justify the adoption of the State Department’s definition. But these actions are criminal—they’re already illegal. Trying to target such acts through this new policy is not only superfluous, but would implicate constitutionally protected political speech in the process.
The Regents Respond
Comments from the Regents themselves were hardly any better.
While Regent John Perez’s acknowledged that the State Department’s definition could potentially limit academic freedom, that was one of the few displays of sound judgment.
The most worrying statements came from Regent Richard C. Blum, whose wife is United States Senator Dianne Feinstein. Blum said earlier in the meeting that “we’ve been too tolerant, too patient about all this for too long,” and continued:
I should add that over the weekend my wife, your senior Senator, and I talked about this issue at length. She wants to stay out of the conversation publicly but if we do not do the right thing she will engage publicly and is prepared to be critical of this university if we don’t have the kind of not only statement but penalties for those who commit what you can call them crimes, call them whatever you want. Students that do the things that have been cited here today probably ought to have a dismissal or a suspension from school. I don’t know how many of you feel strongly that way but my wife does and so do I.
Yes, a UC Regent flatly threatened the university with political consequences if it failed to craft a “tolerance” policy that would punish—and even expel—its violators.
The consequences of this suggestion are grave: If UC adopts the State Department definition of anti-Semitism (or any policy banning criticism or intolerance), and accedes to Blum’s demands, students could potentially face expulsion for any language a person subjectively believes is “intolerant.”
Regent Hadi Makarechian later echoed Blum’s demands, stating:
I just wanted to say that I agree with Regent Blum, that principles are great, rejection of actions are great, but we need to address the punishment. If we don’t have punishment we’re just putting a lot of paper together. We’re just stating a lot of stuff on pieces of paper.
The board concluded the meeting by saying there was more work to be done, and announcing the formation of a working group, led by Regent Eddie Island. Island said he would compose a group of university stakeholders who would work together to craft a policy that addressed concerns about both intolerance and freedom of speech.
We at FIRE believe robust protections for freedom of speech accomplish both goals by providing a platform to debate the merits (or lack thereof) of intolerance in the marketplace of ideas.
Hopefully this working group recognizes that more speech and the hard work of convincing someone they’re wrong are the only real, effective remedies against intolerance. UC students and faculty who value free speech and academic freedom should watch these developments very closely.
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The Balfour Declaration – A Century of Jewish Power
By Gilad Atzmon | May 17, 2017
This year, Palestinians and their supporters mark the 100th anniversary of The Balfour Declaration, a written statement from the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary, Arthur James Balfour, to Walter Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, in favour of the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine.
For Palestinians, The Balfour Declaration was the beginning of their plight: a century of ethnic cleansing at the hands of European newcomers who claim Palestine as their historic home. Yet, for some reason, supporters of the Palestinians are desperate to suppress discussion of the motivation for the Balfour Declaration – how and why did it come about? … continue
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